Wendigo (2001)

When I was maybe 13, I’d go to Blockbuster any chance I got. I’d browse the shelves for the evil-est looking horror flicks available. I didn’t give a single fuck. One of them was this movie. This was maybe the third or fourth horror flick I ever saw - back then I didn't get to see most of this whole genre until I was 12 or 13 and neither of my parents watched it, so I just discovered everything piecemeal and random, just whatever Blockbuster had. It was an interesting evolution. I'll show you why now.

Director: Larry Fessenden

Starring: Patricia Clarkson, Jake Weber

IMDb

This thing starts with a family of three hitting a deer on a snowy country road! Some bearded asshole tries to get in their face because HE was gonna fuck that deer ahead of them!! Oops, did I say that last thing out loud? I ought to be more sensitive about that stuff.

They get to an old country house where the dad just exercises his own weird stereotypes, talking endlessly to his wife about how that dude on the road was such a rude piece of shit. Dude, get over it! You’re not handling it well. There’s a whole trippy psychedelic dream sequence with the son, too, mostly just looks like the camera guy took mushrooms and then left the camera on!

Some weird old man at a gas station hands the kid a totemic stone figure of the Wendigo, which is a kind of mythical figure that has apparently infused itself into strange toys at gas stations! What a world! In 100 years some idiot kid is gonna find a statue of Ronald McDonald and that will awaken an even worse murderous idol spirit to come and wreak vengeance. And I’ll be here for it, because by then I am guessing none of us will have a choice in this fucking capitalist hellscape we’ve created.

By the way, the old man apparently may not have actually existed as the manager says nobody else works there! Weird! The gas station clerk reacts to this news of a mysterious man pretending to work there with all the surprise of a catatonic zombie. Who can blame the girl? She probably makes $6 an hour and gets spit on by weirdos all day. Woohoo, America!

At some point, despite the father’s objections, the movie continues on. The movie jumps over several hurdles of wasting time. This shit could get an Olympic medal with all the scenes of this family doing fucking nothing. I have to say the production value is something – I’m not gonna grab the low-hanging fruit and bash this movie for it, but some of these low-budget productions just fascinate me. I mean, the camera shakes like a tornado victim is holding it, the actors act like they have guns to their head and the picture quality is so bad that you wonder if they didn’t just hold a piece of greasy plastic film over the lens on a dare. But it’s all part of the charm. This feels like it was made by people with no money who just left the camera on while people just did whatever on set. I dig the authenticity.

The bad guy is conveyed via sticks from the forest waving in your face, like it’s a game you played when you were a nine-year-old. Most of the action shots are so dark you’ll swear the light guy was off fucking the secretary from the studio. But hey! That’s what horror was back then! Real horror has no production values and feels like maybe, it might’ve been made out of some weird fetish! That’s what it is!

Somehow, during an expedition in the woods, amid all the movie’s weird trippy dark psychedelia, the dad gets shot. I don’t even know if they had the budget for that effect, given everything else. Was he really shot? Were the makers of this film that sadistic? Even if so, I respect them. We all have to make sacrifices for our art, and some of us have to do it for straight to DVD blockbuster picks that only bored stoners end up seeing, which end up on specialty horror streaming sites 20 years later.

God, how long does it take to get him to the hospital? Don’t you know we can piece it together and fill in the blanks in our heads? We don’t exactly need to see every bathroom break these idiots take. It’s not some kind of fucking Richard Linklater biopic with a progressive theme and a whole concept to spend 20 years behind the filming. Nobody is gonna be lost if you skip a few steps and just show us the dude in a damn hospital bed!

They have a whole sequence where they don’t know if the dad was shot – then you can see a bullet hole right there in his gut. These damn doctors graduated from Mr. Magoo’s University for the Somewhat Well-Sighted. Oh my god, has medical knowledge failed us here in Bum Fuck Nowhere? My god.

The redneck dude from earlier in the movie turns out to be the one who shot the dad. His karma comes because the little boy’s Wendigo statue wants revenge. In a bizarrely shot shaky camera sequence of the forest, the trees like they’re seizure patients, the dude ends up dying. He fires his gun a few times. We get a brief, hazy glimpse of the monster – a naked person with a deer head. I’m sure this was a dejected extra from Eyes Wide Shut that just wandered onto the wrong set; don’t get fucking overreacting about it...

Honestly, I didn't mind this that much. My film education is a thousandfold what it was when I saw this last. But there's a charm to the total DIY factor here, with everything the movie did so bizarrely but while trying to craft a certain atmosphere. They had an idea here. It wouldn't be as creepy without the low-fi production. It's not great and spends too much time waffling around, but I can't say it's the worst I've ever seen.

All in all the Wendigo is my favorite Marvel Universe character and I can’t wait for the long-anticipated sequel that will surely be inspired by this whole coronavirus thing going on. They do have a lot of time to spend indoors. Better get on it.

Image copyright of its original owners; I don't own it.

Frailty (2001)

Alright, last week's review was not very Christmassy. It was, in fact, not at all related to Christmas. But this week I have truly found the meaning of the holiday in a religious horror film that shows the roots of this festive time of year – a belief and devotion to Christ, whose birthday we should all revere and celebrate instead of that fat jolly red bastard who really just represents the evils of American capitalism. 

With that said, this is a movie about a guy who gets visions from “God” that tell him to go murder people who are apparently demons. Now that's festive!

Director: Bill Paxton

Starring: Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaghuey

IMDb

This movie and I have a long history together. See, I used to rent a lot of horror movies at now-defunct video rental giant Blockbuster. I became fascinated early on with horror movies, and often would try and rent random ones that nobody ever heard of in an attempt to find a really, really good one. Most of the time, these movies turned out to be complete shit. Other times they were mildly okay with flaws. Sometimes, though, I'd get a really good one. They were rare, but it was worth the effort. This was one of those few choices.

We start this one off with an FBI agent, Wesley Doyle, receiving a visit from Matthew McConaghuey's character, Fenton Meiks. It's painfully obvious this was before McConaghuey was a household name, because rather than be starstruck, Doyle is just confused as to why this weird guy is coming to his office in the middle of the night with stories about serial killers.

You shoulda seen the time George Clooney came to his office and started talking about sports statistics!

Fenton says he thinks the killer may be his brother, Adam. When asked why, Fenton says he used his incredible reasoning and deductive powers – while he was sitting on the couch getting wasted off his ass, Adam called him, made some damning comments about how the world was full of demons, and then shot himself in the head. I know, that really took a lot of deduction, right? He must be a super sleuth.

This is when I have all my best revelations too.

Do all serial killers HAVE to keep a board with newspaper clippings of their crimes? Seems a bit counterproductive...

