Friend Request (2016)

SEPTEMBER 22, 2017

GENRE: GHOST, REVENGE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I've seen a couple people make the joke that Friend Request looks like something one might mock up for a film that needed a cheesy horror movie playing in the background (you know, for the two or three movies per decade that don't just use Night of the Living Dead), but for what little it's worth, it's actually the best of this year's crop of college kid-centric horror flicks. Unlike Rings, Bye Bye Man, and Wish Upon, I didn't spend the running time rolling my eyes or trying to keep track of how many plot holes it already racked up - I was actually enjoying it in a low-key, timekiller way until its endless and misguided third act. Props for trying something a little different in one of these things, but it didn't quite work due to not being properly set up, and probably accounts for the film's low grades more than anything else.

And by "one of these things" I mean yet another movie where our heroes get freaked out by a vengeful ghost for an hour or so and then decide that the only way to stop the thing that's been killing their friends is to drive to the old _____ (burnt out commune, here) and put the body to rest or whatever. It's amazing how these places are always a couple hours' drive away from where the protagonists live - just once I want to see one where they discover the old factory/asylum/warehouse/whatever is actually located in another country and they can't find a flight. OR, less jokingly, they discover the place is a full day's drive away, but relatively early in the film, and turn the 2nd half or so into more of a road chase, so that we can at least get a change of scenery and a kind of ticking clock scenario that you don't often get in these sort of movies. But alas, they follow the template of The Ring fairly closely, which might have worked better if we didn't have a genuine (well, technically genuine) Ring movie just six months ago.

Hilariously, like Rings, this one's been on the shelf for a while - it was actually shot in early 2014, and released in Germany last year. Why it took so long to come here is unknown, but oddly enough the movie's approximation of Facebook is a pretty close match to what we have now*, so it didn't feel as dated as you might expect for a nearly four year old production about the internet. They never actually use the name "Facebook" (I call it Fauxbook), but the social media site that the ghost uses to spread her terror is pretty much identical, with little variations in the terminology (like "Spread" instead of "Share") to keep them from being sued I guess. It's a good choice, I think - previous films have built their versions from the ground up, which automatically disconnects the audience its catering to as we instantly recognize it as phony. Here, you might just assume it's the real FB, and so the movie's central concepts - accepting strangers as "friends", the jealous rage one gets when seeing their friends having fun when they weren't invited, etc. - work as intended, without the usual distraction of seeing all the characters being obsessed with a social media app the audience recognizes as fake.

Anyway, for those uninitiated, the central conceit is that a fairly popular college sophomore named Laura accepts a friend request (hey, that's the title!) from Marina, a "weird" girl in her class, feeling sorry for her as she has no other fauxbook friends. Marina's nice at first, but then becomes overly pushy, tagging Laura in all her posts and messaging her nonstop about hanging out, missing her, etc. After Laura has a birthday party that she doesn't invite Marina to, the latter freaks out and kills herself - but she films herself doing it and posts the video on Laura's wall. And then continues doing so, from beyond the graaaaaaaaaave! Or, you know, whatever. Anyway, Laura's social circle starts shrinking as the friends begin dying off one by one in mysterious ways, and videos of their deaths are also posted on her timeline. Because of this, the 800 or so other people start defriending her (after leaving comments like "U R SICK!" and such), and Marina's plan becomes clear - she wants Laura to be "friendless", like her.

It's not the worst concept for a movie, really (plus it's not just a generic online ghost - she's actually a witch!), and if they really dug into the psychology of our obsession with social media and used the ghost-y stuff as more of a backdrop, it might have been a really great little slice of social commentary. The 800+ randoms is something that they don't really explore; we get graphics every now and then showing her declining friend numbers, but who are these people? We only ever see Laura with her five besties and her mom - were the others just complete strangers as well? Does she care that these people, who can't even really be called acquaintances, aren't going to see her statuses anymore? There's a minor subplot about how they can't delete their profiles (Marina's ghost won't let them), but it would have been interesting if she simply WOULDN'T delete hers, because she'd lose all her virtual friends. I myself never take anyone on Facebook that I don't actually know, but I know a number of friends who accept every request they get and somehow notice when one of these folks drop them ("Who unfriended me? I had 895, now I have 894!"), so I wish the movie took more time on the idea that these "friends" aren't actually friends at all and Marina is just one of many who were inadvertently scorned by conflating real life friendship with a virtual one.

But instead we just get the usual shit: someone dies, it looks like an accident, there's a suspicious cop who wonders why our protagonist knows two recent victims of tragedy, then another one dies, lather, rinse, repeat. While I was grateful that their phones had nothing to do with their demises, none of the deaths are particularly interesting (or graphic; the film's R rating is mostly for the six or seven F bombs), and you can easily guess the order in which they occur to boot, so it makes it an even bigger bummer that they didn't spend more time on the online obsession angle. Laura is even enrolled in a psych class that is currently on the topic of social media dependency, and the professor has this John Hurt/Jared Harris kind of authoritative presence, making it seem like he might be a more important character down the road, but he's largely dropped from the proceedings after a while. To be fair she's eventually suspended due to being a seeming liability for the school (even though it happens every few minutes it seems, she never thinks to take out her phone or laptop and show the police that she isn't the one posting snuff films and that her account can't be deleted, so the school thinks she's nuts), but again, it seemed like a missed opportunity not to include this guy on the action, if they wanted to *say* something about the very thing the teenagers in the audience will likely start looking at before the credits roll (the opportunities for a meta sequel are RIPE!).

Now I gotta get into spoilers, so skip the next paragraph if you want more surprises.

All that said it's really not all that bad until the third act, where they make a choice that is laudably unexpected and even somewhat daring (for this brand of horror, I mean), by having one of the friends realize that they can be spared Marina's wrath if Laura isn't alive to be alone. So he tries to kill her, and the finale becomes more of a slasher film chase climax, with Marina just hanging out on the sidelines I guess. I admit I didn't see it coming, but that's largely due to the fact that it's not really set up at all. The would-be killer is her friend-zoned buddy Kobe, who is also the requisite hacker type who offers up exposition like "These posts aren't written with any kind of code that I've ever seen before!", i.e. the kind of shit that means nothing in time that they maybe could have spent hinting at his out of nowhere villain turn. He even kills one of the other friends, which makes even less sense, and this all goes down during an endless climax that has Laura travel to the aforementioned commune, but then to another location after discovering the commune is a dead end. When she's not being pursued by Kobe she's just wandering around dimly lit hallways, with Marina making precious few appearances - so when they have Laura go through these motions again at a different place, I felt my last bit of goodwill toward the movie fade away.

It's not a total failure like its aforementioned peers, however. For starters, they believe in James Wan's rule about fake scares, in that there shouldn't be any - two 'classic' ones are set up (a refrigerator door being held open for an unusually long time, and a fogged mirror about to be wiped away) without the expected BOO! moment after, and there are no sudden doorbell/phone ringing kinda ones, either. In fact, the closest the movie gets to one is not only kind of effective in its carnival funhouse kind of way, but it's also thematically appropriate - Laura watches one of those "Hey look at this cute video" things where the subject (a cat, in this case) suddenly morphs into a possessed demon and shrieks. And then there are a few subtle scare moments without any attention being drawn to them, like when a character turns away from his laptop but his reflection on the screen stays frozen in place. Nothing particularly earth shattering, mind you, but it at least shows they were trying to avoid the pratfalls of so many others, and not wasting the audience's energy on false scare moments. It also makes good use of the fauxbook layout/function to introduce us to all of the primary characters quickly, showing their profiles and an assortment of pics/statuses that inform us what they're like and how they relate to one another in a few seconds of mostly dialogue-free screentime, as opposed to awkward expository dialogue that takes a lot longer. It's a shorthand I've seen in other films, but since this one's actually ABOUT this social media platform, it also works as introduction for how *it* works, for the non-computer types in the crowd who might have little idea what Facebook even is, i.e. the parents that will have to bring their kids to this inexplicably R-rated movie.

So basically it's not a good movie but it's also not as bad as many reviews will have you believe, the ones that will be an unfortunate product of the tendency to grade everything on a "fresh/rotten" scale with no room for the middle ground that it actually occupies. Sure, in the wake of It it might seem like the bottom of the barrel, but comparing this kind of thing to that juggernaut is highly unfair. The film actually belongs in the same class as Bye Bye Man and those others I mentioned, and to my eyes it's an improvement on those (though not quite up to par with the similar Unfriended, which took full advantage of its cyber-scenario and didn't skimp on the death scenes, not to mention fleshed out all of its characters as opposed to just the lead), and after Annabelle: Creation I appreciated something a little quieter that didn't seem to have a mandate to throw a scare at the audience every five minutes. They were putting some effort into making an effective horror film in the vein of the 2002 Ring, so even though they missed the mark I can at least appreciate that I wasn't spending 90 minutes feeling like the filmmakers thought I was an idiot. Much obliged!

