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SCARY MOVIE 5 (2013)

Posted in 2013, Cinema Knife Fights, Comedies, Garbage, Just Plain Bad, Michael Arruda Reviews, Spoofs with tags , , , , on April 15, 2013 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT:  SCARY MOVIE 5 (2013)
By Michael Arruda

Scary-Movie-5

(THE SCENE: A cabin in the woods.  MICHAEL ARRUDA walks through the interior, inspecting the bloody carnage from some horrifying incident.  Blood is spattered on the walls, severed body parts are strewn about the floor, and the room is littered with busted and broken furniture.)

MICHAEL ARRUDA (looking things over):  I guess I’m too late for THE HANGOVER PART III cast party!  Wow, it must have been quite the shindig!  Hey look!  (picks up a small white object.)  It’s one of Stu’s teeth.

Anyway, as much as I’d like to be reviewing THE HANGOVER PART III today, I’m not.

Nope, I’m here today in this cabin in the woods because I’m reviewing that sorry excuse for a comedy, SCARY MOVIE 5 (2013).

(Picks up a severed arm.)

This arm is funnier than anything you’ll see in SCARY MOVIE 5.

(A severed head on the floor suddenly frowns.)

HEAD:  But that arm’s not funny at all!

MA: My point exactly.  (looks around cabin)

I sure have been spending a lot of time here lately, in this cabin in the woods.  L.L. SOARES and I were just here last week reviewing the EVIL DEAD remake, and I’m back here again for today’s review. I wish I were here under better circumstances.

HEAD:  I’m glad you’re here.  I could use the company.

MA (to HEAD):  So, what happened here, anyway?  Things must have gotten violent.

HEAD:  Why do you say that?

MA:  Well, for starters, you’re missing your body!

HEAD:  Oh, I’ve been without my body for years.  I arrived here this way.

MA:  You did?

HEAD:  Yeah, someone at the party said they wanted a little head.  (Drum beat)  So, here I am!

MA:  On that note, I should get started on today’s review. We’ll talk more later.

HEAD:  I’ll be right here.  It’s not like I can leave.

MA:  Anyway, I’m here in this cabin because today’s movie, SCARY MOVIE 5 (2013) involves a place just like this, although strangely, one of the movies it didn’t spoof, was the aptly titled THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2011).

I’m flying solo this week, as L.L. Soares is off on another assignment—which is code for “I’m not seeing that f—cking lame ass movie so do it yourself Arruda!” —so here I am, facing the dubious task of bringing you today’s review of SCARY MOVIE 5.

Here goes:  as if you didn’t already know, SCARY MOVIE 5 sucks.  Don’t see it.

Okay, you can go home now.

HEAD:  Are you leaving already?  Because if you are, would you mind giving me a lift to the closest bus station?

Scary Movie 5 poster #2

MA:  No, I’m not leaving already.  That was just a joke.

Even SCARY MOVIE 5 deserves an honest review.

HEAD: Okay, but when you do leave, can you take me to that bus station?

MA:  Sure.

HEAD:  I know it’s early, but I’d like to get a head start on the traffic.

MA:  Stop, all right?  Just stop.

Now, where was I?   Yes, the review.

Seriously, unless you’re a diehard fan of the series, and I’m sure there is one of you out there, you have no business seeing this movie.  Avoid it like the plague.  But you’re smart enough to already know that.

What’s the best part about SCARY MOVIE 5?  That Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan only appear in one scene, and it’s the pre-credit sequence.  You get them out of the way quickly.

Not that I have anything against Sheen or Lohan, but it’s obvious that they’re only in this movie to exploit their real life personal problems, which I find sad.  Keep your personal lives out of the movies, thank you very much!

Unfortunately, what follows after Sheen and Lohan isn’t much better.

SCARY MOVIE 5 spoofs a bunch of horror movies, obviously, and it uses as its framework the recent horror film MAMA (2013) as a young married couple Dan (Simon Rex) and Jody (Ashley Tisdale) agree to take care of Dan’s brother’s kids after they were found abandoned in a cabin in the woods.

So, that’s the framework for this one, but to say that this movie has a plot is saying a lot.

I will say that the scene where Snoop Dog and his buddy first discover the little girls in the cabin is a funny one, and one of the few times I laughed.

HEAD: I liked that scene, too.

MA:  So, you saw the movie?

HEAD:  What?  You think I’m not allowed into movie theaters or something?

MA:  I didn’t say that.

HEAD:  Of course, I do go early, so I can be at the head of the line.

MA (groans):  Enough! You’re giving me a headache.

HEAD:  You said that one.

MA: Moving right along—.

In addition to MAMA, the film pokes fun at the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies, and the jokes here are some of the worst.  Most involve the overweight housekeeper, in gags that are tasteless and vulgar. Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t mind tasteless and vulgar jokes, but they have to make me laugh.  These didn’t.

The film strangely parodies RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011) as Dan’s day job is to work with Caesar and his fellow apes.  These scenes were the most disappointing of all.  The material here is ripe for laughter, and yet time and time again, the writers drop the ball.

While Dan is busy training Caesar, Jody trains to be a ballerina in scenes spoofing BLACK SWAN (2010), in yet another series of scenes that constantly misfire.

There’s even a pointless sequence lampooning INCEPTION (2010) which seems out of place here and is about as funny as the real movie.

HEAD: Was INCEPTION a comedy?

MA:  No.  It was a thriller.

HEAD:  Then, why did you— oh, I get it now.  (laughs).

MA:  Probably the funniest sequence in the movie is a spoof of EVIL DEAD (2013), where Jody and her friend take turns reading from the Book of the Dead, which causes some comical results.  But other than this, I didn’t laugh much at all.

I’ve heard the argument that films like this shouldn’t be criticized because they’re supposed to be stupid.  Really?  I thought they were supposed to be funny?  And that’s the problem I have with this film. You want to spoof something, do a flippin good job, or don’t do it at all!

Pat Proft and David Zucker wrote this movie, and these guys have a ton of comedic credits, including THE NAKED GUN films, AIRPLANE! (1980) and a bunch of other funny parodies.   They should know better.

What’s going on here is lazy writing and taking the easy way out.   It’s obvious to me that these jokes were written with the mindset that even if it’s just the tiniest bit humorous, it’s okay.  The film plays like a first draft from beginning to end.

So many of the jokes in this movie, had they been properly set up and thought out, could have been very funny.  There’s no reason in the world why a movie like SCARY MOVIE 5 couldn’t be a laugh riot.  But it’s not, because the jokes just aren’t there.

You’re telling me that you’re spoofing the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies and the best you can do is relentlessly make fun of the housekeeper?  That’s it?  That’s all you’ve got?  You can’t do any better than the lowest common denominator of humor—crude bathroom jokes, vulgar sex jokes—and rehash it over and over?  That’s spoofing?  I don’t think so.  That’s laziness.

Some of the best parodies take specific scenes and have fun with them.  That sort of thing is severely lacking here.  And if the material isn’t there, if these films have been satirized to death already, then maybe you shouldn’t be making a SCARY MOVIE 5.

The cast can’t save this one either.  While Ashley Tisdale is watchable as Jody, there was something about Simon Rex’s performance as Dan that I found irritating.  He was over the top silly and goofy without being funny.  I have to admit, I strongly disliked most of his scenes, and since he’s in most of the movie, that’s not good.

The rest of the cast either overacts or mails it in, looking as if they’re just there to have fun as opposed to work and actually create something funny.

SCARY MOVIE 5 is rated PG-13, and honestly, this one looks as if it was originally intended to be Rated R and then edited down to a PG-13 rating.  Not that it would have made much of a difference.

In one gag, for instance, as Dan and Jody tour the medical facility where their young girls are being cared for, they pass a window where they see two babes showering and soaping up their bodies, and these babes are wearing bathing suits.  Now that makes a lot of sense.

HEAD:  Who showers wearing a bathing suit?

MA:  My point exactly.

HEAD:  That was a lame scene!  I felt cheated.

MA:  Well, yeah.  I felt that way after the first five minutes of this one.

I almost gave this movie 0 Knives, but admittedly I did laugh a couple of times, and I did enjoy that EVIL DEAD scene.  So, I’ll be generous today, but still, that’s pretty sad to find only one or two laughs in a movie that is supposed to be a comedy.

I give SCARY MOVIE 5 one knife.

Do yourself a favor and see something else this weekend.  Okay, I’m out of here.

HEAD:  Hey, don’t leave me.  Hey!  A little help?

MA (sighs):  Sure, buddy.  What is it?  You want me to drop you off at the bus station?

HEAD:  Actually, I’ve changed my mind.  I feel like washing my hair.  Want to do me a huge favor and reach into that duffel bag and hand me that bottle of Head and Shoulders?

MA:  You know, I’ve had enough of these lame puns.  You’re on your own.  I’m outta here. (Exits.)

HEAD:  Gee, wasn’t he a heady bastard!

—END—

© Copyright 2013 by Michael Arruda

(EDITOR’s NOTE: While I didn’t see this one, I can say that, based on Michael’s review, A HAUNTED HOUSE, which came out earlier this year, sounds a lot funnier than SCARY MOVIE 5. So if you really have to see a horror movie spoof movie this year—you’d be better off seeing that one. It has a lame title, but at least it has some laughs and I gave it a decent review. Check out the review here. ~LLS)

Michael Arruda gives SCARY MOVIE 5 ~ one knife!

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Friday Night Knife Fights: TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM – Part 2

Posted in 2011, Friday Night Knife Fights, Garbage, Psycho killer, Sequels, Slasher Movies, Vampires, Werewolves with tags , , , , , , , on May 27, 2011 by knifefighter

FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS- Free-for-all Cage Match
TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM:   Which one of the three is the WORST series? Part 2 (Conclusion)
By Michael Arruda and L.L.  Soares

 …..Previously, on FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS:

 (the camera buzzes as the film rewinds, then starts again)

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  Moving onto our next question, if you were allowed to improve one of these franchises, which one would you like to improve, and just how would you improve it?

L.L. SOARES:  The way to improve these movies is to simply stop making them.

(A gargantuan cheer erupts from the audience, and suddenly LS is receiving a standing ovation.  Even MA stands to give him a hand.)

MA:  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

LS:  I know.

(film fades to black)

And now the conclusion to FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS:

(The camera starts again. The audience’s ovation finally dies down)

MA:  Welcome back to FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS.  L.L. and I are continuing our discussion of TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM, attempting to determine which one of the three is the worst series overall.

Now, LL, you were just saying that the best way to improve these movies would be to simply stop making them.

LS:  Why continue making crap?  End these things and put us out of our misery.

At least the SAW franchise claims to have done this. A new SAW movie always came out around Halloween time for years, but that’s gladly over with. Instead, we’ll get a new PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movie every October.

How about something new and different, instead of retreads?

MA:  Unfortunately, that’s the Hollywood formula.  As long as the retreads keep making money, Hollywood will keep churning them out.

I definitely agree with you on this point, that the best way to improve these franchises is to stop making them. However, if I had to choose one I’d want to improve, I’d choose SCREAM.  I’m not interested in touching either TWILIGHT or SAW.

To improve the SCREAM movies I would tweak the SCREAM formula by having the hip in-the-know-about-horror movies banter spoken only by characters whose lives aren’t in danger.  As soon as these characters are threatened by the masked menace, I’d have them react realistically, meaning they’d be scared to death, and they certainly wouldn’t be making wisecracks about horror movies.  That’s how it is now, and it kills any authenticity these stories might otherwise have.

And that’s all I have to say on the subject.  I’m not really all that interested in improving these series.  I’d prefer they’d just go away.


We’re getting closer to our goal of choosing the worst of the three.  Of the three series, which one has been the most painful to sit through?

I’ll go first this time and answer my own question, and I’m going to cheat a little bit here, as I’m choosing two.  See, for me it’s a tie between TWILIGHT and SAW.

By far, TWILIGHT has been the most boring series to sit through.  Never in my life have I experienced boredom at the movie like this.  It’s awful!  I would pay someone to stop making these films, they’re so dreadfully slow and painful.

But as horribly boring as TWILIGHT has been, SAW has been just as painful, but for different reasons.  For me, it comes down to the subject matter of these movies.  I just don’t enjoy horror tales built around torture.  Seeing people suffer agonizing tortures just because, and the films really don’t justify Jigsaw’s actions, is not my thing.  How can you justify Jigsaw’s actions anyway?  Even if he had just cause, what he does is indefensible.   Jigsaw and his antics are about as fun as the flu, and as realistic as DYLAN DOG.

