The Vow

Magandang pelikula!

Magandang pelikula!

Not really seeing where all the bad reviews are coming from, maybe they didn't finish the movie? Teresa shines, her acting ability is Oscar worthy. I went from thinking it was a haunting, to the omen, to midsummer, to real life. The greatest horror is reality and this movie nailed it. I was crying at the end, her pain was real.

Two stars for the pretty Teresa Palmer and her above average acting chops. But, there is so much here that is not explained--even at the end--except by saying that the Palmer character Rachel is severely mentally ill, and so assigns various roles to people she meets; some roles good, some evil. The director has this story all over the board, therefore nothing ultimately works and the story becomes a travesty of a Horror story.

Will admit was kind of uninteresting initially but stick to it for the acting..then the story proceeds nicely. Good screenplay. A decent watch, not bad as popularly described here.

My wife and I watched this in Shudder as she's a big Discovery of Witches fan and Teresa Palmer was in this. Unfortunately this was a mash up of several other films, with The Omen, Midsommar and Rosemary's Baby springing to mind, but without being anywhere near as good. Palmer does a lot of the heavy lifting, and does reasonably well with quite thin material. The reveal was unsatisfactory, with a character basically reading the exposition. On the whole, added nothing new to the genre.

Ok so this was surprisingly good for being on Shudder. I was surprised to see Teresa and Stephen in something hot on the heels of 'A Discovery of Witches' where I felt that they had intense chemistry. I wanted her to end up with him instead of Matthew Good. I think SC developed a crush on Teresa and pry agreed to do this lackluster film just so he could be around her some more. She's taken and just had her FOURTH child so my hopes are dashed of them getting together IRL HOWEVER I digress...I felt this was pretty good but the twist got me thinking I gotta go back and rewatch it to make sense of it. It makes sense now why the Dad was so removed from the kid. Teresa is excellent in everything and so captivating onscreen. You can't take your eyes off of her. And Stephen is a very fine looking man. They both definitely elevated this movie and I felt it was well acted overall. The little kid had a creep factor for sure. I thought he was a little girl at first. The only reason I took stars away is because it went a long way around to throw us off to get to the final twist. It would have been better had the whole folklore thing been legit and not a big concocted story to show mental illness. Also if she did kill her husband and son why wasn't she charged with anything? Wouldn't her getting into the wreck be involuntary manslaughter? She got distracted and it was her actions that got her son killed. Also if she pushed her husband by accident it would still be investigated and if she was indeed mentally unfit (as it seems to have been proven from her stay in what appeared to be a mental hospital in the recap) why wasn't she recommitted? I find it highly doubtful she'd just be able to drive off into the sunset. We are shown that she clearly is mental because she is still imagining her entire family alive including the one she made up. This isn't scary but it was creepy and I felt it was head and shoulders above many horror films so that is why I'm rating it so high. I'm biased when it comes to TP and SC. I'd watch them read the phone book. So while many might write this off I for one am giving it high marks. If you're a fan of Teresa and Stephen I don't think you'll mind it. Welp...I'm off to take care of my twins. JK I don't have any children...OR do I? Dundundun.

The Twin is a new horror film directed and partly written by Taneli Mustonen. Before this, he has directed more Finnish films. In the film, Rachel (Teresa Palmer) and Anthony (Steven Cree) move to Finland after a serious accident in which they lost one of their twin sons. Here, along with their surviving son Elliot (Tristan Ruggeri), they try to work through the trauma of the accident and put it behind them. Still, Rachel notices that Elliot begins to act strangely, as if he is still in touch with his deceased brother. Rachel asks for help from a spiritual person, who after an investigation soon determines that something demonic is going on with Elliot. This horror film uses many elements from other well-known horror films, but quickly comes across as a bit cliché. They use illusion dreams like in A Nightmare on Elm Street, the horror atmosphere and story elements from Insidious and a mysterious sexe like in Midsommar. All these different elements lead to a large build-up in the film, but the final end result is suddenly too simple. Because of all this mysterious structure you expect a better end result, but the film ends with a weakly substantiated plot twist. Because of this plot twist, many used elements come across as unnecessary and some of them should not have been in the film, because much of this build-up comes across as unnecessary at the end. For a horror film, the film itself does not come across as scary, because besides the mystery of the film, little exciting happens. Because of this, you even start to miss the effect of a simple jump scare, to provide some tension or keep you awake during the long-winded story. The film seems to be playing with shadows to build up tension, but the shadows appear to be just isolated objects in the scenes with no further meaning. Due to too many changes and adjustments between the scenes and missing information, the film also comes across as a bit unclear. Often the scenes seem to build towards something, but then move on too quickly to the next scenes without creating clarity or tension. Finnish director Taneli Mustonen does use elements and traditions from Finland, but besides bringing this culture to the fore in an interesting way, the plot twist ultimately leads to nowhere. Teresa Palmer does her best as the lead role, but due to the lesser script and the disappointing end result, this is not always easy for her. Compared to other horror films in which she has played, she also does a little less physically, because she was pregnant during filming. Still, she does a better job than Steven Cree, because the script leaves him more in the background with little to do. For Tristan Ruggeri, this is only his first acting work in a film. He knows how to deliver appropriate acting, but due to the lesser script and quality of the film, he unfortunately manages to make his role little special.

I hadn't heard about this 2022 horror movie "The Twin" from writers Aleksi Hyvärinen and Taneli Mustonen prior to sitting down to watch it. I stumbled upon the movie by random chance, and since it was a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to watch it. The movie's synopsis was adequate, as there is something about twins in horror movies that just have some appeal as in regard of possible spooky storylines. However, the storyline told in "The Twin" was just somewhat mundane and generic. And the slow pacing of the narrative just made it a downright struggle to sit through this movie. While the movie runs at 1 hour and 49 minutes, the slow paced narrative makes it seem closer to three hours. I found the storyline in "The Twin" to be somewhat without much of any appeal actually, and I have to admit that my interest in the movie was quickly waning as the storyline trotted on and on in an ungodly slow pace. "The Twin" has a rather small cast ensemble, so it was up to the cast to put on extraordinary performances to carry the movie. I will say that the cast actually put on fair enough performances, but it was just a shame that they had so little to work with from the script. For a horror movie, then director Taneli Mustonen took a swing and missed. This movie wasn't scary, especially not to a life-long horror aficionado such as myself. Sure, if you're new to the horror genre, then I will say that "The Twin" could offer something worthwhile. If you are a horror fan, then I wouldn't recommend you waste your time, money or effort on "The Twin". There are far better and more enjoyable new horror movies out there. My rating of "The Twin" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

I actually was enjoying this movie for the first three quarters of it, until the 'twist'. The ending is absolutely absurd. Giving it three stars is generous.