As this was apparently a huge murder case in this city, Doyle asks Fenton to take him out to this garden where Fenton claims to have buried Adam. I guess they have to do it now rather than just asking Fenton for the address and going out with a proper forensics crew in the sunlight like sane people. That would just be too much of a hassle. No, of course they have to do it now! For dramatic effect!

In the car, Fenton reveals one of his many magic powers – when he speaks, the movie goes into Super Flashback Mode, to when he and Adam were happy little children in an idyllic small town. Their father is played by Bill Paxton, who comes home one night and tells his children that God has spoken to him and wants them to start “destroying demons” as part of a holy mission about the end of the world or something else silly like that. Rather than just start planting fliers on cars or screaming about it in front of college libraries during finals week, I guess Paxton is just a special kind of crazy who starts plotting to do it immediately.

The best time to manipulate your own children is when they're clearly half asleep!

Yeah. I guess there was no qualms about killing people from this apparently normal guy, huh? Not even a sliver of doubt? You could say he's just that into doing whatever God says, and as we don't know this character, you could be right about that. His brain, like many fervently insane zealots, is really just a black void with an Etch-a-Sketch in it waiting for God to use His hands to form ideas upon it.

What follows this is several scenes of two children watching Bill Paxton kill people. While I'm sure that's exciting for Paxton, for those looking for that good old Christian spirit, it is a bit of a buzzkill. I must say, this is not doing its Christian duty at all.

I guess Adam, the younger brother, actually buys into all the bullshit Paxton is spewing about it being a calling from God. Usually you have to buy a kid a few video games to make him believe your holy murdering crusade, but Paxton doesn't look to have much money at all. Huh. Must just be a persuasive guy then.

For all the strangeness of these murdering scenes, I do have to give the movie one thing – it is quite creepy and unsettling to watch these scenes. With Paxton's dead-eyed stare and creepy 'enlightened religious zealot' cadence to his voice, followed with the grisly implications of the bodies being chopped up in that basement, it's pretty gruesome and chilling.

However, I do have to call the movie out for one of the strangest scenes in it – when young Fenton runs across town to the sheriff and tells him his dad is killing people, the sheriff just flat out doesn't believe him and mocks him as a liar. Why? Doesn't it at least merit checking out? He's accusing somebody of MURDER. I get that you're a small-town sheriff and you'd rather be doing the crosswords or humping your secretary than solving crimes. I get that your most devious cases usually just involve some kid drinking too much at the local bar. BUT COME ON. IT'S A MURDER CASE. You gotta at least look into it!

"I'm halfway into a bottle of Wild Turkey and was in the middle of watching the hockey match. How dare you disturb me for your petty causes like 'murder' and 'upholding the law of the land'?"

Even though the sheriff believes Paxton when Paxton says he isn't killing people, the sheriff goes and checks in the shed outside anyway. There's nothing there now and the sheriff still thinks Fenton is a liar, but Paxton comes in anyway and kills the sheriff with an ax. Why? He was on your side! With law enforcement like this, hell, I'd just start dropping decapitated bodies on his fucking lawn. Not like he'd care! Why kill him? He's your greatest ally in this killing spree and you just got rid of him.

Then Paxton locks Fenton up in this hole in the ground for a week until Fenton 'fesses up to believing in God and their murder-mission. Hell, stick me in a place like that for a week and I'd cop to seeing JFK murdered by aliens in flying saucers. I don't think this is quite a confirmation that Fenton is exactly on your side, Paxton – but I guess a guy who thinks God is instructing him how to kill people isn't really the sharpest pencil in the drawer.

I'm sure nothing bad will happen after this. Nope. Nothing!

The murders continue on their merry paths, until Fenton finally has enough and gives ole Paxton the ax:

"On second thought, maybe I shouldn't have believed you were on board with my religiously inspired killing spree! I guess I'm a real idiot!" 

Unfortunately, Adam takes over and kills the guy they were originally trying to kill. Boy, this sure isn't putting the Christ back in Christmas at all!

Not your grandfather's Christmas Story! Actually this movie doesn't take place around Christmas. Why am I trying to hammer this joke in?! WHY AM I SO UNFUNNY?!?

Then we go back to the present times, where Fenton reveals to Agent Doyle that he was really Adam Meiks all along, and Fenton was another serial killer altogether. It's here that the movie shows us there really were supernatural religious elements in play all along – they weren't just Paxton hallucinating. To demonstrate this, we see Adam now magically knowing that Doyle murdered his mother years and years ago:

The funniest thing about this scene is the fact that an old lady died. No, I'm kidding – it's that the movie never fucking explains why Doyle, who is apparently a regular FBI agent now, would kill his mother! Was it a bout of temporary insanity? Was she evil too? Is he just a sick fuck who needs to be locked up? I dunno. The movie never tells us. It's pretty much just a shockingly poorly written excuse for Adam to lure Doyle out there and tell him this whole story.

In addition, we also learn that while the guy we thought was Fenton was really Adam, the real Fenton was a serial killer, too! Yup. I guess that crazy gene runs in the family. Why did he become a killer? Because he was traumatized because his daddy was one? I dunno, it isn't very well fleshed out or established. I guess everyone in this universe is a serial killer! Call the world the Killerverse for all I care. Say that the old lady down the street kills orphans in the middle of the night for shits and giggles. Say the receptionist at the FBI building murdered her whole family last week and nobody found out. Go crazy!

After that we see Adam is actually the sheriff of this town now.

His opponent in the last election was the town's local pedophile. Because the only choices in this world are bad and worse!

I love this movie's stance on law enforcement. The only cops we see are a) a non-caring dipshit who doesn't even see accusations of murder as a big deal, b) a guy who killed his mother and c) a God-powered religious serial killer who makes Dexter Season 6 look like child's play. That's lovely. I'm sure the cops watching are just overjoyed at that!

This movie is still pretty frigging good. It's a solid thriller with good performances from the kids, especially given that they have to carry so much of the film. Paxton and McConaghuey do serviceably and the story is very solid overall. The fear comes from watching Paxton believing he's exactly right in murdering these people, and especially goading his young sons into it. That kind of thing could probably happen in real life, and things involving terror to children are scary as shit.

There were a few points I can see now aren't all that good, sure. Like the numerous holes in the plot whenever law enforcement is involved – come on, that sheriff should have known SOMETHING was up. And I guess the film is really weakened by the reveal at the end where you see McConaghuey and Paxton really did have some kind of supernatural powers to see people were evil. That kinda makes it too much like a Christ propaganda film of sorts...I mean, it still works overall, but the effect is a bit less, is all.

I would have preferred it remain more ambiguous as to whether or not there was anything supernatural. For that matter, keep it all in the past. Don't even show us the present at all, or if you have to, make it very minor parts at the beginning and ending. The scariest part of the film is the middle bit where you see Fenton and Adam as kids – just make a whole movie about that, from their eyes, and don't make it too obvious whether God really is telling them to kill demons or not. That would just be a better flick, and I'd find it even scarier than I found this.

