Silverbrook Entertainment

17/09/2025

Recommendation:

"Monster Island" [2024] Original title "Orang Ikan". Directed by Mike Wiluan. Starring Dean Fujioka, Callum Woodhouse.

From AMC+: "After a WWII Japanese ship is torpedoed, two enemies wash ashore a deserted island where they are hunted by a monstrous creature. Inspired by the 1954 classic "The Creature From The Black Lagoon"."

Good pacing. Comradery between the two leads is great despite their language barrier. Intriguing and exciting. Real decent practical special effects and creature design, when used. Beautiful scenery. However, as the story progresses, we come to understand that the creature is not the only 'monster' on the island. My thoughts.. these people end up on an island where this thing already lives and suddenly it is the enemy? By the end of the piece, I felt as though the monster was the real victim in this story. Reminiscent a bit of "Sweetheart" (2019) and "Prey" (2022).

17/09/2025

Recommendation:

"Dark Was The Night" [2014]. Directed by Jack Heller. Starring Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas, Bianca Kajlich, Nick Damici, Heath Freeman, Ethan Khusidman, Sabina Gadacki, Steve Agee, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum.

From Prime: "Maiden Woods is a remote and quiet town of decent hard-working people, but something stirs in the dark woods surrounding this isolated community. After a logging company decimates an area of the forest, a rash of increasingly violent and unexplainable events transpires."

Beautiful scenery. Intriguing with a nice creep factor and eerie atmosphere from the start and continuing throughout. Intense and exciting with great pacing and an excellent cast. Could have done without the heavy 'blue' filter during the daytime shots, which tries to help emphasize the winter chill, but it just changes the overall color tone of everything too much and it gets a bit old after a while. I was also a little disappointed with the CG monster, but other than that, totally entertaining.

16/09/2025

😢

He made serious topics like grief and political corruption resonate with the masses, in no small part because of his own star power.

10/09/2025

Recommendation:

"Good Boy" [2020]. Directed by Tyler MacIntyre. Starring Judy Greer, Steve Guttenberg, Ellen Wong, Elise Neal, Maria Conchita Alonso, McKinley Freeman.

From Hulu: "When Maggie gets an emotional support dog to help quell some of her anxiety, she finds him to be even more effective than she imagined.. because he kills anyone who adds stress to her life."

Fun and wildly entertaining. Great practical effects. Silly and original story. Decent pacing and good performances throughout. "Get'em Reuben! Good Boy!" Rad twist too! Like a feature length "Tales From The Crypt" television series episode. Mom and I loved this, totally enjoyable and a huge laugh!

03/09/2025

Recommendation:

Happy 20th Anniversary!

"Isolation" [2005]. Directed by Billy O'Brien. Starring John Lynch, Essie Davis, Sean Harris, Marcel Iureș, Ruth Negga.

"Farmer Dan Reilly is struggling financially, so when he is offered a tidy sum in return for allowing one of his cows to have DNA experiments carried out on it, he reluctantly agrees, but soon the cow is not the only victim of the gruesome interventions."

Gloomy, dingy and dirty. Real gnarly and nasty practical special effects and animatronics with plenty of blood and gore throughout. Dark and brutal, with some rough things happening to cows.. and humans. Science gone wrong. Morbid and a touch creepy. A bit slow paced, but the story is original and the creature is unique and gross. A decent, if only one time watch, monster flick from Ireland.

03/09/2025

Recommendation:

"Black Sheep" (Unrated) [2007]. Directed by Jonathan King. Starring Nathan Meister, Danielle Mason, Peter Feeney, Tammy Davis, Glenis Levestam, Tandi Wright and Oliver Driver.

From TMDB: "A genetic engineering experiment gone horribly awry turns a large flock of docile sheep into unrelenting killing machines."

Ridiculously silly, over-the-top, and just plain awesome horror/comedy flick from New Zealand. Beautiful scenery. Super campy. Great pacing, and amazing practical special makeup effects, gore, animatronics and puppetry! A wild and wacky ride that is totally entertaining!

03/09/2025

Recommendation:

"Lamb" [2021] Original Title "Dýrið". Directed by Valdimar Jóhannsson. Starring Noomi Rapace, Hilmir Snær Guðnason, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson.

From Amazon Prime: "In rural Iceland, a childless couple discover a strange and unnatural newborn in their sheep barn. They decide to raise her as their own, but sinister forces are determined to return the creature to the wilderness that birthed her."

Strange, but unique. A bit slow paced, but interesting and intriguing nonetheless. A nice little bizarre slice of International cinema. Definitely original. Not a lot of dialogue, so reading the subtitles was fairly quick and easy. A good cast and performances. Beautiful scenery. Had the finale already figured out way early on, but was still excited to see how exactly it would play out. Enjoyable and entertaining. A slightly morbid and macabre adult fairytale if you will. A decent one-time watch.

