Cinema Freaks Live: It (2017)

Here's the review Will, Nathan and I did for the new Stephen King's It movie. We did this about two weeks ago, but a hurricane in our home state of Florida forced us to reschedule it and then other things got in the way. I know, I know - what could be more important than this?

The answer is that nothing can be. Nothing.

Enjoy the review!

Cinema Freaks Live: A Ghost Story (2017)

Here's our Cinema Freaks Live video for the movie 'A Ghost Story.' I've been preoccupied with other things like the pursuit of money to pay bills and shit lately. So I hope this will tide people over. More reviews soon!

Cinema Freaks Live: Alien: Covenant (2017)

SPOILERS are afoot on this strange alien world where nothing makes sense...

Co-performed and suffered through with Tony.

Cinema Freaks Live: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Colossal (2017)

There may be SPOILERS in this!

Cinema Freaks Live: Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)

Here it is. The newest big budget video production from me here at Cinema Freaks. This one, I did by myself, because I alienated everyone else around me. Either that or I just didn't have anyone that night to go see the movie with me. Pick whichever answer makes you feel better about your own life.

Anyway, this is the new DC animated movie, Batman: The Killing Joke, based on, I believe, an 80s post punk band. But on the case that I am wrong I did include the video here for your viewing pleasure.

Have fun with that! It's eight minutes of bliss about the movie. Spoilers included. If you watched the video before seeing the movie, and then saw the "spoilers" warning after you already heard some spoilers, then sorry. I'll refund your money at the door.

The Purge: Election Year (2016) + BONUS! (SPOILERS)

Well, it's the time of year to be patriotic again, so of course there's another Purge movie to shit all over that and ruin it for everybody. This is Election Year!

And yes, there's SPOILERS for the movie in this review and the podcast. Beware! Or just read the spoilers and don't go see the fucking movie. I dunno. Do what you want. I'm still typing in bold and it makes this part of the review look important.

Director: James DeMonaco

Starring: Frank Grillo, Elizabeth Mitchell

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

Here's a podcast Michelle and I did about it:

The both of us really, really fucking hated The Purge: Anarchy back in 2014. It was just so awful, from the over the top political message to the implication that all Americans really are just awful, shitty people. I feel secure in reinforcing that it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. You know, so far as anyone claiming something is the worst ever on the internet can be taken seriously. Which isn't much – hyperbole is like 99-cent candy bars here. It's cheap currency and you can buy it at shitty, seedy gas stations from teenagers high on pot.

So, Election Year. I'll start off by showing this scene of the Lincoln Memorial covered in blood, gore and burning trash. I wonder who's going to clean that up? This is the most odious crime committed on Purge Night. I have no sympathy for litterbugs!

Throughout the movie they constantly say it's their American right to Purge and blather on about freedom, but then this happens and no one cares. Bull fucking shit. Americans are so zealously patriotic and symbol-obsessed that they'd murder someone who did this on a day that wasn't The Purge night.

We see the New Founding Fathers, apparently the totalitarian leaders of America in the future, plotting against this senator lady, Charlie Roan, played by Elizabeth Mitchell, who is running for president. She has the audacity to want to end the Purge because her family died in it 20 years ago. What an irrational bitch, am I right?

Stop your emotional liberal appeals in the face of our liberties! Wait, this is getting a bit too real.

These guys cackle like Halloween Jack O'Lanterns and speak in all the overemphasized cadence and exaggerated verbosity of a Saturday morning cartoon villain. Oh, wait, there are no Saturday morning cartoons anymore. Which means there is no God.

Anyway, the scenes of Senator Roan debating the other dude who wants to keep the Purge – who is some sort of ultraconservative preacher character who acts like a lost Bugs Bunny villain – are just the bottom of the barrel. The rest of the movie, then, is below the bottom of the barrel. It's underneath the fucking barrel.

The fact that it's such a controversy to stop making murder legal once a year, to the point where one candidate is laughing at another for suggesting it, is batshit crazy. I'm sure you could spin this into a decent satire of some sort, but the movie lacks the self awareness and the good writing to make it seem realistic.

There are also multiple scenes of this corner store in a middle class/poor area of town. There's the owner, Joe Dixon, and a host of side characters like this Hispanic immigrant guy who works with him and a woman who is a regular customer and who drives a van on Purge night to help people. I just think all of these scenes are such a load of horse shit. They're all so fake-folksy, like a corporation trying to relate to the 'common people' by pretending to be idyllic and cute and all of that. It's like Coca Cola putting a rap song into a commercial - you're not fooling anyone.

Oh, but there is a scene of two crazy, psychotic middle school girls who try to steal one candy bar from the store. This becomes a central plot point for the first half of the movie. No, I'm not even kidding.

The big change to Purge night this year is that anyone can be targeted, even government officials, who previously you couldn't target. That should've been a whiff of bullshit so strong that even the dumbest “patriotic” rednecks would have cried foul and ended the whole thing years ago. But remember, in the universe of the Purge, Americans are all universally self-centered idiots who take Fox News as the gospel and swallow their bullshit like donuts at Free Donut Day. Definitely isn't the writers themselves projecting their own idiocy! Nope! It's all Americans that are like this!

So, yeah, we get reintroduced to the guy from the last movie, Barnes, played by Frank Grillo. He has as much character as the lamp I bought last week. He has no charisma on screen and adds so little to this movie or the last one that you could replace him in every scene with a Photoshopped picture of a duck playing the saxophone, and the movie would at least have something kind of endearing in it. This time, he's the Secret Service or something for Charlie Roan. How did he go from revolutionary lone wolf to a Secret Service member? This is making all those times real Secret Service got caught fucking Colombian hookers and letting crazy people onto the White House lawn look like premiere hiring, real career guys.

