Awake not Woke!

A solid 80's slasher. There are some of the usual clichés that were everywhere in this genre in the 80's but overall the story is pretty good. The acting is better than usual, the FX are incredible and some of the kills are very brutal. I watched the uncut version but there are several versions of this in various edits and some of them have a lot of the gore and blood fx cut out. Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter appear in very early roles here as well. Unlike a lot of these movies this one is never boring and the characters and interactions are actually well done. While it is unusual to have a woke score for movie like this there is something to point out. There are several male characters who are very aggressive toward some of the female characters and the lead male councilor does nothing about it. This results in the lead female councilor several times going on a rant about 'you guys make me sick'. I may be reading into it given the time period but it does come off a little preachy and 'The Patriarchy'. I'm giving it a one for that but It might just be me. It's definitely not a focus of the movie and is overall a small thing. If you enjoy 80's horror or slashers this one is recommended.

Whoever did the musical score for this should be thrown off a cliff. This is one of the worst scores I've ever heard. Completely tonally incompatible to the type of movie this wants to be. It's so off-putting and is always present. I don't think there is a single scene without some kind of grating background music. The acting is ok by the 3 main leads but most of the others not so good, the police duo in particular are terrible. The fx are one of the few good things. The story is just completely implausible. Basically these 2 scam artists rent Airbnb's then pretend to be real estate agents and pretend to sell the house. There are so many things wrong with that idea. First of all if your renting an Airbnb then you have a rental account with your names and info, you would have a legal rental agreement. How are you getting away with scamming. They then just plant a sign out front that it's for sale. How exactly are they scamming people into giving them money without an actual sale happening? It's not listed anywhere for real other than a sign. They think they are going to pull this off by renting a house with visible cameras all over the inside. They just turn them all off, like the owner's not going to know. It's all so stupid. Then there's the woke, the 2 scammers are a lesbian couple who we are constantly reminded are lesbians. The lead black male is Djimon Hounsou a pretty well known actor so wouldn't call that DEI. However I believe every single person they scam is an idiot white male and one of them tries to rape one of the lesbians. One of the detectives is female. The black doctor has a painting of his late wife on the wall and of course she's white so we get the check the mixed race couple box as well. Overall pretty slow moving with a ridiculous story that barely watchable made worse with a truly abysmal musical score.

Not woke, just a Direct to TV-movie type of film.

That’s it! I guess by the standards Disney has gotten us used to, that’s what makes it “special” ??? Not been woke and the fact that the story is set before his latest appearances in the other series? It feels like one of two things: either they originally planned a much longer movie with a huge storyline, but when they looked at the budget they decided to cut all the woke stuff… ooor they’re testing the waters to see if the woke mafia inside the company will tolerate a story where no woman is telling Frank what to do. Honestly, there’s no way to know for sure. What you can tell is that it feels like a regular TV episode and not even one of the best ones. The only thing to highlight: it has about 20 minutes of very entertaining action. That’s all.

Woke Fest

Coming from private producers, I gave it a shot, but man, it’s super woke. I couldn’t even calculate the exact percentage of wokeness because both times I tried to watch it I fell asleep lol. That alone says a lot, not just about how woke it is, but how entertaining it isn’t. Straight to the point: There’s a ton of role reversal. Every single male character is portrayed as dumb, useless, or straight-up incompetent, and they all get humiliated or put down by a woman or some feminine figure. The oldest daughter’s dialogues are clearly written by a militant activist (or a whole team of them), because she’s the only one dropping feminism comments left and right (at least in what I managed to watch). That’s pretty much it. I can’t say much more because I don’t think I got past the 30-minute mark. And honestly, in any normal commercial movie of this length, they would’ve already given you the full plot by then.