Predator 2 (1990)

You'd think it would be really easy to make a Predator sequel. I mean, the first one wasn't exactly the stuff of geniuses – you take a bunch of musclebound meatheads, stick 'em in the jungle and watch them get killed off by a sometimes-invisible alien. I had never seen this one, so I was like, oh, it'll probably be more or less the same, right? Right?

RIGHT?!

Nooooooo.

Director: Stephen Hopkins

Starring: Danny Glover, Gary Busey

IMDb

We start this one off with some news reports detailing the dystopian future we all have to look forward to: in 1997, apparently voodoo gang members rule Los Angeles and the police are helpless to stop the constant gunfire and gang warring going on. You read that right, yes – voodoo gang members.

I...just can't even comprehend what kind of bungled thought process went into THAT one – hey, let's make a predator sequel! Cool, what ideas do you have? Well, I thought I'd add in some voodoo gang members in a dystopian future landscape to really exemplify what the Predator is all about and...hey, why are you running for the door? Come back!

Well that's what should've happened. Also, yes, 1997. I do remember the violent gang wars that ruined LA at that time – what a fiasco. And to think all we have to worry about these days are lesser issues like ISIS and the economy and shit. We have it easy!

So apparently our main character is Danny Glover, playing a horrible actor. Or is that not a role at all? There isn't a lot to say about the first twenty minutes or so, as much of it is just a haphazard dive into gratuitous shooting and violence. This isn't necessarily bad, but it's tough to get invested in a film that doesn't seem to give two shits about actually introducing you to any of its characters in the least – instead it's just “Hey! Look at how much violent shit we can put in!”

The gunfire and the cars getting blown up have more character development than the actual characters.

Although there is one guy who we'll rememeber, though mostly for cocaine induced reasons:

Well that's how everyone on set got through making this thing, anyway.

This whole thing goes to shit when the Predator shows up and slaughters most of the gang members. The last guy, Mr. Cocaine over there, is left to jump off a building when he sees the Predator coming for him. This surprises exactly nobody until they notice the little detail of the one other guy in the building who was randomly chosen to be strung up like cattle with his heart cut out.

One of Glover's guys, Danny, goes off by himself and ends up getting killed. Glover gets shit for messing up the operation back at the base, because they weren't supposed to go in the building at all, and apparently he has a history of not obeying orders.

Astonishing; a movie cop that doesn't obey orders? What's next, a hot chick that needs to be saved from a villain twirling a mustache? Whatever will you do next to buck the system and fight against cliché, movie? I'm just on the edge of my seat.

We also get introduced to some other characters, like Gary Busey playing some hard ass special ops guy trying to take over this whole thing as his own. But really his job just seems to be showing off that gap between his front teeth.

Then there's Bill Paxton, who loves to tell wacky stories at crime scenes, because that's how a good cop acts, you know. This character is a constant annoyance on screen and there's really nothing about him that I enjoy.

While that's going on, the Predator is busy killing off a bunch of the Voodoo gang members in some condominium. The cops come and investigate, finding a little spearhead thingy, which Glover and his sidekicks take to some white-haired scientist lady who I think has been locked in a room for seven years with no way out:

Hi, character invented for no purpose but to dole out exposition like a Blackjack dealer!

The lady looks at the spearhead, proclaims she's completely baffled by it because it has no metals known to the periodic table, then just shrugs and lets the cops take it out with them again. You know, no point in actually researching that shit; just let them take it out with them and never bring it up again, like any good scientist is wont to do. Brilliant work, lady.

Then we get more action when a bunch of guys on some train are harassing some women when the entire train whips out guns, because this whole thing is really just the NRA's wet dream fantasy:

The Predator was apparently just waiting for this opportunity, as he comes down and slaughters most of the people on the train. The cops get there, and we see the movie's fetish for scenes where people wander around in the dark for a while before something jumps out and scares them, which is NEVER something overdone in these kinds of movies!

Run! The Invisible Man has gone INSANE!

Fortunately Paxton gets killed off in this scene, which raises the movie up a notch for me personally, as I was about to claw out my own ear drums if I had to listen to another scene of him telling jokes in the middle of a crime scene.

