Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the Beatles-based musical fantasy “Yesterday,” the devil doll flick “Annabelle Comes Home” and the psychological drama “Isabelle” with CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Toys rule at the box office these days. “Toy Story 4” and “Child’s Play” made big bank last weekend. This week marks the return of Annabelle, the $1 billion devil dolly. The wickedest toy since Chucky she’s the creepy, glassy-eyed star of “The Conjuring” prequels.
On screen Annabelle, an old-fashioned doll possessed by evil spirits, has raised all manner of havoc. Before she was captured by “self-described “demonologists, ghost hunters and kooks” Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) she terrorized orphans and haunted children. “The doll,” says Lorraine, “is a beacon for other spirits.”
To keep the world safe from the demonic doll the Warrens stored her in a glass box at their Occult Museum (a basement that looks like a prop warehouse run by Bella Lugosi) in Connecticut. There she is controlled by chapel glass from an old church blessed by a priest to prevent her from causing any more trouble. But what happens if the spell wears off?
In “Annabelle Comes Home” a babysitter’s (Madison Iseman) snooping friend (Katie Sarife) upsets the spiritual balance of the museum, allowing the artefacts to do what they’re meant to do, cause trouble. Now everyone in the house, including the Warrens’ ten-year-old daughter, Judy (McKenna Grace), is a target of evil. “Annabelle. She’s doing all this,” says Judy. “She wants a soul today.”
As with all other “Conjuring” universe movies “Annabelle Come Home” takes its sweet time building an atmosphere of dread to leave you queasy and uneasy. For much of the running time the weirdest thing that happens is an invisible, ghostly hand breaking a glass of milk and starting the stereo. There are jump scares but they don’t deliver much of a payoff. Nothing is singularly shocking, it’s more the cumulative effect of evil versus innocence that disturbs. Director Gary Dauberman knows that the long game, the gradual reveal of evil, complete with the old-school now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t-theatrics, is creepier than overt scares.
“Annabelle Comes Home” works because it creates a mini universe with its own set of rules and God help you if you break them. Best of all it’s an old-fashioned film that doesn’t rely on gore to sell the thrills. Instead there’s lots of laboured breathing, wide eyed disbelief, low-fi drive-in thrills and characters you want to survive.
Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “Shazam!,” the remake of “Pet Sematary” and the documentary “Carmine Street Guitars.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including “Shazam!,” the remake of “Pet Sematary” and the documentary “Carmine Street Guitars.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the kid-friendly superhero flick “Shazam!,” the remake of “Pet Sematary” and the documentary “Carmine Street Guitars” with CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at the family-friendly superhero flick “Shazam!,” the remake of “Pet Sematary” and the documentary “Carmine Street Guitars.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Released almost exactly 30 years to the day since the original film hit screens, “Pet Sematary,” starring Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz as a couple who discover a mysterious burial ground in the woods near their new home, is a remake of one of Stephen King’s scariest novel adaptations. The 1989 movie was so scary King, the master of all things terrifying, says it was the only one of his films that genuinely scared him. Will the remake offer up the same kind of undead thrills?
Exhausted from years as a night shift emergency room doctor in Boston Louis Creed (Clarke) is looking forward to spending more time with his family, Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and children Ellie (Jeté Laurence) and Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie), in their new, rural home in Maine. “The whgole place is ours?” asks Ellie. “I even got them to throw in a forest as a new backyard,” jokes dad. The move offers the change the family so desperately needs but then tragedy strikes when their beloved family cat Church is flattened by a truck on the country road in front of their home.
Their helpful neighbour Judd Crandall (John Lithgow) suggests they bury the cat in a secret spot known as the “Pet Sematary.” Local folklore has it that the eerie burial ground has supernatural powers. “Kids used to dare each other to go into the woods at night,” says Crandall. “They feared it.” The Creeds soon learn there may be some truth to the legends when Church comes back but this time he isn’t so cute and cuddly. “There is something in those woods,” Crandall says. “Something that brings things back. Sometimes dead is better.” (SPOILER ALERT) Later when the stakes are raised, and daughter Ellie is killed, the limits of Louis’s love are tested.
Horrifying things happen in “Pet Sematary.” Undead filicide, patricide and lives taken too soon but as awful as some of things that happen on screen are, the movie isn’t scary. The idea of much of what happens will send a shiver down your spine but the actual rendering of it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been desensitized by “The Walking Dead” but the idea of the dead coming back to malevolent life doesn’t have much of an impact here. There are some jump scares but they are more uncomfortable than actually chilling.
As a study of grief it works better. Louis’s extreme actions are driven by anguish but because so much of what happens feels generic it’s hard to care about any of the characters, alive or dead. Like the pallid cover of the title song The Ramones made famous in 1989, the new film is a pale imitation of the original.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the kid-friendly superhero flick “Shazam!,” the remake of “Pet Sematary” and the documentary “Carmine Street Guitars.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