What say you?

*Unless they updated it digitally - there was an inordinate number of VFX companies listed in the credits, despite the fact that there aren't a lot of obvious CGI effects for the ghost or kill scenes, which are also very brief anyway. So it's possible they went back and updated the Fauxbook screens to be more timely, as we all know how often they change it.

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Rings (2017)

FEBRUARY 3, 2017

GENRE: GHOST, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

With the arrival of each new late-coming sequel (Blair Witch, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, etc.), I become more and more worried about the new Saw and Friday the 13th films that are coming in October. It seems our Hollywood overlords are having trouble reviving old franchises as of late (and audiences aren't fooled, either), and Rings doesn't do anything to change that course. Originally slated for late 2015, the film has been clearly reworked some over the past year and change, and now finally hits theaters as counter programming for the Super Bowl instead of making the easy money it could have made in October (Of 2015 or 2016; it was once dated for both), and even the biggest sports hater in the world will probably wish they were watching the game after about 20 minutes of this lifeless attempt at reviving a series that never should have gotten a sequel in the first place.

To its credit, it doesn't ignore the events of Ring Two - the Sissy Spacek character is a major part (though not played by Spacek, as we just see quick shots of her as a younger woman) and, as the title suggests, the "Rings" club from the same-named short film (which was a prequel to Ring Two, if you recall) makes an appearance. Considering the entirely new cast and creative team, it wouldn't be crazy to assume that this would be a kind of stand-alone entry (or pseudo-remake, even), so as a fan of continuity and the like I'll at least give them props for not doing a reset. Oddly, it might be better to go in blind, because if you know the reveals from the first two films, you'll be far ahead of our heroes for most of the runtime, so if it's been a while I'd suggest skipping the Wiki recap if I were you. It won't save the movie by any means, but at least it'll give you one less thing to roll your eyes at while silently (or not, if the theater is empty) pleading with the film to stop being so goddamn boring.

A big part of the problem is our two leads are total blank slates. They're very nice to look at, sure, but I couldn't tell you a goddamn thing about either one of them, and I just spent 100 minutes watching them make their way through a not particularly complicated movie. It's also not particularly SHORT, clocking in at around 105 minutes, so there's no reason the film couldn't have included a few basic identifying traits for the main characters. The male, Holt, might like Afghan Wigs because there's a poster of them in his room, but that could be his roommate's for all we know. And we know even less about... *consults IMDb because I literally forgot already* Julia, who is an 18 year old who isn't going to college (like Holt is) because she has to take care of her mom, a character we never see and possibly doesn't exist. Julia seemingly sleeps at Holt's, which his dad doesn't seem to mind, and when Holt goes missing she up and takes off to find him hundreds of miles away, seemingly without informing the mom she supposedly has to take care of "after what happened" (your guess is as good as mine as to what that was), nor ever calling her during the week ("SEVEN DAYS!", you know) that she's in/around Holt's college.

But this plays into a larger issue, which is that absolutely nothing in the film feels genuine in any way. It's like every character in the movie came into existence the second the cameras were turned on, giving everything a vague, cold veneer that the film is powerless to overcome. It's also just plain phony and half-assed, and I'll give some examples that may sound like nitpicking, but hear me out, there's a point. In the first 15 minutes:
- Holt and Julia agree to a 9:30 Skype (specifically Skype), and then they cut to a generic chat app and the time is 9:07 (call already seemingly far in progress).
- A character says he had to find a VCR in order to watch the cursed tape when someone gave it to him. Later, he has other VHS tapes, like Aliens and Jurassic Park, in his belongings.
- Julia enters a classroom she doesn't belong in. For no reason, she cuts across a row of seats and... stands in the opposite back corner, a move that exists only to draw attention to her.
- Holt stops answering his phone. After six days, she drives to the school - instead of asking his dad if he's heard from him, or calling the school, or anything a normal person might do.
- Someone uses a screwdriver to hook up a VCR.

Now, yes, any one of these things on their own are fine - movies are movies, this isn't the point, etc. But when you add them all together (and again, all in the first reel), it just tells the audience that this is a sloppy, very phony movie - which makes it harder to buy anything the movie wants to sell us when it really gets going. If I can't believe any of the normal, non-scary stuff, how the hell am I supposed to accept the supernatural goings-on that will occur later? Again, these aren't interesting characters - the least the movie can do is make us believe they're just regular, average kids - and you can only do that by placing them into a normal, believable world. Not one where parents don't care about their minor children sleeping together and a girl takes notice of a VCR at the flea market by studying the BACK of the damn thing (seriously, she spies it from like 10 feet away and just stares at the console's rear panel. Big fan of AV jacks, I guess).

It's possible some of this stuff made more sense or had a different context in an earlier cut, but as with Bye Bye Man, I am not going to give the movie a benefit of the doubt when they're not charging audiences any less to make up for it. However, I WILL note that lots of things in the trailer do not appear; most curious is a line from Vincent D'Onofrio explaining a mark that appears on Julia's hand - in the finished film, the translation of the mark is saved as a reveal for the film's final scene (and does not involve D'Onofrio at all). We also see Julia watching the tape under different circumstances, so I'm curious just how much of the movie was overhauled and if it was actually good at one point. Considering how slow-paced it is (not usually something you say about a re-cut movie - they tend to speed things up, trading away coherence in the process) I am going to guess this one was never in any good shape, but if I were presented with an original cut I wouldn't be opposed to seeing for myself. Funnily enough, I COULD have seen an earlier cut, on several occasions - the theater I saw the film at, which is the one closest to my house (though I usually go to one a bit further away as this one doesn't have coffee or a rewards program), is where they hold a lot of the test screenings in the area. In fact it was a bit of a running joke of how many times the film tested (sometimes paying people to do it, which isn't always the case); I dug through my emails and found at least three invites for the film dating back to its original release date of October 2015. And that's just how many times I happened to get the invite (to my old AOL account, where I signed up for one of these lists ages ago), which means there were almost certainly more.

If I had to guess, the testing audiences didn't warm to the film's back half, because that's where it starts to feel less like a new concept (which is how it starts) and more like a remake of the original. And it's a shame, too, because there are some interesting ideas floating around in that first act, such as the Rings group. Basically, Holt's professor (Johnny Galecki) is trying to prove the existence of a soul, and to do so he has his students work extra credit by first watching the tape and then assigning them "tails" (someone that they can pass the curse on to). But obviously he can't do that if no one is dying, so (we have to infer this much, the movie doesn't bother clarifying and he's written out of the narrative by the halfway point) he lets some of the kids die by purposely botching their "tail" assignments, or at least, that's how it read to me. He also has this like, club (?) for all of them? It's on the 7th floor of the college (dorm? study hall? who knows) and you need a special key to access it, and all these kids are just chilling, like it was a bar or something. I couldn't tell if they were waiting to be tails, or under observation (for the whole week?) or what, but it seemed like it'd be a bigger element going forward. Alas, details are not this movie's strong suit, so whatever its actual function was didn't matter, because the movie shoots itself in the foot, dropping all of the "Rings" stuff shortly afterward to focus on, sigh, another goddamn proper burial plot.

Yep, I don't mean to spoil anything, but I shit you not - the movie eventually becomes another attempt to stop Samara's curse by giving her a proper burial, because her body was moved (and put in a wall) for reasons the movie clunkily clarifies in its third act. I don't know how many supernatural horror movies I've seen where the climax comes down to someone prying apart a wall or floorboard and finding a skeleton or mummified corpse, but I hope that whatever that number is (let's say 30) that it never gets much higher. All it does is remind me of superior films (like the first Ring) and practically guarantee that it won't work, because the damn ghost always comes back after being "properly" disposed of anyway. Speaking of the first Ring, new director F. Javier Gutiérrez tries to ape Gore Verbinski by drowning the film in blue, but he also lights like Peter Hyams, so get used to squinting your way through scare scenes. There's a shot late in the film where a decrepit room de-ages around Julia (broken objects repair, peeled wallpaper plasters itself back to the wall, etc.) and you can barely see the effect, which seems like a silly waste of money for a complicated CGI shot.

