Hokum is a horror movie? I’d say it falls between a haunted house and a murder mystery. Unfortunately, I don’t think it does either half particularly well. I mean, it’s not a bad movie, per se. It’s definitely well made and acted, but the story just never reaches anything interesting. The haunted house aspect would have been a lot more interesting if we actually had more of it. The very short time with get with the witch haunting the honeymoon suite passes so quickly that it just leaves you wanting more. The mystery is so paint by numbers that they even explain to you what happened without the protagonist ever being told. I know there was supposed to be a bit of psychological in there, too, but it didn’t hit. Like, I understand why he’s traumatized, but it just don’t have much to do with the rest of the story. It’s just a vehicle for getting him to the hotel. Surprisingly, the most interesting and endearing character in this movie is the hobo who lives in the woods getting high on mushrooms. So, take that for what it’s worth.

Project Hail Mary is a movie based on a book by the same name. On the one hand, the interactions with the alien, Rocky, were extremely cute and endearing. On the other, the whole rest of the movie was a bloated mess. There’s no reason this movie needed to be two and half hours long. All that backstory? Except for explaining the basis of the plot, which you didn’t need to do because our protagonist doesn’t remember it, was just filling. The scenes of the space ships moving in space were particularly bad. No thrusters. No propellant. Just a basic clipping of a ship in space with the background of stars being moved. And don’t get me started on the main premise. A space sickness affecting all the stars in the galaxy? Really? Yet it just so happens one singular star isn’t being affected? So let’s use the thing killing the stars to fuel our intergalactic one way trip? Why’s it one way if you can literally just pick up more space dots where you’re going? The whole thing is utter nonsense. I know I’m going against the grain here. I know everyone loved this movie. But aside from Rocky, this movie was pretty bad.

Scream 7 is the latest in the Scream franchise. I honestly don’t have much to say about this one. It was a pretty straight forward movie with very little “new” going for it. They brought Sydney back, and made sure to mention many times how she wasn’t in the last film. I feel like that’s about as meta as the movie decided to be. Instead of satirizing other movies, this one satirizes obsessed fans and AI? But you don’t even realize that until the literal end of the film. Instead, you get a pretty basic story where a masked killer is killing kids for seemingly no reason. Remember when Scream was about making fun of slasher movies and not playing it straight. Well, this one plays it pretty straight. Personally, I never really cared about watching Sydney play protective parent. Didn’t she kind of already do that in Five? This one felt redundant, in that sense. It’s fine as a basic slasher movie, but Scream was never supposed to be a basic slasher. I know this isn’t the end of the franchise because studios can’t let big names go but… Maybe it should be?

Mortal Kombat is a 1995 movie based on the video game of the same name. I can’t argue with the reviewers that the movie really doesn’t have much story. It tries to introduce and give background to the main characters, but it’s all really minor. Sonya is chasing Kano, Johnny is tricked, and Liu is looking to avenge the death of his brother. Why do they team up? There really isn’t any reason. Proximity? Because Rayden keeps talking to them together and telling them that they three are humanity’s last hope? I guess that’s a good a reason as any. The fights, on the other hand, are clearly well done and thought out. As much as I loved the new Mortal Kombat’s video game accurate fights, I feel like this movie had much better fights. It actually felt like real fighting and not mimicking the video game. The reviews mention the location shots as another positive but they didn’t really add a lot for me. They were nice, I guess. The acting… is a bit of a mixed bag. There’s a lot of memorable lines in the movie, but I won’t say any of the actors of our main group stands out. Liu is fine. Sonya is struggling, but I don’t think she got a good script. Johnny was also fine. Rayden was funny, but also didn’t particularly feel like Rayden. More like Conner McCloud with lightning powers. Kano was fine, but his role was pretty short. Shang Tsung had a great voice for the role, but I think his acting was a bit over the top, even for a video game movie. Kitana was completely forgettable. So much so that I forgot she was in the film. While I love Mortal Kombat (Techno Syndrome), I do think it was overplayed in the movie. It’s played no less than four times. That’s a lot for any singular song in a movie. A lot of the special effects really don’t live up. Goro, Reptile, and anything CGI was pretty bad. Overall, I don’t think the movie is horrible. If what you like about Mortal Kombat is the fighting, then this movie is perfect. But if you need a little more story to get you into it, the newer Mortal Kombat reboot movie would be more up your alley.