A few horror movies as part of Christmas counter-programming.
Relic - Like The Taking of Deborah Logan this one presents the question of whether an elderly character is being affected by dementia or possession. Some genuinely creepy bits, but the ending's a bit naff.
Freaky - Vince Vaughn's hulking serial killer ends up body swapping with a teenage girl he was attempting to kill. Amusing enough and some nasty kills. Oddly, there's shades of the recent Jumanji film with a middle aged actor playing as if they're a teenage girl.
Spiral - no one needed a Saw reboot. INot being quite as grisly as some Saw films is definitely a bonus, but it's a very perfunctory effort with pacing issues.
Velvet Buzzsaw - works best when satirically skewering the art world via the flamboyant, narcissistic caricatures on display. Unfortunately, the characters such awful people that there really isn't anyone to root for except perhaps Natalia Dyer's hapless assistant who keeps finding herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and discovering bodies. The supernatural painting gimmick was shit and didn't make any sense even by the standards of horror films.
Boys From County Hell - decent little Irish vampire flick sometimes betrayed by its obvious lack of budget. The non-standard take on the vampirism myth was a cool and there was plenty of engaging craic between the cast.
How Ritchie still has a career is kind of beyond me. He does still manage the occasional decent film (Man from UNCLE and Gentlemen we're pretty good recent efforts), but there's a lot of shite too and other directors have been sunk for fewer flops than he's had. That said, his next one with the Stath looks like it could be good, though I may be blinded by the inclusion of Aubrey Plaza.
