Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017)

SEPTEMBER 26, 2017

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

Much like Cropsey, the Creeper is a cool villain that deserves better vehicles to show what they can do, as Jeepers Creepers 3 continues the series' tradition of being better on paper than in execution, forever trying to recapture the magic of the first film's first act. That 30-35 minute stretch of the original, where it's mostly just the two kids in their car being pursued by the Creeper, is nearly perfect, but the next hour, and its first sequel, are handicapped by weird narrative choices, clunky pacing, and an abundance of characters. For a while, it seems like the 3rd film would stick to what worked about the original and deliver on the promise (to the best of the filmmaker's abilities when working with a lower budget this time around), but alas the usual issues start rearing their ugly head.

All except for one, which I might as well get out of the way now - it's thankfully not as skeevy as the other two, or the director's other films that I've seen. No shirtless boys, no gross metaphors (I'm still somewhat repulsed by JC2's "he can get in through the backdoor!" sequence), etc. An early cut of the film apparently included a brief reference to the heroine being abused by her stepfather (and another character saying something like "Can you blame him?") but thankfully they were excised (the backstory was changed; the stepfather is now said to have disliked the girl, prompting to her to live with her grandmother instead), leaving the film free of anything that would remind you of the filmmaker's abhorrent past. And on that note, as always I will simply remind you that he plead guilty and was imprisoned for a while (unlike some others who deny their crimes and walk free), that many people who have worked with him since have sworn that there was nothing uncomfortable about their production(s), and that he is but one of the many people who worked on the film and deserve to see their hard work recognized. I don't condone what he did, but I'm not going to take it out on, say, Jonathan Breck (the Creeper), either. I matched the cost of my ticket to support the GoFundMe for his victim, who is trying to spread awareness of what happened to him and child abuse as a whole - I urge you to support him as well if you have the means to. It's also worth noting that he volunteers at a workshop for juvenile sex offenders, encouraging them to do as he does and work his issues out through creative means - i.e. going out and actually working on problems, as opposed to just tweeting how much you don't like that they exist.

If you care about the film at all you probably have heard by now that it takes place in between the first two films, which has two benefits for the production: they don't have to make it look like the future of 2024 (now a lot closer than it was when the first two films were released) and they didn't need to bring back Ray Wise and (likely) kill him off in order to explain how the Creeper got away from the makeshift prison he was in when we last saw him in JC2. But I figured it'd take place on some random day in the middle of that 23-day spree, so I was surprised when the film began (after a 1978 prologue that I'll talk about in a bit) right at the end of JC1, with the surviving cops regrouping and trying to figure out what the hell just happened after Darry (Justin Long's character) was taken from their "protection". Only one cast member (besides Breck) really returns, Brandon Smith as Tubbs, the high-strung desk sergeant who spent most of his screentime in the first film just kind of growling and muttering at the psychic lady - but he was the only one of the cops that had a distinct presence so I doubt anyone will notice/care that his fellow officers aren't the same, and it's pretty admirable to do the "immediately picks up" sequel thing for a movie that was made sixteen years later.

As for Gina Phillips as Trish, she's top billed on IMDb, but it's practically a spoiler to announce that she's in the movie at all, since she doesn't appear until the film's closing shot, in an epilogue not unlike JC2's: she's basically waiting around to fight the Creeper when he returns in 2024 (I'm not sure what year her scene takes place in - she has a modern laptop, so I'm guessing it's just some form of "present day". The slow pan up to reveal her face is treated as a major surprise, so I don't know why they announced her return for what's basically a twist cameo (oddly, another sequel coming around soon did the exact same thing with its most famous survivor, but knew better than to put that person on the damn cast list), but hopefully no one was only interested in the movie to see her grand return, as it seems we will have to wait for Jeepers 4 to see what Trish has been up to all these years. Unlike Smith (already an older guy) there's no way Phillips could pass for her 16 years younger self, and thus it was obvious that she wouldn't be in it all that much once the 2001 setting was established, so hopefully the next film finally cuts to the Creeper's next spree so she can take an active role in the proceedings.

Speaking of the timeline, as I mentioned the film opens with a prologue set during a different Creeper spree - 1978's, to be exact. At first I figured it was just a way to get a kill in the movie, but not only does the victim have a role in the main part of the film (as a ghost/hallucination/whatever), but it's also a fun little bit of connective tissue - it's the victim that Darry and Trish talk about in the first film, when she realizes they're on the same road as "that old story". It's a throwaway detail that doesn't mean anything, but it's a nice little nod to the first film that registers as the kind of thing you'd never get in a series that kept changing hands like the Friday the 13ths, where such world building is a total mess due to people coming in without respecting what came before. Using the whole buffalo is always a surefire way to win me over, and I like that it's a little detail that won't bother anyone who doesn't remember or never even saw the original. This is the best way to do a callback, in my opinion - it's fun for the people who'd notice, but doesn't hamper the ability for a newcomer to enjoy it.

Unfortunately, the flipside of the "in between" approach is a major one - you're watching the whole movie knowing that the Creeper won't be killed or even stopped for any meaningful amount of time, as he's up and about in Jeepers Creepers 2. I mean it's not like I ever think Jason or Freddy is truly dead at the end of their films (even in the ones that promise as much), but there will at least be the catharsis of seeing the heroes triumph over them and walk away thinking the nightmare is over forever (and those guys are usually down for some time - Jason was in the bottom of Crystal Lake for at least a decade at one point). It's practically a guarantee from the start that the movie won't offer that, and (spoiler?) it doesn't - I'm still not even sure how to describe the Creeper's final moment in the film, and the heroine never gets any major victory over the damn thing. At one point she uses one of his own weapons against him (a very crowd-pleasing moment, actually) but it barely even phases him - he's after her again moments later, so it's about as much of a victory as Laurie stabbing Michael with the knitting needle.

The other big problem is that the movie is very disjointed. There are basically three separate plotlines going on, two of which would be perfectly enjoyable if fleshed out to their own movie, but hurt by the constant cutting around as they very rarely intersect. One is basically a redux of the original - two teens (potential lovers this time, not siblings) have caught the Creeper's eye, and he's going after them. After the usual setup stuff they find themselves trapped under a car as the Creeper stalks/kills a few people around them, and later the girl is trapped inside the Creeper's trademark "BEATNGU" truck (p.s. we learn that his license plate is a homemade one, killing sixteen years of "Creeper at the DMV" jokes), giving it some claustrophobic flair that recalls the best moments of the first sequel, and here's where the prequel element also pays off somewhat - we're never sure that she's "safe", as she isn't around in the "next" installment, giving the director license to kill her off (not unlike Platinum Dunes' Chainsaw prequel). Their scenes are the best in the film, and mostly why it's overall at least on par with JC2, making me wish that they just stuck to them the whole time - it might come off as a remake of the original with such a limited cast, but at least it would be focused and suspenseful, and a marked improvement over the other followup.

The second storyline revolves around Tubbs and a group of hunters led by Stan Shaw, who is basically just Creighton Duke with a team. These guys have apparently been tracking the Creeper and have professional versions of the truck-mounted weaponry Ray Wise used in the other sequel, but given the low budget there is precious little time devoted to them actually doing action-y things. Worse, those scenes suffer the most from the film's bad CGI - the Creeper himself always looks great, but his weapons look like cartoons in some shots, particularly these Mario Kart-esque bomb-shell things that he shoots from his car and can apparently track their targets. My friend said they looked like the Langoliers from the miniseries, and it's pretty apt - plus the fact that the Creeper now apparently has Thor-like powers over his weapons (at one point he literally has his axe fly from the ground into his hand as if by telekinesis), something I don't recall in the others. His truck is also booby-trapped, which results in a few interesting moments, but again is one of those things that makes me wonder why he didn't use them the day before - the harpoon that can puncture vehicles would have been handy all those times he was chasing Darry and Trish, no?

The third subplot involves Meg Foster, who plays yet another crazy old lady that lives in this town. Her son is the guy who dies in the prologue, and his ghost keeps coming back to tell her to get out of town because the Creeper is coming to get "it" back and kill anyone nearby. After a while we finally learn what "it" is - one of his old hands, which is buried in a pot in her field. When someone touches the hand they will spazz out and see the Creature's origins, I guess? Anyway, it's a subplot that's just as interminable as it is goofy, and it doesn't even have a payoff - the Creeper finally comes across it near the end, but he doesn't need an old hand (he's already grown a new one), so he just crushes it and howls at the moon, as birds drop from the sky around him. I don't know what the point of any of this nonsense is, but I DO know if it was all cut from the film it would barely make a difference, and seems like it's there only to keep the director's tradition of including goofy, unexplained supernatural subplots in his films. As a result, Foster's role is limited to either screaming at a ghost (we occasionally see it from other people's POV, showing her yelling at nothing) or standing around watching people touch the hand or whatever. She's the grandmother of the girl that's trapped in the Creeper's truck, so I kept hoping she'd mount a rescue or something, but alas - the two barely ever interact in the entire film, adding to the disjointed feeling.

