Because Everybody Else Has One

I'm probably the last person in the world to review this but I can't help but throw in my own two cents on a superhero movie. Especially not one I enjoyed as much as this. Unsurprisingly, this review ran a little long and more than a little late but, as I'm about to post my *shudder* Hellboy (2019) review, spending some time on a film like Shazam feels all the more appropriate... The Plot : Billy Batson is a troubled teenager who has spent his childhood being shunted from one foster home to the next ever since he was separated from his mother at a carnival when he was a toddler. After stopping his latest "foster brother" from being beaten up by a group of school bullies, Billy finds himself before the wizard, Shazam, who bestows on Billy superhuman powers in an effort to stop Thadeus Sivana, a ruthlessly ambitious Evil Scientist who dedicated his life to finding the Wizard and stealing his powers but instead, in his failure, let loose the embodiment of the ...

Yet another solidly above average horror movie? What is the world coming to? This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A young woman is forced to confront her past and her estranged family when her much younger half-brother is plagued by the same ghostly presence that drove her away from her mother when she was younger. What we thought This year has slowly started to see something of a resurgence in the quality of unexceptional but quietly effective horror films, with both Before I Sleep and the Conjuring 2 being far more enjoyable than most of the chillers of the past few years. They were derivative and unexceptional, to be sure, but at least they kind of delivered on their promise; easily clearing the low bar that the horror genre - or at least the mainstream Hollywood version of it - has set for itself over the past decade or so. Lights Out, which is produced by the Conjuring's James Wan, continues that trend. It's hopelessly unorigi...