Thriller - Movie Meister Reviews

July 31, 2020 leebutler Thriller

Unhinged (2020) – Delightful and Devilish

Released: 30th July
Seen: 30th July

Everyone who has ever driven a car has, at some point, felt a twinge of road rage. Admit it, you’ve been behind the wheel of a car and seen someone make a turn they weren’t supposed to make or beep their horn for no real reason and you’ve felt a swell of anger growing deep inside. It’s a familiar feeling that we’ve all had and so, taking that familiar real world scenario and turning it up to 11 could make for a pretty unnerving thriller. Enter Unhinged which comes along, does exactly that and throws in one of Russell Crowe’s best performances just for good measure.

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July 28, 2020July 29, 2020 leebutler Drama, Thriller

Fatal Affair (2020) – Dead Boring

Released: 16th July
Seen: 27th July

From the writer director who brought us Secret Obsession and no less than 19 movies with the title The Wrong (Noun) comes the newest Netflix movie to make me worry about that company’s idea of quality control. Every time there’s some weird looking Netflix original that was clearly rejected by everyone else, I just wonder why Netflix is doing this. It’s not like they don’t know what good movies look like, they funded The Irishman when no one else would and took chances on great films like Roma, Klaus and The Two Popes. They have the ability to be picky and only buy the good projects, instead of buying another dud like Fatal Affair.

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July 22, 2020 leebutler Horror, Thriller

Follow Me (2020) – Very Good

Released: 16th July
Seen: 20th July

In the early part of 2019, I reviewed a little film called Escape Room. While it was something of a hit financially it was less so critically. I particularly didn’t like it for three main reasons. The first was that it wasn’t as smart as it liked to think it was, the second being how tame everything felt and the third was the strobe lights. I didn’t exactly give that film a high mark, but if a film came around with a similar concept that didn’t pretend it was smarter than it was and actually made things feel dangerous, maybe I’d like it more. This was my thought pattern when walking into Follow Me which I definitely enjoyed more, but I still don’t think this concept has worked out all the kinks yet.

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June 12, 2020 leebutler Action, Crime, Netflix, Thriller

The Last Days of American Crime (2020) – Absolutely Criminal

Released: 5th June
Seen: 11th June

When it comes to single sentence movie concepts, it’s hard to deny that “The government is about to implement a device that makes it impossible to do crime, so what would the last crime ever committed look like?” is a fantastic concept. The idea alone promises a fascinating film, maybe something like Minority Report or even the later Purge movies that had some elaborate plot device around how crime is handled and used that to discuss serious real-world issues. It promises a fun movie, possibly futuristic and certainly a little bombastic. I mean, this is a film about the last crime that can physically be committed in the United States, surely that crime has to be something elaborate right? Well, turns out… no, no it doesn’t mean that. In fact, somehow a film that’s been gifted an idea so good that it should be impossible to mess it up managed to mess up in every way possible.

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May 6, 2020 leebutler Crime, Drama, Mystery, Netflix, Thriller

The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) – No One Wanted This

Released: 27th January
Seen: 5th May

So, while I’m still learning how to effectively write these reviews, I have slowly developed a system that works for me. After I do the first paragraph (usually designed to be just eye-catching enough that if you were to scroll through my main page that it might make you want to know more) I will then stop and think about how to describe the plot. I might have IMDB open to remind me of character and actor names but I can usually come up with a decent enough plot synopsis that doesn’t give away more than I need to in order to get you to know just what kind of movie I’m talking about. The plot synopsis is always a quick thing for me, I try to keep it short and sweet because if you want a proper plot synopsis then Wikipedia is in the next tab over. I add it for context and little more than that… this time? I’m tempted to skip it because the plot is so poorly constructed that even just adding it for context feels pointless but it’s my structure now so I feel obligated to try.

