Reaction & Review | PG: Psycho Goreman

Welcome, one and all, to the final Reaction & Review of 2022. Yes, guys, somehow, someway, I'm still doing this series. But hey, it's still been a rather interesting year for this series, and I'm happy that I'm still able to do this for you guys. So, let's end the year with a movie that I think will be perfect to end the year on. It is a Canadian sci-fi horror comedy from 2020. That movie is "PG: Psycho Goreman".

Now, I'm gonna tell you, guys, I don't really know a whole lot about this movie. But from what I heard, some people refer to this movie as a horror movie for kids. Which might sound kinda odd, but those kinds of movies have existed before. I can think of movies such as "Gremlins", "The Nightmare Before Christmas", "Beetlejuice", and if you really want to stretch it, then I guess you could add in "Goosebumps" as well. I've seen the TV series for it and read a couple of the books, but I've never seen the movies, so I can't really comment on those very much. But anyway, that's what I've heard some people say when it comes to this movie. And part of the reason why is because our main characters in this movie are children. Which, I'm not totally sure if that's gonna be a good thing or not, considering we're working with child actors here, but who knows? Maybe they actually will be tolerable in this thing.

Speaking of which, that leads me into talking about what little I know about this movie. From what I read on the back of the DVD case, the plot is about this alien overlord, who got locked away after failing to destroy the universe, that gets discovered by these kids. And through the power of some magical amulet, they are able to control him and make him do what they want. And apparently, this gets the attention of some other aliens that are out to destroy the universe as well. At least, I think so, anyway. I'm not totally certain how this thing is going to play out, but I will find out eventually when I start watching this thing.

I'm hoping that this thing will be really good. And I have a bit of high hopes for this one. Because the last two movies that I covered for both 2020 and 2021 ended up being in the Top 5 best movies I covered for their respective years. So, who knows? Maybe this will movie will strike lightning 3 times in a row. And the only way I'm gonna find out if this movie is any good at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "PG: Psycho Goreman".

12 minutes later

OK, two things I want to bring up here. One, Luke's acting in this movie, at least so far, has been ridiculously wooden. And two, I have a question about something. I don't know what age Mimi's suppose to be in this movie. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say, maybe, 8. And if that's the case, why is it that she talks and acts like she's 18 years old? It just seems really off to me, because her dialogue makes her sound more like an adult than a child. It's probably something that I'm gonna have to get use to here, but it is something that I felt like was worth mentioning.

11 minutes later

You know, guys, I will say that the costuming and makeup effects on these aliens look really good. At least until I get to Pandora here, and I can't help but notice that those horns covering her eyes look really fucking cheap. I understand that this movie was probably made on a low budget, but I just can't take my eyes off those really cheap-looking horns. It just stands out to me, you know?

7 minutes later

So, guys, I'm learning more about PG's backstory. About how he came into contact with this gem that the kids found, and how he first got his powers. And I gotta say...he's probably the most likable alien overlord I've come across in a long time. Which is saying a lot, considering how we were first introduced to the Templars early on in the movie. So yeah, despite the fact that he's overcome with power and destruction, he's still the most likable character in this entire movie. That is rather surprising to me, guys.

7 minutes later

OK, I have a bit of a stupid question here. Why doesn't PG just swipe the gem from Mimi's hand? She's standing right next to him, and he's not doing a god damn thing about it! Unless he's really bound to whoever controls that gem, he can just swipe the gem for himself, and then go back to his killing ways. Ta-da, that would be the end of this annoying child and her family. I understand that there wouldn't be a movie then, but it's those kinda lapses in logic that sorta bug me a little bit. Just saying.

6 minutes later

So, guys, I just now learned that PG has the power to invade people's dreams while they're asleep to communicate with them. So basically, he's now an alien version of Freddy Krueger. I will say that, while that sounds really cool, what he's also asking of Luke is really fucking stupid and kinda pointless, but I'm gonna talk more about that when this movie is done.

7 minutes later

Wait, so Mimi just faked an order for PG to kill her brother. And when she laughed about it, PG was about to grab the gem that was showing in her hand...in plain sight. Then why fuck did he not do that earlier when she was asleep? He was in her room while she had it in her hand...while sleeping! I'm sorry, guys, that I keep bringing this up, but this is starting to bother me now. And I know it's gonna continue to bug me throughout the rest of this movie. I just know it.

10 minutes later

O...K. So, I just learned what a warrior's death looks like from PG's point of view. Basically, it's just eating you alive in the most gruesome of ways before spitting out your blood. I gotta say, that was actually pretty cool. Kinda messed up, but still, it was certainly pretty cool.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "PG: Psycho Goreman". Let me go ahead and shut the movie off...OK. Good god, where do I even begin with this movie? Well, I should probably start by saying this. I mentioned earlier about how the two previous movies I covered at the tail end for 2020 and 2021 ended up being in the Top 5 best movies I covered for Reaction & Review. Well, a bit of a spoiler here, this movie is not going to end up being in the Top 5. Mind you now, this movie is not going in the Bottom 5 either, because it's not really a bad movie. However, it's nowhere near good enough to make it into the Top 5 for this year.

