Reaction & Review | Robert And The Toymaker

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a horror movie from 2017. That movie is "Robert And The Toymaker".

Now, I discovered this movie at one of my local video stores some time ago. And as I was reading the description of the movie's plot on the back of the DVD case, something about it peaked my curiosity. Before I tell you what exactly it is, I'm first gonna give you guys a summary of the movie's plot. Essentially, there's an Occult book that has the power to bring inanimate objects to life, and it somehow ends up in the hands of a Toymaker. The guy uses it to bring his toys to life, and later ends up getting arrested by the Nazi's because they want the book that somehow ended up in his possession. Oh yeah, did I mention? Yeah, this movie apparently takes place during Nazi Germany in 1941. So they arrest him, and his toys that are brought to life go to rescue their master and exact revenge on the Nazi's.

Now, some of you reading this will probably think that sounds like a really cool premise. And, in fairness, it really is a cool premise for a story taking place during WWII. Except...I've already seen this premise done in another movie. Which brings me to why this movie peaked my curiosity in the first place. Basically, guys, this movie's plot sounds like a complete knock-off of "Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge". I should mention that "Puppet Master III" is my favorite entry in the "Puppet Master" series, and is also the best movie of the entire series. Hell, I watch it every year around the Halloween season, along with the first 4 movies of the series. So, for a movie to basically try and rip-off that movie's plot is very eyebrow raising to me. Especially if you're going for the third movie and not, say, the first "Puppet Master" movie. But that's just me digging a little too much into that.

In fact, I don't believe that this thing is even trying to hide the fact that it's essentially a knock-off of "Puppet Master", because on the front of the DVD case, there's a tagline that specifically states that "There's A New Puppet Master In Town". Yeah...I can see that they were being *totally* subtle with that tagline. But hey, you know what? Just because this movie's premise is basically a rip-off of "Puppet Master III" doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a bad movie. Heck, I remembered watching "Munchies" for this series, which was also a knock-off of "Gremlins", and I thought it was halfway decent at best.

So this movie could still be pretty good. I don't really know if it's going to be so or not, but that's what I'm here to find out. And the only way I am gonna find out 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 "Robert And The Toymaker".

19 minutes later

So, guys, we're almost 20 minutes into the movie and we haven't even gotten to the title screen yet. We're still on this opening prologue that's still going on. And considering this movie is just a little over 80 minutes long, a slow start is something that you really shouldn't be having right now. This film is off to a *really* slow start, and I fear it's going to kill the momentum of this entire movie.

11 minutes later

OK, I have a big question here, and I know it's not gonna get answered by this point, but I'll ask it anyway. So, the daughter of this German family was shot by the Nazi General while she was running away from her house. How long has she been running for? I'm going to assume it's nighttime now, and if it is, I don't think any normal human would be able to still run with a gunshot wound to the stomach for that long, considering it was still daytime as she was running away. I'm sorry, guys, but you can only suspend your disbelief for so long before it starts to insult your intelligence. Just thought I'd mention that.

16 minutes later

All right, this has been bugging me for a while now and I feel like now is the time to mention this. I know you guys can't hear the movie for obvious reasons, so you wouldn't be able to notice this issue. But I can barely hear the dialogue that's going on right now in this scene. I have my volume up at full max and I *still* can barely hear a word that's coming out of most of these actors mouths. I'm gonna get more into this later when I eventually talk about the movie itself, but I'm gonna let you guys know right now that the sound-mixing in this movie is incredibly poor here.

12 minutes later

OK, this Nazi General is the textbook definition of how *not* to chew up the scenery. I swear, guys, he talks so often in this movie, and he's also part of the reason as to why this movie's pacing is so fucking bad. I hope by the time he gets killed in this movie, it'll be a bloody, gruesome death. And if that doesn't happen by the time the movie ends, I'm gonna be a little bit pissed.

12 minutes later

You guys have no idea how happy I am that this film is almost over. The pacing in this movie is so bad that I've resorted to counting down the minutes until this movie is finally over. Do you have any idea how bad it is when you can't even focus on the movie itself and you just focus on when it's finally gonna be done? That's how bad this movie truly is!