Regular readers of the site might be thinking that I levied a lot of these complaints at The Bye Bye Man (bland characters, phoniness, etc.), but ultimately even that one rises above this, because as bad as it was, it was at least goofy enough to give it a pulse. There aren't a lot of big horror scenes in the film (the trailer spoils the two best ones - the airplane and the hair), so you'd assume that when they DID come they'd be worth the wait, but no - they're just as indifferent as everything else, and Gutiérrez and his writers (including Akiva goddamn Goldsman, so you know you're in trouble) can't be bothered to deliver anything even remotely as insane/memorable as the first film's horse freakout on the boat, or even the first sequel's much lambasted deer attack. Even D'Onofrio can't save it; he's by far the best thing about the movie, but he's only in two or three scenes and spends most of them just spouting exposition while sitting in a chair. Even the obligatory "Samara climbs out of the TV" bit is botched, and no one thought to have any fun with the idea of the analog-driven Samara adapting to an all-digital world. Sure, the tape spreads through Quicktimes instead of VHS tapes (there's an honest to god plot point about the file size of a copy being larger than the original), and when she climbs from the TV it's a nice big HDTV set, but it's only in the film's obligatory sequel set up (good luck with that) that they think to do anything like spread it through social media and the like.

While I was fighting to stay awake (I saw the movie at 11 AM, I should mention), I tried to think of the last movie I saw that was this uninvolving, and oddly enough I think it was Shut In, starring ex-Ring lead Naomi Watts. If The Cure for Wellness (from Gore Verbinski) is a snoozer as well, I'm going to start seriously plotting out a meta-Ring sequel where the real curse is that no one can seemingly ever live up to it when they try to go back to the horror/thriller genre (and yes, there's a "back to the well" joke to be made, but I just refuse to). I didn't love Ring Two by any means (I never felt compelled to watch it again after opening night), but at least it was just your typically underwhelming sequel, whereas this is a straight up bad movie, and a bizarre approach to trying to revive a long-dormant "franchise" to boot.

What say you?

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Ghostbusters (2016)

JULY 15, 2016

GENRE: COMEDIC, GHOST
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Any regular reader of the site should know by now that I was exposed to and allowed to watch R rated movies from a young age (6 or 7), so it perhaps shouldn't be a big surprise that the original Ghostbusters is not as sacred to me as several other folks - particularly men - my age. I don't even know if I saw it until I was like 8, which means it would have in between Friday the 13th sequel viewings or R-rated comedies like Vacation and Caddyshack (and no, as a kid I didn't realize the Harold Ramis connection across those examples). As a result, since I had already moved on to more "sophisticated" fare, it didn't inform my childhood as much as it did for all of those folks who have been telling Paul Feig to fuck himself and saying even worse things to the female cast of his remake (subtitled Answer The Call in the end credits, oddly), which has the blessing of every living original Ghostbuster (they all make cameos) and original director Ivan Reitman (who produced this one). Remaking this movie doesn't bother me much, is what I'm saying - and as a fan of Feig's other films (not to mention someone who has harbored a crush on Kristen Wiig for nearly a decade) I was excited to see it - for all I knew I could end up preferring it to the original.

Now, let me stress that it's not that I DISLIKE the first film. Not by any means - it's fairly great, in fact. It's funny even on repeat viewings and the story - unlike many other '80s comedies - is actually satisfying for the most part. Despite the fact that it would have been fairly easy for them to do so, the movie's plot doesn't just exist to string the gags together; the jokes are usually organic to the characters and narrative, so coupled with the FX (many of which hold up) it combines to make a film that is very much deserving of its "beloved" status. I'm just saying it's not really SPECIAL to me the way Halloween or Fletch is - it's important to realize that I recognize several films as being great but they're not of any particular significance to me, same as I realize Kobe Bryant is a great basketball player despite giving less than one shit about basketball. Plus, I'm also too old to give a shit about remakes anymore anyway. They can Van Sant Psycho a new version of Fletch with Zac Efron for all I care.

(Please don't do that.)

Luckily for my comments section, I don't have to worry much about the Ghostbros, because I don't think the new movie reaches the heights of the original. It's better than the sequel for sure (I will never understand that one's appeal beyond the finale - how can GB fans appreciate a movie that spends its entire first act trying to suggest that our heroes have become jokes?), and it might even be funnier in spots, but the villain is very underdeveloped and there are (I know this sounds weird) too many damn ghosts. It's like they had a bunch of concept designs and Feig couldn't decide which to use and thus opted to throw them all in, somewhere - the big finale in Times Square presents dozens of anonymous specters that are disposed of too easily. The movie suffers from an abundance of callbacks to the original, but one of the things they DON'T reprise is one that they perhaps should: the montage of them cleaning up NY over a period of time. That would allow for all of the designs to show up without them being an important part to anything - seeing them all used as essentially the big obstacle before fighting the main villain (who, again, isn't fleshed out enough) isn't particularly engaging. Worse, this sequence is also where the FX start to falter; during Kate McKinnon's big action moment (wiping out a dozen ghosts with her proton-handguns, the ones she licks in the trailer) is laughably bad looking, almost as if they shot the scene with someone else and had to quickly superimpose her over the action. I love practical work, obviously, but for the most part the CGI ghosts here are actually quite well done and even a bit scary (the subway one and the mannequin are on the same level as the librarian), so it's a shame the haters will glom on the few bad FX shots as it's otherwise largely a fine showcase for computer trickery.

As for the villain Rowan, on a conceptual level he's great: a bullied weirdo who uses some homemade devices to amplify paranormal activity in those areas, with the intent on having so many ghosts flying around that the wall that separates their world and ours comes tumbling down entirely, bringing about the apocalypse. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all we know about him; he shows up and plants a device while saying "they'll all pay!" or whatever, and that's about as far as we get inside his head. The meta-parallel between him and the online trolls is apparent, but it's almost like they were afraid to get really lay into these sad bastards, so as a result we're held at arm's length from the villain - in fact if you haven't paid any attention to the online vitriol, you might take away even less about his character and motives. There are a couple of moments where we see that no one wants to deal with him (two waitresses argue over which one of them has to wait on him, for example), but it's all tell and no show - he never interacts meaningfully with anyone else. Let us SEE him being "wronged" by the rest of the world, not just sitting there oblivious to two strangers whispering and saying that the world sucks. And it doesn't help matters that due to the way the plot unfolds he's almost forgotten by the time the climax rolls around, as (SPOILER) he is killed about an hour or so into the movie and becomes a ghost that possesses Chris Hemsworth's idiot receptionist character, letting the actor (using his native accent for a change) kind of take over as the villain. Then, with 15 minutes to go, the ghost leaves Hemsworth and takes on yet another form, that of a giant, growling, personality-free monster. There's nothing about this form that recalls the angry sad sack, which to me feels like a giant missed opportunity. Rowan's takeover of Hemsworth at least allows us to enjoy the actor's otherwise under-utilized comic chops (not to mention his dance moves), but even there it has the same problem: the movie can't quite pin down a primary villain. It'd be like if New Beginning was sped up and grafted on to a shorter version of Final Chapter after Tommy killed Jason off - the transition doesn't work at all for the narrative. Doing it twice is just silly.

But there has to be a big monster for them to blast away at the end of the film, because that's what the original had. As I said, there are too many callbacks to the 1984 movie, following its structure almost beat for beat and overloading it with cameos from FIVE of the original cast members (actually six if you count Harold Ramis, who 'appears' as a bust), plus Slimer and Stay-Puft for good measure. Obviously, you want the new team to show some measure of reverence to their predecessors, and one of the cameos works perfectly (spoiler: it's Ernie Hudson's), but Feig and co-writer Katie Dippold overdo it, as if they figure they can win over naysayers simply by constantly reminding them that they too love the original film. Ironically, the deja vu is the same thing that helped sink Ghostbusters II, so you'd think they would have known better. I don't think anyone would argue that this movie is at its best when it's doing its own thing, so it gets almost frustrating that there isn't more of it.

