Mortal Kombat II (2026)

 

Mortal Kombat II (2026)

 

6/10

Starring

Karl Urban

Adeline Rudolph

Jessica McNamee

Josh Lawson

Ludi Lin

 

Directed by: Simon McQuoid

 

Mortal Kombat II is actually fun to watch, but the issue I had with it, and I think many will, is that it seems the show wanted to focus on big-time actor Karl Urban, with the hope of drawing more people to come see it.

I liked the effects, and right from the start the show is packed with a lot of fights, which keeps going fight after fight, making it easy to enjoy the film because, if not for the action, the bad dialogue and cheesy lines would have made this a disaster.

Now special effects wise and acting wise, I actually was impressed by the cocky Johnny Cage, played by Karl Urban. It was not too flimsy or too serious, it was played with the right touch of both to make you like the character, even if the events around him were not pleasing.

Mortal Kombat 2 follows from part 1, but the good thing is I went to watch it with someone who has not seen part 1 and knows nothing about the whole thing, yet was still able to keep up because part 2 is very good in that aspect of the writing. It fills you in on things, except the Scorpion and Sub-Zero biff, so Earthrealm’s fighters are ready to defend their realm.

This time the real Mortal Kombat is taking place, not just the path to it, which I also liked.

So Earthrealm fighters go one on one with their Outworld counterparts, and there are five fights, with the group that has more fighters standing winning.

But Earthrealm is short one fighter, so Johnny Cage, a washed-up actor, is brought into the team while Liu Kang, Sonya, Jax, and Cole train for a brutal conflict that could decide the fate of Earth.

Now the many directions this show could have taken that would have made this a masterpiece were ignored, instead the show created and forced many situations just to make Johnny Cage, Karl Urban, the star. They wanted to make him the focus, and when in the end they needed to destroy the amulet that held Raiden’s power, it had to be his shadow kick that did it, not the blast from Jade, the laser from Kano, or the fire from Scorpion.

I felt that was bad writing on display, and the way the show handled Kung Lao cutting Raiden, then trapping his powers, was just filled with holes.

How come Raiden did not heal instantly, but Shao Kahn does when he had the amulet? How come Raiden then healed instantly when he was about to be attacked by Shang Tsung?

Look, this is a fine film, which I enjoyed watching in the cinema, but I will advise you to go see this with your brain switched off, or else you are going to hate this movie and wish the writers made a better effort.

 

Incarnation (2022)

 

Incarnation (2022)

 

3/10

 

Starring

Tsai Hsuan-yen

Huang Sin-ting

Kao Ying-hsuan

Sean Lin

RQ

Directed by: Kevin Ko

 

 

The movie starts with an idea of hope, then it just ends the way I expected it to, everyone dies.
Oops, spoilers.

This movie borrows ideas from The Blair Witch Project and The Ring, but the bottom line is, I did not like it. I was asked to see it by my wonderful sister from another mother, because she wanted to hear my thoughts on her thoughts about the movie. So, looking forward to that discussion.

I expected a fun time seeing this, but what I got instead was that feeling that this movie wants to drag out fear in me rather than actually make me scared. Halfway into the movie, and I have to be honest, it felt like nothing was even happening.

Some things in this movie, makes me wonder the logic or common sense in these people’s decision.

Rohan and her two friends go to a village to investigate whether the supernatural things done there are real, and then weird things start happening. One of which is, the people who conduct the rituals locked them in a room after being asked to follow their rules and they refused. They break out, and instead of now leaving, they decide, “let us sneak around some more.”

Then they find a girl who is in critical condition, instead of leaving with her to the hospital, one of them team decides to go explore a spooky tunnel and the other follows.

I was like, call me stupid, but this does not make sense.

But this movie all together does not add up to anything remotely coherent.

In this movie, the child actors are just amazing, they carry the movie better than the adults do.

So what is this movie about? Well, as I said above, a lady named Rohan went to a village with two of her friends to cover a spiritual ritual. Rohan happens to be pregnant, and when they get there, she is asked to leave.

As you can guess, she does not, and they start sneaking around recording things they were told not to. What happens next is exactly that, the two men go to explore the tunnel and never come back, or never came back the same.

So what happens to Rohan? Well, she has her child, and she suffers a mental breakdown because of it, putting her child into foster care.

Later, she gets the child back, and then weird things start happening on day one of the child being back with her.

It is obvious the time in the village something has entered the child, and that thing wants to kill everyone and anyone who saw the footage of the tunnel.

One of the other issues I have with this movie is the time jump between now and six years ago. It just happens, and I always have to catch myself to be sure what time period I am looking at.

There are also times when the found footage does not make sense. There is a moment where she is fleeing with the man who helped care for her daughter, and she is recording. Then later, when she feeds her daughter and the spiritual horrors start to happen, she goes to the shop of the couple who helped her, pushing her child in a wheelchair while recording everything with a camera.

I am like, time and place.

In the end, was I scared? No.

I just felt like this is why I do not watch horror movies anymore, because they do not make sense, and the fear factor is not real to me anymore.