The Revenant Review

Inspired by true events can mean, “At one point guys wore beards”

The Revenant

Inarritu, DiCaprio, & Canada

A Few Of My Favorite Things

Holy shit, this fucking movie.

I just got back from seeing The Revenant.  I went into this movie expecting to blown away, I mean Inarritu, Dicaprio, 1800’s frontier, Canada… These are all things that are fairly incredible by themselves, but thrown in together it’s a recipe for magic, and magic is just what I saw. If you are expecting a straight up revenge flick save your cash, because that’s not what you’re getting here. This movie is a study in many things. man vs man, man vs nature, revenge, love, hate and loneliness are all at play in this film. Let’s dig in.

Hugh Glass

No Relation To George

The film is the story of 19th Century explorer Hugh Glass, who during a trapping expedition was attacked by a bear, and let me be the first to tell you, the bear attack is gnarly. I can think of no better word to describe its sheer brutality. I enjoy when filmmakers set brutal violence against a beautiful back drop. The attack itself it so intense and raw that the viewers can practically feel the bear’s breath on them, and this is a true triumph for director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Violence elevated to sublimity.

The action pieces are truly wonderful. My personal favorite was the Native attack at the very beginning of the film. It was incredible. Throughout the entire film the action is handled deftly. Oh, and there is NO BEAR RAPE. Whoever started that rumor was one sick bastard.

I took a moment during a break in the action to look around the theater. Every time the bear uses its claws to rip Glass’s skin to ribbons, the audience grimaced a little bit. I saw people with their jaws on the floor. One woman had her arms crossed, and was hugging herself while her maw hung open in disbelief. The girl who I saw the movie with was sitting with her hand over her face in animal terror. Her demeanor would change by the end of he movie when she began to gleefully guffaw during a gory fight scene, little psychopath. I was snapped back into the movie when the bear continued it’s onslaught of claws and jaws, the film doesn’t let you breathe for too long.

This is going to get ugly

Inarritu Made A Gorgeous Film

What stood out most to me about the movie was the incredible use of the landscape, and the cinematography.  Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu really used the environment to his advantage in this movie. As our characters get closer to civilization, Inarritu makes sure you see the landscape change to reflect that.  The inflexible wildness of the Rocky Mountains melt into vast prairies.

The film was mostly shot in Alberta, Canada, where I am from, and the film utilized some of my home’s best features to illustrate the story.  From the towering mountain peaks to the frozen rapids, the low prairies, and foothills,  Alberta is a mostly untouched landscape, and Inarritu really puts it on display in this film.  He puts the audience into this world.

Inarritu au Naturale

Inarritu only shot using natural light, meaning if the sun was right for a scene the actors and crew had to get that scene before the sun moved, or else try again the next day. It’s daring filmmaking like this that modern Hollywood is sorely lacking. Hopefully the success of The Revenant will rattle a few cages on the West Coast and give experimental and daring filmmakers a little more wiggle room. We don’t need anymore reboots. We need new ideas.

It’s really pretty in summer guys I promise. Come visit. We need the tourists.

Just Like The Bear

This film  doesn’t so much jump out and grab you as it does slowly creep inside your mind, until you’re just  sucked into it. It somehow manages to make you feel cold, lonely and desperate right along with our protagonist.  Just like the bear, the movie grabs you and doesn’t let go.

Criticisms

Now that the praise is out of the way, there are a few negative points to be made about the movie. It is extremely long, (2 hours 36 minutes) and not the kind where you walk out and say, “it didn’t feel like it was that long.”  It feels like it was that long, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.

We constantly see for lack of a better term Westerns like these that are action packed, running and gunning, for 2 hours. This is in no way, shape, or form, what it was like to live out on the frontier in the 1800’s. It was desolate and lonely, so I imagine there are very long stretches of time where one wouldn’t have any interaction with anybody, let alone get into 3 shootouts on the same day.  As such, the movie does crawl at points, but for me that just helped to drive home the point that Glass is really, and truly, alone. The movie wouldn’t hit as hard if he was running into people and doing important stuff every 10 minutes.

