Reaction & Review | Sinister Squad

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a movie from 2016. That movie is "Sinister Squad".

Now, when I originally bought this movie, I was genuinely interested in checking it out, mostly because of the film's premise. The premise to this movie is basically about a group of storybook villains who get captured and must fight together in order to save the world. Now mind you, this isn't really an original premise, and I'll get to why in a second. But regardless, I was still interested in checking it out. So I bought it, along with a couple of other movies that I had interest in watching, and brought it home. And sometime after that, I was browsing through the movies I had bought at the time that I was trying to fit into the schedule, including this one. And as I was reading the premise for this movie again, I read down further...and then I noticed the company that put this movie out. And my hopes of this movie being decent were drastically brought down. You see, the studio responsible for making this movie...is The Asylum.

Now I know some of you reading this probably have no idea as to what this studio is even responsible for, so I'll try to explain it the best I can. You see, this studio, The Asylum, is mostly known for two things. The first thing is making Sci-Fi Channel Original Movies for, well...the SyFy Channel. Some of them are really god awful-looking shark movies, some of them are zombie flicks, and some other original movies that I really don't know much about. The second thing is that they are notorious for making "mockbuster" movies. For those of you who don't know, "mockbusters" are essentially knock-offs of big blockbuster movies that were released at the time. Now, I am not going to name every single "mockbuster" movie that The Asylum has put out, because it's a ridiculously huge catalog. However, I am going to play a little bit of a game with you guys. I will list off a few certain movie titles below and see if you can guess what movie that The Asylum has done a "mockbuster" of.

"Atlantic Rim"
"Independents' Day"
"Ape vs. Monster"
"Sunday School Musical"
"Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls"
"AVH: Alien vs. Hunter"
"Planet of the Sharks"
"Road Wars"
"Mercenaries"
"Dragon"

So now, while you're busy with that, I'm going to tell you what tonight's movie is a "mockbuster" of. In case the title wasn't a dead giveaway, this movie is a "mockbuster" of 2016's "Suicide Squad" movie. And for the record, I have seen that movie, and it was pretty good for the most part. Now before anyone might ask, no, I haven't seen "The Suicide Squad", because it didn't look very interesting to me. But I don't want to muddy things up here by talking about that movie. Point being, this movie is essentially a knock-off of 2016's "Suicide Squad" film, and the premise is very similar to that movie as well, seeing as how I mentioned that it wasn't really that original. But then again, I'm almost confident that's a standard for any movie put out by The Asylum.

Now I should probably quit stalling here and actually find out if this movie is gonna be halfway decent. I have strong doubts about that, considering the studio that we're talking about here, but who knows? This movie could genuinely surprise me and actually be halfway decent. But the only way I'm gonna find out if this movie is decent 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 "Sinister Squad".

19 minutes later

Well, guys, I can easily confirm one thing so far. This movie has introduced our primary villain characters that are suppose to be this movie's version of the Sinister Squad, and I have not been given a single reason as to why I should care about these characters. All of them, so far, have been dull and incredibly lifeless. I'm genuinely hoping that this movie will actually give me a reason to care about them sooner rather than later. But right now, I'm not having any real hopes of that happening.

19 minutes later

You know, guys, I would be willing to take Rumpelstiltskin's story more seriously if I didn't have to hear any of these annoying cartoon-like sound effects go off anytime that he says or does something odd. It's really more distracting, if nothing else. So I'm kinda hoping that the movie will tone some of that shit down slightly.

10 minute later

OK, I have a really stupid question here that I know I'm not gonna get an answer to, but I want to ask it anyway. Why does the Hatter have glitter on his face? I'm serious, guys, the Hatter has golden glitter all over his facial hair and some on his cheeks, too. It looks really fucking ugly on him. And if he's in this movie for any longer, then I'm probably gonna have to get use to that shitty-looking glitter on his face for almost the next 40 minutes or so.

19 minutes later

Oh boy, guys, we now have Rumpelstiltskin and Gilda bonding with each other. Oh...well, never mind, he actually killed Gilda. Perhaps maybe I would care more about this if any of these characters had any meaning or depth, but...no, I really don't. At this point, I'm just waiting until this stupid film ends, because it's been incredibly boring so far. And I don't think the next 25 minutes or so are gonna get any better. I could be totally wrong on that, but I have a gut feeling that I'm gonna be right by the time this movie ends.

9 minutes later

OK, I do have a question, and it's a legitimately serious one, too. How the fuck is Piper still alive? Because earlier, he was stabbed in the back by Bluebeard, after his brain-washing wore off. And Piper's lying in a puddle of his own blood, too, so how the hell is he still alive?! Did Death or his witch keep him alive with their powers so that he could stay alive for their ritual? I totally understand that I'm trying to put logic into a movie that really doesn't care about it, but I want to ask it anyway, because it's sorta bugging me a bit.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "Sinister Squad". Good lord, um...I'm just gonna shut this crap off...OK. Well...that sucked. I mean, I kinda knew it was going to suck, anyways. But I still wanted to like it, despite the fact that I knew, later, that it was a movie from The Asylum. And obviously, that didn't happen, because this movie totally sucked hard.