DIE!!!

Like clockwork, Glover gets chewed out back at the station and it's revealed he has a history of being psychologically unstable and violent, yet has been on the force for a jawdropping 18 YEARS. Are you shitting me? In the real world he would have been fired and then gone through rehab twice in that time! 18 years? Were they really that short on people? What did their other options look like?

Oh. Oh, I see. Well THAT I understand - carry on, then.

Anyway, Glover then immediately goes out and violently confronts Busey, which I'm sure will really change the higher-ups' outlook that you're some violent, crazy madman...oh wait, no, it really won't.

Oh, the guy with a history of psychotic angry breakdowns in public just did the same thing again after an 18-year career of the same shit over and over? OK, you can stay on the force.

While Glover is visiting his buddy's grave, the Predator stalks him because he has that arrowhead thing, or something like that – this scene is just an excuse for the Predator to have a scene where he runs into a little boy with a gun. C'mon; are we really that bereft for ideas that we're putting a “monster runs into little kid” scene in this shit? Is that the level we've stooped to?

Be careful, kid; you could get expelled from school for having a toy gun these days. Gotta appease the overreaction culture!

Then we get an interminable number of fight scenes which pretty much go like this: people wander around in the dark, then the Predator reveals itself, and we get a decent splurt of actual action. These scenes aren't bad, but they certainly aren't good enough to rival the intensity of the first film. I guess the most pressing thing going on is that Busey and his Special Ops idiots have figured out how to detect the Predator with some kind of thermonuclear detector or something.

Great! How will that wo---oh, I forgot, having any characters be competent would just be silly. Instead the losers and fuckups are the only ones who can survive in a movie like this!

He died as he lived, with his mouth open.

Glover and the Predator have a showdown where Glover takes off his mask and the Predator does his whole "repeat a line from earlier in the movie" thing like in the first one. Only unlike that movie, this time it's a really dumb, lame line that mostly embarrasses me for the makers of this movie. Are you ready for this? The Predator, this ultra badass alien super-warrior, utters this line: "Shit happens!"

Fuckin' seriously? THAT was the best you could come up with, writers? "Shit happens" was the summation of your creative wit? On the one hand, it doesn't even make sense; how does that have anything to do with the situation at hand? On the other, at least it kinda sums up the making of this movie. Shit does happen. As is quite evident here.

You'd think THIS would be the end of the movie, but no, there's still 30 minutes left. 30 minutes? How? What more do you really have to do with this story? Are we going to have the all-important scene where the Predator talks to his therapist about how his mother never loved him and that's why he turns invisible and kills people on other planets?

What about the scene where the Predator helps his best buddy set up a wedding reception? Is that one included?

I'm just asking out of curiosity, as really, this thing is dragging on like a party thrown by your great aunt where she tries to get you to play Parcheesi with your redneck hick cousins who you haven't seen since you were in diapers because oh, it'll be like the old days, except she ignores the crushing reality that the reason you haven't come over in a decade and a half is exactly because of this, and because she also sneaks in snide racist comments she doesn't realize are outdated and kind of offensive and you just don't want to get mixed up in that kind of thing anymore, so you just stick to calling her twice a year on Christmas and birthdays from now on.

What? Oh, where was I? Oh yeah. 30 minutes left after all this? Nobody was around in the editing room nodding off to sleep going “hey, maybe we need to cut this thing down by at least 20 minutes”? I mean that's really all you're doing at this point – creating a cure for insomnia.

But hey, it's not all a loss...we do get the scene where he scares an old lady in the bathroom.

The Predator tries heroin...his experimental days...

In the alternate ending, the Predator is killed by an old lady with a broom. This ending was eventually rejected after test audiences thought it was too realistic.

Because yes, this movie was so desperate it needed to include both the 'little kid' cliché AND the 'old lady' cliché just to show how lighthearted and goofy it really is with its monster movie concept. That's fuckin' astonishing, the level of pandering here.

Then somehow Glover slides down an elevator cable and finds a spaceship with an inside that I think was decorated by the crew from Big Trouble in Little China.