ACTING!

I can’t discuss this film without discussing the actors, and they were all around phenomenal. Leo DiCaprio was fantastic,which is no surprise as he usually is, but here he is a different kind of DiCaprio. He’s not only grizzled and desperate, but also the silent type. I think he may say less in this film than Tom Hardy did in Mad Max. I’m not sure but I bet it’s pretty close.

Speaking of Tom Hardy, he did a wonderful job as John Fitzgerald, our main antagonist and total dick, Tom Hardy played him slimy but at the same time emotionally and physically scarred. He played him as a man who has been deep in the shit, and this isn’t his first rodeo.

For me though one performance that stood out was Will Poulter as famed mountain man Jim Bridger, albeit a very young version of Bridger.  I really enjoyed his portrayal of Bridger as somebody who is brave, tries to do the right thing, but is young and scared.

I also found it incredible how much Bridger trips in this film. There’s a great scene where Bridger and Fitzgerald are dragging Glass to his shallow grave, before leaving him for dead. Bridger trips while dragging him then leaves him, and runs off, and there’s a close up of Glass’s face, and in the background you see Bridger run across the screen and trip again. It had me cracking up in my seat.

Great Movie. Oscar Material.

This was one of my favorite movies of the entire year. It’s an Oscar contender for sure. The Revenant is just a great experience. Everybody needs to see this movie, if not for the story, then the cinematography and scenery.

The Revenant is visceral and relentless. It hits you in the beginning and then keeps  hitting you over and over. Guys, I can’t stress it enough.  See this movie. The scenery is great, the cinematography is great, the story is great, and the performances are all top notch. All cylinders are firing in this movie, so go see it. See it on the big screen. It’s incredible and definitely worth the price of admission. Bring a friend, bring a date (ok maybe not a date), bring whoever, or go alone, just get your ass to the theater and see the movie, and take it all in, you won’t regret it, and if you do I’ll fully take the blame.

Star Trek Beyond Trailer – In Depth Analysis

Star Wars Isn’t The Only Game In Town

Star Trek: Beyond

What The Trailer Tells Us

Watch First If You Haven’t Yet

Alright guys and girls, it happened. The highly anticipated, long awaited Star Trek: Beyond trailer has dropped. Now i’ll admit it here, I’m a Star Trek guy, always have been, when I was a kid I had a toy Enterprise. No Millennium Falcon for me.

The Trailer

Mighty Dale Speaks

So let’s talk about the new trailer shall we. Star Trek: Beyond is the first Star Trek movie to not be directed by JJ Abrams, who is busy with Star Wars. Star Trek: Beyond is directed by Justin Lin of Fast and Furious fame, and fuck me, does it show.

So we start off with “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys playing, reminiscent of the first movie as it was playing when we were first introduced to young James T Kirk.  So we have Justin Lin immediately trying to connect to the best film of the series thus far, ok. That’s fair.

We also see Scotty arriving what looks like the bridge of a ship that is not the Enterprise. Now, not only is Scotty on the bridge of this ship but so are Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Chekov and Uhura. This looks to be a ship that is not space born leading me to believe this is some crashed ship that the crew uses later in the film.

Enterprise Entropy

The next shot we see is the beloved USS Enterprise getting torn to shreds by some kind of space swarm. Are these manned ships? I don’t know.  They seem to have a swarming insect-like quality to them. This is immediately followed by wanton destruction, and Uhura and Scotty looking vexed. We then get a shot of Kirk’s reflection presumably in some sort of escape pod before we see the horrible sight of the USS Enterprise, the beautiful, mighty Enterprise getting DESTROYED……………..again.

WHY?!?!?!

Why can’t we just get a movie with the Enterprise and the Enterprise crew doing Star Trek stuff? Is that too much to ask? Apparently.

So we catch up with Kirk leaving his pod on some planet with the voiceover saying “We have no ship, no crew, I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this one.”  It’s safe to assume the Enterprise has gone tits up and Kirk and Co. are trapped on a hostile planet. It also seems that they’ve all been scattered, Spock and Bones off somewhere together, Kirk on his own and Scotty in a dire cliff predicament. This is when the worst part of the trailer hits, apparently Starfleet training involves motocross, because that’s what we see Kirk doing, some kind of X Games jump on a motorcycle.

