Never Hike in the Snow

This is a Friday the 13th fan film and a prequel to the first film Never Hike Alone directed by Vincent Desantis. The first film is a great and well made film and I highly recommend it. It's easy to find on YouTube and free to watch. I actually wasn't sure if I was going to review this film but I had a lot of thoughts about it. I'm also a big fan of the Friday the 13th franchise in general and I like Jason as a character.

Starting with the positives for Never Hike in the Snow, without question the best thing about this film and the previous film are the filmmaking aspects. These films capture the tension and atmosphere you want from a Friday the 13th film. In this specific film, there's some well shot and lit scenes, especially when dark lighting is needed for tense Jason scenes. I also loved how each scene framed Jason as this powerful imposing figure.

I also like the setting for this film as well. I think it's interesting to explore Jason's whereabouts in a more brighter location. I admittedly prefer him in darker scenes but I do like him in these daylight scenes as it shows he scary he can be even during the day.

The cast of actors are very good as well. Thom Matthews is back as Tommy Jarvis and I'm interested to see what they do with his character in future films. Vincent Desantis acts as well in this film and he does a great job as well. Those are only two who I know but the whole cast in general are great.

Now let's talk about Jason for a minute. I've said it before but this version of him is scary. I like how he was designed, how demonic he looked, they keep his supernatural abilities very tamed yet you do get hints of how powerful he can be and the way he kills people, for a low budget YouTube film, is very affective.

Onto the mixed aspect of the film and the only thing is there are a lot of plotlines in the space of the runtime and it feels a little overstuffed at times. Now I know Vincent Desantis is planning three more of these films so this could be rectified so that's why it's mixed for me.

Also this film states it's a prequel to Never Hike Alone but it feels like it's more of a sequel with the way it's staged and how Tommy Jarvis acts so I feel that should have been made more clearly.

Now as I move onto the negatives, I'm choosing to review this how I usually would with a studio professionally made film and I only have two negatives:

The first one is the runtime. Minus the credits, this film is 25 minutes long and it feels too short. Compared that the first film was just under an hour and with the amount of plotlines in this film, it feels like this needed around 15 or 20 more minutes for the plotlines to be spread out more.

Finally this film ends on a very odd note that can make you feel like you wanted more from it and you should have gotten more. When this film ended, the first thing that came to my mind was "wait? Was that it"? Just a little bit frustrating for me.

But overall this was a great follow up to Never Hike Alone and I'm really liking what Vincent Desantis is doing with these films and now he's continuing the Friday the 13th franchise. I'm excited to see where he takes this franchise.

⭐⭐

The Devil All The Time

When I first heard this film was coming out, I only needed to hear two names: Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson. The thought of these two, Spiderman and Batman, sharing the screen and doing a film together had me really excited and from what I've seen today, this is a film that is gonna have a lot of people.

To start off the positives, without question, the best thing about this film is the cast. I will go as far as to say this is the best ensemble cast of this whole year. Besides the big name stars who I mentioned before, this film has actors like Sebastian Stan, Jason Clarke, Bill Skarsgard, Riley Keogh, Haley Bennett etc. This is an extremely well casted film and these actors do an incredible job but I don't want to sound biased but Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson are the two best stars.

Pattinson does not waste any of his limited screen time and he just embodies his despicable character and the accent he provides, I read he did it without a professional linguist and if that's true, give that man an award now because his accent and performance is purely phenomenal and with Holland, he just becomes such a different actor that we've seen him before. He may have won our hearts as Spiderman but this guy will terrify you as this young violent individual (that's all I'm saying) and so far gives the performance of his entire career.

I also really like the storytelling of this film as this is essentially a character study told in a very different and dark way and the dark tone has a helping hand in making it feel coherent.

Finally I appreciate that this film was unpredictable and I always prefer it when I have no idea what will happen in a film or how it will end.

Onto the mixed aspect of the film and really, it's me giving out a prior warning. As I said before this is a very dark and religiously thematic film and I can see this film dividing audiences. Some will love it for its boldness and dark storytelling and others will be put off by just how dark it is and find it distasteful. This film will not be for everyone.

With that said let's move onto the negatives and the first thing that comes mind are the religious themes. I'm not a religious person and this film primarily focuses on religion and faith and there's times where a lot of that aspects of the film just drew me out of it and I also felt it went too extreme with that subject matter. That's all I can say without giving major spoilers.

Also this film can feel like an audio book at times because this film is just filled with narration and while I didn't mind it at first, it ended frustrating me when it would tell us what's happening instead of letting me see for myself what would happen so I wish the narration was either brought down a bit or was cut altogether.

That's pretty much the only negatives I had. Overall this is a very well casted, brilliantly acted, dark but interesting film to watch that I really really liked watching and I want to see Tom Holland do more roles like this.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Craft: Legacy

This was a film I was mildly excited for mainly because I liked the concept of a film exploring witchcraft. I also found out this is a sequel to the 1996 film so I watched that before I saw this one. I liked it but felt the story was unfocused and rushed and the characterisations were also very rushed at times. But this film makes the first film look like an all time classic.

Let's just get the positives out the way first and I really liked the lead actress who played Lily in this film. She's a very good capable actress who I'd like to see do more in the future. And it's always nice to see Michelle Monaghan in a film nowadays.

Now that's over with, let's get on with the negatives and wow this film is a mess. This is one of those times where I would love to watch the behind the scenes meetings to see what was going through the creative teams minds because this is a film that felt like it had too many visions centering on one story.

Without question, the biggest fault with this film is the marketing. The marketing was horrible for this film. First off, it's seems weird that a sequel to a 90s horror wasn't covered more. There was no official announcement (at least not to my knowledge) that the film was happening, barely any trailers and marketing posters. But what's also weird is the trailers marketed this film as a horror and when you watch the film, you do not get horror vibes at all.

Which brings me to my next problem. This films storytelling and tone is all a mess. This felt like a 10 episode Disney channel series squished into around an hour and 40 minutes. This film shifts between the genres of coming of age, to campy melodrama to even a bit of romcom inserted into it and never once does it feel like a horror film. In fact, this is the time I've seen a horror film and the horror elements feel out of place. This film feels like each scene was directed by different people.

And storytelling wise, if I criticised the first film for being a bit rushed, this film just accelerates through the plot. It literally montages through what feels like an hour of plot and character development which stops you from connecting with the main characters.

Onto some smaller details now, the characters are really forgettable or annoying. Like three male characters were introduced at the same time and once the next scene came on, I forgot what they looked like and I even got one of them mixed up with someone else.

There's other times as well where this film can be a little confusing with the spell casts. There's times where the witches cast spells in their minds instead of chanting them and you just don't realize it. There's one scene where one of the characters performs a love spell but watching the scene, it looks like she's pleasuring herself.

Finally, there's just some really distasteful ideas such as a masculinity cult and performing a love spell on a bisexual character where he's in love with another man. I am shocked that idea was even greenlit by the studio.

Overall this really is an appalling attempt as a horror film and I could spend hours just talking about bad this film is. It's officially in my bottom 5 of this entire year.

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