The Review

And the movie ends almost the exact same way that "Puppet Master III" did, except we're now being treated to stock footage of WWII. O...K, well, I'm thankful that the movie's finally over. I can now shut this garbage movie off...OK. So, guys, that was "Robert And The Toymaker". And this here is a first for this series. This is the first film I've ever watched that doesn't have a title screen of the movie. It has a DVD menu screen, but not when you start the movie. It never shows up and, quite frankly, it gives me the impression that the filmmakers themselves were too embarrassed to even show that much, which tells me a lot about the quality of the movie I just watched. Yeah, guys, I'm not gonna mince any words, this movie was complete shit.

So now, let's actually talk about the movie itself, and good lord *that's* gonna be a fucking challenge in itself. Well, I can start off by talking about one of the big problems this movie suffers from already. Similar to last week's movie "Spaced Invaders", the pacing in this movie is fucking horrible. I really thought the opening prologue was bad enough, because that entire segment takes almost half an hour to get through, but nope, I was *completely* fucking wrong. The rest of the movie is just like that as well. It is so slow and so boring to a point where, by the last 20 minutes or so of the movie, I just started to look at the runtime on my DVD player to show how much of it is left. I never had do to that for *any* movie beforehand. Even the shittiest of movies I've watched almost *never* made me do that before. But this may be one of the first ones that ever does it for me. It is so painfully dull that I just stopped caring about it as the movie was too busy slogging itself in it's third act.

Now the story, as I clearly predicted, is essentially a rip-off of "Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge". The only difference between this movie and other knock-off films I've seen beforehand is that this one probably has the least amount of effort put into it. While I'm kinda happy to see that it's not a shot-for-shot remake of "Puppet Master III", that doesn't mean that what is here is any good. For starters, the characters in this movie are completely shallow and shit. Now, compare it to "Puppet Master III", where they gave you a reason to care about certain characters and why Toulon is out for revenge to begin with, this one doesn't give you one single reason to care about its characters. Our main character, Amos Blackwood, is basically this movie's version of Andre Toulon. Except he has no real character depth, compared to Toulon, who had at least several movie's worth of depth and personality. While Amos is only working with just one movie, and he has all the depth and personality of dried-up paint.

The only things you kinda learn about Amos Blackwood is that he's running a failing business where he makes and tries to sell dolls. And speaking of which, since this movie is suppose to be a knock off of "Puppet Master III", you would expect his dolls to be kinda interesting. Unfortunately, they're really not. The only doll that has any sorta depth is Robert, the doll with the short red hair. And the backstory behind Robert's creation is that Amos discovered the body of a young boy, who was carrying a doll with him, which somehow Amos got his hands on. And he used parts of the doll's body to create his own doll in the form of Robert, who I should also mention, is named after the death of the young boy who was killed. Robert, the doll, is basically this movie's version of Blade from the "Puppet Master" series, except he's nowhere near as cool-looking as Blade was. The rest of the dolls in this movie aren't that important, nor are they worth talking about. Also, there's only 3 dolls that he brings to life, compared to the 6 or 7 puppets that Toulon had made, and none of them are nearly as interesting as they were.

Going back to the horrible pacing for just a moment, there's one character who attributes to the horrible pacing. Our Nazi General in this film talks so much that I honestly wanted him to die in a bloody and gruesome way. And well...I sorta got that. It's not exactly great, but I still kinda got what I wanted out of it. But anyway, this Nazi General has a *really* bad habit of chewing up the scenery. The worst moments with him are the opening prologue and near the end where he's interrogating Amos. These scenes go on for so long and the Nazi General's dialogue just doesn't make it any better. His dialogue consists of him talking about deception and lies in the opening prologue, to rats and their true nature somewhere in the beginning of the 3rd act. The middle of the movie has him doing nothing, which makes his character all the more worthless as the movie goes on by.

So yeah, guys, if it's not made any clearer, the writing in this movie is awful. Setting aside this movie being an obvious ripoff of "Puppet Master III", on it's own standards, the pacing is horrible, and the story is just completely wasted. Also, one other thing I should quickly mention about pacing is that the dolls themselves don't start to take action until about maybe 40 minutes or more into the movie. Yeah, it takes *that* long to get to, and even then, the kills themselves aren't that interesting, except for one part where Robert stabs a Nazi in the crotch. But even then, it's still not very interesting, and everything leading up to the final moments of the movie is boring as shit.