We then get our first look at Sophia Boutella as our nameless alien woman, and she seems to enjoy kicking the fuck out of bad guys, and using her staff (staffs are popular these days). There’s also a scene of what looks like San Francisco, where Starfleet is located, under attack by the very same swarm that attacked the Enterprise.

Not Again

God, I hope they don’t do another attack on Earth. We’ve seen that twice already. The crew has embarked on their 5 year mission into deep space. Enough with fucking Earth, please.

Sophia Boutella in Star Trek: Beyond

We then see a lot of explosions and stunts some fighting and possibly a look at Idris Elba’s thus nameless villain, who is scaly and kind of looks like a rejiggered Ferengi, but I doubt it.

Possibly Idris Elba’s unnamed baddie

Starfleet In Peril…Again

We then have a scene of Starfleet crew members being herded somewhere by our bad guys, with Uhura and Sulu look sufficiently terrified after seeing something horrible.This is immediately followed by a scene of Uhura screaming through a window, with a baddie behind her. Considering he hasn’t just killed her I imagine she’s being forced to watch something horrible happening to somebody she knows.

The final shot of the trailer is what I believe to be the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s motorcycle jump.  He is being beamed onto the decrepit ship we saw at the very beginning, and he grabs Sophia Boutella’s character mid air and they both beam together.

Kirk grabbing Sophia Boutella mid beam

More Sizzle Than Steak

There’s not much in the trailer by way of plot, but there’s definitely more than a few hopes. Hopes that I can cling to. The main one being that they somehow take this movie off planet and back into space, with enough time to really make this a movie with spacecraft.

Sadly I think the Enterprise is done, or at least this Enterprise is down. If it stays as destroyed as it was when the crew abandoned it than there is no way they can continue their 5 year mission. However, one thing worth noting is that in the very beginning of the trailer, when it showed Kirk, Spock, Chekov, Scotty and Uhura on the bridge of a shitty looking ship, Spock is wearing a jacket with a Starfleet patch that says USS Franklin. It is my theory that the Franklin crash landed on that planet, and it’s the only escape for the Enterprise crew.

Now what we know about the USS Franklin is that it’s a Constitution Class Federation Starship, just like the Enterprise. Hopefully Kirk and Co. will be able to repair the it and get it in space, where it will become a new Enterprise. Or Justin Lin could just shit all over us, whatever. Happy Star Wars week, mother fuckers

You see the patch on Spock’s arm that says USS Franklin

Dale’s Columbo Impression

One more stray observation. Alice Eve’s Carol Marcus seems to be nowhere in this trailer. What the fuck happened to her? She left with the Enterprise crew at the end of Into Darkness, which means she left with the Enterprise on their 5 year mission, so unless they dropped her ass somewhere along the way, I don’t see why she wouldn’t be here. It’s a mystery. I hope this movie doesn’t suck.

Batman V Superman Trailer Analysis

Batman v Superman

Dawn of Justice

So the new Batman V Superman trailer debuted on Wednesday Dec 2nd, and there were a lot of mixed emotions in the Dale of the Dead household, I watched it over and over, processing everything I was seeing. Anybody who knows me will tell you I am an unashamed comic book fan. DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Vertigo, whatever, I don’t pick sides because I know I live in the golden age of seeing my favorite heroes being put up on the big screen.  I have nothing to bitch about.

Finally, the Justice League

I’ve eagerly awaited the day that we’d see a Justice League movie, and when the big news hit I was excited as all hell. I liked Man of Steel for the most part, and am a big fan of Henry Cavill as Superman. I’m worried because the more I see of this movie,the more my excitement diminishes.  Let’s talk about the trailer, the good, the bad, the straight up fuckin weird.