But anyway, now that I got that out of the way, let's finally get into the movie itself. And this one is gonna be rather tough for me to talk about, because this movie's quality is a little bit all over the place. So let's start that off by talking about the writing. And I'm gonna start with the biggest problem I had with this movie's writing, which is the gem that controls PG. Now, it's not necessarily the gem itself that I had an issue with. Basically, this gem gives our alien, Psycho Goreman, his powers that give him the ability to destroy everything in the galaxy. And he got this power while slave laboring for the Templars, who wanted him, and a bunch of other slaves, to build temples in their name. And once he freed himself, he gathered a bunch of other slaves and turned them into his galactic warriors to destroy anything and everything that was good. And during this struggle, the Templars were able to seal him away and send him to Earth, which was far away from his own planet called Gigax. And as for our two main child characters, they end up digging him up from their backyard after playing some stupid convoluted ball game, and Mimi was able to get a hold of this gem for herself, which gives her the power to control Psycho Goreman, and make him do what she wants, no matter how stupid it might sound. So OK, the gem itself is pretty much self explanatory and most of it makes sense.

Now, here's where the problems start to rise involving the gem. You see, it's the little details surrounding it that started to bother me. And it first started when Mimi and Luke's parents first discover PG. They freak out about how he's a monster and that he was going to kill them. But Mimi intervenes and says that he's not going to. Now, while all of this is happening, Mimi was HOLDING the gem in her hands. And at that point, I was thinking to myself why doesn't PG just swipe the gem from Mimi's hand? I mean, what's stopping him from ever doing this? Unless he's that honor bound to whoever controls the gem, then there should be nothing stopping him from just taking the gem from her hand when she least's expects it. There was ONE time that PG tried to do this, and it was when our main characters were walking through the woods when Mimi decided to fake out her brother by telling PG to kill him. He almost succeeds at grabbing the gem from her hand, but she ends up holding onto it in the end. And from that scene alone, the problems surrounding this gem really started to get to me. Because instead of doing I've been suggesting, PG instead decides to become stupid. For example, at one point, when the kids leave him at an abandoned shoe factory to watch TV, PG was actually able to use the power of the TV to communicate with his space warriors from across the galaxy. He tells them that the kids have his gem and that he wants them to kill these kids so that he can be free of their control and get his gem back. But they don't show up until much later on in the movie, and I won't say why due to spoilers. Now to be fair, this was pretty early on in the movie when he did this, but when that scene involving the parents showed up, I thought to myself why did he bother contacting his warriors when he could've just grabbed the fucking gem from Mimi's hand and start to kill her and her entire family? It just didn't really make much sense to me at all.

And to further prove how stupid Psycho Goreman really is, after he's finally been exposed to the parents and he's doing stupid shit for these kids, we get a scene where Mimi is in her room sleeping with the gem in her hand. I want parenthesize that; the gem...is...in...her...hand! Wide open in plain sight. And PG is in her room while watching this. And guess what? HE DOESN'T TAKE THE FUCKING GEM! What he does, though, is even more stupid. You see, as I mentioned earlier, PG has the power to invade people's dreams similar to Freddy Krueger. And he did this by going into Luke's dream and telling him that Luke should be the one to take the gem from his sister and give it to PG. Now, I kinda understand what PG was trying to do by trying to persuade Luke of all people. Seeing as how his sister treats him like shit all the time, and that he should be the one to take the gem from her so that he could stop being his sister's pushover. But Luke, being a bit of a pansy, ultimately says no in the end, and PG just kinda accepts it and the dream ends. Like, seriously? I really thought it was going to build up to some sort of temptation where Luke was going to betray his sister and ultimately take the gem from her and give it back to PG. But no, that doesn't really happen. And it makes PG look like an idiot. I mean, OK, I'm kinda happy that he does have a really solid backstory and he's not just some brain-dead mute monster, but come on, dude. You had PLENTY of chances to grab the fucking gem and take it so you can go back to what you were known for. But I guess he's seriously that honor-bound to it, unless he was told by Mimi that he couldn't take it from her. However, last time I checked, I never recalled her saying anything like that. But anyway, that shit involving the gem really bothered the shit out of me, and it was something that I couldn't really overlook.

