This week’s movie for me was Stake Land (2010). One of the most “mid” but enjoyable movies I have ever seen. My girlfriend and I did have a fun time watching it, despite its shortcomings. The movie throws you right into the story, a vampire apocalypse has occurred and immediately we see Mister (Nick Damici) saving Martin’s life (Connor Paolo). There is a rabid zombie in a garage that they have to kill. 

The first thing I’ll talk about is the special effects. They are very well done for a small budget of only $15 million. The vampires in this movie look scary and the costuming and makeup is really gory, believable, and even looks good in the close ups. I chalk this up to all the effects in this movie being practical effects, which typically not only look better but also hold up better when a movie is visited years down the road as I have. This is a very “B Movie” horror flick, but they got a lot of things right, which was surprising to me. I had low to no expectations when drafting this one as I had never heard of it before, and I would say that the special effects alone had me interested in it from the get go.

The story itself is overall very middle of the road. Nothing really special or surprising happens, it’s about two people who are trying to survive and travel north to a safe haven, “New Eden”. Of course, along the way they encounter other survivors and form a little rag-tag group. The first of these new characters is Sister (Kelly McGillis) who at first I thought was going to be your typical annoying horror movie “mom” type character who couldn’t handle the world she was thrust into. But she ended up being my favorite character overall, and I felt for her at certain points, especially at the end when she sacrifices herself to distract the vamps from her friends so they have a chance at escaping.  

Then, there’s rustling in the distance in the woods. Martin and Mister go running around in circles after it, only to return to Belle, to find her missing. They then follow the trail of the Intelligent Vamp, finding Belle strung up in a shed. This is when the big-bad-guy-death-cult-leader-intelligent-vamp is revealed and I audibly groaned. This movie had a semi interesting concept, wasn’t that terrible up to this point, but this kind of ruined the own lore of how the vampires work that had been previously set without any explanation at all. Then an even more lore breaking thing occurs in the very next scene, the death cult leader vamp speaks. Up to this point, every vampire had seemed to be a zombie/vampire hybrid, and none could talk or control their behaviors. Their only motive was to attack and kill; not pause and have a conversation with their prey… 

Overall, this movie is just fine. If you’re a fan of horror that’s campy and has an interesting plot, even when executed relatively poorly, you will not hate spending 98 minutes on this one. Not great, not too bad, just a perfectly middle of the road movie that’s enjoyable enough for one watch. 

-2.5 mallards /5

-Seann

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) is a film that had the unfortunate fate of being released in theaters at the height of the COVID pandemic, which severely impacted the box office profit, as well as the potential notoriety of the film. Luckily, as far as the latter aspect is concerned, nothing of value was missed. This is described as an action/western movie, and while there is indeed action, the ‘western’ is a bit baffling. The movie takes place in the western part of the United States, but other than that…? There aren’t any cowboys, or anything that you would expect in the typical genre of a western.

The action or thriller description is much more apt and, unlike the ‘western’ tag, suggests basically everything that happens in this movie. This is a movie built almost entirely around tropes. Here are a few tropes present in this movie: a man discovers a secret about a politician and is chased by two hit men. The hit men are simultaneously ruthless, cold, calculating, and also incredibly inefficient, stupid, and trusting. The young boy character has a mom who died of cancer. The female lead (Angelina Jolie) has PTSD and a problem with kids. There is a sheriff who has a pregnant wife, which is used against him. There is a sheriff that gets killed the day before his retirement. One of the would-be assassins is killed by a fire that they started themselves. The police and FBI cannot be involved, for some vague reason.

That’s right, it hits all of the plot points, themes, and events that one would expect of the genre. Does that make the movie bad outright? Not exactly, but it certainly doesn’t help, and it doesn’t exactly improve the film’s potential of being interesting. There are interesting moments in this movie, but they have nothing to do with the actual events of the movie itself, but to do with the choreography and the fighting scenes. The emotional elements of this movie fall flat on all fronts, and those scenes as a result detract from the overall quality, because the viewer finds themselves getting bored while waiting for the next shoot-out or fight scene. If you’re someone who likes when movies are unpredictable, and when you don’t know what’s going to happen next, you likely won’t find this one very appealing. 