Overall though? Still a good horror movie. Go check it out!

Though, now that I think about it, this wasn't very related to Christmas either. Huh. I guess the idea of God telling people to murder in his name isn't the part that those Christians really wanted Christmas to be about. My bad!

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

REVIEW: Hannibal (2001)

Okay, all bets are off, people. This is the big one. One of my most hated movies of all time. I did a short one paragraph thing for this movie the last time I saw it, but I really don’t think THAT did this heinous thing justice at all. So let’s dig into this virtual layered cake of everything wrong with cinema, Hannibal.

Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212985/

Where the first Hannibal Lecter movie with Anthony Hopkins, the great Silence of the Lambs, had characters, even the most minor ones, with depth and texture to them, a compelling story and a fascinating psychological undertone, this movie has phoned in joke characters, subplots that go nowhere and take up the majority of the film’s run-time and psychology that is mostly relegated to ‘playing classical music while showing montages of Anthony Hopkins doing things.’ Formula for a train wreck? You bet!

It starts off in the way I think everyone wanted a Hannibal Lecter movie to start, with a side character from the last movie talking to a diseased Muppet crack baby played by Gary Oldman:

You see this less than a minute into the film's runtime...isn't that just wonderful? Isn't that the best way possible to start off a sequel to one of the defining serial killer movies of the 90s?

…what, you didn’t think that would be a good set-up for one of these movies? Well then, you simply have no taste!

I guess the story is that this guy, Mason Verger, was once tricked by Lecter into doing hard drugs and savagely removing his own face with broken mirror shards, and that somehow made him paralyzed from the neck down as well. Probably just because this series loves having people bound so that they can’t move any part of their body below the neck. Are we seriously supposed to be invested in this? Oh, boo hoo, you did some drugs and did stupid things while on them? Cry me a goddamn river you whiny little freak.

What is his plan, anyway? We see that he “collects” Lecter memorabilia for some strange reason, but his main goal seems to be to torture and kill Lecter for revenge. However, THAT falls flat almost in the same scene when he admits that he’s “glad” Lecter did what he did to him, because it allowed him to awaken spiritually, or some bullshit like that. So which one is it? Is he obsessed with Lecter or does he hate him? MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

A drug fueled binge of madness? Yeah that sounds about right with how THIS movie was made...

Oh well. Oldman’s performance is deplorable and irritating, and the writing is just garish – this character is not an intimidating villain, he is Miss Piggy’s wart removed from the bottom of her foot. He’s pretty much only here to serve as a foil to Lecter to get him back into America.

He calls Clarice to his house because he saw on the news that she shot some drug dealer lady who had her baby strapped to her chest (just go with it…), and is now taking heat for it. There, he questions her about God and whether or not she has accepted Christ as her savior. This subplot is…never brought up again? What? Why? What was the point of bringing it up then?! It’s incredibly forced and contrived! Did the filmmakers just go “hey, we need something DEEP in this next scene! How about we have Verger ask Clarice about her opinion of Jesus Christ! That means our movie is SUPER INTELLIGENT!!!” Ugh.

But enough of that; we still have Clarice Starling’s character to butcher! In the original she was played by Jodie Foster, who gave an exceptional performance and really breathed life into the character. Here, and I can’t imagine why, she has not returned, making way for Julianne Moore, whose performance is about as bland as can be, but hey, at least she’s trying – it’s mostly the fault of the writing that she isn’t believable at all as Clarice. In a sensible sequel, the viewer would feel the weight of her years on the force and sympathize with her when she gets kicked off the force despite trying her best to follow orders. However, THIS movie just makes it all kinda ‘eh’ and presents it in a relatively bland way. How am I supposed to be invested in this Clarice? I know almost nothing about her. The atmosphere of the film and her personality are almost entirely different from that of Silence of the Lambs. With more insight into her inner character this could have been an arresting performance, but I guess that would have actually made the movie good, so the filmmakers couldn’t do that! Oh no.

We do however have stupid scenes set in Florence, Italy, where Hannibal himself is now residing, played by an Anthony Hopkins who I am betting got through this movie by smoking copious amounts of weed before each day of acting. He looks pretty zoned out:

"I'm sorry, I took more than my usual dose of Ritalin today..."

He’s…mostly OK, I guess, but the abysmal writing screws that up, too. He desperately wants to come out of retirement and start killing again, and yet he’s spending all his time, energy and resources applying for the position of curator of a museum? What the hell is stopping him? We clearly see later that he has no qualms with killing when provoked. Why doesn’t he just kill whenever he feels like it? Would that make too much sense? Does he just suffer from the fatal Plot Convenience Disease?

But never fear, for as soon as Clarice appears on the news for a relatively minor screw up, he writes her a letter all the way from Florence – because that makes sense how he would watch the American news all the way from there, right? Was he just doing that for 10 years straight just in case Clarice showed up in distress on the screen? Again, Plot Convenience Disease! It’s a killer!

There’s also Ray Liotta, who pretty much plays some horrible wretched douchebag put on Earth solely to torment poor Clarice. He’s a homophobe – he calls Hannibal gay because he enjoys classical music and tea time food – and he’s a sexist, as evidenced when he openly objectifies and harasses Clarice right to her face, with no shame whatsoever. Real great character guys! Maybe you should have him kick puppy dogs and tie girls to train tracks next!

"Hey, what, do you expect me to actually act like a human being that wouldn't have been beat up or killed in the real world yet? TOO BAD!"

But this is all really just window dressing for the movie’s real passion. You thought this was going to be a sequel continuing on the original’s premise of Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in a mental battle of wits with a third plotline mostly in the background? No! THIS MOVIE’S main focus is one Detective Pazzi, a rude, fat, frumpy, pissed-off looking guy who smokes a lot and yet somehow has a hot, charming wife who begs him in a seductive voice to take her out to the opera…nope, sorry movie, I’m not buying that for a second. There’s NO WAY a guy this annoying, bad tempered and fat would get a woman like that. NO WAY.




Anyway, he catches onto Lecter’s real identity and starts to try and capture him to get the FBI bounty on his head. This would be OK if, oh, I don’t know, HALF THE GODDAMN MOVIE WASN’T SPENT WATCHING HIM DO THIS. I don’t know if you know this, movie, but this character is grating as hell. He’s really not a good character at all. And we literally sit here for like upwards of 45 minutes watching him blunder around Florence, acting like a jackass, getting innocent people killed and shrugging it off like it’s nothing and just generally being a despicable excuse for a human being…? Do you people know anything about how to entertain an audience? Do you have any concept of what it means to tell a story that people want to pay attention to? GOD.

