Death Bell (2008)

Here's a Korean treat from back in 2008. A kind of slasher, gory thriller that they often produce so well over there. Originally called Gosa, it's about a bunch of students in a school who are trapped by, well, they don't know who/what, with a couple of their teachers and a janitor kicking around.

The school tannoy has been taken over by the assailant and they/it has started to announce, one-by-one, a bunch of sadistic 'puzzles' which the group must solve in order to stop the grizzly murder of each of them (which they soon find out, is in order of their 'ranking' in the school exams)! Hang on in there though, as there is some logic to all this and the satisfying reveal in the finale puts all the pieces together.

In the meantime, we, along with the students, have no idea what's what, why or whom - but get together and try to solve the puzzles, revealing clues as to what the heck it's all about! The murders and traps are somewhat inventive and there's lots of blood and gore being hurled around in the process as they are picked off one-by-one, with fairly good visual effects. Oh yes, they are not allowed to leave the school or they get killed, this is an evening, so nobody is around from outside (though I did wonder why parents didn't wonder why their kids had not come home!) and all land/cellphones have been cut off!

So yes, it creates a theatre of gore which, on the face of it, dubiously and at a stretch, nobody can get away from. Why the kids don't just all stay together in the same room so they can't be picked off, I don't know. But let's not nitpick - as plot holes there may be, but it doesn't take away the fun of it all.

We are led to wonder if there's something supernatural and ghostly going on as a pupil who had been murdered in the school a couple of years back kind of appears to some of the students, but it's exam time and the students are under a lot of stress - so we're not really sure if the visions of the 'ghost' are real or down to some anxiety/mental health crisis. Certainly not all the students see the visions.

I won't reveal any more as it will spoil the outcome, but it's certainly fun - and I love the Korean culture in terms of the way they speak, especially the girls - the intonation in their language and voice is lovely to hear as so different to our boring English! It's also funny in places, far-fetched in others, annoyingly badly acted by some, but not others - along with much handheld camera work. The sound effects and music is nicely done, supportive of the tone and suspense here and there - and it's quite nicely shot, claustrophobic often, all inside the school.

I don't know the director Hong-Seung Yoon, nor any of the actors but a number of them do a decent enough and convincing job. The DVD that I saw had subtitles, but you can also get a dubbed version. It's not streaming anywhere that I can see at time of writing, I'm afraid, but the DVD can be bought at the likes of CeX and Music Magpie in the UK, used - or probably new elsewhere - and no doubt it'll pop into streaming services at some point. Suggest you watch out for it!

The Invasion (2007)

I'd never seen this little thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, but stumbled into it on one of the streaming channels this week. It's about an "alien epidemic" which is inflicted on earth which takes over humans, makes them calm, passive and unemotional, but controlled by who-knows-who/what! Sounds quite desirable to me - but the cast didn't think so!

Nicole Kidman is Carol, a psychiatrist, who has a small boy, Oliver, played by Jackson Bond, and they live in Washington. There's a husband, Tucker, played by Jeremy Northam, from whom she's separated and has shown little interest for the last 4 years - but suddenly, infected, he's put himself back in the frame claiming legal rights to spend time with Oliver.

She's also got a doctor friend in the frame with whom she seems to be best friends/girlfriend (neither of them seem too sure)! He's Ben and played by Daniel Craig. Between them, along with their labrat buddy, they try to find a cure whilst not falling asleep if they do get infected - because it's OK to be infected but when you go to sleep it gets to work taking over the body during REM! So stay awake!

People get infected by being vomited on by someone who's already got it! So that's mostly the gore taken care of. Most of the rest of the grizzly stuff is around dead bodies and bodies 'encased' in some sort of goo/netting whilst they are taken over in sleep. It's done well enough. Then as the heat turns up it becomes a race across the city, against the odds, more and more infected people, less and less uninfected, ex-husband whisking child away, mum racing not only to find him as she's his mum, but also discovering that he seems to be immune - as he'd been infected and gone to sleep and is alright.

