Archive for Paranormal

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 (2012)

Posted in 2012, Cinema Knife Fights, Demons, Evil Kids!, Faux Documentaries, Haunted Houses, Paranormal, Plot Twists, Sequels with tags , , , , , , , on October 22, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 (2012)
By Michael Arruda & L.L. Soares

(The Scene: A bedroom. MICHAEL ARRUDA lays in bed asleep.  For a long time.  The words, “3:13 AM.  Night 13” are superimposed on screen.  Still, nothing happens.  MA looks up at camera.

MA:  This is a long time for nothing to be happening.  Too long.

THE VOICE OF L.L. SOARES:  You said it.  If I were making this movie, I would have chopped your head off already.

MA:  Where are you?

(Bedroom door swings open, revealing the silhouette of a person.)

MA:  Well, that’s predictable.  Couldn’t you think of a more original place to hide?

LS:  Um, that’s not me…  I’m in here.  (Climbs out of a bureau drawer.)

MA:  That’s not so predictable.  How did you fit in there?

LS:  It’s not real.  It’s a prop.  Just like this carving knife (raises knife).  You would have been in for one helluva surprise reaching for your clothes this morning.

MA:  Lucky for me, I’m already dressed.  (Climbs out of bed, fully dressed.)

LS:  You’re an odd duck.

MA:  Quack.

(Silhouette in door steps forward, revealing that it’s a woman.  Suddenly, she stomps forward, her steps booming loud, and MA & LS scream.  She grabs LS by the head and twists it around full circle, then leaps at MA and does the same to him.)

LS (with head spinning):  Hey, this is cool!  Woo-hoo!

MA (head also spinning):  It gets the kinks out.

LS (to woman):  Thanks!  This feels great!

(WOMAN frowns, then Exits.  LS & MA’s heads stop spinning.)

MA:  That was different.  I think I’m ready to review today’s movie now.

LS:  Start us off, then.

MA:  Today we’re reviewing PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 (2012), the fourth film in the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY series, a series that admittedly has grown on me, so I was actually looking forward to seeing it.  But as movies go, this one’s about as deep as—(walks to the bed and pulls a feather out of a pillow) — as this feather.  In other words, it’s a lightweight movie if I ever saw one.

Since PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 was a prequel, this movie follows the events of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2, and at the end of that movie, Katie (Katie Featherston) kills her sister, her sister’s husband, and walks away with their little boy, Hunter.  That movie ended with the superimposed words on the screen stating that Katie’s and Hunter’s whereabouts remain unknown.

And that’s where the action picks up in this movie, as we meet a new family, specifically a 15-year-old girl, Alex (Kathryn Newton) who spends most of her time with her boyfriend, Ben (Matt Shively).  Alex lives with her parents and younger brother, and next door to them lives a creepy little boy named Robbie (Brady Allen) and his mom, who we assume, of course, are really Hunter and Katie.

LS: Which may or may not be the case.

MA: One night, the little boy’s mom is rushed to the hospital—supposedly, as this is what Alex’s mom says, and we don’t actually see this— and so the strange little boy temporarily moves in with Alex’s family, since he has no other family of his own.

LS: Well, we kind of do see this. We see an ambulance across the street at Robbie’s house with its siren flashing. And Alex’s mom says that she was asked to take Robbie in.  But no, we never actually see Robbie’s mother physically being carried to the ambulance.

MA: And of course, since he is a strange little boy, weird creepy things start happening in the middle of the night, including visits from the ghost or demon who’s been haunting the folks in all these movies, the spectral dude known as Toby.

You know, you’d think that Toby would pick a house without so many friggin cameras, so he could actually accomplish something without people watching him!

LS: Maybe he’s an attention hog!

MA: Of course, that’s the gimmick in the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies, that everything is filmed by the cameras of the characters in the movie, to give it a realistic feel. And for the most part, this gimmick works.  It’s why these movies are fun, because there are long moments of silent “in the middle of the night” footage which prompts audience members to yell out various comments, because they can’t stand the tension.

Of course, for story purposes, this gimmick made the most sense in the first movie.  I can believe some guy filming everything on his video camera.  In the second film, the family was concerned about burglars, and so they had security cameras installed, and that’s how we saw all the footage in that film.

In this one, Alex’s boyfriend Ben is a computer geek, and so he records everything with his computer camera, and so when the strange events start happening in Alex’s house, she has Ben fix all the computers in the house so they’ll be taking video footage 24/7.  Not that this is unbelievable, but like I said, what are the odds that every house Toby haunts has cameras on him all night?  I’m suspending disbelief here more than I want to.

Anyway, this is how in this movie we’re able to see all those PARANORMAL ACTIVITY scenes we’ve come to know and love, scenes of silent rooms in the middle of the night, just waiting for something scary to happen.

And of course the story in this one is about that strange little boy next door, who we assume is Hunter, and the eerie events his presence causes once he’s inside Alex’s house.  And that’s it folks.  There really isn’t much of a story here.  There is a twist, but I was unimpressed.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 is easily the weakest film in the series.  I didn’t hate this movie by any means, but I was unsatisfied.  Big time.  I mean, all the signature “in the middle of the night scenes” are there, but they’re just not that scary this time around.

The ending, which is a bit scary, is quick and over WAY too fast.

I liked the main character Alex, which is a good thing, because she’s in almost every scene of the movie.  I thought Kathryn Newton did a great job, and if I’m allowed to say this about a 15 year-old, she’s stunningly beautiful in this movie.

LS: Well, maybe you should wait about three years to say that. (laughs). But you’re right, she’s quite pretty.

MA: Matt Shively is also likeable as her boyfriend Ben, so these two main characters aren’t the problem.

The problem is the story, or lack thereof.  The PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies have never had strong stories, but they’ve been fun because they’ve been scary.  I didn’t find this one scary at all.  The scares just aren’t there, and in a gimmicky movie like this that doesn’t have much of a story, if you don’t have scares, what’s left?  The answer is, not much!  There just isn’t much to this movie.

Christopher Landon wrote the screenplay, and he also wrote the scripts for the second and third films in this series as well.  I think maybe he’s running out of ideas.  There are “middle of the night sequences” where nothing seems to happen, and this is the same problem I had with the previous films in the series, especially PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 (2010).  You’re waiting there, watching a silent empty room in the middle of the night, and the pay-off is a little boy walking around a room.  Come on!

Plus the little boy in this one just isn’t that creepy.  I thought the kid in LOOPER (2012) was much creepier!

(The door opens and the little boy from LOOPER enters the room.  The boy grimaces, his eyes widen, and he grows red in the face.)

MA:  Easy kid!  Don’t use your telekinetic powers on us!  I was actually complimenting you!

LS: Geez, kid. Give us a break.

BOY:  Where’s the bathroom?  I have to go.  Bad!

MA:  It’s down the hall on the left.

