Monthly Archives: December 2019

Dec 30 2019

Mel’s 5 Second Review: Eli

Eli (2019)
Charlie Shotwell, Kelly Reilly, Lili Taylor, Max Martini, Sadie Sink, Deneen Tyler, Katia Gomez
Directed by: Ciarán Foy

When I first saw the trailer for this on Netflix, I was immediately interested, and put it in my watchlist. And forgot about it, like so many others. Last night, while flipping through for something to watch, I saw this again, and decided to give it a shot. I’d seen mixed reviews about it, some people loved it, others hated it. But thankfully no one spoiled the ending for me, which was great, since it really is something. I was going to include spoilers in this review, but I’ve decided against it.

Eli starts out as a rather generic, but well done, haunted house flick. Eli is an 11 year old boy suffering from a debilitating auto-immune disease. He’s basically, as one character puts it, “allergic to the world”. He and his family drive cross country to the home/hospital of Dr Horn, an immunologist, who says she can cure him. But almost as soon as Eli and his family arrive, strange things begin to happen to Eli. He sees shadows, hears breathing, and, soon enough, starts to see ghost children. Dr Horn tries to assure him that it’s only hallucinations brought on by the treatments, but he’s having none of it.

All of the haunted house tropes are there, creepy ghosts, creepy music, parents that don’t believe the kids. But it was just interesting enough with the auto-immune disease that I kept watching, and boy am I glad I did. The final payoff is ridiculous. Ridiculous good, not ridiculous stupid. The acting is mostly good all around, with young Charlie Shotwell holding his own against the adults. I’d been looking for something really scary to watch last night, and while this isn’t, it’s still very much worth your time. A very good 8.5/10 from me.

As a side note, my boyfriend, who generally doesn’t like horror films, liked this one. So I should probably have given it a higher score, just for that, hehe.

M.

Dec 4 2019

Mel’s 5 Second Game Review: Grim Dawn

Grim Dawn is a fantasy/horror ARPG (action role playing game) in the style of the Diablo franchise, released on Steam by the indie company Crate. Called hack and slash games for their rather simple game play, they’re actually some of my favourite games. I have about 500 hours clocked into Grim Dawn, and I don’t think a minute of that was time wasted. The initial game came out in February 2016. There are two expansions, The Ashes of Malmouth, released in October 2017, and Forgotten Gods, released in March 2019.

The story is simple enough (the world “ended” and there are monsters), but it’s so well crafted that it doesn’t matter. And if you take the time to listen to the quest givers and read the lore, you’ll realise just how dark they went with this. There’s a man who locks his family in his house and is about to set them on fire, rather than face this new world. There are journal entries laying around one of the zones, telling the story of a family of cannibals who are becoming less than human. There’s no swearing or nudity, but I still think this is one game that’s not for kids.

The game-play is standard for this type of game. The camera is above your character and you click the mouse to move around and cast spells. Some spells will require the use of the number keys. The looting system is also standard. If playing with a friend, you each get your own drops, which is nice (Path of Exile could take a page out of that book). What’s not standard is parts of the skill tree. There are shrines all over the map that you have to restore and that gives you a Devotion point. You can then use this point to chose stars on a constellation tree. Each constellation gives boosts to different builds (spell casting, melee, ranged, minion build, etc). I’m not sure I’m explaining this right, so let me show you.

That was the most complicated skill tree I’d ever seen since I started playing Path of Exile last week. But once you get used to it, it’s not so bad.

So if you like Diablo-like games and aren’t afraid of a little horror, then I definitely recommend this game for you. As for me, I give it an 11/10. Bloody perfect!

M.