Every Day's A Holiday (2 Stars)

Mae West is always worth watching, but unfortunately "Every Day's a Holiday" gives her very little to work with. The story of a wanted criminal getting involved in a mayoral election is extremely dull, and I found the film a struggle to sit through.

Go West, Young Man (4 Stars)

"Go West, Young Man" is a simple little comedy, but I enjoyed it more than the other Mae West films that I've seen so far. Mae plays Mavis Arden, a famous movie star whose Rolls-Royce breaks down during a publicity tour, leaving her stranded in the country and staying at a local boarding house. There she takes a fancy to Bud Norton, a handsome young mechanic and inventor played by Randolph Scott, whose ambition is to develop a device for synchronising sound and film. Mavis sets about trying to seduce him, while her press agent Morgan does his best to prevent her from causing another scandal. It's a fairly slight story, but the film moves along nicely and has enough comic situations and Mae West one-liners to keep it entertaining.

Gladys, one of the maids at the boarding house, is a huge fan of Mavis Arden and is thrilled to have her idol staying there. Gladys is played by Isabel Jewell, who I found gorgeous. Even in a relatively minor role she outshines Mae West whenever she's on screen. Mae, of course, has the bigger personality and the film is built around her, but Isabel has a natural screen presence that I found much more appealing. She made more than 60 films in her 40-year career, but always in supporting roles. It's a shame she never became a big star.

Carrie [2013 version] (5 Stars)

This is the fifth time I've watched the 2013 version of Carrie, which makes this review difficult. I said most of what I wanted to say about the film in my previous reviews, particularly in 2019. But having watched it again, there's one thing I want to emphasise.

I still think it's a very good film. In fact, I still prefer it to the 1976 version. Chloe Grace Moretz is excellent as Carrie and, for me, gives a better performance than Sissy Spacek. Julianne Moore's Margaret is even more deranged than Piper Laurie's version, and I like the way the new film gradually develops Carrie's telekinetic powers rather than suddenly revealing what she can do when the story reaches the prom.

The prom sequence itself is another improvement. It lasts longer, giving the film more time to build up to the inevitable disaster. I also prefer the way the film moves almost immediately from the destruction at the school to the aftermath at Carrie's home. The whole thing feels more continuous.

Nevertheless, I don't think the film needed to be made.

When a film is remade, I think there are two things it has to achieve. It has to be close enough to the original for us to recognise the story, but it also has to be different enough to justify making it again. There should be something new to say or a different way of telling the story.

Carrie 2013 doesn't fulfil that second condition.

It was described as a new adaptation of Stephen King's novel rather than a remake of the 1976 film. Technically, I suppose that's true. But having watched both films several times, I find that distinction difficult to accept. The 2013 film is remarkably close to the earlier one, right down to individual scenes and snippets of dialogue. It's been modernised, with smartphones and social media replacing the technology of the 1970's, but that isn't enough to make it feel like a genuinely new interpretation.

And that's what makes my opinion slightly contradictory. I think the 2013 Carrie is better than the 1976 Carrie, but I also think the remake was unnecessary.

There are certainly differences, and some of those differences are precisely why I prefer this version. Moretz is a superb Carrie, Moore gives Margaret an appropriately disturbing quality, Carrie's powers are better developed and the prom sequence is more substantial. Miss Desjardin is also more appealing in this version. I particularly like her wild dancing at the prom.

But when I watch it, I can't escape the feeling that I've seen it all before.

Perhaps that's inevitable when two films are based on the same novel. But there's a difference between telling the same story and making the same film. I would have liked the 2013 version to take King's novel and do something substantially different with it.

Nevertheless, after five viewings, I'm still very fond of it. The fact that I can complain about its lack of originality while giving it five stars tells you everything you need to know about how much I enjoy the film.

So many films, so little time.

Success Rate:  + 0.8

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Tragedy Girls (5 Stars)

Apparently "Tragedy Girls" is unoriginal. That's what critics wrote when it came out in 2017. It's supposedly just a knock-off of those 1990's teen slashers.