BOY:  Thanks.  (Exits, as he runs down the hall).

LS (calling after him):  Next time don’t wait so long!

MA:  I had some questions about the story as well.  I wanted to know what was actually going on in the house next door to Alex.  At one point, she sees a bunch of cars there, and when she goes to investigate in the middle of the night— of course—she finds people there, but she’s frightened and runs away, and so we never learn what’s going on.  Now, based upon the events of the prequel, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3, I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on, but this movie might have been scarier had we seen more of those people next door, since we all know they’re not about to win any good neighbor awards!  They’re evil!  Why would you not make your scary story more about them?

LS: At the same time, it makes sense that she’d get scared and run away. So it is in character.

Most 15-year-old girls wouldn’t challenge people at a neighbor’s house and demand to know more.

MA: Then there’s good old Toby, the friendly neighborhood PARANORMAL ACIVITY demon.  He’s not much of a factor in this one.  Maybe he’s finally getting camera shy.

LS: Yeah, Toby’s a bit of a letdown this time around.

MA: Alex’s parents aren’t so bright either.  In one scene, a knife falls from the ceiling, and her dad, although spooked, doesn’t do anything about it.  It’s not like a door swings open.  Sometimes a stray draft opens or closes doors.  We’re talking about a knife falling from the ceiling.  I’d want to know what the hell a knife is doing in the ceiling in the first place!

LS: I kept expecting that knife to drop down and imbed itself in someone’s head.

MA: In an earlier scene, the mom is cutting vegetables with a knife— the same one I assume—she walks away….

LS: Of course it’s the same one. Why do you have to “assume” it?

MA: …we hear the knife swiped up and away—she returns and of course is dumbfounded and wonders where she put the knife.  She then walks away and returns with another knife and continues cutting.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a knife disappear into thin air from a kitchen counter on me.  I’d be somewhat freaked.  I wouldn’t continue cutting my vegetables like nothing had happened.

LS: So you wanted more time wasted with her just standing around, looking for the knife?

MA: No, I wanted her at the very least to ask someone in the house, “Hey, did anyone just take the knife I was using?”  Show some concern!  Jeesh!

I also have a complaint about Spooky Katie.  Does she always have to walk so slowly?  It’s like watching a store mannequin.  Someone light a firecracker under that woman!

(Outside there is an explosion and a flash of light, followed by a scream.)

I didn’t mean that literally!

VOICE OFF-CAMERA:  Sorry!

MA:  Also, the very creepy scene shown in the film’s trailer doesn’t appear in this movie.  This isn’t the first time this has happened in this series.  I remember a similar scary scene shown in the trailer for PARANORMAL ACTIVTY 2 which wasn’t in the film.

LS: This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since way too many trailers give away the complete story of a movie before you see it.

MA:  I dunno.  It bugs me.

LS: At least these scenes in the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies that don’t appear in the movies are kind of like bonus scenes. But you’re right that this new movie could use all the scares it could get.

MA: This one was directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the same folks who directed PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3.  Like their screenwriter Christopher Landon, I think they’re running out of ideas.

All in all, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 is weak horror movie, hardly worth your time.  I enjoyed last week’s SINISTER better, as that one disturbed me in a way that this movie doesn’t even come close to doing.  Again, I didn’t hate this film, but I sure was underwhelmed.
I give it one and a half knives.

LS: Y’know, we’re actually in complete agreement about this one. This is the Year the Sequels Died. When some of the franchises we’ve come to rely on have run out of steam. I felt the same way about RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION. That was a series I didn’t mind, although it was never rocket science, and I at least found each sequel entertaining. If you have to sit through these movies, you at least want to enjoy yourself a little bit. But the new RESIDENT EVIL movie was so cynical and such an empty example of greed, that it pissed me off. There was absolutely no reason for that sequel to get made except to cash in, and a series I had liked a little bit finally ran out of steam and lost all reason to keep going. (I should have known better when the previous one ended right in the middle of the story, demanding that it “Be Continued.”)

I don’t feel as angry and cheated by PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4.

MA:  I agree.  I’m not angry about it either.

LS:  There are some plot points that push things forward (although not all that many), and lead character Alex is very likeable and you care about her. But overall, Part 4 is pretty flimsy compared to the other movies. I liked this series a lot. They’re not amazing works of art, but they’re fun. And I’ve come to rely on that. But this one really felt like they were phoning it in. Like they were just making a new movie to keep the franchise going. And we really didn’t get enough answers by the end to satisfy us.

What you do with a franchise like this is inject some new blood once in a while. The people who started the movies do not need to keep working on each one. Like Michael said, it’s obvious that these people run out of ideas and start repeating themselves.

If you bring in fresh people and maybe let a franchise go in a new direction, then there’s more of a chance that the audiences might actually feel surprised.  It’s a risk, but it’s better than wasting our time.

With PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4, I just think the filmmakers are admitting defeat. Either let someone new take a turn, and take a chance on actually improving on the concept and the series, or just end it here.

Because otherwise you’re just jerking us around and taking our money.

I really wanted to like this one, but I give PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 a rating of one and a half out of five knives, too.

MA: Wow, we agree on something.

LS: That’s a surprise in itself.

MA:  And I don’t think we’re alone in not liking this one.  I don’t know about the audience you saw the movie with, but the theater I was in, the audience was rather subdued.  There weren’t many comments until the last 10 minutes or so.

And when it did end, the woman in the row in front of me said, “That’s it?”  My sentiments exactly!

(Suddenly, a big glass chandelier above them crashes down on the floor, just missing them by inches)

MA: Yahh! I’m out of here.

LS: I think Toby is angry with the bad review.

(They run out of the house)

-END-

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 ~ one and a half knives!

L.L. Soares also gives PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 ~ one and a half knives!

2 Comments »

CHERNOBYL DIARIES (2012)

Posted in 2012, Animals Attack, Cannibals, Cinema Knife Fights, Doomed Tourists, Mutants! with tags , , , , , , , on May 28, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: CHERNOBYL DIARIES (2012)
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: A spooky, abandoned building at night. MICHAEL ARRUDA and L.L. SOARES explore, waving flashlights)

MA: And to think, I could be sitting at home, watching TV.

LS: Oh, come on. This is fun. Exploring abandoned cities.

(Suddenly, there’s a loud clicking)

MA: What’s that?

LS: Our Geiger counter! The radioactivity here is going through the roof!

MA: You still think this is fun?

LS: Sure I do!

MA: Well, I think we should get out of here. Those radiation levels are dangerous.

LS: But we’ve got a movie to review.

MA: And we couldn’t have done it somewhere safe?

LS: Of course not! We’re Cinema Knife Fighters. We don’t play it safe!

(There is a loud howl coming from one of the floors above them)

LS: What was that?

MA: I don’t want to find out. Why don’t you start our review, so we can get out of here.

LS: Okie doke.

