An example of a movie review. negative.

A: The movie remains in the gray for far too long. Very little gets explained as the movie progresses, with as a result lots of weird sequences that seem to have a deeper meaning but because of the way of storytelling they become only just weird and not understandable to watch. It sort of forces you to watch the movie again but no way I'm going to do that. It is that I watched this movie in the morning, I'm sure of it that if I watched this movie in the evening I would had fallen asleep. To me the movie was like a poor man's "Blade Runner".

The movie leaves far too many questions and improbabilities. It makes the movie leave a pointless and non-lasting impression.

Also the weird look of the movie doesn't help much. The movie is halve CGI/halve real life but it's not done halve as good, impressive, spectacular and imaginative as for instance would be the case in later movies such as "Sin City" and "300". They even created halve of the characters of the movie by computer, which seemed like a very pointless- and odd choice, also considering that the character animation isn't too impressive looking. Sure the futuristic environment is still good looking and the movie obviously wasn't cheap to make but its style over substance and in this case that really isn't a positive thing to say.

Some of the lines are also absolutely horrendous and uninteresting. The main God of the movie constantly says lines such as; 'I'm going to do this but it's none of your concern why I want to do it'. Than just don't say anything at all Mr. Horus! It's irritating and a really easy thing to put in movie, if you don't care to explain anything about the plot. Also the deeper questions and meanings of the movie gets muddled in the drivel of the movie and its script.

The actors still did their very best. They seemed like they believed in the project and were sure of it that what they were making would be something special. So I can't say anything negative about them.

The story and movie is far from original. It rip-offs from a lot of classic and semi-classic, mostly modern, science-fiction movies. It perhaps is also the reason why the movie made a very redundant impression on me.

A failed and uninteresting movie experiment.

3/10

An example of a movie review. negative.

A: "They Are Among Us" is poor science fiction at best. Mediocre acting bogs down this film. The plot holes are numerous. Aliens that somehow came to earth on a meteor and have been hiding among us for over 100 years, but need a plastic surgeon to make them appear human. In their alien form they supposedly have exo-skeletons (which is why they need the plastic surgery) but when you see them they have teeth and fingernails. The heroine's father "disappeared" after Project Blue Book closed, but was supposedly an F-16 pilot. And on and on. If you want to see an alien invasion movie, pick "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", and see how it is done right.

An example of a movie review. negative.

A:
I was looking forward to seeing John Carpenter's episode in Season 2 because his first, Cigarette Burns, was by far the best from Season 1 (and I did like other episodes from that season). Oh, how I was disappointed.

In fairness to Carpenter I think the primary problem with this episode was absolutely horrible writing. The characters, aside from the subject matter, seemed to behave and speak as though they were written for an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. The acting was bad, and I normally like Ron Perlman a lot, but I can only blame them so much because the writing was so horrible. I'm not going to try to guess what the writers were trying to do because that would be useless but it appeared as though they were trying to mix horror (obviously) with some form of social commentary on abortion and religion. In this case, not surprisingly, it seemed a chance to bash a certain variety or religious nuts as well as fanatical anti-abortionists. And I am in favor of both aims but it was done so horribly that I was embarrassed to watch characters act and speak with such stupid inconsistency. This failed totally to offer any worthwhile opinion on the subjects and the horror element failed as well alongside such inept writing.

While I don't think Carpenter can be blamed for most of the badness here I will say he did choose to direct the teleplay and therefore has that to be held responsible for. There are a couple small bits that I found nice, hence the 2 stars I gave it.

The actual gore and monster effects were good, but the CGI gore (two separate gunshots to the head) were so obviously inferior quality CGI they should've never been given the OK. I'm generally very critical of CGI but not because I have a problem with it in principle. I have a problem with the execution of it. The technology, while amazing in some respects, is not good enough to match "real" effects, whether they be miniatures or gore especially when it is supposed to match something organic and/or alive, and therefore shouldn't be used until they are. CGI can be used well in small amounts or obviously if the whole film is animated.

I'll also take this opportunity to note that the show title, Masters of Horror, is a bad title to have. There simply aren't many actual "masters of horror" around. Maybe two or three. If the show were called "Tale of Horror" or something like that it would be fine. But as it stands the criteria for directing one of these episodes, and therefore being criticized for not being a "master of horror" is that they have directly at least one horror film in their career. And it didn't even have to be a good one.