Letterboxd — Your life in film

It has all the frustration of HARD CANDY and FUNNY GAMES and nothing else. There isn't much that's redeemable nor sympathetic, which is a complaint I rarely make. I watch movies about awful situations and people all the time, yet most rarely turn me off like this one.

The direction isn't bad, the acting can be good, and the extent to which Eli Roth pisses us off with all the characters can be commended—but was I not supposed to think…

A missed opportunity.

On one hand, it is good at discussing the software of social media, its design to affect user psychology and behavior, and the advertising model that motivates it. There is no doubt that subtle manipulation is around nearly every corner of the Internet. Our time and labor is being sucked from us for the sake of somebody else's profit. The doc also highlights the effect of this technology on younger generations, which is interesting for me as…

Not the banger you'd hope from the guy who gave us SYMPTOMS, VAMPYRES, and EDGE OF THE AXE, but for his final outing Jose Larraz lengthens the connective tissue to the thematic interests of his past, which had been absent to an extent during his "hackwork" from the 1980s.

Like EDGE OF THE AXE, it is setup as another rural American slasher for a youngish audience expecting a body count. It takes a regal turn toward the psycho thriller, as…

I have to be on the fence with this one. I feel equal amounts of enthusiasm as disappointment. So, the chance of it growing on me is 50/50.

Or higher. It has an ideal framework: domestic thriller and gory slasher which "house" the is-it-psychological-or-supernatural? trope. Add goofiness and "gaffes" and Wings Hauser to get a paragonal model of Eighties horror.

But it can feel clunky, Hauser's dialog can be dull and repetitive, it needs one more death by carpentry, and…