LS: See, this is where I have a problem with your argument, because, as far as I know, you haven’t seen that many of the SAW movies. I know I’ve had to review them alone for years. I’m guessing you only saw one or two of them. So it’s not really fair that you judge all of them if you haven’t seen them. On the other hand, I’ve had to sit through all of the movies we’re talking about.

MA:  Not fair?  What, are we on the playground?  You’re right.  I haven’t seen as many of the SAW movies as you have, but I’ve seen enough.  Are you telling me that in the later films things get better?

LS:  I’m saying that Jigsaw does have a justification for his actions—however lame—and that is he’s trying to put bad people in a life-and-death situation in order to wake them up and make them change their lives.

MA:  What a thoughtful guy!  And I already knew this, as this plot point was in the films I saw.

LS:  I admit, this gets tired fast, but it is how he justifies his actions. I don’t think it’s any more stupid than every character in a SCREAM movie suddenly being an expert movie critic or Taylor Lautner taking off his shirt every five minutes in the TWILIGHT movies.

To be honest, the SAW movies just don’t bother me as much as the other two series do. I find the movies brainless, but entertaining. And they don’t repulse me like the SCREAM or the TWILIGHT movies do. The SAW movies may not be great, but I don’t mind them that much.

MA: At least SCREAM, for all its faults, has a set of recurring characters I enjoy watching, and the first movie had a good sense of humor and some decent thrills.  I can’t find anything redeeming about TWILIGHT or SAW.

LS: Who needs “redeeming?” I just want to be entertained. The SAW movies are the only ones that even come close to doing this. So they’re the lesser of three evils. And while you enjoy watching the recurring characters in the SCREAM movies, I despise them all and wish they’d just die already. So not everyone shares your affection for those dumb-ass characters.

As for me, I’d say the worst of the bunch is a draw too, but between two different movies.

The SCREAM movies because they irritate the hell out of me, and the TWILIGHT movies because it’s torture trying to stay awake while watching them.

MA:  And now for the big question, the final question of the night, when we decide the winner— or loser— of tonight’s competition:  which one of the three- TWILIGHT, SAW, or SCREAM— is the worst series?

LS:  The worst of the three is a tie between the SCREAM movies and the TWILIGHT movies.

MA:  There seems to be a lot of ties tonight.

LS:  They are bad in different ways. The SCREAM movies feature annoying, self-aware dialogue that doesn’t sound natural and thinks it is much cleverer than it is. Also, with each sequel they become more and more like the lame sequels they make fun of.

MA:  True.

LS:  The TWILIGHT movies, in comparison, don’t even try to be scary, because they’re not horror movies at all. They’re romance films playing dress up. And they’re abysmally boring.

MA:  Also true.

Okay, my turn to pick the worst.

I’m going to go with the SAW movies as the worst of the three because they have so little to offer.  Mindless violence, gruesome pointless tortures, and no story or decent characters whatsoever, the SAW films rely solely on the gross-out for their horror points, and this just doesn’t cut it—heh, heh— for me.

As much as I abhor the TWILIGHT movies, they don’t turn me off like the SAW movies.  They just put me to sleep.

With SCREAM – I actually like the characters, and the story in the first one was a good one.  Even though they’ve gone downhill since the first movie, the SCREAM films are still not as twisted and sick as SAW or as boring and dull as TWILIGHT.

So, my pick as the worst of the three is SAW.

It looks like then, since I picked SAW, and you picked both TWILIGHT and SCREAM, that we have a three way tie.

LS:  Let’s be honest here. They all suck.

MA:  I guess that’s apropos, that they each received a vote for The Worst Series.

With just the two of us here tonight, it would have been difficult to pick just one worst series anyway, unless that rarity of rarities occurred, and you and I agreed, and we both chose the same movie.  Maybe we’ll do this again sometime with some guest panelists.

LS:  I hope not.  I really don’t want to talk about these movies again anytime soon.

MA:  I agree with you there.  Still, there may have to be a rematch at some point.

So, hopefully nobody out there is disappointed, but tonight’s results reveal a stalemate.  Which one is the worst series?  It’s a draw, as TWILIGHT, SAW, and SCREAM all received one vote, meaning, they’re all horrible!

There are no winners here tonight, only losers.

LS: I guess I need to get off the stage then.

MA:  My prayers have finally been answered.

Well that wraps things up from here.  This has been FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS.  I’m Michael Arruda, and on behalf of L.L. Soares and myself, thanks for joining us tonight.  Good night, everybody!

—-END—

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2010: MOBY DICK

Posted in 2011, Action Movies, Animals Attack, DVD Review, Garbage, Giant Monsters, Michael Arruda Reviews, Pickin' the Carcass, Remakes with tags , , , , , , on May 25, 2011 by knifefighter

PICKIN’ THE CARCASS:  2010:  MOBY DICK (2010)
By Michael Arruda

With a title like 2010:  MOBY DICK, I knew this one was going to be bad.  The only question was:  how bad?

Why watch a movie like this in the first place?  Well, while MOBY DICK, the famous American novel by Herman Melville, has never been one of my favorites, it does tell an entertaining story, one that strangely has yet to be captured effectively on film.  The 1956 version directed by John Huston and starring Gregory Peck, isn’t bad, but as a movie version of a classic literary novel, it fails to leave its mark as a classic film.  It’s worth watching mostly for Peck’s powerful performance as the maniacal Captain Ahab.  It lacks pacing and as a result it isn’t a very suspenseful movie, despite its subject matter.  JAWS, it ain’t!

The 1998 version starring Patrick Stewart isn’t bad either, but it’s a TV movie, and it just isn’t on the same level as a theatrical release.

So, when I heard there was a new version of MOBY DICK, one that updated the tale to modern times, I was intrigued, and that’s why I decided to watch this one.

2010: MOBY DICK, now available on DVD and streaming video, opens in 1969 with a young seaman, Ahab, on an American submarine that is attacked by an extremely fake looking CGI whale.  What’s a whale doing attacking a submarine, you ask?  Well, the Moby Dick in this version isn’t just an ordinary whale.  He’s a super prehistoric whale, which means he’s bigger and badder than the white whale in Melville’s novel.  He’s the Godzilla of white whales.   Now, before you get all excited and think, this sounds interesting, let me clarify for you the level of special effects in this one:  they’re LAND OF THE LOST  material—not the movie, but the old Saturday morning TV show.   They’re embarrassingly bad.

Seaman Ahab loses his leg to Moby Dick, and it’s actually a pretty gruesome scene, about the only effective scene in the movie.  It’s also about five seconds long, which means that’s as good as it gets.

The action then switches to present day where we meet Dr. Michelle Herman (Renee O’Connor).  She fills in for the Ishmael character in the novel, and we know this because her first line in the movie is the first line of the novel, but rather than “Call me Ishmael,” she says “Call me Michelle.”  Yup, it’s pretty lame.

Michelle studies whales, of course, and she’s recruited by the now Captain Ahab (Barry Bostwick) aboard his submarine “The Pequod” to help him hunt Moby Dick.  About the only thing this movie gets right are the names of the characters and the name of the ship, “The Pequod.”  It also mentions the Essex, the real life ship that was sunk by a whale and served as Herman Melville’s source material and inspiration for his writing MOBY DICK.  In this flick, the Essex is also a submarine.

And that’s pretty much the story.  Captain Ahab and his crew chase down Moby Dick, and if you’ve read the novel, you know what happens, and you know there’s only one survivor, the narrator of the story, in this case, Michelle.

The acting, directing, and writing in this one are all absolutely horrible.

Barry Bostwick—yes, that Barry Bostwick, Brad from THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975), now an old man who looks more like Robert Frost than Captain Ahab—lacks the intensity and drive to be a believable Captain Ahab.  When he delivers his lines of hatred aimed at Moby Dick, he sounds like an old man barking at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn.  He’s miffed, but he’s not passionate.

Renee O’Connor (Gabrielle from XENA, WARRIOR PRINCESS ~ editor’s note) is just plain awful as Dr. Michelle Herman.  She doesn’t come off as believable at all, and of course it doesn’t help that she has to speak some pretty horrible dialogue.  The rest of the cast aren’t any more memorable than a cast of cardboard cutouts, except for Derrick Scott as Pip, who wins the award for the most annoying character in the movie.

One of the weakest parts of 2010: MOBY DICK is the incredibly bad action scenes, completely mishandled by director Trey Stokes.  There are far too many close-up shots of the actors reacting to things— presumably destructive things— that Moby Dick is doing, yet we never see these things as they occur off camera.  For example, one scene actually has the white monster attacking a cruise ship, but the only way we see this is through the reaction shot of one passenger on the ship.  We never see the actual attack.  Now, I’m sure this means the film didn’t have much of a budget, but if you’re a director, you’ve got to do a better job at building suspense with what you have.  I mean, if you can’t make the scene work, don’t include it.

Also, Moby Dick varies in size.  In some scenes, he’s big enough to attack a cruise ship, and in others, when he’s near people, he appears much smaller.  The action scenes, or lack thereof, are just plain awful, which absolutely kills this movie, since there are so many of them.  The scenes in this one make the action scenes in old GODZILLA movies seem as if they were directed by James Cameron.

The screenplay by Paul Bales gets the names right, but that’s it.  The dialogue is laughable.

The special effects are horrible as well.  Moby Dick looks like the SyFy special.  The close-ups of the whale’s eye are effective, but that’s hardly enough.  At one point, Moby Dick actually leaps over an island.  Gee, I didn’t know whales could fly!

While I like the idea of updating MOBY DICK, this film doesn’t do justice or give the proper respect to the source material.  It’s a horrible movie, and it’s not even fun in the sense that it’s so bad it’s good.  It’s just bad.  It makes the previous two versions seem like CITIZEN KANE and CASABLANCA.

Like Captain Ahab, it deserves to sink to the ocean depths, never to be heard from again.

—END—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda

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Friday Night Knife Fights: TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM! – Part 1

Posted in 2011, Friday Night Knife Fights, Garbage, Horror, Psychos, Sequels, Serial Killer flicks, Slasher Movies, Vampires, Wes Craven Movies with tags , , , , , , , , on May 20, 2011 by knifefighter

FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS- Free-for-all Cage Match
TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM:   Which one of the three is the WORST series?
By Michael Arruda and L.L.  Soares

(BELL RINGS)

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  Welcome to another edition of FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS.  Tonight we have a special Free-for-all Cage Match.

L.L. SOARES:  You mean we get to be in a cage, and I get to clobber you to a pulp?

MA:  No, it means rather than having two subjects battling it out, tonight we have three.  TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM:  Which one of the three is the WORST series?

LS:  Damn!

MA: What? You don’t like this topic?

LS:  No.  I just wanted to bash your brains in.

MA:  Oh well.   You’ll just have to settle for trying to do it in the figurative sense, although be prepared to have your figurative brains spread all over this arena.  (smiles)

LS:  This means war.

MA:  Then, let’s have at it.  TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM.   Which one of these series is the absolute worst?

(LS hands MA a club, and he’s holding a large pick-axe.)

MA:  What are we doing with these?

LS:  I just have to do this to get this out of my system.  Feel free to join me.  (Dumps a heap of film canisters at their feet, and he begins to smash them to smithereens with his pick-axe.)

MA:  Are those what I think they are?

LS:  Yep.  TWILIGHT, SCREAM, and SAW.

MA:  I think I will join you.  (They smash the film canisters into tiny bits and pieces.)  That felt good.

LS:  Too bad we have to talk about these clunkers now.  Can’t we just tell people the films stink and go home?

MA: No, we have a bout to decide.  We have to determine which one of these three series is the worst.  To that end, here’s the first question for tonight.

Which one of these series is doing more harm to the horror film industry right now?

LS:  All three franchises are guilty of putting out crappy product that makes the genre looks lame. But I don’t think the SCREAM movies are important enough to have much bearing anymore, and the SAW movies are supposedly finished.

MA:  I hope so!

LS:  The TWILIGHT movies don’t really count, because they have their own niche audience that has nothing to do with horror fans.

MA:  You can say that again.  I always thought TWILIGHT fans were young teenage girls, but at least in my neck of the woods—.

LS:  And you mean that literally, because you do live in the woods!

MA:  I don’t live in the woods!  Sure, I live in a rural community, but it’s not the woods!  Anyway, as I was saying, when I’ve seen these movies, the theaters have been packed with adult women, many of them middle-aged, and—even stranger— adult couples, as if these movies are good date movies.  Very strange that the teen girls have been outnumbered.

I don’t think any of these movies are truly doing harm to the horror film industry, either.  I don’t give these films that much credit or power.