Now, setting aside all that, let's talk about the acting. Most of the acing in this movie is terrible, partly because most of the German accents that are put up in this movie really suck. Now mind you, I'm far form German myself, but even I can tell when someone's putting up a terrible German accent, and this movie's definitely guilty of that. Speaking of which, I need to talk about the actor playing our Nazi General. Now this is very strange to admit, but he is both the best *and* worst actor in this entire movie. See, I'm convinced that this actor is trying his best to have fun with his role...but the problem here is that he's not trying hard enough. Like with every other actor in this movie, his German accent really sucks. I would say his acting in general is wooden, but that would be sort of an insult to all of the dolls that were made for this movie. He sounds very quiet in almost all of his scenes, and I have no idea if that's either how he generally acts when putting on a German accent, or if that was just his general direction for this movie, or if it was the terrible sound-mixing that made him sound very quiet.

In fact, let's skip ahead to that, shall we? First off, to summarize the acting in a nutshell, it's completely horrible. Almost as horrible as the sound-mixing for this movie. You see, guys, for almost a majority of this movie, most of the actors dialogue sounds very quiet. And again, I had my volume up all the way, and I *still* couldn't hear a lot of the dialogue that was said in this movie. Almost all of it is quiet, and part of me still wants to blame it on the acting, but I really want to put the blame on the person in charge of the sound-mixing. In fact, looking at the back of the DVD case, the person in charge of the sound-mixing production goes by the name of David Bekkevold. I don't know what convinced Mr. Bekkevold to think that this even sounded half good, but this is just really poor work on his part, because had he took a little bit more time in actually mixing the actors dialogue properly to where it's perfectly listenable, there wouldn't be much of a problem here. I mean, the acting would still sound terrible, but at least it would help if Mr. Bekkevold got off his lazy ass and actually fixed the sound on this movie.

So...anyway, seeing as how I skipped past the special effects, let's talk about them next. I will say that, when it comes to the designs of all the dolls that are in this movie, I will say that they look pretty good. I am willing to admit that much. And when it comes to the puppetteering, that in itself looks OK, too. I mean, sure, it's not great either, but it could've been a lot worse, too. That being said, I want to mention the makeup effects on Amos Blackwood's actor. I don't know why there is so much makeup on him to begin with. Part of me thinks that they couldn't get an actual elder actor to play the part of the toy maker himself, so they resorted to putting on a lot of makeup on his face so that he looks somewhat older. And I'm gonna tell you, guys, it looks horrible. The wig looks laughably shit, and the makeup effects on him look incredibly pale as well. I don't know *why* he looks so pale in this movie, but for some reason, he does. And it just makes me wonder why they didn't even try to cast someone older to play the role instead? I don't know, but regardless, it is what it is, and it just doesn't look very good on him.

Camerawork here is halfway decent. Although admittedly, there is quite a bit of shaky cam going on the second half of the movie, which sorta makes the whole film disjointed, seeing as how the first half looked fine. Lighting here is OK. And the score here is completely forgettable. So yeah, technical stuff here is a very rough definition of mixed bag.

So, guys, with all that said, am I able to recommend "Robert And The Toymaker"? No. Hell no. As a ripoff of a much better movie, it sucks balls. On it's own standards, it still really sucks because there's almost nothing redeemable about this movie that's even worth watching for. This movie borders on being unwatchable, what with it's abysmal pacing, horrible acting, and almost even worse sound-mixing. This movie has nothing going for it. If you somehow find this movie on DVD, Blu-ray, or somewhere on some streaming service, do not waste the time on it. This movie is not worth a single viewing. In fact, I was very close on shutting this movie off prematurely just so I can go watch "Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge" because it's such a good movie. I'm probably gonna go do that right now, because this film left a horrible taste in my mouth and I need to be reminded of something good right about now. So yeah, I'm gonna go watch my copy of "Puppet Master III" right now, because I've already seen the other two this month already, and I'm gonna continue it with the third movie. Which makes all the more sense to me.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and will see you all later. Peace.

Reaction & Review | Spaced Invaders

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm covering a Sci-Fi comedy from 1990. That movie is "Spaced Invaders".