Except Kurt Russell could have made this movie awesome. Seriously; who thought replacing Arnold Schwarzennegger with Danny Glover and Gary Busey was a good idea anyway?

Glover fights the Predator and somehow beats it down, but then a bunch of its buddies pop out of thin air and carry him away. But not before tossing Glover a gun from the 1700s for no reason whatsoever!

What the hell was that about? I have no clue. I guess they intended to have a sequel to this thing, but obviously after 24 years that isn't happening.

And why should it? This thing is just a mess. There are some goofy fun moments, and not all of it is bad, but for the most part it's too long, the characters are annoying, there are a bunch of cliches and the story is just kind of a mess – the Predator mostly just seems like he's stumbling around aimlessly, and what is he even doing in this setting? I get wanting to change things up from the first film, but this just seems like some entirely different movie, some sort of dystopian gang-war thing like a discount The Warriors, with the Predator thrown haphazardly into the middle. Half the time he just seems like he's confused, as he doesn't have much purpose or direction in this movie and just pops up wherever.

There's no consistency to this thing and with a near two-hour runtime, it gets tiresome by the end, real fast. I guess I can see why some people like it, but really to me it is just an overly long, ridiculous bore for the most part. I guess you could do worse though. You know, the best thing you can say about any movie!

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Dead Silence (2007)

Man, if I keep on reviewing these James Wan movies, people are going to start thinking I have some vendetta against James Wan!

...what? I have no clever retort to that. It was just an observation.

Director: The Great Visionary James Wan

Starring: Wooden caricatures of human beings, and also puppets

IMDb

So...Dead Silence. This piece of shit was one of the first in a long painful line of supernatural ghost-vengeance-small town-nice-house-porn flicks that have been coming out like the Octo-Mom’s kids ever since.

A quick glance at the Wikipedia page reveals, for one, that this movie’s script was heavily doctored after its initial draft by SAW writer Leigh Whannel, who wasn’t happy about it at all. Which is understandable given the quality of this movie, but baffling when you find out Whannel also wrote Insidious: Chapter 2 just last year - didn’t learn THAT much, huh? And two, one of the working titles was apparently “Sshhh…”. That...doesn’t even need a comment.

In the opening credits, we see how puppets are really made: in the dark with seizure-inducing flashing lights so you can’t see what you’re doing, with dark ominous music playing, because that puts you in a mood to make toys for children, doesn’t it?

Puppets are dark, scary monsters made in hellish domains by tortured souls. Rent one for your seven year old's birthday party today. Boy, Jim Henson studios got dark in its later years.

Once upon a time there was a boring couple who were unrealistically attractive. The guy, Jamie, loved fixing sinks and the girl flirts by saying that him dialing for take-out for dinner is attractive to her. Lovely! I almost, kinda, sorta believed that you had once been in a room a long time ago with two people in a relationship.

"The smell of hands working under a sink gets me hot! Dialing a phone to order bad Chinese food gets me even hotter!" ... "Hey, is this realistic dialogue yet? No? Well, fuck it; I don't like putting effort into things."

But that doesn’t last long, as apparently Jamie gets a puppet in the mail. I’d say how weird that is, but I’m following the characters’ lead. Because they don’t find it weird at all. They don’t even ask any questions!

"Where did that puppet come from?"
"Who cares? Let's play with it!"

I guess mysterious packages in the middle of the night are just normal for them.

We then see what a catch Lisa is as she talks to the dummy while she’s alone with it and sets it up to “scare” Jamie when he gets back. Seeing as that isn’t something any functioning human being in the history of the world would do, the doll rightfully kills her:

Jamie returns home and finds this, in a suitably obnoxiously edited flash cut with a loud sound behind it, because nothing can be scary without that. I mean, thank fuck they put in that loud sound and the flashy lights and what not; I never would have known to be scared here otherwise.

Then he gets arrested and questioned by the worst cop in the world, who suspects him of killing Lisa even though he didn’t do it and there was that tiny matter of a DOLL being delivered to him right before the murder happened! But the cop doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t consider it. What he DOES care about is interrogating a guy just for the sake of hearing his own stupid voice. Because that’s...really all you’re getting with this, you fucking idiot. I’ll sum up the conversation:

“Did you kill your wife?”