I think SAW gives horror a bad name because it’s the kind of movie that people who aren’t horror fans point to when they complain about all that’s wrong with horror, and in this case, I’d have to agree with them.  I know a lot of horror people who also think the SAW movies are pretty bad.

TWILIGHT,  I think , is mostly laughable. The true fans like these movies because they love the books, but the rest of us see them for what they are: pretty boring love stories masquerading as vampire tales.  They are the most boring films I’ve seen in many years.

I know in the past you’ve pointed to SCREAM as a franchise that has hurt horror, saying that SCREAM led to a bunch of weak horror movies that had teens for characters and were played for laughs, and you’re not the only person I’ve heard say this.  I just don’t think SCREAM was ever that influential, and as far as having teens for characters, horror movies have had teens as main characters going back to films like HALLOWEEN (1978) and way, way back to the 1950s with films like I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957) and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN (1957).

But you’re right about there not being a whole lot of good horror movies during SCREAM’s heyday, but I think this is more a coincidence than a result of SCREAM’s influence.

LS: Well, I guess you’re entitled to your opinion. Even if it’s wrong.

MA:  So, of these three series, which one do you think is the best?

LS:  SAW is better than the other two because at least it tries to be interesting in creating different, elaborate ways to kill people.

MA:  And I completely disagree!

LS:  So what? You already had your say.

That said, the SAW movies are repetitious and predictable as well. Even though Jigsaw is dead, his disciples keep things going (and with flashbacks, it’s like Jigsaw never left). So it’s pretty much the same thing every movie. Basically, the SAW movies are just as bad in their own way— except they don’t annoy me as much as the SCREAM or the TWILIGHT movies.

MA:  If I had to pick one I think is better than the others, I’d go with SCREAM.

(LS screams)

MA:  SCREAM is better than the other two because I liked the first SCREAM movie better than any of the movies in the other two series.  I actually liked the first SCREAM a lot.  I thought it was clever, funny, and scary.  The series just gradually went downhill from there

I didn’t like any of the SAW movies, and it goes without saying, I didn’t like any of the TWILIGHT movies either.

Moving onto our next question, if you were allowed to improve one of these franchise, which one would you like to improve, and just how would you improve it?

LS:  The way to improve these movies is to simply stop making them.

(A gargantuan cheer erupts from the audience, and suddenly LS is receiving a standing ovation.  Even MA stands to give him a hand.)

MA:  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

LS: Thank you, thank you.

(Audience continues to cheer as camera pans away.)

-–END PART 1—-

COMING NEXT FRIDAY NIGHT:  THE CONCLUSION OF FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS- Free-for-all Cage Match
TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM:   Which one of the three is the WORST series?

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THE ROOMMATE

Posted in 2011, Cinema Knife Fights, Garbage, Hot Chick Movies, Psychos with tags , , , , , on February 7, 2011 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: THE ROOMMATE
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares


(The Scene: A college campus. MICHAEL ARRUDA and LL SOARES sit on a bench in the middle of a vast green lawn in the middle of the campus, as college kids go about their daily routine.)

MA: Ahhh, college in spring time. Is there a better place to be?

LS: Considering our real bodies are back in snow-covered winter? No. But I don’t want to go back. Our astral bodies are doing just fine here.

MA: But we’re here for a reason. We’re reviewing the new movie THE ROOMMATE.

LS: Did you have to remind me? Yes, I suppose that’s why we’re here.

MA: Stop leering at the young co-eds!

LS: Stop leering at co-eds? You might as well ask the wind to stop blowing. The sun to stop shining.

MA: Get on with the review.

LS: (Chuckles) Okie doke. THE ROOMMATE is a riveting tale of obsession and murder, set on a college campus. Young freshman girls Sara Matthews (Minka Kelly) and Rebecca (Leighton Meester) are frolicking in the leaves of autumn…..

MA: Wait a minute. That’s not the movie I saw. Stick to the real movie!

LS: Do I have to?

MA: Yes!

LS: Okay, okay. Sara arrives at school, a fresh-faced (if slightly older than she should be) freshman, eager to fill her head with knowledge. When she gets to her dorm, her roommate isn’t there yet, so she bonds with suite-mates like Tracy (Alyson Michalka), who likes to get drunk and have sex (in that order). When her dorm room roommate does show up, it’s Rebecca, a very intense art student who seems a little bit overly concerned about Sara’s coming and goings.

MA: She’s downright nuts!

LS: I was getting to that. At first, Rebecca just seems like she really needs a friend and wants to bond with her new roommate. But things get creepy from there, as we spiral into Obsession Land. Rebecca starts doing odd things like threatening Tracy’s life in the shower (she changes dorms and stays away from Sara as a result) and setting up the pervy professor (Billy Zane) who hit on Sara, so that he gets fired.

It just goes downhill from there, as threats and intimidation make way for slicing and dicing, including poor Jason (Matt Latner), Sara’s ex who can’t seem to let go. Rebecca leads him on just so she can get all sharp edges on the poor guy. And don’t forget Sara’s long-time friend and fashion insider, Irene (Danneel Harris), who offers a way out (she offers to let Sara move in with her to escape her obsessive roommate)  and who gets seduced by Rebecca in a nightclub bathroom. When Irene takes Rebecca home, Sara suddenly stops getting phone calls from her friend. Anyone who is close to Sara is a target in Rebecca’s world. Mostly because the poor girl won’t take her meds!

MA:  I’m sure none of the young teens who were in the theater with me were thinking about this, but I found the characterization of Rebecca somewhat insulting to people with mental illness and mental disabilities. Rebecca obviously needs help, obviously needs to be on her meds, and yet no one seems to make this simple suggestion to her – “Ah, Rebecca, don’t you think you should take your meds?”  Even Sara, once she discovers that her roommate needs to be on meds, doesn’t say anything to her about it.

LS:  Yeah, Sara also doesn’t tell her R.A. or any adults in authority. It just seemed stupid to me. I guess she was worried Rebecca would flip out and kill her, but if that’s the case, and she really is afraid for her life, wouldn’t she try to get some help from the people in charge?

MA:  Which is why I found this characterization insulting. Nobody even mentions Rebecca’s doctor or suggests that she should see one. Oh well. I guess it’s just a silly horror movie, which is another reason not to see it.

LS:  A rather interesting part of the film involves Sara going to Rebecca’s family’s house for Thanksgiving (before she realizes her roommate is a full-on psycho). Actually, it’s not as interesting as it could have been—if only this movie had better writing—but it’s funny how even Rebecca’s parents seem terrified of her. A definite sign that something is very wrong.

MA:  I’d say!  Something is wrong with her parents!  What a pair of frightened wimps!  The mom whispers to Sara, “Is she taking her meds?”  Is she taking her meds??  Don’t you know?  It’s your daughter!  If your daughter is as sick as this movie makes her out to be, what the hell are you doing sending her off to college without the supervision of someone in the medical profession?

LS: Yeah, not only is that irresponsible to their daughter, it’s also putting a lot of other people in danger. And you know her parents are aware that Rebecca is dangerous, or else they wouldn’t be practically shaking with fear every time they see her. I guess they let her go away to live on campus just to be free of her!

MA:  And it’s like you said, this part of the movie could have been more interesting had the writing been better and the story followed up this relationship more, because when they first meet Rebecca’s parents, it’s such an odd uncomfortable meeting that I was thinking, this is going to be interesting, and then it goes nowhere.

LS:  Yep. Also during this Thanksgiving visit to Rebecca’s home, we get to meet a girl who might have been Rebecca’s earlier “crush” before she met Sara. Another potentially creepy scene that could have been done much better.

MA: And, as we predicted in last week’s COMING ATTRACTIONS column, this one was pretty much a by-the-numbers rip-off of the 1992’s SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, except made for a younger, college crowd.

LS: They even both have an “I’ll change my hair color so I look even more like my really cool roommate” scene. And that’s my number one problem with THE ROOMMATE. It’s so damn predictable!! There’s not one scene in this movie that I didn’t see coming a mile away!

MA: Same here. I found this extremely irritating, to be honest. Even though the setting, the ages of the characters, and the actual criminal acts committed by the psycho roommate were changed, all the thrills were pretty much the same—the only difference is this psycho isn’t as deadly as the Jennifer Jason Leigh character in SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, who I believe left a trail of dead bodies in that one.

And since THE ROOMMATE doesn’t do anything to improve upon SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, it doesn’t blow you away, and so if you’ve seen that first movie, this one is predictable and actually less intense than the original, though just as mindless.

LS: Now to the acting. First off we’ve got Minka Kelly in a leading role, as Sara. That’s a good thing.

MA:  Yes, I definitely liked Minka Kelly. She’s beautiful, and she can act, too. If I had to pick one thing I liked about THE ROOMMATE, it would be Kelly.

LS:  I’ve been a fan of the TV show Friday Night Lights since it began, and Minka has the pivotal role on the show as Lyla Garrity. This is the kind of well-written, strongly acted show that is ignored by viewers but constantly makes critics’ Top 10 lists. It really deserves a bigger audience. Friday Night Lights is one of the best shows on television, and everyone in the ensemble cast is pretty terrific. It’s always cool to see actors from this show go on to bigger and better things, but so far, the projects they’ve gone on to do not have the same level of quality as Friday Night Lights.

Perfect examples are Adrianne Palicki (who played Tyra on the show) who went on to be the pregnant girl in the so-so horror flick LEGION. And Taylor Kitsch, who is so good as Tim Riggins on the show, was just plain horrendous as Gambit in X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. Minka Kelly joins the ranks of good actors gone bad here, because THE ROOMMATE is pretty awful.

MA:  I wouldn’t call it awful. Mediocre, maybe.

LS: You’ve got to be kidding me. THE ROOMMATE is downright lousy. Although Kelly and Leighton Meester (also a TV vet, coming from the show Gossip Girl) certainly give it the old college try!

MA:  Forgive me if I don’t jump up and down and defend this movie. It’s hard to get excited about “mediocre.”

LS: Sure, Minka Kelly proved she was a good actress in Friday Night Lights, and she even recently got chosen as GQ’s “Sexiest Woman Alive.” Unfortunately, that’s not enough to save this movie.

MA: No, she doesn’t save this movie, but she is one of its best parts, and she does keep it from being horrible.

LS: Leighton Meester really tries to be creepy as “off-her-meds” Rebecca, but she falls a bit short. There was nothing she did in this movie that I didn’t see coming a mile away, so it was hard to see any of her behavior as all that scary. Then again, this is more the script’s fault than hers. In some scenes, she actually pretty good.

MA: Yeah, I thought Meester was sufficiently crazy, but nothing in her performance lifted it above the very predictable material.

LS:  Not only was THE ROOMMATE a complete rip-off of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, it’s also a complete waste of time. Hell, even the “Sexiest Woman Alive” couldn’t save it.

MA:  I wouldn’t call it a complete waste of time. I actually think Kelly is worth watching, though don’t run out and see this one by any means!

LS:  The rest of the cast was just so-so. Cam Gigandet, playing Minka’s love interest Stephen, a fratboy with a soul. I guess he’s okay in the role, but his constant smirk made me want to punch him in the face.

MA:  I actually liked Gigandet’s performance. I thought he came off as sincere and likeable.

LS: And poor Danneel Harris as Irene isn’t given much do to at all, except be a victim. Although I wish I could have tried out her cinnamon lipstick.

MA:  I thought Billy Zane as the perverted Professor Roberts was pretty good. I wished he had been in it more. I thought he would have stuck around to seek revenge against Rebecca, but he just kinda disappears.

LS: Yeah, once Rebecca “deals with them” they all conveniently disappear. Can’t have any actual tension or suspense in this movie.

It’s funny. Throughout this movie, this young-ish crowd I saw it with was constantly yelling and jumping in their seats to THE ROOMMATE, which annoyed me no end. How could they have such strong reactions to scenes that were so damn predictable? And then it hit me. These are the same kids who made the TWILIGHT movies box-office hits. They don’t care about originality or real scares. So why am I expecting them to be more savvy than they are?

MA:  You know, I had nearly the same exact experience. The theater was packed; there was barely an empty seat in the house. I do believe that 90 percent of this young crowd were seeing their first horror movie ever. People were screaming, and squirming in their seats. There’s a scene where Rebecca picks up their cute little kitty, and you know she’s going to harm it, and nearly the whole theater erupted in a collective gasp, and it only got worse as Rebecca carried the animal into the laundry room towards its inevitable fate. I thought the people in front of me were going to have a coronary. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been chanting “Kill the kitty! Kill the kitty!”

LS: Thanks for bringing that up. Obviously they were going for a “boiling bunny” kind of scene here, like in FATAL ATTRACTION. But everything is implied, everything happens off-screen, and it’s not scary at all.