You get the idea - the kid is the key to sorting it all out and the main players are racing against the clock - and the infected - to crush it once and for all. They're all doing an OK job though not needing to try very hard - it felt a bit like an easy payday sometimes. There are plot holes and not much clarity about what's what really - but it kind of hangs together under direction from Oliver Hirschbiegel, taken from the late Jack Finney's book (and various other films) Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Having said all that it's certainly entertaining if you don't think too hard about it and just enjoy the ride. The pacing is OK until the last 5 minutes of the 1 hour 40 minutes when the editing becomes laughable - they wrap the whole story up in 5 minutes flat, lurching from chaos to calm. Blink and you'll miss it! Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig do a fine job and the little boy, Jackson Bond matched them both during his scenes. All good fun, but sadly quite forgettable.

The Jester (2023)

I almost forgot about this one, now streaming on various platforms. It seems to have been caned by most reviewers but I thought it was OK. Low-budget thriller/chiller with most of the spooks based around the titular character's mask and position in the frame whilst terrorising people!

The Jester guy is genuinely creepy, the music is effective being used behind his acts of creepiness and (somewhat supernatural) ability to inflict gore and nastiness on victims in small-town America at Halloween. It's quite atmospheric at times but with little logic to what's going on in terms of an excuse for a story - just spooks, terror and fun!

Special effects are a bit basic, but that's not the point really - it's less about the gore and more about the sinister creep value. There's a great scene in a One Stop shop (or petrol station maybe) about half way through which is fun. A few jump-scares, mostly brought about by urgent music than visuals, but again, it doesn't rely on that.

There's a series of shorts out there starting in 2016 from the same director, Colin Krawchuk, so I must try to track them down. Michael Sheffield, in the lead does a good enough job as he holds The Jester's body menacingly and Lelia Symington as the lead female, Emma, similarly as our potential victim to get behind. A few beers, Friday night after the pub. Perfect!

Loony Fast Charging for Motorola

Inside the Edge 50 Pro box (at least, here in the UK) there's a 125W TurboCharging brick and a decent-looking USB-C to USB-C cable. Sometimes, just sometimes, not routinely, this can be worth its weight in gold! It produces staggeringly fast charge-speeds, from 0-100% in less than 20 minutes. (Yes, I know there are less mainstream devices that claim faster, but Moto is much more widely sold, globally.)

You seem to need to use their supplied charger to get that max Turbo speed, but my UGreen 100W GaN ain't far behind - unlike Oppo et al where just about anything else apart from their supplied VOOC will drop you down to very slow speeds.

Perhaps there's been a power cut (very common here) in the night and you wake up with no charge. Or you're out sightseeing caning the camera shooting holiday video. Watching a video/film using HDMI-Out/Smart Connect to your hotel's TV. Plug in, have a cuppa or a shower, or perhaps a cuppa in the shower - and Fanny's your aunt! A fully charged phone to get going with. It really is a feature that the Big Boys in mobile need to get (back) onto, even if they are frightened of battery longevity (people routinely charging this way). Or Samsung fires! Time to move on!

This particular phone also has 50W wireless charging available and even 10W reverse-wireless thrown in. (Note: In some regions, it comes with a 68W charger in the box instead of 125W.) At time of writing, the 512GB/12GB Black Beauty version is available via AmazonEU for £385, down from £599,

Black Cab (2024)

We spoke about this in Coming Soon in our Projector Room Podcast, so I thought I'd give it whirl. It's only on Shudder for now (or cinemas). I think my tolerance for nastiness and gore has gone up (or should that be down?) as even though there was a little of it here and there, it barely registered on the Salmon Goreometer!

A girl and her kind-of boyfriend/kind-of fiance end up in the back of a cab, locked in, being driven by our bozo fruit-loop (as seen very clearly in trailers). He hauls them off to his isolated lair in the woods, then does nasty things to them both.

We find out from the gob-shyte driver all about his background (which eventually stitches things together along with a kind of ghostly story mixed in) with clues as to what's what peppered out along the way.

It stars Nick Frost (from Shaun of the Dead) and Synnove Karlsen (from Last Night in Soho) who do a decent-enough job with the not-so-decent-enough material! They try to make it atmospheric and eerie throughout, all under cover of darkness/rain, pretty much, but don't really nail it. The best fun is waiting for the annoying, rude and abusive boyfriend to 'get it' whilst bit-by-bit feeling sorry for the girl and getting on her side.