But for a movie that was practically willed into existence after a number of false starts over the years, the fact that it's decent is kind of a miracle. The budget is lower but not to the extent that it can't deliver what fans want (in fact, I think we see the Creeper more than ever), and while it eventually loses its luster, it's interesting to see how much of the film is set during broad daylight. With some tighter editing (the director's usual editor Ed Marx, who has cut all of his films dating back to 1999's Rites of Passage, did not return this time) it could have worked fairly well, but the jarring shifts between characters who rarely interact, and the fact that you know the movie is building toward an anticlimax (though there is a nice little twist that ties into JC2) is something the movie never fully overcomes. It's worth a look for series fans, for sure (and you can get another chance on October 4th if you missed this "one time" screening), but don't expect to be converted if you weren't on board with those.

What say you?

P.S. I left his name out on purpose. People are on a witch hunt this time for some reason, and I don't get why since it's not exactly a secret and has been widely known since Powder (before the internet), but I'm not in the mood for a bunch of anonymous assholes to blast me - a father, by the way - for "lining the pockets of a monster" after finding this review by searching for his name (I can't very well leave the name of the movie out, alas). Does me seeing the film mean it's more likely he'll make another film? Maybe. I don't think it means he'll go out and hurt someone else, though, and besides, the kid's mother has said she has no problem with him continuing to work, so I don't see why I should feel any different than her. At any rate, comments are moderated (as they always are for every review) and won't get posted if they're vile, and if you're so offended by me seeing the film I encourage you not to yell at me on social media, which does nothing (except raise more awareness of the film's existence - several people told me they only knew it was playing because of tweets blasting the filmmaker), but instead match my $12.50 ticket price to RAINN or a similar organization, or donate to the GoFundMe I linked above.

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Kong: Skull Island (2017)

MARCH 12, 2017

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I was rarely as excited for a big blockbuster as I was for Peter Jackson's King Kong back in December of 2005. It came out the night I flew home to see my family for Christmas, and I was so hellbent on seeing the film I barely even saw any of them before racing off to the theater for the next showing. And within an hour, I felt myself sinking into my seat, feeling guiltier and guiltier about ditching them for that slog of a movie. I knew it was long, but I figured Peter Jackson - the guy who made Dead Alive and was now free to do whatever he wanted post-LOTR - would dive into Skull Island's creatures and give us a $200m creature feature. Instead we got ice skating, and it was just the first of what has been an unbroken streak of disappointing movies from this former hero of mine. Luckily, twelve years later, I got to see most of that movie I wanted to thanks to Jordan Vogt-Roberts and Kong: Skull Island, which is an hour shorter and features twice as much monster action.

In fact, things start a touch quicker than I even expected. Jurassic Park was a clear influence on the filmmakers here, but there's no long buildup like that movie had - I think that scene from the trailers where Kong tosses a tree through the windshield of a helicopter comes at about the 30 minute mark. Since there's an action scene right at the top (a flashback that establishes the John C. Reilly character, who crashes on the island along with a Japanese pilot during a WWII dogfight), that means there's really only about 25 minutes worth of setup before the movie becomes, more or less, a nonstop chase/fight movie. Our heroes are going to the island to take photos and see what's there (John Goodman's character is pretty sure there are monsters there, but the mission is disguised as mere recon to see what resources the island may have, before the Russians get there first), and Kong's big initial attack wipes out about half of them and scatters the others into two primary groups. One group stumbles across Reilly and the other jungle inhabitants, and learn that Kong is actually kind of a good guy and acts as the primary defense against the real dangers of the island. The other group, for the most part, keeps running into those other dangers. We go back and forth between the two groups for a while, which allows for a perfectly balanced mix of adventure and character development; we're never away from action for too long, but we also get to know the people who may or may not be eaten by "Skull Crawlers" or giant squids, or stomped on by Kong as he makes his way around his home.

Well, to be fair, we get to know MOST of the people. Goodman, Sam Jackson, Reilly, and Shea Whigham (as one of Jackson's men) get to play fairly complete characters, but they're all billed below Tom Hiddleston, who really serves no function in the movie other than to look gravely concerned at whatever the next obstacle is. He is hired because the island is unknown territory and they need a badass like him to guide them through. He's basically Indiana Jones and Han Solo rolled into one guy, at least as far as his introduction goes - but once they're all on the island he really doesn't do a hell of a lot. He kills a few flying monsters with a sword (while wearing a gas mask, so his big hero moment could just be a stunt guy for all we know) and supplies Brie Larson with the tool that save their lives later, but I honestly think if you digitally erased him from like 90% of his scenes there would be zero effect on anything. He's just THERE, as if they hired him before writing the script and forgot to include his character in the plot, but didn't have the heart to tell the actor he was no longer needed. Near the end he becomes the voice of reason against Jackson, who just wants to kill Kong and everything else on the island, but that stuff could have been given to Larson or Reilly (the latter also serves as their guide once he's introduced, so at that point Tom doesn't even have a useful skill for the group anymore). Larson fares slightly better, but also feels a bit like someone noticed late in the development that they needed another female character in there, rather than an essential part of the plot.

Amazingly, the movie manages to overcome the fact that it doesn't give its two main characters anything to do. While the CGI occasionally suffers from that weightlessness that big movie monsters tend to have (when Kong is toppled during a fight, it feels like his size should be causing a tidal wave or earthquake, but the humans nearby barely flinch), for the most part it shows us the best money can buy. The designers have some up with a variety of monsters, including spiders with legs that are so long that they are initially mistaken for trees, and a four-legged creature that is made out of wood and bark, and acts like a scared dog when shot at. Kong and the "Skull Crawlers" get the majority of the screentime devoted to beasties, but I'm glad that they peppered in some others to flesh out the world of the island a bit more (we're also told that there are ants that sound like birds, but we never see them). And not all of them are antagonists, which adds to the Jurassic Park-y feel - some are just cool to look at and won't hurt you, like the "veggie-sauruses" of that movie. Stuffier types might find it annoying that the monsters are more fleshed out than the characters, but they probably also complained that Godzilla wasn't in Godzilla '14 enough, because such folks are never happy and certainly never consistent, so don't listen to them.

The movie also has a bit of a mean streak that I appreciated. Not like, Silent Night Deadly Night levels of gleeful hatred towards humanity, but certainly more than I was expecting for a PG-13 movie that attracted kids. There's an obvious hero type who gets wiped out at the halfway mark, and that scene in the trailer where a character seems to be sacrificing himself to save his friends doesn't quite work the way anyone would expect. It's also got a respectable amount of carnage (including a through the mouth impaling!) and even a few kinda scary bits (the spider scene, mostly). But it's also funnier than I would have assumed; Reilly is even more gutbusting than he appeared to be from the trailer (I'm still laughing at his final line to the native people), and Whigham gets a number of good, crowd-pleasing lines. There's also terrific use of a Nixon bobblehead (you just have to see it) and even Kong gets a couple of smiles, like when he slurps a giant squid leg like spaghetti (he also uses a big propeller like a kind of brass knuckles, which is awesome).

Less successful is the editing, which shows a number of seams. This movie is under two hours (and that's with very lengthy credits on account of the CGI), and I suspect that wasn't always the case, because what major blockbuster movies are under two hours anymore? At one point Larson begins talking about the Japanese pilot in the past tense, but since she obviously never met him nor had Reilly mentioned him, there was clearly a scene or at least a few lines to set up her reaction. It's not until about ten minutes later that it's even clear who she was referring to, which is just plain awkward storytelling no matter how you slice it. There is also a cutaway of a hex nut falling in between some gears on their boat, which you can assume is foreshadowing a malfunction down the road, but there's no payoff for it. And I'm pretty sure Sam Jackson's squad respawns at some point, because I kept mentally trying to keep track and there were always more alive than I could have sworn was possible given the casualties we just witnessed. As with the weird lack of a point to the Hiddleston character, it's not a crippling flaw, but it definitely raised an eyebrow more than once, and I can't help but wonder if some exec demanded some cuts at the 11th hour to shorten the runtime, resulting in some sloppier than usual editing for a movie this size.