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May 4, 2020 leebutler Drama, Mystery, Netflix, Thriller

Dangerous Lies (2020) – LIEEEEEEEES

Released: 30th April
Seen: 2nd May

About a year ago I did a review for a film called Secret Obsession which was basically Netflix picking up the scraps left over from a Lifetime all-you-can-eat-buffet and turning it into something meant to resemble a film. It wasn’t exactly good and you could kind of tell what network it was made for originally but I figured “Oh well, if Netflix does a Lifetime movie every now and then that could be entertaining. Sometimes those are campy enough for a laugh” and Netflix apparently heard me and decided to make an even blander wannabe lifetime movie… I’m so ready for 2020 to be over.

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April 29, 2020 leebutler Crime, Thriller

The Fanatic (2020) – I’m Not A Fan

Released: 30th March
Seen: 27th April

Sometimes a movie is so instantly deemed “God awful excrement” that I’m almost eager to see it, just to know if everyone is overreacting. At the end of August last year, The Fanatic came out in America and when I heard about it, I patiently waited for it to come down to Australia when I’d have the chance to see it, but it never came. Possibly because it made $3000 in 52 cinemas, which is aggressively bad, but I knew eventually I would have to see it somehow. Sure enough, the movie got a DVD release on the 30th of March, meaning it’s a 2020 movie for me and I would finally have the chance to see it (and it’d be eligible for an end of the year list for me, so that’s nice). Then it popped up on Google Play and was about 6 bucks to rent which… yeah, more than I should’ve spent. I should’ve just not bothered, I don’t deserve this kind of shabby treatment.

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April 19, 2020 leebutler Thriller

My Mentor the Serial Killer: Tony (2019) – It’s A Killer

Released: 29th November 2019
Seen: 19th April

About a month ago today I received a list of films from The Movie Agency, 6 in total that I thought would take me a long time to get through because I still had a bunch of movies in the cinema to check out and a ton of Netflix stuff so I was going to work through them at about one a week and see where that got me… and then someone stupidly read out loud from the contagious disease version of the Necronomicon and I found myself stuck at home with nothing in the cinemas and needing to do something to kill time for the next month. On the whole I have to say that these films have been interesting experiences, probably not films I would’ve selected to watch and review on my own but each one did offer me something interesting even if I didn’t like all of them. From the very start though I knew there was one film I wanted to save until last. Partially because it was the longest and I am nothing if not predictable in enjoying shorter films but also because it seemed like it was going to be the best and I wanted a high note… of course, having seen Necrologies and fallen in love with Pozu I now can’t see this as the high note of the list I had provided to me, but it’s still really really good.

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April 18, 2020 leebutler Action, Horror, Thriller

The Hunt (2020) – The Most Dangerous Movie

Released: 13th March
Seen: 18th April

The most controversial movie of the last decade is easily The Hunt. Easily, just based upon the reaction its trailer got alone it will go down as being one of the most controversial films in history, alongside its controversy cousin The Interview. Much like The Interview, the film became a major discussion piece throughout pop culture due to its subject matter and the trailer used to promote it. What else makes it just like The Interview? The fact that the controversy was obscenely stupid on every front and was a vast overreaction by everyone involved. Guess who gets to talk about politics in a review of a film in the year 2020? BECAUSE THIS YEAR DOESN’T SUCK ENOUGH ALREADY!

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April 10, 2020 leebutler Drama, Mystery, Netflix, Thriller

Horse Girl (2020) – Coming In In All Directions

Released: 7th February
Seen: 9th April

Normally when I write these reviews I do an opening paragraph that is intended to set the scene. Either I talk about the original text that inspired the film or I’ll talk about a cinematic trend or, in one case, talk about paint drying to create a subversive joke that can lead into the bulk of the review. Partially this is for context and it’s also done so that if people are scrolling through my page, the opening paragraph might catch their eye and make them want to read more. So, how does someone write an interesting and appropriate opening paragraph for a movie like Horse Girl, a film about a woman who is slowly being overtaken by her serious mental illness that starts as simple little obsessions and culminates in dressing like a peach-ninja and having imaginary sex with the nerdy guy from Criminal Minds? I sat here and tried to think of such an opening and ended up not having any idea, so that’s why you got that tiny bit of information about how I write this… it’s the most interesting thing I could think of because I do not know how on earth I can begin to explore this one.

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