“No, but there was this weird puppet dropped off in front of my door like an hour before---”

“That had NOTHING to do with it! DID YOU KILL YOUR WIFE?”

“But I saw a guy with a bloody knife leaving the scene when I got back to the house!”

“Trivia at best! DID YOU KILL YOUR WIFE? I know ya did! Admit it, you guilty bastard!”

“But I get phone calls every night from the murderer and he taunts me that he'll never be caught because the police won't do their jobs right!”

“Oh pshaw, you killed her; just admit it!”

AAAGGGHHH!

Then we see the height of good policework - after you question your “suspect” for no reason very harshly, just let him leave town and take the fucking dummy with him. Oh yeah. Why does he take that dummy? Your guess is as good as mine. I guess he just wanted to remind himself of Angel Season 5 while on the road.

He goes to the town we see in all of these movies: the sorta small town with a Victorian mansion in the middle of it, and also with a population of only attractive, slender white people. The houses we see are always squeaky clean with nothing out of place and look like millionaires reside there. Because nothing says horror you can relate to like it’s happening to you, like a bunch of rich GQ cover models living in mansions even The Big Lebowski would call extravagant.

If a black person appeared in any James Wan movie, the whole universe would probably implode.

We get some very bland attempts at drama when Jamie interacts with his father, who apparently he didn’t used to get along with but now the father has changed and wants to reconcile I guess - whoop-de-doo, do you want a fucking medal? Also apparently the father has had multiple ex-wives and celebrates that fact by painting them out of portraits when they die, or some shit like that.

All of this is really just window dressing to the main point that this movie has no fucking idea what it’s doing. Who cares about any of this drama? How does it make us relate to the characters or story any more? That’s really the crux of horror, you know - relating to the characters so we’re scared with them when they get in danger. This movie, like so many before and after it, just wanted an excuse to show pretty looking mansions and attractive people.

There’s no spontaneity to any of this, no mess in the houses, no flaws in the characters’ appearances, speech or personalities - these things, while small, would have made the film a tad bit better, as at least THEN we could have gotten the sense we were watching real people, and maybe then we could have at least been a little more invested in this shitty story. As is, it’s more like watching a bunch of dolls playing in a dollhouse.

So Jamie leaves and goes to some motel where I really am just hoping Norman Bates will pop out and stab him to death. But that doesn’t happen. Instead we get another appearance by Detective Gumshoe McCrimeSolver, who has a brilliant solution - focus in on the dummy NOW. Yeah, before it just seemed like a silly idea, but NOW it’s genius! Detective work is fun when you can just make things up as you go with no logic or reason!

We also get the true height of detective skills when we see Gumshoe here talk to Jamie with the dummy just to be super funny and shit:

"For my next trick, I'll make the rest of this movie seem tolerable by comparison when I come on screen."

What the shit is this, the stand-up comedy hour with the detective? Get the fuck out. We really paid tax dollars for this? Is this really the best the police force could do? Well, I suppose it isn’t actually - it’s just that they probably put all their competent guys on cases more important than the fucking dummy murder case. That makes more sense.

After that we get an exposition scene where Jamie runs into the town crazy lady, and of course her husband is kind enough to sit Jamie down and tell him everything going on in a neat and orderly fashion, because the movie had no idea how to get all of this vital fuckin’ information out to us otherwise…

"Now, let's talk about something so boring the audience will fall asleeeeeepppppppp

So get this - apparently a long time ago, Cruelle DeVille’s even creepier and meaner cousin went on stage all the time in this town and did puppet shows. It apparently was fine and dandy until some snot-nosed kid made fun of her because her lips were moving.

It's like a Disney game; return 101 puppets to Cruelle DeVille's less successful cousin.

Then she killed him and the town pulled a Freddy Krueger and killed her in retaliation. Apparently her will involved them turning her into a puppet after she died, which I’m sure was a bucketload of fun for the embalmers and the morticians:

So do wood carvers in this world ask for their body to be turned into a wood statue after they die? At what point do these after-death wishes become too ridiculous?