For example, the dynamic of the group is very different. Kristen Wiig is in the sort of Peter Venkman role as the one who is a bit above the ghost hunting stuff, but unlike Venkman she's not even associated with her "Ray Stantz", the Melissa McCarthy character. The two were best friends and wrote a paranormal book together years ago, but then Wiig left that stuff (and McCarthy) behind when she took a job teaching physics at Columbia, while McCarthy has taken a job at some dump college and made a new best friend (McKinnon's "Egon"). When Wiig finds out the book has been republished on Amazon she confronts McCarthy about taking it down so it doesn't embarrass her, just as a ghost shows up elsewhere. So they're sort of forced together, and she has no existing relationship with McKinnon - a big change from the original's trio of pals (Egon was the new guy, but they clearly didn't MEET in the film). As for "Winston", Leslie Jones plays Patty, a subway worker and history buff who the others meet when investigating the 2nd ghost in the movie, and who joins them shortly thereafter, much earlier in the narrative than Winston joined up (before they've even decided on a name, in fact). This lets the group have some "getting to know you" moments the original obviously didn't require, the occasional reminder of the strained friendship between the two leads (a subplot that's largely phased out as the movie goes on, only to resurface near the end), and also more time of the full group working as a team than the original movie had.

It's this stuff that makes the movie work as well as it does. Obviously everyone's tolerance for this or that type of humor varies, but I personally found almost every scene of the four of them just talking to be hilarious, and all four of them get in plenty of laugh out loud lines (even McCarthy, who seems a bit hampered by the PG-13 rating). Not that the ghost-hunting scenes lack laughs, but again those are the scenes where they seem to be constantly using the original film as a guide - the ones of them just sort of hanging out (usually involving some new tech McKinnon designed) are consistently funny, and cementing the idea that they should be reunited for a sequel. Their chemistry isn't surprising since they've all worked together on SNL (three cast members and one regular host), but despite the fact that they're all subbing in for the original's characters in some form, I was surprised at how quickly they took on their own personalities and played off their relative strengths. Unfortunately, this also means that the movie occasionally suffers from some fairly bad editing, because Feig clearly let these four talented and hilarious women play off each other (read: improv) whenever he could, and used the best gags and jokes even if they didn't always flow as well. McKinnon scores a great laugh with some Pringles in one scene, for example - hopefully you're still laughing and thus don't really notice when they're completely gone (and her expression is totally different) in the next shot.

On occasion, the plot suffers from this "hey, something's missing" feeling as well. Feig said his director's cut was something like three hours long; I don't think it feels like it's been reduced by over a third (I'm sure a lot of what was chucked was just more comedy of no narrative use), but there were at least three instances where I couldn't help but feel something somewhat important just got chucked in order to keep things moving. For example, when all hell breaks loose, McKinnon, McCarthy, and Jones are all running around fighting the ghosts for a bit, and at one point they get trapped... and then Wiig shows up and saves them. It plays like she had quit the team at an earlier point and decided to come back to them (think Han Solo showing up to help save the day at the end of New Hope), but we never saw that if so - far as we knew she was just at home when the other three sprung into action. I've already mentioned Rowan's truncated appearance, but that extends to other antagonists as well: Matt Walsh and Michael K Williams play a pair of Feds who are sort of in the Walter Peck mode, but they never do anything worthy of hiring these actors (particularly Williams, who also gets 6th billing despite maybe 90 seconds of screentime). This is nothing new for a modern comedy; Neighbors 2 (which more of you should have seen - it was pretty great!) was just as bad if not worse in that regard, but since the first film's script by Aykroyd and Ramis was famously gigantic and managed to offer a relatively tight narrative in 100 minutes, it's hard not to notice. It's part of the problem of improv; sure you get comic gold, but then it seems like there's a tendency to let the plot falter because test screenings show this otherwise unnecessary bit gets the best laughs. So when they decide 30 seconds needs to be trimmed somewhere, and the choice is between some exposition/character development, or a tangential bit that people will laugh their asses off (like Hemsworth's terrible ideas for their logo), they opt to keep the latter every time.

Also, maybe I just missed something, but all of a sudden Times Square is transformed into the 1970s (no particular year can be determined; the movie theaters are showing Willard (1971), Fist of Fury (1972), and Taxi Driver (1976), so it's just random), which no one comments on in any meaningful way and seems like a lot of work for the production for a mere sight gag. Anyone have a good explanation for this bit?

Overall, I liked the movie (as did the audience, who applauded when the credits came up - rare for a Friday morning crowd). I'd watch it again, I want to see the cast come together for a sequel (not the one they tease at the end of the credits though - don't Into Darkness this shit, come up with your own villains, please!), and it left me far more satisfied at 36 than the original sequel did when I was 10. But it also kept mucking up the plot and showing its seams, which A) won't help win over any of the idiots who have been hating on this movie since the day it was announced, but an even more painful B) it makes it hard to really champion, either. "GO SEE THIS FLAWED MOVIE!" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, and that's exactly what I wished I could give it due to all of the unnecessary hate being thrown its way - even a mega-budget studio movie can feel like an underdog, I guess. So they all deserve recognition for making it a lot better than the disaster it might have been, I can't help but feel Feig could have done a little better, either - it almost seemed like he felt he HAD to throw in those shoutouts (Slimer is particularly awful and unnecessary to boot), and did so half-heartedly, using screentime that could have been used on more of his and Dippold's own ideas. Here's hoping that they have the confidence to truly make it their own next time.

What say you?

P.S. Fall Out Boy's awful cover of the theme song appears in the middle of the movie. Brace yourself.

P.S.S. Comments are moderated here for a reason. Don't bother leaving vitriol, because it will never see the light of day. If you have something constructive to say, fine. Otherwise save it for AICN or IMDb, where pointless drivel is tolerated.

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The Other Side Of The Door (2016)

MARCH 4, 2016

GENRE: GHOST, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I have a son now - have I mentioned that? (pause for groans) But seriously, as mentioned in, oh, every other review I've written for the past two years, having a kid changed how I approach horror movies, in particular ones like The Other Side of the Door, as the movie is about a woman (Sarah Wayne Callies, someone I'm always happy to see) who loses her son in a car accident and tries to kill herself to end her grief. The family's nanny, Piki, feels sorry for her and tells her about a place that will allow her to contact her son; she can't SEE or TOUCH him, because he's (see title), but she can talk to him and say what she needs to say. Under no circumstances, Piki warns, should she open the door no matter what - and this being a horror movie, you can guess what she does (spoiler: she opens the goddamn door).

Since he dies in flashback (he's already dead when the movie begins), thus softening the blow, this was probably the most conflicting moment for me to watch as a horror fan who is also a parent; two years ago I'd probably end up hating the movie because of this moment. Because the horror fan part of me is rolling his eyes, yelling at Callies for doing the one thing she was instructed not to do - but the dad in me was wondering why she took so long to do that. If my son was taken from me and I had a chance to talk to him on the other side of a door, you can bet your ass that I'd have the damn thing opened before he finished saying "Daddy is that you?", damn the consequences. I have come to realize I am far more sensitive than some other parents when it comes to things like this (they're able to separate the "it's a dumb horror movie" element enough to know that such a thing would be impossible in the first place, whereas I am not), so I just want to make that clear when I say I enjoyed the movie. When the plot hinges on something that 90% of the audience might consider completely stupid (it's the equivalent of a road trip movie that goes to hell because our heroes opt to take some creepy ass "shortcut"), I know it's bound to keep them at bay for the rest, but for me I was totally fine with it.

But I think the real reason it didn't affect me as much as I feared once I knew it was about a dead kid (I didn't know much about the movie before I sat down) is because it's more or less a Pet Sematary remake, with a grieving parent being told of a place that would bring their loved one back to them, albeit with warnings that are ignored. Bad things happen, more people die, and at the very end we realize no one's learned their damn lesson. In fact, Mary Lambert is actually thanked in the credits, which made me wonder if they had to run the movie by her to make sure there was nothing legally actionable about the movie. I kid; there's obviously enough of a difference that no one could be held accountable any more than Costner and Reynolds could be sued over Waterworld re: Road Warrior, but speaking strictly as an easily upset dad, the similar beats of a story I know very well kept me from freaking out for the most part, because I've more or less been down this road before (and in far harsher manner - nothing here is remotely as awful as the little coffin spilling over at the funeral in Pet - good lord that is traumatizing).

One of the biggest changes (besides the dynamic - it's the mom, not the dad, who goes off to the magical burial place) is the setting. India, to be specific, which gives the film a unique look and invaluable production value - the authentic, slightly rundown (and giant) family home alone sets it apart from the countless anonymous middle/upper class homes we've seen over the past few years in (name a Blumhouse movie). But there are some city-set scenes that also give it plenty of personality the plot occasionally lacks, and the script wisely skips past the "stranger in a strange land" element - we learn early on that they moved there for the husband's job several years ago, so they're obviously pretty comfortable in the locale instead of bumbling about needing everything explained to them.