MA: But seriously, I was sitting there bored, and people—young people—were gasping and chattering nervously. I didn’t get it.

LS: You can say this movie was not made for us; it was made for a younger crowd. But the truth is, a good movie is a good movie, no matter who it’s meant for. And this movie isn’t good.

So here’s my rating. I give THE ROOMMATE half a knife. And I only give it that because I dig Minka Kelly, and she’s done work in the past that proved to me she really is, deep down, a serious actress. You would never tell it from watching THE ROOMMATE.

But I can’t give more than that. This movie is just embarrassingly bad.

MA:  I liked it better than half a knife. As I already said, I enjoyed Minka Kelly a lot in this movie, and, taken as a whole, the acting in THE ROOMMATE was pretty darn good.

The writing, not so much. Sonny Mallhi wrote the screenplay, and it’s average at best. Considering that it’s based almost exactly on SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, with really no improvements to the original story, I’d say that’s disappointing. If you’re going to remake something, you really should try to make it better.

LS: And if this is a remake, then give the original some credit. (Of course, they’d deny that.)

MA: That’s a good point.  There’s nary a mention or a nod to the original.  It’s like the filmmakers were pretending this was an original movie, which it’s anything but!

And there was an odd moment when Sara phones Rebecca, and it’s a collect call!  What’s up with that?  There are still collect calls in today’s age of cell phones and wireless service?  I didn’t get that. Today, who would need to make a collect call?

THE ROOMMATE was directed by Christian Christianson. I wonder if he’s religious?  He does an adequate job in telling this average story. Where he fails is in generating suspense. THE ROOMMATE isn’t really all that suspenseful. Plus this movie feels less like a horror movie and more like a made-for-TV thriller.

LS: It almost would be right at home on the LIFETIME channel.

MA: It’s OK. Like I said before, mediocre is the word that comes to mind, but since oftentimes I see films that I think are downright awful, with horrible acting, writing, and special effects, I hesitate to place THE ROOMMATE in this category.

LS: I’ll do it for you.

MA: I did find one scene scary, when Sara discovers her friend Irene tied to her bed. In restraints, Irene jumps up at the camera, and I thought this was a good quick fright. I also liked the belly ring scene in the shower. That caused a few winces.

LS: Yeah, the scene where we find Irene tied to the bed works. It might be the only scare in the movie.

MA: But I’m not surprised that you hated this movie, since ultimately it was a watered down version of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, which I believe was an R rated movie, and this one was PG-13. Gone is all the nudity and all the murders. Not that that made SINGLE WHITE FEMALE any better, because I was never a big fan of that movie either, but THE ROOMMATE is definitely lacking, and any kind of an edge would have been a good thing, so the decision to water down the original material probably wasn’t a good one.

LS:  Well, despite being R-rated, I wasn’t that impressed with SINGLE WHITE FEMALE either—and it had better acting and a far better director—it just wasn’t that great a movie. THE ROOMMATE is even worse.

MA: THE ROOMMATE is an average passable movie that is okay if you want to watch it on DVD and have nothing better to do, but it’s hardly worth the effort of seeing it at the theater. I give it two knives, mostly because all the actors in this one do a good job and they’re easy to watch. Too bad I can’t say the same for the rest of the movie.

LS: Okay, enough chit-chat. We have some other work to do.

MA: Work?  What the hell were we just doing?

LS: Writing Cinema Knife Fight is fun. It’s not work. Well, most of the time.

MA:  That’s true. Okay. So what work are you talking about?

LS:  Did you think we could just sit here, enjoying the sun and watching skimpily-dressed co-eds?

MA:  Well, the thought had crossed my mind.

LS:  You are very naïve, my son.

(Pulls out shovels)

MA:  Are we robbing a grave?

LS: We need to clean up the trash on campus.

MA:  Are you kidding me?

LS:  Nope. That’s why we’re really here. And the first heap of garbage we have to shovel is none other than THE ROOMMATE!

MA: I am dumb-founded!  Well, like I said before, it’s hard to defend mediocrity. Let’s get shoveling!

—END—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives THE ROOMMATE – 2 knives

LL Soares gives THE ROOMMATE – 1/2 knife


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ARE YOU SCARED 2

Posted in 2011, Garbage, LL Soares Reviews, Psycho killer, Sequels, Serial Killer flicks with tags , , , , , , , , , on January 25, 2011 by knifefighter

ARE YOU SCARED 2 (2009)
Movie Review by L.L. Soares


If you read this week’s Cinema Knife Fight column, where Michael Arruda and I reviewed the movie ARE YOU SCARED? (2006), you might think things can’t get much worse than that one.

You’d be wrong.

Despite all its flaws, and the fact that it was a pretty blatant rip-off of the SAW movies, the first ARE YOU SCARED? at least had a coherent plot, and you could tell what was happening throughout. In other words, it made sense, even if it was a bad movie.

ARE YOU SCARED 2 doesn’t even attempt to tell a coherent story.

First off, I don’t even know why this one is billed as a sequel. It has absolutely nothing to do with the first movie. Even though the villain of the first one, Shadow Man (Brent Fidler) survived at the end of the first movie (sorry to spoil that for you, folks!) and could easily have continued his story in this one.

Instead, ARE YOU SCARED 2 starts off showing us a group of fun-loving idiots who go around digging up hidden suitcases all over the place. They’re professional scavenger hunters and the group we’re watching, “Team DNA,” is one of the best (or so we’re told). They’re made up of four friends: Dallas (Tristan Wright), Andrew (Chad Guerrero), Taryn (Andrea Monier) and Reese (Kathy Gardiner). They check the Internet each day for new challenges, and are given coordinates by strangers to the next hidden item. The “prizes” can be anywhere – we first see them navigating through a junkyard to find a cache in the trunk of a rusty old car. And they film their exploits and post them on their site, where they actually have a following (!). The girls even do “sexy chat’ on the site.

So you think, “Okay. This new movie has nothing to do with the first one – which was bad anyway – so all we can go is up, right?  The fact that this movie is a complete departure from the first one’s plot is a good thing, right?”

Wrong.

This time, we see another guy in an isolated room watching a bunch of computer monitors. This time it’s not Shadow Man, though. This time it’s CANDYMAN (1992)! Yes, Tony Todd himself appears in this movie for some bizarre reason (Can’t he get better roles than this?). He follows these morons’ scavenger hunts online, and decides he wants to be in on the fun. So he posts the coordinates to his spooky old house online (the scavenger hunters have no idea who posts each hunt – it could be anyone). Team DNA decides to accept the challenge and track down the coordinates to the house and get inside.

From here, the movie just plunges into complete sewerage.

The kids find the hidden suitcase pretty fast in one of the upstairs rooms. But it has a severed arm handcuffed to it. They assume the arm is fake and find a ton of money inside the suitcase. So they’ve hit the jackpot, right? Not so fast. Sleeping gas fills the room and knocks them out. And when they wake up, they’re part of a brand new game. This time, instead of a scavenger hunt, it’s hide and seek.

It turns out they’re not alone in the house. Also hiding inside are two nutjobs (Mark Lowry and Dallas Montgomery). One talks constantly in a Southern accent and always seems to be on the verge of crying. The other one is a hulking Leatherface wannabe in a skull mask. Tony Todd is their “boss” (in the credits, he is just called “Controller”), and tells them to hunt the kids down and kill them. All the while, Todd is filming the goings-on for his own internet reality show – which caters to the underground snuff film crowd.

The psychos hunt the kids. The kids wander around the house with a GPS unit that Todd has provided for them, trying to get out and avoid the killers. And Todd watches and films everything that goes on in the house, and in the surrounding woods, with surveillance cameras that are posted everywhere.

Reese, who’s actually very pretty, gets captured first and tortured by Southern Guy, while Skullface tracks down the rest of them. There are a lot of close calls, violent confrontations, and twists. Some of the kids are driven to tap into their dark sides. But it all culminates in utter stupidity.

First off, I have absolutely no clue why Tony Todd is in this movie. Technically, he runs a snuff site and wants to make money off the footage. But why is Tony Todd the ACTOR in this one? It appears as if most of his scenes were filmed separately (until one of the kids finally find him towards the end), and amount to him sitting in a chair, watching computer screens and talking to himself. That is, when he’s not spouting soliloquys to his pet turtle, Timothy. Most of his scenes seem completely incoherent. Sure, he’s still got one of the best voices in the business, and could make anything sound great, but the dialogue he’s forced to expound here is just ludicrous. It’s like someone on an acid trip wrote down a bunch of gibberish and then gave it to Tony to say in his scenes alone.

The psychos could be interesting, but they’re not. Southern Guy just pretty much tries to imitate Edwin Neal’s performance of Chop Top from the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), talking in a strained voice and making all kinds of goofy faces. First he does something horrible and then he begs his victim to forgive him. Then he does something else sadistic. I have to admit, it’s more of an effort than this movie deserves, but not enough is done with this character. Skullface has a nice spooky presence but most of his scenes just involve him breaking doors in and crashing through walls. Nothing all that scary. It would have been nice if the insane characters had a bit more of a backstory or a smidgen more character development. Who are these people? How did Tony Todd find them? I guess it really doesn’t matter, after all.

The kids, the main characters — the ones we’re supposed to identify with — are completely annoying. You don’t once think “I hope these kids live.” They’re just idiots. Reese, while pretty enough, is incredibly whiny and you’re glad when she’s captured. But her friends don’t even seem to care. At one point they have a chance to get away, but they go back. Not because they want to save Reese (hell, they don’t even acknowledge she may be in trouble), but because they want revenge on the person who did this to them. Poor Reese! It makes sense that we don’t care about her, but you think her friends would!

Aside from the fact that the kids are horrible actors, that the dialogue throughout is dumb, that the psychos just aren’t scary enough, that Tony Todd’s scenes force him to say nonsense (in a very cool voice), and the production values aren’t very good (this isn’t filmed anywhere near as well or atmospheric as the first one, and instead opts for a more “reality TV” look that is just lame). Aside from all that, we don’t even get to really see most of the kill scenes! A lot of the time, I had no idea what was going on. Someone would be struggling with a psycho or getting tortured, and you’d see their face, but the real damage is done off-screen and you have NO IDEA WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THEM. I found this completely annoying and stupid. No matter how bad the first movie was, it at least took the time to show you a drill boring through someone’s forehead or an axe chopping someone’s head off. But in ARE YOU SCARED 2, most of the gore happens off-camera and we don’t even get to enjoy it!

Andy Hurst, who directed the first ARE YOU SCARED? isn’t even around for this one. Sure, we pointed out he did an awful job, but compared to ARE YOU SCARED 2, the first one was a work of genius! In the second movie, the culprits are John Lands and Russell Appling, who both wrote and directed the movie. I only mention them, because frankly, we should know who turned out a movie this bad, and perpetrated this crime against cinema.

By the end, I realized I’d just completely wasted 94 minutes of my life. Of course, I should have known better. The first movie was bad enough. You’d think I would avoid the second one like the plague. But I was curious to see just how bad Part 2 was. And I wanted to see what the great Tony Todd had to do with the storyline. Todd is the one I feel worst for – the guy is a talented actor and deserves a lot better than this crap.  Won’t someone making a good movie hire this guy for Chrissakes? And not just for a cameo like in HATCHET (2006)!

So no, when I was watching ARE YOU SCARED 2, I was NOT scared. Not for a second. But I was annoyed and sad by the time the credits rolled. Because I realized I was dumb enough to sit through this one.

As for a rating — how many knives I give this one — let’s just skip it this time. To talk about giving this one a rating is a joke. I can’t believe I watched this one right to the end.

-END-

© Copyright 2011 by L.L. Soares

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ARE YOU SCARED?

Posted in 2011, Cinema Knife Fights, DVD Review, Garbage, Psychos with tags , , , , , , , on January 24, 2011 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: ARE YOU SCARED? (2006)
by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares


FADE IN

(The Scene: The interior of an old warehouse. As MICHAEL ARRUDA and LL SOARES stand in front of a filthy metal wall, a projector suddenly plays a film clip on it)

LS: Hey, that’s me!

VIDEO IMAGE OF LL: Yeah, I’d love to be on this show. I could use the cash. Heaven knows I’m not going to get rich writing Cinema Knife Fight. As for what scares me? Having to sit through really awful movies.

MA: You must be pretty scared, then.

LS: Whatever do you mean?

MA: We just sat through the movie ARE YOU SCARED? Can’t get much more awful than that.

LS: Well, um, it wasn’t THAT awful.

MA: Yeah, sure. Then why don’t you start our review then?

