 Thanks for checking out this movie review video. So this is for the 2020 film Skull the Mask and it's a shutter original and it's coming to shutter on Thursday May 27th. Now for that reason and because it's a newer film coming to shutter, I'm putting this review out ahead of time so it is a no spoiler review. I'm just going to give a quick little synopsis and that's about it spoiler wise. Other than that, I'm not really going to tell you anything about the events of the film but I'll tell you my feelings and some of the things that they end up doing. So this one won't have any talk really about subtext or themes in the film because there really isn't that to this type of film and you'll see what I mean when I start getting into it really. So this one's written and directed by Armando Fonseca and Capel Ferman. They've done the film Uptake Fear which I have not seen, don't know anything about unfortunately. This is actually an American and Brazilian co-production so it's kind of an international film. It is in Portuguese so it is all subtitled but that said the subtitles don't go super fast so if you're not the best at subtitles you should be able to easily handle yourself. Also I'll go ahead and say if you honestly want to watch this film without reading any of the subtitles, I feel like you could safely do that because it's not big on substance and that leads me to what this film basically is. It's like a Grindhouse style throwback film so the dialogue just like it really doesn't matter. The story is so simplistic and there barely is even story there honestly. It's mainly about the Grindhouse style being kind of over the top and the kills. Most importantly the kills and the gore and the practical effects which are what shine for this film in my opinion. But what is it really about even though there is such a simplistic story and not much to it, it is basically about as the title says Skull the Mask, a mask that looks like a skull that has a tie into an old ancient legend about a being that kills people in essence. That's all you need to know and it's modern day and here's the skull. Like I said there's a lot of kills and gore and stuff so I'm pretty sure you know exactly where things go with this film, nothing's all that surprising except for the kills. How they get invented with the kills, I like that. It's kind of an odd beginning to the film so I think it's important that if you're watching this that you do know ahead of time that it is a Grindhouse film. I had no clue what I was getting into going into it so the fact that I went into it just thinking oh you know this will be a horror film like all the other screeners I watch. It was weird to me at first I'm like what is going on with this because it looks very different there's like this kind of like crappy sheen over the entire film which is intentional and that's fine because they're going for that visual look of a Grindhouse film so it works but at first I'm like why is it so crappy looking almost kind of blurry-esque because after seeing you know HD for so long seeing something like this is a little bit like what is going on here so it's also just really odd and weird and quirky in the very beginning and it's fun I think it's really fun I think the setup scene in the beginning is really cool and honestly I really would have liked if they kind of would have stayed along the same lines of that storyline instead of going to modern day because that storyline seemed a lot more interesting to me and like there was a lot more potential because you can do the kills you know with any any backdrop any backdrop as long as you just execute the kills properly like they really do execute the kills in a very wonderful fashion in this film but as far as keeping the film interesting not really in my opinion that said I will say that I think that it's worth watching once for sure because of the kills and how much fun that aspect is also the music I really do like the music at certain times it's too much but a lot of the time it's not and the music is just fun and well done and it adds to the film so thankfully it's got that going for it because of its intended style it intentionally doesn't look good and that's okay also because of its intended style I assume that some of the acting is intentionally bad but there is some acting in this that you can tell is just bad you know whether they were going for intentional or not intentional it was going to be bad regardless and one of the big problems with that ends up being the kind of main character the main character you see the most because they're kind of two main ish characters that one not do less I would have liked a lot less screen time I'll tell you right now the character Beatrice should have not had much screen time and the character Monko should have had a lot more screen time because the potential for the character of Monko was a lot more story-wise and just interest-wise on camera and that individuals acting was a lot better Beatrice's acting was whoever that was we played it terrible I don't think it was intentional or it was so intentional that they were brilliant about how bad it was it wasn't enjoyable it really was like a wisest person on the screen plus the other thing is with how important they make Beatrice as a character for what reason you know like it's it's like an hour and a half film it's a little bit under an hour and a half with credits and everything it's like an hour 28 I think and it feels like it's longer which sucks I mean you just find yourself looking forward to the kills and it's like okay we don't really need the story the story is very whatever anyway let's just get to the kills man and that's fine to some degree but don't it doesn't need to be an hour and a half in that instance I'm gonna say this I say it all the time with films that feel long to me take a cue from the film host that film was under an hour was like 56 minutes or something like that don't waste people's time if you don't have the story that's needed to get to an hour and a half then just make it however long it needs to be to tell the story properly and show the things you want to show just saying so anyway going back to my notes everything is over the top even the gore thankfully the gore and that is obviously like I've been saying where this