Our movie this week is CHERNOBYL DIARIES, brought to us by director Bradley Parker. This is his first movie as director. Previously, Parker made his name as a visual effects guy on a variety of films including FIGHT CLUB (1999), the Vin Diesel action film xXx (2002) and LET ME IN (2010). And it shows. CHERNOBYL is visually interesting. But the person who is getting a lot of credit in the marketing campaign for this one is Oren Peli. He’s the guy behind the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies and also was one of the creators of the recent ABC series THE RIVER (which, unfortunately, didn’t last beyond its first, short season). Peli wrote the screenplay for CHERNOBYL DIAIRIES, based on a story idea by himself, Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke. Peli is also one of the producers. And, to be honest, this movie looks a lot like an Oren Peli movie, even though Parker directed.

MA: And it’s a neat idea for a horror movie. The story grabbed me right away, and I was more than willing to go along for the ride. I just wish it had been more thrilling.

LS: Like a lot of these kinds of movies, the story is pretty simple. A guy named Chris (Jesse McCartney), his girlfriend, Natalie (Olivia Dudley) and their good friend Amanda (Devin Kelley) are traveling around Europe and decide to pop in on Chris’s older brother, Paul (Jonathan Sadowski), who now lives in Kiev. The plan is that they will be going to Moscow to check out the sights, with Paul as their guide. But, Paul gets other ideas. After talking with his friend Uri (Dimitri Daitchenko), an ex-Russian military guy who now runs an “Extreme Tourism” travel agency, Paul suggests that instead of going to Moscow, they take a trip to Chernobyl instead.

For those who don’t know, Chernobyl was the site of a nuclear accident twenty five years ago, and the facility, as well as the nearby town, Pripyat, which was where the Chernobyl workers lived, have been abandoned since the incident. Uri offers them a chance to explore the deserted landscape, something he claims to only offer to special travelers. Of course, when the group agrees to it, they find out that they’re not so special, because another couple, Australian Michael (Nathan Phillips) and his new Norwegian wife, Zoe (Ingrid Bolso Berdal) is tagging along as well.

Uri takes the group of them into the heart of Pripyat, now a ghost town, after sneaking past some military check points. Pripyat has a very eerie quality to it as the young tourists explore its buildings. Uri tells them as long as they are not there for more than a few hours, they won’t be affected by the radiation (which has gone down to manageable levels over the years). And everything seems to go well, until they attempt to leave, and find out that someone or something has tampered with the van’s engine, and they are stuck here, in the middle of nowhere.

As the night goes on, things get more and more dangerous as animals, and other more formidable predators, come out when it’s dark, and the kids find themselves under attack.

(There is a loud crash.)

MA: What was that?

LS: How should I know? What am I, a mind reader?

(The door crashes open, and a large WINNIE THE POOH bear runs through the doorway.)

POOH: Oh, bother. I’m all out of radioactive honey, today. Where did I put my honey? Think, think, think.

LS: Can you think somewhere else? We’re reviewing a movie here.

POOH: I do believe I placed it next to Rabbit’s 8 foot long radioactive carrot. Yes, that’s where it is. (POOH skips by them right through a wall, leaving a huge Pooh-shaped hole in his wake.)

MA: Eight foot carrots? Oversized Pooh bears? We’ve got to get out of here!

LS: Keep your shirt on. We won’t be here long enough for any of this radiation to do any damage.

Where was I?

MA: The folks in the movie were under attack.

LS: Yes, but just who or what is this threat to their lives? And, with no way to contact the outside the world (cell phones don’t work, no one answers Uri’s walkie-talkie, and the nearest checkpoint is over 12 miles away—and, worst of all, NO ONE KNOWS THEY’RE THERE!), will they be able to get out of this place with their lives?

(A door crashes open again, and this time YOGI BEAR and BOO-BOO enter.)

YOGI: Okay, Boo-Boo, we’re almost there.

BOO-BOO: Yogi, I don’ t think we’re anywhere near Jellystone Park.

YOGI: The power of positive thinking, Boo-Boo. Follow me! (They exit through the Pooh shaped hole.)

LS: What’s with all the bears anyway?

MA: I guess bears live around here.  Don’t you remember the huge bear that nearly mauled the folks in the movie?

LS (whispers): Shhhh, I was playing dumb on purpose. I was hoping they’d be surprised.

MA: It’s so noisy here. Maybe we should go to another floor to continue this review? Or better yet, why not go outside?

(They enter another room.)

LS: Like Peli’s other films, I thought CHERNOBYL DIAIRIES did a good job of ratcheting up the suspense through most of the movie.

MA: Really? I thought the suspense was lacking in this one. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of suspenseful moments in CHERNOBYL DIARIES, but they weren’t as intense or as disturbing as I expected them to be.

LS: I like that just about anyone can die at any time. And even though Parker is directing, he uses a lot of Peli’s tricks, like having us focus on the main characters as they talk or argue, while strange things are sometimes happening in the background. With these movies, you have to pay attention to the background as well.

MA: Yes, be on the lookout for strange things happening in the background!

LS: The cast is pretty good. While no one here is a movie star, a couple of the cast members may be familiar to you, like Olivia Dudley, who recently appeared in the horror anthology film CHILLERAMA (2011); Nathan Phillips, who was backpacker Ben in the 2005 horror flick WOLF CREEK—another tale of tourism gone bad, and a favorite of mine—and SNAKES ON A PLANE (2006); and especially Jonathan Sadowski, who looked very familiar to me right away, and who was in the 2009 remake of FRIDAY THE 13th, but who was also the lead in the TV series $#*! MY DAD SAYS, with William Shatner.

MA: Yep, I liked the cast too, and that was one of the reasons this story worked so well for me, in spite of the fact that I didn’t find it as scary as I hoped. The characters in this movie are likeable. There wasn’t anyone I wanted to see become food for the pack of wild dogs that kept hounding them. Or the worse dangers…

I enjoyed Jonathan Sadowski a lot as Paul. I liked his take-charge on-the-edge personality, and I was grateful that he didn’t come off as a jerk, which I think is a testament both to Sadowski’s performance and Peli’s writing.

I also enjoyed Devin Kelley as a Amanda, and she made for a strong female lead. And I thought Nathan Phillips did a standout job as Michael, the Australian traveler. There was something very sincere and genuine about his performance, and I think the same can be said for all the actors in this movie. They come off as real people.

Again, a lot of the credit here for these characters should go to Oren Peli’s screenplay. The dialogue is excellent.

LS: Despite the fact that I thought the movie was effective and had a few nail-biting moments—

MA: Too few.

LS: —it’s also true that there were parts of this movie that reminded me a lot of the remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES (2006), especially the scenes in that movie that took place in a strange, abandoned town that had been once been the site of nuclear tests.

MA: Oh, absolutely! It’s THE HILLS HAVE EYES IN RUSSIA for sure.