Now, I actually did want to check this film out a couple of years ago after discovering a trailer for this movie on YouTube. And the trailer looked kinda, sorta interesting enough for me to check out. I was originally gonna cover it on YouTube at the time, however, I eventually nixed that idea for other movies that I had lined up then. Thankfully, I was finally able to get a copy of this movie thanks to one of my local video stores for carrying a copy of it.

Now as for what I know about the movie itself, all I can really tell you guys is that it's about aliens invading Earth, and it somehow leads into hi-jinx from there. I don't exactly remember the full plot on this one, because, like I said, it has been about a couple of years since I last saw the trailer for this movie. So I'm mostly going into this thing as blind as possible. Which I'm totally cool with.

I'm hoping for this thing to be pretty good. I don't really know if it will be, though. The only way I'm gonna find that out 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 "Spaced Invaders".

5 minutes later

Wait a second...is that the old man from "Killer Klowns from Outer Space"? You know, the one where he and his dog "Winnie the Pooh" got turned into cotton candy? Holy shit, I think it is! That's certainly really cool. I'm hoping he'll last longer here than how he did in "Killer Klowns from Outer Space", but we'll just have to wait and see.

7 minutes later

So the way the aliens discovered Earth's signal was that some radio station was playing Orson Welles's famous speech about martians from outer space. Well, that's certainly a unique way to discover it, I'll say that much.

5 minutes later

Guys, I'm just gonna say this right now. The mouth movements on these aliens, whenever they're talking, look horrible. I'm hoping, maybe, that I'll end up getting use to it as the movie progresses. But as of now, I'm not really a fan of these aliens mouth movements.

15 minutes later

You know, guys, I totally understand that it's been a long time since I went trick-or-treating, but I don't recall ever getting cigarettes as a treat before. Is that just a thing some people in Illinois give out every year during Halloween? I'm kinda curious about that, because I've obviously never visited Illinois, outside of passing by it a few times. So if anybody from Illinois is actually reading this, can you clarify that for me as to whether or not you give out cigarettes to kids on Halloween? I'm really kinda curious here.

20 minutes later

So in the aliens attempt to destroy the humans "missile silo", what they really destroyed was the top of a water tower. I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that these aliens aren't exactly the brightest bunch, now are they?

1 minute later

Oh, so it wasn't actually water, it was...popcorn, I think. I'm not totally sure if that's accurate or not, but at least it wasn't water, so my mistake there.

6 minutes later

OK, I have a bit of a question here. Is this kid ever gonna take off that stupid beak from his duck costume? Well correction, his costume looks more like a turkey than a duck, but I digress. The beak is kinda distracting me and I sorta wish he would take it off so that he can speak a little bit more properly. But hey, perhaps that's just me.

15 minutes later

Well, what do you know? The movie actually answered one of my questions. Yes, the kid I mentioned a moment ago wearing the duck costume with the stupid beak on his mouth is no longer wearing the costume. He's just in normal clothes now. Not sure how he found out where Kathy and the aliens were, but I can kinda, sorta let that slide for now.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "Spaced Invaders". Let me go ahead and shut the movie off now...OK. So, um...where to start here? I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you guys when I say that I am kind of disappointed in this movie. I wanted to really like it. But unfortunately, the flaws I'm about to discuss here are gonna hinder this movie to a point where I'm not sure if I can even recommend it to you guys.

So, let's start off this review here by first discussing the writing. I'm gonna start off with the biggest problem with this movie as a whole, and that is the pacing. The pacing in this movie is absolutely atrocious. This film takes *forever* to get itself moving. The worst of it comes from the last third of the film where our heroes are trying to get the aliens home. That part of the film's pacing is so bad that it honestly felt like a 2 hour movie. And mind you, the movie's about an hour 40 minutes long, which isn't really doing much favors to begin with, but in some cases, that shouldn't feel like a problem. But again, because of how badly paced this movie is, it really drags the movie down to a screeching halt.