03/09/2025

Recommendation:

"Hatching" [2022] (Original title "Pahanhautoja"). Directed by Hanna Bergholm. Starring: Siiri Solalinna, Sophia Heikkilä, Jani Volanen, Reino Nordin, Oiva Ollila, Ida Määttänen, Saija Lentonen.

From TMDB: "12 year old Tinja is desperate to please her mother, a woman obsessed with presenting the image of a perfect family. One night, Tinja finds a strange egg. What hatches is beyond belief."

Beautiful scenery. Eerie and haunting musical score. Cool cinematography - some really nice shots. Talented cast. Super neat creature! - cute and freaky at the same time when it is first hatched. Great practical special FX and makeup. Digital visual effects are top notch. Definitely a unique and original story that is very interesting, intriguing and decently paced. I enjoyed this International, foreign language flick a lot and was totally entertained all the way through!

02/09/2025

😢

Graham Greene, a Canadian actor best known for his Oscar-nominated turn in the 1990 film "Dances with Wolves," died on Monday. He was 73.

02/09/2025

~ Movies are Art. Art is Subjective. Everyone's Opinions are Valid. ~

Movies That I Hoped Would Have Been Better (*may contain slight spoilers):

[2025] "Ash" - Cool cinematography and editing. Was interesting and intriguing at first, but very quickly became melodramatic, familiar and laggy. About halfway through it seems like they got lost with the visual effects and forgot about the overall plot; which was later literally 'spoon fed' to the audience, making it easy for the unimaginative or uncreative to understand (or those who are messing around on their phones the entire time and not paying any attention), since the beginning is a bit disjointed. Silly and unnecessary. Special effects were muddled with way too much blood and digital CG filters and touch-ups. Kinda ridiculous, couldn't tell what was happening at times. I am so tired of the overused 'sinister smile' on every possessed character's face.. please stop doing this! Reminiscent of "Creature" aka "The Titan Find" (1985) and the newest lame couple of 'Alien' flicks and TV series. Overly played out nonsense in the end. Not really anything new or original that hadn't been done a bunch of times before.. to include the removing of a parasite/alien via medical machine from a living and conscious host! Relatively short runtime, but took forever to get to the point. OMG, and just when you think it is over..! Another waste of time. New filmmakers, please stop binge watching other people's works and simply copying and pasting together what you see. Have a unique idea for a change.

[2025] "Havoc" - Great cast and Tom gives an excellent performance. Writing is a bit melodramatic. Could have absolutely done without the cheesy digital CG animated driving, action sequences and scene filler.. so cheap and artificial looking. Too long for the thin plot and simplistic premise that barely holds your attention. The shaky camera work was total crap and nearly gave me motion sickness throughout just trying to watch it. All the shooting, body count, and digitally animated blood and gore is excessive and totally unnecessary, gets old real fast and then becomes a bore to watch as it goes on and on. Mom and I were both quite uninterested with this disappointing action thriller.

[2025] "Mickey 17" - He talks like Jake Gyllenhaal in "Bubble Boy" (2001), lol. Beautiful visuals. Interesting start, but ultimately, just way too long, slow and dull with loads of despicable, disgusting and self-absorbed characters. Pattinson is great though, delivering fantastic performances. Didn't really care for the overall premise. Movies are usually a nice way to escape reality for a couple hours. I don't need a flick stuffed with political nonsense that is essentially reflecting aspects of what is currently going on in the world around me. No thanks. Leave that to the news or documentary film makers. All of that completely shut the rest of the movie down for me, making it unenjoyable and unentertaining.

[2025] "War Of The Worlds" - First off, I could not stand the chosen style in which this movie was presented. The entire time we are staring at the main character's computer screen and all the lame live videos, video chats, web searches, windowed popups, etc. It was ridiculous and irritating. Most of society already spends their time experiencing 'life' in this fashion - could we please leave it out of the features. I cannot relate at all to this sort of story telling format or the flix that do this.. tons of stuff like this was made during covid and quarantine. It's such a complete waste of time and totally unnecessary. I love ya Ice Cube, but I got way better things to do than watch you mess around on your laptop for ninety minutes just to tell us an already familiar tale that has been remade before.. 'Oh, but we updated it to more modern times and technology!'.. still.. who cares. Pass! Cheap, made for Syfy network, trash!