Oh, except when we have Lecter giving pretentious speeches about sin and Dante Aligieri and Judas Iscariot…Christ, I don’t think I can make it through this. How is it even possible to make something this unenjoyable? The answer to everything isn’t just putting ominous classical music on in the background, you know. That doesn’t exactly make your movie deep or anything; just more annoying and pompous.

So, yeah, after god knows how long, Lecter finally kills Pazzi by hanging him from a tall window tower and slitting his belly open. It’s actually a good scene and beautifully shot, but how much do you want to bet they just cease to care about the Pazzi character, his friends and family and Florence altogether after this? If you put money on that, well, you’d be sitting pretty right now.

It is just incredible how asinine this is. “Hey, let’s take an hour of the movie’s runtime to establish the character of Pazzi and make him the focus of the film. But after he dies, there’s no real point in resolving the story or anything; no no! Just act like it never happened at all! Great filmmaking!” What is this, the third or fourth time I’ve used that joke of imitating the movie’s creators? I’m sorry, but there just isn’t much else to do with this one. There’s nothing else here!

But maybe the movie will redeem itself with its last act or so. Maybe I’m being too quick to condemn it. After all, there’s still the plot with Verger, who despite looking like something a cat puked up, actually does have sort of a main goal, even if it is incredibly confusing. Maybe he’ll surprise us and pull out a truly cunning and sinister plan…

Yeah, this is stupid. Look at those dumb sunglasses he's wearing. Look at the boars just running around out there waiting to eat people alive. He really thought this was the best plan he could do?

…OR he’ll just do the dumbest thing possible! I mean my God! You can’t seriously tell me THIS was his only option! “Hmm, I want revenge on this guy! I think I’ll feed him to a bunch of savage boars!” It doesn’t add up! There are a billion more dignified and cool ways to kill someone! How on Earth did Hannibal attract the one person in the entire world whose chosen method of killing and torture was BOARS? It’s so stupid it’s radioactive! You could see the asininity coming off this plot from outer space. Outer! Space!

On the bright side, though, it’s finally clear to me exactly much of a joke this movie was to its creators. I mean, there’s simply nothing else here but crappy one-shot jokes turned into elongated pseudo-serious plotlines. I feel sorry for a lot of these actors, actually – especially Gary Oldman; man that makeup must have taken a long time! And it wasn’t at all worth it.

So they kidnap Lecter and strap him to another board so he can’t move his body at all; told you this series had a fetish for that. Verger says “Bet you wish you had fed the rest of me to the dogs too, huh?” Because, you know, it’s not like Verger said earlier that he was glad that Lecter tricked him! Oh wait, he did. Is it really that hard to have a character even a little bit consistent in his motive and mental processes?

Clarice comes to save Lecter at the last minute and gets shot, so Lecter saves her and walks out. But not before convincing Verger’s butler to throw Verger into the boar pit and kill him! This could have been a compelling plot point – a sort of ‘servant turns on the master’ gig. But the way the movie plays it, the whole story just didn’t matter, as nothing is ever resolved of it and we learn nothing about Verger, his butler or any of the other villains that make this movie any more compelling. But at least we got to see a guy eaten by boars! Hur hur…

Ha ha ha...finally, I get to see this terrible character pushed off a ledge and eaten by boars! My oddly specific wants are satisfied!

Lecter stitches up her wound and dresses her up in the skimpiest dress he could find, which shows off as much of her tits as possible:

Yeah, at this rate, why don't you just go full stop and dress her in her underwear or something? I didn't know Lecter was this much of a lech.

She goes downstairs and finds they’re at Ray Liotta’s house, which Lecter…found somehow, I guess. He’s scalped Liotta and is, well…it’s too dumb to even write down, so I’ll post a picture:

"Goodfellas? Meh, that was alright. THIS is my true passion in acting!"

Yeah, our finale for this movie involves Julianne Moore’s tits and Anthony Hopkins eating Ray Liotta’s brain! You know, the biggest flaw with THIS scene is that Hopkins is indeed eating Ray Liotta's brain. Ray Liotta has a brain? I think this scene is factually inaccurate.

So long story short, Lecter escapes and feeds some brains to a little boy on a plane. The end! Was it worth it? I don’t think so.

I mean man, this is a heinous piece of work, a sorry excuse for a film, a sad attempt at a sequel to something good. It’s practically unwatchable in how dragging and directionless it is. Plots are brought up and dragged out for ungodly amounts of time, as if they’re actually important, but then they’re just dropped for no reason and never resolved at all. There are opportunities for character development and psychological intrigue, but they are shelved in favor of terrible one-off jokes and attempts at being gory.

The characters are mostly indefensible, especially the awful Ray Liotta and the confusing mess that was Gary Oldman’s Mason Verger. The only good parts involve just Hannibal and Clarice together, only even they don’t seem terribly invested – hell, just look at the half-assed script they had to work with and you can completely sympathize. There’s just nothing good about this movie. There is simply no way they could have possibly screwed up a sequel to something good more…

Okay, well there’s that. But this is still terrible!

I guess some people like this movie for reasons I will never even begin to comprehend, but…yeah, keep this thing as far away from me as possible. Eugh. You know, why did I even bother elaborating on this? Looking back, my original review was fine and summed up everything I've said here except in about 1/10th the length! What was the point; what was the purpose?! Excuse me...I need to go meditate on my life.

All images copyright of their original owners. I do not own any of them.

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor

Director: Steven Spielberg

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212720/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence

Well, I ended 2011 with a Steven Spielberg film, so I might as well begin 2012 with one as well. Regressive? Maybe. How about I review one that is a little different from "Warhorse"? How different you ask? Well...this one sucks.

First, a little back story. The film was originally going to be helmed by the great director Stanley Kubrick, but he sadly passed away before it could be adapted to the big screen. So Spielberg took on the project and cast Haley Joel Osment, still a big star after "The Sixth Sense," as the main lead. So what do you get? A mess...

This review will be a bit longer than what I usually post and there will be spoilers, so...be prepared.

Based on the short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" by Brian Aldiss, it takes place in the future where the ice caps have melted, the cities have flooded, and people are being attacked by terrible-constructed CGI mega sharks and giant octopuses. Well, maybe not. Anyway, a scientist played by William Hurt (I can find out his character's name, but I just don't feel like it) wants to create a boy robot which will feel unconditional love, leading to the ethical question: can people love them back? Well, let's find out shall we?!

The first third of this film is almost like the plot of a sci-fi horror movie. One of the roboboys is "adopted" by two parents (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards) whose own son is in a seemingly terminal coma. The boy is named David: he is nice, does what he is told and...is as creepy as hell! He follows his mom all over the place, including when she is using the toilet (hmm I was expecting the shower; touche, movie), all while wearing this blank expression on his face. There is also this really weird scene where he all the sudden burst out in forced laugher, causing the parents to laugh, before ending in awkward silence. Well...that's apparently enough for the mom to decide she is going to keep him! I personally would have had it sent right back to the factory, destroyed the little hell-spawn and made it into Bender from "Futurama," but to each their own!

