Rightful

Or you will die in expectation... a low budget, bad acted, but with a glimmer of hope of an idea, gory southern horror, with digital bloodspatter, and cgi wounds made by the reaperman and his whippet.

Its a c movie for sure x2, but not for the common and squemish horror lover, the idea could easily have gone home on a larger budget thinks the grumpy old man.

Being a horror aficionado and stumbling upon the 2021 movie "Rightful" (aka "Blackstock Boneyard"), of course I had to sit down and watch it. Sure, I had never even heard about this movie from writer Stephen George and director Andre Alfa, so I didn't have a clue as to what I was in for here.

Turns out that I wasn't in for a particularly outstanding or great horror experience. The storyline and script from writer Stephen George just didn't have any punch or any particular drive really. It was a very monotonous and generic horror movie, without actually being scary in any way.

The storyline in "Rightful" was just too bland and pointless to provide me with much of any entertainment, and it was quite the ordeal to sit through the movie and keep focusing on the events on the screen, especially since there wasn't really much going on to begin with.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Rightful". Normally that is something I tend to enjoy when I sit down to watch movies, as the new and unfamiliar talents and faces are not already associated with other previously portrayed characters in other movies. But I have to say that the cast ensemble in "Rightful" just didn't have a whole lot of proper contents in terms of script, storyline, characters and dialogue to work with.

For a horror movie then "Rightful" just didn't deliver. The only real thing scary about "Rightful" was the absence of proper horror elements.

My rating of director Andre Alfa's 2021 movie "Rightful" lands on a three out of ten stars.

After learning that she's inherited some land, a woman and her friends travel to a small southern town to look into everything and soon find that she's involved in a shady incident from the past involving a pair of wrongly convicted black men who have no risen from the grave seeking revenge for these actions.

This one really could've been better but is still enjoyable enough. This one really works when focusing on the revenge-based rampage that's told in the finale. That features the exploits of the curse coming true as the killers rise from their graves and set out to seek revenge on the ones whose ancestors wronged them enables some enjoyable enough slashing scenes. Getting the group into the courthouse at the end allows for some entertaining scenes of the group being chased through the building and being killed off in rather graphic and brutal ways, this isn't revolutionary or truly impressive but still features a reasonably exciting part of the film featuring creepy-looking killers offering the bloodshed. These aspects are what make this one rather tolerable for the most part. There are a few problems with this one. One of the main problems here is the film's sluggish pace that, even at a considerably shorter run-time, makes this feel a lot longer than it really is. The first half to this one really struggles to get going, mired in a string of racist outbursts from the locals, a series of intimidation tactics disguised as goading her to sell her share of the land, and a really shoehorned and unnatural romance angle that really struggles to make it feel like a genre effort. These scenes would've been fine had they done something special to build on the revenge that's taking place, but these scenes end up holding back that revenge part until so late in the film that it comes off dull and overlong at times based on the setup. As well, there's also the rather curious notion of the film being comically over-the-top with its characterizations to prove points about social issues. The overt racism on display towards the black characters, with their language and immediate physical violence merely at their existence, is so far removed from realistic behavior that there's no connection to any kind of commentary it's trying to prove. Likewise, a further attempt at criticizing sexual intimidation and conspiracies in the workplace comes off so utterly lazily and then forgotten about highlights the futility of including it as it's such a backhanded addition that it doesn't need to be there. It goes hand-in-hand with the other drawbacks here to really lower this one from what it could've been.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic and racist Language and Graphic Violence.

A horror - but do bare in mind, mostly, it didn't succeed because of the very low budget. The idea was overall good, not original or incredible, but I do not think it relied on any racial slur, it had its own little world where it couldn't develop properly so it ended up looking like a cartoon.

There are no special effects, and whatever holds their place looks bad, as in for characters and development, there is some progress here but still, overall, stereotypical and annoying. Easy to predict people and the same with the action. Again, it did have a little spark, that I do believe it would have worked with a better direction and budget, but perhaps this was the most they could achieve.

Overall, definitely not a recommendation for anyone, a horror that perhaps managed to get something right when it came down to the costumes: it had a little bit of Friday the 13th in it but done well.

Cheers!