While I'm on the subject of pacing, this movie also has no sense of direction on where it wants to go. I have a theory that, after the aliens landed on Earth, the movie just decided to wing itself and just improvise scenes as they went along. Because this movie feels incredibly all over the place. We have scenes that jump back and forth between the aliens, the old man, our two main child characters, to another alien and his mind controlled human servant, this movie just feels very uneven and it has no idea on what it wants to truly focus on. That also leads into another problem that I'll get to in a moment, but just to summarize for you guys, the pacing in this movie is some of the worst I have ever experienced in a movie in a long time. And mind you, I watched "Critters 4" not too long ago, and as bad as the pacing in that thing was, it's looking a hell of a lot better when compared to this movie. This movie is just slow, boring, and really directionless.

Which then perfectly leads into the next big problem with this movie: the characters. And the first thing I need to talk about in regards to that are the aliens themselves. All of the aliens in this movie are basically stupid as shit. OK, I know that's suppose to be the point to their characters, but the problem here with that is that you can't just rely on their stupidity to make them stand out. You also have to make them interesting in some way, which this movie does not do. The only noticeable things about them is that most of them are supporting accents, with one of them putting on a Jack Nicholson impersonation. I'll talk about that later when I get to acting, believe me. But yeah, none of the aliens in this movie have any real interesting personalities other than being dumb as shit. And as for everything else involving the comedy, well...nothing about it is really all that funny. Like I said, it felt like the movie was just winging itself for anything to be funny, but unfortunately, the comedy just falls flat on it's face.

As for our human characters, well, none of them really stand out, with the one lone exception being the old man. And that's basically because he's sorta playing the same character that he did from "Killer Klowns from Outer Space". The only difference between this movie and that one is that he's not killed off very early in the latter. In fact, he doesn't die at all in this movie, but still, you get my point. He's the only stand out for me, personally. As for everyone else, well, none of them really stand out in any fashion. I thought Kathy, who's one of the leading child actors in this movie, was gonna stand out more. But she really doesn't. It's mentioned very early on that her mother died back in May, and I thought that would bring up some kind of drama between her and her Dad. But nothing comes from it, because it's mentioned only one time and is never brought up again in the film. So that's an example of wasted potential for our characters.

And even though I did enjoy seeing the old man again, it's also kind of a shame, because there's a subplot that's also brought up way early on where some dick-headed sheriff is after his farm and that if the old man doesn't pay him the money he needs the following day, or if there's not a single crop growing in his garden, he's going to lose his farm. I thought the movie was going to do something a little bit more with it. But like with Kathy's Mom, it's never really brought up again, at least until the very end of the movie where, spoilers, he ends up getting a bunch of crops thanks to the help of the aliens spaceship and his farm is saved. So yeah, that's all the subplot you get from this movie. It's over and done with just like that.

So yeah, guys, um...writing in this movie is just not very good at all. It's boggled down by it's awful pacing, and it obviously could've used a *lot* of trimming down. Now, as for the acting, well...it's kind of a mixed bag. The best actor, by far, would have to be Royal Dano, but again, that's mainly because he plays the same character as he did from "Killer Klowns from Outer Space", so I'm mostly being kinda biased when it comes to that one. As for the aliens, most of them just sounded really fucking annoying with their accents as the actors were trying to ham them up to be funny, but it mostly doesn't work. The worst actor, though, has to go to the alien with the Jack Nicholson impersonation. Now admittedly, I didn't really get the accent at first until a little halfway into the movie where the movie started to focus more on him, and I'm just gonna say it, the impersonation is just horrible. Like, he *really* tries to ham up this impersonation so much for the entire film, but it's just so fucking bad. What's sad about this is that, out of all the aliens, he's the only one who sounds less annoying than the others. But that's like saying a small pile of shit isn't nearly as bad as a big mountain of shit. That's not really helping things much. The rest of the human actors are OK at best, but that's also not saying very much here.

Special effects, for the most part, are halfway decent. The visual effects are pretty good for it's time, and costuming and animatronics on the aliens look rather decent, too. However, that leads into a big problem that stuck out at me from the very beginning about them. I said earlier, and it bears repeating, the mouth movements on these aliens are fucking horrible. Most of the time, their dialogue doesn't seem to match up with what they're trying to say. Most of the mouth movements look like gibberish, and it just doesn't look natural on these aliens at all. And I tried to overlook this problem as the movie went on, but it just became more of an issue the more that I saw these aliens talking. It just seems to me that almost nobody put any effort into making these mouth movements look natural.