Well, yes. It does look remarkably like a 1990's teen slasher.

That's the point.

McKayla and Sadie are two teenage girls who're obsessed with social media, popularity and serial killers. When they get the opportunity to learn from a serial killer, they use him to improve their own murderous careers. Because apparently getting good grades and going to university isn't ambitious enough.

The clever thing is that the film doesn't tell the story from the point of view of the victims. McKayla and Sadie are the slashers. We follow their plans, their friendship, their arguments and their increasingly elaborate murders. We sympathise with the two girls, We want to see them get away with murder.

And they do.

Most slasher films have a Final Girl. Tragedy Girls has two Final Killers.

The film eventually builds towards a prom massacre in which 124 students are killed. That's quite a lot of dead teenagers, even by slasher standards. And while everyone else is having a terrible evening, McKayla and Sadie are having the time of their lives.

Then they escape.

It's a remarkably audacious reversal of the genre. The film takes virtually every familiar teen-slasher convention and uses it for the benefit of the people who would normally be trying to avoid it. The teenagers are there. The high school is there. The killer is there. The gruesome deaths are there. The prom is there. The social-media obsession is there.

It's just that we've somehow ended up supporting the wrong people.

And that's why I find the criticism that the film is "unoriginal" so strange. Of course it's copying the conventions of 1990's teen slashers. It's deliberately copying them. The originality comes from what it does with them. Rather than parodying the genre from the outside, it moves the protagonists to the other side of the knife.

It also works surprisingly well as a straight slasher. There are plenty of kills, the film has a good sense of pace and it uses music much more effectively than the recent Scream films. It doesn't have quite the soundtrack presence of Scream 1-3, but at least the film remembers that a slasher benefits from having some music.

And then there's that ending. McKayla and Sadie are heading off to college, ready to begin a new chapter. In other words, they're going to college to get an education in serial murder.

Unfortunately, that's where the story ends.

I was lucky enough to see "Tragedy Girls". It never really got the general cinema release it deserved. It went straight to video in most countries and only had a tiny theatrical release in the US. A sequel was clearly being contemplated, but it never happened.

Which is a genuine shame, because the college sequel could have been wonderful. Put these two completely amoral teenage serial killers into a new environment with hundreds of fresh victims and give them four years to work on their social-media strategy. What's the worst that could happen?

Quite a lot.

It's a brilliant film, in my opinion the best slasher film of the last 25 years.

And if you think it's just a knock-off of 1990's teen slashers, you should watch it again.

This time, pay attention.

Bruce Almighty (5 Stars)

I haven't seen "Bruce Almighty" for at least 16 years, so I was curious to see how it would hold up. The answer is very well indeed. In fact, I'd forgotten just how good it is.

It's a silly film. Very silly in places. Jim Carrey is given the powers of God and naturally proceeds to have enormous fun with them. There are plenty of ridiculous moments and more than once I found myself thinking, "That's silly." But then I realised that the silliness is part of the reason the film works so well. This isn't a film that takes its premise seriously, but it does take its characters seriously.

Bruce is a television reporter who's convinced that God has it in for him. When he's given God's powers, he initially uses them to improve his own life. Why wouldn't he? Then he realises that he should be helping others, so he starts to answer prayers. He soon discovers that being God is more complicated than he imagined. You can't simply make everybody happy, answer every prayer and solve all the world's problems.

That gives the film rather more substance than I remembered. Underneath the comedy there are some surprisingly serious questions about God, free will, prayer and what people actually expect from a higher power. Morgan Freeman is particularly good as God. He doesn't play him as some distant, solemn figure, but as a calm and slightly amused man who lets Bruce discover the answers for himself.

And then there's the love story. Bruce's relationship with Grace is not just an excuse to give the film a romantic subplot. It's an important part of his journey. Bruce spends so much time thinking about what he wants that he fails to appreciate what he already has. His newfound powers eventually teach him something that omnipotence can't give him.