Now, I'm gonna try to move past all that. Because outside of that one point that really bothered me, the writing here is still decent. I could definitely see that this movie was trying to aim at being a horror comedy. And it really does feel like a genuine horror comedy. Now mind you, I honestly didn't really laugh at a whole lot of the comedy, but I did think most of it was mildly amusing. And that's more than what I could've asked for out of a lot of horror comedies that I've seen throughout my time. As for our characters, most of them kinda range from being rather boring to flat out annoying. The latter portion goes to Mimi. I swear to God, guys, this is one of the most irritating child characters I've ever come across in a movie in a long time. Most of the time, she sounds like a fucking bratty bitch that doesn't listen to anybody and only cares about what she wants. Now I totally understand that a lot of kids are fucking annoying and obnoxious, and maybe that's what the filmmakers were trying to aim for here, but that also gets compounded by the fact that she talks like she's 18 years old. I swear, guys, her dialogue sounds like she came out of fucking high school more than anything else. And as annoying as that may sound, that part alone makes her have more personality than any other character in this entire movie, with the exception of PG. Her brother, Luke, is the wimpy child that really doesn't have much of a personality. Their mother is kinda boring, and I don't remember what she did throughout most of her time in the entire movie, save for towards the end of it. And their Dad is considered to be lazy. Beyond that, the only other character I actually liked in this movie was PG, even if his logic and reasoning at times for not wanting to swipe the gem is pretty fucking stupid. But I'm not gonna harp on that point any longer, because I've said plenty about it already.

So overall, I can say that the writing here, despite some noticeable flaws, is still decent for what it is. As for the acting, well honestly, it's pretty good for the most part. I mentioned earlier that when our two main characters were gonna be child actors, I was really skeptical about this, because child acting can either make or break your movies depending on the situation. If they're the focus of the movie, then you are taking a huge risk. Because if your child actors suck at acting, then it's gonna bring your entire movie down to a screeching halt. And I was fully prepared to slam these two child actors if they really did suck. And...I was half right. You see, the best of these two child actors was the actress playing Mimi. She really did turn in a pretty good showing. Even though she acts like a fucking bratty bitch, she actually plays it up really well. And if that was the intention, then hey, I guess she did what she needed to do, given the material she had to work with. The other half, though, mostly sucked. I brought it up earlier, but Luke's actor in this movie sounded ridiculously wooden. I guess when compared to Mimi's actress, he didn't really have a whole lot to work with, given how his character in this movie is really bland. That being said though, it's not entirely unbearable, but it's not really that good either. As for the rest of the acting, it's mostly decent. The one who turns in the best showing is Matthew Ninaber as Psycho Goreman. He really does sound menacing, yet also brings a lot of charm to his character. So, I can definitely say that the acting, for the most part, is pretty decent from just about the entire cast.

Special effects in this movie look really damn good. And considering that this was made on a low budget, they certainly went all out with what they had. Mind you, not all of it is perfect, but most of it certainly looks really good. The best of these effects come from the creature effects. The creature effects look fucking awesome. From Psycho Goreman, to all of the other aliens from this planet that we see a few times in the movie, they look awesome from costuming, to makeup, to even the puppeteering. Most of that looked really good. The only bit of the costuming that stuck out at me was on Pandora, and it really has to do with the horns on her helmet. It might just be me, but I swear that almost every time that the camera focused on Pandora, my eyes would always draw attention to the horns. They just looked cheap as shit, and they might've been made out of some really standard cardboard. I could be totally wrong on that, but it just looked that way to me. And to me, that was probably the only bit of costuming that I had an issue with. Beyond that, though, the costuming here is pretty good. Gore effects here are pretty good, and the blood here is not too bad. So yeah, the special effects are mostly pretty good here.

Camerawork here is pretty good. Lighting here is lit really well. The sound-mix is decent. Our score is fine. The soundtrack is...not great. Now, this one's just more of a personal bit, but I really did not like soundtrack for this movie. There was a song that was partially sung by Mimi, and her singing was fucking terrible. Now it's very well possible that it might've been lip-synced, but I have no idea if that was the case or not. That being said, the soundtrack here kinda sucks, and I don't see myself ever downloading the soundtrack for any reason.

Overall, guys, when all is said and done, can I recommend "PG: Psycho Goreman". Um...honestly, it's a bit of a hard one for me to recommend. I would say that if you're able to overlook the lapses in logic involving the gem and why PG couldn't just grab the gem when he had an easy opportunity to do so, then what you have is a pretty decent movie. The special effects, mostly the creature effects, are great, and are easily the highest point of the entire movie. The story here, while certainly flawed, is pretty entertaining. And the acting here is mostly decent, save for one child actor. I, personally, don't even know if I would want to watch this movie a second time. But I did hear that there's a sequel being developed, at least at the time that I'm writing this review. And if that ever comes to pass, I may want to check it out and see if they improved on anything. Because even though this movie was just OK, I am open to the idea of watching it's sequel. However, until there is more information about it, I am not gonna say anything else about it. For now, I'm just gonna debate to myself on whether or not I'm gonna hold on to this movie. And on that note, I'm gonna go and find something else to watch. Being that this was a horror comedy, I think I'm gonna pop in my copy of "The Machine Girl". It's been quite a while since I last watched that one, so I'm gonna go do that next after I'm done putting this review together.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of the last Reaction & Review for 2022. Man, guys, it's been a rather interesting year, and hopefully next year will be even more interesting. Until then, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.