So it's not a home run, but it's a lot closer to one than I would expect out of current day Warner Bros, which is always seemingly bungling its big movies by treating them as parts of a long-running franchise that's being forced on us from inception, as opposed to the good old days where they'd only make sequels to movies we liked. Indeed, the post-credits scene is just there to set up a vs. film with Godzilla (whether it will be the one from the 2014 movie, or a new incarnation a la Batman in BvS, I'm not sure), but at least they weren't dropping a bunch of teasers for it throughout the film like they did in BvS with its bullshit Flash cameos and such. But unlike BvS, this actually excites me about returning to this world; maybe not in a vs. movie, but I'd love to come back to Skull Island (perhaps in a prequel, with Reilly's character in an Enemy Mine kind of scenario with the Japanese pilot) and meet more of its inhabitants. Naturally, they've already dated the vs. film (and, sigh, hired writers to come up with the story for it AFTER they promised us when we'd see it), but as with its DC characters, the shared mega movies being planned doesn't mean we can't get stand-alone entries in the same world. Naturally, I'm more excited about giant monsters than superheroes (even with my beloved Affleck as Batman), so the fact that Skull Island is (so far) better received than any of their DC films is hopefully a good sign that more will be coming.

What say you?

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Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2017)

JANUARY 27, 2017

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

In case it never dawned on you, projected film is nothing more than a series of still images played in succession, fast enough to create the illusion of movement that you'd witness in real life, with your brain kind of filling in the missing chunks in between those frames. That same kind of idea applies to how I saw the action sequences in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - I (usually) could tell you what happened from point A to B, but only because my brain was sorting it out through context clues. Milla Jovovich and some monster rush toward each other, and then ????? (STUFF!), and then the monster is dead, so I can safely assume Milla killed it. However, I couldn't usually tell you HOW, because Paul WS Anderson and his editor (named Doobie, and - trigger warning - a frequent collaborator of Neveldine/Taylor) often cut five or six times per second during the action scenes, and often in closeups, so my brain couldn't quite process who was hitting who and where - I just had to wait until the encounter had concluded and then use context clues to determine what happened.

It's a shame, because on a script level this is one of the better entries in the series. The story isn't too complicated, the villains are fun (Iain Glen, you have been missed, sir), and there's a pretty great final showdown between the major players that not only pays off the things set up in this movie, but the series as a whole. The action scenes, poorly edited as they may be, are varied and frequent, and the movie series has finally embraced the giant monster element from the games, pitting Alice against a giant bat for the first big sequence and some Cerebrus (basically GIANT dogs) later. It even brings back the horror element that's been largely scaled down in favor of action; there are at least three legit scare moments in the movie, plus a lot of creeping around and "I think something's watching us" kind of moments. The budget was scaled down from previous entries (with inflation factored in, it's actually the cheapest, by my math), so Anderson and crew were forced to rely on such things and save the big-scale action for highlight sections instead of throughout the movie. In a general sense, it pays off.

Plus, the aforementioned Iain Glen is a total hoot, and the best reason to see the movie. Even if you're not a fan of the series, it might be worth a look just to enjoy the sight of a gifted, theater-trained (and award-winning) actor making his way through a B-movie like this. As with the Underworld films, these UK theatre guys not only lend the proceedings a touch of class, but make the gibberish plot believable by committing 100% instead of smirking their way through it like American actors in his peer group might. He's clearly enjoying himself, and he even gets to play two roles - or, two variations of the same role. By now you should be used to the use of clones in this series, so it's not really a spoiler to say he plays both the original Isaacs and a clone who is unaware of his clone status. One is in charge of Umbrella and spends his time in a nice suit and delivering exposition, the other is out in the wild and seemingly on his way to becoming a Mad Max villain of sorts. It's the best of both worlds, and both of them get to fight Alice and spout a few applause-worthy lines (one, involving the word "trinity", is so glorious it might be the main reason I watch the movie again if I ever have the option).

But the editing! Along with that reduced budget came the fact that they shot with traditional cameras and converted it to 3D later, and apparently Anderson didn't seem to care much about people seeing it in that format (I saw it in 2D, thankfully). Whereas on the previous two films he knew to keep the action fluid and with long edits (in fact, perhaps TOO long in Afterlife's case - he nailed it with Retribution), here he dishes out the most over-edited and choppy action scenes this side of Olivier Megaton. There is a scene about halfway or so through the movie where the heroes are making their way through a giant turbine fan that's been turned off, and naturally the thing turns on before everyone is safe. But it's "warming up", making the blades turn slow enough that people can still get their way through (like they would in *a* video game, though this kind of platforming thing has never been present in a Resident Evil as far as I can recall). All well and good, but I swear to Christ, I had no idea what was happening as the sequence neared its conclusion. I couldn't even tell which character got stuck, let alone how they were eventually freed, and this wasn't the only example of such editing atrocities in the film. I mean, it's one thing to pull the "hero moves so fast the villains never know what hit them so lets disorient the audience in turn" stuff every now and then, I don't even mind that - it's another to keep us in the dark of who we're even looking at and what needs to be done for them to be safe (I THINK the girl got her bag of gear stuck on a blade, but I honestly don't know). I've seen trailers with smoother, more complete action beats.

And while I'm used to it by now, the series' penchant for abandoning its characters really hurts this time around, in that it kind of leaves the movie feeling like we missed a giant sequence. When the last one ended, Wesker and Alice stood side by side along with the latter's friends, ready to save humanity together using their combined resources. When this one starts, Alice is just under a pile of rubble, and she immediately goes off on her own looking for supplies/shelter/etc. Much later, we learn that Wesker betrayed them (again) and only brought her there to kill her, a scene that we probably should have seen, not just heard about (by the time we've probably forgotten the gap anyway). As for Jill, Ada, etc. - we just have to assume they're dead, as they're completely omitted from the film beyond the obligatory opening recap footage - no in-film mention whatsoever. Later, Alice finds (spoiler for those who didn't see the trailer) Claire, who got the same treatment along with Chris in between Afterlife and Retribution, and she gives a half-assed explanation for her survival, but doesn't mention Chris nor does Alice inquire about him. Then there's the minor issue of her surrogate daughter from the previous film, who is also never mentioned even when Alice's past and current humanity comes into question. For a series of films that are all written by the same man, it's remarkable how little he ever seems to care about the characters he created (and yes, he created them, as they rarely have anything to do with their game counterparts beyond their name). Granted, cast availability might throw a wrench into the plans, but would recasting really be an issue? Especially for this film, when it's so dark and over-edited that I couldn't tell you who I was looking at half the time anyway?

That all said, I really did enjoy it overall, at least as much as I can for these things. As I rewatched them all this past week (save for the original, which I got through a couple weeks ago - it took me this long to get to 2-5, sigh), I realized that I couldn't even rank them in any definitive way - they're all just varying shades of "OK". I know people really hate Apocalypse, but I can't see why it gets singled out - there's no discernible difference in the CGI (it's not great), the cast (Milla and... some others!), the way it translates stuff from the game (loosely!), etc. It's got some truly awful slo-mo stuff, but I can't imagine that'd be enough to sink it below the others, especially when compared to this (slo-mo > incoherent-mo). They're never great, but never terrible either - they're just kind of enjoyable in their own low-key way. I own all the Blu-rays but can't imagine a scenario I'd ever sit down and listen to the commentaries (at this juncture, I mean - back in 2005 when I had little else to do I recall going through the features on Apocalypse DVD), because I just don't get INTO them like I do for things like Halloween and Friday the 13th, where I'll devour the bonus features for even the entries I hate. It's a decent series that got a decent send-off, far as I'm concerned; if you hated the others this won't change your mind, and if you loved them... well I'm not sure what you love about them, so I couldn't tell you how you'd feel about this one.

I do know this though (minor spoiler ahead): for all the talk about this being the "Final Chapter", they don't exactly close the book on the series in any meaningful way. The last shot is literally of a monster chasing one of the heroes, so if this makes a zillion dollars you can expect Resident Evil: A New Beginning in ten months, if history repeats itself. The one bonus to Anderson introducing cloning and also leaving so many characters' fates ambiguous is that the series can conceivably run forever if they continue to be profitable, simply by rotating out the players - a concept that would be more believable if he ever gave anyone even half as much weight as Milla/Alice. It baffles me that in this MCU/Fast & Furious-heavy world that Anderson wouldn't use "The Final Chapter" to bring back as many characters as possible instead of paring it down (Alice, Claire, Isaacs, and Wesker are the only returning characters - there are no surprise appearances) and give them legitimate closure, because even if they're not exactly iconic it'd mean more when say, Leon died instead of one of the random people we just met. And maybe that's part of why I can't really get into these as much as say, the Saw series - there's an air of indifference to them. There's been a decent attempt at continuity at least in broad strokes (though they've completely abandoned Extinction's idea of the entire world being a wasteland), but no one to really get attached to besides Alice - who is a blank slate. Had this one been better directed/edited, it might have managed to be my favorite just for the sheer variety of action scenes and legitimately great final reel (well, great for this series), but thanks to Anderson's hyper-active nonsense it ends up being just another entry in this entertaining but forgettable series.

What say you?

