#Alive (Korean: #살아있다; RR: #Saraitda) is a 2020 South Korean post-apocalyptic action horror film directed by Cho Il-hyung. Starring Yoo Ah-in and Park Shin-hye, it is based on the 2019 script Alone by Matt Naylor (itself becoming another film), who co-adapted his script with Cho. The film revolves around a video game live streamer's struggle for survival as he is forced to stay alone in his apartment in Seoul during a zombie apocalypse. It was released in South Korea on June 24, 2020, and globally via Netflix on September 8, 2020. Critics generally gave positive reviews.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
What we do in the Shadows, 2019
What We Do in the Shadows, 2019 is an American comedy horror mockumentary fantasy television series created by Jemaine Clement, first broadcast on FX on March 27, 2019 until concluding its run with the end of its sixth season on December 16, 2024. Based on the 2014 New Zealand film of the same name written and directed by Clement and Taika Waititi, both of whom act as executive producers, the series follows four vampire roommates on Staten Island, and stars Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillén, Mark Proksch, and Kristen Schaal.
PREMISE
Traditional vampires Nandor, Laszlo, and Nadja, together with energy vampire Colin Robinson, share a Staten Island residence, maintained by Nandor's familiar Guillermo. The vampires routinely clash with the modern world, other supernatural beings, and/or each other, while Guillermo earnestly endeavors to balance his loyalty to Nandor with his desire to become a vampire, complicated by his ancestry as a descendant of vampire hunter Van Helsing.
Rating: 10 Stars
The Lost Boys, 1987
The Lost Boys is a 1987 American comedy horror film directed by Joel Schumacher, produced by Harvey Bernhard with a screenplay written by Jeffrey Boam, Janice Fischer and James Jeremias, from a story by Fischer and Jeremias. The film's ensemble cast includes Corey Feldman, Jami Gertz, Corey Haim, Edward Herrmann, Barnard Hughes, Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, Jamison Newlander and Dianne Wiest.
The film follows two teenage brothers who move with their divorced mother to the fictional town of Santa Carla, California, only to discover that the town is a haven for vampires. The title is a reference to the Lost Boys in J. M. Barrie's stories about Peter Pan and Neverland, who, like vampires, never grow up. Most of the film was shot in Santa Cruz, California.
PLOT
The Emerson family—teenager Michael, his younger brother Sam, and their recently divorced mother Lucy—move to the seaside town of Santa Carla, California, to live with Lucy's eccentric father ("Grandpa"). Lucy takes a job at a video store owned by Max, who takes a romantic interest in her. At the local comic book store, Sam meets the Frog brothers, Edgar and Alan, self-proclaimed vampire hunters, who claim the undead have infested the town.
Meanwhile, Michael becomes drawn to Star, a beautiful girl he meets on the boardwalk. He notices Star spending time with David, the charismatic leader of a local gang that includes Paul, Dwayne, and Marko. Sensing Michael's interest in Star, David challenges him to keep up with them on their motorcycles, leading him to their hideout in a former luxury hotel buried during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. There, David seems to manipulate Michael's perception, making his food appear as maggots or worms, before offering him a bottle filled with red liquid. Although Star warns him that it contains blood, Michael drinks. David's gang then leads him to a railway bridge, where they hang suspended over a vast drop, each member eventually letting go and disappearing into the fog. Michael, unable to hold on, falls—but he suddenly awakens in his bed.
Michael begins to change: he becomes sensitive to light, finds normal food revolting, and notices his reflection fading. He develops a craving for blood and nearly attacks Sam, but Sam's dog, Nanook, intervenes and stops him. Though terrified, Sam agrees to help Michael and deduces that he is turning into a vampire. However, his transformation will only be complete if he feeds on human blood—and it may be reversible if they kill the head vampire. Sam, Edgar, and Alan suspect Max is the head vampire, but after Max is invited to dinner at Lucy's house, they notice he has a reflection.
David and his gang attempt to push Michael into killing by revealing their true monstrous faces and demonstrating their ability to fly as they murder a group of partygoers. Michael resists the temptation to feed. Later, Star confides in Michael that she and Laddie, a young member of the gang, are also only partly transformed, as they, too, have refused to kill. She admits that David wanted her to kill Michael to complete her transformation. Determined to save her, Michael leads Sam and the Frog brothers to the gang's lair during the day while the vampires are sleeping. They stake and kill Marko, whose pained screams awaken the others. The boys narrowly escape with Star and Laddie as David vows to hunt them down that night.