film really really really shines not only do I think they shot the gore scenes really well and they look really good they put some actual mechanics into the practical effects that look cool they look fun they had a lot of blood I'd be interested to know exactly how much blood they ended up using with the film and it works really well for the kills how much blood they also have some very inventive kills and fun-looking kills they go huge on the kills and I love that about this film I mean really it's what is needed to redeem this film honestly it really is solid directing but bad acting now bad acting is typically fine for for a film like this like I was talking about like I feel like some of it was intentionally bad and that's cool but there are definitely those instances like I was talking about with the character Beatrice that you could tell it's not that it was intentional it's just that that the acting's bad like it's just terrible acting and that's one of the reasons that I wanted a lot less screen time for that character the other reason being their story arc is not interesting and that leads to another kind of problems with the film is I think they needed more interesting characters in general they're all kind of like cardboard cut out but the characters that you get a little bit of a glimpse of in the opening scene seem way more interesting and seems like there's a lot more there also the character like I said Monko who I wanted more screen time for seemed like they had a lot more potential story wise and just a more interesting character you could have done a lot more with them and you could have injected even more comedy into it because that's another problem with this film in my opinion is that there are comedic moments like intentionally comedic moments and the overall feel of the film and atmosphere of the film is supposed to be kind of funny because of it being grand house and ridiculous but I feel I feel like it would have been better if they injected a lot more intentional humor into it just a little tidbit you get here and there it's just not enough in my opinion especially when your story is so boring and people are just really looking for the kills at that part at that point my apologies there are a few moments of CGI use in this and for the most part they're good there there's a moment or two where the CGI looks a little bit too wonky in my opinion to the point where you actually notice that it looks wonky but for the majority of the time when CGI is being used it looks totally good totally fine they did they did well with it overall the the other thing about you know making it seem like it's a much longer film than it actually is the story portions really really really really slow down the film unfortunately so you have like a really good scene where there was a cool kill and and you're all like amped up and you're ready to go and then it slows down considerably and you almost get lulled into an almost sleep state in my opinion until you get to that next kill scene so I'm glad that they didn't do something like they did with a film that I saw kind of recently that I'm not gonna mention here because I'll go down another path where they just kind of had nothing going on nothing going on until the last third of the film and then they threw all the kills in like one chunk and then we're done with it so I'm glad they didn't do that but still you know the story just yeah there's one never mind my apologies there are some moments where the film becomes oddly quiet there's one one moment in particular where it becomes really quiet and it kind of seems like there's just one audio track going at that time where it's just the noises of a few things going on in the scene that were added in post and it's really weird it's kind of like all the air is sucked out of a room and you're just like it's just a bunch of padding around you and all you hear is like a few noises it you don't have like the atmosphere of where they actually are because they're outside at that moment so there would be a lot more noise so I don't know what happened there I don't know if that was intentional or not but it was really weird thing that occurred I don't know it was just super odd and in the end the ending of the film is very boring I think that there's a more logical point that they should have just cut it off but it seems like the film unnecessarily keeps going and you're just like this is an interesting we should have to stop this before so that's basically all I have to say about it overall I would say yes just check it out because the kills are really cool and definitely we're seeing and the practical effects so there were some really cool ideas and some really good visual execution with this so I would be very interested to see the writer directors actually just direct in the future maybe get someone who's really good at script writing maybe even the same style grind house that that's fine because visually it looked really cool and it's a great idea it's just not everyone who can direct can write and not everyone who can write can direct it's one of those type things and I just think you need a better more interesting story with better more interesting characters for the most part or the better and more interesting characters who are there give them a larger role it's it's just one of those things but definitely we're seeing so with five stars possible with half stars five stars possible half stars in play I think I'm gonna give it two and a half I'm gonna I'm gonna land right in the middle at two and a half I thought about going to but no I think the practical effects and the the looks of the kills and the creativity of the kills I think brings it up to that two and a half so I'm gonna be in the middle on this one now if you're watching this and you've already seen it go ahead and put some comments down here talk about your feelings about the film I see people loving this film there will be people who love this film there will be people who hate this film there will be people in the in between just like me so let's go ahead and talk down here go ahead spoilers are fine in the comments we can do that also do me a quick favor and hit that subscribe button if you can and you certainly can that is 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