(There is a knock at the door. A HILLS HAVE EYES mutant enters.)

MUTANT: Are you guys looking to rent an apartment here too?

LS: No! We’re trying to review a damn movie. Go away!

MUTANT (wanders back out into the hall): I hear the rates are very reasonable!

LS: Scram!

CHERNOBYL moves at a brisk pace, the characters seem to be constantly moving, and , as I said before, you can never be sure who will live, and who will die. And I liked the ending a lot. Yet, I did find myself feeling a little disappointed as the mysterious threat revealed itself.

MA: Same here.

LS: I was hoping for something a little more..well…surprising. In some ways, CHERNOBYL DIAIRIES really isn’t offering us anything we haven’t seen before, but it does it in a visually suspenseful, tension-filled way, that worked for me. And the location is great. I just wish there were a few more surprises. That said, I give it three out of five knives.

MA: I agree with everything you said, except I was a little more disappointed than you in both the ending and the intensity of the scares in this one.

I definitely liked the beginning of this movie. The premise caught my interest immediately, and you can’t go wrong with the setting, Chernobyl. I mean, this part of the film is extremely refreshing.

I liked the characters’ trek into Chernobyl, or Pripyat I guess, since that’s the actual town they travel to, and at this point the film has done an excellent job of setting the stage for the scary things to come.

When they find themselves stranded there overnight because their van won’t start, because it appears someone tampered with it, which in itself is creepy because no one else is supposed to be there, the suspense grows and at this point I was really enjoying this one.

But a funny thing happened along the way. I realized the thrills and chills here weren’t all that thrilling and chilling. Oh, they were okay, and some of the scenes were fun, but I didn’t exactly find them nail biters.

For example, at one point they’re searching the abandoned city when they come across a pack of very scary looking wild dogs, and these dogs start chasing them, and the folks run away. I’m thinking, “Don’t run!  You can’t outrun dogs! Hide or something!” But they run, and then I’m thinking, this isn’t going to turn out well. Someone’s going to become wild dog food in a few seconds. Brace yourself.

LS: I was thinking the same thing. You can’t outrun dogs, especially over a long expanse of woods like that…

MA: Now, I’m not going to give anything away, but this scene doesn’t exactly end in a flurry of nail biting seat squirming sequences. Again, the scene is okay, but there’s no need to look away, and there certainly weren’t any loud screams in the theater at this point.

LS: And I wish they’d shown us more about those cool mutant fish!

(A giant version of the three-eyed MUTANT FISH from the beginning credits of THE SIMPSONS pops up, standing upright on its tail fin)

MUTANT FISH: Me, too. Those fish were cool!

(MA and LS scream, and the MUTANT FISH scuttles away)

MA: The same can be said for several scenes when Paul and the others are searching through abandoned buildings. There is plenty of mild suspense here, but very few of these scenes jumped out at me as being masterful.

LS: And there were the usual scenes where characters go in to certain rooms and you’re like “Don’t go in there!” But in this case, it makes sense. They’re not just going into dangerous situations out of curiosity or because they’re dummies. They’re going to save members of their group who have been kidnapped. Although I don’t know if so many people would be this brave in real life!

MA: I did like the one sequence where Amanda gets separated momentarily from Paul and Michael, when they’re searching a building, and she’s trapped, hiding on her hands and knees from an unknown threat that is there in the room with her. I have to admit I was getting ready to nibble a nail during this scene.

I also didn’t like the ending. Compared to the rest of the movie, the ending isn’t anywhere near as creative. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before, and I think the writers dropped the ball here. It seemed a convenient simple way to wrap up an otherwise inspired storyline.

LS: I liked the ending. I admit, it’s not totally original, but it worked for me. It just seemed like the logical conclusion, after all that came before it.

MA: Logical, but a letdown.  This is definitely a case where the threat is more interesting when it’s unknown than at the end when it’s known.

CHERNOBYL DIARIES is a great concept, it takes full advantage of its excellent location, and it gives us likeable characters in a well-written storyline. However, it suffers from a mediocre execution and a disappointing resolution. After a refreshing set-up, it needed to have a much wilder, scarier, and intense second half, or at the very least something creative, but we get neither. Instead, CHERNOBYL DIARIES takes a path we’ve all seen before and doesn’t do anything new with it.

I enjoyed this one, but I didn’t love it. I give it two and a half knives.

So, now that we’re done, can we go home before I become a walking slab of radioactive bacon?

(There’s a loud SIZZLING noise)

LS: You do like to exaggerate. Radioactive bacon! And here I was thinking that for our next review we’d take an extreme tour to chase down tornadoes.

MA: Ha, ha! Good one! You can do that one solo!

(Suddenly, HOMER SIMPSON appears from out of the shadows, the guys scream!)

HOMER: D’oh! I didn’t mean to scare you guys. I just thought I should say something, since I’m a nuclear expert. You  two are completely safe here. So don’t worry at all. You will not get contaminated!

LS: Then why is the skin on your face sizzling?

HOMER: Ha ha! So’s yours! You two should look in a mirror. This is so funny! Hee hee.

MA:  Um, I’m not laughing!

(HOMER notices something in the corner)

HOMER: Is that a donut? (he wanders away from the guys)

LS: I admit, it looks grim, but we’ll find our way out of here.

(There is a howl and a loud crash from the floor above them.)

MA: All right, for one last time. What is that?

(Suddenly, the ceiling is ripped away, and a huge, radioactive PORKY PIG peers down menacingly at them.)

MA: Whoa! How’s that for some radioactive bacon?

LS: I guess you weren’t exaggerating after all!

MA: Let’s get out of here!

LS: I think I see the exit. Quick, run this way!!

(MA & LS flee, as PORKY PIG looks at the camera and shrugs.)

PORKY PIG: I was only going to say, “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!”

(HOMER SIMPSON comes up from behind PORKY)

HOMER: Would you like to share a donut? (sniffs) Someone’s cooking bacon! Yummy.

—END—

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives CHERNOBYL DIAIRIES ~ two and a half knives!

LL Soares gives CHERNOBYL DIAIRIES~three knives.

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INSIDIOUS

Posted in 2011, Cinema Knife Fights, Ghost Movies, Haunted Houses, Paranormal with tags , , , , , , , , , , on April 4, 2011 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: INSIDIOUS
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

L

(The Scene: The interior of a creepy old house. MICHAEL ARRUDA and L.L. SOARES are sitting around a table in the living room. The lights are off. An old MEDIUM sits between them, with her eyes closed. They are all holding hands).

MA: You know this is a complete waste of time.

LS: Shhh, I want to hear her talk mumbo-jumbo!

MEDIUM: Oh mumbo jumbo!

LS (chuckles): I love that!

MA: Oh, hi folks. We’re here in the middle of this séance, when we should be reviewing the new haunted house movie, INSIDIOUS because L.L. wants to— tell me again why we’re doing this?