Jim Carrey is perfectly cast, of course. This is the sort of role that allows him to be as manic and ridiculous as he wants, but he also manages to give Bruce enough warmth to make the more emotional scenes work. Jennifer Aniston is equally good as Grace, while Morgan Freeman looks as though he's having a great time being God.

What surprises me most is how well the whole thing hangs together. It's a comedy, a love story and a film that asks some genuinely interesting questions about God, all without becoming too heavy or losing its sense of fun.

It's also a film that doesn't deserve to be forgotten. I'd more or less forgotten it myself, which is why I'm glad I decided to watch it again after all these years. Sometimes a film can disappear into the past simply because there are so many others competing for our attention. "Bruce Almighty" deserves another look.

Life is too short for bad movies. Fortunately, this isn't one of them.

Success Rate:  + 4.0

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Wie Feuer und Flamme (5 Stars)

There are some films you remember for the story, some for the characters and some because of the way they make you feel. "Wie Feuer und Flamme" (engl. "Like Fire and Flame") is a film that manages all three.

One of the things I love about the film is its atmosphere. The East Berlin scenes are particularly gloomy. The grey skies, muted colours and bleak architecture give the city a distinctive look, while the cinematography never feels as though it's trying too hard to tell us that this is a grim place. It simply looks that way.

The West Berlin scenes have a very different feeling, and I recognised some of the details immediately. Nele lives with her parents in a commune (Wohngemeinschaft), sharing their home with other people. That rang a particularly strong bell with me because I lived in West Berlin in 1976 and spent my first four weeks living in a WG. There were eight adults and a child. It was simply part of Berlin life at the time.

The music is a big part of the film's appeal. It gives the story an energy and a youthful quality that fits the characters perfectly, but it also helps establish the period without turning the soundtrack into a collection of obvious musical signposts. The music and the cinematography work together particularly well. There are moments when the images, the atmosphere and the soundtrack combine and the film becomes almost nostalgic, even though the story itself is taking place in a divided city.

And that's what makes the film work so well for me. It's a love story, but it's also a film about a particular place and time. The political division between East and West Berlin isn't just background decoration. It affects the lives of the characters and makes their relationship more complicated, but the film never forgets that these are young people falling in love.

I also like the fact that the film feels lived-in. It doesn't constantly explain Berlin to the audience. It simply shows people living there. The little details are more convincing than big political statements.

Five years had passed since my last viewing, so there was always the possibility that the film wouldn't have the same effect on me this time. It did. In fact, I appreciated some things even more than I did before, particularly the cinematography, the music and those little glimpses of the Berlin I remember.

"Wie Feuer und Flamme" was originally #91 in my Top 100, but it got pushed out by other films. That was a mistake. After watching it again, I don't know what I was thinking. I've pit it back in my top 100, where it belongs. And I shan't let it get knocked out again.

Das Leben der Anderen (5 Stars)

Some films are slow because not very much happens. Others are slow because they have something more important to do than keep the story moving. "Das Leben der Anderen"  (engl. "The Lives of Others") belongs firmly in the second category.

Set in East Germany in the 1980's, the film takes us into the world of the Stasi, but what makes it different from many other films about life in the DDR is that we don't see the Stasi purely from the point of view of its victims. We spend a great deal of time with the people doing the watching.

Captain Gerd Wiesler is assigned to monitor playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland. Wiesler listens to their conversations, observes their private lives and reports anything that might be considered suspicious. At first he is simply doing his job. He believes in the system and has no apparent difficulty with what he is doing.

But then, gradually, something changes.

And it's not only Wiesler. One of the film's great strengths is that the Stasi isn't represented as one-dimensional. There are people who genuinely believe in what they are doing, people who are simply following orders, people interested in their careers and people prepared to abuse their position for their own personal purposes. The machinery of the state is made up of human beings, and that makes it considerably more disturbing.

