jtindahouse

When 'Four Brothers' started I thought I was in for a real treat. It had a great opening scene and then it set itself up to be a dark and gritty revenge tale. And at times it is. When it's at its best this movie is amazing. But too often the tone slips off and it becomes a sloppy little mess for 10-15 minutes at a time.

The characters are pretty well written for the most part. The brothers are fairly likeable considering they're meant to be pure criminal scum. The bad guys therefore have to be really bad to outdo them, and they are. They're highly unpleasant people.

Mostly I really enjoyed 'Four Brothers'. A part of me can't help wondering if it was a bit of polish away from being something really special. 7/10.

'My Dead Friend Zoe' is an interesting movie. When you see "Based on a true story" come up on the screen and then proceed to watch a movie about a girl seeing and talking to her deceased best friend, that's a new one. Obviously I'm joking, and the true story it is based around is apparent by the end.

I could tell early on that this film was going to hit me like a freight-train by the end. And it did. Not quite in the way I expected. There's a little mini-twist that makes you re-think everything you've seen to that point. I thought that part of the movie was really well done.

I also loved the characters in this movie. A lot of love and care has gone into them. It's clear this was a very personal movie to the director. This was a good one. 8.5/10.

There are two key elements to making a Found Footage film work. The first and biggest one is obviously the ending. Everything is leading up to that moment that is going to explain why the footage needed to be found.

The other part though is the build up. Even though most Found Footage horror is on the shorter side of runtimes generally, there is still a long time where the audience has to follow these characters around in anticipation of what is going to happen. The build up has to be tense and has to fill us with a sense of dread. We have to be worried about what is to come. This is where 'Frogman' lets itself down.

The build up wasn't very good at all. It was never established why anyone should be afraid of 'Frogman' (or even if anyone was, for that matter). Everything in the buildup just felt like filler. Yes the characters had a little bit of charm but that wasn't nearly enough.

It leaves a massive weight on the ending to basically carry the entire film, and it simply couldn't do that. 5/10.