LS: We’re here to contact the spirits and tell them we’re sick of haunted house movies!

MA: We’re sick of bad ones, anyway.

MEDIUM: Sorry guys, I’m getting a busy tone. We’ll have to try again later.

LS: We need a new service provider.

MA: Good. That means we have time to do our review.

LS (grimaces): Oh, goody!

MA: Do you want to start this one?

LS: Sure. INSIDIOUS is the new movie by James Wan, the guy who gave us the first SAW movie (2004), the evil dummy movie DEAD SILENCE (2007), which we’re bound to review here eventually, as well as DEATH SENTENCE (also 2007).

As this one starts out, I felt like I’d seen it before. And I did. Last time, it was called PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2007). These kinds of movies have become a cliché already. We start out with a normal-looking family. Then weird things start to happen. Things get moved around. The characters hear noises and see strange things. And eventually, they decide to call for help.

MA: Even the interior of the house looks the same.  I thought I was watching PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 (2010) all over again, the houses looked so similar.

However, I have to say here that the scares worked better in INSIDIOUS than in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 because stuff actually happens.  In PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2, there’d be a creepy set-up, but then nothing would happen, it’d be a false alarm or something, and we’d wait until the next night, when the process would repeat itself.  It was a process I grew tired of very quickly.  But here, in INSIDIOUS, we get faces in windows, strange voices, and spirits and demons.  There’s definitely more going on here, at least at the beginning of this one.

LS: And no hand-held documentary-style camera this time. I thought that was a pleasant surprise. This one actually looks like a real movie!

Okay, so the family consists of John Lambert, (Patrick Wilson, who we last saw in WATCHMEN (2009) and THE A-TEAM (2010) ), his wife Renai (Rose Byrne from 28 WEEKS LATER (2007) and KNOWING (2009)) and their kids: two sons and a baby daughter. When the family moves into a new house, strange things start to happen, and Renai begins to believe the house is haunted. One of their sons, Dalton (Ty Simpkins) is playing in the attic when he falls and hurts himself. He doesn’t seem to be hurt very badly, but by the next day, he has fallen into what appears to be a coma. The doctors are completely baffled. When weird stuff continues to happen, including strange people somehow getting into the house, despite locked doors and home alarm systems, Renai finally convinces Josh it’s time to move.

They move to another house, but soon afterwards, strange things start happening again. They just can’t seem to catch a break!

In desperation, Renai calls first a priest and then Josh’s mother, Lorraine Lambert (Barbara Hershey, who we last saw as the controlling mother in last year’s BLACK SWAN), who completely believes her daughter-in-law, suggests they call in an old friend of hers, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye, who was in everything from the original A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) to SNAKES ON A PLANE (2006)). Elise is a professional medium and sends two of her investigators to check out the house first, Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Leigh Whannell, who also wrote the script), who confirm there really is something supernatural going on.

I felt that once Elise showed up, the movie finally started to get interesting.

MA (laughs):  I completely disagree.  I thought the movie got off to a terrific start but slowed dramatically once Elise and her friends entered the scene.

LS:  What do you know?  Up until Elise shows up, it was just your garden-variety haunted house movie.

MA:  Well, in terms of story, yeah.  It was nothing we haven’t seen before, but I thought the scares were really working here.  I haven’t had this much fun at a horror movie with the audience screaming in a long time as I did during the first half of INSIDIOUS.  People were shouting out, and the guy in front of me had cried out so much that half way through he yelled, “No more haunted houses me for me!  I can’t take it!”

LS:  I’m thinking the same thing.  But for a different reason.

But seriously, who are you seeing these movies with? A troop of girl scouts?

MA:  No, the row in front of me was a group of college-aged guys, and they were screaming like crazy, and there were a couple of women behind me who cried out every time a face appeared in a window.  The theater was packed, which was a good thing, and the crowd was really into it.

During some movies I’m thinking what the heck are these people screaming at?  But here I thought the scares really worked.  There was the strange whisper on the baby monitor in the middle of the night which suddenly became a loud shout.  I loved the faces in the window and the red faced demon I thought was really cool-looking, even if he did remind me a little bit of Darth Maul from STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999).

LS: Exactly! I knew he reminded me of something.

MA: And I absolutely loved the scene where the mom wakes up and sees and hears the long haired fiend pacing on the balcony outside her window and suddenly without warning he’s inside the bedroom with her.

LS: He was a big, long-haired guy who reminded me totally of Peter Steele from the group Type O Negative. He died not too long ago, so he could have been the ghost!

And don’t forget the blood handprint on Dalton’s sheets!

MA: I liked that, too.

During the first half of this movie, the scares were frequent and they were real.  I loved the first half.  I thought director James Wan did a terrific job setting this one up, giving it legitimate scares and a very stylish look.

However, as is the case with so many movies these days, the film goes downhill during its second half, as soon as the paranormal investigators arrive on the scene.  The two men, Tucker and Specs, are silly geeks and they provide comic relief which, after such a strong frightening opening, seems way out of place here.  The humor is almost jarring.  It would have been like the classic HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), after Christopher Lee scares the crap out of everyone during the movie’s first half as Dracula, instead of having Peter Cushing arriving onto the scene as Van Helsing you get Jerry Lewis!

LS: Yeah, I don’t think they were all that necessary here. But I’m curious—is everything with you an old Hammer movie? How about a more current comparison. Some of our readers probably have no idea what you’re talking about!

MA: Which is exactly why I talk about the old movies, so people today don’t forget them.  When I was a kid watching horror movies in the 1970s, I loved reading about the older movies.

But, anyway, more recently, imagine in THE WOLFMAN (2010) having the Scotland Yard inspector who arrives late in the game to hunt the werewolf played by Steve Carrell.  It just doesn’t fit.  Same with the geeky guys in this one.

LS: That’s better.

MA: Lin Shaye is fine as the chief investigator Elise Rainier, but at this point the movie gets bogged down in a silly narrative that I didn’t buy for a second, ridiculous stuff about wandering spirits, humans with the ability to leave their bodies and travel to a place called the Further. At this point the dialogue gets really dumb.  It all starts to sound like a 1980s Steven Spielberg movie—the only thing missing is the sugary sweet John Williams music.

When INSIDIOUS was scaring the crap out of the audience during its first half, it was a rockin’ horror movie, but once it started to explain things, it became silly and contrived.  One of the reasons the first half was so scary was it was chock full of spirits and demons.  I wish as the movie had gone on, it could have remained focused on these spirits and demons and let them become a bigger part of the story.  Let the demons continue to scare!  It would have been a much scarier movie.

LS:  I liked the second half.

Elise finally starts giving us answers. Everything from the fact that whatever these spirits are, they aren’t haunting the house, but something else, and she also fills in the blanks about events in the past that led up to all this, including some revelations from Josh’s mom. We suddenly become privy to everything from astral projects to red-faced demons, to other planes of existence.