Now aside from that, the camerawork here is pretty good. Lighting here is fine. The sound-mixing is fine, too. And the music here is actually rather decent. There's really not much else I can say about it, other than it sounds fine.

But ultimately, guys, when everything is said and done, can I recommend "Spaced Invaders"? As much as I'd like to say maybe give it a once-over or rent it somewhere, I really can't do that. This movie's problems are too much for me to ignore. The biggest, and most obvious problem, is the film's pacing. That right there is the reason why I can't recommend this film to you guys. Perhaps maybe had this film been trimmed down to about 20 minutes or so, then maybe I would've said it's worth watching once. But as is, there's no way I can recommend this movie to you guys. There's no way you're gonna get past the awful pacing, and it'll most likely put you to sleep, since the movie is incredibly boring, too. So yeah, unfortunately, I can't recommend this thing in any way, shape, or form. And on that note, I'm gonna go and watch a better movie. And seeing as how this movie not only reminded me of "Killer Klowns from Outer Space", but also had the same actor from that movie in this one, I'm gonna go and watch that right now. And it's also the perfect time of the year for it, too, so that makes it even better for me.

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.

Reaction & Review | Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a horror movie from 2021. That movie is "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City".

Now, back when I did my second "Video Game Movie Marathon", I said that I was not gonna cover any of the live action "Resident Evil" movies. And when I said that, I'm mostly referring to the ones that came out during the 2000's. And the reason why was because I remember seeing trailers for those movies back in the day, and they looked absolutely horrible.

So why then am I covering this movie, seeing as how it is yet another live action "Resident Evil" movie? Well, the thing is, unlike the "Resident Evil" movies I just mentioned, where I saw the trailers for those movies, this one I haven't seen any trailers for. In fact, I've barely heard anything about this movie. Which is great for me, because I get to go into this movie with fresh eyes and see how this thing turns out.

Now as for what I know about the movie, well, I know it's another live action adaptation of the popular video game series. And considering the track record for live action video game movies, this thing already has a lot going against it. That, plus, this thing is probably gonna have almost no connection to any of the games, outside of name recognition.

But again, I could be jumping the gun here. This movie could actually wind up being halfway decent, or perhaps even great. I somewhat doubt it, but hey, you never know. It could still surprise me in someway. But the only way I'm gonna know for sure if this movie is good or bad 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 "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City".

11 minutes later

OK, I have a dumb question here, but is it normal for dogs to lick up blood? I know they'll eat strange shit like, well....literal shit, but do they really lick up blood as well? I'm only asking, because I'm not a dog owner, and it just leaves me a little bit curious is all.

14 minutes later

Well, guys, I can tell you this much so far. The acting in this movie is fucking horrible. It's actually making the acting from the original "Resident Evil" game from the late 90's sound like Oscar worthy material. I never thought I'd say that, but this movie's already achieving that aspect. I'm hoping that it gets better as the film progresses, but somehow, I'm already starting to doubt it.

3 minutes later

Did Claire seriously just ask "What is that?" in response to an alarm sounding? Moreover, Chris is just waving this off as if it's "just nothing". Either this is a normal thing to Chris, or the characters in this movie are just stupid as shit. Considering how this movie is going so far, I'm going with the latter on this one.

10 minutes later

So our hero, Leon S. Kennedy, didn't notice the explosion coming from the truck that just exploded in front of the R.P.D., because he was too busy sleeping. I gotta admit, that takes some real dedication to do something that like that. Unless he was just on sleeping pills or something. But still, that certainly does takes a lot of effort. Oh, and also there's a guy on fire that just walked inside the police department, which is also accompanied by shitty music. Oh...never mind, it just ended, thankfully. God, that entire scene was just stupid as fuck, and not even in the so bad, it's good kind of way either. It was just stupid in general.

13 minutes later

Well, guys, I can also say that, adding onto the horrible acting, the CG in this movie is also fucking terrible. I'm seeing a poorly rendered CG demon dog, and it's reminding me of the terrible CG demon dog I saw in "The Bye Bye Man". I never thought I'd have to make that kind of comparison, but this movie's found a way to do that, and it's rather depressing, too.