Here is is if you haven’t seen it yet, or you want to go back and see something I mention.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Trailer

So our trailer starts off with Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent, at some fancy ass soiree. He sees a car pull up and asks who the driver is. spoiler alert, it’s Bruce Wayne. Seriously Clark?!?!? You work for the press, and you have no idea who Bruce Wayne is? The FUCKING BILLIONAIRE FACE OF GOTHAM, and you’re clueless?  Maybe Zod smacked him around too much and fucked up his long term memory.

Clark introduces himself to Bruce and asks him his opinion on the “bat vigilante”. Batfleck pulls an “I dipped my dick in your soup” grin that only a douchey billionaire could pull off. Then it’s cue the montage of bat stuff going down. Police raiding a home and finding a baddie tied up, and branded with a bat symbol. BRANDED. This I actually like. The brutality is great.

Batman needs to be more extreme than Superman due to his lack of powers, so this was fine with me. You hear the conversation between Clark and Bruce playing over the action. Bruce accuses Clark of being a hypocrite since every time Superman saves a cat out of a tree Clark writes a puff piece about it. Batfleck then drops the “I have a bad history with freaks dressed like clowns” an obvious nod to Joker. We then see the Robin suit with “hahaha joke’s on you Batman” scrawled on it, implying that this takes place in a post Jason Todd world.

When titans meet

All this has great tension, the music is sufficiently dark and foreboding, all this leads to…………Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor. He breaks all that tension by very campily calling,  “BOYS!!! This Lex totally majored in musical theater.

Lex proceeds to ingratiate himself to Bruce and Clark, and act like a total douche nozzle. Seriously, how Clark refrains from punching a hole in Lex’s face is beyond me. I got a few seconds of him and it was enough to drive me into a murderous rage.

More Montage

Onward to another montage of things we’ve seen already for the most part. Superman and his weird SWAT team, Superman showing up for his hearing, more Lex, Bruce saying that Superman brought the war to earth, scenes of the Superman/Zod fight from Man of Steel (I’m actually excited to see that fight from a different perspective), and shots of Batman and Superman duking it out.  We hear Lex saying “the greatest gladiator fight in the history of the world! Son of Krypton vs Bat of Gotham!”

This implies that Lex is manipulating one or both of them against each other, for undoubtably nefarious purposes. We also get some cool shots of what I assume is the batwing, and we see Amy Adams as Lois Lane. Hey Amy, welcome to the party. Then more fighting, and a shot of the bat mobile, which I actually think looks pretty damn good. I hated the tumbler so this is a welcome change for me. Then we get that really strange shot of Batman fighting Superman’s SWAT guys in some kind of desert suit,while strange flying moth things fly around and pick up SWAT guys. I can’t make heads or tails of this, but I think it’s Bruce’s dream sequence about a world where Superman goes unchecked.

What the fuck is happening here?!?!?!?!

This leads to my favorite part of the trailer, Superman and Batman fight in the rain and Superman tells Batman, “Stay down, if I wanted it you’d be dead already.” Which really is true. Without the use of kryptonite Batman really could never realistically stand a chance. He’s alive because of Superman’s restraint, which also shows me what I suspected the whole time. The killing of Zod in Man of Steel was a turning point for Clark. He learned that he never wants to do that again, and here it shows that he is maintaining that ideology; one step closer to becoming the blue boy scout we all know from the comic books. On another note, Batman’s Dark Knight Returns armor looks pretty damn good.

better than I was expecting honestly

What Day Is It? Doomsday.

Then comes the big reveal, which imo was just way way too much for a trailer. We see General Zod’s body being wheeled to Lex, and this is when the trailer gets real Frankensteinesque, with lightning and shit, and the mad scientist Lex Luthor declaring, “If man won’t kill God, then the Devil will do it.” That’s when we hear a roar and see something crashing down the side of a building. Out of the smoke and wreckage… Doomsday, and ladies and gentlemen, he ain’t looking so hot.

I had NO idea that the cave troll from lord of the rings was crossing over into the DC universe, good for him, finally getting his big break

Wonder Woman Saves the Day

Doomsday fires his laser face at Batman and Superman, who are seemingly fucked, only to be saved by Wonder Woman. But I feel this may be a different scene entirely.You know how tricky trailers can be.
Supes looks at Bats and asks “Is she with you?” Bats looks back and with his weird robot, throat cancer voice says, “I thought she was with you.” ha fucking ha. I’m getting too old for this hackneyed shit. We then get our first shot of the holy trinity in action.