Michael, Sam, and the Frog brothers prepare for the gang's impending assault, arming themselves with holy water, a longbow, and stakes. As night falls, David's gang breaks into the Emerson home. In the ensuing fight, Sam, Nanook, and the Frog brothers kill Paul and Dwayne, while Michael takes on David. Michael resists David's temptation to accept his transformation, ultimately impaling him on Grandpa's collection of antlers. Despite David's death, Michael's transformation remains incomplete, leading the group to suspect that David was not the head vampire.
Lucy and Max return home from their date. Spotting David's lifeless body, Max confesses he is the head vampire. He reveals he passed the boys' earlier vampire tests because he had been invited into their home, making him immune to those vulnerabilities. Max explains that he sought a disciplined family and ordered David to turn Michael and Sam to compel Lucy into becoming a willing mother to his lost boys. To save Michael, Lucy reluctantly agrees to Max's offer. However, before Max can act, Grandpa crashes his truck through the wall, impaling Max with a large wooden fence post and causing him to explode. With Max's death, Michael, Star, and Laddie revert to normal. Grandpa then quips, "The one thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach: all the damn vampires."
Rating: 10 Stars
Friday, January 31, 2025
Abigail, 2024
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Trouble, 2024
The Swedish film Trouble, 2024 from director Jon Holmberg (Swedish Dicks) and co-written by Holmberg and Tapio Leopold (Day by Day), stars Felip Berg, Amy Deasismont, and Eva Melander.
A innocent father who works at a major electronics store runs into trouble with the law when he witnesses a murder during a TV installation. Unfortunately for him, he’s framed for the crime and swiftly locked up. It’s all going downhill fast.
Is Trouble based on a book?
No. It’s a remake of the 1988 Swedish film of the same name (Strul in Swedish) directed by Jonas Frick and written by Bengt Palmers and Björn Skifs. Rating: 10 Stars (Super Fun)
Rating: 10 Stars
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
The Twilight Saga: Breaking dawn Part II, 2012 (Leaving Soon Netflix)
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (or simply Breaking Dawn – Part 2) is a 2012 American romantic fantasy film directed by Bill Condon from a screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the 2008 novel Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. It is the sequel to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011) and the fifth and final installment in The Twilight Saga film series. The film stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner, reprising their roles as Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, and Jacob Black, respectively; Mackenzie Foy portrays Renesmee Cullen. The ensemble cast includes Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen, and Dakota Fanning.
PLOT
The film continues from the events of the previous film, as Bella, who has just given birth, awakens from her human-to-vampire transformation. After her vampire husband Edward Cullen helps her tame her initial thirst for blood, Bella is introduced to their daughter Renesmee. The rest of the Cullens and Bella's werewolf friend Jacob stay nearby, and when Jacob acts possessively towards Renesmee, Bella learns he has "imprinted" on her, a werewolf phenomenon that makes Jacob and Renesmee soul-mates.
Meanwhile, Bella's father, Charlie, has been trying to contact the Cullens for updates on Bella's health. Carlisle, the Cullen patriarch and a medical doctor, announces that they have to leave Forks, Washington, to protect their identities.
Jacob, desperate not to lose Renesmee, visits Charlie and tells him that Bella is alive and vaguely describes that she has transformed, revealing his wolf form to Charlie to persuade him to stop asking further questions. Charlie goes to the Cullen house to see Bella and meet Renesmee. He accepts that Bella is now recovered but somehow different, though he does not know what has changed or where Renesmee came from, instead accepting she is "adopted".
Several months pass with Carlisle monitoring Renesmee's rapid growth. The vampire Irina spots Renesmee in the forest and mistakenly assumes she is an "immortal child": a type of vampire transformed in childhood who, because it cannot be reasoned with or trained, sucks the blood out of humans uncontrollably. The creation of such children is outlawed by the vampire leadership, the Volturi, and anyone caught with one is executed on the spot. Irina reports the crime to the Volturi.
After Edward's sister Alice, who can see glimpses of the future, experiences a vision of the Volturi and Irina coming to kill the Cullens, she instructs the others to gather as many witnesses as they can to testify that Renesmee is not an immortal child.
As the Volturi serve punishments swiftly, the Cullens and their werewolf allies prepare for a possible battle. Bella soon realizes she has a special ability: a powerful mental shield that had protected her from Edward's mind-reading even when she was human, which she is taught to extend to protect others from vampire superpowers.
The army of the Volturi arrives in Forks, led by Aro, who can read people's minds by touching them. Seeing the Cullens alongside their witnesses and allies, the Volturi hesitate. The Cullens are able to prove to Aro that Renesmee is not an immortal child.