The film is wonderfully atmospheric. There are no car chases, explosions or unnecessary attempts to manufacture excitement. The tension comes from people talking in rooms while somebody else is listening. A pause, a glance or a change in someone's voice can be more suspenseful than an action sequence.

It's obvious to compare it with other films about the DDR and the Stasi, films such as "Wie Feuer und Flamme" and "Der Rote Kakadu", but "Das Leben der Anderen" approaches the subject from a different direction. Those films show us what it was like to live under the system. This one takes us inside the system itself.

And that's what makes it so fascinating.

The performances are excellent, particularly Ulrich Mühe as Wiesler. He manages to say an enormous amount without saying very much at all. You can almost see his thoughts changing as he listens to the people he has been ordered to spy on.

It's a beautifully controlled film. Nothing is rushed and very little is overstated. Even when the story becomes deeply emotional, it doesn't resort to melodrama. The film trusts the audience to understand what is happening.

And then comes the ending. It's one of those endings that doesn't need a grand speech or an emotional explanation. A small gesture says everything.

"Das Leben der Anderen" is a brilliant film. It takes its time, but that's precisely why it works. The atmosphere, the performances and the gradual transformation of its characters are far more important than action or pace.

Some films are about what happens.

This is a film about what happens inside people.

Success Rate:  + 36.7

Sympathy For Delicious (4 Stars)

A wheelchair-bound DJ discovers that he has the power to heal other people, but not himself. That's the straightforward part of "Sympathy for Delicious". The less straightforward part is figuring out what the director, Mark Ruffalo, is actually trying to say with it.

The clue is in the title. "Sympathy for Delicious" is a play on the Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil", but the film also has a much closer connection to "You Can't Always Get What You Want". Dean desperately wants the one thing his miraculous power cannot give him: the ability to walk again. Instead, he gets the opportunity to heal other people, and promptly turns his gift into a way of making money, gaining fame and getting involved with a rock band.

And that's really the point. Dean spends most of the film wanting the wrong thing. His physical disability is only part of what needs healing. The real journey is learning to accept what he cannot change and discovering that helping somebody else can be more important than getting something for himself.

It's a good idea, and once I understood what Ruffalo was getting at, I appreciated the film considerably more. But I have to admit that I didn't fully get it while I was watching it. There are so many different elements competing for attention – religion, faith healing, rock music, fame, poverty and Dean's own bitterness – that the message is buried.

So don't expect a conventional story about a man who discovers he can perform miracles. The miracles are really there to ask what "healing" actually means. And as the Stones already told us, you can't always get what you want. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get what you need.

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World Trade Center (3 Stars)

I didn't enjoy the film. For long sections the picture is so dark that I found it difficult to follow what was happening. I'm sure that's realistic, but I don't watch films to experience exactly how little the characters could see. I much prefer the way films handled night scenes in the 1960's, with a blue tint that tells us it's night without actually making the screen almost black.

I was also disappointed that we never actually see the planes hit the towers. I understand the decision, but those are the images that immediately come to mind when you think of September 11th. Perhaps "World Trade Center" is too concerned with realism for my taste. I found it a rather dull experience.

Success Rate:  + 0.5

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Amazing Grace [2018] (5 Stars)

I saw "Amazing Grace" in the cinema in 2019 and loved it, so I'm glad I finally have it on Blu-ray. I'm not particularly a fan of Aretha Franklin as a soul singer, but as a gospel singer she's phenomenal. Watching her perform in a church, backed by the Southern California Community Choir, is an extraordinary experience. The picture quality is poor, especially on the first evening, but I can forgive that. The footage was lost and unreleased for years, so it's better to have it like this than not at all.

There's something rather surreal about seeing Mick Jagger dancing at the back of the church. Perhaps the Spirit was moving him. Or perhaps Mr Sympathy For The Devil just couldn't help himself.

