Amizade Maldita

If you're going to go up against The Babadook you'd better make sure every aspect about the film is better and this film falls significantly short in every department.

That's not to say it's a bad film, it's just not as good as it could be. The difference between Z and The Babadook is that throughout the Australian horror we are constantly wondering wether the monster is real, but in Z we are pretty much dealt the full on monster creep early on so the sense of mystery and threat is diluted throughout the rest of the movie.

Story aside what really let this down was the poor quality of the special effects. The house fire in particular was laughably bad. The protracted final confrontation with the beast was a bit long winded and I kind of lost interest.

Not unwatchable but not as good as it could have been. If you haven't seen The Babadook definitely watch it after this.

I hadn't even heard about the movie "Z" from writers Brandon Christensen and Colin Minihan before I happened to stumble upon it by random luck. I picked it up, and the movie definitely had a horror sensation to the cover, so of course I needed no persuasion to sit down awn watch this 2019 movie.

While the storyline definitely had good moments, the movie was flawed. It was flawed to the point where it ultimately failed to raise above mediocrity. I mean, the concept of an imaginary friend being real has been used many times before, for sure. But the atmosphere in the movie was so foreboding and brooding that director Brandon Christensen had me expecting something grand when the imaginary friend, Z, was finally revealed...

In came a most atrocious CGI rendering of an abstract humanoid creature. Uhm, okay, what just went wrong there? The CGI was so bad that the movie almost lost me entirely in the curve. It was so atrocious to bear witness to, and the entire atmosphere and dread that was built up, vanishes like darkness before the rising sun.

The acting in the movie was good, just a shame that the movie was sort of restrictive in what they had to work with. I mentioned the storyline being good. And well, it was. But it just felt like the movie didn't really reach its fullest potential. And the ending of the movie was just a bit forced - predictable even. And for a horror movie, then "Z" was frightfully devoid of scary parts. I think the most scary part about the entire movie was actually the massive drawing that the child made on the wall - it was actually downright impressive.

All in all, not a bad movie, but hardly a memorable one either. I am rating "Z" a mediocre five out of ten stars - as the atrocious CGI killed it for me. I sat through the entire movie, as was adequately entertained, but this is hardly a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time.

Z is a gift that keeps on giving.

At first, they trick you into thinking that this is going to be an Insidious/Paranormal Activity/The Babadook mix (+all the Babadook rip-offs). It's rushed, doesn't make a whole lot of sense but still comes as an ok by-the-numbers horror that feels like it came straight from the early 2000s.

The second act is rushed through and then they just run out of the story. Then we get like a short sequel that is built into the main film.

I think that the idea came from a practical joke that was taken too seriously or an attempt to do something different. It probably felt ok on paper, but when turned into a film it just feels more comedic than scary.

The ending just goes off the rails, and again, this could've worked as a bizarre psychological thriller if done better.

You can see several interesting ideas here and there, but as a whole, the film doesn't work so well, mostly because of how disconnected from reality it is.

Keegan Connor Tracy was good in this, but you can see that at times she's just confused about what she is actually supposed to be playing.

Sadly, Stephen McHattie with all his potential was completely wasted in this.

It's not bad and I really want to like it, but there's just too much nonsense that prevents me from doing so.

Also, Z looks very different throughout the film and I'm not sure if this was intentional or not

I feel like I've missed something important, but probably not.

Now this review might sound a bit biased for some, I'm genuinely more scared of atmospheric slow-burn horror movies that tend to creep me out and cause goosebumps every now and then, psychological horror works more for me rather than bombastic and annoying jumpscares without substance, now with that said, therein lies the problem.

Z at first glance ticks the right boxes, it reminded me of Babadook, it started to resemble Hereditary which i was ready to embrace it as, but while those comparisons kept upping the ante as they escalated in both tone and their scare factor, Z on the other hand, does nothing despite having a easy to follow plot with one eerie twist that i wish they did more with, since this isn't a spoiler review i wont bother to give any details on that, but it became a make or break situation.

To summarize Z, it had a promising set up, there were genuinely scary moments that made my hair raise, but the last portions alongside no clear direction completely killed the momentum for me.

Final verdict: 6

Had it not been for the promising start and creep factor in some moments, i would've knocked the score by 2 and left it at 4.

This is a trend that more and more horror movies made in the last few years follow. "Z" is another one to add to that list, with a strong start that loses all sense of direction in the second half.

"Z" has the bones of a strong movie though. The main actress plays her role genuinely, and her acting interplay with the child actor is convincing. Most kids in horror movies nowadays get compared to the child in "Babadook" and this child actor is nothing of that whiny sort. He pulls off some well done solo shots. "Z" also looks great. The director manages to pull out everything he can out of his budget (which was around 400k), and produced a movie with the looks and direction five to ten times of the money that went into it. That in its own sense deserves credit, the movie's looks and sounds fantastic for the budget.

Where "Z" really begins to loose it's mark is in the direction of the plot, especially the second half. The beginning of the movie starts off well, and it's subtlety is jarring. It has jump scares few and far in between, relying more on atmosphere. The jump scares it does show are decently well done. Best of all, the characters actually act sane. They reacting to what happens like real people in real life would do, which is refreshing.

Right around the halfway point it looses its direction completely. It's a different movie, like the director switched out with someone else. "Z" turns into cheap jump scares galore, the characters devolve into morons, and the plot jumps off the path laid out by the first half of the film. This all ends with the last 20 minutes that had me peering out from hands over my eyes, not from the horror but from the cringe of the plot.

"Z" turns into a B level horror movie where gone was any sense of subtly and instead everything is presented to you at face value. Nothing against these type of horror movies, but with the potential the first half of the movie showed, it's hard to not be disappointed with how it ended. Still though, the director is one to keep an eye on. If he can learn from some of his mistakes, he can put out something worth watching all the way through. The first half of the film marks that his potential is there.