P.S. I know I said I'd review Apocalypse and maybe do a real one for Retribution, but I'm so behind on work I can't really justify it. Long story short, Apocalypse is the least boring entry and seems to have the games at heart more than any other film in the series, but the slo-mo stuff is terrible and Mike Epps' character is annoying as all hell. As for Retribution, I kind of regret making my review a gimmick, because it's actually pretty good and a big step up from the previous one. But I still can't forgive it for finally introducing Barry and giving him so little to do (great death scene though). P.S.S. I really want to play Resident Evil 7 on PS VR but I swore not to buy any more games until I got through a good chunk of my backlog. So someone buy it FOR me. Thanks in advance!

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Slithis (1978)

OCTOBER 6, 2016

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

As a very vocal champion of physical media, you would think I'd want every movie I enjoy to have some kind of spiffy special edition Blu-ray (if you're reading this review in the year 2050, replace "Blu-ray" with whatever tech you have now), which would offer a complete-ish look at its inception, production, and other history. But when I see a movie like Slithis (aka Spawn of the Slithis), I almost don't want it to get that kind of treatment. A commentary or 45 minute retrospective would likely prove that the screenwriter was not an alien mimicking human behavior, and that the actors did indeed know the camera was on them during some of their scenes, and that would ruin a lot of its appeal for me. Finding out these people were humans and knew what they were doing would just make me sad.

Yes, Slithis is one of those special movies where everything is just "off" throughout its 90ish minute runtime, changing what might have been a generic and poorly paced monster flick into a B-movie masterpiece. Every few minutes I was howling at something: the hero reading a story about two dead dogs on the front page of the LA Times; the will-be victim protesting his wife's request to put on a bathrobe before checking out the noises they hear, the random cop who sneezes his way through his one scene until our hero offers him eucalyptus leaves - all of this occurs in the movie's first 10-15 minutes, mind you. There's a guy we meet probably 45-50 minutes into the movie who gets more of an introduction than our main characters (bonus: if Will Ferrell and/or Adam McKay have ever seen the movie, there is no doubt in my mind that he was the inspiration for Ron Burgandy), which includes its own weirdness (a turtle fight?), as if they were introducing a spinoff movie within the edit of their first one.

As for our actual hero, he's the very bitter/bored head of the local school newspaper, who takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of the Slithis in order to escape his terrible life of shaping young minds so that he can... get a job at the paper, I guess? Over the course of the film he puts together a sad little crew, including a scientist pal and a boat captain who dives for evidence at his urging (our hero doesn't really DO much beyond know people who actually do the work). He also has a girlfriend (or wife? Sorry, I'm writing this a week later so details are hazy) who the director and/or editor is fond of cutting to even if she's not doing anything or contributing in any meaningful way. Or even reacting properly; the hero and his scientist buddy will be talking about their theories and it will cut to her smiling as if one of them just complimented her new haircut. But weird edits are not uncommon in the film - in that same scene, when the scientist comes over the camera doesn't bother to show him entering. Instead we just hear him do so as the camera remains locked on the living room, so you might just assume they couldn't move the camera for whatever reason, but then not 30 seconds later it pans and tracks the wife as she goes into the kitchen to grab him a drink.

Interestingly, the editor went on to edit a few episodes of Dukes of Hazzard, while the director only helmed one other film - a TV movie starring Bo Duke himself, John Schneider. For all we know they didn't ever pursue these jobs again, but Slithis - enjoyable as it is - offers plenty of evidence that they should leave such things to other folks. The pacing is saved only by pointless jibber jabber that really only works with an appreciative (and possibly inebriated in some cases) crowd. It's nearly impossible to see movies made this far outside the studio system on the big screen today, which means if you're not watching them alone you're with a friend and talking over the slower scenes - and that's where this movie's personality really shines through. The monster doesn't look too bad all things considered, but when it's killing folks it's just another monster movie - it's those quiet moments that I find myself thinking about, like the aforementioned bathrobe bit, or the lengthy cameo by Hy Pyke as a police lieutenant who overacts and mugs his way through his one scene as if he will be executed if he stops bugging his eyes out or shouting random words in his dialogue. Like, when the monster dies you almost wish the movie was only halfway through so we could spend another 40 minutes with all these weirdos.

Or 25 minutes every week. There's a delightfully odd sequence late in the film when our heroes discuss their plan, the sort of scene that you see in pretty much any monster movie. But what makes this one unique is that we see them talk for maybe 20 seconds, and then there's a cut to the four of them in a different spot, lined up differently, continuing the conversation as if they hadn't just changed position. It feels a lot like the hangout shots you'd see in an old sitcom, where the cast is just goofing off and they'd use highlights in between the closeup cards with their credit (think Friends, or, god help us, Three's Company). Except they're just talking about killing a Slithis and had no reason to be moving around so much during their conversation. Some of director Stephen Traxler's now trademark directorial in-confidence is on display here too - the sequence kicks off with a long zoom across the water to where the four are standing, at the end of which he zooms back out a bit (he's still too far to even really see any of them clearly anyway).

For the life of me I can't understand why it was paired with Tourist Trap, as the only thing they have in common as far as I can tell is that they're both late 70s horror movies set in California (was was the third film, The Dark, which was a lot more like Slithis, making Tourist Trap the oddball in both narrative and actual quality). I had only seen the film (one of my favorites, you might recall - and one of very few "non canon" reviews to make it into the HMAD book) on 35mm once before, and it wasn't the best print - this one was better, albeit still faded and occasionally beat up (mainly at the reel changes). It was one of the movies I often requested to show when I screened films there, but was told a print couldn't be found - *shrug* - so it was nice to finally be able to see it there, even if I wasn't hosting. Since it had been a number of years since I watched it, it was fun catching up with it, enjoying Robin Sherwood's all too brief appearance (just like Halloween and Friday the 13th - the girl I find the most attractive is among the first to die!) and laughing along with everyone at Davey's bizarre voice. As for The Dark, I kept falling asleep and eventually just went home before it ended, but I had seen it before (or at least, sat through the whole thing - some parts seemed completely foreign to me, so I probably kept falling asleep when I last saw it there in 2013), and quickly remembered that the film's behind the scenes story is much more interesting than the one on screen. Unlike Slithis it had professional actors and real filmmaking on display, so when it was dull it was just dull - not off-the-wall like this one. Worth seeing for William Devane's unusual performance though.

Long story short, this is the kind of movie I would only want to watch with a repertory crowd (a respectful one, not a bunch of assholes trying out for MST3k gigs). If I watched this at home I'd probably get bored quick, as the monster doesn't appear enough and the lead either can't act or simply chooses not to (he sells insurance now, for what it's worth), making it a tough movie to retain your focus. But in a theater you kind of have no choice but to stick with it, and then it's also magnifying the film's quirky little personality, which shines through JUST enough to make this worth seeing under the right circumstances. You can see the Hy Pyke scene on Youtube to get a taste of the strange madness, but be warned - that's about as good as it gets, so if you spoil it for yourself out of context you might be setting yourself up for disappointment (sort of like the people who have only seen the "highlights" of the Wicker Man remake and assume the whole movie is like that). You've been warned!

What say you?

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Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)

JUNE 14, 2016

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Usually, when I review a Victor Salva movie, I make a note that I know what he did and that I'm just here to review the movie he made, but he makes that separation pretty difficult with Jeepers Creepers 2, which might take Freddy's Revenge's record for most homoerotic horror sequel in history. Granted, the characters in the film are older than the boy he assaulted (and, as I feel in fairness I must remind people, plead guilty when charged and served time), but they're still kids, and he finds more than one way to get them shirtless (lingering on their bare chests whenever possible). Plus there's a sequence where the Creeper discovers he can easily get to all that young flesh via the backdoor exit of their presumed safety, which is all kinds of icky.

Of course, it's easier to make these connections and shake your head when the movie isn't up to snuff, and that's the issue here. I've seen worse (including from Salva himself), but it's nowhere near as effective as the original film (which itself had some problems), and Salva makes the fatal mistake of over-populating his film, with so many jocks on the bus (plus some cheerleaders, a couple coaches, and the driver) that he doesn't even have time to identify them all. Sure, it gives the film a different flavor than the original, which focused on just two heroes for the most part, and it also helps make it harder to guess who our survivors will be, but it's equally hard to care much, either. By the end, I feel I still barely know anything about the people who survived, let alone the ones that died along the way - an issue that could have been prevented with a few lines of dialogue explaining why there were only, say, ten people tops on the bus (just say they had two buses because of all of the equipment or something - done). It'd still be "bigger" than the original, but not so overstuffed that it starts to resemble a lesser slasher flick more than a cool monster movie.