MA:  All of which comes off as contrived and forced. INSIDIOUS is a movie that would have been better without these elaborate explanations.

MEDIUM (in the background): Can you hear me now?

LS:  I liked Elise, but, no matter how good a character she was, she isn’t half as cool as the dwarf lady from POLTERGIEST (1982).

MA: Do you have to mention POLTERGIEST?  I hate that movie.  It’s one of those 1980s Spielberg produced movies I was just talking about.  Besides, I thought you hated it too?

LS: I do, but that creepy dwarf lady is the best thing in it. Hell, the ONLY good thing in it.

It was at this point that INSIDIOUS finally began to show some originality. Nothing ground-breaking, mind you. This movie isn’t quite exactly a breath of fresh air. But it at least takes us in some interesting directions.

MA:  Really?  A place called the Further is an interesting direction? I didn’t buy this direction at all.  I half-expected to see HELLBOY roaming through the kitchen in search of a beer.  It was just too much exposition at this point, and not enough raw scares, which we had in the first half.

(HELLBOY suddenly enters the room from the kitchen)

HELLBOY: You guys got any beer? I ran out of Tecate.

LS: Go away, we’re reviewing a movie here.

HELLBOY: I hate you guys! (leaves in a huff)

LS:  Despite some interesting twists toward the end, though, I can’t recommend INSIDIOUS very highly. I mean, the acting and direction are fine, I’m actually a fan of director James Wan, even if I don’t think he’s made a really great movie yet. But we’ve seen most of this before. And when things start to show a glimmer of creativity, it’s not enough to save it.

MA:  I completely disagree with your take on this one.  I loved the first half but not the second half.

I loved the job director James Wan did during the first half of this movie.  I’d give him an A+ for direction.  He was pushing all the right buttons. The movie looks fantastic, and during the first 45 minutes or so, it’s absolutely full of fun scares.  And within the confines of a PG-13 rating, he wasn’t going to be able to gross people out, which meant he’d have to be creative with his scares, and he was.  Even during the second half, Wan still was doing some neat things with the camera.

However, as much as I liked the direction, I didn’t like the screenplay by Leigh Whannell all that much.  He completely loses me in the second half with an unconvincing narrative and misplaced comic relief.  He had me in the first half.

Yet, even during the strong opening, there were some problems.  I thought the mom, Renai, was slow to freak out.  The night she hears the whispers on the baby monitor, the whispers actually become a clearly audible booming loud shout from an obviously demonic sounding voice, and yet the next day she calmly says to her husband, “Something strange happened last night.  I thought I heard someone in the baby’s room.”

Thought you heard? Lady, you need to get your ears checked!

LS: I dunno, the husband had a reasonable explanation – that it might have been interference or a crossed signal from another nearby house. Maybe someone was playing a joke on her.

MA: Some joke. Who’s their neighbor?  Satan?

Also, I don’t know what kind of a teacher the husband Josh is supposed to be, as it wasn’t made clear, but it looked like he was a school teacher, and they’re living in an extremely fancy house?  Not very realistic, especially in this day and age when funding for public schools is being cut left and right, and salaries are being frozen.

I thought the acting was fine.  Patrick Wilson was fine as the dad, even though he’s absent from most of the film’s scary first half, as he’s always working late.  I thought Rose Byrne was excellent as the mom, and I thought she gave the best performance in the film. Not that it was Oscar-worthy or anything, but she was very good.

I liked her character a lot, better than her husband, and I wish the movie had made her the central character involved in rescuing their son, rather than the dad.

MEDIUM (in the background): Can you hear me now?

MA: Towards the end, the scenes inside the Further were dark, foggy, and very atmospheric.

LS: Are you serious? It looks like someone just turned on a fog machine! It would have been nice if the Further actually looked like another world; if they’d only taken the time to really give us something fascinating and other-worldly.

MA: Well, there were a few scary things lurking inside that fog.

However, I though the ending of the movie was stupid and abrupt, and it did nothing for me.

All in all, my favorite part of INSIDIOUS was the work of director James Wan.  In fact, to me, if there’s a reason to see INSIDIOUS, that’s it:  Wan does a terrific job at the helm, and he gives the movie lots of scares during its first half before the film loses steam, getting bogged down in lots of contrived exposition.

But based on the strength of its first half, which I found a lot of fun and very scary, I’m giving it two and a half knives.

LS: Really? I give it one and a half knives.

MEDIUM: Are you two done blathering yet? I want to get back to contacting the spirits.

LS: Yeah, yeah. Keep your pants on.

One correction I have to make to Michael’s comments is that this movie isn’t very scary. A lot of the “scares” are downright silly. Including one scene where a young boy dressed in an outfit from the 1920s (oversized cap and coat) runs around the house and Renai chases him. There is nothing scary about this kid, and yet it’s all played out as if the director felt it was a very tense scene. Also, that demon with a bright red face and a forked tongue is meant to be scary, but it’s not. It looked kind of silly, even if there was a cool effect later on as it climbs walls.

MA:  I disagree completely.  Again, I’m giving credit to director Wan here.  He made these scenes scary.  It’s a very stylish first half.

LS: You really thought that scene with the little kid running around the house was scary? He didn’t even have a monster face or anything. He was just a kid playing hide and seek. I guess it doesn’t take much to scare you.

MA:  When he leaps out of the closet unexpectedly, yeah, that was scary.

LS (laughs):  Oh well. Will little Dalton ever wake up from his coma? Will the Lamberts ever be able to move to a house that isn’t haunted? For the answers to these questions and more, you’ve got to go see INSIDIOUS for yourself, although you may want to wait until you can rent it on Netflix.

MEDIUM:  Shh!  I hear a voice. It’s saying— it’s saying—.

LS:  Yes?  What’s it saying?

MEDIUM:  It’s saying “Where’s the beef?”

MA:  Where’s the beef?  You must have tapped into that old lady from the Wendy’s commercials from the 1980s.

MEDIUM:  There’s more!  I hear—John Williams music playing in the background.  I see a strange-looking dwarf lady and she’s saying something about the light.

MA:  Uh-oh.

LS:  Let’s get out of here!

MA:  Okay, folks, we’ll see you next week!

MEDIUM:  And there’s a red-faced demon.  He’s carrying a light saber—.

(MA & LS flee.)

—END—

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


Michael Arruda gives INSIDIOUS - two and a half knives!

L.L. Soares gives INSIDIOUS - one and a half knives!

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Cinema Knife Fight – On the Radio

Posted in 2010, Paranormal with tags , , , , on January 4, 2010 by knifefighter

Tonight at 10pm EST, Michael Arruda and LL Soares will be on the GHOSTMAN AND DEMON HUNTER radio show to discuss horror movies. Yep, the Cinema Knife Fight guys bring the column to the radio.

The guys who do this show also have a cable TV show on the A&E Channel called Extreme Paranormal, so they supposedly have a big following. And this will introduce us to a whole new audience.