It's OK - just nothing to write home about or consider watching again - or indeed shellin' out hard-earned to view if you don't have it 'included' somewhere. That's about it really. Instantly forgettable - but alright. I suppose!

Motorola ROKR 500

Sucker for Motorola products? Appreciate what Lenovorola are doing on Desktop and Mobile, particularly with Smart Connect? Run out of Moto stuff to get in to scratch the itch, allay the lust?! How about a dinky waterproof bedside/desktop/travel Bluetooth speaker/powerbank/wireless charger?

Let's face it, with 1001 other options out there and no real benefit here as a part of Motorola's ecosystem - you'd have to be as sold on Moto as I am to fall for this! Fortunately, it's cheap at £43 though I got it some months ago on an Amazon deal for less than half-price for £20 and I'd say that in that case, or even at full price, it's worth the punt! It's certainly very cute, attractive, a nice colour in this Jet Black and although not a patch on the output of my more expensive JBL Clip 5, it does have some advantages - with, for example, the light weight of the unit and built-in powerbank, enabling up to 10W Qi charging when travelling, depending on brick being used.

There are other colours if you buy it direct from Motorola - Titanium White, Lagoon Blue and my favourite, Coral Red. It's certainly compact and portable and will fit into (even) a jeans pocket (at a push)! Having said it's not up there with the more expensive JBL Clip 5, it ain't bad for volume and quality when hooked up to various devices via Bluetooth and, unlike the JBL, can be used for phone calls - as it has a microphone. I did test this and it seemed to work very well (with a Motorola Edge 50 Pro anyway)! Connection is solid, voices at both ends perfectly clear enough.

The waterproof/resistant certification is IPX/6 which makes it good for "powerful water jets from any angle" apparently. Depending on who you believe/read, IPX/6 rated protection is "extremely waterproof, impenetrable by weather, waterfalls and even a non-sustained total soaking". So take your pick! In real world use I'd guess that it's good for rain showers and bathroom splashes, but not to be submerged fully in water. At least, not for long! The X means no 'dust' protection, so perhaps not a beach-bound unit, more a desk/bedside/bathroom/travel one.

It's got a USB-C socket on one end under a weatherproof rubbery-feeling flap. It's not particularly quick to charge the 2,500mAh battery and Moto don't seem to quote what it should be, but it seems to be somewhere between 2 and 3 hours here on testing. When it's charged, and not being used as a wireless charger, it gives about 10 hours of playback on medium volume, so less on full. When charging a phone on the pad, it will clearly only give a maximum of 2,500mAh, so perhaps a mid-afternoon kick if your phone is running low, for example, for half of the now average phone's battery size.

It charges a phone very slowly on the pad of course - like about 10% in 30 minutes here, depending on phone, size of battery, state of depletion when attached and so forth. Your mileage will certainly vary! It will vary even more - like down to zero(!) - if the speaker is not being used at the time and it powers down, which it does after 15 minutes! So if you want a quick 10% boost for your phone and the ROKR 500 is not plugged in, that's probably as much as you'll get! Power it back on for another burst, I guess. Or hook it up to the phone and play music - though in this way will use the battery for doing that as well!

Probably best not to be relied on as a wireless charger when you don't have power plugged in - but the irony of that is clearly that you might as well then just plug the cable into the phone! Update I tested this with two Motorola phones (with 68W and 125W charging capability) and the charging was much better and faster. Again, I can't share specific data (we need a physicist!) but it charged those phones from about 80-100% very quickly indeed within the 15-minute window. Could it be a Moto thing, I wonder?!

The unit is very nicely made of hard plastic around the edges and back, anti-slip, rubbery grip feet on the bottom with a linen/cloth across the top where the Qi pad lies and speaker below. If you have a phone laying on it whilst listening, depending on the shape of the back of the phone, it does muffle it a bit but remains perfectly good for, say, listening to an audiobook on a timer when dropping off to sleep in a quiet room. 