The husband is played by Jeremy Sisto, who is always an interesting guy to watch and chooses his horror projects carefully (or at least, he has since Hideaway). Callies is the main star here, with Sisto usually off at work or something and thus not witness to any of the spooky goings-on. It doesn't QUITE land maybe as well as they hoped, but this allows a late-period wrinkle where Callies starts to confess what she's been seeing to him and he starts wondering (as do we) if she's just crazy, that her grief finally got the best of her. It'd be a fun twist to take (and would make the Pet Sematary lifts actually kind of inspired - distracting us with a familiar story to distract us away from the more plausible answer), but (spoiler) they don't opt for that route. Sisto finds out about all the supernatural stuff in a pretty good way, however, and he makes the most of his slightly reduced screentime. Indeed, one of the few times my "dad gene" kicked in was when he broke down at the sight of his son's toys and clothes on fire, which is something the wife had done to try to ward off his evil ghost.

Unlike Gage Creed, their kid doesn't really come back in a flesh and blood way - we see him in flashes, but for the most part he's just a "presence", with chairs moving by themselves and books being dropped at Callies' feet when he wants to hear a bedtime story. But modern horror movies need something physical to cause people to jump, so we learn early on that there are these creepy Rob Zombie-looking dudes who live on the flesh of the dead, and once Callies opens the door they start menacing her on a regular basis (read: when the movie needs a jump scare). The director is fond of showing one of them off in the distance, startling the characters into walking backwards a bit into another (obviously much closer) one, a trick that gets a bit old but is still preferable to fake ones where she's scared by her husband or a coat rack or whatever the hell. In fact I don't think the movie actually has any of those cheap shot ones at all, though I did leave for a bit to get a drink (this theater allows alcohol and it was my birthday, so I indulged) so maybe I missed one. Either way, it's hardly Insidious in terms of effective jolt moments, but at least they aimed to make them honest jolts, and however successful they ultimately are is kind of up to the viewer anyway.

I knew so little about the movie before going in that I didn't realize until it was over (there were no titles at the beginning of the film) that it was directed by Johannes Roberts, someone I consider myself a fan of based on his previous two films. One was Storage 24, a fun little flick that takes a slasher template and applies it to an alien monster movie (and sets it inside a personal storage warehouse), and the other is Expelled, which I saw as F and liked enough to put in my book. It's his first wide(ish) release in the US, and it's a shame that Fox didn't seem to have much faith in it, doing the same thing they did with the inferior The Pyramid in the December before last (namely, putting it on a few hundred screens and not really advertising it). It's not the best movie of the year or anything, but it's a solid entry in the "careful what you wish for" sub-genre of supernatural horror (the minor allusion to "Bobby" from Dead of Night should make some old-school fans smile) and, for genre fans, a far better showcase for Ms. Callies than Walking Dead ever offered her (seriously, did the writers just hate her guts or what?). It'll be a big Redbox hit, at least.

What say you?

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Crimson Peak (2015)

OCTOBER 24, 2015

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I usually hate seeing movies "late", i.e. after they've been out for a week, because by then all the surprises have been spoiled and my expectations are thrown all topsy-turvy by hearing everyone's two cents, which makes my viewing almost a complete 180 from how I prefer it - going in completely blind and untainted. But for Crimson Peak, it might have helped waiting a week, because lots of folks have been bemoaning the film's lack of full blown horror elements in favor of a romantic tale, so that, coupled with the fact that the trailer* left me cold, is the reason I think I actually quite enjoyed it - it might even be my favorite of Guillermo Del Toro's American (read: non Spanish) films.

I should add to that the fact that among those, I was no big fan of Pacific Rim, wasn't wowed by Blade II, and found the Hellboys to be fairly enjoyable but never wanted to watch them again - making Mimic (!) my previous favorite, ironic since he has mostly disowned it. But I love all of his Spanish language films, so despite my constant disappointment with his studio work, I keep giving him the benefit of the doubt, and finally I found myself rewarded here. I don't think the film is COMPLETELY horror-free, as some have claimed - it's fairly evenly split between the ghost/horror stuff and the romance between Edith (Mia Wasikowska) and Thomas (Tom Hiddleston). In many ways it's reminiscent of House of Usher, albeit with the sexes swapped - Mia's kind of the Mark Damon role, with Hiddleston as "Madeline". That leaves Jessica Chastain in the Vincent Price slot as the more villainous of the pair. But the plot is otherwise similar; the decaying home, the seeming refusal to leave it or welcome any outsiders, and a family "curse" of sorts that will prove to be everyone's downfall.

But Del Toro wasn't just looking at an old Roger Corman film for influence - there's lots of The Haunting, The Shining, and (maybe?) The Others in here, plus a subplot borrowed liberally from another genre film that I won't name because it will kind of be obvious what EXACTLY he is taking from it. Some of my peers weren't as careful, cluing me into something that's supposed to be a major shock at the end of the 2nd act, and it's the sort of thing that really annoys me. No, they're not coming right out and saying it, but if you have seen Crimson Peak and know what movie I'm referencing (based on a book, and recently remade for television), you will probably agree that just saying the title is a dead giveaway for the plot point that resurfaces here. It'd be like someone saying that a movie was influenced by The Crying Game - no one is going to think of that movie if the plot concerns IRA agents and double crosses, so obviously they mean that some woman in the movie turns out to be a dude.

Luckily, even knowing that was coming didn't ruin anything. There are certainly far worse ways to spend two hours than looking at Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain in gorgeous period outfits; hell I might enjoy this movie even if there was ZERO horror. But what really got me was how patient it was - the trailers seemed to suggest almost nothing in the movie happened outside of its main location, but on the contrary - it's 40 minutes before they even arrive there. That first act establishes all of our characters in New York, and includes the great Jim Beaver as Edith's father. I didn't even know he was in the movie, so seeing him was a glorious surprise, as were the bit roles by Burn Gorman (also a bright spot of Pacific Rim) and Leslie Hope, the latter a one-time actress crush of young BC thanks to It Takes Two. As you can probably tell from the trailers' absence of these people, their roles are limited and before long we're down to the primary four, but the point is - there's a bigger world (and even some humor) than the marketing had led me to believe.

And it's these scenes that make the long-awaited arrival at the mansion as deflating for us as it was for Edith. The house is falling apart in wonderfully weird ways - the floor is sinking into the red clay that comes up from the ground (for bricks; it's the key element of the family's fortunes), and the collapsing roof allows it to snow inside - this has to be the only movie where a would-be kill from being thrown off a balcony inside is prevented by a large snowpile. But the red clay surfaces everywhere, allowing Del Toro to give you a movie where the house seems to always be bleeding (and even cinema's first logical "red water comes out of the faucet" scene!) but isn't anything the characters find strange. One of the best things about Del Toro's movies is his fascination for unusual details, and rarely have they worked so well as they do here - it's living up to its schlocky influences ("BLOOD POURS DOWN THE WALLS!" sounds like something you'd hear in a drive-in movie trailer, right?) but also not distracting away from the mostly grounded narrative. Hell, the first big horror moment in the main narrative (it opens at the end, and then offers a flashback) is something out of a giallo, with black gloves and a straight razor that may or may not come into play (I loved the misdirection here).

As for the ghosts, eh. I have long since grown tired of seeing CGI tendrils of smoke or goo or whatever the hell else these designers think is scary or even visually interesting, and even if I HADN'T just suffered through more than enough of them in Paranormal Activity 6, I would have been rolling my eyes at their usage here. Their primary design is spectacular, as they are formed (or half-formed) from the same blood red clay, giving them an appearance that is equal parts ghostly skeleton and Frank in Hellraiser. Most of their appearances are little more than floating down a corridor and pointing while croaking out some sort of cryptic warning, making the film more fitting for a Halloween Horror Nights maze than I thought (it was a kind of shitty maze), but that's the sort of thing that will make it a pretty good Halloween option for the years to come. In fact, given its Imax release, I'm kind of stunned the film isn't in 3D as well - the ghosts' movement and the house itself would have lent itself nicely to the format.

I can only guess that the reason is the film's length - it's only seconds under a full two hours, and seemingly could have been trimmed here and there - I swear there's two full sequences that are identical, where Edith wakes up, discovers her husband isn't in the bed with her, grabs a candle, and goes around to investigate until she finds a Haunted Mansion reject*. There aren't any major unnecessary subplots or anything like that (Del Toro's not Peter Jackson, after all), but since the story has to serve two masters (horror and romance) it's just kind of a given that it'll run longer than the average 90 minute horror (or 105 minute romance). Even 5-10 minutes could have helped it out a bit, and might have even wiped out a number of those "it's not even horror!" complaints. I mean, this is a movie that has a man's head being bashed into a sink, multiple bloody stabbings, and even a good ol' fashioned shovel to the head - even without the ghosts, it'd certainly qualify, but maybe the stretches in between those things are just too much for folks to handle.