But don’t worry if you miss it. The show will be archived and will be posted on places like iTunes.

Come support your favorite movie reviewers! And have a few laughs along the way.

As always, thanks for your support!

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THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE

Posted in 2008, Cinema Knife Fights, TV Show Movies with tags , , , , , , , , on December 23, 2009 by knifefighter

(And now, a review of quite possibly the worst movie of 2008 – LS)

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE
By Michael Arruda and L. L. Soares


(SCENE: We come upon L.L. SOARES digging a ditch in a cemetery. There are snow drifts and the earth is hard with frost. MICHAEL ARRUDA shows up to give him a hand.)

MA: Who’d you kill this time?

LS: No one yet. I’m trying to bury the X-FILES.

MA:  You mean X-FILES 2?

LS: No, the whole franchise, and it’s not called X-FILES 2. That would be too easy. Instead it’s called THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE. As if that old chestnut of a slogan from the TV show wasn’t tired enough, now they have to use it in a movie title.

MA: What’s wrong with that?  I want to believe too. I want to believe that the truth is out there, that these things we write about are real on some level. You hear me? I want to believe, brothers and sisters! I— sorry,  I got carried away.

LS:  I think I’ll dig a second ditch.

MA:  But first, we have a review to do.

LS (groans): The thought of reliving this movie gives me the creeps.

MA:  Excellent.

LS: It’s something like ten years after the events of the first X-FILES movie. Since then, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) has left the FBI to become a full-fledged medical doctor at a Catholic hospital. Her former partner, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), has gone into a life of seclusion and has even grown a mountain-man beard.

MA:  I liked the beard. He should have kept it throughout the movie. It would have given the film an identity it lacked.

LS: This movie needed a lot more than some lame beard to give it an identity. It needed a totally different script!

Mulder spends his days clipping articles about strange phenomena out of the newspapers. On his wall is the old poster of a flying saucer and the words “I Want to Believe” from the TV show (sound familiar?)

An FBI agent goes missing, and the Bureau is using a psychic to find her, named Father Joseph Crissman (played by Billy Connolly). Father Crissman is actually an ex-priest who was convicted of pedophilia, but somehow the Bureau trusts this guy enough to follow his “visions.” So far, he’s led them to several severed limbs – evidence of some bizarre serial crime – but no sign of the missing agent yet.

Special Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) asks Mulder to come back to the FBI. She wants him to check out the credibility of the priest’s visions, and also use his past experience in bizarre cases to help track down the missing agent. Of course, to get in touch with Mulder, the Bureau has to first contact Scully, who is one of the few people who know his whereabouts.

Once Mulder and Scully get involved in the case, it goes from lame to plain old boring, as Father Crissman continues to have visions that bring them closer and closer to solving the mystery. Unfortunately, the mystery itself, as it unfolds before us, isn’t very interesting.

A subplot involving a dying child that Scully is trying to save in the hospital seems rather unnecessary as well, and while the fight to keep someone alive should be compelling, the truth is, it isn’t here.

(A PRIEST with long white hair stumbles onto the scene, and approaches MA and LS).

PRIEST:  It’s here. It’s here. She’s alive. My visions tell me she’s here. I see—.

(LS hits the priest over the head with his shovel with a loud CLANK! knocking him out cold)

LS:  Stars. That’s what you see now.

MA:  You know, I do see something down here. (Drops to hands and knees and starts digging in snow.)

LS:  I absolutely hated this movie, which surprised me, because I was a big fan of the television show when it aired on Fox from 1993 to 2002. Well, I was a fan of most of it. The last few seasons were pretty much a waste of time, and the first X-FILES film was mediocre at best. But it was a masterpiece compared to this movie.

Which is all sad, because there was a point when it was one of the best shows on television.

The problem was that the first film dealt with the whole alien conspiracy storyline that got more and more muddled on the TV series as it developed. The movie ended up asking more questions than it answered. But the best shows were always the ones that were self-contained cases rather than the conspiracy storyline, and creator/director Chris Carter seems to understand that this time around, and has dropped the complex alien storyline here in order to give us a story of tormented psychics, weird experiments, and severed limbs.

Too bad that the new film not only seems like a bad episode of the TV show – it’s also a  LONG episode –as in the length of a feature-length film, which it claims to be.

I actually had a hard time watching this one. I just got more and more restless as it went on, and wished I was anywhere but in a movie theater watching a lame X-FILES sequel. I mean, at this point, what is the audience for this thing? A lot of fans gave up on the show years ago, when it dropped in quality. And a lot of audience members who didn’t watch the show will not get any new interest in it based on this film.

The whole thing was just dismal. I WANT TO BELIEVE that I didn’t spend $10 to see this useless crap, but unfortunately, I did!

MA:  I found it!  I found a body part! (Lifts the severed head of an alien from the snow). Too bad this wasn’t in the movie. (Tosses head away and wipes green blood from his hands onto his clothes).

No surprises here. I didn’t like this movie either.

What’s interesting is that unlike you, I was not a fan of the X-FILES TV show. I caught one or two episodes here and there over the years, but I never watched it regularly, so I’m coming from the perspective of someone who didn’t have knowledge of the show.

But the one good thing about this movie is that you don’t need knowledge of the show to understand the movie. As you said, it’s a stand-alone plot. But, as you also said, it’s a lame and dull plot, and I agree with you on both those points. Talk about going for the non-dramatic!  This film was about as compelling as a snowflake. I mean, you have a story of a possible serial killing, and yet we don’t get to know the victims, nor do we know anything about the villains until the mystery is revealed, and even then, they’re not fleshed out. There’s simply no emotional connection here, other than to Mulder and Scully, but that doesn’t make for a very balanced movie.

Still, I enjoyed the two leads, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, and I thought they were both very good in this movie, as you would expect. They were believable, as they should be, having played these roles for so many years.

LS: I thought Mulder and Scully’s scenes together were incredibly flat for two characters who were once lovers. It’s not clear what their relationship is now, but they’re not married, and they had a child together who died.

I thought they did a good job showing the pain between them, the lingering ache of losing a child. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe there was ever any passion between these two characters. Watching them was like watching the sex lives of robots.

MA:  I believed that they genuinely liked each other and missed each other. That was expressed quite clearly to me, but no, based upon what I saw of them in this movie, I wouldn’t categorize them as passionate. The lack of passion didn’t bother me though. I didn’t think this was supposed to be a love story.

I also really enjoyed Billy Connolly’s performance as the psychic priest. His performance as a convicted pedophile generated the right amount of anger, disgust, and most difficult of all, sympathy. It wasn’t a knockout performance by any means, but in an otherwise stale movie, it added some spice.