I give you your trinity

Mighty Dale’s Judgement

So that’s my rundown of the trailer. Now I’ll give you my opinion. It has some good stuff. I’m cool with Batfleck, I’m cool with Henry Cavill as Superman. So far I can’t stand Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. Lex is supposed to be an intimidating business man, who gets his way through intelligence and brutality, for fucks sake. The man becomes president at one point, I can’t see the Eisenberg Luthor ever becoming president. I can only hope that his douchebag behavior is an act to mask his true evil nature. I can say the same for Doomsday almost, I hope that over the course of the movie he evolves into the version of Doomsday we know and love, and this is just his very first incarnation. In the end guys and girls, I’ll be in line, probably at midnight, to check this movie out, but am I not 100% sold on this DC universe, not even close.

 

Nacht Der Krampus

Krampus Was Great

Krampus Mini Movie Review

No Spoilers

Howdy, folks. I’ve just returned from seeing Krampus and fuck was it fun, was it the best horror movie ever? No. Was it the best Christmas movie ever? No, was it the best horror Christmas movie ever? maybe, so let’s get into it.

The Germans Ruin Everything.

Krampus is the story of a family at Christmas time,The thing is that most of them are shitty people. These people  have simply become disillusioned with their lives and have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas. Pretty standard formula right? WRONG!!!!, Nothing is standard when Krampus gets involved.

As night falls a massive blizzard moves in knocking out the lights, radios, cell phones and everything else that might fuck up Krampus’s fun. Step one, isolate the prey. Poltergeist is a german word for a reason.

As the night wears on and, turns into days Krampus terrorizes our family with his hilarious minions including a demonic monster teddy bear, a Satanic Christmas tree angel, and a gang of murderous trigger happy gingerbread cookies. For real. It’s like Sam Raimi presents Shrek. It actually felt a lot like Gremlins at times.

This all makes the movie a whole lot of fun. It utilizes horror without sacrificing charm or Christmas spirit (like Home Alone). It also delivers laughs throughout (unlike Home Alone). Krampus’  very first appearance is also pretty memorable.

Gene Simmons steals children to feed upon their youth

I’d recommend you go see this one this Christmas. If you love horror you’ll dig it.  If you love Christmas movies you’ll probably dig it. If you just want to have a whole lot of fun I guarantee you will. If you’re one of those horrible people that bought a Krampus sweater a couple years back, when Krampus suddenly became a thing, then kindly drink bleach. Seriously. You’re the type of person who’s only days away from saying, “You’ll shoot your eye out!”  at the office… for no reason. Please. Just stop. It’s exhausting.

This movie does a lot of things right, including somehow managing to get a lot out of their PG 13 rating and avoiding the pit fall of dragging it out. So get to the theater and have a little fun, leave seriousness or expectations at the door. And keep an eye out for a full review, with spoilers, after it’s been out for a while.

Being bad Es Verboten

 

 

 

Paranormal Activity: The Nope Dimension

The best part of the movie was the popcorn

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension Is Stupid

So readers, I’ve just returned home from seeing the sixth film in the Paranormal Activity franchise, The Ghost Dimension, and it is STAGGERINGLY BAD, but we’ll tackle that in a minute. First things first. I was a massive fan of the original Paranormal Activity. I found it original and frightening. It’s simple bare bones approach created boat loads of tension, and kept viewers wanting more. And it was all done with a $15,000 budget, and became the most profitable movie of all time (base on ROI).  Then Paramount bought the franchise for $350,000 (a fucking steal), and proceeded to piss all over it.

Money < Creativity

We got Paranormal Activity 2 which in my opinion was actually pretty decent, and Paranormal Activity 3, which was also not bad. Then the whole franchise went tits up with the dull Paranormal Activity 4 and the entirely unnecessary Paranormal Activity: the Marked Ones.