And so now she’s a vengeful ghost haunting the town for no reason. Or maybe there is one. But I’ll be fucked if I’m going to listen to the bland writing that makes this thing up. Apparently she also had a bunch of dolls that she made that got buried because, I guess, the town thought they were haunted or something. Whatever.

The movie after this...really doesn’t have any structure to it, and it just meanders around like a drunk at Oktoberfest. There’s way, way too much exposition, with a whole other part where we get lots of backstory about the town and why Jamie specifically is being targeted - I dunno; forgive me for being vague, but do you really even care? It took me Herculean strength to type even this little paragraph - c’mon, I’m trying to make these reviews more exciting, and this movie is NOT helping.

I’m just amazed at the great use our taxpayers’ money is going to with this cop - he spends time digging up ALL THE PUPPET GRAVES to prove the point that, I dunno, something is going on I guess. Are you shitting me? Digging up little puppet graves is official police procedure now? 

"Phew, I didn't prove anything by doing this, but I sure did get a good workout!"

Eventually they make their ways to the set of Lord of the Rings for the final battle:

There, the ghost speaks through a puppet and says the reason Lisa died in the beginning was because she was pregnant. You know, the twist from Se7en doesn’t work when it’s a dumb looking clown puppet saying it.

Then we see the true way to kill ghosts - blow the fuck out of them with a rifle. Genius!

Call of Duty: Retarded Edition

The detective guy finally dies, which I think almost redeems the movie altogether - almost.

Then Jamie goes back home and has a flash-cut revelation when he realizes his father wasn’t his father at all, but instead a puppet the whole time, and his father’s new wife was actually the ghost in disguise!

This is why we can't have nice things.

This whole movie was just awful. Wan’s cliches are already in full force here like a back-full of angry warts. The characters are non-entities, the setting is boring, there are no effective scares and the story is mostly just really, really boring exposition. All in all, shit movie, shit director, nothing good about it and if you’re outdone in quality by an R.L. Stine book, you need to quit making movies.

Oh you bet I went there. At least the Stine books were awesome for twelve year olds. James Wan movies aren't awesome to anyone.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999)

This may surprise you guys reading, but I was recently turned into a vampire. I don’t intend to let that stop me from doing my reviews, though. Or really, anything else in my normal life. Because really, being a vampire isn’t a big deal, and those who become vampires shouldn’t let such a pesky detail just ruin their plans. I mean, we all gotta pay our bills, you know.

If you’re wondering why I have come to this conclusion, it’s because I stopped listening to inferior movies such as Near Dark or Let the Right One In, and started listening to From Dusk Till Dawn 2, the only true manifesto of how to be a vampire the right way: don’t let it fuck with your day job.

Director: Scott Spiegel

Starring: Robert Patrick, Duane Whitaker

IMDb

The first From Dusk Till Dawn wasn’t great, but it was entertaining and had some fun scenes. This one’s a festering, heaving shitpile with no redeeming qualities, and when it's directed by the guy who made Hostel III, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

We start off with some woman in a building on her way to an appointment to be attacked by bats, which is never something you want to be late for:

"I can't be late for my 3:00 either, guys!"

It takes a really long time for the bats to kill her though, and then we see they even do her the courtesy of sending the elevator down to the first floor for her afterward. How nice of them!

"Sirs, this is your floor. Please exit the elevator in a timely manner."
Wait a second, nobody hears things like that when they exit an elevator anymore. JOKE RUINED...FOREVER...

Then we get true genius as we see Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 playing some jackass redneck. He’s hanging out at his trailer and takes time out of fucking a hooker to adjust the TV set. Yes, really. I don’t even know what angle to come at that from.

"Honey, you know I only hire hookers when there's nothing good on TV! But now Duck Dynasty's about to come on! Get out of the way!"

They see on TV that one of their friends, Luther, has escaped police custody and is now on the run. We then see Luther himself calling up Patrick’s character from a payphone. In the middle of a bright sunny day. With a cop car right behind him. He’s sure lucky the cops in this town are of the ‘doughnut shop’ variety rather than anything actually competent or remotely realistic!

