FOR THE FIRST TIME IN my life I was more upset by what I saw in the theater than on the movie screen. The viewers who look or text on their phones while the film is playing upset me, but I simply find them rude; except for that one viewer who when asked to stop talking on her phone yelled back that she had to take the call. The people who have no consideration for those sitting around them are ignorant in my opinion. I just want to ask them to look around and notice they are not sitting at home in their living room; there are people sitting by them who paid to WATCH a movie. What I am talking about is a different kind of upset that has deeper implications. I do not want to offend anyone by what I am going to tell you; these are just my feelings I am putting down on paper, about what took place while I was waiting to watch this movie. Ironically, I was dreading seeing this latest installment because I knew there was going to be brutal violence and blood shown in multiple scenes. Instead I was appalled by several people who came in to see this movie.      GETTING TO MY SEAT A FEW minutes before the lights dimmed, I took a brief scan of the other people sitting in the movie theater. I was curious to see who wanted to see this picture; I was only there to review it. A few rows down and off to my right I noticed a man and woman sitting 2 seats apart from each other. It took me a moment for it to register but I suddenly realized there were 2 kids sitting between them. I was stunned; parents actually came with their children to see this R rated movie? What was wrong with them, I thought to myself. There was no way the parents did not know what this movie was about and what would be shown in it. Before the shock could subside in me, coming into the theater was another family with what appeared to be a 4 or 5-year-old child. Has the world suddenly gone mad? I was shocked; did the parents want to desensitize their kids to blood and violence or expose them to different ways one can kill another human? I am sorry but I found it disgusting and wondered what DCFS would have to say about it. To me this was worse than anything I was going to see in this action, horror film.      WITH THE RISE OF A THiRD political party into power, its platform included a new social experiment they believed would curtail crime. At least that is what they planned for it to show. With relative newcomer Y’Lan Noel as Dmitri, Lex Scott Davis (Superfly, Training Day-TV) as Nya, Marisa Tomei (The Big Short, Love is Strange) as Dr. Updale, Mugga (Precious, Orange is the New Black-TV) as Dolores and Joivan Wade (The Weekend, Doctor Who-TV) as Isaiah; this installment’s trailers showed what the viewer was going to get. What surprised me about the story was the message it conveyed; it mirrored the current times we presently live in. This aspect of the story was the highlight for me. Everything else about this picture was just more of the same; nothing different or new which I hope doesn’t mean I have become jaded to this franchise. I felt there was nothing scary in the predictable script except for the aspect of the story I mentioned earlier. For whatever reason, I will tell you I found it sad that Oscar winner Marisa agreed to take this role. Maybe it was my experience in the theater but it was more upsetting to see children being brought to this violent film than anything done in the movie itself.

1 ¾ stars