"Hello, I'll be your pretentious, overly cute, child actor for this film."

Well, the roboboy now acts slightly more boy than robo, and this is where the movie begins what becomes its biggest problem. David's face goes from being a cold smile to a that of an open mouthed, scarred little boy who looks like he has no idea what he is doing. You know, Osment's normal look! He also stops being a creepy robot and starts to act more like a mildly creepy momma's boys who constantly needs attention. Yes, this is our main character folks. Have fun with him...

Oh yeah, one minor note I feel obligated to address. The family also owns a robotic teddy bear that possesses its own form of artificial intelligence. Okay, okay, okay, hold on, I swear it is not as quite as stupid as it sounds! Yes, at first it is rather disturbing in a movie that did not need to be anymore disturbing. In fact, I'm not really sure why they added it to begin with because it serves almost no purpose to the story. However, the bear, while lacking in personality, does try to be helpful at times, even to the point where he seems wiser than most of the main characters. Yes...the animatronic teddy bear is one of the more likable characters in the movie. That's...............ugh....

Guess which one is the better actor...

Well, the fun does not last for long, because (surprise) the parents real son Martin (Jake Thomas, the kid who played Matt on "Lizzy McGuire") wakes up from his coma. And guess what, he is an obnoxious little brat! He manipulates David to do to a bunch of bad stuff. Now to be fair, I do not have too much of a problem with this part. Sure the kid is a jerk but given that he suffers from "one child syndrome," it kind of makes sense in a brotherly manner that he would do this and it's nice to see a film where even if someone, a child no less, is sick for a long time does not make them a saint. Or maybe I just do not like David and therefore don't care what happens to him!

He used to see dead people. Now he doesn't really see much of anything...

Anyway, even though the parents realize what is going, the roboboy becomes too much of a hassle for them to deal with, so they prepare to send him back to the lab to be destroyed. Strangely, it's the father who forces the mother to get rid of David...even though it was his idea to get him in the first place. Kind of a flip flop, huh? And then, ugh, the mother pulls a "The Fox and the Hound" and sets the robokid loose in the woods. I believe her thinking was "I can't bear to have you destroyed, so I am going to set you free in an environment where you have no survival skills and filled with people who will catch you and destroy you in the most gruesome way possible! I'm truly the Mother of the Year!"

It is at this point where we are introduced to another character, Gigolo Joe, played by Jude Law. As his name implies, he is a sex robot who spends his time pleasuring the ladies. But he runs into trouble when he is framed for killing woman and eventually meets up with David. Joe is probably the only character who I genuinely like in this film (other than...the teddy bear). He is charismatic, he has good moves (no, I don't mean...no...), he is clever, and he has a healthy dose of cynicism but is still optimistic enough to look forward to the future. He is a really good character and Law plays him very well. So...WHY WASNT HE THE MAIN CHARACTER!!! Okay he didn't have to be the lead, but dear god, why have this cool sidekick attached to such any annoying lead! Its like the two don't even belong in the same movie! Rather frustrating, indeed!

Anyway, the two of them and the teddy bear (yes, he sticks around, just don't ask) meet up after they are captured by these anti-A.I. fanatics, headed by a guy played by Brendon Gleesen. They are then taken to this fair where robots are destroyed in front of a crowd of raging rednecks. There were some parts about these scenes that didn't really settle with me but not enough so I could really be to bothered to nitpick about them. I guess my biggest complaint that it is a virtually pointless aspect of the film. While it shows the tension between the battle over man and machine, there are other ways they could have done it. As it is, it really doesn't progress the story that much. They show it, David and Joe and the bear (....) escape, and that's it; the incident is almost never brought up again. Was filler really necessary in a 2 and a half hour film?!

Osment: "Gee, Mr. Law, we sure are going to have a great time making this movie!"

Law: "I wonder if it isn't too late for me to sign on to that 'Road to Perdition' script..."

So David sets out on a quest to get his mother to love him. How does he plan to do this? By finding the Blue Fairy from the Pinocchio story to turn him into a real boy. Wow, I don't know whether that's really stupid, sad, or both. For some reason, Joe goes along with it, and he leads them to Dr. Know, this annoying supercomputer that projects a 3-D version of Albert Einstein, voiced by Robin Williams (who incidentally was in his own subpar, futuristic robot flick, "Bicentennial Man"). It leads them to the now semi-submerged New York City, where they find themselves in the lab of Hurt's character. Hurt tells David how special he is because he is the first of his kind. But David wants to be the only one of his kind, throws a hissy fit, and then sets out to find the Blue Fairy on Coney Island [insert joke here]. Joe is captured by the police so that he can be transported to a better movie, Hurt is...never seen again for some reason, and David and the bear use a machine to go underwater. They find a model of the Blue Fairy, David keeps making wishes to become a real boy, they get trapped underneath a Ferris wheel, and are frozen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC8zz95rm8s

The End.

Or at least that's what I would like to have had happen, but they still have the rest of the third act to drag out.

So 2,000 years go by. Humans are extinct, New York is completely frozen over, and aliens are digging up the remains of the area. They find and defrost David and the bear, and since the roboboy is one of the last links to the human race, you guessed it, they treat him like he is very special! They also tell him that they will be able to bring back his mother, but only for one day. So the mom is brought back, David gets her all to himself like he always wanted being the little attention whore that he is, she goes to sleep, he goes to sleep (even though he said earlier that he technically can't), and then he either goes into a coma or dies, I don't know, something about dreams and such, the teddy bear sits on the bed wondering what the hell it's supposed to do, and the movie, finally, finally, FINALLY ENDS!!!

Wow, he gets to sleep in bed with his mommy. It makes me wonder who he would be like if he really was a real boy and grew up to be a real man...

Yeah, this looks about right.

Oh boy, that was a doozy. So how to sum it up...?

This is the kind of movie that has some things that work and other things that really, really, really don't work at all. It has an interesting plot and at least two decent characters, even if one of them is a teddy bear. But everything else is a problem. The main character is a selfish little whiner and too creepy for his own good, the rest of the characters are mostly forgettable and the story seems to feel the need to drag itself out for no reason.

Even the moral seems to be off. We are told point blank that it is whether humans can learn to love a non-living being. So what is the answer. Well...it's unclear. The mom cares enough about David so that she secretly lets him loose, even though this almost seems crueler than destroying him. But there never appears to be a point where it seems she loves him. When she is "brought back to life" she seems more like a spirit than an actual person. So even though this version says she loves David it does not appear that this is really her talking; just a figment of Davids mental capacity (I wont even be surprised if the aliens manipulated her so she acted this way on purpose). I think the story actual is about whether robots can love, but that answer seems a little more definitive: no. And that leads to a problem for this movie...

