Three Films Make A Post: And you thought that other HOUSE was bad

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021): I already wasn’t terribly happy with the first Venom movie, what with its combo of a crap script and uninventive action, but compared to this second attempt at a movie, that thing was a masterpiece. Instead of even a bad script, this is based on what really just a series of badly connected memes that’ll probably go well on Instagram but certainly do not a movie make, terrible acting by a bunch of people who can do so much better, some of the worst effects you will see in this budget bracket, and direction by Andy Serkis that suggests he’s not even acquainted with the concept of tone, much less able to provide this nonsensical mess with one.

Perhaps the writer of the next Venom movie might take a look at some of the better comics runs of the characters and just crib from there?

The Hypnosis aka 최면 (2021): In comparison, this deeply mediocre horror movie by Choi Jae-hoon with its much too obvious twists, its indifferent character writing and its never more than okay staging at least feels like it is at trying for coherence in tone, style and narrative. Sure, it mostly only manages to land there in the blandest manner imaginable, and ends up being the kind of film you’ll watch and forget in a manner of minutes, but at least it isn’t going out of its way to become a bad time.

The House on Straw Hill aka Trauma aka Exposé (1976): By all rights, this pretty sleazy British thriller with Linda Hayden and Udo Kier (and barely anyone else) as directed and written by James Kenelm Clarke should be a much better time, if in a pretty unpleasant way. There are certainly all the elements here that make comparable exploitation movies (mostly from Italy) a good bad time, but things never come together as they should: the sleazy bits feel more awkward than anything else, the thriller narrative is much too predictable (not helped by a narrative style that shows always too much or too little), and the film’s attempts at being artsy (always useful for exploitation, obviously) manage to at the same time weaken the sleaze and feel like a put-on.