Because independent of the bus folk, and off-screen for far too long, is a much more interesting character played by Ray Wise, and I don't need to tell you or anyone else that keeping Ray Wise in your movie as MUCH as possible is the correct way to go. Alas, after the opening sequence (which is also one of the best parts of the movie - love the Creeper posing as a scarecrow), Wise pretty much checks out for about an hour or so, only rejoining the action for the 3rd act when the kids, calling for help from the bus, reach him via CB radio. Once he shows up with his homemade harpoon gun things pick up a bit, but by then it's too late for this to be anything but a relatively lackluster followup. Too many interchangeable kids with too much generic drama (including some half-assed attempts at racial tension and even a go-nowhere subplot about one of the players being in the closet) is bad enough, but when we're focused on them instead of Ray Wise (who has a personal vendetta against the Creeper) it's just twisting the knife. To be fair, the kids are involved in some of the best moments - I love the injured Creeper kind of leap frogging his way to a victim (also injured), and the bit where he tries to remove a javelin from his head by sliding it back and forth, finally giving up and just pulling it sideways out of his own head - but OVERALL the movie is more effective when Wise is doing his Ahab/Loomis thing, and much less so when it's just a bunch of kids yelling at each other.

But again, fewer kids might have solved the problem. The concept itself is actually a pretty good one, as it's essentially a "hole up and keep the bad guy out" story in your Precinct 13 or NOTLD vein, albeit on a broken down bus in the middle of nowhere. Salva milks his location dry - you'll know every inch of this bus before the end of the film - but I just never found myself particularly engaged by their dilemma, so whether the Creeper got them one by one or in one fell swoop made little difference to me. Apparently there was a scene of them playing their game before getting on the bus, and I can't help but wonder if that's a big part of the reason I felt so disconnected - it likely would have given them some much needed context that would have improved things greatly. Instead, I actually couldn't tell if they were on their way to a game or coming home from one for a bit after what is now their introductory scene, which means we're starting off on the wrong foot.

Salva also hamstrings himself with a truly terrible "psychic dream" subplot, where one of the cheerleaders inexplicably dreams of Justin Long's character from the first film, who also helpfully explains the "Every 23 years for 23 days..." concept to her so that she can pass this information on to the others. I'm not sure why it's necessary for them to know all of that; a number of the Friday the 13th movies let most of their characters be ignorant of Jason (in Part 3 they never say his name at all), and this "rule" is so goofy that it's probably best not to bring it up any more than absolutely necessary. Wise could have told them about it when he showed up (as a grieving father hunting it down, it'd make sense for him to have picked up this information somewhere) if it was vital for the kids to know what they were dealing with, sparing us the out of nowhere supernatural element. Jesus, why didn't Salva have me rewrite this damn thing before he shot it?

He also could have used my assistance before sitting down for his new interview for the obligatory retrospective piece on the film, because he starts off by blaming 9/11 for the first film's quick death at the box office after a solid (then record-breaking for Labor Day) opening weekend. There's just one problem with that - 9/11 occurred the Tuesday after the film's SECOND weekend, so unless you want to get heavily into conspiracy theories we can be pretty sure that the 2nd weekend drop had nothing to do with what was going to happen a couple days later (and, to further debunk his "theory" - it dropped LESS on the weekend after 9/11 than it did the weekend before it). I mean, Christ, guy - you're already on thin ice with pretty much everyone who watches anything you do, and now you're gonna toss 9/11 into the mix for no reason?

That unfortunate part aside, it's a pretty good recollection, though I'm not sure if it really required it since the existing special edition was already packed and everything has been carried over. The featurettes, the two commentaries, etc - all here, most of them on a second disc (rare for Scream Factory) to save room for the transfer on the main disc. I never saw it on DVD so I can't speak to its improved picture, though I CAN say it looked fine to my eyes and should make fans happy, though as always some shoddy CGI work (the Creeper flying, mainly) is prone to look worse than you remember now that it's been cleaned up for high def. The other new features are an interview with Wise (at 20 minutes, it's possibly longer than his actual amount of screentime) and the three adults on the bus, including the lady bus driver whose role was originally meant for Meat Loaf (dammit!). As for the commentaries, feel free to skip the one with Jonathan Breck and the people who worked on his makeup/design unless he's actually on-screen, and also keep in mind there's a featurette focusing on the character where they highlight all the important info anyway (though Breck tells a pretty horrifying/funny story about mosquitoes biting the inside of his eyelids on the first movie). Salva's is of course more interesting, and he's joined by a large chunk of the cast, but he drops some of that same unearned pretension from time to time that can't possibly help your probably already low opinion of the guy.

There is also a collection of deleted scenes, and if you think the movie laid on the homoeroticism a bit too thick, you might be stunned to learn how much thicker it was - nearly every deleted bit has eyebrow-raising material, including lengthier peeing scenes (one of which includes a guy rubbing one out in front of his friends?), more shirtless closeups, and the oddly written line "You use that mouth on your brother?" (spoken to a young boy, for the record). Again, I try to just ignore Salva's past when I watch his films, but he sure as hell doesn't make it easy, so I guess I can take solace knowing that it could have been even worse if someone didn't think better (the footage is presented sans commentary or introduction, so we have no idea why any of it was cut). But I know some folks feel differently, and they have every right to - and have probably already made up their mind about whether or not they will be supporting this release. However, I ALSO know those folks probably aren't reading this review, and only the film's fans are - to them I say it's probably worth the upgrade for the Wise interview alone, and also to have the film on a stand-alone Blu (it was previously only available on a double feature with the first film, which Scream has also re-released with new features, including a new commentary with the two leads). Just don't wade into any Facebook threads about it.

What say you?

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Bite (2015)

MAY 12, 2016

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

Maybe I should have added a "Body Horror" tag to my list? It'd feel weird to add one NOW, but Bite is one of a small but growing wave of new films that are inspired by old-school Cronenberg, joining Thanatomorphose, Strange Blood, and the Contracted films with a story about our protagonist gradually turning into a disgusting monster. I guess it kind of fits in the monster movie vein (hence that's why I tagged it as one), but monster also (read: usually) means an inhuman giant beast of some sort, not a normal 20-something who does something dumb on vacation and ends up turning into an insect/fish hybrid thing. It's... well, it's pretty goddamn gross, really.

You'd think a horror (or any) movie would want to suck its audience in right off the bat for maximum effectiveness, but part of what makes Bite ultimately work is that it kind of sucks at first. We're seeing everything through a video camera, our trio of heroine Casey and her two pals are kind of obnoxious, and it's even got the dreaded/stupid cliche of a friend pretending to be grabbed in the water to scare her friend, only to come back to the surface laughing at her horrible and overused joke. It's like the movie is going out of its way to be as generic as possible, which is smart - even if you don't realize or appreciate it at the time. The back half more than makes up for its earlier lapses, and I have to wonder if it was intentional, making the audience let their guard down so that they're even more blown away by what happens later.

Of course, this is a risky gamble in today's film watching landscape, as 99% of the people who see this movie will be doing so on Netflix or some other streaming service, where it's a lot easier to jump ship and watch something else or, at the very least, grab your cell phone and give the movie (at most) half of your attention. Granted, the plot doesn't get very complicated, especially if you've seen the aforementioned movies (especially Thanatomorphose) as it follows their familiar pattern - the infected person starts feeling sick, then weird bumps/sores appear, then weirder shit happens, and finally they're barely recognizable as human beings. Along the way, accidental (and then intentional) deaths occur as the condition worsens, and a happy ending is not even close to a possibility. But you'll likely miss the little subtle bits that keep it a little more engaging, like the reveal of what happened to Casey's engagement ring, or her horrible would-be mother-in-law (the wedding is in a week, because of course it is) fingering the packaging for a pregnancy test as she wanders around the apartment. The characters aren't exactly multi-layered, but you gotta give the movie your full attention to get what the screenwriters DO offer (which is still more than the average modern gross out horror flick can be bothered with).

What makes this one stand out is how icky it gets. I have mentioned my fear of fish more than once on this site, so longtime readers don't need to be told that a woman turning into a fish monster is gonna gross me out. The key moment is about halfway through, when Casey walks into a surprise party and reacts by dumping thousands of fish eggs on the floor - which her guests proceed to applaud and then stomp on as she desperately tries to stop them from destroying her babies. By now we know we're watching a nightmare scene, but here's the kicker - she wakes up and stumbles around her apartment, which really IS covered with thousands of freshly dumped fish eggs! And while The Fly is a clear influence, she doesn't get Brundle's super strength - she gets his acid puke ability, plus a sort of bluish gummy substance that she secretes from her hand and makes her victim look like she was just shunting with Smurfs.