If I had to say my biggest problem: I just didn't care about what happened. While I admit that story keeps intrigued enough to get you through to the end, you still don't really care about what happens to the main character. I make fun of Haley Joel Osment's acting, but to be fair, I am not sure how well any actor would have done because the part is written so badly. David is unlikeable due everything I already mentioned, but also because he is programed to be that way. It is not like in other films where there are some technical glitches or some other abstract interference that makes it so that the character wants to achieve a certain goal. He does it because that is what he is supposed to do. When he is stuck at the bottom of the ocean, making his wishes, it's not a sad child wishing against the odds in the name of love; it's more like watching a wind up toy that hits a wall and can't move around it. He never really becomes a real boy in either a physical or an emotional sense. So why bother?

So that is the film. Despite the efforts of two of cinema's greatest filmmakers, it's a wreck. I can't honestly say that I hated it because it was at least trying to be a great movie, but there are just so many things that go wrong with it that final product is just annoying and unpleasant. Therefore, I do not recommend it.

These images and links are copyrighted by their respective owners and are being used here for entertainment purposes only. Please don't sue me. [end with anti-SOPA comment]

REVIEW: The Others (2001)

There are SPOILERS in this review!

Horror movies are hard to do right; I will admit this as freely as anyone, and I am a huge fan of the genre. What it comes down to is that horror is a genre that works on a very different level than most other genres, and emphasizes very different aspects of filmmaking – like how you can make an effective horror movie with barely any money. Horror doesn’t need money; it needs atmosphere, creativity and heart to do right! But sometimes there does come along a rare big budget Hollywood horror movie that simply smokes everything out there…such is the case with The Others, which is a veritable masterwork of horror craft and style.

Director: Alejandro Amenábar

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Finnuola Finnegan, Alakina Mann, James Bentley

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230600/

This movie is just awesome. It’s completely accessible and friendly to viewers of more mainstream films, and yet it doesn’t pull any punches and is always elegant, well-written and classy. That’s not to say that the scares aren’t there – they are. The scares are perhaps some of the best I have seen in any post-2000 horror film, as The Others uses a very subtle, understated style that leaves most of the horror to your imagination. And the subtle build of tension eventually leads to a much better payoff when the big, supernatural scares start rolling toward the end.

It’s kind of like Hemingway’s iceberg theory – you only see the tip of the iceberg, where the rest is hidden below the surface. One scene very early on that floored me is when the two kids, Anne and Nicholas (Alakina Mann and James Bentley), are sleeping in their room, and he hears her talking to a “ghost,” who talks back in a different voice, but you don’t really see anything but the back of her head from his perspective. So is she talking to a ghost, or is she really just doing voices, like he initially thinks? And when the “ghost” touches him…? That is brilliant, brilliant scare tactics right there, and it was at about that point that I realized I was dealing with something more than a garden variety horror film. The build-up to the movie, full of scenes where Nicole Kidman’s character hears things going bump in her big, spacious house, is rife with these kinds of techniques, these manipulations of the viewer, and it really shows a great mind at work here with the directing. Director Alejandro Amenábar hasn’t directed many other films, which is a shame.

Nicole Kidman in The Others, traversing amidst her dark abode...

The characters are all really good, too, even when you think they’re going to be really stock clichés. Nicole Kidman is Grace, a domineering but caring mother of two children who are photosensitive, and can’t be exposed to the sun for too long. They live in a big old country mansion in the 40s after World War II, and the story begins just as they hire Bertha Mills (Fionnula Finnegan) and her traveling companions as help around the house.

Kidman really does a great job at capturing Grace’s tight, strict demeanor and devotion to the Lord, which pretty much frame her entire character. She is quite vividly colored and I actually found myself totally drawn into the performance, believing every inch of it. The kids, same thing, they are excellent. Bertha Mills is one of the better characters, and Fionnula Finnegan really makes you question her motives at every turn – you know there’s something up with her, but what is it? Or are you just being paranoid? Her companions are a young mute girl and an elderly man, neither of whom have many lines, but both end up as sufficiently creepy and suspicious anyway.

Having the kids be photosensitive is an interesting twist and really made for some cool, inventive visual touchstones – like how Grace has to close all the windows and doors to make sure the sun doesn’t creep in accidentally. One scene in the beginning shows this quite well – after telling Anne to leave the room to study by herself, Grace has to first tell Bertha to close the windows in the adjoining room to keep her daughter safe. This plot point wasn’t entirely necessary to move the story forward, but the fact that it is there adds another layer of complexity and weight to the plot, upping the ante on the danger present in a very peculiar and unique way. The fog constantly surrounding the house is great, too, always looking ominous and ghostly, setting the stage with a real atmosphere.

The film closes with two plot twists, one right after the other. First we find out that Bertha and her companions have been dead the whole time, accompanied by some beautiful, haunting shots of the country house at night in the fog. The shot of the three of them walking slowly toward the kids is bone-chilling.

Haunting!

The final twist is perhaps not completely unexpected, but it is pulled off with gusto and drama – that the entire family, Grace and the kids and all, have been dead since the beginning of the film. Shock and awe! In reality, the ‘ghosts’ they’ve been hearing the whole time have been living people trying to move into the house. It is a rather humorous and witty take on the genre, as everything the main characters have been doing throughout the film would have been the ‘ghostly’ activity inflicted upon the characters in any other movie. Those curtains opening randomly? The rustling and bumping in the night? Quite eerie to think about, really…and quite a great deconstruction of the ghost story. The Sixth Sense has nothing on this.

Really this is a movie about death and our perceptions of our own lives. Nobody can really talk about ghosts with any kind of certainty, but The Others does a fine job of commenting on the ways we view ourselves and how little it sometimes means when the outside world sees us so much differently. The realization of death is bitter and painful, but inevitable too. There’s something to be said for Grace’s final speech, which amounts to her own character weaknesses and strengths all at once – very good writing. She has to face the reality that God did not give her a second chance to be a good mother, and that she’s been lingering on Earth as a ghost, and really, what does it all mean?

It is not a happy tale, and the implications are all quite macabre as to what actually transpired, as opposed to the movie’s unreliable narration, but the film is powerful and haunting all the same. I also like that it’s so accessible and cleaned up. Rather than coming off as cheap and phoned in just to make a quick buck, it feels like time and effort went into making it – a calculated, precise work that shows its effort off like a badge. This is a very mainstream take on the horror genre, and for once it actually works like a gem, as The Others is just magnificent. Scary, artful, meaningful and gripping, this is a bonafide classic of the genre.

Pictures copyright of their respective owners.