Let's just get into this thing by talking about the writing. Now obviously, as I mentioned earlier, this movie is suppose to be a knock-off of 2016's "Suicide Squad" movie. And I hear a lot of people really didn't care for that movie for one reason or another. The most noticeable complaint I've heard is Jared Leto's performance as the Joker. Now admittedly, it has been a few years since I last seen that movie, but I didn't really have a problem with Leto's Joker. The only real issue I had with that movie was the first half hour of it taking a little bit too much time into getting it's characters together to form the actual Suicide Squad. But other than that, I really enjoyed that film. So, why exactly am I bringing up all this? Well, it's simple. For whatever fault's that movie may have had, it's certainly a hell of a lot better than the crap I had to sit through for almost 90 minutes, because this movie has almost NOTHING to go on, other than the fact that it tries to be a storybook version of the same movie that it's trying to mock, and it does a poor job of that. Now I wasn't really expecting anything groundbreaking, especially coming from The Asylum, but I was still interested to see what exactly they could do as a knock-off of "Suicide Squad". And while there are a couple of interesting elements here, it really won't hold your attention for very long, because of it really doesn't get explored enough.

A great example of this is our story itself. Now being that this is suppose to be a knock-off of "Suicide Squad", you would expect this movie to maybe kind of rip off that film's story beat for beat. And it does...kind of. The only real difference is that this movie is relying on the storybook characters that have fallen in the public domain. So we have characters like Rumpelstiltskin, Goldilocks, Piper (AKA the Pied Piper), the Big Bad Wolf, and Alice of "Alice In Wonderland" as a few examples. Funnily enough, Alice plays this movie's version of Amanda Waller from "Suicide Squad", because she runs this prison that is known as the Looking Glass, and, aside from Goldilocks and Piper working for her, she also has Tweedledee and Tweedledum as her prison guards. And their mission is to recruit a bunch of storybook villains in order to stop our villain, Death, from conquering the world once he breaks free from the Underworld. You see, we get dumped with some exposition from Rumpelstiltskin that he was sent by Death to look for the Magic Mirror, so that Death could use it to travel to different dimensions and conquer our world. Well, somehow, Rumpelstiltskin ended up breaking the mirror, so Death can't really leave his dimension, thus he sends his messengers out to our world in order to retrieve the scythe that our heroes have locked away in the armory. So then we have our Witch, who's suppose to be Death's lover, and she's also after the scythe so that she can give it to Death to perform a ritual, which will give Death an opening to come to our world and take over it, I guess.

Believe me when I say, guys, that this story almost makes no sense. It tries to give out some backstory, but it's not enough backstory. Like I said, it's all just exposition that was dumped on us about a third of a way into the movie. And I have a lot of questions here that I know won't get any answers. For instance, why exactly did Death send Rumpelstiltskin to go look for the Magic Mirror? Why didn't he send any of his messengers out to get the Magic Mirror instead? Furthermore, why was Rumpelstiltskin working for Death to begin with? Did he make a deal with him from before he first got captured that I wasn't made aware of? I'm going to assume that Rumpelstiltskin did make some kind of deal with him from before the events of this movie, but I don't know if that's the case or not. I know he does try to do this about halfway into the movie, but I don't know if he did that long beforehand. Another issue I had was the selection of one of our captured villains that's suppose to be working for our heroes. OK, I get that this is suppose to be a storybook version of "Suicide Squad", so it would make sense to work in some of the characters I mentioned earlier, but what the hell is Bluebeard suppose to be from? I admit that I may not be familiar with every character from classic storybooks of the past, but I don't recall ANY instance where a character named Bluebeard appeared in any form from those tales. Now I could be totally wrong on this, so if anybody could name me any kind of actual reference in which Bluebeard appeared in any sort of classic storybook tale, please tell me. Otherwise, I'm just gonna assume he was totally made up for this movie and nothing else.

Speaking of which, let's talk about the characters. Now again, I know some people may have had issues with the "Suicide Squad" movie from 2016, and I'm not going to try and contest anyone's own opinions about that film, but do you want to know what that movie did better over this film? They gave you a reason to care about those characters. They gave you some kind of backstory in which you could find something to care about. While the first half hour of that movie could've been shortened a bit, the movie was still gracious enough to try and flesh out those characters the best way that they could. This thing, on the other hand, doesn't. The characters in this movie are all very shallow and one dimensional in personality. The Big Bad Wolf is basically described as somebody that had eaten 6 animals at a zoo, and was placed in prison because of his actions. Goldilocks is the only one who tries to calm him down, which may hint that he's not really a bad person, just misunderstood. And while that could've been interesting, they don't do anything else with him beyond that. Bluebeard's gimmick is that he has two knives that he refers to as his "wives", and that one of his knives gives him more power each time he kills with that knife. And his personality is that he's kind of a sex-crazed maniac. Beyond that, he has no other defining characters traits that make him stand out. The only other character I can think of that's even worth mentioning is Rumpelstiltskin, who's basically this movie's version of Joker. And he would've been interesting, had there been more backstory to him in regards to what I mentioned earlier. But like everything else, this movie doesn't really explore anything interesting beyond that. The only thing they do with him as that he's suppose to be paired up with Gilda, the Queen of Hearts. And, I guess, she's suppose to be this movie's version of Harley Quinn, although I didn't make that connection until just now. But she's in the same boat as Rumpelstiltskin when it comes to lack of character development.

