Ghost On Air I liked the premise of this movie enough to go against my gut feeling and watch it. A popular radio DJ gets moved to the night shift slot and decides to tell ghost stories. Scary shit follows. How could you fail with this premise?
Turns out, pretty easily. The plot was a tad confusing at places, mostly because it featured a bunch of unrelated ghost stories with similar elements. One of them is about a girl who has an abortion and is haunted by her dead kid. The girl's mom finds her hanging. Then there's a different young girl haunting a store and it becomes really hard to tell which old lady is the mom from the first story and which one is the shop owner and how, if at all, these two stories are connected (from what I can tell, they're not, but I'm still confused).
In any case, the DJ's dead girlfriend was a horror writer who decided to investigate some ghost stories she heard about. It's unclear even at the end of the movie, if this research was the cause of her death (I'm unsure if we're ever told how she died, all we get is a scene in a hospital where she's on a stretcher) or if it was unrelated. The dj finds her notes and after telling the stories on air, decides to also look into these hauntings.
There's also a subplot about how a young female dj takes the prime-time spot from his, but it's fairly misogynistic. I was expecting something more interesting to happen, as the woman is always trying to help the protagonist and he always blows her off. Unfortunately, it looks like we're really supposed to think she's a horrible monster.
Spoilers follow, including ending.
The movie has a pretty dumb ending. After the DJ ''solves'' the hauntings by revealing the truth, he wins an award for best male DJ, gets his old job back and gets to push his rival out of the show. Apparently being a woman and having a job means you're a whore and you should be punished.
In any case, there's a scene right after that where the DJ watches on his laptop a video of his girlfriend telling him she's haunted and asking ''Where are you?'' I'm not sure why she's recording this video or why she's asking that, it seems like she could have called him or something, but what do I know, I'm not a ghost. Then the ghosts descend upon him and presumably drive him crazy. The end.
All and all, I wouldn't recommend this movie. It has no good scares, the plot is convoluted for no reason and there just isn't anything all that interesting here.
2 out of 5 ghost DJs.
Black Rock (spoilers throughout)
Another utterly dumb movie about how apparently ordinary people will decide to commit felonies for no reason, with no regard for their own safety or best interest.
Three women decide to go on vacation back to their childhood vacation spot, on a tiny island. Once there, they meet three hunters who they kinda-sorta know and invite them to hang out. After one of the women flirts with one of the men and invites him into the woods to presumable have sex, she has a change of heart but the guy won't take no for an answer and tries to rape her. She cracks his skull open with a rock.
His two buddies are upset and decide to kill the three women because of reasons. I don't know, not a lot makes sense here.
They play the usual cat and mouse game on the island, including more dumb scenes, like having the women try and make it into the water by crawling towards the beach, but one of them freaks out and starts screaming and gets up to run, immediately getting shot in the face.
I don't know why. She couldn't get the pressure of crawling on a beach I suppose. The remaining two women run into the water only to realize they're freezing to death, so they get back out. This, despite a five minute conversation they had before they put the plan in motion, where one of them absolutely knew she could handle the cold water. I guess she was wrong.
The two women get naked to battle hypothermia. I guess the boobs were unavoidable.
Anyway, the movie ends as expected. It's really dumb. If you're really into watching women get victimized for an hour and then maybe get their revenge for two minutes, I guess you could give it a shot.
1 out of 5 hypothermic, naked women.
Magic Magic (spoilers throughout)
Ah, the dumbest of them all. I admit to being intrigued for the first half hour of this movie, but once I realized the movie has an unreliable narrator, I kinda gave up on the whole thing. I like unreliable narrators, but when you got every other character acting weird as shit and then compound that with a protagonist that appears to be schizophrenic, is there really any point in watching? If there is no basis for reality and the events aren't even that interesting (oh woo, this guy is mean to her, her friend was rude on the phone, a dog tried to hump her), it's hard to take it seriously. Couple this with a really dumb ending and you get Magic Magic.
Everyone in this movie is both irritating and stupid. And terrible, like the guy who wants to have sex with his girlfriend who had an abortion the previous day and suggests anal when she says she's still hurting. What.
In the ending, her friends take her to a Mexican witch who tries to exorcise her and ends up chocking her to death by feeding her a frog. This is happening as about ten people watch, none of them saying anything, apparently convinced she's possessed.
I can't say enough bad things about this movie. Fuck it.
0 out of 5 humping dogs.