tiny_thanos

1/10

Spoilers

Oh boy, do I have thoughts about this one. This movie makes so many overt references to scenes in other movies that after a while I thought it was supposed to be a parody. This is obviously intentional, but the scene choices are weird and they come off as just references to other works. Yeah, we get it - you had a conversation about stealing in art and you're totally stealing in art and that's really meta and cute, but why point that out if you're not going to comment on it? This pattern of bringing something up and then ignoring it continues to the very end of the movie. The script makes a point of the fact that there's a family from Mexico - why? Christina is "slow" and "special" (_very_ classy, Mr. Rocca) - why? It turns out that [spoiler] Christina is related to the ghost [/spoiler] - why? Even the very end of the movie seems to do this with the movie itself. [spoiler] We get an epilogue from the couple, who are both alive, healthy, and on another vacation [/spoiler]. It's like the whole movie never happened. No one did anything, things just _happened_, and now both characters are exactly as they were before the movie started. In the same vein, the movie makes a point to repeatedly bring Christianity into focus. Early on, the movie lays out a simple assertion: if ghosts are real, then so is God. This isn't strictly true, but it is right in that an afterlife implies some spiritual reality outside of the way we define it in science. But whatever, let's hand wave away all other religions and accept the premise. There is also some talk about faith being "belief without evidence", then we're shown incontrovertible evidence that there is some spiritual force at work. By the movie's own rules we're not dealing with any character's faith. So again, a topic seems to be important to the writer, but they can't justify it being in the story. It's just... there, and it makes all of the religious talk seem preachy. The strangest part of this whole mess is that the couple are _actual_ YouTubers. The movie is basically just them doing what they normally do in some alternate universe where their house is haunted. **WHY**? This is some advanced, higher-dimensional cringe that just blows away all other conceited, narcissitic marketing attempts I've seen. Even if I were to be charitable and assume that a semi-popular travel vlogging couple are serious horror fans and just wanted to make their own movie for fun, the self-insertion is just lazy and tacky, not to mention unappealing. 8ight After is, at best, a confused and profoundly bad mess of a movie. It is also likely a cynical attempt at attention seeking and a quick cash grab. No matter who you are or what type of horror movies you like, this one will not appeal to you. Find another way to waste an hour and a half.