Awake not Woke!

You won't find anything really new story wise here. Basically an organization stages 'games' at a location by trapping random people inside while they are hunted by 4 people for points while it's streamed and bets placed. The acting is decent enough for this type of movie and there are cameo's galore for horror fans. The blood and gore FX are extreme, over the top and very well done. There's some very brutal graphic stuff here not for the squeamish. It takes a bit to really get going but by the 30 minute mark it really starts to go nuts. There are unfortunately some small writing problems like characters doing stupid things or not seeing or hearing things they realistically should of. For example they cut off all communications include internet service except their own private network. However an 11 yr old goes on his laptop and searches for network then just simply connects to it as if it's a completely unsecured network. Then he just somehow has instant access to their entire system. They are locked inside a hotel with the front doors being glass and not one person tries to break the doors or a window to escape. There's also the horror staple of being constantly chased and people trying to kill you and not once does anyone bother to arm themselves with all the possible weapons laying around the hotel. The woke score is a little difficult. There is a group of 3 hotel guests that appear to be there drinking and partying. One of them appears to be obviously gay and flamboyant and the 2 females are seen making out. Nothing is ever said about them being lesbian and it could possibly be just drunk partying too much. Also the seemingly gay character is also never shown doing anything or saying anything to imply that he is actually gay. I decided not to give anything woke for this one as a result. For me this is probably a 3.5 but I don't think it's worth a 4 so I kept it at 3.

Good movie in a sea of mediocre hollywood!

(No Spoilers) This movie surprised me! I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's artistic (which is par for the course for a Del Toro movie) and entertaining. Starts out a little slow due to how they chose to tell the story, but it's definitely worth watching all the way through. It's a great twist on a modern classic. It basically has no woke nonsense. 7.5/10!

This is a British comedy/horror miniseries with 8 episodes. The first thing I noticed in Ep 1 was some general DEI overrepresentation including the main character being a POC. She is an unlikable terrible person so not off to a good start. The acting is ok and the setup isn't too bad. Not much for comedy though and pretty light on the horror but there's promise. Ep 2 really ramps up the DEI casting. There is an openly racist Indian character who makes a random comment about while babies and ethnic mothers than randomly mentions a white family is racist for no real reason and no context. Starting to notice a distinct lack of white casting and any male characters in general. Ep 3 lesbian couple is introduced including some lesbian kissing. DEI is now at max capacity. There are virtually no white people or men. Any you see are background characters. We are just giving up with the horror aspect and going into more preachy motherhood is hard and nobody but mothers understand. No mention of fathers or men. Story wise it's pretty much at a standstill. There's no real story progression from the first episode and this is mostly pointless. Ep 4 Lesbian characters are now some of the main characters and still max DEI with little story progression. We are reminded they are lesbians at every opportunity. At this point I'm bored about to give up but decided to give it one more episode. Ep 6 is an origin story for one of the main characters. She is revealed to be lesbian and involved with a married woman behind her husbands back. The lesbian make out sex scene is were I shut it down. This is not comedy or horror, it's just preachy woke feminist garbage. There is only 8 30 minute episodes and by ep 4 there is almost no story advancement since ep 1. The idea is interesting enough but they decided to go full extreme woke agenda instead of actually trying to tell a good story. It's possible the last three and a half episodes brought it all together to make sense but at this point I don't care anymore. The only reason I'm giving this a 1 instead of 0 is because there is an actual interesting story buried underneath the mound of garbage that's presented instead. Unless you are an extreme woke feminist there is no reason to watch this trash.

Some more minor DEI casting. This one seems to go out of it's way to force more female casting in the movie. There is a homeland security female officer, 2 out of 3 of the CIA security detail is female. This takes place directly after the first one and the terrorist from that movie is back this time with his pregnant wife as well. The villains here are said to be professional independent military contractors and naturally they have their very own girlboss leader. The acting here might actually be worse than the last one. Knapp in particular is horribly miscast with really bad acting and her nails on chalkboard cartoonish voice makes it impossible to take her seriously. It's her voice and not her fault but it's bad casting nonetheless. The writing is maybe a bit better here with the action scenes looking much better for the most part but there are still some problems. The hand to hand combat in particular varies greatly with some scenes looking well done and convincing while others almost look like practice takes. The aforementioned 'professionals' can't seem to hit targets right in front of them half the time. This appears to take place in a large airport yet there doesn't seem to be any civilians to be found. The worst part is probably still the acting, the gunshot would in the van early on is comically hilarious. Background characters get shot and flail their arms about overacting like something you would see from 10 year old's pretending to get shot. If you made through the first one it's an ok time killer and probably a step up from that one but still can't bring myself to give it a higher rating.