J*A*S*M

The three stars are for the format, because this is somewhere “beyond” found-footage or docuhorror. I don’t think I ever saw a film composed entirely of secret recordings and wiretaps and I fully appreciate that “creativity”. Otherwise, it can’t be said that it’s in any way thrilling, scary or, heaven forbid, fun.

You almost get the feeling that in The Philippines you can run into a ghost at every turn. One road, one building, three decades, three short stories, lots of characters and one hundred and ten minutes is maybe a little too much for one film. The first story, taking place more or less in the present (2008), sets the horror bar pretty high and the remaining two stories never reach it – in fact, they don’t get even close. This doesn’t mean that the first story is the best, it’s just somehow the scariest and creepiest. Overall, the film left me with very mixed feelings. There’s plenty to complain about (for instance, the pointless twist), but some moments are really very intense. 60 +

No! Now Spanish creators have also jumped into the septic tank of teenage “horror” mainstream. Spain is certainly not one of the superpowers of this type of soulless sterility, so I’m very disappointed to see something like this coming from there. A derivative story about students going to an abandoned mining town in the country’s backwaters to research about a doctor-psychopath. It had potential, the setting of abandoned towns always works on me, but the way it’s executed is so unoriginal – and not only that, but also uninteresting and bland – that it cannot offer anything horror-wise (at least not for the more experienced viewers). There are a couple of chaste bloody murders, overlit mines, several crazy 3D effects and a predictable twist, the most shocking fact of which is that the creators were serious about it. A waste of time. 3/10

It’s okay to watch once. Well made, atmospheric, the corridors of a mental hospital have their charm and the psychopaths in the end are really good. I’m not jumping in joy, but I’m sure there are people who will be very satisfied with this film.

Mixed feelings. An average action flick that looks like made for TV with cool moments, wannabe cool moments, smart moments, dumb moments, thrilling moments and boring moments alternating at irregular intervals. Overall, it’s not bad, the last remaining fans of Mel Gibson (both of them) will be happy, but I’m surely not going back to it.

My friends say I should act my age…

I went to the 9:30 pm screening, after a very physically exhausting day, and I told myself that if this film manages to entertain me enough to keep me awake, I will give it five stars, and here they are. Now seriously: Avengers is a perfect blockbuster with great sense of humour, incredible chemistry between the characters and amazing action. If you are not looking for the brooding of Batman or the ambition of the Wachowskis (or anything “more”), and you only want good fun at the cinema, you can’t do better than this, it has no competition among the light summer blockbusters. And I’m saying this as someone who didn’t like too much the previous Marvel films and is also not a member of Whedon’s fan club. But there’s one little quibble: Next to the other superheroes, Black Widow and Hawkeye look so out of place and meek. And it’s also weird to see Auntie Robin in SHIELD’s control centre. Hulk/Banner rulez.

A great example of a film where you can not spoil the ending because there isn’t one. The Devil Inside is very poorly written, the characters behave in unlikely ways and the plot, rather than a complex story leading somewhere, is a sequence of unrelated scenes. Despite all these problems, which are a lot, in the second and third act, the film manages to hold some semblance of atmosphere. The horror scenes, which aren’t intended to move the plot forward, are well executed and feel unpleasant; they are effective. That’s mainly because, with the documentary style it uses, which looks almost abnormally ugly with its washed out colours, it’s pretty easy to conjure an unpleasant atmosphere. When they are performing the exorcisms or the possessed start jumping, it’s quite good... Unfortunately though, it’s mostly boring blabbing about nothing, it’s not worth recommending.

A horror film that is unnecessarily long, without anything to say and uninteresting in every way.

I can’t understand why creators who are clearly working with a low budget and a found-footage format (which lets you make a scary film that feels naturally realistic for hardly any money) would include in their film a plane crash, something that can not be shot in a way that would feel realistic on a shoestring. The found-footage format somehow blurs the fall, but the impact, which looks awfully artificial, ruins the impression of “real images”. But whatever. The main problem is that the rest of the film, when things finally get going, is hardly scary, doesn’t have any creepy moments and it can’t even rely on likeable characters, because there are none. The “villains” are good, though, and I’d love to see a classic format film with them.