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The Himalayan (3½ Stars)

Ching Lan is framed for the murder of her husband, so she goes on the run with her childhood friend, Little Hu. They take refuge in a Tibetan temple where they're trained in esoteric kung fu, preparing them to return and take their revenge.

The problem is that it took me more than half an hour to work out exactly what was happening. Too much of the story is skipped over, while the training at the temple goes on far too long. We've seen the old kung fu routine where the novice carries water or stones up a mountain many times before, but here it really does seem to go on forever.

That's a shame because the fighting is good when it finally happens. Unfortunately, there's not enough of it. When the characters gathered for the final battle, I checked the time and saw there were only 12 minutes left. That's much too late for a martial arts film to get to its main event.

Not a bad film, but it could have been much more exciting.

The Tournament (3½ Stars)

I was shocked to hear Angela Mao's character say that Thai boxing is stronger than kung fu. That sounds almost blasphemous coming from a 1974 Chinese martial arts film. The Thai boxing scenes didn't do much to convince me. They were sterile and lacked the excitement I was hoping for.

The film improves considerably when Angela finally gets to use some proper kung fu. The fights in the middle and especially towards the end have much more energy, and this is where Angela Mao comes into her own. She's such an impressive martial artist that it's a shame the film doesn't make better use of her.

It's one of those Angela Mao films where the star herself is more entertaining than the film around her.

So many films, so little time.

Sisu: Road to Revenge (4½ Stars)

As my regular readers have noticed, I've been having a disappointing run of sequels lately. I hoped "Sisu: Road to Revenge" would break the run. It does.

It's 1946. Aatami Korpi returns to Karelia, now occupied by Russia, to dismantle his old house and take it back to Finland. A Soviet officer takes exception to this and gives chase.

It's slower to get going than the first film, but once it gets going, it really gets going. There's more gore, more mayhem, and Aatami gets considerably more battered this time around. It's a wonderfully insane action film.

Success Rate:  - 1.2

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Scream 7 (4 Stars)

It's OK. That's probably the best way I can describe it. I enjoyed watching it, but when the final credits rolled I felt that something was missing.

For a start, there aren't enough teenagers. That might sound like a strange criticism, but this is supposed to be a teenage slasher movie. The teenagers have always been an important part of the formula, and there simply aren't enough of them here. There are too many adults and not enough of the young characters who made the earlier films so much fun.

On the positive side, Sidney Prescott and Gale Weathers are still a great combination. The chemistry between them works. It always has. Put Sidney and Gale together and there's an instant familiarity that reminds you why these characters have survived through so many films.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel the same way about Sidney's husband Mark. He irritated me almost from the moment he appeared. He has no charisma, adds very little to the story and, frankly, I wasn't sorry when Ghostface killed him.

In fact, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then it was revealed that he'd survived.

"Oh no!" I thought. "That means he'll be back in the next film".

And then there's Ghostface. Or, more accurately, Ghostfaces.

Yes, there are three killers again. I don't actually have a problem with that. Scream has done multiple killers before and it can work very well. The problem here is the motivation.

Karl Gibbs is basically random. He's talked into becoming a killer by Marco Davis, who's the real brains behind the operation. And Marco, in turn, has been talked into it by Sidney's jealous neighbour, Jessica Bowden.

That's quite a chain of events just to get to a group of people wearing Ghostface masks.

The trouble is that none of their motivations are particularly convincing. When the killers are finally revealed, you're supposed to have that wonderful Scream moment when everything suddenly makes sense. Instead, I was thinking "Why?" And then, when the explanation came, I was still thinking "Why?"

That's disappointing, because the identity and motivation of Ghostface are such an important part of the fun. The best Scream reveals make you look back at the film and realise that the clues were there all along. Here, the explanation feels more like the writers needed three people to be Ghostface and then had to find a reason for each of them to be involved.

Having said all that, I didn't hate "Scream 7". Far from it. It's entertaining, there are some good kills, and Sidney and Gale are still fun to watch together. I just don't think it works as well as the best films in the series.