LS: Do I have to?

(MA nods his head)

LS: Okay. Since there was nothing for us to review this weekend at the theater, we decided to review a DVD. Instead, we ended up checking out OnDemand movies on our cable system, and drifted over to FEARNET, which happened to be showing this particular film, called ARE YOU SCARED?

MA:  I actually watched it streaming through Netflix, which is another great way to get movies these days.

LS:  I’d heard a little bit of buzz about this movie – it even spawned a sequel – and thought it might be a good one to review. But I could have been wrong about that.

MA: I’d say so.

LS: ARE YOU SCARED? bears a very strong resemblance to another movie franchise. That would be the SAW films.

MA: Ya think?  When this one started, I thought it was another SAW sequel.

LS: Point taken. This one’s a blatant rip-off that tries to do a clever variation on the theme. But it’s not all that clever.

You see, in this movie, the victims think they’re part of a new TV show called, ARE YOU SCARED? It’s kind of a cross between that TV show FEAR FACTOR and the SAW films. People send in their videos saying why they should be on the show, and what scares them. Then they’re filmed facing their fears head on, in a gross, abandoned warehouse. These scenes involve stuff like power drills and shotgun blasts to the chest.

Where the SAW movies had this pretense of “teaching people a lesson,” things are a little different in ARE YOU SCARED? Because in the SAW movies, there’s always the chance, however slim, that the victims might be able to survive their torture. They have a fighting chance. But in ARE YOU SCARED? there really isn’t a chance anyone is going to win. They’re all pretty much screwed from the get go.

MA:  That’s kinda how I felt watching this one.

LS:  Six kids wake up to find themselves trapped in a warehouse. They’re told they’re on the show, and surveillance cameras are everywhere. But the only viewer is a mysterious “Shadow Man” (as he’s called in the credits, played by Brent Fidler) who sits in a control room with a dozen very old computer monitors (these look like the first home computers ever made – they are ancient!) watching as each of his victims try to “beat” their phobias.

Each person is shown the video they sent to the show, their audition tape, and then they undergo a creepy torture that incorporates their individual fears.

The acting is pretty awful all around. In fact the acting and the production values made me think an awful lot of a bad TV show, or one of those “original movies” made by the SyFy channel. Especially bad are two cops who are trying to track this killer down, Detective Jay Bowman (Eric Francis) and FBI Agent Christine Robinson (Jennifer Cozza). In fact, Eric Francis might just win the prize as the worst actor in this movie.

MA:  Yep!  He was the worst.

LS:  As for the Shadow Man, he doesn’t send any puppets in to do his dirty work, like that pesky Jigsaw from the SAW movies, but he does like to watch everyone on video screens and likes to talk to his victims in a spooky voice.

DEEP SPOOKY VOICE:  This movie sucks.  Don’t bother.

LS:  What the—?  (turns to see MA, who is speaking through a voice-changing device)  Hey! Cut that out.

MA:  Sorry.

LS: By the end, we find out that the Shadow Man has a personal vendetta against one of the victims, and that is the main motive behind all of this, but it doesn’t explain why everyone else had to die. Then again, these kids are so stupid and annoying, that’s probably reason enough.

MA:  Yep, I agree one hundred percent.  I thought the explanation at the end was stupid and pointless.  If you don’t tack that ending on, at least the Shadow Man would have been a mystery, even though he still would have been ridiculously underdeveloped as a character.

LS:  I actually kind of liked Brent Fidler as the Shadow Man. Half his face is disfigured and my favorite scenes are of him sitting in front of his ancient computer monitors, watching horrible things happening to people, and he’s laughing out loud in his chair. For some reason, that was pretty funny.

MA:  Maybe because the rest of the movie was so awful!  I didn’t like the Shadow Man.  Sure, his scarred face was a little creepy, but when you come right down to it, he’s boring.  Take away that stupid creepy voice, and all you have is an old man with a scarred face watching computer monitors.

LS: He’s not that old!

MA: You don’t even get the PHANTASM/Angus Scrimm factor, as he hardly says a threatening word.  Ah, the Tall Man.  Where are you  now?

TALL MAN:  I’m right here behind you.  Come here, boy!

MA:  Yikes!  He still gives me the creeps.

TALL MAN:  I said, come here!

MA:  You’re talking to me?  Are you talking to me?

LS:  Scram, shorty.  Can’t you see we’re reviewing a movie, here?

TALL MAN:  I can’t see anything.  I dropped my glasses.  Why do you think I’m asking to come here for?

MA:  I don’t know.  I thought— well, if you need help finding your glasses, that’s another story entirely. (approaches TALL MAN.  Suddenly there’s a loud CRUNCH! sound.)  Oops.  Were these your glasses?  (holds up a crushed pair of eyeglasses.)

TALL MAN (growls):  Why, you—!  Kids today!  (exits)

LS:  Speaking of kids, none of the kids in the movie is great, and they’re all pretty forgettable. Soren Bowie plays Dylan, an annoying skateboarder and Althea Kutscher plays a girl named Kelly. They probably stand out the most, even though they’re not much better than the rest.

MA:  I agree.  (in background TALL MAN blindly walks into a wall, before stumbling out a doorway.)  I actually didn’t think the acting was all that bad, except for the people playing the two cops.

LS:  Even though this movie is a rip-off of another film and pretty laughable, I have to admit I found ARE YOU SCARED? to be entertaining at least. You’ll find yourself laughing at this movie more than anything, and you certainly won’t be scared.

MA: Entertaining?  ARE YOU SCARED? was about as entertaining as a drill to the forehead!

LS (turning on a large power drill):  That can be arranged!

MA: If I ever have to watch the sequel, I might take you up on that!

ARE YOU SCARED? was a complete waste of time.  I didn’t like this movie at all.  You hit the nail on the head.  It’s a rip-off of the SAW movies, a franchise I think is horrible.  So, if you’re like me, and you don’t like the SAW movies, you’re not going to like ARE YOU SCARED? It doesn’t offer anything different or better than the SAW movies.

I was hoping that this one would be creative.  I like the TV show SCARE TACTICS, where people are scared CANDID CAMERA-style (anyone out there remember that old gem?) and the show is actually pretty funny.  Not that I was expecting ARE YOU SCARED? to be funny, but I hoped that the threatening situations the characters found themselves in might be variations of the situations found on SCARE TACTICS.

This was not the case—not in the least.  The only situations the characters found themselves in were torture situations.  This story provided one scene of torture after another, interspersed with incredibly awful scenes of two bad actors playing cops.  Oh, this is a lot of fun!  ARE YOU SCARED? was a complete waste of 90 minutes for me.

LS: It was only 84 minutes.

MA: Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Spock.

It doesn’t even provide a good villain.  The Shadow Man is about as compelling as a real shadow and about just as scary!  Heck, even a cardboard cutout of Angus Scrimm as the Tall Man is scarier than the Shadow Man!

I also thought the ending was stupid and unnecessary.  I think it’s about time movies stop giving us revelations about secret family members.  “I AM your father!”  “She’s his sister!”  “The killer’s his mother!”  “It’s the baby!”  “It’s the dirty uncle!”

Well, that last one I haven’t seen, but you know what I mean.  Can’t villains/killers just be evil for the sake of being evil?  Or maybe they just don’t like people?  Or perhaps they suffered from a bad childhood?  But, stop with the chasing down of a relative bit already! Give us a break for a while, will you?

I give ARE YOU SCARED? one knife, and I only give it one knife because other than the two actors playing the cops, I didn’t find the acting all that bad, and the direction by Andy Hurst was pretty good, in that the film looked good.  But I don’t recommend this stinker at all.

LS: I guess I give it one knife, too. I’m surprised they got away with making a movie that is such an obvious SAW knock-off. But it’s still better than BEHIND THE WALL, your choice the last time we reviewed a movie off cable. Remember the one about the ghost in a lighthouse? That one was almost unwatchable. But don’t get the idea I’m recommending this movie at all, because I’m not. It’s pretty bad.

MA:  I enjoyed BEHIND THE WALL better.  I’d rather watch a lame ghost story movie than a lame torture movie.

(A room down the hall lights up)

SPOOKY VOICE: Come on, go into the room. I have a game for you.

LS (to MA): Didn’t I tell you to quit using that voice changer device?

MA:  It wasn’t me!

SPOOKY VOICE:  I’m the real deal!  Now go into the room!

LS: Screw that, I’m going home. I’ve already spent too much time here already.

MA: Me, too.

SPOOKY VOICE: Aw c’mon. Please? Pretty please?

MA:  Pretty please?  What kind of a spooky voice are you?  See ya, pal!

(LS and MA leave out of the front door)

SPOOKY VOICE (Pounding furiously on the wall): PLEASE!  PLEASE!  PLEASE!

FADE OUT

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives ARE YOU SCARED? - 1 knife

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LL Soares gives ARE YOU SCARED? - 1 knife


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Cinema Knife Fight Presents: THE WORST OF 2010

Posted in 2011, Cinema Knife Fights, Garbage, Worst-Of lists with tags , , , , , on January 14, 2011 by knifefighter

Cinema Knife Fight Presents: THE WORST MOVIES OF 2010
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(The Scene: An old-fashioned “mom and pop” movie theater with fresh popcorn popping in the background, and real butter melting on the stove. MICHAEL ARRUDA & LL SOARES are dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts. They’re drinking beer while feasting on a plate of nachos.)

LS: By the way, what happened to the tuxedos, champagne and the fancy food?

MA: This is the WORST MOVIES OF 2010 column. Beer and nachos is as good as it gets!

LS: That’s okay. I like beer and nachos too.

MA: Me, too.

LS: And don’t forget the delicious fresh popcorn, which is sooo much better than the stale Multiplex popcorn and mysterious “butter-flavored liquid” I normally have to deal with.

MA: Someone should write a story about just what exactly is in that mysterious liquid.  I agree.  Popcorn at the multiplex just isn’t what it used to be.  Yet I eat it anyway.

I suppose we should be grateful we weren’t served water and saltines. Anyway, welcome to our first ever WORST MOVIES OF 2010 column. We’ll be picking our Top 5 Worst Movies of the year, based on movies we reviewed this year at Cinema Knife Fight.

Anyway, would you like to start us off?

LS: Sure. My Number 5 choice is INCEPTION.

MA:  An overrated bloated turkey if I ever saw one!  Good choice.

LS: Yeah, why go after low-budget movies with no resources? I’m gonna go after the big fish. When we first saw INCEPTION, I gave it a better review than you did, because I was dazzled by the visuals of the movie. I still think it looked great. So why is it on my WORST OF list? Because the more I thought about this movie over the months between then and now, the more I think INCEPTION was a major-league BORE.

In its effort to be so damn clever and complicated, INCEPTION thought that by putting dreams inside of dreams inside of dreams, we’d be pummeled into submission. But I can easily say that I never want to see this movie again. In a weird way, that van that takes 2 HOURS to fall into the sea epitomizes the entire movie for me. A lot of it is the cinematic equivalent of watching paint dry. Sure, it’s colorful paint, sure it matches the carpets okay, but it’s still damn boring to watch paint dry. I have seen the Emperor, and I am telling you, the dude is NAKED.

MA: If Godzilla had a mind-fart, it’d be INCEPTION.

Moving right along, my pick for the Number 5 Worst horror movie of 2010 is SKYLINE, a silly alien invasion movie that was simply dreadful.

It had fake-looking monsters, fair special effects, and very weak direction by the Brothers Strause (Colin and Greg). The film lacked anything resembling a memorable scene, which is amazing when you think of its subject matter. SKYLINE is so bad that it was even worse than the similarly themed MONSTERS (2010), a film that in spite of its title forgot to include monsters (okay, there’s a few monsters in MONSTERS, but it’s not called FEW MONSTERS now is it?). There are plenty of alien monsters in SKYLINE, but they’re about as frightening as Spongebob Squarepants and his pals.

LS: They’re all CGI and no matter how advanced CGI is, it still looks fake most of the time.

MA: SKYLINE also suffered from some very weak acting. Lead actor Eric Balfour looks like he’s constipated throughout the whole movie, and while I like Donald Faison a lot, (loved him on SCRUBS) he’s not so hot here.

The screenplay by Joshua Cordes and Liam O’Donnell left key things in the movie unexplained and sported dialogue that was plain and uninspiring. They also created a bunch of characters who were simply annoying.

SKYLINE flatlined.

LS: I didn’t think SKYLINE was great, but I had fun with it while I was watching it. It was just a big, dumb alien invasion movie. I was interested in seeing how it was going to unfurl. Sure, it’s not one of the best movies of the year or anything, but it wasn’t bad enough to make my WORST OF list.