It's a shame the movie tanked so spectacularly (it will be GdT's least attended studio movie by a wide margin), because while I get that it won't be for everyone, it seems the people that it WILL be for have largely avoided it. It has some minor issues but nothing too damaging, and the big screen is the right place to enjoy such gorgeous production design (and, for his largely female fanbase, Hiddleston's thrusting bare ass during a love scene). I take some solace in the idea that maybe after two money losers in a row, GdT will be forced to scale it back even further or just go all out and make something in Spanish again, since smaller = better when it comes to his features. If you think you might enjoy this sort of thing, I urge you to check it out soon (as in, this week, before Friday), as by then it's likely to be downgraded to the crappiest screens around in order to make room for the new releases, and will be gone entirely by mid-November, I'm sure.

What say you?

*Yes, I know this was one of Guillermo's 7,000 announced projects that have yet to come to fruition. Couldn't help but wonder if he was just getting this sort of ghostly action out of his system in case it joins all the others that will never happen.

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Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)

OCTOBER 23, 2015

GENRE: GHOST, MOCKUMENTARY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I used to always rewatch at least the previous entry of a franchise before heading out for a new sequel, if not a few of them if the series had been going long enough. However, time does not allow for such things anymore, and usually I'm lucky if I even find time to skim the films' Wikipedia entries beforehand. But I was asked to moderate a Q&A for the first Paranormal Activity just two nights ago, giving me my first viewing of the original/best film in the series in probably 4 years, and I spent a good chunk of that viewing wondering how in just six years it went from a series that worked because it was so simple (and largely believable) to one that was in 3D and promised to explain all of the "mythology" that had been building over the previous four sequels. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension retains the found footage element (and the "Night #_" title cards) but is otherwise unrecognizable as a followup to that perfectly simple and effective film - and hits a new low for a franchise that hadn't been exactly knocking it out of the park lately.

Based on the grosses for the last two films, maybe some of you haven't kept up with this convoluted and increasingly uninteresting saga, but if you're in the mood to return to its world I have some good news for you - the only ones you really need to see are the first and third films, which are also the best. As this is the last one (they say, though tracking suggests that the box office won't be strong enough for them to change their minds) we will apparently never get any explanations for the unanswered questions from Paranormal Activity 4 (no expensive fork backstory!) or The Marked Ones, as those films are barely acknowledged (Hunter makes a brief appearance, and since there's a magic door I guess we can count it as a callback to Marked Ones' climax). Katie only appears as a little girl, leaving Katie Featherston completely out of this one for the first time - a bizarre choice considering its supposed position as the series closer. At this point it's more or less for fans only - why not give them one last scene with the series' most prominent player? It'd be like sending Jason to hell in a movie where he barely appear- oh, wait.

Anyway, the movie takes place in 2013 and focuses on the family that lives in a brand new (and impossibly gorgeous) home that, as we learn around halfway through, was built on the spot where Katie and Kristy's home was, before it burned down. While setting up Christmas decorations (and filming themselves doing it, even though it seems like the sort of task that would be easier to do with two hands) they find a box that doesn't belong to them, and wouldn't you know it - it contains an ancient video camera and the box of tapes that we first saw in PA3. Tapes get watched, freaky shit starts happening, more cameras are set up... you know how this goes by now. The trailer highlighted one of the film's few fun ideas, which is the idea that the girls on the 25 year old tapes were somehow seeing our heroes in the present and even communicating with them - but the film barely uses it. It only happens twice (and you've already seen one), so you can't help but feel kind of deflated when such moments come and go so quickly, only to be followed up by yet another two minutes of watching everyone sleep via multiple camera angles before anything happens.

The other new wrinkle for this entry is the 3D, which sounds wholly ridiculous on paper - why is a found footage movie in 3D? Better yet, HOW is a found footage movie in 3D, given that the consumer cameras these people use don't have that function. But oddly enough, it's one of the film's few bright spots, as director Gregory Plotkin wisely keeps everything flat except for when the ghost is out and about, with its floating particles and the things it's "touching" being given the extra dimension over an otherwise standard 2D image. So yeah, you're spending a giant chunk of the movie's runtime wearing 3D glasses for no reason, but at least it's movie-logical in its implementation, and gives the film most of the faint pulse that it has.

But at the same time, it's sort of representative of everything that's wrong with the movie. The first one terrified people with little more than loud bumps on the steps and a few shadows moving around - this one relies on a giant CGI black swirl to get those boo moments. On occasion Plotkin trusts in the audience's imagination - there's a fun little bit where the mom (who, in keeping with the film's attempt to remind us of 1 and 3, is once again a gorgeous brunette) sticks her head in the fireplace to get something that the spooky daughter threw in the back of it, and the unseen ghost turns the gas on - that's the stuff that works! The thing that will give you House on Haunted Hill (the remake) flashbacks - not so much. And not only is it not scary, but it also runs perpendicular to the very thing that made the original movie work: its natural believability. You could probably fool a younger audience member into thinking that the first film was a legitimate recording of a couple who got haunted, but even my infant son would recognize this one as a scripted Hollywood movie from start to finish. Recognizable actors, 3D, and CGI by no less than ILM itself will keep you from ever buying into the "reality" of the movie, which is the whole point of a POV movie in the first place. I mean, Christ, when you need the FX wizards behind Star Wars to create the scares in your Paranormal Activity movie, you're obviously doing something very wrong.

(Also wrong: needing three credited writing teams. To make a sequel to a movie one guy made by himself in his own house.)

It also has its own internal problems, starting with the vague characterization we're given for its leads. In a nice nod to Oren Peli's early days, the dad is a video game designer (or programmer? Bug tester? It's never clear, but we only see him frowning at an iPad once saying he needs to get the game finished, so it doesn't matter), but whatever mom does is a total mystery, and neither of them ever have to leave the house, I guess (the film never once goes beyond their front yard - even when they try to escape by going to a hotel, we just hear about it when they return, defeated). And yet, they apparently require a live-in nanny? Olivia Dudley from Vatican Tapes is always nice to see, but I honestly couldn't tell you why she needed to be in this movie, and the film offers no real explanation either. At first I thought she was a friend who was kind of always hanging around, but there's a scene where the little girl wakes up in the middle of the night and it's Dudley, not the mom, who comes in to comfort her. I also considered the idea that maybe she was just the wife's sister, but if so it's kind of creepy that the dad's brother would be hitting on her so much, as they were in-laws. So two stay at home parents have a nanny and a gorgeous, gigantic home (the little girl has a bedroom AND a playroom) with a Christmas tree that would make Clark Griswold jealous, and as always with these things also apparently live in a bubble where neighbors are never concerned with all the screaming and crashes that occur. Again: why operate under the guise of reality if you're more unbelievable than the average Arnold Schwarzenegger movie? Why not drop the video camera angle completely?

Speaking of the camera, I had to laugh at the idea that these folks were already filming every stupid thing they did for no reason BEFORE they find the box of tapes and magic video camera. Toby the ghost has incredibly weird luck when it comes to choosing victims, as they all just love filming things all the time. And yet it doesn't stop the brother from mocking the family from PA3, saying "Did these people just film EVERYTHING?" as he himself is being filmed for no reason (and this of course leads to the inevitable scene where a man tapes his brother and sister-in-law as they watch a tape of them watching a tape). Exposition is a frequent problem as well; Dudley is CLEARLY dubbed in one major scene, rattling off nonsense about the witch cult, and other bits of backstory reveals are similarly dropped in voice-over by dad or whoever is holding the camera. They also throw in the idea that Katie posed as a real estate agent to make sure that THIS family moved into THIS home, which doesn't jive with PA4's narrative. If you recall, that one took place in Nevada, so clearly Toby can get around - why would Katie have to go to all that (seemingly impossible) trouble to make sure this targeted family lived in that particular house? Couldn't he just go anywhere they ended up?

