i honestly loved zendaya as chani. one of my favorite scenes with her was when she and paul were taking down a dragonfly ship. while she and paul were running, there were a few seconds where she cackled to herself before the ship exploded, and that moment made me feel giddy.

in tandem with this moment, i liked when paul first rode the grandfather sandworm. his little out-of-breath "okay, okay" made his character much more likeable, even if he turned out to be an asshole who lost his path towards the end.

ANOTHER favorite scene is the coliseum with feyd. the WHOLE scene being filmed with infrared even though it didn't NEED to be ?? the intense fight scenes feyd was in ?? didn't know elvis had it in him.

still, i think chani deserved better. i don't understand why paul chose a political marriage over her and didn't correct feyd when he called her his pet. and even though the movie was told from the perspective of paul (in my opinion), i was starting to get an inkling of a thought that maybe paul wasn't good, according to how chani felt betrayed over and over again.

i was surprised to see florence pugh. she is still really pretty. i wish she had more of a presence (?) in the movie, since to me she deserves it for being her. she literally slayed.

my sister owns the book, and i'm REALLY tempted to take it from her if she doesn't start reading it first.

i'm loving all the reels i'm seeing that are inspired by dune. everyone is so funny when it comes to dressing as the bene gesserit, or thumping the bed for the pet-worm. also, have been seeing weird content of timothee rapping. i'm not complaining.

the ending had me confused because i couldn't tell what it was supposed to be/what was happening ? the dragon left the cave to kill the royalty, sure. but where are they going when they boarded that ship ? i thought the fade to black implied they were already home because they changed clothes AFTER the castle burnt down. but no, they were going "home home," with a dragon in tow. also. i thought they were gonna go their separate ways, Elodie and the dragon, since she spared her and helped her get revenge, but no. Elodie just casually tamed a dragon apparently. also don't like how they made the dragon "lipsync"

secondly, the mother's death was hinted at throughout the movie, but i was disappointed that it wasn't explored more since the theme of motherhood seemed so prevalent. the dragon is a MOTHER who lost her children. i want to see the other side of that, with the girls sort of reminiscing about their own mother. and i'm pretty sure you can still be respectful to the stepmother in the same breath.

speaking of the stepmother, i also wish she had a more pivotal role in the movie, where she would help the girls more, or have more/less autonomy because of the seemingly passive king. i want to know why she became the stepmother in the first place, but she probably just didn't have enough scenes since the movie is named after the "damsel" in distress.

4: it felt like a let down from the first three. it was less tense, less suspenseful, and there was a lot of incompetence when it came to the family not realizing they're being haunted. it felt like the movie had to tack on the scares towards the end (as per tradition in the franchise), but the scares weren't as hard-hitting as the previous movies. it also felt like the main girl (alex) didn't have a lot of agency. i did enjoy the twist where wyatt was teased to be hunter. i still had questions about what happened until that point, since the third movie didn't bridge the second and the fourth.

3: i thought this was gonna be various video tapes stitched together (like a bad horror movie i watched/my bf fell asleep to called "creepypasta") but i was relieved to find out that wasn't the case. it still left me with more questions about the origin of the curse in the first place, and how it came to be placed on the family, as well as whether katie and kristi had their memory erased because they couldn't remember what happened in clear detail. it also felt like the grandma was just thrown into the movie because they didn't know who the bad guy would be for this movie. come to think of it, i don't think the grandma showed up again, except for in this movie. she was never mentioned again.

1: was pretty good. i like the twist at the end when katie got possessed completely. also, micah was an asshole and i'm glad he died. he was trying so hard to keep control over a situation he literally had no say in, especially with the ouija board and him waiting to call the demonologist. i was on the edge of my seat, and i thought this movie was the best in the franchise, but of course the sequel had to one-up it somehow.

2: is my favorite just because of how scary each jumpscare was. they were subtle when they needed to be, and jarring when we weren't expecting them. the one that gave me a heart attack was when all the doors and cabinets flew open in the kitchen. i had to recover from that one because i didn't expect it. one jumpscare that made me want to run away from my computer was when hunter was getting pulled out of the crib as he cried. i care about kids so it was a little scary to see that the demon (or whatever) wasn't indiscriminate towards haunting kids. and when kristi went missing from the chair, me (and my bf) were thoroughly freaked out.

all in all, the first four movies are pretty solid, but definitely went down in terms of the quality of scares. although the timeline was all over the place, i liked the katie-kristi story. it was very tragic what happened to them as kids and as adults, and it's one of the few movies where a bad ending makes sense because it's a curse and they don't know where it came from.

still, the few things i didn't like where the blatent incompetency or ignorance when it came to the parents/partners believing their wife or girlfriend about being haunted. i'd hope that if i were in a situation like that, my boyfriend would believe me if something was bothering me or making me that anxious. i could see my family having doubts about whether "spiritual" things are real, but i'd like to believe that most people aren't that willfully ignorant when something they can't logically explain is happening. i can't say i believe those things are real, but i wouldn't want to find out if they are. i don't understand why people think being haunted is "awesome" or "cool." maybe not all hauntings are bad, but when it's as disruptive as it was in the movies, maybe you gotta reconsider.

