 Thanks for checking out this movie review video. So this is for the 2021 release Stay Out of the Attic, and actually it's called Stay Out of the Effing Attic, but I'm not going to say that or put that in the title of my YouTube video because problems with YouTube at that point. So also, I don't really understand why they had to put Effing in the title unless there's another movie out there that it could be confused for, which that might be the possibility. But at any rate, it just makes it harder to mark it that way. Just to stay out of the attic. But anyway, like I said, it's a shutter original and it's coming to shutter on Thursday, March 11th. I'm putting this review up the Monday before that and for that reason, and because it's going to be new to shutter, no spoilers in this except for maybe like one thematic spoiler. I don't know, but I'm going to talk about my feelings on this. I'm going to talk about the good and I'm going to talk about the bad because yes, there is bad, probably more bad for me than there is good. Unfortunately, I wanted to like this film, but for me personally, not a fan. So I am going to lay out what I liked, what I didn't like, but it comes with this disclaimer and I say this a lot, which is I do believe that every film is worth watching at least one time so that you can make your mind up on whether you like it or not. Because I'm not a fan of this movie. I didn't like it and obviously I'll tell you why. But I guarantee there are people who are going to like it and people who are going to love it. Of course, there will also be people who really dislike it like me, but maybe you need to figure out if that's you or not, unless you don't have a whole lot of time, in which case I'd say just pass on this one. So anyway, directed by Jaren Lauder, who also will be directing a film coming up called The Inhabitant. And I will say this, one of the strongest things about this film is the directing. Jaren Lauder has a future in directing if they can get where they need to go. Someone give this person a better script, someone give this person a better budget and I want to see what they can do because their directing is good. Directing cinematography in this, it looks good. There's a lot of really nice camera movements in the film, which I really like. I hate it when it's like just stationary camera shots, you know, very basic stationary camera shots. This does not do that. It gets artsy at times with the way it, you know, angles shots or moves the camera or what they shoot around or through or how they move around in the scene. So very big fan of directorially and cinematography wise what they did in this film. Also the music in this film I think is quite good, but I'll talk a little bit more about that after I get to the rest of this stuff. Lauder was involved in writing this. So Jason Scott Goldberg, Jason Scott Goldberg, Jesse Fetterman and Julie Auerbach, who Julie Auerbach had actually written scripts for baby sitter must die and cold dead hands. Now that's for people working on the script. I'm a firm believer in less as more as far as amount of people working on a script. Once I start to see more than two people working on a script, I start to get concerned because it can start to get confused. It could start to get convoluted and it can have real voice issues in the film. Now I do think they kind of kept it one voice working with four people with that, which I do think is kind of an accomplishment in its own in it, but it didn't come together. It really did not come together. I firmly believe that there is not enough story to justify the runtime of this film and the runtime of this film is only an hour and 20 minutes. But I'll talk more about that. I keep going off and then I got to refocus here. But anyway, very quick synopsis because I don't want to give too much away because if you want to watch it, you should definitely watch it. But basically it's about three individuals who are working for a moving company who get a call to come to a creepy looking house and they're going to move this person out for the day. They start the moving and things get creepy, things get interesting. That's where I'm going to leave it. That's all you need to know. So I have not spoiled anything for you, though. Because of the music and how things are shown in the intro of the film, it actually reminds me a lot of the film, The Collector. Now I'd be interested to see if anyone else feels that way. I don't think a whole lot else of the actual film feels like The Collector to me, but the intro really feels like it was heavily inspired by the film, The Collector, and the intro of The Collector. So I would be interested to know if that was actually an inspiration. But put a comment down there if you've seen it and you feel the same as I do. Or you can see that now that I've said it. From the get go, I noticed nice camera movements to give the film actual style, like I was saying, good directing and cinematography. The shooting location for this actually looks good. The house they picked looks appropriately dark, appropriately creepy. Set design good, all that stuff, well handled in my opinion. The dialogue that's supposed to be funny in this actually really is not funny, unfortunately. But it does seem realistic the way it's written and the way it's delivered. So that is a negative and a positive at the same time. One of the big things is when you're going to have any sort of comedic aspects to a film, especially if you're not