And, for the record, MONSTERS made my BEST OF list—even if it did just get an Honorable Mention. I still don’t get why you hate that movie so much. I thought it was  really good.

MA: There simply weren’t enough monsters in it, and the few scenes in which the monsters did appear weren’t that exciting.  I found the movie stylish but exceedingly dull.

Coming in at Number 4 for me is DEVIL, a movie ruined by its title, and certainly not helped by the guy responsible for its story, our old friend. M. Night Shyamalan.

DEVIL was directed by John Erick Dowdle, who also directed the decent thriller QUARANTINE (2008), but unfortunately that’s where the comparison ends, because DEVIL is anything but a decent thriller.

It’s the story of five people who get stuck together on an elevator and find themselves trapped inside with a presence that is hell-bent on killing them one at a time, a premise that might have been compelling if not for the fact that the title of the movie tells the audience quite clearly that the baddie in this one is Mr. Horns and Pitchfork himself, the devil. Now where’s the fun in that? Things aren’t helped when the movie is set up as a mystery— hmm, I wonder what kind of creature is responsible for their plight? Could it be— the devil? Yep. Yawn.

LS: How did you guess?

MA: Common sense, dudes. If you’re going to write a mystery, don’t tell us in the title who the bad guy is!

The script for this one is a complete mess. Written by Brian Nelson, who also wrote the superior 30 DAYS OF NIGHT (2007) and HARD CANDY (2005), it doesn’t work at all. It plays out as if it were still in some serious need of revising.

By far, DEVIL was the most contrived movie I saw in 2010.

LS: I have to agree. This is one dumb movie. In fact, this one was so stupid it annoyed me. This is supposed to be part of a series of movies based on “ideas by M. Night Shyamalan” called THE NIGHT CHRONICLES. Basically other directors take his ideas and make movies out of them. I think DEVIL did pretty badly at the box office, so maybe the THE NIGHT CHRONICLES will stop with this one. I hope so.

Unfortunately, I doubt it.

DEVIL was Number 2 on my list. So I’ll agree that it’s easily one of the worst of 2010.

LS: My Number 4 pick is the big budget remake of CLASH OF THE TITANS in glorious…er, lame-ass…3D. The original movie (from 1981) wasn’t that great either, but at least it had Ray Harryhausen’s totally unique stop-motion animation to recommend it. The remake has nothing to recommend it. Sam Worthington, who was the only thing good in TERMINATOR:SALVATION and who became a star in AVATAR (both from 2009) is pretty much wasted here. His Perseus has no personality and his backstory is a snooze. And instead of Harryhausen monsters this time around, we get ho-hum CGI monsters and giant scorpions. Even the 3D effects are awful, since they were added to the movie AFTER it was made – so it wasn’t even originally filmed in 3D. Only one scene, with the Gorgon, seemed to be made for 3D. So not only was this movie bad, it cost me an extra 5 bucks for almost non-existent 3D effects.

MA:  CLASH OF THE TITANS didn’t make my Top 5 list, but I didn’t like this one either.  I thought it was middle of the road.

LS: My Number 3 pick for the WORST of 2010 is the new remake of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. This is another one that was just plain boring. The reason to see the original films was for Freddy Krueger, as played by Robert Englund. Sure, he was always making cheesy jokes and spouting corny one-liners, but Englund was terrific. It’s because of him that Freddy became such an iconic character, even if the multitude of sequels to Wes Craven’s 1984 original were pretty awful. You could always count on Freddy to be entertaining, even if the rest of the script sucked.

Recasting the role of Freddy was just plain dumb, and even though I really like actor Jackie Earle Haley, I think he was completely miscast here. His Freddy is humorless and tedious. And the attempt to make the entire story darker and more disturbing failed. Instead, it’s just grim and lifeless, without any impact at all. And boring. It’s a lifeless mannequin.

MA: I agree with you 100 % here.  I hated this one as well, and it just missed my Top 5 List, coming in at Number 6.

Coming in at Number 3, it’s MY SOUL TO TAKE, Wes Craven’s latest horror movie disaster. Who would have thought Craven could make a worse movie than CURSED (2005)?

MY SOUL TO TAKE is about a group of seven 16 year-olds who live in fear of the ghost of the Riverton Ripper, a serial killer who died on the night they were all born. The Ripper had multiple personalities, and on the night he was killed, the personalities or souls supposedly jumped ship and hid inside the bodies of the seven babies born that night. The teens start dying one by one, and the film leads us on a mystery tour of sorts—who’s doing the killing? Is it the ghost of the Ripper? One of the teens possessed by the ghost of the Ripper? Or is it the actual Ripper, still alive all these years later, since his body was never found?

MY SOUL TO TAKE has a lot of problems, but the biggest by far is I didn’t buy its story for one second. For example, its basic premise of the Ripper and how his personalities supposedly entered the teens when they were newborns is problematic. For this to be true, then the Ripper would have to be dead, for how else would a soul leave a body if it weren’t dead? Yet, the film also hints that the Ripper might not be dead, since his body was never found. Since these two storylines can’t both be true, it makes it very difficult to believe either one. It comes off as fake drama.

The screenplay by Wes Craven was simply horrible. The characters and story seemed to be a lame attempt to recapture the cleverness of SCREAM and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, but in this case it doesn’t come close to working since the story is so damned unbelievable.

LS: The “cleverness of SCREAM?” That’s pretty funny.

MA: I thought you’d like that.  MY SOUL TO TAKE was one of the worst movies of the year, a shame since it was made by someone once considered a master of the genre, Wes Craven.

LS: It’s been a long time since Wes Craven was a master of anything. I expected MY SOUL TO TAKE to be bad, but it was dismal! Easily one of the worst movies Craven has ever made, and he can’t blame a script by Kevin Williamson this time around (like he could with CURSED or those awful SCREAM sequels), because Wes wrote this one himself. Next time, get a real writer to write your script, Wessy.

MA: Okay, my pick for Number 2, is TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE.

While I didn’t pick this as the worst movie of the year, I will say that this movie and the others in this series have the dubious distinction of being the most BORING movies I’ve ever seen in my life, period, and if I have to see yet another TWILIGHT movie, I may not survive the experience.

I’ve seen worse movies than these TWILIGHT films, in terms of the way they’re made and the acting in them, but never have I suffered so much from pure boredom than I have sitting in the theater watching the ridiculous plight of Bella and which boyfriend—vampire or werewolf—she’s going to choose. It’s one movie during which I WANT people to turn on their cell phones!

I’ll also add that they don’t really deserve to be called vampire films. Even Walt Disney created more frightening characters than pale-ass Edward!

The sun can’t set fast enough on TWILIGHT!

LS: Yeah, yeah, this was an obvious one. It’s a horror movie without the horror. It’s vampires that have been defanged and werewolves that have been declawed. It’s romance masquerading as horror, where the members of a love triangle get to play dress-up and pretend to be scary creatures. PRETEND being the operative word here. TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE is a joke, and a bad one. But because there is an audience for this tripe, it continues to rake in the dough each time a new one comes out, and there’s going to be more sequels. So we have to put up with this stuff.

And you’re right. Sure, really bad movies deserve to be on our WORST OF lists, but so do movies that are just plain boring. Boring is the WORST thing a movie can be. And the TWILIGHT films are boredom squared.

On to my Number 2 pick. For me, it’s DEVIL, based on an “idea” by M. Night Shyamalan. How do I know this? Because his name is in big letters on the movie poster. Even though he didn’t direct it and didn’t write the finished screenplay. And yet, his fingerprints are all over this cinematic dud. I think we’ve talked about this one enough. It’s garbage. Let’s move on.

MA: By all means.  Continue.

LS: As for my Number 1 pick for the WORST MOVIE OF 2010, it’s a tie. Two movies so bad, I couldn’t decide which one was worse. And they’re ones we’ve already discussed, so I won’t belabor my dilemma, except to say they’re both awful. MY SOUL TO TAKE reaches Number 1 status because it’s dumb, badly acted, horribly written, and the 3D effects (we had to pay extra for glasses to see this thing) are NON EXISTENT. Not like CLASH OF THE TITANS, where there’s just one good 3D scene. In MY SOUL TO TAKE, there is not one moment where you say, “Hey, this is cool 3D, I’m glad I have these glasses on.” Wes Craven scraped the bottom of the barrel with this one. There is not one positive thing about it I can think of. It’s abysmal.

But there’s another movie just as bad, and that’s TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE. TWILIGHT may look better, may have slightly better acting, may be slightly more coherent, but the story is BOREDOM taken to a new level, and there is not one character I like or care about or want to survive by the end credits. Sitting through a TWILIGHT movie is like being tortured. Hell, both of these movies were pure torture to sit through. And I don’t plan to repeat the experience anytime soon.

MA: I agree, but for me, there was one more movie that was even worse than TWILIGHT:  ECLIPSE.

My pick for the Number 1 WORST HORROR MOVIE of 2010 goes to PIRANHA 3D.

PIRANHA 3D is nothing more than a GIRLS GONE WILD wannabe disguised as a summer horror movie. Shame on everyone involved with this stinker, including lead actress Elizabeth Shue, Richard Dreyfuss for allowing himself to do a cameo in this one (spoofing his JAWS character Matt Hooper), and, most of all, director Alexandre Aja for directing this fish tale.

The 3D effects in this one also failed to impress. And the blood and gore here was on the tasteless side, with a huge bloodbath scene, the centerpiece of this movie, that I thought went on way too long. It relied on shock instead of suspense.

The sex-obsessed screenplay was written by screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg. These guys also wrote SORORITY ROW (2009), another awful horror movie obsessed with sex instead of horror. Maybe they should switch genres.

PIRANHA 3D was by far the most disappointing film of the year for me. It was also the year’s most shallow film. A complete disaster from start to finish.

LS: If you truly thought that PIRANHA 3D was worse than MY SOUL TO TAKE, TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE and DEVIL, then you really need to turn in your critic’s card. You’ve always had bad taste, but this little number takes the cake.

MA:  Bad taste?  PIRANHA 3D was AWFUL!  It SUCKED!

LS  PIRANHA 3D actually made my BEST OF list as an Honorable Mention.  It was easily my favorite 3D movie of 2010—I thought it was a lot of fun—and at least the 3D worked in this one. It had naked girls aplenty and even more gore. The story was entirely tongue-in-cheek, and it wasn’t boring for a moment.

MA:  No, it wasn’t boring.  It was HORRIBLE!  Naked women and dumb ass gore do not a good horror film make!  And you put this on your Best of List?  You’re the one who needs to tear his critic’s card and go back to school and take some taste classes.  Give me a break!

LS:  There were so many worse movies in 2010. I am speechless that this was your number one pick.

MA:  Speechless???  Hell, there’s a first time for everything!

LS:  I have one more movie to mention. My choice for the BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF 2010. It wasn’t the worst movie of the year, but it was bad, and I went in expecting a lot better from the people involved. And that honor would go to George A. Romero’s SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD.

I love Romero to pieces. I think he’s directed some of the best horror movies ever made. He’s still the best director to make a flesh-eating zombie movie —hell, he’s the one who started it all. But SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD was a complete letdown, from the acting to the script, I just sat there with my jaw hanging open wondering what Romero was thinking when he made this one. But I still enjoyed it more than the movies I’ve listed here as the WORST OF 2010. I just hope Romero gets his mojo back sometime soon.

MA: And for the record, I really liked SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD.  It was a heck of a lot better horror movie than PIRANHA 3D!

(LS rolls his eyes)

MA:  Okay, that wraps things up from here.

LS: Well folks, we’ll say so long for now, and the next time we see you, it will be with the review of a new movie!

—END—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

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BEHIND THE WALL (2008)

Posted in 2010, Cable movies, Cinema Knife Fights, Garbage, Ghost Movies with tags , , , , , , on December 13, 2010 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: BEHIND THE WALL (2008)
by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE:  a lighthouse on a rocky cliff, high above the ocean, somewhere in rural Maine. MICHAEL ARRUDA and L.L. SOARES approach.)

MA (to audience):  Welcome!  We’re here today at this haunted lighthouse to review—.

LS:  Are you sure this place is haunted?  It doesn’t look haunted. (Yells) ANYBODY HOME?

MA:  What’s a haunted lighthouse supposed to look like?

(A scream blasts through the air, and a body hurtles down from the top of the lighthouse and lands on the ground with a loud thud.)

MA:  There you go. How about that?  Some poor bastard just got shoved off the top of the lighthouse. Is that haunted enough for you?

TOOTHLESS MAN (groans and sits up):  No, I wasn’t shoved. I slipped. And I’ve been drinking.

