When I was active on Steemit, I used to write movie reviews- particularly horror movies. I had a little series called "Tapes from the Crypt" and it was actually where most of my friends and followers came from. Apparently it was my "knack", whereas now my writing has kind of gone a different direction. 


![screen-shot-2016-01-07-at-11-46-58-am.png](https://images.hive.blog/DQmYtTvuLNBr6DEp1G5yf8waHdapBmwRRy38mNJTGVbH9XZ/screen-shot-2016-01-07-at-11-46-58-am.png)


Since I got sick, I've been watching quite a few movies. As always for me, mainly horror. I have a Shudder subscription which I admire dearly; because as Stephen King once said, "the worst horror movie I ever saw was fucking great". Well, this certainly applies to my mentality. There's just something so special about the genre it really doesn't matter if it's the best movie I've ever seen or the worst. It's always entertaining. 

About a week ago I had actually begun writing a review for the film "Peninsula". I was interrupted by some pretty damaging news regarding my personal life and it left kind of a bad taste in my mouth and became something I didn't want to return to. I'm sure after I give it a little time, I will return to the draft and finish said review. 

I hadn't necessarily planned on doing another review anytime soon. I wasn't sure if the same audience had carried on over to HIVE, as I have seen few reviews during my time here. However, that is more likely due to communities and people I follow. I was reading a post this morning that mentioned CineTV, and I realized I had noticed a micro CineTV reward in my hive-engine wallet recently. Curious, I jumped over to the platform. It seems to be to be "a sign" that I should start writing reviews again. Regardless of whether or not anyone will read them, it is something I enjoy doing, and I'll take any excuse to get my fingers moving. 

# The Drone (2019)
Directed by Jordan Rubin



![The-Drone-Banner.webp](https://images.hive.blog/DQmTv2xoQfnBaTDWYuqKcsoUMo4z2SsTYzpCHAoSXPz5iX7/The-Drone-Banner.webp)
[Source](https://walkdenentertainment.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/The-Drone-Banner.jpeg)




Ok, so if we're going to be perfectly honest, I was not motivated solely to write a review today due to my discovery of the project. I'm not feeling amazing today, and I decided I was gonna hop on over to Shudder and watch a movie. Movies there seem to be added kind of in "waves"; and one of the recent additions I saw this morning was titled "The Drone". The cover art was, well, a drone. 

As mentioned by Mr. King above, this looked, well.. entertainingly stupid. I put it on for the laughs, and I didn't make it far before I said "OK, I guess this one is just dumb enough to write about". 

The first thing that made this movie stick out as abnormally stupid was the acting of the character in the opening sequence. I have, and I say this confidently, never seen such poor acting in my life. The dialogue added to this sentiment, and I honestly couldn't tell if the shitty dialogue was intentional or not. Upon catching the "drone criminal" at the beginning, a SWAT team member actually says, "well buddy, your days of raping and murdering are over". Roll title. I really couldn't tell if this was a comedy or not. 

That is, until, directly after the title, when who should be the first character to appear on screen, but Dirt Nasty. At this point, I was very confident the film was a spoof. Despite the fact I recently watched *The Strangers*, in which Glenn Howerton(Dennis, *It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia*) makes a cameo.. when I see Dirt Nasty on screen I ***know*** it has to be a parody film. If there are any films in which he plays a serious role in existence, please let me know about them. Or maybe don't. Actually, yeah don't. 

I really had high hopes for this movie. Well, I guess "high hopes" is a funny way to put it. I thought it would be funny. I thought that it was just stupid enough of a plot to laugh away and be submitted to some pretty good humor. I'm a big fan of horror/comedy films, but this one, while it had potential, missed a lot of opportunities to be entertaining. 

I *actually* had a difficult time throughout the film discerning whether or not I correctly categorized it as a comedy. I mean, it certainly was; but only because there are small hints throughout that it was meant to be. The movie seemed to mock a lot of our modern, internet age obsessions. The appearance of certain actors or character stereotypes. But like, you really had to look for it. 

Before I get to any spoilers, a quick synopsis. The film is about a serial killer who transfers his consciousness into his drone before being killed by a bolt of lightning(which he somehow manifested?); doing so by reading a binary sequence. The drone, "Ramsey", kills off Dirt Nasty immediately(I think this film would have been much better if they left him in), and then flees to a suburb to terrorize a young married couple. 