going to have a ton of them, you want to make sure that those are actually going to land when you put them out there. I didn't laugh at a single one of the moments that's supposed to be funny in this. So maybe some other people will, but I have a hard time believing that many people will. Not very funny. I do actually think that the comedic aspects they try to put in detract from the movie in general and slow it down, which is one of the biggest, one of the, one of the problems. It's not one of the biggest problems. It is a problem with this film in my opinion. Although I do like the music, I think it actually should have been a little bit more restrained. They do beat you over the head with how loud the music gets, how in your face the music gets, and at certain times it's like, okay, okay, I get it. It's like the music is shouting at you and you're just like, I know what you're trying to say to me, please calm down, please be quiet. You know, it's like when you're having a conversation with another person and they're not just talking to you, but they're like getting super emphatic and they're yelling at you like incessantly and they're saying the same thing over and over again and you're just like, I heard you the first time, you don't have to yell at me. That's what the music kind of feels like in this, but the construction of the music, I think it's good. I quite like that. So whoever created the music, good job on that. The acting is okay. I do think that the characters themselves though are over exaggerated for what they are. It's kind of like they take one aspect of each character basically and then just make that the whole character. They're not very multi-dimensional in my opinion and they're exaggerated. And they're all exaggerated kind of on the same level. They all kind of act similar. They don't feel like very different characters to me. They feel like they were written very much the same. And that doesn't really work in the favor. Really caring all that much. The film is kind of dark, but it actually is lit enough so you can see basically everything you need to see in the film. So that's good. There are plenty of times where filmmakers will not have nearly enough light when it's dark and you're just like, what am I even looking at right now? What am I seeing? So good job to them on actually lighting it pretty well. 30 minutes into this film is when things start to feel like they're actually going to get moving. Now that sucks. Like I said at an hour and 20 minutes, you don't feel like it's going to start really moving until 30 minutes in. You waited too long for what the runtime is in my opinion. I think they should have gotten the things a lot earlier. And like I said, a lot of the dialogue just drags the film on. There's too much dialogue, especially in the beginning. They're trying to be too cutesy and funny. They're trying to build these relationships with the characters that I don't think feel very real, in my opinion. Like I said, the dialogue feels real, but the relationships do not, and the characters, the way they interact with each other, don't feel that real. I don't know. They do have some nice-looking practical effects in the film. I will give them that. And those are the best moments, in my opinion, of the movie. I really like that. Although towards the end, they had a really great opportunity that they should have used, that they set up, and they could have done more practical effects. But maybe they didn't have the money, I don't know. Just saying. You can feel that there are scenes stretched to hit the runtime. This is what I'm talking about. The film is slow. And at an hour and 20 minutes, if it feels slow, that is a very bad thing. That is not a long runtime for a film. So an hour and 20 minutes should feel like an hour and 20 minutes, or it should feel like, oh my god, the movie went so fast. Oh, I wanted more of it. This one is more like, is it over yet? Oh my god, it's an only an hour and 20 minute film, and it feels like it's way longer than that. That's not good. And the biggest problem is a lot of scenes, they just stretch the scenes too long. They really needed to take another pass at this, edit it down, make it a lot more succinct as a film and would have played better. I think like an hour runtime would have been more appropriate for this film. I really do think they could, well, maybe they couldn't have cut a full 20 minutes. But they could have cut probably at least a solid 10. Very easily could have cut 10 minutes. Maybe more, in my opinion. But it just drags too much. A lot of the tension and dread ends up dissipating in this film because of those pacing issues. And the intentionally drawn out scenes like I talked about. Cause you can tell they're intentionally drawn out. You can tell they're trying to not make the film too brief, but I'm gonna keep doing this. I'm gonna refer back to the movie host. The people who made the film host on, which is on shutter and you should see, it is under an hour. I appreciate that. We're at a point where you're not making movies for the theater necessarily, you're not making movies for TV. You don't need to hit a certain runtime. Whatever time you need to actually tell the story and tell it well and not drag things out, that is how long it should be. You should let the story dictate how long it is. You shouldn't shoot for a certain runtime. Take a cue from host. Everybody, please. A lot of the tension, oh, I literally just read that, I'm sorry. There's