The apartment itself is (don't say a character, don't say a character...) kind of its own character (goddammit, Collins!), mirroring her own degeneration as it turns into a sort of cocoon/hive/nest thing. It's a marvel of production design that must have been torture for all involved, as it is barely even recognizable as a domicile by the time the climax rolls around - thick layers of what looks like a shed snakeskin cover the walls, tendrils of gooey tar like substances protrude everywhere, more eggs come flopping out of giant sores in the wall... imagine the cocoons from Gremlins mixed with that thing in Possession and you kind of get an idea, except across the entire apartment instead of being confined to one spot. Every shot has things just like dripping or pulsing in the background, and it really helps provide a contrast for the (one too many) scenes of someone knocking at the door asking Casey to let them in, only to finally barge their way inside and get disgusted at what they see. Casey looks right in that environment, these normal looking people are the aliens. It's a pretty neat visual, really.

Also, the hybrid nature of what she's turning into is pretty cool. I mean, her eggs are definitely of the aquatic variety, but she gets a stinger and the fly-like puke thing, giving her more of an insect quality (plus the final shot features the eggs hatching little flying things). Maybe there's some fish that matches up with all of these descriptions, but I prefer my hybrid theory, in the end (yes, that was an intentional dumb joke). We don't see what bit her, but it's something in the water - but then again her friend gets bitten too and she's OK except for a rash. So maybe it was an STD she got from the guy she bangs? Or a mixture? The movie doesn't really spell it out, which is fine...

... but leads into my other concern, which is that I wish there was a little more to the basic structure. Like I said, too much of it just involves people being worried about her and coming by to check up, only to usually get killed for their trouble. There's a go-nowhere subplot with a neighbor whose dog she walks - not that I want to see a dog get turned into a puddle of goo but it's weird how it's just dropped after a scene where the dog is afraid to go near her (at this stage she just looks like she has a bad cold or something). A random subplot about one of her friends trying to steal away her fiancee comes along too late in the narrative to mean much (by the time she makes her move it's not like the wedding is gonna happen anyway), and the cast is too compact to mix things up enough. I assume the budget was small and (rightfully) all went toward the makeup and production design, but it doesn't make it any less cyclical and thus somewhat flat - eventually you're just kinda waiting to see the next gross-out effect. Maybe the dog shoulda came back as a hero? Basically if Casey is a Seth Brundle type, the movie needed a Stathis Borans substitute to throw a wrench in the works. Explaining everything isn't exactly what I'd want, but maybe bringing the guy she banged back into the picture wouldn't have hurt. Look, I'm not the screenwriter, dammit! Just needed SOMETHING to keep it from having that "short film stretched to 90 minutes" feeling.

So a little thin and rough going at first, but if you're a fan of this niche but effective sub-genre, it's definitely worth checking out. And it's another minor win for Chad Archibald, who also gave us the enjoyable (but also padded) slasher The Drownsman and the pretty cool sci-fi flick Ejecta. All of his films have good intentions and are worth watching, but I really hope he can knock it out of the park next time (perhaps with a committed screenwriting partner that can really nail his intriguing concepts), as that's three in a row that I recommend with reservations. Sure, that's better than just making a bad movie, but it's kind of frustrating too - all three could be classics based on their concepts, but they always fall a little short for one reason or another. He's so close!

What say you?

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Lake Placid vs Anaconda (2015)

APRIL 29, 2016

GENRE: MONSTER, PREDATOR
SOURCE: STREAMING (ONLINE SCREENER)

"Unless [another entry] is somehow conceived, produced, and released in the next 5 months (when HMAD ends), I'll never see it. For me, this truly is the Final Chapter. Adieu, mostly lousy series!"

That's from my review of Lake Placid: The Final Chapter, posted a few months before the daily part of HMAD ended in March of 2013. The thinking was, while I still planned to update the site a couple times a week (I know, it's usually more like once at best), I wouldn't be bothering much with sequels to movies I never liked much to begin with. Alas, I was "forced" to watch Lake Placid vs. Anaconda for one of my freelance jobs, and when I was surprised to discover that it actually had some continuity with both of the series, I looked up my own reviews and realized that I had reviewed all eight previous movies - I figured I kind of had to post a review.

And yes, EIGHT - four Lake Placids, and four Anacondas. In terms of vs. movies, it's rather squarely matched - Jason had more movies than Freddy, Alien had more movies than Predator, but these guys are on even ground - except when it comes to money and theatrical success. The first two Anaconda films were released theatrically and were successful (especially the first - outgrossing the likes of Starship Troopers, LA Confidential, Jackie Brown, and The Game, among far too many others), but only the first Lake Placid was given such treatment - and it was technically a dud, grossing a mere 31m on a 35m budget. In fact, I'm kind of confused Lake Placid went first in the title, as not only is Anaconda a bigger brand name but it also comes first in the alphabet, giving it better placement in VOD menus (whereas L is pretty much right in the middle). But either way I think it's a pretty stupid title, since Lake Placid isn't the name of the crocodile. I mean it'd be cool if the snakes all decided to just fight a large body of water, but that's obviously not what happens - it'd be like if the 2003 film was called Freddy vs Friday the 13th.

Anyway, back to the continuity - I wouldn't say you HAD to watch the other movies, but I was surprised to discover that the writers clearly had, bringing back elements from the Lake Placid series (like the giant fence that encircles the area, letting these animals live peacefully) and the Anaconda series (like the Blood Orchid) in equal measure. The two characters that return are both Lake Placid vets (Yancy Butler and Robert Englund, who survived being eaten in the last film), but the main evil business lady is the daughter of John Rhys-Davies' character from Anaconda 3, so they reward people that have memorized those movies (or, like I did, took a second to look at a Wikipedia entry to understand the connection after she kept referring to unseen father, which is sequel shorthand for a dead character). Again, it's not like you'll be confused if you go in blind, but it tickled me that the movie actually seemed to care more about the two franchise's history than Freddy vs. Jason or Alien vs. Predator did about their respective series.

I was also tickled that the movie's production company was Destination Films, which I thought had went belly-up years ago. For horror fans they're probably best (?) remembered for Bats, the Syfy-level movie that somehow got a theatrical release in 1999 (a not entirely unsuccessful one! It outgrossed Idle Hands and Teaching Mrs. Tingle, for what it's worth), but to me they're the gods who gave us Drowning Mona, one of my favorite random comedies of all time ("Demoted mother"). Alas, my enthusiasm quickly vanished, as the very first shot of the croc was hideous - not even PS2-level, more like PS1 cut-scene, made additionally sad/hilarious by the fact that the shot was behind the VFX supervisor's credit. Supervising what, exactly? A Windows 95 computer running After Effects 2.5? FX are cheaper these days and more people know how to do them - it shouldn't be this hard to get an at least halfway decent shot of your title monster(s), especially in the first few scenes.

However, some of that hope returned a few seconds later, when an unexpected bit of wit intruded on an otherwise cliche and dumb scene. Early on, Englund (sporting a hook hand, metal foot, and eye-patch to explain his survival) has been hired by the shady scientist types to get them past the fence so they could steal eggs or whatever the hell, and he's trying to back out, so one of them has a gun on him. And they're going through the motions, muttering "Not so fast..." "I won't say anything, let me go!" sort of dialogue that no one actually listens to. Meanwhile, the non-gun-toting scientists are still going about their work nearby (everyone's in one of those mobile labs, like the one in The Lost World), and one of them needs to get to a microscope next to the guy holding a gun on Englund, so he just totally ignores their own personal problems and sighs "Watch the gun..." as he casually strolls between them so he can get on with his work. Like, I love the idea that the real scientists are so used to their employers pulling guns on each other that it doesn't even faze them anymore.

As for the "vs" aspect, as expected they don't spend a lot of time on it. They meet up around the halfway point and the croc gets destroyed pretty quickly, and then near the end another croc (there are several of each monster) flings a snake into the blades of a helicopter hovering above, killing the snake (duh) and sending the chopper into an off-screen crash. No, as usual, they spend most of the movie just going after random humans, following Lake Placid sequel traditions and pitting a group of Bulgarian-as-American teens against the beasts as one of their parents tries to rescue them. This time it's a bunch of sorority sisters/pledges, naturally led by a horribly bitchy girl who, just as naturally, will be one of the last to die (after pushing one of her friends into the monster's path to save herself, of course). But director A.B. Stone bungles the moment we've all been waiting for, opting to cut to the other girls' reactions before we see the croc actually chomp on her. He cuts back to at least show her (already dead) in his jaws, but still: personal foul, movie - ten yard penalty. The only reason to keep these awful kind of characters around for the majority of the runtime is to give them a really satisfying death (even with the MPAA cuts, the bitchy girl in New Blood is a fine example - axe to the head AND he throws her across the room!), so to not actually do that is kind of a huge betrayal of our trust.