LS: I actually like Billy Connolly. However, I thought his character was rather repellent, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a movie – characters don’t have to be likable to be compelling – but despite the movie’s attempts to make him sympathetic, I didn’t find myself moved to care very much about him. I also thought it was interesting how he’s a major presence for most of the movie and then when he dies, it is completely anti-climatic (has nothing to do with the story) and happens off-screen. Like the script just lost interest in him.

(The COWARDLY LION runs up to them, wringing his hands)

LION: I do believe in spooks! I do believe in spooks!

LS: Hey, you already “believe.” I bet you liked this X-FILES movie!

LION: I dunno. I was too scared to watch it!

MA:  Boo.

(LION runs away in fright)

LS:  Bully.

MA:  At least I didn’t hit him with a shovel.

I actually was drawn into the mystery during the first half of this movie. I wasn’t sure where it was going to go, and it was just mysterious enough to hold my interest. There were missing women, severed body parts, and visions from a weirdo priest. For a while there, it was fairly interesting.  I even thought, “You know what, I should check out the original episodes of the show on DVD to see what I missed all those years ago,” which I bet is exactly what writer/director Chris Carter was aiming for when he decided to make this movie.

But once the mystery is revealed, and we know what this film is about, it’s a letdown as it just isn’t that compelling, scary, or even all that interesting. Those thoughts I had about checking out the original series?  Pushed aside. I’ll finish the dozen or so series I’m watching right now first.

LS: You should still check out the early episodes at some point, to see how all of this actually WORKED at one point. But this franchise long ago passed its expiration date.

MA: THE X-FILES:  I WANT TO BELIEVE does in fact play like an elongated TV episode, and the sad part is, it’s not even a very good episode. It’s largely forgettable, in terms of plot. It also doesn’t make a very good movie, as there’s nothing cinematic about it. The key chase scene in the movie, for example, should have been a high point, a major source of excitement and suspense, but it falls flat. It’s dark, hard to see, and for a chase scene, rather slow. For me, that was the beginning of the end, because it was also around this time that answers started being revealed, and they where ho-hum revelations at best.

I also agree with you about the subplot about the dying boy. You know, I liked this plot for a while, and I felt for the boy, and Scully’s determination to save him I found admirable, but in terms of this movie, so what?  There wasn’t a strong enough tie-in to the main plot.

LS: The boy was supposed to be a surrogate for Scully’s child who died. It was supposed to make us feel something. But I just found this storyline forced and boring. Where it should have been poignant, it just hung there.

MA: Watching this movie was like eating a slice of white bread when you were expecting a hearty slice of rye.

LS: White bread would be a treat. This movie is like eating paper.

MA: You’d think that after a 10 year hiatus, writer/director Chris Carter would have come up with something more compelling.

LS: Definitely. For a while there, it was like Carter fell off the face of the earth, which is bizarre, since at the peak of the X-FILES show, he was being touted as a friggin genius. I guess in his case, genius is a fleeting thing. After all these years, he should have had a script that could knock us out. But this is a complete dud.

And it’s funny how the die-hard fans who still exist now seem kind of sad. There were people in the audience I saw this with who cheered the first time the X-FILES theme was played. They cheered the first time Scully and Mulder came onscreen. Even after two bad final TV seasons and a lame movie spin-off, these people still thought they were going to see the show returned to its former glory. And Carter keeps delivering low-quality product.

MA: I did enjoy the George W. Bush gag very much, and it was fun to see a movie with snow at this time of year, but that’s about it.

LS: George W. gags are a dime a dozen and have reached the saturation point where they just make me cringe. But the fact they also made fun of FBI founder (and total whacko) J. Edgar Hoover redeemed the joke.

MA:  Saturation point?  What planet are you living on?

THE X-FILES:  I WANT TO BELIEVE is about as intriguing as an afternoon nap. Perhaps a better title for this yawn fest should have been, THE X-FILES:  I WANT TO SLEEP.

LS (stops digging and raises his head to reveal he is crying blood): I just want them to stop making these films. I want to believe that I’m finally free of bad X-FILES movies!

MA (also begins to cry):  I want to believe that a man can fly!

(Suddenly, a full orchestration of John Williams’s SUPERMAN theme is heard, and Superman flies by above them.)

MA:  Thank you. I do believe!  I do believe!

(LS hits MA over the head with his shovel with a loud CLANG!, knocking MA into the ditch.)

LS:  I do believe this review is over.

MA (unseen):  There’s something else down here.

VOICE:  Phone home.

LS: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

—END—

They deserved better.

(Originally published on Fear Zone on 7/27/08)

© Copyright 2008 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

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PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

Posted in 2009, LL Soares Reviews, Paranormal with tags , , , , on November 15, 2009 by knifefighter

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
(Solo Movie Review by L.L. Soares)

Kate and Micah move into their first house together. They’re engaged and in love, and it’s an exciting time. Too bad an unseen demonic force has decided to haunt their house.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is filmed much like a faux documentary – a la THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, except instead of showing us incredibly annoying kids running through the woods, the characters in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY are at least likable enough.  I have to admit, I enjoyed BLAIR WITCH the first time I saw it. But I am unable to watch it again. When I tried to sit through it a second time, I was so focused on how irritating the characters were (especially the incredibly whiny Heather) that I couldn’t get into the story. So it’s one of those movies that only works for me once. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, however, is something I could easily sit through again.

The movie begins with Micah setting up a video camera to film what is going on in the house. The camera appears to be on 24/7 (especially when they’re sleeping, so they can watch it back the next day and see if anything weird was going on).  At first, they think the house might be haunted by a ghost, and call in a ghost expert. But the guy tells them he is sure it’s not a ghost, and they should contact a colleague of his who specializes in demonology.

While Kate believes something supernatural is going on, Micah is skeptical. He wants to solve the riddle himself, and thinks the camera is the way to do that.

As things get stranger and stranger, we get sucked into their story. Clearly something is very wrong. And the movie builds on the suspense and scares as it goes along.

I guess I’m a jaded old guy, because I didn’t find it that scary, but clearly I was alone in that. Several audience members screamed out loud when I saw it. I did find it tense and engrossing, though, as you look forward to see what happens next. And it’s got a really good ending.

This was one of those rare movies that almost slid totally under my radar. When it first came out, I hadn’t heard anything about it. Supposedly, it was a hit at the Slamdance Film Festival early this year (an indie alternative to the more mainstream Sundance festival), and it didn’t get a lot of hype before its release. The title doesn’t help, either. “Paranormal Activity” sounds really generic, like a bad reality show on the SyFy channel. So I really had no intention of seeing it at first. But several friends of mine kept telling me how good it was, and I had to check it out for myself. In the meantime, it has grown into a cult phenomenon. This small, indie flick has even made it to number one at the box office this past weekend, beating out standard Hollywood fare like SAW VI.

It’s the little movie that could. And it’s actually a pretty good flick.

Check it out.

(Note: I recently saw it again with a friend, and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY held up pretty good the second time around)

© Copyright 2009 by L.L. Soares


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