The Aftermath/The Prodigy (Double Review)
***Warning, contains spoilers***
So, today I saw one good film and one excellent but deeply disturbing, upsetting and terrifying film and here's my double review of both of them. Let's start with the good/borderline very good movie first.
That movie was The Aftermath. Now, I do enjoy a good Second World War movie, I loved Dunkirk for example. This movie intrigued me because it showed the aftermath of the war (hence the title), but from the German side and how it affected them. The movie is actually a BBC movie in conjunction with a German company too.
It is produced by Ridley Scott who we all know is an absolute legend from the Alien movies and other films. Pure class. He wasn't the director but the fact he had a hand in this movie must have helped make it as good as it was.
It stars firstly Keira Knightley. Now she is one of my favourite actresses. I've always thought her best work was in the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, but she again shows what a top quality actress she is in this film. Also the fact that she is incredibly attractive will always get viewers and there is a sex scene where you see her topless in quite a lot of detail. It's very tastefully done but it is there.
Keira plays a wife of a guy in the army who has been posted to Germany to help assist after the war has finished. As part of his role he is allowed to requisition a house to live in and the occupants have to move out. Keira comes out to Germany to meet her husband, played by Jason Clarke who stars in the forthcoming horror movie Pet Sematary, based on the book by Stephen King, a movie I can't wait to see!
Clarke however is a kindly soul and can't bear to kick the German family out of their home, so they all live together. The house owner is played by Alexander Skarsgard, another very good actor. He lives there with his daughter.
As you can probably guess, Keiras on screen husband is away quite a lot and Skarsgard doesn't have a job so he is at home most of the time. What happens is an affair begins between Keira and Skarsgard, hence the sex scene I mentioned earlier.
This however is further complicated by the fact that, unbeknownst to Skasgard, his daughter instead of going to school, has started having a relationship with a boy who is in the 88 which is a group of Hitler sympathisers who still believe the war is on and can't take defeat.
When this boy finds out from the daughter that an English army person is staying at her house He sets out to kill Keiras husband, and nearly succeeds.
Now, Skasgard and Keira had planned to runaway together, but this incident gives her grave doubts. Do they end up together? Well I will let you watch the movie to find out!
There are so many incidents throughout the movie that give you a real feel of the aftermath of the war from the German side. Starving people, abject poverty and worse. It just shows that after the war, both sides had a huge period of rebuild and recovery to go through. I'm still very glad our side won though! But it's nice to see it from the eyes of the other side and there are many people in Germany who didn't support Hitler and you can't tar everyone with the same brush. This movie shows us this.
In conclusion, whilst not an excellent movie, it's certainly a very good one, well worth the 4 stars I've just awarded it. Go see it if you like war films.
Right, the second film I saw today, The Prodigy, was truly upsetting but an absolutely excellent movie and one of the scariest, most upsetting horror movies I've ever seen.
I won't mention actors names etc because they aren't well known, but it does show you don't need a big name actor or actress to make a movie great.
So, imagine this. A woman is pregnant with a baby and just as she is giving birth, somewhere else in the United States a sick twisted killer who has killed many women and cut off and kept their hands is being caught by the police because the latest victim he caught managed to escape.
However in the ensuing police raid he is shot dead just as the woman I previously mentioned is giving birth. What do you think happens? Yes, you've guessed it, the soul of the dead killer transfers into the baby just being born.
You might think yawn, boring, been done before! And it might have, but not like this, not as upsetting as this.
Very soon as the child is growing up we quickly see that the child is something of a genius. He starts saying words at a very young age and as he grows older is clearly very advanced for his age.
All this is fine until the child reaches the age of 8, then it all goes incredibly dark and disturbing. The child starts doing very strange things like talking in his sleep but in Hungarian when he doesn't know that language. He then kills the family dog and attacks another boy at school with a blunt instrument. This is on top of the incredibly scary things he does at home such as building a device to listen in on his parents conversations, something no 8 year old should be able to do, and setting a horrific trap for the baby sitter so she steps on a huge share of glass with bear feet.
What is causing all this? Well the mum seeks help and eventually ends up at the door of a hypno therapist who says he's seen this before, where a soul of a dead person is in the child's body and the mum needs to be quick and find out what that soul wants as otherwise the dead persons soul will consume the living soul and her son will be gone, his body will still be there, but it will be someone else's soul inside it for good.
Even writing about the movie is giving me chills it's so deeply disturbing! The mum discovers who the person is inside her son's body and realises that the only way to make the killers soul go away is to do what it wants which is kill the woman that escaped from the killer all those years ago.
She goes to the other woman's house and in the end can't kill the woman that escaped but then her son does it for her, stabbing her with a knife. What gets me is the fact they obviously used a child actor for this and I mean the swear words the child had to say in this movie and the killing he had to do, couldn't that affect him psychologically in real life? He is only a child after all. Just a thought.
The mum thinks it's all over when the woman the killer wanted to kill is dead but it isn't (spoiler alert), she's too late. The psycho killer has already consumed her son's soul, how horrendous. Like I said, this movie is deeply upsetting and disturbing but also brilliant.
In conclusion The Prodigy is an outstanding horror movie and one of the scariest, most upsetting horror movies I've ever seen and deeply disturbing. But it's a horror and they are supposed to be like that.
This movie is a must for all horror movie fans and well worth the 5 stars I'm giving it. Well done all, 5 stars awarded.