Now that we’ve gotten some of the history out of the way let’s move on to the meat of The Ghost Dimension, and be warned, spoilers follow.

…………

………….

……………

………………..last warning. No bitching.

Let’s Examine This Dumpster Fire

The movie starts off with the Fleeges; a happy husband and wife named Ryan and Emily, and their young daughter Leila. Ryan’s brother Mike, and yoga instructor, Skyler are around too but for no fucking reason other than to look hot.

Ryan and Mike discover an old camcorder in a box with a ton of tapes. You guessed it. The tapes depict the immediate aftermath of Paranormal Activity 3, and Katie and Kristi’s time with The Midwive (their grandmother (now mom’s) Devil worshipping cult).

Deus Ex Camera

This is no ordinary camera kids, this is a special camera that can capture things regular cameras cannot, including demons. The camera picks up the usual horror movie shit; sounds, objects moving on their own, and (in a nod to the Amityville Horror) Toby himself, who is apparently a slightly skeletal oil monster.

Once the Fleege family figure out they’re dealing with a demon, they call a priest in to help. Apparently their daughter,who is friends with Toby (just like Amityville), burying rosary beads and trying to burn bibles didn’t tip them off.  As what always happens in these movies, the priest tells them exactly what to do to keep the demon from growing stronger, and they, ya know, don’t listen. They’re told they need to ignore it, and try to stay calm, because the demon feeds off fear. In response to this expert advice the Fleege family scream, and run around and TRY TO FILM THE FUCKING THING.

Good Work, Guys

I swear, if I had a demon that fed off fear I would bombard that thing with so much fun, and happy shit, it would literally kill itself or just fuck off. I’m talking keggers every day, Rick and Morty marathons, orgies… people would be having so much fun in my house that demon wouldn’t be able to handle being on the same block, but movie people are stupid. I digress.

Let’s move on to the evil coven’s big plan, which has taken 6 movies to come to fruition. They need children, who are all born on the same day, month and year (6/6/6), This is so they can …wait for it… get one drop of their blood to make a body for the demon, so he can walk the earth and do some shit involving the Princes of Hell. As you have guessed by now, you clever readers you, Leila happens to have been born on that date, and the demon needs her.

Witches Be Hella Inefficient

What I don’t get is if the wtches just need a drop of blood, why did they need to murder tons of people to get it? Just stalk the kids. Kids fall, scrape themselves, and do dumb shit all the time. You don’t need covens, demon hauntings and multiple homicide to get it. Just follow them on their two wheeler.

Daddy, why does our movie suck?

The shit doesn’t really hit the fan until the last 20 minutes of the film.  That’s right, it takes that long for shit to go down. The Fleeges attempts an exorcism, to get the demon to fuck off. It doesn’t work, and all but mommy die in the course of about 5 minutes.

Mommy follows her daughter to what I assume is the ghost dimension, where she finds her daughter, and sees that Toby has succeeded and has a body. Toby kills her, takes Leila and destroys the camera. Roll credits, bad guys win again. It’s the feel good movie of the fall.

Movie logic.

Lies, Lies, Lies

The biggest problem in this film is how it was advertised,  They said,”You’ll finally see Toby.”They said,”all your questions will be answered.” They said, “This is the final installment.” Well I say bullshit.

You by the time the credits roll

The amount of threads left dangling is mind boggling, especially for a final installment.

<RANT>

What the fuck happened to Katie? She doesn’t appear AT ALL in this movie. She’s mentioned in passing as being the real estate agent who sold the Fleege’s their house (which was been built on top of her burned down childhood home). In the first film she was pivotal. It made it seem like her family, and her in particular, are a focal point of the demonic happenings.I assumed going into the Ghost Dimension that she would play a pivotal role in Toby’s end game. I was sorely disappointed.