It's OK.

But when you're watching a Scream film, "OK" isn't good enough.

Success Rate:  + 2.8

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Megan 2.0 (4 Stars)

I loved the film "Megan", stylised as "M3GAN". It was a simple but brilliant horror film with a great idea at its centre. Megan was created to protect a young girl, but her interpretation of that job became increasingly murderous. It was funny, creepy and, most importantly, it didn't need to complicate things. "Megan 2.0" takes a different approach.

The sequel is turned into something closer to a science-fiction action film, with a new AI threat, military technology, conspiracies and one plot twist after another. There are some entertaining moments and Megan herself is still the best thing about the film, but the story has become unnecessarily complicated. It's still a good film, but it's disappointing in comparison with the original. The first film knew exactly what it wanted to be; the sequel seems to have forgotten.

Success Rate:  + 0.6

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Heavier Trip: Road to Wacken (4 Stars)

Not as good as the first film.

Too much comedy.

Not enough music.

But Babymetal is cute.

Lust for a Witch (4 Stars)

The first time I watched this film I was a bit confused. It looked like a Medina film, but not quite. It features four of the regular actors from the early Medina films, Evan Stone, Alexandre Boisvert, Nicole Sheridan and Rebecca Love. I was particularly curious about the director, Michael Windsor, who's never made any other films. I wrote to Fred Olen Ray and received this reply:

"That movie has a long history. It was made by a British adult video company called Unionjaxx/RudeBrit. We used to rent them an office and some warehouse space when we had a large presence on Winnetka. Adult stuff had just become legal in the UK and they were trying to distribute their product in the US but it was awful. They wanted to make something here and came over with one of their starlets Poppi Morgan. They hired Evan Stone to put it together for them. We agreed to do their music tracking, special effects and titles in exchange for a softcore cable friendly version, but it was not up to our level of acceptability and we sat on it as being unusable for maybe what seems like a decade. I finally cut it down as far as it could go and still be a feature when I needed something to release one month and it maybe sold 1000 units. I don't remember. Windsor was one of the Brits. His wife was also one of their UK starlets known for having the biggest tits in England. Her names escapes me".

Today I did some research and found the answer. Michael Windsor was a pseudonym. His real name was Michael John. His wife was the actress Tanya Hyde, who was promoted as having the largest breasts in England.

Fast & Furious 10 (4 Stars)

Dante Reyes is completely insane.

That's not meant as an insult to Jason Momoa's performance; it's probably the best thing about the film. Dante is the son of Hernan Reyes, the drug lord Dom and his crew brought down in Rio in "Fast Five". Dante witnessed his father's downfall and has spent twelve years planning his revenge. He doesn't simply want to kill Dom. That would be far too easy. He wants Dom to suffer, and he wants to destroy everything Dom loves along the way.

Dante's plan is so elaborate that Dom and his family are constantly several steps behind him. He manipulates the authorities, frames Dom's crew for a disaster in Rome, steals the surveillance technology known as God's Eye and eventually focuses his attention on Dom's young son, Little B. But Dante isn't interested in simply kidnapping the boy. Everything he does is part of a carefully constructed game in which Dom is forced to watch his family being destroyed one piece at a time.

And Dante enjoys every second of it.

The film eventually brings the two men back to Brazil, where Dante recreates the circumstances of his father's death. Dom manages to save Isabel, Elena's sister, but Dante escapes with God's Eye and uses it to track Little B. The chase eventually moves to Portugal, where Jakob attempts to protect his nephew. Jakob sacrifices himself, destroying a group of Dante's men and giving Dom the opportunity to rescue his son.

You'd think that would be the end of Dante's plan. It isn't even close.

Dom and Little B head towards an airfield, believing that Aimes, the head of the Agency, is going to help them escape. Instead, Dante reveals that Aimes has been working for him all along. Aimes shoots down the plane carrying Roman, Tej, Han and Ramsey, apparently killing them all. Dante then traps Dom and his son on a dam with two enormous tanker trucks racing towards them from opposite directions.