I’ve written this before about some of the movies I’ve reviewed in the past, and I think it makes sense to comment on it again here: the best part of the movie is its short run-time. I get the distinct impression that some of the scenes in the movie are present for the express purpose of reaching the usual 90 minute mark. There’s a 5 minute scene with a horse that can easily be cut out entirely, as well as various 30-second sections that can be trimmed without negatively impacting the plot (such as it is). I think this movie could realistically be trimmed down to around 70 minutes, which again is not necessarily a bad thing. The action is set up almost immediately as the movie starts up, and it ends with basically all of the loose ends tied up….except for the main plot point of why the information the assassins need is so important, but I digress. 

In a movie aiming to be artistic, a 90 minute runtime implies that the creator (or artist) didn’t have much content to say, or didn’t dig deeply enough into the themes and philosophical aspects of whatever topic the film is about. In a movie like this, which merely seeks to entertain an audience, a 90 minute runtime is a godsend. There are rather boring parts of this movie, but they go by quickly enough, and the final two-thirds are pretty action-packed. The actions itself has various levels of excitement, for example when the characters are running from the fire it is not very exciting, but when they’re fighting each other with knives, axes, blowtorches, and deer rifles, it gets a bit tense. 

While this type of movie is clearly not my preferred genre, I have seen quite a few of them, so I know what a good thriller or action movie should be like. I understand the plot points and the flow of the action and where the acts should end and begin, etc. This movie fit squarely in line with others in the genre, but didn’t do anything to go beyond it. This is not one of the best movies I’ve seen, and it’s not one of the best thrillers I’ve seen, either. This movie is merely an okay example of the genre– if you like the formula of thrillers, then you’ll like this, but I can’t imagine someone who likes thrillers would find anything groundbreaking in this, especially when compared to some of the great thrillers of our time. My point is: I probably would not have liked this movie even if it was a top-tier thriller, and since it’s not one of those, I like it even less. 

There are a few things I’d like to comment on that were actually pretty good about the movie. Firstly, the acting is surprisingly good. Jolie is a known entity, but Aidan Gillen played the lead hit man very convincingly, even to the point of making me root for him a little bit. Jon Bernthal plays the role of a family man sheriff pretty well, and his affected western rural accent comes across as authentic, if not always consistent. The script is also pretty good in terms of dialogue and, as stated previously, the pacing is right there. The casual conversations are written pretty casually, while the intensity of the action sequences can be felt in the characters’ voices and words. I think everyone did a great job on this one, and while it wasn’t of particular interest to me, it also didn’t offend me with lines that tried to be cool or hip. Another thing I appreciated was the use of the setting. This movie takes place on the Lewis and Clark trail, and it was shot, if not in that location, then a good approximation of it. There are many aerial shots showing off the beauty of the land itself, and the environment definitely acts as a character of its own in the movie – the are areas that cannot be traversed, there are hills that are used for hiding, creeks, rivers, and small lakes used to escape the fires, etc. 

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021), which by the way is a terrible title for this movie, and tells you absolutely nothing about what it is or what it’s about, has a score of 6.0/10 on IMDB, a Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer score of 63%, and a Letterboxd score of 2.7/5. I think this movie can fluctuate anywhere between a score of 2mallards and 3mallards, depending on one’s affinity for the genre. If you’re someone who would willingly seek out this type of movie to watch, as opposed to being assigned randomly to watch it (as I have), then I could see how it would be almost enjoyable. As I said, this isn’t really my type of thing, but even so I recognize that it is competently-made, well acted, tense at points, and has no major blunders or embarrassing moments. For someone who would never watch this of their own volition, there’s not much more to ask for than that. 

2.5 mallards/5

–Maxwell