The writing seems to lack direction. It almost seems to me as if there was either a person involved in this who wanted it to be a comedy but got caught up in trying to make the story make sense, or someone involved that wanted it to be serious and wouldn't let the comedic aspects come out too much. It would have been a great premise for a comedy/horror trope, but instead, it seemed to bounce back and forth between a parody film and a serious(ly bad) film. It was a good idea, but it didn't work. That isn't to say I wasn't entertained, though. I was just sorely disappointed. 

# **Herbert's rating: 3.5/10**

# Spoilers 


![drone2.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmP1wjTjQwKVCEgLzHDmBh2hoU2XNeUp1ZsmzZdkayfNsx/drone2.jpg)
[Source](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HLE51PDODas/XE9C7u7V5aI/AAAAAAAALUU/bd0bv7QpOyk4U8vBUHq10FrqOtxIVk4tgCLcBGAs/s1600/the%2Bdrone%2Bmovie%2Bslamdance.jpg)


This is the way I had landed on writing my reviews back on Steemit. I would write a little bit about the film, and then go into the spoilers section. Not that it really matters with this film, I highly doubt anyone on HIVE is going to see this and be inspired to watch "The Drone". But, nevertheless, can't piss people off, either. 

So, as I said before, this movie was a big let down. They ditched the comedy almost immediately, and struggled to hold on to some sort of plot line. Essentially, Ramsey, the killer who now inhabits a drone, ends up on top of the trash can during a young couple's moving day. How these two can afford such a ridiculously nice and expensive house is beyond me. The wife is said to be an "architect" at one point, but there is absolutely nothing else to suggest that throughout the film; other than her ruining a watercolor painting that slightly resembles a blueprint after being startled by the drone. The husband is a photographer that seems to just shoot photos of high school girls wanting to get into soft core porn. I'm aware there is money in both of those things but 1. most architects aren't *that* successful by the time they're in their late 20s (and they actually work) and 2. this guy wasn't exactly shooting top of the line content, and the house was easily a three quarter of a million dollar home. 

That's besides the point. I'm sorry, as anyone who's read my writing knows, I like to rant. And normally, especially with a parody film, I choose to ignore plot holes but these ones rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. Probably because I wish I could afford a house like that for doing absolutely nothing haha. 


![thedronefeat.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmSw2PsHpvCb9rzt4VnWQb1cZE5CGyzBASHYwbston9qmh/thedronefeat.jpg)
[Source](https://cdn.entertainment-focus.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/thedronefeat.jpg)


Anyways, the drone does some kind of funny stuff at the beginning of the film. It flies over the fence to photograph the classic "slutty blonde neighbor" stereotype, and then uploads the photos onto the wife's computer so that she believes the husband took them. It's pretty funny to watch. This is still at the point of there being some hope for the movie. 

It goes on to murder said neighbor, and of course, the plot turns to the husband/drone "owner" being framed. Detectives show up, detain him, release him, bla bla bla. At this point, the wife believes her husband and pleads with the officers that it was the drone and that her husband is innocent. It's a little odd because there's no clear reason as to her "flip". There's no big "a-ha" moment; just one moment she believes her husband is an asshole and a pervert, and the next she's convinced the drone is a murderer. 

The body of the film is almost too boring to write about. I can't stop saying that, well... it was just confusing as to whether they were serious about the plot or not. The couple hires a detective to find the drone after the wife bashes the thing to bits when it tries to attack her during her husband's interrogation. Of course, when they return home, the drone is missing; yet the detective finds a serial number and uses a GPS to trace it. 


![The-Drone.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmd62Z1q8jwzafuaVK4ZuQDYSwhsn98fnQWVPaLRiwGy5f/The-Drone.jpg)
[Source](https://scariesthings.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/The-Drone.jpg)


Of course, after the detective relays this information over the phone, the drone immediately finds him and kills him. There's no explanation as to how the drone found the detective so quickly nor how it got into the bathroom; where the detective is killed mid-bowel movement. This is one of those few moments where I remembered "oh, ok, it *is* a comedy" as the drone kills the man by slashing up his rear end(pants still down from the toilet), and sends a picture of it to the couple with the text "Courtesy flush" and "#blessed". 

During this time the drone is in "hiding" at his brother's apartment. One thing I have to say about his brother; that man should not have a handgun. Before realizing the flying object was his sibling, he unloads a clip into random walls in his apartment building and somehow misses the drone from close range with each shot. In reality, one of those bullets would have probably hit a neighbor through the paste-thin walls. 