I guess the story here is that Patrick’s character Buck is assembling a sort of low-rent Ocean’s 11 group to go and rob some dinky bank in Mexico, because really why not, you know? His first stop is to go get this guy, who likes to make his dog run on a treadmill and make the camera do ridiculous things like give us “bottom of the beer cooler” perspectives:

That's one grimy, dirty looking beer cooler. You sure you want to drink anything out of that? Oh who am I kidding...by Texas standards that's practically squeaky clean.

That’s...so stupid it’s really just sad. I don’t even really have a joke here, because frankly I can’t form coherent thoughts when I’m being shown a camera POV from a dog’s water bowl:

Because if you can't simulate being eaten by an ugly dog in your movie, you've really just wasted an opportunity.

Or a perspective shot from the eyes of a guy doing push ups!

Yeah, a shot of his crotch and legs was really good and necessary. You get an A+.

I realize it’s cool to be all artsy and shit with your directing, and there are some directors who can do really clever shots like this. But...oh, hell, what do I care? Just put your camera in a fucking washing machine next time, you’ll get a really good POV shot from that when you turn it on and film it!

There’s also this jackass named Ray Bob, who is so clumsy he nearly destroys the security guard room he’s setting up when Buck surprises him:

Because, you know, a guy who’s that clumsy is always good to have around on a bank robbery job. I’m also inviting my paraplegic friend and pyromaniac friend who tends to start fires whenever she gets nervous. That’ll really be a good bank robbing team! Make sure to wear all pink and have bells attached to your shoes too. That will truly make it an awesome bank robbery.

They end up staying in some shitbag hotel and watching porn, to which actual time in the film is taken to show - yes, a movie that sinks so low as to actually have characters watching porn as a featured thing in the runtime that takes up minutes of your life.

Nothing gets him off like watching porn with a group of other sweaty, morally questionable middle aged men.

The snuff tapes from Vacancy DO make good hotel room viewing, I guess.

Money was spent putting this moment on screen. You could’ve spent that money feeding starving children or donating to charity or even paying for a bucket at Target so you could dump ice water on your head. And you did this. You absolute waste of life.

Then we get a scene where Luther, while coming down to meet them, gets his truck broken down due to an unexpected visitor:

Get that Halloween mask from K-Mart out of my face.

He goes into the Titty Twister bar from the first one and finds Danny Trejo still working there, even though I could’ve sworn he died in the last movie, not to mention that other little detail - what was it again? Oh yeah - the friggin’ bar blew up!

Gee, I wonder how that reconstruction process went - did they just rebuild during the night only? Was there a big conflict between doing vampire-y stuff like killing people and drinking blood, and doing REALLY IMPORTANT shit like rebuilding a bar?

"Hi, I'm Danny Trejo. I have no standards for what I appear in. At all."

For that matter, why even rebuild it? Was it absolutely vital for the vampires to have some shitty bar to call their home base? I mean, I guess it DOES allow you to have more sequels to this franchise. And cover up the fact that you couldn’t get George Clooney to come back for this one.

So because the movie can’t think of any way to move its own plot forward that isn’t complete fucking nonsense, Luther refuses the offer his friends give to come pick him up, and instead just accepts a ride from Trejo, who is a guy he never met before at a shitty, sleazy bar in the middle of nowhere in a country he isn’t familiar with. Were you literally just born yesterday?

Yes, apparently.

It turns out the bat he hit was actually a vampire, who appears out of nowhere in the desert and, surprise, is in league with Trejo. How did he survive being hit by a car and trapped inside the engine? I know being a vampire gives you some super strength or some shit, but that’s pushing it. They turn Luther into a vampire too rather than just straight up killing him, which makes sense because again, the movie wouldn’t be able to go on otherwise!

Then we see another incredibly important scene with that one guy having sex with some random woman we’ve never seen before. It’s okay though, because we see HER purpose in the film afterward: to take a shower and be attacked by a bat in a long, drawn out scene that results in her turning into a vampire too! But mostly the shower thing.

That's how all women shower in reality - in ways that exclusively make them look sexy and hot for an audience they're not supposed to know is there. Great realism, movie.