But, you know, it's fine. I got paid to watch it so that might factor into my "excitement", but they've paid me to watch others that I wished I could pay them back to STOP watching, so I guarantee it's at least tolerable. Englund seems to be having a little more fun than he did in the previous film, and I like how Yancy Butler has a different job in every movie - she was a poacher in Lake Placid 3, then an EPA Agent in Final Chapter, and now she's the sheriff (Corin Nemec plays the obligatory EPA rep). The end of the movie sets up another sequel of course, so I hope if she returns she's the mayor or something. It also offers plenty of carnage (and an impressive amount of blood being tossed on our heroes during the climax as giant monsters explode around them), and even if they're brief the titular battles are at least funny to watch, bad CGI and all. I also loved (ironically) the bit where Butler comes across some wrecked vehicles and says "What the hell happened here?" as if she hadn't already seen this sort of aftermath in two other movies - maybe she has her memory wiped every time she takes on a new job?

The crocs get more human victims than the snakes, for the record. They're the ones who kill most of the sorority girls (only one dies by snake I think - he/she crushes the car the girl's hiding in), so between that and the two characters it seems that the producers favored Lake Placid over Anaconda a tiny bit. I think the problem with all of the modern vs. movies is that they're born out of two different studios (Jason was Paramount for majority of his run, so it made sense that "The House That Freddy Built" would prefer Krueger for FvJ), unlike the old Universal ones like Frankenstein meets The Wolfman that were all under Universal's umbrella from inception. They had the characters, the sets, the history... the team-ups were more satisfying, at least on that level, than these newer ones ever manage. I think we'll be seeing a shift toward more shared universes (like Marvel) as opposed to straight one on one matches. Take Civil War - a movie that was just Captain America vs. Iron Man would have been fine on its own, but it's the fact that it's part of this ongoing series that makes it truly exciting for everyone, because it's Cap 3, Iron Man 4, Ant-Man 1.5, plus a prequel to Black Panther (and Spider-Man). Marvel is the franchise, not any one character, giving them license to do whatever but also keeps favoritism at bay - you can guarantee if Fox agreed to temporarily lend them the X-Men characters for one "AvX" film that fans of the X-films wouldn't walk away as satisfied as Avengers fans. That said, there are enough junk franchises on Syfy (including Bats, now that I think about it) that they could probably build up some sort of half-assed universe going forward. Maybe Anaconda and Lake Placid can fight Sharknado. A man can dream.

What say you?

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Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

MARCH 25, 2016

GENRE: MONSTER (really!), PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I learned something interesting a couple years ago about the writing credits on a movie. If there's more than one screenwriter, they're listed with either an "&" or an "and" between them, and there's a reason for the non-conformity: the "&" means the two writers worked together, whereas the "and" means one rewrote the other's script. Alas, even though Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice feels like the sort of movie that would skip an opening title sequence and save it for the end titles, we learn right off the bat (heh) that the film's two credited writers, David Goyer and Chris Terrio did not work together - there's an "and", not an ampersand, and by god does it show. At times I wondered if one actually rewrote the other script or if they wrote completely separate ones and Zack Snyder just took whatever he liked from each with no rhyme or reason, but either way, even if this movie makes a billion dollars I wouldn't expect either of them to consider it their finest work.

To be fair to them, I'm sure if they were hired to write a movie where Batman fights Superman (and then probably teams up with him against a villain) and nothing else, they'd probably do a fine job (well, Terrio could; Goyer has given us little reason to have faith in his abilities unless he's backed up by filmmakers like Guillermo Del Toro or Christopher Nolan). But that's not what they were hired to do - they're also writing a prequel for a Justice League movie, a prequel to a Wonder Woman movie, a sequel to a Batman movie that doesn't exist, a sequel to a Superman movie that established Lex Luthor, and, when time allows, a sequel to Man of Steel, which may have problems but is comic movie perfection compared to this mess.

I'm not exaggerating when I say the first hour of this film seems like a collection of deleted scenes: there is zero connection between most of them, with more "and then this happens" storytelling (for lack of a better term) than I have ever witnessed in a major film. At times it made me long for the relative cohesion of the Amazing Spider-Man or Transformers movies, because as bad as they are at least I could usually track the characters from point A to B, a feat that is impossible here. For example, there's a scene where we've just cut to the Daily Planet offices, and Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) wonders where Clark Kent is - it's the sort of scene that should belong right before we cut to Clark/Superman doing something far more exciting than sitting at his day job desk. But this is BVS (I have taken to calling it Beavis, for the record), so after he inquires about Clark we cut to... Lois Lane, meeting with a source as she works on her next story. Then we cut to Lex Luthor, doing his thing. So why is the Fishburne scene there, exactly? It doesn't inform the narrative in any way, it doesn't offer insight into any of its characters, and it's probably long forgotten by the time Zack Snyder bothers to return to Clark - not to mention that we never know why Perry was looking for him in the first place. You can ask that "why am I watching this particular scene?" question about a lot of them, though that one stuck out as particularly egregious.

And that's because a lot of the other disconnected scenes have an answer: because DC has a bunch of movies down the road planned, and since they didn't have the patience to do this right like Marvel (mostly) did, they need to get a lot of the Justice League pieces into place in time for that movie, which is coming in 2017 and starts shooting next week I think. If you want to compare to what Marvel has done (and there's no reason not to, since they're obviously swiping from their "shared universe" playbook), if Man of Steel was their Iron Man, kicking the whole thing off, then this is their Avengers - without Iron Man 2, Captain America, Incredible Hulk, and Thor in between. At the very least the movie often feels like it should have had another Man of Steel film and the debut of Ben Affleck's Batman (which, as confusing as it is with Nolan listed as a producer on this movie, is NOT a recast version of the character Christian Bale played - it's a "remake" just as Bale's was to the Burton/Schumacher series) before this one, because there's a lot of ground to cover just to get Batman worked into things - at the expense of Superman's runtime. Indeed, Affleck is billed over Cavill, which is kind of weird since Cavill's the one who is coming back and "Batfleck" is technically being introduced - this transition would have been a lot smoother if they had settled into their roles and with their characters more clearly defined. At one point Bruce Wayne pauses to reflect on a beat up Robin costume with a scary Joker message scribbled on it - a moment that carries exactly zero weight since we have never even seen ANY version of Robin with ANY version of Joker in a live action movie since the 1960's*, let alone in this particular incarnation. I get the inclination for wanting to focus on a Batman that's been around for 20 years when the story begins (as opposed to another goddamn origin tale), but there's gotta be a way to do it without it feeling like you actually missed a movie.

Now, I mostly liked Man of Steel (and I should note I'm nowhere near as big of a Superman fan as I am of Batman), but one thing that felt odd to me and certainly didn't sit well with a lot of Supes fans is that he was kind of a brooding jerk in the movie, as opposed to the uplifting hero we're used to from the comics. In Man of Steel I was fine with this - they were doing the Superman version of the Nolan Batfilms, and it was a total 180 from the 2006 Superman film (that I didn't really like at all). But when this brooding Superman faces off against Batman, the appeal is mostly lost, because darkness is Batman's thing. Lex has this little speech about their impending fight (which he orchestrates) and spells out their opposite standings: "darkness vs. light!" and things like that, but where's the light? It's not night and day, it's 11pm and 1030pm. Snyder attempts to dig himself out of the hole he dug by simply making this Batman even darker than usual (meaning he kills people, without a moment's hesitation or contemplation), making Superman seem more "golden" in comparison, but it's not a particularly successful gambit. Plus, with a new Batman that we've only known for an hour, it's hardly an iconic meeting anyway - the ideal version of this movie would have been released in 1994 and featured Michael Keaton facing off against Christopher Reeve. Instead they made Speechless, and we get this.

Back to all the sequel setups. Also along for this clumsy ride is Wonder Woman, played by the otherworldly Gal Gadot (Gisele from the Fast movies), though she's never really introduced in the narrative. She appears as a mysterious thief who steals one of Bruce Wayne's little spy gadgets because it has a photograph on it that proves she's at least 100 years old, and I guess that'd be a problem in a world where everyone knows Superman is an alien and they're OK enough with him that they build statues in his honor despite having gotten thousands of people killed during his fight with Zod (which we see from Bruce Wayne's perspective in an opening scene that is also far and away the best the movie ever gets). Anyway, she's in civilian mode for 80% of the bloated runtime, but when Lex creates Doomsday (out of Zod's corpse - OK?) and sets him on a warpath against our other heroes, she springs into action, getting off a plane at once and suddenly reappearing in her WW costume (did she have it on her carry-on?) to join the fight. I'm not even sure if her name (Diana Prince) is ever even fully revealed, though with so much information crammed and offered haphazardly throughout the film I suppose I myself could have been in it somewhere and I wouldn't have caught me. And again, if they didn't have to spend so much time re-explaining Batman to us (including yet another parents getting murdered scene) they probably could have used a little more time on introducing her - after all, except for a quick bit in Thor we didn't really meet Hawkeye until Avengers. Not everyone has to have their own movie before they all meet up, but they certainly need more than ONE MOVIE TOTAL before throwing everyone together.

