thalassafischer

Inhabitants is a low budget and extremely poorly researched attempt at a religious horror film. I thought it might be funny, there was something about certain scenes in the film that made me think I might be watching a satirical horror comedy but no!

It just came across as a non-religious person or maybe a random Evangelical trying to write a movie about Catholics and New Age people.

What makes it so terrible is that it sucks you in for a while if you're willing to meet it halfway. I would have liked to stop watching it much sooner, if only I suspected just how crappy it would be.

Season 2 of Shiny Happy People just dropped, and in the beginning I wasn't too enthused compared to Season 1. The first season on the Duggar clan is absolutely shocking and unsettling. I wrote a long rambling review of it at the time because it shook me so much. It was incredibly eye opening, and the kind of child abuse along with objectification and dehumanization of women in these quiverful fundie homes is outrageous.

But Season 2 actually gives a story that is extremely relevant to what is happening in the United States in the year 2025. The undertones of brainwashing, violent boot camps and politicization of church seems to have all started here somehow. I don't enjoy these kinds of late 80s or 1990s aesthetics, it isn't fun for me, and I really really cannot stand commercial Evangelical culture. I think it is lame, stupid and it lacks creativity compared even to Mormons as well as Catholics and other religious groups. It is such a turn off that it boggles me how it attracts so many other people.

But if you watch each episode, it pays off. Trust me.

First off, it is pretty weird that I think a film that actually called itself The Bye Bye Man (what is this, Teletubbies? Elmo?) has potential at all. I avoided it for years because I couldn't believe that a film called The Bye Bye Man was marketed for anyone over the age of 8.

Stupid toddler name aside, there are elements of this film which would work if someone was actually a good director. There is nostalgia, stylish 1960s flashbacks, a charming small town, a haunted house, gray drizzly days, a library and even a train! When the girlfriend character began coughing I immediately thought Ah, the tuberculosis epidemics of the 19th and early 20th centuries! We are going somewhere! Look her boyfriend is looking for old papers in a library!

No such luck. This movie is for morons.