The Month of Terror: Session 9 (2001)

Director: Brad Anderson

Starring: David Caruso, Peter Mullan

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261983/

Gruesome, creepy and uncompromising comes Brad Anderson’s masterwork, the inimitable Session 9. Telling a tale of deep psychological insanity and reaching one’s breaking point, the film cycles through the present day with a group of Hazmat guys restoring an old mental hospital and ties it into a series of recorded tapes featuring a girl who has a very damaged mind. They’re unrelated stories except for the fact that the film’s main character, Gordon, is slowly slipping off the edge as the movie goes on…

This film works on a base level of scaring the living hell out of the audience, but also on a deeper level as the sinking horror of its subtle undertones sink in. The characters are portrayed starkly and simply, shown to us as regular guys doing a regular job, but in an irregular place. They’re sort of a grounding anchor in the midst of the film’s sometimes abstract and artful directing – it’s not too much in that direction, but compared to other movies, this one is a lot more obtuse, especially on a first viewing. Scenes are filled with hidden meanings and visual cues that only become apparent when you really sit down and pay attention, and there are a lot of long, lingering shots of the excellent, ominous hospital under the sultry grey skies.

Speaking of the scenery, that’s another thing that really works with this – great, creepy old mental hospitals make for awesome horror settings, and I am a glutton for anything in this vein. I can’t get enough of the empty halls and the grimy walls filled with old newspaper cutouts and photos – this is the icing on an already excellent horror movie-cake, per se. The sense of isolation these characters have is just superbly well done. And unlike P2 for instance, which was another one-setting-only horror film, this one actually works with what they have to escalate tension and drama. The tagline is ‘Fear is a Place,’ and that about sums up why the mental hospital setting works. Haunting, ethereal and unrelenting.

The main draw of the film, though, is in the psychological undertone and message of the film. Session 9 talks a lot about mental insanity, especially in the parts where one character is listening to old tape recordings of mental patient sessions from when the hospital was open. This is a film about human darkness, the inherent insanity in some people who just got the short end of the stick, who have been pushed to the brink without any hope of coming back. You don’t really see what’s happening at first, and the twist isn’t really a smash-bang shocker so much as it is a dark, unfurling sense of unease, creeping up on you as each scene plays out, until you’re completely in awe at the majesty of this darkness, this complete and total horror. That’s why I think Session 9 is one of the greatest horror films ever. If you haven’t seen this, you owe it to yourself this Halloween season.

REVIEW: Donnie Darko (2001)

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing some thinking on how to make this blog more interesting. And one of the things that came to me was that I have been reviewing the same types of movies for a while now – mostly cheaply made, somewhat underground horror movies that not a lot of people have seen. So this month I’m changing it up and starting off with a very different kind of bad movie that I really think people need to take a closer look at. This is a movie that had a real budget and seems to be under the delusion that it is somehow ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ in some fashion. And that’s why I’m here! So join me if you would, as I take my journey through…Donnie Darko.

Director: Richard Kelly

Starring: The Gyllenhaal Clan, A Giant Demonic Bunny

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/

Or If You Really Want a Laugh...: www.donniedarkofilm.com

This movie throws a lot of gibberish at you, but really I’ll just spell it out for you right now what this movie is really about: A kid with severe mental problems with voices telling him to burn down houses and flood public buildings. You have seen this story before in real life several times – in tabloid newspapers, when some guy does something crazy and blames it on nonsensical fairy-tale crap. “Boy kills neighbor’s dog and claims that voices made him do it.” That’s pretty much this whole movie in a nutshell. With that said, let the complaining begin!

Our first scene involves Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie Darko, waking up on the side of the road early in the morning, not knowing where he is, and that’s always a great way to start a morning…he goes home to his family, where they have dinner and we see that his sister is played by his real life sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal. Who frankly is above this movie and I don’t know what she’s doing here. She says how she’s going to be voting in the upcoming election for her politician father’s opponent, just to piss him off, because she’s an annoying teenager. Then she and Donnie start calling each other such sweet and affectionate nicknames as ‘fuck-ass.’ Isn’t it nice when a movie goes to such great lengths to make sure you like the characters? Oh wait…

They're a good family...

And I take back what I said about Maggie Gyllenhaal being above this movie.

Donnie then hears more voices in his head later that night telling him to go and sleep on a golf course. Oh, and also that the world will end in 28 days…that’s kind of important too. He’s woken up by Patrick Swayze and another guy, who think it’s a good idea to make fun of him, because everyone in this movie is an asshole. Then he goes back home to find out that a plane engine fell on his house the previous night. I hate when that happens, too. Then they all get a hotel room to stay in while their house is cleaned up. At the bus stop, Donnie’s friends make fun of a random Chinese girl, further proving what A-class human beings they are, and then in class, the teacher tells the new girl to sit next to whichever boy in class she thinks is the best looking. Because…THAT’S not weird and awkward for a new kid, right?

Can't someone just run him over with a golf cart and end this movie prematurely? Hey, I can dream...

Donnie and his dad are driving home one day when his dad almost hits an old lady in the road. Frankly I thought Pumpkinhead 2 had a much superior ‘old lady walking in the middle of the road’ scene…but yes, this is Grandma Death, who walks around aimlessly all day in the middle of the road checking her mail. Will she ever get any? Truly the most gripping part of the movie!

"Maybe my subscription to Hair Magazine Monthly will finally get here..."

We see that Donnie actually sees a giant, ugly talking rabbit-demon creature named Frank, who was the voice all along telling him this stuff. Yes, I’m dead serious, and no, I wasn’t doing any intoxicating substances when writing this review…anyway, Frank tells him to go flood his school and put an ax in the head of their, uh, ugly dog-faced man mascot statue thingy (???). Donnie is such a normal boy…there’s nothing weird about him at all. In fact, I believe many serial killers started out the exact same way.

Donnie in about 40 years.

The next day, Donnie finds the new girl, Gretchen, getting bullied by two morons, and walks home with her to protect her. She tells him the best thing to tell any boy you just meet, that her father stabbed her mother four times in the chest. But it’s fine, because Donnie one-ups her and says that he burned down a school. Being that he’s completely insane, she finds it attractive – I guess it runs in the family. He even gets her to be his girlfriend right away, because if someone ever told me they burnt down a building and had mental problems, I’d be jumping to get into a relationship too.

"Hey, I'm quirky!"
"I'm quirky too and I find your quirkiness attractive!"
"Let's be boyfriend and girlfriend...awkwardly!"
...or "Every Indie Film Ever Made."

You know, I think I just figured out the main problem with Richard Kelly’s writing. Just like in The Box, another godawfully pretentious pile of slop which he was behind, he substitutes memorable situations and interesting characters for unpleasantness and weird, gross-out scenarios. He almost gets a reasonable level of suspense, but it’s hard to be invested when he keeps on putting such dark, grotesque imagery and themes in his movies. And don’t get me wrong, I like dark and grotesque as much as anyone, but you have to have a point behind it! It should be scary, or underline some kind of message, or even just tell a good character-driven story. There should be some kind of structure to it, which you do not get here. This is a film that is pretty much just dark, and nothing else. It’s just unpleasant, weird scene after unpleasant, weird scene without any coherence, like a movie written by that kid who always sat in the back of the class with stringy hair covering his eyes, breathing raggedly down your neck and drawing pictures of naked women rubbing their breasts. Did you like that kid at all?