*These reviews are all my own work, please don't reproduce without my permission but please visit my advertisers pages as they help keep the blog going thankyou :)
So, today I saw one good film and one excellent but deeply disturbing, upsetting and terrifying film and here's my double review of both of them. Let's start with the good/borderline very good movie first.
That movie was The Aftermath. Now, I do enjoy a good Second World War movie, I loved Dunkirk for example. This movie intrigued me because it showed the aftermath of the war (hence the title), but from the German side and how it affected them. The movie is actually a BBC movie in conjunction with a German company too.
It is produced by Ridley Scott who we all know is an absolute legend from the Alien movies and other films. Pure class. He wasn't the director but the fact he had a hand in this movie must have helped make it as good as it was.
It stars firstly Keira Knightley. Now she is one of my favourite actresses. I've always thought her best work was in the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, but she again shows what a top quality actress she is in this film. Also the fact that she is incredibly attractive will always get viewers and there is a sex scene where you see her topless in quite a lot of detail. It's very tastefully done but it is there.
Keira plays a wife of a guy in the army who has been posted to Germany to help assist after the war has finished. As part of his role he is allowed to requisition a house to live in and the occupants have to move out. Keira comes out to Germany to meet her husband, played by Jason Clarke who stars in the forthcoming horror movie Pet Sematary, based on the book by Stephen King, a movie I can't wait to see!
Clarke however is a kindly soul and can't bear to kick the German family out of their home, so they all live together. The house owner is played by Alexander Skarsgard, another very good actor. He lives there with his daughter.
As you can probably guess, Keiras on screen husband is away quite a lot and Skarsgard doesn't have a job so he is at home most of the time. What happens is an affair begins between Keira and Skarsgard, hence the sex scene I mentioned earlier.
This however is further complicated by the fact that, unbeknownst to Skasgard, his daughter instead of going to school, has started having a relationship with a boy who is in the 88 which is a group of Hitler sympathisers who still believe the war is on and can't take defeat.
When this boy finds out from the daughter that an English army person is staying at her house He sets out to kill Keiras husband, and nearly succeeds.
Now, Skasgard and Keira had planned to runaway together, but this incident gives her grave doubts. Do they end up together? Well I will let you watch the movie to find out!
There are so many incidents throughout the movie that give you a real feel of the aftermath of the war from the German side. Starving people, abject poverty and worse. It just shows that after the war, both sides had a huge period of rebuild and recovery to go through. I'm still very glad our side won though! But it's nice to see it from the eyes of the other side and there are many people in Germany who didn't support Hitler and you can't tar everyone with the same brush. This movie shows us this.
In conclusion, whilst not an excellent movie, it's certainly a very good one, well worth the 4 stars I've just awarded it. Go see it if you like war films.
Right, the second film I saw today, The Prodigy, was truly upsetting but an absolutely excellent movie and one of the scariest, most upsetting horror movies I've ever seen.
I won't mention actors names etc because they aren't well known, but it does show you don't need a big name actor or actress to make a movie great.
So, imagine this. A woman is pregnant with a baby and just as she is giving birth, somewhere else in the United States a sick twisted killer who has killed many women and cut off and kept their hands is being caught by the police because the latest victim he caught managed to escape.
However in the ensuing police raid he is shot dead just as the woman I previously mentioned is giving birth. What do you think happens? Yes, you've guessed it, the soul of the dead killer transfers into the baby just being born.
You might think yawn, boring, been done before! And it might have, but not like this, not as upsetting as this.
Very soon as the child is growing up we quickly see that the child is something of a genius. He starts saying words at a very young age and as he grows older is clearly very advanced for his age.
All this is fine until the child reaches the age of 8, then it all goes incredibly dark and disturbing. The child starts doing very strange things like talking in his sleep but in Hungarian when he doesn't know that language. He then kills the family dog and attacks another boy at school with a blunt instrument. This is on top of the incredibly scary things he does at home such as building a device to listen in on his parents conversations, something no 8 year old should be able to do, and setting a horrific trap for the baby sitter so she steps on a huge share of glass with bear feet.
What is causing all this? Well the mum seeks help and eventually ends up at the door of a hypno therapist who says he's seen this before, where a soul of a dead person is in the child's body and the mum needs to be quick and find out what that soul wants as otherwise the dead persons soul will consume the living soul and her son will be gone, his body will still be there, but it will be someone else's soul inside it for good.
Even writing about the movie is giving me chills it's so deeply disturbing! The mum discovers who the person is inside her son's body and realises that the only way to make the killers soul go away is to do what it wants which is kill the woman that escaped from the killer all those years ago.
She goes to the other woman's house and in the end can't kill the woman that escaped but then her son does it for her, stabbing her with a knife. What gets me is the fact they obviously used a child actor for this and I mean the swear words the child had to say in this movie and the killing he had to do, couldn't that affect him psychologically in real life? He is only a child after all. Just a thought.
The mum thinks it's all over when the woman the killer wanted to kill is dead but it isn't (spoiler alert), she's too late. The psycho killer has already consumed her son's soul, how horrendous. Like I said, this movie is deeply upsetting and disturbing but also brilliant.
In conclusion The Prodigy is an outstanding horror movie and one of the scariest, most upsetting horror movies I've ever seen and deeply disturbing. But it's a horror and they are supposed to be like that.
This movie is a must for all horror movie fans and well worth the 5 stars I'm giving it. Well done all, 5 stars awarded.
*These reviews are all my own work, please don't reproduce without my permission but please visit my advertisers pages as they help keep the blog going thankyou :)
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