What happened to Alex, our heroine from Paranormal Activity 4?  Despite that being the worst of the franchise I still wanted to know what happened to Alex. Last we saw her she was running with Hunter from demonically possessed Katie. Alex jumps out a window, looks up and sees a witch horde coming toward her. She turns around and is attacked by demonic Katie before the camera goes black. Ok.  We know that Toby needs to spill the blood of a virgin and she is the virgin in question, but still, show us that! Don’t assume that everybody in your audience knows that, and for those of us that do know that, show us anyway you assholes! You’re not creating art, you’re churning out product.

Who the hell was Robbie (from PA 4)? The little kid served as some kind of demonic emissary, meeting and befriending young children in order to teach them about Toby.  Then he would deliver them to the demon. What’s up with that? Oh and he also serves as a surrogate son to the possessed Katie. Why him? why doesn’t he get fed to Toby?

We also never find out what happened to little Hunter, after the events of PA 4.  I guess he just rides off into the demonic sunset. If you recall, Katie took Hunter at the end of PA2 when he’s a baby, yet at the beginning of PA4 had he been adopted by another family. Why did the demon put him up for adoption when it needed him and already had him? Did he need the tax break? It makes no sense, nor was it explained.

We also never see what happened to Jesse, who at the end of PA: The Marked Ones goes through a demon door which can transport people to any time that has heavy demonic activity, like a demonic Tardis. Jesse jumps through  while possessed and kills his best friend on the same night Katie killed her boyfriend in the first PA.  I suppose he just disappears into the demonic ether never to be heard from again.

Which brings me to my final point which is the worst offense of all.  where the fuck was Ali Rey?!?!?!  She’s the step daughter of Katie’s sister Kristi, and the step sister of Hunter. Her parents were murdered gruesomely by the demon the night possessed Katie took Hunter. Ali was on a school trip and returned home to find her parents slaughtered and her baby step brother gone,

The last time we ran into Ali was in PA: The Marked Ones, when Jesse’s friends find her contact info and talk to her about the demon.  She has tons of information and appears to have spent years hunting it, and many, including myself was hoping that in the seven years between PA:2 and The Ghost Dimension, Ali would have come up with something. She could have been the one to come in and duke it out with Toby and get a win for the good guys, finally, but instead she isn’t seen, or even mentioned and the bad guys win, as usual.

Fuck Continuity. There’s Money To Be Made

As we mentioned earlier, The Ghost Dimension also boasted a look at Toby, the demon who has been plaguing families for six movies now. Instead what we got was a weird black oil monster, some flashes of a skeletal face as it blew past people and a cheap ghostly cgi shot only included so it could pop out of the screen for those who saw the film in 3D. Boo! (the bad kind, not the scary kind)

There were a few possibilities that could have been cool. For instance Leila had been drawing pictures of a multi eyed, horned, demonic goat creature, a standard depiction of most demons. This look could have been cool. it is classic spooky and mythologically accurate. In the first PA movie, Katie’s boyfriend Micah puts down powder outside their room and awakes to taloned footprints leading into their bedroom but not out. That was awesome, and eerie.  But no. Fuck that. This version of Toby looked nothing like the three pronged talon feet seen in the first movie.

this is what they meant when they said a look at Toby?!?!?!?

In the end, guys, if you’re a die hard fan of the franchise, just looking for kicks, and don’t give a shit go see the movie. Some people liked it.  People who appreciate good horror should avoid this like the plague. They promised answers, they promised a look inside the world of Toby, but in the end they provide none of it.

If this is the finale it’s a sad day for the franchise. A finale should fire on all cylinders, empty the clip, and go down in a blaze of glory. It’s an opportunity to remind fans why they loved you to begin with. Instead, the Paranormal Activity franchise went out with a whimper, limping across the finish line. It’s bullshit. It’s simply setting us up for yet another sequel, probably one that will be released directly to Blu Ray and streaming services. In fact Ghost Dimension pissed off theaters by releasing the movie on streaming services on the same day as the theater release.

</RANT>

Instead of delivering answers Ghost Dimension  simply sets up for another sequel, which I hope for simply so they can get it right. Come on PA people, hire me, I have absolutely zero experience with movies or writing or directing but hey, I still probably have more than that room full of stoned monkeys that made the Ghost Dimension, and you’re in luck, I’m super available, and I’ll work for scale.