HK_Key-Si_HK

Only one year after "The Beyond", director Hasraf Dulull releases his next take on the Sci-Fi genre in form of "2036 Origin Unknown". And once again we get a movie that is quite boring. Even more than "The Beyond". For pretty much the entire runtime Katee Sackhoff (who is mostly known for the lesbian merc who wanted to get laid by Riddick...) is alone in one room, communicating with the A.I. system of the ship or her character's sister via a monitor. And here we get the main problem. Let's face it, Katee Sackhoff is not a Tom Hanks kind of actress, to pull this off properly and you feel that very early on in the movie. She does a decent job working with what she is given, but in the end this movie is very monotone and yes, boring. On top you do get some shots from "Mars", but nothing that even get's close to look good at all. If you are looking for that, watch "The Martian". "2036 Origin Unknown" doesn't feel terrible or unwatchable, it just feels like a waste of time. Even for hardcore Sci-Fi fans.

Watching "The Wailing" is quite an undertaking. With a runtime of almost 3 hours this Korean Horror-Triller is a shear beast. Unfortunately I feel like pretty much more than half the runtime should have been cut. "The Wailing" circles around in a seemingly endless "who done it" or, to be more precise, "who is it" and even though the acting of our lead Do-won Kwak was not too bad, the dialogues bothered me constantly. I find myself repeating this for about every Asian movie and I assume it must be a cultural thing. I mostly find the talk so generic and pointless, that you could reduce some movies to 5-10 important lines and let them be quiet for the entire rest of the runtime. And this movie is no different. The best acting performance was delivered by Jun Kunimura, who not only presented a great play with mimic, but also refused to talk much (I bet he knew I would appreciate that). The cinematography was pretty good and I liked the realistic appearing gore effects. Not so much on the "possessed zombies" but therefore on the crime scenes and such. With that many pro's and con's "The Wailing" ends up somewhere in the middle and can therefore be labeled average.