[TRIGGER WARNING - sexual ass*ult mentioned] --- i really appreciated all the movie references they had; i picked up on two (besides the glaringly obvious ones like tarzan) - there was tinker bell, then there was the shining, my bf noticed that the news anchors diving off of the buildings reminded him of something but he doesn't know what.

i don't know why but the scene where paprika was lying on the table with her hands pinned down with... pins, it reminded me of silence of the lambs, but i will need to rewatch that too to confirm. the sexual ass*ult scene made me very uncomfortable though; i completely recoiled from the screen and had to watch it from far away in my bed. i don't understand osanai's significance to the story aside from being a vessel/puppet to the chief, so it was very jarring to see what he did to paprika.

i also didn't understand why atsuko got married to tokita at the end; i didn't pick up on any romance tones between the two of them. i even almost hated tokita's character because he kind of jumpstarted the whole second half of the movie after he remade the DC Mini despite atsuko telling him to do something else to help. atsuko was also making a lot of comments about his weight, but i guess it was just banter between the two of them; i still didn't think it was romantic to say things like that, more like jest between co-workers. but maybe i just missed something subtle.

despite everything, all the muddiness in the story or the nudity of what looked like a teen (??), the animation was very fluid and detailed, and a few of the sequences creeped me the fuck out or made me shudder. i wonder how kon came up with all the different, diverse dream components. did he have weird dreams ? was it a collaborative dream effort between all the animators, where they contributed an element they remembered from their dreams ? the whole movie felt so surreal.

it was hard for me to watch the movie with subtitles just because of the sheer amount of things happening on screen, as well as the dialogue sometimes translating to nonsense. if i'll ever rewatch this, i'll rewatch it in dubbed so i can pay attention to the movie more. i just hope things won't get lost in translation on the second watch.

[TRIGGER WARNING - suic*de mentioned] --- one of the main character's (lyra) co-workers (aileen) took her own life because she was either cursed by one of the videos she had to moderate, or she couldn't handle the mental stress that the videos and content caused her. she was a relatively new worker too, so it's understandable why she couldn't get acclimated to the content.

the second time i watched the movie with my boyfriend, i was able to pick up on some subtleties that i didn't pick up the first time. i understood lyra's character more; she was traumatized at a young age because of her father, and that resulted in her becoming desensitized as an adult. this memory explains why she was able to work as a content moderator for at least a year without breaking or taking a break. i liked how this worked against lyra towards the end.

in the end, when it was revealed that lyra wasn't saved from the building, and instead was cursed to watch the same video that her co-worker watched, it made sense to me. while lyra was being "interviewed," she reiterated that she saw the people in those videos as "just data." aileen, the entity haunting lyra, wasn't satisfied with this answer. aileen knew that lyra stood by as she was manipulated, drugged and assaulted by their boss. aileen couldn't let lyra continue to live without the guilt; she had to show lyra that the people in those videos were real, and that the "data" can be someone she knows, but lyra refused to accept that.

to my understanding, aileen wanted lyra to show sympathy after she showed her two videos, but lyra didn't learn. i don't blame lyra for not being able to learn sympathy immediately, but she did get close with aileen while she was still working. lyra was almost like a mentor to aileen, but the both of them had a different outlook on people.

there was a moment in the movie that foreshadowed the ending. when lyra and aileen were talking on the rooftop, lyra took a picture of her, but deleted it because it was blurry.

all in all, i enjoyed how this movie was written, and how difficult it can be to navigate relationships as an adult, while also dealing with your own past and career.

i thought the movie was a metaphor for trauma: how suzume blocked out all her memories of the tsunami; how she used the door as an escape, how she held onto the chair and the memories it held of her mom/her home. i think the earthquakes reminded suzume of her past, and they unearthed something from the back of her head. i also noticed all of the ordinary people (people going to work, school kids, construction workers) ignored the worms or couldn't see it until it was almost too late. they ignored the earthquake sirens and returned back to normal. my sister found out the same night that the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed suzume's home was inspired by the tsunami that caused the fukushima nuclear disaster. there were hints in the movie but i didn't put it together. it adds a whole new lens to the movie.

a few of my problems lie in the fact that souta barely has a backstory, so there isn't much there to support his decisions/mannerisms. also, why make him a chair other than a funny gag ? i heard from my sister that we could've gotten a lesbian romance, but they had to censor that. maybe a girl from her hometown dredging up old memories could work better. there's a lot of cultural implications that i (as an american/non-japanese) can't understand. such as, why are people so supportive of a 16 year old running away ? at least she was texting and calling her aunt while she was running away. suzume worked at a bar while she was underage, which is questionable; i didn't realize it until my sister pointed it out.

lastly, i had a theory about daijin being suzume's mother because of what the cat said (ie. [to souta] "you're in the way." [to suzume] "don't you love me ?"). there's some evidence there but isn't explicitly proven by the movie. also what kind of gods are the cats ? what are their powers ? bc the aunt got possessed by one of them, and they were powerful enough to turn souta into a chair/keystone.