Just before I went to start this post, I happened to notice that this will make my 1,600th post! I have slowed down in the last few years, but I'm still chugging along. I have decided to forgo my usual order of watching films for the rest of the year. Instead, I will catch up with some movies I have been wanting to watch instead. Over the next few reviews, except for tomorrow's I have decided to catch up with a couple of films that has Ellie Church in then, along with a movie from Scott Schirmer as well. I'm kicking things off with Skeletons In The Closet (2018). I had to rent this one in order to watch it, but I didn't mind doing that at all.
Jamie (Alaina Karner) is getting ready to watch her favorite show while her parents get ready to leave. It isn't long before Tina (Elizabeth Stenholt) shows up to babysit Jamie. This is the first time that Tina has been hired to babysit Jamie and she gets the cold shoulder from Jamie at first. Once Tina brings up scary stuff, Jamie becomes more talkative. That is until the show Skeletons In The Closet comes on, then she just wants to watch TV. Let's watch a movie with them, shall we?
Skeletons In The Closet is, I think anyway, considered an anthology film. It was written by Tony Wash, Jeremy Silva, and Johnny Hlousek. It was directed by Robert Patrick Stern, Tony Wash, and B.A. Lewandowski. This was a weird type of anthology film. The main story centers around Jamie as she watches TV and gets annoyed by her babysitter. Another story is with the hosts of the series, played by Ellie Church and Adam Michaels. Their backstory was interesting as TV hosts go. The Window killed her husband who is a living corpse in the basement. For the show, she goes down to watch horror movies with him. Then there are three shorts as well. Two of those are shown a lot, while the third one is hard to get a handle on because it is always cut away from to show Jamie and Tina. One short has to do with a mean grandmother who might just be demonic and the other short is about a couple of robbers hiding out in a junkyard that is said to be haunted. The last one was hard to figure out because they cut away from it the most or had other characters talking over it but it had characters from the other two shorts in it. While I didn't mind these three shorts, they ended up being more of a distraction than anything. The story with Jamie and Tina is what held my interest in the movie more than anything. The TV show that Jamie is watching was also fun thanks to the hosts. I didn't care about the shorts that the show was showing. If they never even showed any of the movies the hosts ended up talking about, I wouldn't have cared because it was funny by itself. I may have been curious as to what they were watching at times, but it wasn't that important. As much as I liked the hosts, it was Jamie and Tina I wanted to see more of. I loved the interaction between the two. Tina tells Jamie a good scary story after hearing a news report on the news. It is hinted at from there that there could be someone else in the house. This was teased a lot but never really explained until the end and then dropped. I guess I would have loved to have found out what happened next.
If I had to pick a short out of the three as a favorite, I would go with the robbers in the junkyard. In fact, that was what this movie was originally titled it would seem. I liked the story to it a lot with a hint of something ghostly going on. Didn't know if that was the case or if the one guy was just making it all up for some reason. I did like the first short as well, but not as much. It wasn't until the slight twist at the end that I liked it more than just thinking it was an okay short. I think my main problem with Skeletons In The Closet was it is just a weirdly structured anthology film. I'm not saying something new is bad, just that this something new didn't work. It was hard to concentrate on one story when it kept cutting between different stories.
The effects are pretty good here. Not overly gory but still gory in places. The effects are well done and I had no problems with any of them. The acting was great. I loved Alaina Karmer in her role. The smirks and hateful looks alone won me over but she does a very good job of acting outside of that as well. I also really liked Ekuzabeth Sternholt in her role as well. The two played off of each other very well. Of course, it is always great to see Ellie Church in a movie. I was happy to see that she has a fairly large role in the movie, though I would love to have seen more of her.
Skeletons In The Closet isn't a bad film despite the problems I had with it. I still enjoyed my time with it a lot and I look forward to watching it again someday. I'm glad I was able to rent it and thus help support the film in a small way. I didn't check to see if it is on Blu or DVD yet, but hopefully, it will be if it isn't already. If you haven't given in a chance yet, I hope that you do. There is just enough here to make it a good movie. Some don't seem to like it, but it has been gettings its share of good reviews. Happy New Year everyone!!