There's a row of four buttons nicely embedded into the cloth at the front edge which you can get to with a phone laying on it, depending on size of the phone. The first is the power button, long-press to turn on/off, second volume down, then play/pause and finally, volume up. Short press for volume adjustments, press and hold for next/previous track. Play/pause to stop and start playback, obviously(!), but also to answer/end calls, disconnect the Bluetooth and even a double-press to invoke the Google Assistant, which then pops up on the phone. I've had no luck with Read Aloud Notifications, just this link to the Assistant.

You can also pair two of these speaker together if you want to, though I didn't have a second one to try. I can't find much data on this, so am assuming that it's playing the same audio source to both speakers, not that they can be used as a stereo pair.

The sound coming from the speaker is decent enough for a bedroom or office desk in a relatively quiet environment, but it's not going to be usable when ambient noise is present to any significant degree. It seems to be designed less for kids partying, more for someone stuck in a hotel room waiting for tomorrow's meeting(!) or, like me, a pretty quiet environment at home, in the kitchen or bathroom for sure.

Overall, the Motorola ROKR 500 is a decent device for anyone looking for a compact and portable Bluetooth speaker. It offers good-enough sound quality, with the above caveats, a stylish design and a range of convenient features. While it may not be the most powerful or feature-rich speaker on the market, at £20 it was a bit of a bargain, I reckon. At £43 maybe not quite so much, but it is cute. And has the Motorola name on it!

Motorola G85

The obvious way to tackle this G85 review is as a three-way comparison. Firstly, with the phone it replaces, the G84 from the year before, but more importantly in my view, the newer Edge 50 Neo - the big question being, is the extra £100 justified for the benefits that the latter brings. 

One caveat to remember here is to also check prices - as always Motorola phones are often on deals and sales, so shop around. At time of writing, for example, the Edge 50 Neo is £329 and the G85, £249 - making the difference a mere £70. But still, to many folk, even £70 is a significant difference when money is tight, so let's look at it.

Firstly the unboxing and the G85 comes in a minimalist box, all buff-coloured and eco-friendly, plastic-free as is their standard now, no charging brick, a USB-C to USB-C cable, some papers, a lovely soft, clear, simple, grippy TPU case (well done Moto) and a pokey-tool for the SIM Card tray. This is a PR unit, kindly loaned by MotorolaUK, which has been in the hands of other reviewers, so I can't tell you if the box is 'perfumed' in the way that others have been recently - I can't detect it! Be aware that depending on your region, contents of retail boxes may differ.

It's beautifully designed. Yeah, I know, I'm one of the few who really still likes the very-slightly curved screens. I'm not talking about waterfall edges, but just slightly - makes it feel classy and premium to me whilst being fairly minimalist, not interfering with screen touches. No surprises on layout of functions, nanoSIM Card tray with reverse for microSD but no second SIM option on this unit (apart from eSIM), USB-C port, speaker at the bottom, volume/power on the right, nothing left and top but microphones and the front panel has a secondary speaker for stereo, doubling up as the earpiece for calls in the usual way - and below that, a punch-hole Selfie cutout. The back is made of what they call eco-leather, well actually it's Silicone Polymer - plastic, but it does have a nice velvety feel to it and affords more grip, for those who don't want to use the case, than shiny plastic or glass.

I never had a G84 in-hand, so can only compare in terms of specs as I start to look at the G85, which arrived just under a year later, in June 2024. They both have the more budget-friendly plastic frame, same back options as mentioned above and the G85 is slightly bigger all-round with a 6.67" screen instead of the G84's 6.5" (which doesn't feel as big because of those curves), so a tad taller and wider, but about the same thickness and not far off the same weight. The older phone seems to have had an IP5/4 rating whereas the G85 is now back to the typical Moto nano-coating arrangements, officially at least. They may have just been saving some cash on the certification costs.

The Gorilla Glass 5 screen is up to Moto's usual standard, being a gorgeous, bright, colourful pOLED, as it was last year I'm told, both of them refreshing at up to 120Hz. The newer phone peaks out for brightness at 1600nits over 1300, for anyone who can tell! Both phones have 1080p screens with a 20:9 ratio, returning about 400ppi. The G85's screen really is nice to use, especially with that slight curve around the left and right - and is a joy to look at, too. I'm still not sure if these panels remain LG-supplied, but they make a big difference to usage and often defy the price-point as Moto are including them lower and lower down the range.