And yes, three other JL members are introduced, quickly, and in a scene so abysmally bad I couldn't believe that they stuck it into the middle of the movie instead of at the end of the credits, where its lack of connection to the narrative wouldn't be as jarring. Despite having plenty on his plate, Bruce sends Diana (this is probably where her name is shown, now that I think of it) an email with some videos attached (he got them off the doohickey that she had stolen from him - she gave it back because she couldn't break the decryption), and those videos are of Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg (who is created by Joe Morton, which I thought was inspired casting), who Bruce assumes are all aliens like her and Superman I guess? I dunno. It's really awful, and just adds to the problem - it only exists because DC is doubling down on their impatience by releasing Justice League before any of the other stand-alone films come along besides Wonder Woman's. Flash and Aquaman are coming AFTER the JL movie, so now they're basically going ahead and making Avengers 2 before making Hulk or Captain America (or even a proper Batman movie, not to mention the seemingly non-existent Man of Steel 2 unless they change their schedule plans). And just to make all this crap even more frustrating, the picture has Chris Pine standing next to Gal Gadot - it's such a pointless distraction that I had to laugh. Ebert famously referred to another Ben Affleck movie as a two and a half hour trailer (Armageddon) - if he was alive he might be forced to take it back and use it to describe this film, because it is almost quite literally a two and a half hour trailer for all of the movies that they've dated and cast but haven't actually made yet. And they're using time that should be spent on THIS movie's plot to set them all up, rather than do it organically like their competition has done. You know, Age of Ultron wasn't that great, but they've earned enough goodwill by this point that we're still stoked for Civil War next month - who can possibly be excited for Justice League (also from Snyder) when he can't even handle doing 2-3 heroes in a movie? And when it's the first time we'll really be seeing half of its members?

When you strip all that crap out, you're left with the skeleton of what might be a pretty fun comic book movie where Lex Luthor arranges for Batman and Superman to fight, only for them to realize what he's up to and join forces to stop him, at which point he springs another villain on them to battle. Lex's plan is easy enough to engineer since Batman already hates Superman for all of the destruction he caused in Metropolis (it took out a Wayne Enterprises building, in fact), though the script curiously has Lex deal only with Superman - Lex and Bruce Wayne's entire relationship in the movie is shown in the trailer. I guess since Lex doesn't know Bruce is Batman that he didn't think much of him, but why not have him figure that out? After all, he's got files on Aquaman for some reason, so it's not completely impossible for him to have at least given a passing interest in who the masked vigilante one town over (yep, Gotham and Metropolis are neighbors here) might be. Wait, why am I suggesting MORE subplots for them to toss in? Perhaps with fewer characters in the mix there might be time to explain why anyone does anything, so I wouldn't be muttering "Wait, what?" to myself so often. For example, Batman crafts a spear out of Kryptonite to fight Superman with, but once they patch up their differences he tosses it aside. Lois Lane then throws it into the water (why, I have no idea), but later Batman realizes he can use it to fight Doomsday, who is currently just sort of standing there on an uninhabited island. His plan, for some reason, is to lead Doomsday back to Gotham (where the spear is, probably near some innocent people**) to get it, rather than just fly back and grab it while Doomsday chills out not bothering anyone. Once Batman arrives on the scene, he suddenly forgets all about the damn spear, but luckily for him Lois suddenly knows how much they need it and dives into the water to get it, while Batman sits most of the Doomsday fight out. Huh?

At least I get Doomsday's motives: he's a giant ugly monster and therefore wants to kill our heroes, as is tradition. Lex, on the other hand, has a plan that makes no real sense, and we're never given much of a reason to fear him as a villain. Except for showing Bruce's parents dying (which is necessary for a later, very silly plot point involving a funny coincidence about Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne to really register), Snyder and his writers just assume you know who all of these people are, why they're important, etc. So Lex (who, it should be noted for those who forgot, was not in Man of Steel) just shows up and everyone's already suspicious of him for some reason, and he's already obsessed with Superman because... uh, he is in the comics, I guess. I mean, I know that the primary audience for these movies are comic fans, but it's a baffling decision to alienate non-readers by not giving even rudimentary background information on who anyone actually IS. If you hadn't seen a Batman movie before, you'd be completely baffled as to who Alfred is, why the Waynes were important, etc. Plus, fans of the comic will be angry about all of the changes anyway (Batman killing people, Lex being so young, Doomsday being made out of Zod's corpse, etc.) so who exactly was Snyder trying to please here, anyway, besides WB stockholders?

He sure as hell wasn't out to win over families. I felt legitimately sad for all of the excited kids who were running into the theater before it began, because they probably spent most of the following 150 minutes alternating between being bored and terrified. Both of the heroes are jerks, there are scary nightmare scenes throughout (I momentarily wondered if WB was roping Freddy into the mix), and there's a shocking lack of any big action scenes until the final half hour, which is just a CGI fest on par with the terrible finale of last summer's (otherwise superior) Fantastic Four movie. There's even a suicide bomber scene, and the only time we see Batman doing anything "regular day" is when he's rescuing some sex slaves (that he's also terrified in the process). And people thought Batman Returns was too fucked up for kids? It's Schumacher-level goofy compared to this, and I honestly feel bad for kids whose parents will (rightfully) deny them permission to see a new Superman movie because it's too grim and upsetting. Since there's such animosity between Marvel and DC fans I won't use Spider-Man 2 as the example of a perfect, well rounded comic movie (as much as I'd like to), so let's use the first Batman (1989) instead - it's got some adult-leaning elements, but I'd still be OK showing it to my kid when he was 7 or 8, i.e. the age kids probably start really reading comics and wanting to see their heroes in big-screen adventures. This? There are a couple of R-rated movies I'd feel more comfortable showing him first.

OK, a million words later you're probably still wondering why you're reading a review of a Superman movie on Horror Movie A Day. Two words: Ben Affleck. You gotta understand how much I truly love the guy - he was a Boston boy (like me!) who won an Oscar right when I was about to start film school. Later that year he co-starred in what would ultimately be one of my all-time favorite movies, and in 2003 he starred in a movie based on one of my three favorite comic characters: Daredevil. That movie wasn't that great and it's hardly one of his best performances, but as a fan of the character I was happy to see a guy I really liked in the role - one of those other three favorite characters was Spider-Man and it's not like I had any real affinity for Tobey Maguire. So who is the 3rd in that group? You guessed it: Batman. Most of the comics I read nowadays are of the non-hero variety, but I make two exceptions: Daredevil and Batman (Spider-Man lost me forever a few years back... maybe it's OK again now but I grew tired of all the dumb retcons and resets). That one of my favorite actors has played two of my favorite heroes is pretty nuts, I think, and as someone who has rooted for him time and time again (even in the mid-00's... some dark times those were) I couldn't have been more excited to see him take on this role and hopefully get back some cred in the eyes of comic fans. So far, it seems he has - even the harshest reviews seem to point out that he's great in the role and that they can't wait to see him in a solo movie (not to mention Jeremy Irons, who is a wonderfully gruff Alfred) without all of this other bullshit weighing him down.

Long story short, I want to stress that I was very much excited for this movie and had no reason to go in wanting to hate it or any of that; even with all of the bad reviews coming in (and trailers that didn't exactly leave me hopeful) I was still optimistic that I'd at least enjoy it as a fun timekiller, same as Deadpool. I in no way could have predicted that a sequel to a movie I enjoyed that added my boy Affleck to the mix as FUCKING BATMAN would leave me feeling annoyed and bored in equal measures. And even if I WAS planning to hate it, if there's anyone who can overcome that sort of thing it's Zack Snyder - I went into Dawn of the Dead fully expecting to despise it, and walked out a huge fan. But alas, I would estimate that there are maybe about 20 minutes of the movie that I actively enjoyed - that is not what I'd think of as a "fun timekiller". And since I couldn't quite convey why I was so disappointed with 140 character tweets (and my other site kind of already clogged with BvS coverage), I figured I'd "October Extras 2" this thing and offer anyone who might give a shit what I think about a comic movie something to read over the weekend. Fear not, I'll be back to reviewing killer scarecrow movies in due time.

But then again, there IS a monster and a lot of scary nightmare scenes, so I guess I couldn't have picked a better one to review here!

What say you?

* A movie that got a very funny shoutout in the teaser for The Lego Batman Movie, which was NOT the same one that's available online. It was by far the highlight of the moviegoing experience, and I suspect the movie will do very well - the teaser went over like gangbusters.

** After all the shit Snyder and co. took from Superman killing thousands while bashing Zod around, the movie hilariously keeps having reporters and army types explain (via quick voiceover) that this or that area is uninhabited, or that everyone has left for the day or whatever. But still, leading him back to the mainland when he's on an island is completely fucking ridiculous, and even dumber when you consider that the reason Batman hates Superman in the first place is because he took his very destructive fight to areas where people are around. Hypocrite!

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