End of February Movie Reviews: Three Stinkers to Avoid

I avoid watching bad movies like the plague, but even I’m not immune to falling victim to seeing the occasional stinker. Unfortunately for me, it was string of subpar movies in a row, as I wouldn’t recommend any members of the trio of films broken down in this final February edition of movie reviews. 

Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022)

XYZ Films, 93 minutes

Huesera: The Bone Woman is a mediocre Spanish horror film with a few decent ideas, but mostly poor execution. The movie centers on a woman expecting her first child who’s experiencing anxiety and mental anguish already, and then things turn substantially worse when a sinister entity begins haunting her.

There are a seemingly endless supply of horror movies that focus on a woman being forced to combat an evil entity of some sort while people in her life don’t believe what she’s going through. Smile is a recent example that springs to mind, and while that’s not a great film, it’s far more enjoyable than this one.

Huesera: The Bone Woman is a movie that would’ve benefitted from a few more drafts to its screenplay. Every character except our protagonist is one-note, and even she doesn’t feel truly fleshed out. We’re told how our protagonist, named Valeria, is supposed to feel by other characters. We can understand that she’s having difficulties with what’s going on in her life concerning her new pregnancy and being torn between her husband and a past lover, but almost everything feels super surface level with no real depth or understanding as to why she feels the way she does.

Another issue with the film is its pacing. With horror movies, we need to feel a sense of increasing dread, with also ramped up frightening moments, as we go. Here, some of the scarier shots are earlier on, with the movie mostly being the same level of scary until a scene at the climax. This is definitely a movie that drags despite a not long runtime.

Huesera: The Bone Woman does have an extremely creepy-looking bone woman that we see fleeting glimpses of, but there’s little else going for it. This is definitely one to skip, despite its generally positive reviews.

Grade: 4/10

Infinity Pool (2023)

NEON, 117 minutes

I really enjoyed writer-director Brandon Cronenberg’s 2020 sci-fi/horror film, Possessor, so I had high hopes for Infinity Pool. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite deliver.

Firstly, even more so than with Possessor, I would say that Infinity Pool feels more like an art project than a movie at some points. If you aren’t a fan of arthouse films, this is not a film for you. Infinity Pool is a body horror movie where even though I was always engaged with what was going on, I’m not sure it’s actually all that good.

As far as characters go, no one in Cronenberg’s picture acts at all how real people act or responds to situations in the way real people do, save for maybe our protagonist’s wife, Em, though she’s not a major character in the movie. That’s fine, of course, especially if the message of the story really hits, and I think this is a movie where the filmmaker cared more about the message and feeling of the story than its characters.

However, while the meaning of the movie, which is about the ultra-rich and the things they’re capable of getting away with, is crystal clear, it’s a topic that’s become such a popular one in movies and TV to dissect recently, that I’m beginning to get bored with it. TV’s Succession and White Lotus, along with the recent horror film, The Menu, are just some examples.

If you love really out-there horror artsy films and don’t mind a heaping of violence and depravity in your movies, you’ll probably like Infinity Pool. It’s just a little too out there for me.

Grade: 4.5/10

Sharper (2023)

Apple Original Films, 116 minutes

Now, for the first two movies I wrote about above, Huesera: The Bone Woman and Infinity Pool, though I didn’t enjoy them overall, I can see why some moviegoers might find value in them and like watching them. If you liked Huesera or Infinity Pool, I’m not going to debate you on them – it’s fine, I just thought they didn’t quite hit the mark. For Sharper, I feel differently, because Sharper is the worst type of movie that’s being made today.

There are lots of types of movies I don’t enjoy, but my biggest pet peeve that holds true across all genres of films is when characters don’t behave in the way that’s reasonable given the story they’re in. I know that I just wrote about how in Infinity Pool characters don’t act the way real people do, but that’s largely fine, because Infinity Pool is a movie where the version of the world being presented is a very different (much more artsy and disturbing) version of the world that we actually live in.

With Sharper, it’s an entirely different story, as we have characters who are supposed to be clever and intelligent making choices that make zero logical sense in the universe of the movie. Sharper is a film where the writers think “twists equals good” and load the movie with “twists” they think are smart, but are totally nonsensical when you think about them for more than a minute. It’s hard for me to discuss the plot further since it’s so loaded with potential “spoilers,” though really every twist we can see coming from a mile away.

Sharper is a movie made for people who not only don’t want to think when they watch films, but who actually want to become dumber for having seen a movie. It’s a movie that thinks its way cleverer and smarter than it actually is, and is also the exact type of trash you’d expect to go straight to a streaming service (which it did).

If you want an actual quality movie about con artists, I’d recommend the 2003 Ridley Scott-directed crime drama, Matchstick Men. As for Sharper, not only does the title stink, so does the finished product.

Grade: 2/10