So Donnie gets some more garbage from the ugly talking rabbit about the end of the world. He blathers to his psychiatrist, who hypnotizes him, and then he talks about how much he thinks about sex all day at school, before starting to jerk off under the hypnosis…glad that scene was in the movie. At least she wakes him up before he gets too far. Then we get a scene of him sitting with his friends in the middle of a big field talking about whether or not the Smurfs rape the one female one in their whole clan. Donnie says they don’t have genitalia anyway, so it’s a moot point.

…God, EVERY SCENE there’s something that pisses me off. EVERY SINGLE SCENE! It’s seriously amazing. But it’s OK, because it’s so quirky that all the pretentious indie kids can laugh at just how quirky it is! How I hate such “quirkiness.” It’s incredibly self indulgent and smacks of an upturned nose and the pretension that only rich, preppy white morons would find interesting.

So if that wasn’t enough to make you want to violently strangle everyone involved with this, we also get introduced to the idea of time travel in this movie. Yes, time travel; because this movie didn’t rip off your faux-intellectual ideals from 10^th grade enough. Ugh. I’d elaborate on this but really none of it makes sense or has anything even remotely meaningful about it, so all I can tell you is that he finds out that Grandma Death, the old lady eternally waiting for her mail, once wrote a book about it. So he reads it and finds out that it has to do with the voices he’s been hearing. This is all very exciting, but personally I just want to know if she got her mail or not.

A riveting mystery!

We also get some really RADICAL FAR-OUT scenes of Donnie REBELLING AGAINST AUTHORITY, MAN, because he’s on the edge of society; a rebel who thinks for himself and doesn’t follow the crowd. And other dumb clichés spouted by people who are, ironically, following a crowd in and of itself by claiming that they do not follow a crowd.

There’s this one character who’s pretty much the stereotypical Christian soccer mom, complete with calling for books to be banned during PTA meetings that have otherwise nothing to do with that. In her class, she makes the kids constantly watch self-help videos from Patrick Swayze’s character, who apparently is some kind of local celebrity, or something. I don’t know. One day in class she makes all the kids place these situational card things on either side of the ‘human emotional spectrum’ – fear and love. Donnie stands up and gives a big old sermon about how human emotions are more complicated than that. Because he’s so deep. Then at this big public sermon where Patrick Swayze pretty much just spews out faux-inspirational, self empowering, politically correct crap, Donnie gets up again and makes a big speech about how wrong everything Swayze says is.

"Hi, my name is annoying vaguely religious soccer mom character, how can I irritate the hell out of you today?"

Uh, seriously movie? Big whoop, he exposed the hypocrisy of the school system. Are we supposed to be impressed?

So then he and his girlfriend walk around in the forest and talk about how beautiful the world is, American Beauty style, except without the charm and stronger, snappy writing that movie had. She says she doesn’t want to kiss him until the world feels right, or some other hippie-inspired nonsense, and also “because there’s a fat guy over there watching us,” which there is. Ahahaha…wait, no, that was even less funny than the dialogue in Juno. Which I have to admit is an accomplishment.

Then Donnie and Gretchen go to see Evil Dead in theaters, and there’s nobody else in the theater, because being in a bad movie has apparently ruined everyones’ taste. I’d really like to watch Evil Dead right now, but the movie ruins it by having Frank the demented crack-fantasy rabbit come in during it and talk about some more vague, mystical junk that means nothing. He takes off his mask and we see that he has a terrible bloody wound on his eye. Why is this important? The answer is, it isn’t! But then nothing in this movie really is, anyway, so it’s a moot point to criticize this specific part.

Sittin' in the theater with a giant demonic bunny...nothing weird about that! Heck, last week I had dinner with a three eyed mutant giraffe!

Oh yeah, but Frank told him to go burn down Patrick Swayze’s house! Which he does. And then he cries to his therapist about it, but then it’s revealed the next day that he had child porn and is now arrested. And I still don’t care. Seriously, this whole plotline is so played out. Public official is full of hot air and gets exposed for the liar and hypocrite that he is. Snore. I’d say the world is better off without him polluting young kids’ minds, but really when the rest of the characters in this movie are allowed to spout their fluffy hippie-liberal “I love everyone and the world is so beautiful and artistic” garbage freely, I don’t think the world is really any better at all. These are not characters with depth or human qualities; they are various ideologies and psychological stereotypes with names slapped on.

The Christian soccer-mom book-banning witch isn’t impressed with Donnie’s mom’s lack of devotion to her daughter’s dance team thing, because oh no, she’s a stupid and annoying character, so she guilt-trips Donnie’s mom into chaperoning their field trip. Donnie and his sister have a big Halloween party, when Donnie realizes the world is supposed to end tonight. So he and Gretchen and some of his friends go to the abandoned house of Grandma Death, where they find the bullies waiting there for no reason. The bullies attack them, and Gretchen gets hit by a car even though she could have easily avoided it…and then the movie ends with a big time loop that sets everything back to the beginning of the movie all over again, except this time Donnie actually died when the engine fell through the roof. Oh wow, a time paradox?! I haven’t been this surprised since I found out fast food wasn’t good for you! Truly the minds behind this movie are FAAAAR beyond my puny comprehension to come up with something THIS intellectual! Yeah, it’s stupid and pretentious. But at least the movie’s over.

This movie had some interesting concepts and the directing itself wasn’t bad at all, but the way its themes and motifs were executed was just all wrong. This movie is incredibly preachy and condescending, which is ironic considering how much it rails against that kind of collectivist sheep-mentality. It’s built on the premise that this kid, Donnie, is debunking all the hypocritical and overly simplified thinking that the public school forces on everyone, but then the way it shoves Donnie’s free-thinking, liberal ideas down your throat CONSTANTLY, IN EVERY SINGLE SCENE, is just so annoying that it makes me want to reach through the screen and smack everyone.

Not to mention the plot is ridiculously overcomplicated, the characters are all unlikable jerks, that stupid rabbit thing is just ugly as hell and the whole thing is specifically tailored to make young kids who don’t know any better feel smarter. This is not a good film, and I’m sorry this review hasn’t been as funny as some of my other ones, but really, what kinds of jokes am I supposed to make when every scene just has so many fundamental things wrong with it from a writing and ideological standpoint? There might not be any gaping plot holes or silly acting here, but don’t let that fool you: Donnie Darko is putrid, sappy, hipster crap and you shouldn’t ever watch it. Go, quickly! Run away!