3 out of 5 I don't have any skeletons...okay, maybe one or two
Jamie (Alaina Karner) is getting ready to watch her favorite show while her parents get ready to leave. It isn't long before Tina (Elizabeth Stenholt) shows up to babysit Jamie. This is the first time that Tina has been hired to babysit Jamie and she gets the cold shoulder from Jamie at first. Once Tina brings up scary stuff, Jamie becomes more talkative. That is until the show Skeletons In The Closet comes on, then she just wants to watch TV. Let's watch a movie with them, shall we?
Skeletons In The Closet is, I think anyway, considered an anthology film. It was written by Tony Wash, Jeremy Silva, and Johnny Hlousek. It was directed by Robert Patrick Stern, Tony Wash, and B.A. Lewandowski. This was a weird type of anthology film. The main story centers around Jamie as she watches TV and gets annoyed by her babysitter. Another story is with the hosts of the series, played by Ellie Church and Adam Michaels. Their backstory was interesting as TV hosts go. The Window killed her husband who is a living corpse in the basement. For the show, she goes down to watch horror movies with him. Then there are three shorts as well. Two of those are shown a lot, while the third one is hard to get a handle on because it is always cut away from to show Jamie and Tina. One short has to do with a mean grandmother who might just be demonic and the other short is about a couple of robbers hiding out in a junkyard that is said to be haunted. The last one was hard to figure out because they cut away from it the most or had other characters talking over it but it had characters from the other two shorts in it. While I didn't mind these three shorts, they ended up being more of a distraction than anything. The story with Jamie and Tina is what held my interest in the movie more than anything. The TV show that Jamie is watching was also fun thanks to the hosts. I didn't care about the shorts that the show was showing. If they never even showed any of the movies the hosts ended up talking about, I wouldn't have cared because it was funny by itself. I may have been curious as to what they were watching at times, but it wasn't that important. As much as I liked the hosts, it was Jamie and Tina I wanted to see more of. I loved the interaction between the two. Tina tells Jamie a good scary story after hearing a news report on the news. It is hinted at from there that there could be someone else in the house. This was teased a lot but never really explained until the end and then dropped. I guess I would have loved to have found out what happened next.
If I had to pick a short out of the three as a favorite, I would go with the robbers in the junkyard. In fact, that was what this movie was originally titled it would seem. I liked the story to it a lot with a hint of something ghostly going on. Didn't know if that was the case or if the one guy was just making it all up for some reason. I did like the first short as well, but not as much. It wasn't until the slight twist at the end that I liked it more than just thinking it was an okay short. I think my main problem with Skeletons In The Closet was it is just a weirdly structured anthology film. I'm not saying something new is bad, just that this something new didn't work. It was hard to concentrate on one story when it kept cutting between different stories.
The effects are pretty good here. Not overly gory but still gory in places. The effects are well done and I had no problems with any of them. The acting was great. I loved Alaina Karmer in her role. The smirks and hateful looks alone won me over but she does a very good job of acting outside of that as well. I also really liked Ekuzabeth Sternholt in her role as well. The two played off of each other very well. Of course, it is always great to see Ellie Church in a movie. I was happy to see that she has a fairly large role in the movie, though I would love to have seen more of her.
Skeletons In The Closet isn't a bad film despite the problems I had with it. I still enjoyed my time with it a lot and I look forward to watching it again someday. I'm glad I was able to rent it and thus help support the film in a small way. I didn't check to see if it is on Blu or DVD yet, but hopefully, it will be if it isn't already. If you haven't given in a chance yet, I hope that you do. There is just enough here to make it a good movie. Some don't seem to like it, but it has been gettings its share of good reviews. Happy New Year everyone!!
3 out of 5 I don't have any skeletons...okay, maybe one or two
