Film · Prime Video · 2020

Underwater

The courage is the walk out. The drill was the first sin. Adults. The creature is the usual last reel.

Norah and the others are workers when the film begins, which is more than most monster pictures allow. They follow procedure, they lose people, they keep moving. The pressure is a fair picture of consequence. Then the deep produces a thing, because the genre cannot bill a film on procedure alone. Stewardship has already been violated by the well. The monster is a late sermon.

If you watch it, watch it for the crew that does not panic first. Do not let the last creature erase the earlier fact. They should not have been down there for the reason they were down there.

The eight

Industry
7/10
A crew with a job and a protocol.
Household
4/10
Companions, not a household.
Piety
2/10
The deep as a scare.
Courage
7/10
They walk anyway.
Republic
3/10
A company site, not a commons.
Temperance
4/10
Fear mostly channeled into tasks.
Truth
5/10
The collapse is an honest bill for the drilling.
Stewardship
4/10
The good to keep is the crew, not the reveal.

Live historicallyDo not call a danger noble if you dug the hole for profit.

Film · Prime Video · 1988

Beetlejuice

Funny, and the joke has a predator in it. Adults. Not the children.

Adam and Barbara are decent, recently dead, and too polite to haunt effectively. The Deetzes are rude in a way the film enjoys. Beetlejuice is not a scamp. He is a creature who wants a living girl for a bride, and the comedy keeps inviting you to find that charming. Lydia is a child in a black dress, not a punchline, and the film is at its best when the dead couple become her guardians.

Watch it grown, if you watch it. Do not hand the bio-exorcist to a ten-year-old as a friend. The friends are the quiet ghosts. The other one is a summons you should not make.

The eight

Industry
4/10
They are learning a craft of haunting, badly.
Household
6/10
A dead marriage, still kind. A girl who needs a household.
Piety
3/10
A bureaucratic afterlife, played as a joke. The demon is not a joke.
Courage
5/10
They finally fight for the girl.
Republic
3/10
A handbook of the dead. No republic.
Temperance
3/10
The film's appetite for the grotesque outruns the story.
Truth
6/10
He is dangerous. They learn it late.
Stewardship
6/10
The good act is protecting Lydia, not reclaiming the décor.

Live historicallyDo not invite a worse thing in to solve a rude neighbor.