Ghastlies (2016) Reviews

• Don't Expect Anything Good

  christineackerley2019-02-18

  They make it look like Critters with their poster and the trailer looked fun but this is actually a terrible movie. For one thing the puppets look cheap and terrible and don't even move. They're just plastic toys that get held up once in a while. That's another thing is that they are almost never shown, only when they do they suck. Also the only sound they make is a chipmunk like laugh and by that I mean one laugh, the same laugh every single time they actually are on screen. All three of them make the exactly same annoying laugh. Sometimes the shot stays on them for a while and they laugh 4 or 5 times in a row and it's just that one same laugh played again and again. Like they are proud of how annoying they can be. The scenes are far too long and it is excruciating trying to sit through. There are no effects to speak of other than some fake blood thrown against a tree a couple of times. The props were bought at Dollarama and I for sure recognized the fake hand they use and also the plastic police badges the two cops use from there. The cops also have their clothes and bike helmets from home. Everything about this looks cheap and unimpressive and it's so tedious you can't even enjoy it as the kind of bad movie you can laugh at. The writing is basically a story that could be told in three minutes stretched out to 70 minutes that feels like 3 hours. There is one scene that is literally a woman doing aerobics for 10 minutes while her boyfriend peaks in through the bedroom door and makes pervert expressions for no apparent reason. There are characters that have no point and entire scenes that have no point. The ending makes no sense at all. There's a cult at the beginning that has nothing to do with anything and is never brought up or seen again. The movie is set in the 1980's but has a lot of modern stuff in it that I guess they could just not be bothered to leave out. Nothing about this movie is good or makes sense at all. Aside from the two main female characters the acting is below zero. The two bike cops and the pizza delivery guy are particularly awful. Not sure why any of them are walking around in the woods for no reason anyway but that seems to be the whole point of this movie. I assume they exist to add more run time to the movie like every other pointless scene that drags on forever, and also as some kind of comic relief because they are trying so desperately hard (and failing) to be funny. This movie should be fun to at least laugh at but it's just terrible. I feel bad for the actors and crew who spent time making this because there's no way anybody got paid for this thing.

• Dumb and lazy, but not the worst thing I've ever sat through.

  snatanic-878-9307562019-04-02

  I picked this up because I'm a huge fan of Critters, Ghoulies, Troll, Gremlins, and films of that nature. This could've been a fun little throwback but it lacks creativity and tries too hard to be intentionally bad on purpose. The "Ghastlies" themselves are awful looking puppets that barely move. They even make the Hobgoblins look like a godly effects job. But I could look past that if they had any sort of character. There's no backstory to them, they never talk or really interact with one another. It's just shots of them giggling most of the time. *mild spoiler* After the movie has ended, an animated short starts up involving the Ghastlies. In the cartoon, it plays out like a Looney Tunes type thing where the creatures are pranking one another. Okay... so where was stuff like that in the actual movie?! The characters and actors are nothing to write about. Intentional bad acting and dialogue, didn't laugh once at them. All cardboard cutouts and cliches. There is some brief topless nudity in the beginning and that's it. I will say the film finally does pick up in the final ten minutes after dragging on and on for the first hour. There were a couple goofy gore gags at the end that got a little chuckle out of me, which was the only bit of enjoyment I got out of this. Too little too late though. Not the worst thing I've ever seen, but still far from my cup of tea. I'd recommend it only to lovers of truly bad movies, and to try and rent it first before purchasing like I did.