This is the series that killed Saw, which is amusing because it attempted the same sort of annual longevity and ran out of gas way earlier. Saw rebounded creatively with its 6th film (albeit not financially, that was the one that went up against the first Paranormal), but this, essentially Paranormal 6 since the "spinoff" Marked Ones ultimately opted to spend its third act bending over backwards to be connected, is possibly its nadir. Even Paranormal 4 had a pretty good ending (this one's is terrible, for the record) and the fun Kinect stuff - here, without 3D it will have nothing of note really going for it. I find it funny that they took down Saw but ended up with one less entry and not even half of the goodwill - people are still asking about a Saw 8, but I can't imagine too many people will be bugging Blumhouse and Paramount to continue the series after three dud entries in a row (Marked Ones was better than this or PA4, yes, but hardly a return to the heights of the first three, and the grosses were only half of what PA4 made, itself a major disappointment). Somewhere along the line they lost sight of what made the first three movies so successful and interesting, and ended up with a baffling, half-baked mythology that this finale only partially resolves. Maybe they're not totally ready to call it a day on this series, but I'm sad to say as a major champion of the original - I think I am. Good luck with the video game.

What say you?

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The Gallows (2015)

JULY 9, 2015

GENRE: GHOST, REVENGE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

This will be a (slightly) shorter review than most HMAD entries, because quite frankly, The Gallows didn't give me a lot to work with. I almost didn't bother to write a review at all (was gonna just tweet a few things) but a quick check on Alexa revealed how far the site has plummeted since I stopped updating daily, which is concerning since part of that non-frequency is due to my writing a book that I'll need people to come here on the regular to know when it's available. So you'll get a review of a lousy found footage movie that you can read at a red light, and I'll spare my twitter followers more thoughts on this shockingly flat, long past its prime entry in the now-over POV race.

Oddly, the one thing the movie gets right is that it feels like a genuine video shot by an obnoxious high school kid. As anyone who has read my takes on some of the other major FF releases can vouch for, I particularly hate when there's no logic behind the footage we're seeing - impossible cutaways, people filming things for absolutely no reason just so they can ensure the camera is on when something scary happens, people standing there filming their friends being killed - all of these things drive me up a wall and keep me from engaging in the film. But here, I bought like 75-80% of the footage as something I could imagine filming myself in that situation. One scene even plays out mostly while looking at the characters' feet (attn: fetishists), because they're arguing and that's what people would do if holding a camera up before things got heated - they'd drop it to their side and engage as a human being. It's only in the film's final scene that the camera logic is completely out the window, but by then I stopped caring anyway.

Because while they got the camera right, they screwed up everything else. The movie has almost nothing to it beyond the one line plot synopsis: some kids break into their high school at night, get stuck, and are menaced by the ghost of a kid who died in a school play 20 years ago. There are a couple of reveals concerning why it's after these kids specifically (well, one of them), but it's an empty attempt at making the film more interesting, because (spoiler) the connection our hero has to the original incident involves his father, and that's a character we see briefly, 30-40 minutes before this revelation, and never again. For it to have any meaning, he'd have to re-enter the picture and explain his side of the story, but that doesn't happen. So who cares?

(That it's a reveal even though the picture of his father has been hanging up in the room that he's been practicing a play every day for weeks is something we can just let slide, I guess.)

Dropped characters are just the order of the day in this movie, actually. Early on our hero goes out of his way to film a janitor going about his business and saying "working late tonight?", to which the janitor answers in the affirmative - this seems to establish his presence/another victim for later when they go inside after hours, but nope. Ditto for the Jonah Hill-y stage manager who the protagonist torments (if you haven't guessed by now, the guy with the camera is an asshole), as they are engaged in some back and forth pranking/retaliation that goes nowhere, since he doesn't show up in the locked off school either. I suppose one could defend these things as mere misdirection, but that only works if they're directing your attention away from the real threats or suspects, which do not exist in this one-note movie. It's either padding to fill out the barely feature length run time (an exact 80 minutes, with credits and a scene we see play out twice), or sloppy writing. Take your pick. It's a toss up to me, but I might give "sloppy writing" the edge based on how many jaw-droppingly bad bits of exposition are shoehorned into the dialogue, a problem that starts in the movie's very first scene when an audience member filming a school play (starring his own kid, one would assume) starts talking about how one of the actors was a last minute replacement.

It's also not scary at all. As always I use the audience to gauge the effectiveness of these things to see how well they're working since I'm immune to jumps and such, but the scattered audience members who joined me for this 9:15pm screening were, I guess, equally just annoyed that they were missing Hannibal for this, because I swear I only heard one person shout at one of the scares (far cry from its hilariously overblown ads suggesting that it's the scariest movie ever or whatever). Worse, there's no sense of dread - it's clear who the villain is, more or less what he wants, and the idiotic twist that explains how he connects to one of the other characters is too laughable and out of nowhere to add to the non-existent tension. Even the light supernatural elements about doors that can't be opened fail to register, and I say this as someone who can count sneaking into my own high school after hours (ironically to obtain a videotape) as one of the more intense moments of my adolescence, since I'm sure being caught would result in some sort of major disciplinary action. Shouldn't I be even the slightest bit worked up to see this sort of thing on-screen in a legit horror movie? Having a connection to the material is a key factor in how much you respond to horror movies (hence why I now have trouble with evil/dead children movies since becoming a father), so it's an even bigger indictment of the movie's failures that I was unable to feel anything but apathy.

Thankfully, the trailer's awful "Smells Like Teen Spirit" cover is not included. That and the believable camerawork are about the only positives I could find in this thing. It didn't exactly have a high bar to clear for me to say something like "best wide release found footage movie in years!" (I specify wide release because the indie scene still produces some minor gems, like Afflicted), but it couldn't even manage that. It's maybe better than Paranormal Activity 4 and Devil's Due, but that's about it. This is the sort of movie where I wouldn't even bother yelling at someone for taking out their phone - I'd be thankful that they offered something that actually engaged me.

What say you?

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The Poltergeist of Borley Forest (2013)

JUNE 1, 2015

GENRE: GHOST, TEEN
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

A friend of mine made a haunted house movie that was pretty well received by those who saw it, and years later he still busts my balls about it because he knows I dislike haunted house movies more often than not and figured I'd hate it. But I actually quite liked it, and since I did I've tried to keep more of an open mind about such fare since. Alas, movies like the Poltergeist remake and now The Poltergeist of Borley Forest are exactly the sort of bland things that made me dislike the sub-genre in the first place. I know these kind of movies CAN work on me even as an adult, but whatever that secret ingredient is that makes me like so few of them is definitely missing here.

To be fair it's more of a typical ghost film than a haunted house one (the original title was "You Will Love Me", I assume it's been retitled due to the timeliness of its DVD release - very Asylum-level thinking, Image), but it's got several tropes of the HH film, and just about every (attempt at a) scare takes place inside the heroine's home, so it's safe to put it alongside the actual Poltergeists and The Haunting in your virtual video store shelves. The key difference is that our heroine, a fairly obnoxious girl named Paige, attracts the poltergeist's attention in the titular woods and it follows her home, where it does most of its thing before a climax that returns to the woods. Perhaps if they spent more time there than in the nondescript suburban home that serves as the primary location, the film would be a little more exciting, or at least less drab to look at.

I'll give them this much - at least they didn't go found footage. There's actually a focus on tech - Paige's confiscated/reclaimed cell phone is a major plot point and two of the male characters spend giant chunks of their screentime looking at computers - so ironically it wouldn't be much of a stretch to think that these kids filmed everything, and it was shot in 2011 when such films were all the rage. But no, it's traditionally shot, at least in a general sense. Part of what undoes the film is the director's obnoxious tendency to shoot scenes by panning or tracking back and forth as the actor talks. It's fine (if ill-fitting) for scenes of someone sitting alone or master shots of a group doing something, but when he does it during a conversation it might cause a headache. With careful planning the approach might work, but the execution just has two closeups being cut to back and forth like a traditional conversation in a movie, but with the camera jarringly moving around and none of the cuts coming off gracefully. It's hard to explain why it doesn't work without actually seeing it, but trust me - it'll drive you nuts too if you bother to watch the movie.

As to whether or not you should do that... I'd advise against it. The plot isn't too bad (especially for a teen-friendly horror film) but the clunky presentation does it no favors, and it's so drawn out (100+ minutes!) that it's likely to easily lose the attention of its target audience long before the story kicks into gear. None of the actors are particularly good (though I enjoyed the guy playing the doctor's seeming attempt at a Malcolm McDowell impression), and again the heroine isn't exactly a character you will instantly fall in love with. She's kind of snooty and childish, and we barely get to know her before she's put in danger, something the movie can't quite recover from. From that point she's either trying to figure out what's going on, or seemingly forgetting about it entirely as she is wooed by a new coworker of her brother's, so there's nothing for us to latch onto. There's a subplot about her friend that was supposed to be with her when she went off alone in the woods and unleashed hell upon herself, but it's kind of a stupid one - she's mad at the friend for not showing up, but how is it her fault that Paige was dumb enough to go into the woods alone in the middle of the night?

