This time, the aliens are back, and they want… more of the same thing they wanted before, maybe? Not that it matters, because it’s all about the spectacle. But my own son, who was 6 ½ when I brought him to a screening, slept through about half the movie. Kids around 10 and older probably will be fine watching this sequel to the 1996 smash-hit blockbuster Independence Day. Rating: PG-13, for sequences of sci-fi action and destruction, and for some language. Just don’t bring the kids unless they’re teenagers. If you’re a fan of the genre, you’ll dig it. But director and co-writer Mike Flanagan has made a beautifully crafted horror film, filled with atmosphere and authentic period detail.
We also see the actual demon that takes over her body, and there are several terrifying deaths. The little girl says and does startling things and her wholesome appearance changes in disturbing ways as the evil builds within her. Soon, strange things start happening involving the younger daughter, Wilson’s Doris, who has connected with restless spirits who inhabited the family’s house decades earlier. One day, she brings home a hot new board game called Ouija to spice up her activities with her clients.
In this prequel to the 2014 horror movie Ouija, set in 1967, Elizabeth Reaser stars as a widowed fortuneteller living in Los Angeles and raising her two daughters (Annalise Basso and Lulu Wilson). But it’s got some supremely creepy imagery that will freak you out no matter how old you are. Cast as the bad guy, he imbues his line readings with the same strange, philosophical tone-of-voice he uses in his wondrous documentaries, making everything his finger-chewing, cloudy-eyed weirdo says in the film have the awful ring of truth to it – no matter how ludicrously conceived his character’s back story is.Rating: PG-13, for disturbing images, terror and thematic elements. Adding extra layers of barminess is Grizzly Man director Werner Herzog. The film – based on Child’s novel One Shot – sees McQuarrie and Cruise having fun with the concept as Reacher (Cruise) is called upon to get to the bottom of killing spree in which the gunman in custody may well be innocent. That innate Cruise-ness helps make all the lone wolf tropes inherent in the character much more palatable too it’s easy to buy into the fact that he’s an ex-military cop living off the grid because such a ridiculous, well-worn concept can no longer be played wholly straight. In lieu of having an actor who matches the physical description, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun) simply capitalises on Cruise’s larger-than-life persona so that when the character walks into a police station, a lawyer’s office or a bar, he still turns heads because he looks and acts like, well, Tom Cruise. True, his physical attributes fell short of the mark, but while the much remarked-upon height difference between the 5ft 7in Cruise and the eponymous 6ft 5in hero of Lee Child’s novels horrified Reacher’s literary fanbase, in movie terms, Cruise remains a good casting choice.