11 minutes later

OK, this movie's sorta answered a question that I've had on my mind for a while now, in regards to why the police force isn't affected like most of the citizens of Raccoon City. The answer that Claire's friend from the videotape gave out was that they have strong immune systems, and that they all were injected with something to keep them safe from being infected. But if that's the case, then why isn't Claire's friend infected like the rest of the citizens? Did the scientists of Umbrella give him the injection before locking him up as well? From the way he's talking, it doesn't sound like it. But then again, considering his horrible acting, I really can't tell. But anyway, I'm curious as to why he's getting a pass in all this? I'm really hoping for an answer at some point, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna be getting one or not.

12 minutes later

You know, guys, I totally understand that it has been a long while since I last played the original "Resident Evil" game. Well, the remake on GameCube anyway, but still, I don't recall Lisa Trevor ever doing this kind of shit in the game, where she's fighting off one of those monsters to where it only responds to loud noises. It's kinda stupid, really. But then again, this whole movie has been incredibly stupid to begin with, so I guess it's being kinda accurate to the games, in a way, I guess.

14 minutes later

So Wesker's now dead, and they were trying to pass him off as a good guy, even though he just killed Sherry's parents a moment ago. I'm sorry, but no. This is just really fucking lame, cause they took a character who had something resembling depth in the games and tried to turn him into a shitty good guy who went down in an incredibly lame way. That's just awful, guys.

The Review

Oh, thank you god, it's over. Well, guys, that was "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City". I'm gonna shut this garbage movie off...OK. Holy shit, that was fucking torturous to get through. And now, I have to review this thing. Oh boy, is that gonna be a fucking challenge! Well, before I dive right into this in more detail, I gonna you guys the summarized version of my thoughts on the movie. It was shit. I know that probably didn't seem like it, based on my reactions and all, but this is quite honestly the worst "Resident Evil" movie I have ever seen period. And after watching this movie, I've had more than my fill of watching another live action "Resident Evil" movie because I'm more than certain that it's not gonna be any good.

So, why don't we go through the motions here, and first discuss the writing. Now, being that this is suppose to be an adaptation of the "Resident Evil" games, I first have to answer this, since so many people are fickle about loyalty to the source material. How loyal is this movie to the games? Hardly, if at all. Which, I know is probably not that much of a surprise, but still, some people really care too much about loyalty to the source material. Myself, personally speaking, I just want it to be entertaining. And this movie fails at being that. I'm gonna tell you, guys, for as much flak as the 1993 "Super Mario Bros." movie and the 1994 live action "Street Fighter" movie get, the one thing those movies excel at is being entertaining, and also not boring either. Which this is movie also good at. It is *incredibly* boring, to a point where I kinda just checked the runtime on the movie itself just to see how much of it is left. That's how boring it really is.

Now this movie tries, in vain, to be a very loose adaptation of Resident Evil's 1 and 2. In which, you have Raccoon City being a hellhole of a town where something is obviously wrong, to Leon and Claire both held up at the R.P.D, to Chris and company exploring the Spencer Mansion. So, on the surface, it seems like a straightforward story, but the problem is that they tried to combine both games into one movie, and it really just doesn't work. I could understand them trying to adapt one of the games into a live action movie, but the very fact that they tried to combine both stories of the games into less than 2 hours is like trying to combine a 64 page graphic novel of "The Killing Joke" into less than a 75 minute movie, where a good portion of it is nothing but filler. It doesn't work, and this movie certainly cut a lot of corners into try and fit in as much as they could from the games.

Now speaking of which, let's talk about the characters. Most of the characters in this movie are well established characters from the games. Now admittedly, I have no idea if this is suppose to be a reboot of sorts for a series of live action movies. But if that's the case, then this movie fails at it, because there is not a single character in this movie who is likable, or has any personality whatsoever. They're all flat and fucking lifeless. As I mentioned before, Wesker is a lame twist villain who has an even lamer face turn towards the end when he dies. Claire and Chris seem to bicker a lot when they first get together, but that's kinda it. By themselves, they're really boring as shit. Jill Valentine is probably the most boring of the cast, because she really has no character to her whatsoever, other than being here for name recognition. Leon has it the worst, because he ends up playing the goofball rookie who has no idea what's going on. And yes, I know he was a rookie in Resident Evil 2, but he wasn't that much of an idiot like he was in this movie.