However, the Volturi are eager to subdue the Cullens to forcibly enlist their talented members, so they summarily execute Irina for her mistake to provoke the Cullens into battle. But before an all-out fight breaks out, Alice appears in time to give Aro her vision of the future if fighting ensues.
In Alice's violent vision, Carlisle, Aro, and several others on both sides are killed, including other Volturi, Cullens, and werewolves. Aro, despite being afraid of the vision, still wants to execute Renesmee as she might be a threat to the vampires' secrecy.
Alice reveals their final witness, a Mapuche man from South America, who is a half-human half-vampire, just like Renesmee. He proves that he is not a threat, supporting the notion that Renesmee is not one either. The Volturi unhappily leave, Aro concluding that there will be no battle today.
Back at the Cullen home, Alice glimpses the future, seeing Edward and Bella greeting Jacob and a fully matured Renesmee, also a couple, on a sun-dappled beach. Edward reads Alice's mind and feels relieved that Renesmee has Jacob to protect her.
Alone in their favorite meadow, Bella pushes her mental shield away and finally allows Edward to see into her mind, showing him every moment they have shared together in a montage. They kiss after Bella tells him, "nobody has ever loved anybody as much as I love you", and he romantically responds "with one exception".
Rating: 10 Stars
The Twilight Saga: Breaking dawn, Part I, 2011
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (or simply Breaking Dawn – Part 1) is a 2011 American romantic fantasy film directed by Bill Condon from a screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the 2008 novel Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. It is the sequel to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) and the fourth installment in The Twilight Saga film series. The film stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner, reprising their roles as Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, and Jacob Black, respectively.
PLOT
Several months after the events of the previous film, human Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen are getting married. During the reception, werewolf Jacob Black, who had left town upon receiving an invitation to the wedding, returns, much to Bella's delight. They share a dance in the woods, where Bella says that she and Edward plan to consummate their marriage on their honeymoon while she is still human. Jacob becomes furious, fearing that such an act could kill her.
After the wedding, Bella and Edward travel to an island off the coast of Rio de Janeiro for their honeymoon, and they make love for the first time. Two weeks later, Bella vomits after waking and notices that her period is late. She informs Carlisle Cullen, a medical doctor and Edward's adoptive father, that she believes she is pregnant.
Edward is distraught, as it is highly unlikely a human will survive giving birth to a vampire's baby. He encourages Bella to receive an abortion from Carlisle. She refuses and convinces Edward's sister Rosalie to be her bodyguard. They fly back home to Forks, Washington, where Jacob rushes to the Cullens' house to find a pale, underweight, and visibly pregnant Bella. He implores her to terminate the pregnancy immediately, but she refuses.
Jacob storms out of the Cullens' residence and meets in the woods with his packmates, including their leader Sam, who soon feels they should kill Bella to ensure her half-vampire child does not harm anyone. Jacob refuses, and he and several other werewolves separate from the pack.
As Bella's pregnancy progresses, her health declines rapidly. She soon realizes the fetus is craving blood, so begins drinking human blood obtained by Carlisle from the hospital, improving her health. As a half-vampire, the fetus's development is far more accelerated than that of a human fetus, and thus Bella's pregnancy progresses at an alarming rate.
Edward's resentment for the baby dissolves when he discovers he can read its thoughts. When Bella suddenly goes into labor, Edward, Jacob, and Rosalie begin performing an emergency C-section while Carlisle is out obtaining blood. The procedure is excruciatingly painful, and Bella falls unconscious, though she wakes to find she has delivered a healthy daughter, whom she names Renesmee (a combination of her mother's name and Edward's mother's name).
Bella's heart suddenly stops, and Jacob desperately attempts CPR. Edward injects Bella's heart with his venom in an attempt to transform her into a vampire, but his action appears to be futile as Bella remains lifeless. A distraught Jacob decides to kill Renesmee for apparently causing Bella's death; however, when he looks into the baby's eyes, he "imprints" on her: a werewolf phenomenon in which one realizes one's soul-mate. This prevents his pack from killing her as their most absolute law is not to harm anyone who has been imprinted on.
Over the course of two days, though still unconscious, Bella's injuries heal and her figure returns to normal. Finally, her eyes open and are blood-red, signifying that she has become a vampire.
In a post-credits scene, the Volturi, the keepers of vampire law, receive a letter from Carlisle which summarizes Bella and Edward's wedding and her transformation into a vampire. The Volturi bicker about how Carlisle is growing his coven and that the Volturis' dispute with the Cullens is over. However, the Volturi leader mentions that the Cullens still have something he wants.
Rating: 10 Stars
La Peau de Chagrin, 2010 (Amazon Prime)
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