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The Devil's Dozen (2013) Directed by Jeremy London



Unbelievable! 9 years later and they are still doing "Saw" ripoffs.

So here we have yet another movie about a bunch of people who are all stuck in the same room together. It turns out that all of them have some bad history and they are forced to kill each other until there is one person left standing. Still probably sounds awesome and interesting to you but let me just tell you that there is absolutely nothing spectacular, tense, surprising, original or interesting about this movie.

First of all; there are far too many characters in it and each of them has far too much dialog as well. This especially becomes a big problem at the start of the movie when everybody is still alive and every single character is given far too much dialog that goes something to the extent of; 'What are we doing here?' 'Why are you doing this?' 'Why is this happening?' 'Just let us go!' 'I can't handle this' and 'this is insane!'. Seriously, that's how all of the characters spend the first few minutes of the movie talking, which is soon becoming something incredible tiresome and annoying to have to watch and hear. Besides, because there are so many characters in this movie, none of them ever gets developed that well. It's hard to care about any of the characters in this, since you just don't know anything about them, other than they presumable have done some bad things in their lives. It doesn't help much that most of the actors are absolutely terrible in this.

But hold on! There is a twist toward the end as well, in which it gets revealed why and how all of the characters ended up in the same room together. Unfortunalty it's not a very good or likely surprise and twist. It's even the type of twist that probably is going to anger a whole bunch of people.

The main story also really isn't anything solid enough. Instead of trying to find a solution, or a way out of things, all the characters do is argue about who should die next. Really, that's basically all this movie ever does, which again, is making this movie too much of a both repetitive and tiresome one. I genuinely do believe this movie still had some potential but it all went to waste, due to its lacking execution and uninteresting approach.

It's not the worst thing you'll ever see but it still really isn't worth watching either!

4/10

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Copycat (1995) Directed by Jon Amiel




(Review originally written at 30 December 2006)

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

"Copycat" is a surprising good serial-killer thriller, that perhaps is not the most original movie around but its definitely one of the better executed ones.

The movie is well written, with a solid story, main characters and a couple of nice twists. At the beginning you don't really know what the movie is going about and everything is build up in a good, non-forced or overdone way. In the beginning its still a mystery who's behind the killings and it even is subtly implied that the killers could be one of the cops, or one of the other characters in the movie. The movie however takes a twist when it fully shows the killer, his preparations and his actions. The movie is at times told completely from the killers point of view. This works surprisingly effective and it doesn't ruin the tension or mystery of the movie, in any way.

What makes the movie effective and also in a way distinctive is that the main characters of the movie are two female characters. They are being portrayed by about the two strongest female leading Hollywood ladies of the moment; Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter. They are two strong and independently, different from each other characters that know to carry the movie. The movie also has an excellent supporting cast with Harry Connick Jr. in a disturbing role, Will Patton and the fairly unknown William McNamara as the killer of the movie. The fact that he isn't as well known as an actor perhaps makes his character work out all the better.

I have yet to see a Jon Amiel movie that is original on its own. His movies always heavily 'borrow' from other movies in the same genre. He's a real 'copycat' himself you may say. "Copycat" is really no exception to this but it this case it didn't bothered me since the execution of it all was superb and effective.

The movie is basically good and tense from start till finish, due to a good pace, interesting well written and developed characters and a good overall build up. The movie perhaps at the end turns into a bit of a formulaic and simple one but it doesn't really downgrade the movie in any way. It all makes this movie one of the better genre movies of the last couple of years. The movie has basically everything in it that is needed to make a good thriller.

The movie is good looking with an overall nice visual style, some nice cinematography, nimble editing and a suiting musical score from composer Christopher Young.

A simply great genre movie, that deserves some more recognition and that holds up surprising well against other classic genre examples such as "Silence of the Lambs" and "Se7en".

8/10

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