The other guy gets turned into a vampire too, and so now they have an entire team of vampires waiting to prey on unsuspecting victims. So what are they gonna do - take over the hotel and turn it into an awesome vampire coven? Turn more people into vampires? Turn more people into food for vampires? Or maybe just rob a fucking bank like they were planning to in the first place.

Yup - you heard it right. They actually just go ahead with the bank robbery plan like nothing happened. I’m sorry, did you just forget what kind of fucking movie you were making?! I admit the idea of a bank robbery movie with vampires MIGHT be cool in a pulp sort of way, but come on! These guys are turned into vampires, don’t question a thing and just go about the robbery like nothing happened? What kinda stinking rotten manure is that?! What’s wrong with you? That’s really the best you could come up with?

Turn the camera right side up, you dipshit. What is this, a Ulli Lommel production?

I mean...come on, seriously? You’re vampires. You don’t need all this secrecy and sneaking around. Just fucking break some shit and steal whatever you want. What does a vampire need money that much for anyway? You’ll be sleeping when all the Hot Topic stores are open. Not like you’ll be able to go and refill your cache of black mascara and pseudo-gothy looking capes that easily.

Oh, and we really needed this POV shot from the lock being turned around in circles:

Come one, come all; ride the tilt o' whirl!

Thanks a lot...ya jackasses.

Then we get a scene where Buck figures out most of his friends have been turned into vampires. For some reason he gets really tense and angry about this - oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know a fucking bank robber had such high-class morals as to care whether his team was human or not. You still got the money, you idiot; just take your share and worry about it later - not like the vampires will be able to follow you once the sun comes up anyway.

But the cops arrive too, and Buck gets arrested while trying to warn the cops about vampires. It’s really odd how quick Buck just accepts the fact that vampires exist. He doesn’t even blink an eye, consider any other options or seem surprised at all. Was he just always suspicious that vampires MIGHT exist and this just validated his insane paranoid delusions?

We then get a long, long, looooooooooooooong battle scene between the vampires and cops in which they fight, fight and….fight some more. It’s indescribably boring and makes watching your dad file taxes seem exciting.

I don’t even know how you make a fight scene this boring - at the very least, the action scene can be the saving grace in a shitty movie like this. But proving that nobody really gave a crap about what they were doing in this thing, even the action is boring, overdone and overlong. The film suffers from this problem any time it tries to put something “exciting” on screen, as I already talked about with the “bat attack” scenes earlier - to compensate for having little to no other ideas or points of interest in the film, it just stretched out the fight scenes to a bloated extent. Well, I can see the fucking stretch marks, assholes.

We get the most convenient eclipse in the world, right as the sun is coming up, allowing the fight scene to go on even longer. AAAAAHHHH!

"Uh, hi, yeah, I'm the most convenient and plot-pandering eclipse ever made. Sorry to budge in, but the poorly written script says I have to."

We then learn several cool things, like that signs are perfectly good weapons for vampires to use in a fight, because it's not like they have super strength or magic powers or anything:

"Yield!"

Also, whoever thought this was a good idea for an action shot - you only see their shadows through the entire action sequence - needs to be Indian burned:

I didn't know the Shadowboxing championships were in town.

But finally, after what seems like an eternity of this bland nonsense, we finally see all the vampires killed off. Buck makes friends with the sheriff who just lets him go despite the fact that he committed a crime. So there’s a real-world application for ya - if you’re planning on robbing a bank, just kill some vampires nearby. That will get you off the hook.

Otherwise, this movie is the pits. Bad characters, annoying camerawork, no real story or direction and a complete waste of the ‘vampire bank heist’ concept. This movie was not only bad; it flaunted its badness, as if somehow proud of its ceaseless, unrelenting idiocy - it constantly just paraded its badness in front of your face without even trying to hide it. It's seriously a test of patience and sanity to watch any of this thing, as there is absolutely nothing in it resembling quality filmmaking. It is one of the most irritating, asinine and ridiculous things I've ever seen.

Oh well. This movie blows chunks and I'm still a vampire. I'll have to consult my therapist about it.

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