MA (to man):  Are you okay?

MAN:  (Hiccups). No. I think my bones are sticking out of my body.

LS:  Tough luck, dude. Don’t be so careless next time. (to MA): What a friggin idiot.

MAN:  Do you think—?

LS:  Sorry. We can’t help you. We have a movie to review. (to MA)  I told you this place wasn’t haunted.

MA:  I don’t know about that. That guy just pulled a cell phone out of his rib cage. Let’s go inside.

(MA and LS enter lighthouse. The inside of the building is empty but messy, as if it had been abandoned.)

LS:  I guess we won’t find any snacks in here.

MA:  Shh!  Did you hear that?

LS:  What?

MA:  Whispering.

WHISPER:  Go away. You’re not wanted here. Besides, the snacks in the cupboard belong to me.

LS:  Why don’t you go away, whoever you are?  You’re annoying!  And get a body while you’re at it! (to MA) If it’s whispering, then why is it so damn loud?

MA (to audience):  As I was saying before, we’re here in this haunted lighthouse to review BEHIND THE WALL (2008), a horror movie now available for free on Fearnet on OnDemand cable.

LS: Yeah, as readers of our COMING ATTRACTIONS column know, we were supposed to review THE TEMPEST this week, but it’s in limited release and wasn’t playing near either of us. What’s with all these movies in limited release? So we’re skipping it.

To make up for it, we decided to review a movie on OnDemand cable. Michael chose this one, which is why it’s so damn lame. Thanks, Michael!

MA: Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.  What can I say? I like lighthouses and I thought this one might be scary.

LS: Whatever. Might as well get this review over with, since we came all the way here.

MA: BEHIND THE WALL opens with a murder. The local police pull a vehicle over and discover the driver and his 10 year-old daughter covered in blood. Apparently, the man, who’s the caretaker at the local lighthouse, had murdered his wife.

The story jumps to 20 years later, as the daughter Kaitlin “Katie” Parks (Lindy Booth) returns to her home town of Henderson Bay, Maine, based on a letter she thought was sent to her by Deputy Mayor Drew Cabot (James Thomas). When she arrives in town, she finds that Drew knows nothing about the letter. He’s also just made a deal with businessman Eric Carrinton (Brad Hodder) to renovate the lighthouse she grew up in, in order to use it to bring in tourist money for the cash-strapped town.

Immediately, this group is opposed by a local priest, Father Hendry (Lawrence Dane), who claims the lighthouse is haunted, and that nothing good can come from it. Of course, no one believes him, and you can’t blame them. Would you believe a priest who goes around calling people “my son” and “my child”?  Cliché!  I’ve yet to hear a priest outside the movies who speaks this way.

LS: Father Hendry is easily the most annoying character in this movie. He’s a jerk! Every time he’s on screen, I was screaming at my TV. I wanted to kick this guy in the ass.

MA: Drew and Eric and their group, including a public relations photographer named Monica (Suzie Pollard), who has the hots for Drew—alas, Drew is not interested in Monica, as he has his eye on Katie— set up shop in the lighthouse. Sounds like AS THE LIGHTHOUSE TURNS.

LS: If this is such a soap opera, then why can’t he just have sex with both of them? Oh I forgot, because there is absolutely no sex in this movie. I thought I was watching a TV-movie on the LIFETIME Channel.

MA: Yes, this did have that LIFETIME feel.  As you would expect, strange things begin to happen. For starters, they hear whispers.

LS: Yeah. LOUD ones.

WHISPER:  If you build it, it will fall apart.

LS:  Shut up already! Damn whisperer. We’re trying to review a movie here! (to MA) I wish that damn ghost would show itself so I can give him a good slap.

MA:  And people start disappearing. Soon afterwards, things get worse as people start dying. Katie discovers an old letter from her grandfather warning of an evil presence in the basement of the lighthouse. —Don’t go into the basement! —too late. The contractors have already opened a sealed door and have unknowingly unleashed the evil hidden inside.

LS: That Kaitlin sure gets a lot of letters. Maybe the Post Office produced this movie!

MA: Katie then teams up with Drew, Eric, and Father Hendry, to solve the mystery of the evil entity hidden behind the wall in the basement. The answer isn’t anything you haven’t heard before.

BEHIND THE WALL is about as compelling as a loaf of white bread. I wasn’t expecting much from this movie, but I certainly hoped I’d be pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t. I’ve seen worse movies than this one, but for a horror movie, this was about as bland as they come.

WHISPER:  White bread. Wonder Bread. Scary!

MA:  No, they’re not, and neither is this movie. The story by screenwriters Michael Bafaro and Anna Singer is your standard ghost story, and director Paul Schneider fails to add any energy to this baby. There’s no atmosphere or energy to be found. The film’s not creepy, not mysterious, and worst of all, it’s not scary. Not even close. The ghost in this one is about as threatening as Boo Berry.

LS: Sorry to break it to you, but a Boo Berry commercial would be scarier than this movie. And don’t be fooled by the DVD cover at the top of this review. It says “By the Writer of POLTERGIEST.” But the truth is Michael Grais, one of four people who worked on the POLTERGIEST screenplay in 1982, only produced BEHIND THE WALL. He didn’t write or direct it.

MA: The story is so standard you’ll be holding a stick shift in your hand instead of a remote.

And there are lots of unanswered questions. For example, I’m not really sure what these people are all doing camping out inside the lighthouse. Think about it. Why are the deputy mayor, the businessman financing the deal, the public relations photographer, and the two contractors spending the night in the lighthouse?  Haven’t they ever heard of a hotel?  And doesn’t the deputy mayor have a house to go home to?

LS: Not a lot about this movie makes sense. Like the victims are covered in blood, but we never see how they’re killed. It would have been nice to get an idea what the ghost is doing to them. Is it just tossing buckets of fake blood on them?

MA: While the movie does eventually explain what the threat is, it doesn’t answer the question, why is it killing people?  Also, some of the dead people show up alive again, as if they’re possessed by the evil entity. How?  This must be some powerful ghost!

LS: Powerfully BORING. I started watching this movie on a Friday night. I fell asleep half-way through, and I had to watch the rest the following morning. Not a ringing endorsement. And we don’t even get to see the ghost until the end, and it’s just some guy made of smoke. Kind of cheesy effect, actually, and not scary one iota. What a complete letdown!

MA: The movie does look good. There’s some fine photography of the lighthouse and surrounding area. But I didn’t choose to watch BEHIND THE WALL for the photography. I wanted to watch a horror movie, not look at a postcard. The lighthouse itself I thought looked rather puny. It was anything but ominous.

LS: The photography isn’t wonderful; it’s just competent. The people who made this movie had a good crew. Too bad the story is sub-par.

MA: The acting wasn’t bad. James Thomas was actually very good as Drew. I thought he created a very likeable character. Lindy Booth was also likeable as Katie, and she was cute too. Brad Hodder was okay as Eric, and Suzie Pollard wasn’t bad as Monica, but the rest of the cast was largely forgettable.

LS: Yeah, the acting by the leads is fine. James Thomas is quite likable. I thought Lindy Booth was very cute too, and she is the ONLY thing that kept me watching this snoozefest. I’d love to see that hot little redhead in a movie that actually is worth watching. It’s certainly not this one. The rest of the cast is so-so. It’s kind of sad seeing Thomas and Booth turn in decent performances in a movie that just doesn’t give them anything to work with.

As for Lawrence Dane as Father Hendry – I have no idea if this guy can actually act, but he certainly doesn’t impress us here. I’m guessing it’s because the writing for his character is absolutely lame, and I really don’t want to put the blame on him. But I really hated this character and I couldn’t wait to see him get killed off.

MA: But the biggest strike against BEHIND THE WALL is that it’s simply not scary at all. There aren’t any memorable scenes, and the murder scenes generate little or no suspense. They’re pretty tepid, there’s no gore, and director Paul Schneider doesn’t even seem interested in giving these scenes an edge.

LS: Like I said, this one screams LIFETIME Channel. It’s just a very safe, very bland little movie that lacks scares, a decent script, or memorable directing. I’ve seen car commercials with more edge.

WHISPER:  I see dead bunnies.

LS: Get bent!

MA: Actually, dead bunnies would have been scarier. To use a food analogy, watching BEHIND THE WALL was like eating LIGHT vanilla ice cream with half the sugar. It’s not that satisfying.

LS: I’d rather eat cardboard than watch this movie again.

MA: BEHIND THE WALL features adequate acting from its main players and some fine photography, but it’s bogged down by a sub-par story, lackluster direction, and a complete lack of mood and scares.

LS: In other words, it stinks. Don’t bother even seeing this one for free. I feel like I was gypped.

MA: I give it TWO KNIVES.

LS: Two knives? What are you, high? You just told everyone how bad it was, and then you give it two knives? Must be because you chose this one and you’re trying to save face.

MA: No, I thought it wasn’t completely awful. Just clichéd and weak.  Plus it didn’t annoy me. For me to give a movie one knife or less, it’s got to be horrible.  This one’s bland and dull, but unlike you, I wasn’t screaming at the TV.

LS: Well, I give it half a knife. It really deserves none. The only reason I give it even half a knife is for Lindy Booth, who was cute as hell and I want to see her in more (and better) movies. But otherwise, this one is a complete waste of time.

MA: There you go, another Cinema Knife Fight comes to a close. See you next time.

LS:  Yeah, and next time I’m picking the movie!

WHISPER:  Don’t go away.  It’s time for me to reveal my true identity.  I’m Batman.

LS:  Batman?  Try Boring Man.  Shut the hell up!  We’re out of here.

MA:  Sorry, Whisperer, but I have to agree.  Don’t quit your day job.

(MA & LS exit.)

WHISPER:  But this is my day job. Maybe I’ll start whispering to horses.

—END—

© Copyright 2010 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gave BEHIND THE WALL - 2 knives

L.L. Soares gave BEHIND THE WALL - half a knife.

2 Comments »

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

Posted in 2010, Cinema Knife Fights, Garbage, Sequels, Vampires, Werewolves with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on July 5, 2010 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: a river by a forest. Wolves are howling in the distance. LL SOARES and MICHAEL ARRUDA enter a clearing by the river, and stop to take a drink. Behind them, a young GIRL appears skipping along the river singing to herself.)

GIRL: Looking for my true love, my true love, my true love. Oh where shall I find my true love?—- aaahhh! (SPLASH as GIRL falls into the water)

LS: The river’s a good place to start. Try there.

MA (shaking his head): That’s really too bad that she, er— slipped.

GIRL: Help me! I’m drowning!

MA: We can’t help you. You’re on the wrong side of the river. That’s werewolf territory.

(Big phony CGI wolves appear, wearing ribbons and bows around their necks. They jump into the river.)

MA: Ready to start this week’s review of THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE?

LS: I’d rather eat broken glass.

MA: Let’s just get this over with.

(Behind them the wolves are attacking the GIRL in the river. MA and LS ignore the screams and continue talking.)

LS: Okay. ECLIPSE is the third movie in the TWILIGHT series, based on the books by Stephenie Meyer. It is basically a love triangle between three people: Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl just about to graduate from high school; Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a vampire who Bella is in love with; and Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), a Native American boy about Bella’s age, who also happens to be a werewolf.

As we saw in the previous movies, TWILIGHT and NEW MOON, the three of them have gone through high school together. Bella’s love affair with Edward has only grown more intense as they approach graduation. She desperately wants to consummate her relationship with Edward, but, as a vampire, he’s afraid he may hurt her or even kill her in the throes of passion. So she has made a deal with him. She wants to become a vampire, too, so that they can make love without fear of danger. In return, he asks that she marry him first, because he’s “old school” and wants a commitment. She has agreed to marry him after graduation.

MA: There’s a part of me who wants to applaud Edward’s sense of honor towards Bella, that he doesn’t want to sleep with her until they’re married. But the problem I have with this, is the same problem I have with the rest of the movie, and that is, it’ s not realistically portrayed.

LS: Personally, I wish they’d just screw and get it over with.

MA: Okay, Edward’s this noble male. Great. But when do we get to see how he’s handling this? It’s clear that Bella has the hots for him, but doesn’t he have needs too? What’s he doing about them? He’s just so icy cold. Whatever happened to the classic vampires like Lugosi and Lee who had a sexual energy about them that was obviously very attractive to women?

(Vampires holding signs are picketing the area. They include Bela Lugosi in his Dracula cape, Christopher Lee, and Gary Oldman. Their signs read things like “Real Vampires Don’t Sparkle” and “I Want My Fangs Back.”)