01/09/2025

~ Movies are Art. Art is Subjective. Everyone's Opinions are Valid. ~

Movies That I Hoped Would Have Been Better (*may contain slight spoilers):

[2025] "The Monkey" - I'm not really a fan of a lot of King's writings in the first place, so any adaptation is always ify to me. I had no high hopes for this at all, and rightly so. The writing is poor, cliché (even featuring the 'oh so typical' and overused King narrative style story telling), and the entire thing is dumbfoundingly predictable and boring. Dialogue is melodramatic, unimportant and pointless for the most part. Badly acted. Advertised as a comedy/horror, though nothing was funny; mutilation and murder are not humorous in most horror movie cases, very few manage to pull it off successfully. Extremely immature and childish throughout. Plot is thin, simplistic, and essentially nonexistent. The characters are self-absorbed, unlikable and despicable - especially the children. Ridiculous, stupid and forced lame 'final destination' setup deaths; all done with poor animated CG digital blood and gore effects, which I can't stand. The monkey was pretty neat looking though. Overall, nothing new. A redundant, complete waste of time piece of junk. So uninteresting and unnecessary. I couldn't wait for it to be over.

[2024] "The Rule Of Jenny Pen" - Such an amazing cast and performances, unfortunately the film is just rather dull. Does have some semi creepy moments, but the pacing is poor, and not really a lot happens over the short runtime. However, it does have a satisfying finale. It would be an awesome horror flick for any Grandparents who love spooky films! I found it a bit tough to watch, only because the thought of growing old and being alone, left someplace to wither away with people who could care less about you, it a very frightening idea.

[2025] "The Ugly Stepsister" - Unfortunately nothing new, fresh or original. If you are familiar with the Grimm's Cinderella story, then you already essentially know what is going to happen; only this time is from the oldest stepsister's POV as her evil, vapid mother puts her through torturous finishing school and a make-shift period version of 'Nip/Tuck', if you will. Sadly, none of this is interesting as one would hope. The writing is shallow, very melodramatic, and ultimately predictable. The characters, with the exception of one, are all disgusting, self-absorbed and despicable. It's also a bit rapey and pornographic in places. Not even the decent practical makeup effects and gore can fix this poorly paced, yawn of a foreign film. Overall, it seemed so unnecessary and it's nothing you haven't already seen before.

[2025] "Until Dawn" - Never heard of, or played the video game. Pretty unlikable characters from the get-go; who look like thy have poor personal hygiene - dirty and unwashed. Uninteresting dialogue. Cliché and predictable. The simplistic and repetitive plot got real old, real fast. Essentially the same stuff over and over, but seems to take a bit too long to get to the variations and advancement of the story. The blood and gore effects were a mix of practical and CG, not too bad. Did have some cool sets and set design. Would have liked it if it had been much shorter with way tighter pacing; feels really long and laggy. Boring and a big yawn. Unfortunately, nothing unique, fresh or original; seen it all before a million times over. Reminiscent of "Happy Death Day" (2017) (which was entertaining), and "Cabin In The Woods" (2011) (I found lame, unbelievably cliché and stupid).

27/08/2025

"Smile" [2022], "Smile 2" [2024]. Directed by Parker Finn.

*This is not a recommendation for these flicks, rather, the six track EP that came from the sequel only.

Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLv3qeuV3YDrGHsnN338QsxyRyk7FzzOl

The lyrics are great, and fit the theme of the film. The music is emotional, moving, and upbeat; with nice melodies that pleasantly get stuck in your head only after a couple of listens. Naomi Scott's singing is great, calming to the ears and even dramatically powerful at times. Overall, I feel it is a great plus, especially since a lot of todays music really lacks. Keep in mind that it is pop and dance style, but does feature a really nice ballad, which is honestly my favorite track, and contains two versions of it. A lot of times when a movie features original songs in this context, they are fairly simple and just quick tunes to fill the short scene. That is not the case with this soundtrack. The writers really put time and effort into providing the audience with authentic tracks that could easily be from a huge, mega pop star. I was impressed.

However, I was sadly disappointed with the movies due to the already familiar premise (and a multitude of other things) which is similar to "Ringu" (1998)/ "The Ring" (2002), "It Follows" (2014); the list goes on with 'like' themed films. I am just getting really tired and bored of seeing the same recycled ideas, stories, and concepts over and over.. a new filmmaker's 'version' of someone else's work, if you will. Too many new releases are unfortunately like this. Perhaps targeted to a much younger audience who presumably have not seen some of the older, original films that most of these themes are taken from. Growing up, sure, I'd see maybe one or two other movies that were kind of the same as to something I had already seen, but it has gotten a bit out of control these days as far as I'm concerned.. the second a remotely 'fresh' idea comes out, suddenly there are a dozen movie replicas, and four or more streaming programs.. ALL with nearly the exact same tale to tell and with only slight alterations. If you are a viewer who is okay with this.. then by all means, check these out!