So overall, the writing here is just terrible. The story doesn't really make much sense, and for a "mockbuster", it does a REALLY poor job of mocking "Suicide Squad". Which, for some people, that may not be saying much considering their own thoughts on "Suicide Squad". But being that I quite enjoyed that movie, it couldn't even meet the low standards that I had set for it. So with that in mind, let's get into the acting. The acting here...is a little bit of a mixed bag. Some of the acting ranges on being passable, to a couple of them hamming it up, to others just sounding very wooden. The most noticeable of hammy acting comes from Rumpelstiltskin's actor, who probably puts up the most hammiest performance in this entire movie. And honestly...I wasn't on board with his performance. I could see that he was trying to stand out, but the thing is, guys, and I've talked about this before, but if you're gonna ham up your acting, you have to try and make it sound natural. And for me, personally, this didn't feel natural. It felt...really off, and it was just a bit too much, even for me. The worst performance would probably have to be a tie between Bluebeard or Piper. I'd probably lean towards the former in this case, because Bluebeard's actor really didn't have much range in his voice, and he just sounded like he was trying to whisper his lines with a raspy voice, as if he was trying to sound like he was menacing. Which didn't work, obviously, because it came off as really shitty. Piper's actor sounded very wooden, and sounded like he really didn't care enough to be there, so he just phoned what was given to him and decided to call it a day. Everyone else...was passable. It wasn't anything good, but it wasn't terrible either, so...I guess that's something to account for.

Special effects in this movie are kinda crap. Most of it is done with CG, meaning that there's very little practical blood that's used here. And the practical blood that is used here looks like cheap-looking BBQ sauce. I want to make it known to any and all filmmakers out there. Please, PLEASE try to implement more practical blood, if you're gonna have that kind of thing in your movie. Because most of the time, CG blood looks awful. There are rare instances where you can make CG blood look good, such as the case with "Stitches". But if you're not able to do decent enough CG blood, then don't use it at all! It looks like shit most of the time, and it's much more preferable just to do practical blood. It would make your movie look slightly better. Anyway, everything else involving CG mostly looks like crap. The costuming here is somewhat passable, but nothing worth remembering for. Makeup effects here are OK at best, but again, it's nothing memorable, either. Overall, the special effects in this movie border on being a mixed bag, but it's a nudge towards being on the negative side of things.

Camerawork here is pretty good. The lighting here is actually fine. The sound-mix here is decent. I do want to comment on sound effects, because this kinda bugged the shit out of me for a while. I mentioned it earlier, but there's usually sound effects playing whenever Rumpelstiltskin is on camera talking. Sometimes, he's either blinking, or whether he's talking about something of relevance, there's usually some kind of sound effects playing, and most of it sounds rather cartoony. And like I mentioned earlier, it's also very distracting. Such as the scene I mentioned earlier, in which he gives an exposition dump about the Magic Mirror, in which there's these oddball sound effects that happens at certain points when he's talking, and it's all very distracting, because it pulls you out of the movie, thus you're not able to take his story very seriously. And whoever thought it was a good idea to give Rumpelstiltskin sound effects should probably have been fired after that, because it was just a terrible idea to begin with. The music here is very bland, both in score and soundtrack, so there's really nothing of noteworthy to take away from the music in this film.

Overall, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Sinister Squad"? No. There is no way in hell I can recommend this, unless if you just want to riff on it with some friends on a bad movie night. Otherwise, you can easily avoid this. This movie is just terrible. As a knock-off, it sucks. And for a movie that came from The Asylum, I was sorta expecting something kinda interesting here. But the movie couldn't even provide THAT much. Now I have no idea if this is gonna be just a one off thing for The Asylum, because I was too stupid to notice that this movie was put out by them, or maybe if there's something else from them that could provide for some decent material for Reaction & Review. I don't know. But for right now, I'm just gonna steer clear from just about anything else that this studio has churned out. At least, until I find something that's even worth covering for this series. For now, though, I'm gonna go and watch something else. I think I'm gonna go pop in my copy of "Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay". That, in my opinion, is the best Suicide Squad movie that I've ever seen. And one that, sadly, doesn't really get enough attention, because it's just that good. 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 another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.