MA: We don’t see Edward suffering from not being able to make love to Bella. The guy’s gotta be suffering, right?

LS: I think he’s a eunuch.

MA: To me, this is all a not-so-subtle message about chastity and virginity, two subjects I don’t have a problem with…

LS: I do! They make for BORING movies.

MA: …But I do have a problem when the message is delivered in a way that isn’t realistic. I’m sorry, but if you love someone the way Edward is supposed to love Bella, you’re going to be feeling certain things that if you repress, you’re going to be affected by it, and we just don’t see that. The passion is missing.

LS: “The passion is missing.” That’s the entire TWILIGHT series in a nutshell. Can I go home now?

MA: No. We owe it to our readers to explain WHY ECLIPSE is such a bad movie.

LS (sighs and continues): Everyone else in the movie thinks that Bella is moving too fast. That she wants to give up her mortal life (because in order to become a vampire, she has to die first) before she has even had a chance to experience it. Among the people who think she is making a mistake is Jacob, a pal since childhood who also loves Bella. In the last movie, NEW MOON, Bella admitted that she loved Jacob, but “not in that way.” In this movie, Jacob finally gets Bella to admit that she does love him in “that way,” but the problem is, she loves Edward more.

MA: The bigger problem is why should we care?

LS (snoring and MA nudges him): Wha-wha-what happened? I wasn’t asleep!

MA: Sure you weren’t.

LS: Should she go with Jacob, who is a werewolf, but who is also alive, and she would not have to change herself to be with him (in this series lycanthropy seems to be a genetic condition, rather than the result of a wolf bite)? Or should she give up her life to become a vampire and spend eternity with her soul mate Edward?

The whole thing is incredibly silly to me. If she’s that desperate to get laid, and will even commit what is essentially suicide to get a chance to sleep with Edward, then her priorities are really screwed up. She could at least have a fling with Jacob first and see what sex is like, before she gives up everything for Edward. But the fact that the central argument of the movie is “should Bella have sex or not” makes me also realize that there is not one adult emotion in the TWILIGHT movies. These are childish dilemmas written for an immature audience.

MA: Bella wants to have sex because she’s in love with Edward. To me, it’s obviously clear that she doesn’t love Mr. Buff Werewolf Jacob the same way she loves Edward, and so all this angst comes off to me as phony and a waste of time. It’s there for the sake of having a love triangle, which is yet another reason I didn’t like this movie, because I didn’t buy its love triangle. She loves Edward. End of story.

LS: Bella wants to have sex. Edward wants to wait until marriage. Jacob pines for Bella on the sidelines. It’s all very juvenile. Yes, I know it’s geared toward teenage girls. But what about the middle-aged women in the audience? I have to admit, their interest in this series baffles me.

MA: There were more adults in the packed theater with me than teens, and a lot of them were couples, so it wasn’t just a girl’s night out. The hubbies were there, too.

And when all the shirtless werewolf males sprinted onto the screen for the first time, the adult women behind me started “oohing,” and “aahing” and giggling. I immediately wanted to scream my favorite Charlton Heston line from PLANET OF THE APES (1968), “It’s a madhouse!!”

LS: Of course, the central romance can’t be the only storyline. There also have to be some genre trappings so that ECLIPSE can at least superficially claim it is a horror movie. So we get the plotline that Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard), the red-haired vampire from the last movie, wants revenge on Edward for killing her mate, James. So, because he took what she loved the most, she plans to take was Edward loves the most —Bella.

MA: Hey, here’s a message for Victoria- Get over it, girl!

LS: Since Victoria can’t take on the whole Cullen clan (Edward’s vampire “family”) by herself, she creates an army of vampires by “turning” as many people as she can. It turns out vampires are their strongest (and most out of control) the first three months after they become bloodsuckers, because they are slaves to their thirst for blood and have not yet acquired the knowledge and discipline to control it.

MA (opens mouth wide): YAWN!!!

LS: Victoria’s army seems almost like an afterthought. When they finally reach Forks, Washington, for the big showdown with the good guys, the movie is almost over. There is one big climactic battle—

MA: That was a battle? I thought it was a ballet.

LS: — between Victoria’s vampires and the Cullens (and the werewolves, who have joined forces with them to protect Bella) but it’s not much of a fight and this subplot adds nothing to the movie. I guess they just needed more to the story than just “Who loves Bella more?” but it doesn’t work.

MA: If you at home want to find out who loves Bella more, you should go see ECLIPSE. Isn’t that a compelling reason to see a movie?

LS: There’s also a council of the Volturi, the vampire overlords we last saw in NEW MOON, who are keeping tabs on the growing vampire army But they do nothing and are pretty much there to waste more screen time. Even Dakota Fanning, suitably spooky as the leader of the Volturi contingent, can’t make them interesting.

MA: The Volturi are even more boring than the Jedi councils we had to suffer through during the last three installments of the STAR WARS movies. Those Jedis were so horrible it’s no wonder Anakin Skywalker left them to follow the Dark Side! These folks are even worse! They really could have used some help from YODA.

(YODA suddenly appears.)

YODA: Help vampires I will, the force they should follow, dark side leave they must.

MA: English you should learn.

LS: Hey, Yoda, go jump in the river. Don’t make this review any longer than it needs to be.

YODA: Rude you men are (YODA exits with a SPLASH)

LS: As usual, the acting in this series is atrocious. Kristen Stewart as Bella continues to say her lines with a strange hesitation, as if she’s reading them as she goes along. This is especially confusing because I just saw Stewart as Joan Jett in the biopic THE RUNAWAYS (also with Dakota Fanning, strangely enough), and thought she was quite good in it. Which means Stewart can act when she wants to. She just chooses not to when she portrays Bella.

MA: I don’t mind Stewart’s acting, but I really have a problem with the character. There’s just something very annoying about Bella. I think it’s because she’s the center of all this attention and I just don’t get it. I mean everyone and their grandmother is out there trying to protect Bella. Why?

LS: I don’t get that either. What is so damned special about Bella anyway???

That must be a big reason why this series appeals to teenage girls so much. They want to be “special” and the center of all attention, just like Bella.

MA: To return to the STAR WARS analogy, not even Princess Leia had this much protection. And she was leading a rebel alliance against the evil galactic empire! What the hell is Bella doing? She’s waiting around to see who “loves her more!”

LS: You and those STAR WARS analogies. What are you, Joseph Campbell? Taylor Lautner as Jacob seems a little more confident this time around, but still has miniscule acting ability. His big thing seems to be walking around without a shirt and showing off his abs. In the audience I saw ECLIPSE with, the girls went nuts when we first see Jacob in the movie, leaning on a car with his shirt off. So it seems he doesn’t have to actually do any acting to get a favorable reaction, which is good because he is incredibly DULL.

(A horde of screaming women run by. “Where is he? Where is he?”)

MA: In the river. (The women jump in.)

LS: As for Edward, it’s hard to understand what Bella sees in him. All he ever does is either mope around or he is so overprotective of her, watching her every move, that he seems like more of her stalker than her lover.

ECLIPSE is just a snooze-fest. I looked at my watch and yawned constantly during this movie. And I was fidgeting in my uncomfortable seat a lot by the end.

MA: Just so there isn’t any misunderstanding on this point. What you just said is not an exaggeration. ECLIPSE is an excruciatingly boring movie.

LS: Last time, when NEW MOON first came out. I missed seeing it the first day it opened because all showings were immediately sold out. So this time, I got my ticket ahead of time. When I got there, I had to stand in a special line in order to be let in. I put up with all this in order to basically subject myself to a torture session for over two hours. It just doesn’t seem fair.

My main problem with the TWILIGHT movies is that, despite the presence of vampires and werewolves, these films are not HORROR MOVIES by any stretch of the imagination. They are romance movies. Everything revolves around declarations of love, not scares. There is not one moment in any of these movies that will elicit fear or outright terror.

MA: And I have to argue here that they’re not even very good romance movies. I’ve asked myself this question over and over: Is the fact that I’m not a huge fan of romance movies the reason I don’t like this franchise? My answer is no. Because if it were a good movie, I’d like it, or I’d at least recognize it as a good movie and then just say it wasn’t my cup of tea.

Last week I saw TOY STORY 3, a kid’s movie. There’s a scene near the end where Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and their toy friends face death, and while watching this scene, I told myself, it’s a Disney/Pixar movie, they’re probably not going to die, but the characters really believed they were going to die, and it was such a compelling moment, an emotional moment, that for a second, I really feared for them, and they’re toys!! It’s an example of good storytelling. There’s nothing like this in ECLIPSE, no moment where you go, “My God, what’s going to happen?” It’s dull and emotionless.

LS: I still think the CGI werewolves (which just look like giant wolves) are horrible. At one point, Jacob, in werewolf form, enters a scene and someone in the audience shouted “Awww, he’s so cute!” and the truth is, he was. He just looked like a big old puppy dog. And that is not how werewolves should be portrayed in horror films.

(A group of werewolves, including Lon Chaney Jr’s Larry Talbot, Paul Naschy and Benecio Del Toro are now holding picket signs that read things like “Real Werewolves Eat Human Flesh” and “Don’t Neuter Me.”)

In fact, everything about these movies is “cute.” And safe. And boring. The vampires may appear to have fangs, but the TWILIGHT series is ultimately toothless.

MA: Exactly. It’s as if these movies were produced by Disney. I half expect to see TWILIGHT dance numbers on parade at Disney World next year.

LS: Rumor had it that ECLIPSE might be the best movie of the series, but it’s not. I think it’s just slightly better than NEW MOON (2009), which was the worst.  The surprising part is that this one is directed by David Slade, who gave us the superior vampire flick 30 DAYS OF NIGHT (2007). Then again, his hands are tied by the awful script by Stephenie Meyer and her constant collaborator in these films, Melissa Rosenberg. The best TWILIGHT film remains the first one (2008), partly for Catherine Hardwicke’s directing, and partly because, back then, these characters and lame storylines hadn’t been done to death yet. But even the first TWILIGHT was no prize, and was hard to sit through.

I would like to make a pact with you now, Michael that this is the last TWILIGHT film we will review for Cinema Knife Fight. I’ve done my time, and I just can’t sit through another one. These are NOT horror movies, and there is no reason for us to continue reviewing them for CKF.

MA: You don’t need to twist my arm. No more TWILIGHT.

LS (doing a happy dance): This is our last TWILIGHT review! Hurray!

So, is there anything else you want to say, Michael?

MA: Watching this movie, I felt like I was trapped in the back seat of a car for a two-hour trip, while in the front seat sat Edward, Bella and Jacob, and they started talking about their relationship. I listened, and I was fairly interested at first. I was curious. But after about 15 minutes, I was ready to move on, only the conversation never ended! Bella loves Edward, but Jacob loves Bella, and he’s not going to give up. Okay, okay. I get it. Let’s move on. But we don’t move on, and the entire car ride is spent listening to the same arguments over and over and over. That’s what watching ECLIPSE was like for me.

Believe it or not, there were a couple of things I did like about the movie. I thought the chemistry between Bella and Edward was stronger in this movie than in NEW MOON. I also liked the scenes Edward and Jacob had with each other, as they make good adversaries. Edward even gets one of the better lines in the movie when he says about Jacob, “Doesn’t he own a shirt?”

I also liked a scene in the movie when Jacob learns that Bella is going to marry Edward, he tells her he’d rather she be dead than a vampire, the implication being that he’d actually kill her to save her from Edward. Of course, he’s just talking out of anger. This movie doesn’t come close to visiting a dark interesting place like that for real.

LS: I can’t believe you found ANYTHING to like about this movie!

MA: But, ultimately, ECLIPSE is about as engrossing as a Saltine cracker. Like the previous installment in the series, it’s talky and dull, and it’s so sanitized it’s nauseating! Everything is just so clean. I have to laugh, because in the movie the vampires complain about the werewolves smelling bad, and the werewolves complain about the vampire’s stink. Stink? This movie’s so clean it smells like window cleaner.

LS: The only thing that really stinks is this movie!

MA: If you like your vampire stories sterilized, stripped of passion and blood, and your werewolf tales all cutesy and buff, and your love stories superficial and immature, you’ll love ECLIPSE! Otherwise, stay away from this one. I give it one and a half knives.

LS: I give this movie no knives. I wish I could give it an even lower score.

MA: And to think, that of all the movies we’ve seen the past two years, the biggest audience has been for this series. There’s only one thing left for us to do.

(MA & LS jump into the river with a final SPLASH.)

-END-

© Copyright 2010 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

MICHAEL ARRUDA gave THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE – ONE AND A HALF KNIVES

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L.L. SOARES gave TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE – NO KNIVES


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