Masquerade

The majority of the film is a girl crying and Bella Throne driving. The twist does pay off towards the end, it did take me a second to figure out what was going on..so that redeems it but overall a bit boring.

I watched this movie, and by god is it boring.

The twist at the end, A neat one mind you, just cannot save this movie.

The acting at the start is bad, Thorne doesn't show the range this role needed.

Alyvia Alyn Lind is the only one who's acting is actually not that bad.

But ever since Daybreak i am expecting her to be able to make it far.

Well, the 2021 thriller "Masquerade" from writer and director Shane Dax Taylor wasn't exactly a groundbreaking addition to the genre of home invasions. But I am getting ahead of myself here.

As I sat down in 2022 to watch "Masquerade", I had literally never heard about the movie. I picked it up and saw that Bella Thorne was on the cover. And with it being a thriller that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to watch "Masquerade".

But I wasn't in for a particularly great movie experience. And even for a home invasion movie, which has a tendency of being tedious, if not downright boring, in my opinion, then "Masquerade" wasn't really leaving a lasting impression on me. Sure, I managed to sit through the entire movie, but I was only partially entertained.

Storywise then "Masquerade" was a generic one. The story written by Shane Dax Taylor just didn't offer the audience anything new or innovative. So you are in for a pretty straight forward and generic thriller without much of any surprises or twists.

It should be noted, though, that the movie had Bella Thorne, Alyvia Alyn Lind and Austin Nichols on the cast list, among others as well. So they definitely had an okay ensemble of performers in the movie. Just a shame that they only had a mediocre script to work with.

As for the characters in the movie, well talk about it being a bland serving of stale soup. The character gallery in "Masquerade" was just out the window. I didn't care one bit about any of the characters in the entire movie, and they could just as easily have been replaced by cardboard cut-outs. The characters were flat and had no distinguishable traits, personalities or quirks. So it was a massive swing and a miss.

As for the entertainment value of "Masquerade", well don't get your hopes up. Let's just leave it at that.

My rating of "Masquerade" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

There is nothing to look forward to.... Generally boring with no plot.

This is not the usual horror. The closest to this I can remember is Hushed. It has unpredictable end, it is mysterious, and it explains everything at the end, although bit too unclear or complicated. Unlike in most thrillers here we could see somebody so innocent looking getting badly hurt, so no censorship. Blood looks bit fake and story looks unfinished unfortunately. But at least unpredictable.