FrightFest

8/10 - Ghostbusters 4. Whilst clearly short on the budget side, this movie's goofy charm and energy keep it bouncing merrily along... aside from a fair bit of exposition.

I wasn't looking forward to this but during the little animated sequence at the beginning I thought well, maybe it'll be OK.
That was a false dawn.
Totally incoherent rubbish. Endless exposition which only makes things more confusing. Things constantly being trapped in little boxes then let out again. Soul-sucking beams from the eyes and mouth which have no apparent effect. Demons which can be killed with handguns whilst others require huge fuck-off proton beam thingies. A character who dies tragically - three times. A hero who goes from sanitation engineer to necromancer in five minutes flat.
To be fair, it looked good on the budget. But basically it's RIPD. Just a load of CGI and meaningless noise.

They'd obviously put a lot of thought into the concept, it looked nice, and it was competently directed....

but it was awful, a sweary Power Rangers with gore. Delivering shit dialogue in English with a European accent was always going to make Monica (Rita Repulsa) Bellucci seem hammy, but Jesus she was bad. I hope for her sake she got a decent fee.

The plotting followed the Alex Kurtzman/Roberto Orci modern standard of 'if we just tell the audience what needs to be done and then do it, they'll have to just accept it even if it's bollocks and makes no sense'. Tons and tons of tech and rules were introduced and explained, only for all of it to be thrown out of the window 2 minutes later. I wasn't bored, but it was terrible.

The big disappointment of the festival for me.

Had a ticket for StarDust Brothers but went for this one and we just let down.

Visually it was good, acting was fine but take out the swearing and you have a PG-13 kids film.

Anything that needs a 5 minute exposition at the start is not well scripted. A lot of noise and frenetic action that was a little dull. Too derivative

The film does a good job of putting a lot of effects on screen, but the key flaw here is that the film-makers have developed an immensely complicated backstory about races of Nekromancers [sic], Demons, Wraiths and Ghosts, all of whom have their own powers and rules, and the associated technology. The result is that characters are constantly talking to explain the plot. As well as this, the humour falls flat and the film ends up being a slog.