The chipsets used in the two phones are also comparable - the G85's SnapDragon 6s Gen 3 is apparently a slightly beefed up version of the G84's SnapDragon 695. The G85 performs well enough in my tests here taking it through the usual array of car-racing games, heavy loading in terms of copying files, reading/writing to microSD and so on. I detected no heating up even during the most intensive tasks. These chipsets are never going to perform like the latest/greatest industry leaders, but for Joe Public, they are just fine and the slight slowdown that might be detected by the user is so minimal that the vast majority of users' expectations will not be challenged.

This supplied Cobalt Blue unit has got 256GB Storage and 12GB RAM, but it's also available with 8GB RAM in 256GB and 128GB versions. Again, I have thrown many tasks at the system and yes, opening and closing apps, starting up the phone, is not as instant as more well-specified phones, but I certainly don't see any problematic shutting down of apps - they can be recalled from Recents from some way back. Both phones have got a microSD Card slot, so whichever base-model you get, you can expand up - and this one is playing very nicely with my 1TB microSD Card for read/write speeds. Incidentally, apart from this colour, you can also get it in Olive Green, Urban Grey and Magenta.

One of the differences between the two phones is that with the new one, Moto have stepped up their game with promises of longer support. The G84 arrived on Android 13 and it was pretty much unspecified as to how long it would be supported (though I understand that it does have Android 14 now) - but the G85 gets the promise of 2 OS updates (so to Android 16 following Google's release - which at time of writing sounds like it might be in mid-2025 now) and 4 years of Security updates (so to June 2028). Yes, it looks like this is not going to be supported terribly long-term, but at least it's specified and not at the whim of what they fancy doing at the time.

Another difference between the two phones is that the older phone had a 3.5mm audio-out socket which has been removed for the G85. Not sure how much that will impact people but to be honest, I'm mostly using Bluetooth these days as it's so good and convenient - so perhaps the legacy crowd will all eventually have to settle on Sony! The G84's audio also had 24-bit, high-res output but again, with Bluetooth, the G85 sounds great to my ears, good quality and volume - as always, depending on the quality of attached gear.

The speakers are up to Motorola's usual decent standards in my tests here, even at this cheaper price-point. Yes, at full volume they can get a little tinny, but playing with the Dolby Atmos equaliser settings and installing Wavelet sorts that out nicely. What you lose in a little volume you can make up for in quality. No, it's no Sony Xperia, but the stereo effect is good and soundstage wide and impactful 18" from the face. The vast majority of users will have no complains about the sound.

The cameras on the two phones are very similar as well. The main shooter being a 50MP one with OIS, a supporting 8MP wide-angle with autofocus, 1080p video at 60fps - although the Selfie has been upped in spec, now being a 32MP unit instead of 16MP. The test shots that I have taken here all seem perfectly good enough for the 98% of users who are going to post photos to social media and share with friends, leaving the 2% pixel-peepers no doubt to zoom in and tut-tut! That autofocus in the wide-angle camera allows for nice and close so-called Macro shots and shooting in Night Vision seems to pull out shareable photos even when the human eye sees pitch blackness! The camera software looks exactly the same to me as it is in various recent Motorola phones, so perhaps I'll point you now to my coverage in those. ThinkPhone, Edge 50 Pro, Edge 50 Neo, Edge 40, Edge 40 Neo, G Stylus (2024) and so on! There's oodles of Moto stuff on my blog here. You'll have gathered that I'm a fan!

Connectivity in my tests here is good. All boxes ticked and appear to be working well, for Wi-Fi, tested on 3 networks, Bluetooth, with good range and holding on well - again depending on attached gear, GPS for mapping applications - locking on quickly and staying so - and also NFC talking to other gear and payment terminals in shops. Again, check your region for what's included/supplied/working with all this stuff.

Security seems good with an under-glass optical fingerprint scanner and face unlock working together well, or indeed in isolation, in all-but the darkest conditions for face. Fingerprint scanning software, though never going to be as good as ultrasonic in my experience, makes registering easy/quick and in use, reliable. All this was, again, available on the G84 so I can assume that it worked as well.

