THE WITCH (2015)

"What is amiss on this farm?"

As anybody who has had the pleasure of reading Robert McCammon's masterful "Matthew Corbett series" already knows: New England back in the day was all kinds of fucked up!  Disease, hostile animals, food shortages, no internet, lack of fresh drinking water, harsh weather and worst of all..witches.

As the film opens, a family (mother, father and four children) are banished from a colony due to unspecified religious differences.  The family sets up shop in a promising looking field near running water and the edge of a forest.  Things go alright for awhile, but then insects start eating the crops and the youngest baby straight up disappears.  Tension among the family grows and grows.  All the while, a large black goat watches the family with a smug look on his evil, furry face that you could just hug to death!  He's so cute!  Yes, he is!!!  Who's the cutest, most evil goat in all the world?!

THE WITCH is an impressive directorial debut by director/writer Robert Eggers, but personally I would have went for a more fucked up ending.  That's just me though.  I always enjoy a steady build-up followed by an explosion of violence and gore.

Mild violence, poorly lit nudity that doesn't even really count, good pace, impressive acting by the entire cast, awesome old-timey dialogue, atmospheric music that added to the creepy feel of the movie, surprisingly low amount of actual witch action.  Also, for some unknown reason, while thinking about the film afterwards, my handsome mind kept going back to the final act of THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER.  Now that I think of it: that'd actually make an interesting double-feature with this film.

Recommended.

VIRUS (1999)

"There's some really weird shit goin' down on this ship, man."

An alien spaceship(?) comprised of what looks to be pure energy [insert Information Society joke here] passes through the Mir space station (the Mir was a space station that orbited the Earth from 1986 to 2001).  The pass-through kills all of the astronauts on the Mir and beams a signal down to a research vessel in the South Pacific.  Some time later, a tugboat happens across the research vessel during a typhoon.  Looking for shelter, the tugboat crew boards the research vessel only to find that the whole place is wrecked and it looks like a small battle happened onboard...plus, everybody is missing.

That's not really the most original idea ever, but in the correct hands, the mystery could turn out to be awesome!  Unfortunately, the people who made this film were not the correct hands.  It ends up the energy beam took over the electrical equipment on the ship (think MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE at sea) and viewing the humans as a virus, it started killing them in anyway it could.  Whether by nail gun or anchor drop or building a Terminator-like robot out of a corpse and giving it a gun.  That sounds exciting, but for a whole host of reasons, VIRUS is not exciting.

Mediocre acting that honestly seemed like the actors didn't care, poor lighting, messy action scenes full of people yelling and sparks flying all over the joint, zero nudity, very light gore, medium pace, dated special effects, forgettable characters, boring dialogue, abrupt ending that was only satisfying in that I could turn off the movie and do something else.

VIRUS would be worth watching in the middle of the night if it came on TV and you were too lazy to turn the channel, but that's about it.