Review of New Horror Movies

*Photos courtesy of IMDb.com*

“A Quiet Place” 

My go-to Netflix show when I’m looking for an easy laugh is “The Office,” starring John Krasinski as Jim Halpert. Whether he’s playing a prank on Dwight or making a shrewd comment about Michael behind his back, I find myself laughing out loud every time. However, a smile was nowhere near my face as I watched Krasinski direct and star in his new movie, “A Quiet Place.”

The movie is set in a ghost town where we meet a young family struggling to survive in a world of scavenging aliens. The movie begins as the family heads out of town to live on their own with high hopes of finding a way to survive.

Krasinski wasted no time getting into the meat of the movie. Taking place in a seemingly post-apocalyptic world, the whole premise of the movie revolves around sound. If they hear you, they hunt you. Using this motto as a key to survival, the family takes tip-toeing to a whole new level.

The unnamed parents, played by real-life husband and wife John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, communicate with their three children solely through sign language.

The movie unfolds as the parents seem to go through hell and back to save their children and another baby on the way from the outside death traps. This was not the carefree Jim Halpert I was used to.

As a mix of aliens and monsters, these larger-than-life creatures who inhabit the surrounding are easily the grossest things I have ever seen. I’d rather have a staring contest with Freddy Krueger from “A Nightmare on Elm Street” than have to even glance at these nasties.

These freaks are abnormally large, with flaps of skin on their face that bulge in and out when they are ready to kill, unveiling their underlying red flesh. And to top it all off, they have hyperactive hearing so that they can find and kill their prey in a matter of seconds. If you even try to open your mouth to speak, they are on you like Annabelle the doll when the door creaks.

Although not unbearably scary, the amount of jump scares had me feeling like I just finished an ab workout by the end of the movie from each time my body would clinch up. Krasinski does a brilliant job of implementing these jump scares at the perfect time. Since the movie focuses on silence and sign language, scares were the least bit predictable.

Even though there were several twists and turns during the plot and somewhat of a cliffhanger ending, it made me an active participant in this game of tension. As I walked out of the tight thrill ride of a movie, I found myself wondering, ‘so when’s the sequel?’

“Truth or Dare” 

Let’s play a game of truth or dare.

I dare you to try and sit through this entire movie without wanting to leave because of how awful and cheesy it is. Just try – I bet you will lose.

“Truth or Dare” starring actors like Lucy Hale as Olivia, Tyler Posey as Lucas and Violett Beane as Markie, starts off with the typical college spring break trip to Mexico (shocker) and ends up going south for everyone (not just geographically).

Only 10 minutes into an hour and 45-minute movie, I found myself hitting my head against the back of my seat as I watched horrible acting, boring storyline, and some more terrible acting. There’s a reason why I had no idea who any of the actors besides Lucy Hale were.

The movie revolves around eight college students who get lured into a game of truth or dare during spring break by a complete stranger, played by Landon Liboiron, resulting in the cursed game following them back home.

When they arrive back home, they one-by-one start to see certain signs and clues that they are about to begin the game, like Olivia noticing her car got keyed by someone who wrote “Truth or Dare?” across her door.

After trying to avoid the game, each of them start to notice whoever they are talking to momentarily gets taken over by demons from the cursed game. Their face turns into this creepy enlarged smile that asks the same stupid question, “Truth or dare?”

The game is simple. If you don’t answer the truth you die. If you don’t do the dare you die.

Each of the truths and dares are intended to turn the friends against each other – like Olivia accidentally telling the entire school library that her best friend cheated on her boyfriend or telling her closest friend that she was with her dad the night he committed suicide.

As the movie goes on, it becomes progressively worse. Each of the truths and dares are completely unrealistic and left me with so many unanswered questions. Why in the world would you follow a stranger that you just met into an abandoned castle to play truth or dare? Didn’t I play truth or dare in like fifth grade? I’m not really sure, but all I know is that it is seriously messed up.

After the hour and 45 minutes that felt like days, I was left with nothing but a tacky movie that should be found under the horror movie section of Netflix – everyone knows those are the wanna-be movies that didn’t make their grand debut in theaters. Oh, and Lucy Hale should probably stick to “A Cinderella Story” instead.