Ok ok ok, it's a horror movie. And a parody at that. I have to stop being that insufferable "well actually" asshole. 

He realizes the drone is his brother right after, seemingly only because the drone played their song and knocked over a picture of them together. After that, the unnamed brother(he truly is unnamed. I apologize for repeatedly not using names in this review, that is not normal for me and very sloppy, but it's hard to give too much of a fuck after watching this film) hooks up a phone to the object to make it speak (somehow). It's actually pretty funny, whether intentional or not. 

While the drone is out doing it's murderin', the couple tracks down the apartment and gets in a confrontation with the brother. There's not much to it other than a pretty entertaining fight scene, other than the wife seeing the picture of the two of them together in the apartment, which is the big "a-ha" moment for the plotline. As it would turn out, the "Ramsey" inhabiting the drone, is actually the perverted ex the wife keeps hinting at. Why no one knew that he was a serial killer was another "beyond me" type of moment. This seems like the kind of information people in your personal life would find out about; whether you wanted them to or not. 


![Screen Shot 2021-04-07 at 5.58.40 PM.png](https://images.hive.blog/DQmbjZCXmayRZ44CqUukKy7rcALxx9Zfrg7a4Wg4WVWWq8X/Screen%20Shot%202021-04-07%20at%205.58.40%20PM.png)


This actually got me thinking about possibly the only real "substance" to the storyline that I noticed. And I'm still not sure if it was intentional as it was kind of brushed over. But the wife, who hates technology, attributes that hatred towards an incident when her ex bought her an RC car and made her play with it out in the street. She cuts a car off, the entire family inside the car dies. This seems to me to probably be the "trigger" that most serial killers need to start acting upon their dark urges. However, it doesn't really seem to actually be an intentional tie in the plot; just something my dark mind put together. 

Really the following scenes in the movie aren't worth mentioning. As I said before, the bulk of this film was just tying a shitty plot together. I think this is why they lost their humor drive. It seems as though they focused more on making this a real plot rather than just throwing their arms up and saying "it's a parody, fuck it!". This is exactly the reason why I feel they needed to keep Dirt Nasty in the film. 

The climax has it's moments. It is, obviously, the big fight between the couple and the drone. At one point, the wife takes out her husband's ACTUAL drone and they briefly battle; which was humorous. She kills the drone by dousing it in paint thinner and setting the thing on fire. However, while she is on the phone with the police, the somehow indestructible drone AGAIN transmits it's consciousness to the husband's body (through binary code, of course.....). The final scene is her throwing her husband's body off the balcony and onto the stake he pounded into the ground to commemorate their dog(who was also killed by... well you know). I was a little disappointed in this ending because I thought the consciousness being in her husband actually allowed her some hope(if you could bring yourself to really care for the characters). They still had zero proof of their little drone story, so it would have allowed Ramsey to go to jail in the body of her husband. Using that time, maybe she could have figured out a way to get her husband back or.. I don't know. Whatever. Instead she just offed him on an impulse decision and she had to watch her husband die, with no explanation for her to give to the authorities afterwards. 

Anyways, that was it. I have decided I wanted to start reviewing films again and honestly, this one was a bit of a stretch. But I had already made up my mind once I saw Dirt Nasty, and I felt I would be letting myself down by NOT writing about this. Besides, I have this kind of "dream" in my head of reviewing every movie on Shudder; something which is likely impossible but hey, I won't know unless I try. 

Thank you to anyone who stuck with me throughout this. I hope to be doing more of these soon; regardless of reception. It's a good way for me to combine my love of writing, film and horror. Final advice; watch this movie if you agree with Stephen King's words at the top of this post. I certainly enjoyed it, but I think I'm in the minority on that one. Cheers <3


![stephen-king.by-shane-leonard_wide-f9df986f26c8d66ecb63cf8e49bded6360cbd9d3.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmeaBxZMNbmni3Nz2BJxGfwbSqRtzmzJqyp8ci3WdvJpeM/stephen-king.by-shane-leonard_wide-f9df986f26c8d66ecb63cf8e49bded6360cbd9d3.jpg)
[Source](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/04/07/stephen-king.by-shane-leonard_wide-f9df986f26c8d66ecb63cf8e49bded6360cbd9d3.jpg)


# **The worst horror movie I ever saw was fucking great** -Stephen King