At least I think that's why there is strife in this relationship that is never properly established before it becomes strained. At times the movie approaches Beneath the Mississippi-ian levels of bad audio recording, where conversations go by with the mic only really picking up one of the speaking actors, leaving the other one muffled and occasionally indecipherable. Weird echoes abound as well, as if people were recorded in a bathroom, and what I can only assume is an attempt to hide the bad recording with a frequent score is unsuccessful. This is the first feature film from the crew (a group of pals/filmmakers from Florida, named Liberty Lane Productions) after making several shorts - I can forgive the plodding storytelling on growing pains from filmmakers used to telling stories quickly, but not the abhorrent audio production. This is something they should have figured out after the first short, and apparently they still haven't gotten it right after four or five? Unacceptable.

The same problem plagues the behind the scenes video, which focuses on the project's origins and some of its production before randomly stopping, as if they were only halfway through editing the piece and ran out of time or something. At least it shows the fun way they pulled off the ghost above the bed" effect, by having a guy jump from a chair onto the bed and using the frames where he's in mid air to superimpose in slow speed over the footage of the girls in bed screaming. Cool, lo-fi trick that actually produces a kind of effective visual. And thankfully the piece explains that they had no money, were making the movie guerrilla style (cops were called for filming somewhere without permits), etc. Still doesn't explain why they couldn't bother to buy an extra lav mic for scenes with two people, but at least you can tell that they're enthusiastic and well-meaning about their film - the cynicism that permeates many an independent horror film is wholly absent here. It's the sort of thing that makes me wish I liked the movie more, because I see so many ones that are just made by people who want to make a buck and otherwise have no passion for what they're doing. These folks clearly do (or they're better actors than the ones they hired), but passion is just one of the things you need to make a good movie. Better luck next time! Seriously!

What say you?

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Unfriended (2015)

APRIL 18, 2015

GENRE: GHOST, REVENGE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I often say that I don't dismiss any horror movie for a lack of scares, because I don't frighten easily and thus it wouldn't be fair (it'd be like David Ortiz criticizing little leaguers for failing to strike him out), but I have to make an exception for Unfriended, because it simply has NO SCARES. I don't mean effective ones, I mean none at all - good, bad, earned, fake... however you want to categorize a "boo", it's safe to assume this movie doesn't have enough of them. There's one kinda effective moment where it seems like the Skype image of one girl is frozen until they see her phone rattling to her (meaning SHE is frozen, not the image), but it's not well executed. And then there's a bit where the ghost suddenly loads an ironic song on Spotify, but it's played more for laughs than a fright moment; even in the annals of "loud noise = scare!" it's hardly a great example.

You might notice I'm listing things you've heard of: Skype, Spotify, etc. What the movie DOES do well, and why it works at all, is that it doesn't make up a bunch of fake apps that were clearly inspired by ones you know of - it just uses the real one. No "Friendspace" or "Twiddle-Book" or whatever the hell, our heroine Blaire goes to the same sites and uses all the same programs you yourself have on your computer (including VLC, which seems to be a bit advanced for someone who doesn't know how to use keyboard shortcuts), which is a huge relief as I've never fully understood why people go to the trouble of inventing a fake search engine in a movie just to look up things like "Nightmares" or "Telekinesis" (it makes a bit more sense when they're looking for fictional people, in order to control the search matches). This grounds the movie into our reality, rather than distracting us with cheesy simulacrums of the world's leading programs.

And, for better or (often) worse, the filmmakers accurately reflect what it would be like to be in a Skype conference call with six teenagers. They talk over each other, they laugh at two others getting into a row, and Blaire, whose laptop screen is what we see for the entire movie, often minimizes the program to play songs on Spotify, iChat with her boyfriend, look at Facebook, etc, while the conversation(s) continue in the background. Sure, if you want to get really anal you can spot some fakery in the background, such as the curiously high numbers for bland (fake?) Youtube videos alongside the one that serves the plot (12 million views for a 25 second video titled "Lake Tahoe vacation"?) or the fact that her iChat log keeps disappearing every time she clicks back to it, but where it matters, it's accurate and believable.

It's also fun to see things like "greyed out contextual menu options" become part of the plot. If you were unaware, the film is about the supposed ghost of a girl who killed herself joining on a group Skype chat and demanding that whoever posted an embarrassing video of her (which led to the suicide) own up to what they did, killing someone every now and then until the guilty party outs themselves. So naturally the solution would be to disconnect them, but the ghost is apparently in the machine, and so attempts are futile - the option to do anything that you'd think to do has either been greyed out or disappeared entirely. Again, this is where the film's realism helps matters greatly, as our familiarity with the programs lets us instantly know that something is amiss. When the ghost sends Blaire an email for her eyes only and one of the others demands to see it, it's fun to see that Gmail's "forward" option - which we all know where it should be - has been wiped out. This wouldn't work with "Fast Email 2000" or whatever nonsense the filmmakers would usually come up with, making it a far more effective moment.

The other thing that makes it feel more genuine is Blaire's legit activity when typing. We see her write things with the occasional typo, some she corrects and others she leaves. We see her pause, hovering over the send button as she reconsiders what to say, many times rewriting it before finally being satisfied. This actually offers us information that the other characters never learn; when the dead girl's history is asked about, Blaire writes several drafts of the reply, and we can piece together what appears to have left her messed up (an uncle did something) before she finally settles on something noncommittal. We're so used to seeing the absolute fakest representation of online communication in movies (i.e. people saying every word they type) that it actually feels somewhat genius to just show it like it actually is.

BUT WHY CAN'T IT BE SCARY? The ghost has no physical presence to speak of (unless you count the innocuous Skype logo - I hope a sequel can find the protagonists being terrorized by the Twitter egg), and all of the kills are mostly off-screen (the most explicit is the one in the trailer - the kid shoving his hand into a blender). And it takes forever to know what exactly the video showed that made her a target; revenge movies of this sort (it's basically Terror Train or Slaughter High or any other "victim of prank returns to exact revenge" horror) tend to work better when the prank kicks the movie off, not when we gradually learn what it is (and it's kind of goofy; the ads tried to suggest it was some sort of sexual act but it's actually... well, you'll see). So it's hard to really sympathize with the ghost as we're not even sure what they did until after she's already killed a few of them - it'd be nice to have that "well they deserved it!" feeling for a while. I know cyber-bullying is a horrible thing, but since they're kind of making light of the seriousness of it by having a ghost exact revenge (as opposed to a tech-savvy parent or sibling of the deceased), it's easier to judge it along the lines of its horror brethren as opposed to "modern film tackles a growing issue".

The filmmakers also go way overboard with the glitches. Even more unrealistic than the idea of a ghost using Skype is the chances of a seven way call going for over an hour (the movie plays out in real time) without anyone getting disconnected because of a poor signal or whatever, but every 7 seconds someone is victim of that weird video glitch where the shape of a person remains in one side of a screen even though they've moved to the other (I don't know what the name for it is, pixelated smearing?). Like film damage filters on faux "grindhouse" material or digital hiccups on found footage movies, the editors and directors simply forget that less is more, taking what could be used well/natural and making it ridiculous. The movie was shot in long takes (even going through the entire movie in one go, from what I understand) and is seamlessly edited together, so it's obvious that they put time and energy into the presentation, so it baffles me that they'd be so careless with glitching the footage so often (and on that note, why they wouldn't clean up some strange mistakes - like Zombie's Halloween II, they seemingly can't decide if it's a year later or two, so we see evidence of both).

So here we have a unique situation (especially for a horror film) where they get lots of "side" stuff right (and mostly good performances too, I should mention) but fail on the basics: no scares, not even that much suspense, and a vastly underutilized villain. Usually it's the other way around; we overlook the flimsy reality and lousy acting as long as the scares work and/or the villain is memorable, but here it's like the best things about it have zero to do with being a horror movie. Perhaps if they opted to switch screens, or condense the timeline and see it play out from one perspective before rewinding to see it from another (like Rec 2), the suspense factor could be improved, but with everything being told from one POV, it's not even a spoiler to say that whatever REALLY pissed her off was the fault of our heroine and thus she'll be saved for last. Padding it out with other secrets between the group (including, yet again, a love triangle involving someone sleeping with their best friend's S/O - can we give this plot point a rest in our modern horror films?) doesn't help matters either; all it does is remind us that this is a great premise that can't sustain itself for a full feature.

What say you?

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