The 5000mAh battery is the same in both units, but anything like the fast charging of Moto's more expensive models is not present. No chance of the 125W charging of the high-end units or even the 68W of the mid-range. No, here, we have 30W wired and no wireless. I guess something has to give and personally, I'm OK with the 30W wired charging but have really come to rely on wireless (overnight) charging, inefficient and bad for the planet as I'm told it is. 30W wired is no slouch however and certainly better than it used to be with these lower-mid-range phones - and this one can be charged up in under an hour and a half. But the 5000mAh battery is sound as a pound! Really well-performing, getting through 2 days of moderate/light use. The 10% Reading Test I do returned excellent result at well over 2 hours. You can always add a 3rd party Qi coil for a fiver from Amazon as long as you're OK wielding a case.

HelloUI is the new-look MyUI from Moto and every phone released by them now comes with it. Even, yes, down here at this price-point. And it's very pretty, been redesigned in terms of front-end, colours, display options, all those great Moto Gestures which I have written about so much - all present and correct. The UI is very Vanilla - like a Pixel in many ways sticking to the tried and tested, but with Moto's sprinkling of genuinely useful additions, including some AI sneaking into some settings like CrystalTalk for reducing background noise on VOIP calls and whatever Google make available, like Gemini Live! It goes deeper than ever now as Moto prioritises security in keeping with what Google are doing as they evolve Android. As I say, I have written loads about HelloUI now, so check out my linked-to reviews above, especially the recent ones where I dig into the nitty-gritty of it all.

Moto's Smart Connect works brilliantly with the G85, wirelessly of course - only the very top phones get wired support, but actually, wireless is so good, I really don't think, armed with a reliable network connection in your space, wired is becoming unnecessary. Never thought I'd hear myself say that, being a big HDMI-Out fan for so long! Now of course sometimes a situation may arise where a network can't be relied on, then a cable becomes like gold dust. But networks are generally getting very good these days and the hospitality sector gearing themselves up generally for customer's needs. Anyway, it works perfectly here. I shall point you to my Smart Connect Review and Features piece on my Blog as all the details are there, so click on through and see what's so great about it! And it's amazing that Moto are including all the hooks to make it work in even their lower-end phones now. Kudos.

So now back to the original question about the Motorola Edge 50 Neo which is my current darling of the range! What do you get extra over the G85 here by paying the extra £100 (or, as I say, just now £70)? Well, for starters you get wireless charging - admittedly it's only at 15W but that's perfectly good enough for overnighters like me. You also get 68W charging (though still no brick in the box in this region) so significantly faster charging when needed. You get a much smaller phone, which, for one-handed use, is much better than the G85's bigger display for me - though some would argue this the other way as you can see more! There's also no premium-look/feel edges on the Edge 50 Neo, rather a flat screen. Because it's smaller, you get a smaller battery - though in my testing these two really are as good as each other. You do get Moto's first promise of 5 Android OS updates on the Neo and Security patches to 2029, unlike here. You also get IP6/8 dust/water resistance as well as MIL-STD-810H compliancy, which is just amazing. It's becoming a hard act to beat already, don't you think, for the price difference? But I haven't finished yet! One of the big ones for me on the Neo is a proper Always on Display (the same as was introduced for the Razr 50 Ultra), not present on the G85. It's been a long time coming, but hurrah - perhaps we've turned the corner now, grown out of the (in some way excellent) Peek Display and arrived with this much more useful standard, sipping lightly at the battery via the efficient chipset. You also get another camera stuffed in there with OIS and 3x optical zoom and 512GB/12GB RAM as standard on the Neo (though no microSD). It really feels like a tough act to follow, for the price-difference, but do click through above to my full review.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing much wrong with the G85, a mid-range phone at a decent price with an amazing pOLED screen, great build quality with a premium feel, a very (what we used to call) stock Android experience in terms of software, microSD for loads of storage, the whole Moto secure stuff built right in as well as the excellent Smart Connect, very well-performing speakers, long-lasting battery - the list goes on. Trouble is, that in my opinion, if you have the extra £70/£100 to spare, you can get so much more for the bit more cash with the Edge 50 Neo. This G85 is still recommended however, especially if someone likes the styling and wants a screen that's a bit bigger. Spoiled for choice by Moto!