Dom does what Dom does. He drives his car off the side of the dam, races down the concrete slope and escapes the explosion. For a few seconds, it looks as though he's actually beaten Dante.

But, of course, Dante has thought of that too.

The entire dam has been rigged with explosives. Dom and Little B are now stranded at the bottom with no car and nowhere to go. Dante detonates the explosives and the film cuts to black.

That's the end of the film.

And then we wait.....

I'm perfectly happy to accept that "Fast & Furious 10" isn't meant to be a complete story. It was intended to launch the final chapters of the saga, and a cliff-hanger was always going to be part of the plan.

But there's a difference between ending a film on a cliff hanger and simply stopping halfway through the story.

When I saw "Fast & Furious 10" in the cinema, I gave it five stars. I assumed that the next film would follow fairly soon and that I'd get the answers to all those questions before too long. Three years later, I'm still waiting.

So now the ending doesn't have quite the same effect. Dom and Little B are apparently about to be blown to pieces. Roman, Tej, Han and Ramsey have apparently just been killed in a plane crash. Jakob has sacrificed himself. Dante has won. And we're expected to sit here for years wondering how everybody is going to survive.

Because we all know they're going to survive.

This is Fast & Furious. People come back from the dead in this franchise. Gisele, who was supposedly killed in "Fast & Furious 6", turns up alive in a submarine at the end of this very film.

So the cliff-hanger isn't even particularly suspenseful. It's just irritating.

I like "Fast & Furious 10". I like it a lot. Dante is a wonderfully deranged villain, the action is spectacular and the film is enormous fun. But that ending has now cost it something.

If "Fast & Furious 11" had arrived in 2024, I'd probably still be giving "Fast & Furious 10" five stars. But three years of waiting for the story to continue is a different matter.

A cliff-hanger is supposed to make you desperate to see the next film.

It isn't supposed to make you think the filmmakers have forgotten to finish the film.

Success Rate:  - 0.1

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Five Nights at Freddy's (4 Stars)

• Mike Schmidt struggles to keep custody of his younger sister Abby.
• Mike is haunted by the kidnapping of his younger brother Garrett.
• Mike takes a night security job at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.
• The restaurant's animatronics come alive and attack intruders.
• Abby befriends the supposedly murderous animatronics.
• The animatronics are possessed by murdered children.
• Mike dreams about Garrett and the murdered children.
• Mike discovers that the murdered children were killed at Freddy's.
• The policewoman Vanessa knows the truth about Freddy's and its history.
• The children were murdered by the serial killer William Afton.
• Afton is Vanessa's father and Garrett's kidnapper.
• Afton murdered the children while wearing the Spring Bonnie suit.
• Abby helps the murdered children realise that Afton betrayed them.
• The children turn against Afton and drag him away.
• Afton is trapped inside the Spring Bonnie suit.
• Vanessa is seriously injured and falls into a coma.
• Mike and Abby survive and remain together.

Success Rate:  + 12.9

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Pearl (5 Stars)

Müde bin ich, geh zur Ruh,

Schließe beide Äuglein zu.

Vater, lass die Augen dein

Über meinem Bette sein.

Hab ich Unrecht heut getan,

Sieh es, lieber Gott, nicht an.

Deine Gnad und Christi Blut

Machen alle Schaden gut.

Kranken Herzen sende Ruh ,

Nasse Augen schließe zu.

Lass den Mond am Himmel stehn

Und die stille Welt besehn.

---

I am tired, I go to rest,

And close both my eyes.

Father, let your eyes

Be upon my bed.

If I have done wrong today,

Do not look upon it, dear God.

Your grace and Christ's blood

Make all harm right.

Send peace to sick hearts,

Close wet eyes.

Let the Moon stand in the sky

And watch over the silent world.

Success Rate:  + 8.1

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