Get Out
I don’t usually add movies to the list that are released the year I’m marathoning, but I had to do this one. Chris Washington is in an interracial relationship with his white girlfriend and agrees to meet her parents, he soon finds that all is not what it seems to be.
This is a near perfect horror film if there ever was one. I don’t even know where to start. It takes the natural tension and caution that occur in real life situations such as this, and then raises it to horrific levels. The atmosphere is unsettling early on and never really lets up, all with a sprinkling of effective humor, and a very exciting climax.
The protagonist is likeable, easy to root for, and he isn’t stupid. The antagonists are portrayed as exceptionally creepy in a very Stepford Wives sort of way. Daniel Kaluuya’s performance is awesome, but everyone puts on a good performance. The pacing is perfect. There isn’t one scene I would remove or shorten.
There isn’t much gore, but Peele does give us one major gory scene of certain blood soaked body parts. The effects are quality. The music in the movie is great. Yeah, there’s the typical horror background stuff, but there are real songs explicitly picked that both set the tone and are relevant to the theme of the movie itself. It’s very nice.
Sorry this isn’t a longer review. The plot is pretty simplistic, but it’s executed SO well, and these opinions tend to be longer the more problems there are.
The Dead Inside
The Dead Inside is a horror musical about a couple, Wes and Fi, and how Wes copes with Fi being possessed by a ghost named Emily.
When I started watching this movie it reminded me of Lo, which I love. To my somewhat surprise, this was made by Travis Betz, the same individual responsible for Lo. Both movies are light on budget and actors. The practical effects are about even on both, but I’d actually give Lo the nod just because the design of Lo itself was so impressive.
So, here’s the thing. This movie has some flaws. The biggest flaw is that it fails to carry any sort of dramatic weight. It definitely lacks the weight necessary to carry the story it’s trying to tell, and makes for a very flat ending that was very clearly written to be surprising and dramatic. There are major events in this story that happen in the blink of an eye. That doesn’t help. The movie would benefit if it portrayed time passing better. I know that might be a difficult thing to do when the entire movie takes place in two rooms, but I think if Betz could have managed that it would have benefited the characters.
The acting is not the best. Sara Lassez plays Fi and her performance is a bit uneven. It’s decent most of the time and actually damn good at other times, but again, the lack of weight felt throughout this movie betrays her performance. Dustin Fasching performance is the worse of the two. It felt like he was putting on a stage performance rather than portraying genuine emotions.
The music in the movie is instrumentally sound and often very catchy, although some of the lyrics come off as cheesy. The occasionally cheesy lyric is helped by the humor that is present early in the film, and the humor is actually good, but it doesn’t last long. I don’t remember any of these songs, tbh, and I JUST finished watching this movie, as opposed to Demon Girl in Lo, which still gets stuck in my head sometimes.
The Dead Inside is not a bad movie, really. It’s a light affair. It has a lot of kinks, but it is perfectly watchable. I wouldn’t say that it’s “hunt down” material, but if it’s on tv, or you’re bored and it’s on shudder, or you happen to find a discount copy of it while skimming through the dvd aisle, it’s definitely a “ehh, why not?” kind of thing. If Lo is Florence and the Machine, The Dead Inside is like Taylor Swift or Megan Trainor trying to be Florence and the Machine. It might not be your kind of thing, but it’s ultimately harmless.
