Suicide Squad (2016)

*Fortunate Son playing in the background*

The long waited blockbuster superhero film is finally here. David Ayer was set to direct the film. The trailers and teasers of the film promised a lot of fun things. Even the film tried to approach to a child-like theme; it promised craziness, fun, and also Jared Leto’s Joker.

First of all, I have to say that I’m impressed that DC got their hands on one of the best directors of the 21^st century. Ayer made End of Watch (2011) and Fury (2014); movies that I love and full of fancy action sequences. I imagined Ayer directing a movie like this would’ve a big stomp for superhero movies.

Another thing that I have to mentioned is, Will Smith, Margot Robie, Jared Leto are not some actors. They are really amazing actors. The studio had to pay big bills to get their hands on them. We were expected to see some great performance. They even have to provide a psychologist for the actors to stay sane. A lot of method acting were applied for this movie.

So did the film live up to the expectation we’ve all been waiting for?

I say, no.

The editing of this film is a disaster. Like all the other critics said, it felt like it was not a finished movie. I want to add another thing: I think the film was supposed to be like 4-6 hours long, but some douche just cut the film into 2 and a half hours. It felt rushed. One minute they introduce a character and a minute later something destroyed a city? Whattt?

As predicted, the script lose the main story of the movie because of the exposition of every character in the movie. They even had to kill one interesting character in the movie, which is really a waste of asset.

They say that it was the studio’s cut that made it into the theatre, not Ayers. I do want to see the extended cut of this movie. I think it would be much better than the studio’s one.

As I said earlier, the cast of this movie were amazing. But I really hate that the Joker didn’t have much screentime. I think it’s a waste of opportunity. Everyone wants to watch this movie because of the Joker (also Harley Queen).

Overall the movie is going somewhere in the DC universe. But I’m really not sure where are they going with this film. Suicide Squad is a disappointing movie. I see a potential if they re-release it with Ayer’s Cut. I mean, c’mon guys! Put your ego and greed aside so you can produce a better movie!

The verdict:

Silly in a bad way and a waste of potential.

Lights Out (2016)

Internet has become a new platform to present ideas and arts, especially for filmmakers. Lights Out was originally a short film back in 2013. The concept is great and pretty scary if you ask me. It was directed by David F. Sandberg. The short is only less than 3 minutes; it starred the director’s own wife, Lotta Losten. Sandberg and his wife had to move to Hollywood in order to get the interest of investors and the time to get this movie in production. They were really strugling. Another interesting fact that Sandberg had never been in a film set before; he had to ask his first assistant when to say “Action.”

According to Wikipedia, the budget was only about $5 million and made 20 times more than that.

Movie critics like to embrace smart-simple things. This film proved to be one of it. This film is like James Wan’s low-budget horror-thriller film; shot indoors – not in public places; few cast and only revolves around a family problem; cheap but effective effects with some fancy jump scares. It had a simple story pattern and still felt fresh. Although it wasn’t as good as Wan’s.

But all and all, I didn’t really enjoy it, I like the short film better than the feature film. The short film only embraced the idea. The idea evolved into a feature length movie, which wasn’t a good thing. The story didn’t live up well beside the idea. The story made the special idea into an ordinary idea.

The verdict:

A simple horror movie, but didn’t evolved well from its original creation.