one particular scene toward the end where three characters are in a room talking and it kills the film in my opinion. Cause this was the crossroads of where they needed to start having a really good payoff and you felt it coming and then it didn't come. It was just a terrible tease that then gets drawn out into way too much dialogue that repeats the same thing over and over again that doesn't really go much of anywhere and it's tough. I, it's not very entertaining. And you just feel like you feel the energy just being lost from the film experience in my opinion. Cause it felt like it was building to something and then it just got sapped. The performances needed more in the scene in particular as well. I said the acting was okay, but in this scene they needed more out of the actors. They really did. The reactions to what's going on needed to feel more realistic. That's another thing, whatever, how they're reacting to each other and the situation doesn't feel very realistic and they needed to cut it down. Another instance of a scene that goes on way too long. That's a problem. Way too much talking for that scene. Should have been a lot less. It's one of these things in writing in general where they always say, you know, don't tell me, show me. And that's a big thing with script writing. Don't have people tell me in dialogue what is happening or what should happen or backstory or anything. Show me that, show it to me. It's a better way to do things and it's more engaging. It does, after this particular scene I was just talking about, it does start to get better and I was starting to get hopeful at the very, very end. But then the way they end up leaving the film makes you pissed off or at least it made me pissed off because where they leave it off is literally a great opportunity to have some good story and have some good scenes and have, like I said, another great opportunity for practical effects. Like where it stops is literally a great point of what they should have had in the film, literally. And then I will say there are post-credit scenes and it sucks because when you see the post-credit scenes you realize that they literally skipped where the cliffhanger was at the end which they could have used that cliffhanger to be like, okay, there's gonna be another movie which I guess they still could. They could like go back and be like, this is what happened between, you know, the very end portion and the post-credit scenes and that's the second movie. But it felt more like, okay, here's a really cool interesting thing. Now you don't get to see it but then we'll show you what happened after that. Like that sucks. Don't do that to people. That was crappy. I don't like that you did that. Oh man, can you tell I didn't like this? I don't like, I wanted to like it. I definitely did because like I said, especially like the directing and cinematography and the intro like really got me going and then it's just, there are some ideas that could work but not enough actually because there's not enough story. There's just not enough story for the script really. It feels like they needed to really flesh out an actual like larger story and then build the script after that. It feels more like they went into the script with just like a main idea and maybe a few plot points and then they were like, oh, we'll figure out the rest as we write it and they didn't actually figure out the rest as they wrote it. So just saying. This, I will say this though as far as like a thematic type thing. This film could be viewed as a call to a younger generation to look back, understand historical context of a certain evil and expunge it from our current society. I think that may have been the message in this and if I'm right, that is a good message. It is cool. I do like that and I kind of felt that at the end but all the other stuff that went on with the film especially of being so slow and drawn out just killed it, unfortunately. Once again, I think I really could have felt differently about this film if it was edited down a bunch. Just saying. But anyway, that's kind of my feeling on this. So out of five stars with half stars in play I'm not gonna be insanely harsh on this because like I said, like the acting was okay. The dialogue actually feels real. There's just too much of it and the relationships don't really work that much. It looks good. It looks very good. And the practical effects were really good. So out of five stars with half stars in play I'm gonna give it two stars. I was between one and a half and two but I think because of the directing and the cinematography, I'm gonna get it to that too. Just know, Jaren Louder, I like what you did. Not with the writing necessarily although maybe your parts were the good parts of the script but you're directing. Kudos, good job. Anyway, thanks everyone for checking this out. Put some comments down here. If you've already seen it, let me know. Did you like it? Did you not like it? Were you in the middle on it? Whatever. And go ahead, spoilers in the comments, go ahead. That's fine. I do not mind. That's all good. And do me a quick favor though. Hit that subscribe button because that is your way to repay me if you like this review video or any video I've ever done on my channel. It literally takes you a second and I really do appreciate it a whole lot because I'm just trying to grow a nerdy horror community here. But regardless, I thank you for taking your time to watch this and until next time, keep it brutal.