That brings me to the only other characters worth mentioning, which is the Birkins. William is nothing more than a mad scientist who wants to play god, and ends up sounding like a shitty "Power Rangers" villain once he's transformed himself into a monster. What I'm surprised by the most is how little depth Sherry and her mother get. Which is strange, because in Resident Evil 2, Sherry's mother was also a scientist much like her husband, but in this movie, she's really just somebody who's in this movie to be a scapegoat and nothing more. What's even more baffling to me is that she had no idea that her husband had been working on these horrible experiments this whole time. Really, lady? You've been married to him for how long and you had no idea on any of this shit!? And what's more, Sherry also has no special part in this whatsoever, which is a massive contradiction from RE2, because her father injected her with the G-Virus and grew very sick before being saved by Claire and a vaccine that Sherry's mother told her about and made. So yeah, Sherry, who ends up becoming something by "Resident Evil 6" is just here for the sake of being here and nothing more. Which is honestly really disappointing.

So, if that wasn't any indication, the writing in this movie is just terrible. It tries, in vain, to appeal to fans of "Resident Evil", only for it to really fall flat on it's face. Speaking of, that greatly transitions into the acting. I said it before, and I'll say it again, the acting in this movie is horrible to where it makes the horribly stilted acting from the original PS1 game look like Oscar worthy material. I'm serious, guys, that's how bad the acting in this movie is. There is not a single actor in this movie who even tries to emote properly, outside of maybe the actor playing Chief Irons. But even with him, his acting still sucked. The worst actor, by far, has to go the guy on the videotape, who we also see again in a jail cell at R.P.D. I'm going to make a wild assumption, and I could be totally wrong here, that this guy has barely acted in his life. And if that *is* the case, then he should be nowhere near in front of a camera again until he has taken more acting lessons. That is how badly he acted in this movie, and the rest aren't any good either, of course. The acting here is terrible from top to bottom.

Before I get into the special effects, I will say that, when it comes to the sets of both the Raccoon City Police Department and the Spencer Mansion, they both look almost spot on. I say that mostly for the former, because it's been a while since I last played the "Resident Evil" remake on the GameCube. But still, when it comes to the look of these locations, they look very accurate to their game counterparts. But that's really all the praise I have for this movie comes to an end, because when it comes to the special effects, they look fucking horrible. The CG in this movie, along with it's blood effects, looks like something that would come from a Sy-Fy Channel Original Movie. It's *that* bad looking. The only halfway decent effect I sorta liked was that monster I mentioned that responds to loud noises. It looked OK, but it's not gonna take away from the rest of the shit that is the special effects.

Camerawork here is decent. The lighting here, at times, is kinda shit. Mostly in dark areas, especially during where one scene where Chris is trying to fight off a bunch of zombies in the dark. It was probably the most poorly lit scene of the entire movie. Sound-mixing here is decent at best. The music here is kind of a mixed bag in terms of the soundtrack, but the audio for some reason seems really loud in some scenes. The most notable one I can remember is the scene where the guy who was on fire walks in, and the music is just booming loud to where I had turn down the volume on my TV. Not only that, but the song that played for that brief moment felt very out of place, too. I don't remember the song, and I don't really care what it is, all I know is that it was shit. And that's all I needed to hear from it, really.

So ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City"? No, I cannot. This movie is garbage, both as a "Resident Evil" movie and as a video game movie adaption. It's not gonna appeal to "Resident Evil" fans, because fans of the games will probably think this movie is terrible as well. If you really want something better from "Resident Evil", just go play any of the games. Or if you seriously have to find some decent "Resident Evil" movies to watch, then I could recommend the CG animated movies. I'll even recommend the ones I didn't care for as much, which were "Resident Evil: Degeneration" and "Resident Evil: Vendetta", because those movies are milestones better than this pile of shit that tries to be a "Resident Evil" movie. Now...speaking of the CG "Resident Evil" movies, I still have two of them that I kept after I reviewed them last year. I plan on watching both of them this month, what with it being the month of October and all, so I'm gonna go and watch "Resident Evil: Damnation", because I enjoyed that one the most out of all the CG "Resident Evil" movies I watched. So I'm gonna go do that next, and hopefully, I can get the awful taste from this movie out of my mouth.

And with that, guys, 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.