We see more of his expert prowess when they set up this whole security detail at Charlie Roan's house, protecting her from the Purge night. It doesn't last more than 20 minutes before it's revealed that almost every security guy they hired is corrupt and actually working for the New Founding Fathers to kill Charlie! Wow, maybe you should've spent more than twenty minutes vetting these security guys and not been multi-tasking on your phone playing Online Billiards or whatever the fuck.

So then they go and hide out conveniently in the folksy corner store from before – wow, you mean there was a reason they showed those two separate storylines earlier on? What expert level, Shakespearean storytelling! This leads to some truly masterful dialogue between Barnes and Joe Dixon, in which Dixon constantly assumes Barnes is being racist to him. Only the dialogue here isn't good enough to actually convey any tension, and so their constant bickering actually just makes the movie itself look subtly racist. Just because one of them's a black dude and the other isn't doesn't mean every conversation they have has to sound like Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson in Die Hard 3 – you fucking hacks. It isn't the early 1990s anymore, for one thing, and for another, your movie isn't as smart as Die Hard 3. Certainly not enough to pull this off.

Not to mention pretty much all the black characters come from some rough past in 'the streets.' And the one Hispanic guy is from a horrible war-torn part of Mexico that he compares the Purge to. You know, just because you graduated beyond writing black characters like Song of the South or something, doesn't mean you're not racist anyway.

Oh, and the foreigner characters who have vaguely non-denominational European accents (they're just "foreigners") are only in the movie because they've come from overseas to participate in Purge night. They're portrayed as bloodthirsty, remorseless serial killers. EVERYONE FROM ANOTHER CULTURE IS EVIL! HIDE IN YOUR HOMES! VOTE TRUMP!

"This'll sure look cool at the Halloween Horror Nights attraction!"

But fortunately you don't have long to think about that, as the psychotic high school girls arrive in a car covered with Christmas lights, dressed like dominatrixes and acting like literal wild animals would if they had a basic command of English. And yes, the main one is still after the one candy bar – that's her whole motivation. She's going to kill people just to get a fucking candy bar.

This is one of those scenes like from the last movie where I just can't suspend my disbelief. What did these girls do the other 364 days a year that weren't Purge night? How did they function normally in society? The movie implies that there doesn't need to be an answer, because humans are just shittier in the future for unspecified, vague reasons including the words 'moral decline.' Fuck that and fuck you, movie.

The girls do get run over though! So there is that, for some mildly okay gore. If that's all you need, then The Purge: Election Year has your dismal standards covered!

A lot of other shit happens after that. I don't care to get into all of it. It's mostly badly shot, poorly paced, boring action movie crap and it's not even exciting to look at, with everything being so dark and grimy all the time.

Walking around at night with shitty haunted house traps set up in the city and predictably coming out unscathed = drama and suspense, I guess.

The climax involves a plot by this rebel group to blow up a church where this group of rich 1%ers is having this sermon praising the Purge for letting them get their 'demons' out, or some bullshit. The rival Senator is leading the whole thing. Only then they kidnap Charlie Roan and tie her up and intend to murder her for their big sermon thing.

That means one candidate for president is kidnapping and attempting to murder the other. It's like if Donald Trump went to Hillary Clinton's house, held her at gunpoint and killed her, and then expected everyone else to just act like nothing happened the next day and continue the election without her later. It's utter lunacy. The fact that someone wrote this and another person greenlighted it as if to say “yes, this is a smart plotline” makes me convinced we're doomed and Trump is going to win.

Fortunately, through a series of contrivances, the villains move much too slowly to actually kill her, so the good guys can save her. So glad they spend a ton of time monologuing, and then when they go to slit her throat, they do it as poorly as possible. Then they have a big shoot out fight, punctuated with Joe Dixon inserting incredibly lame and unfunny “jokes” throughout every time there's a pause. They're seriously not funny at all. I've heard things said at funerals that were funnier.

He dies at the end anyway, taking a bullet for Charlie Roan in another slow, poorly drawn-out scene that she should've died from but the script wouldn't allow it. Because really, what good is a black character in a horror movie if he doesn't die tragically? Otherwise you might actually have to do crazy things like make them "likable" or give them "personalities."

Then it turns out Charlie Roan actually wins the fucking election that year. It would have been hilarious if she lost. Wouldn't that have been a dark twist? Too bad, sometimes the progressive light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel candidate just can't win? Would've been salt in the wounds for Bernie supporters watching this anyway.

But yeah, she wins and ends the Purge, I guess. I don't understand how. If people wanted the Purge night to change this badly, why did it go on for so long? 20 fucking years of that before people finally decided to change it? Really? The only implication I can see is that there was no candidate advocating for the end of the Purge that whole time. The whole fucking 20 years of legal murder, and not one candidate until this Charlie Roan lady even breached the subject. Wow. That's a lot of bullshit to swallow!

This movie is awful just like the last one. The whole political message just makes no sense – it's a skewering of the American right wing through the lens of this far left view, but the way all the poor and homeless and minorities are depicted – as degenerates or very broadly drawn, unflattering stereotypes – swings it right back to more of a right wing view, like the caricatures of Fox News-style fearmongering. It's a confusing, poorly thought out message.

Mostly, the movie implies that Americans are just a bunch of stupid, assholeish simpletons who would allow their country to get this far gone. The proof I have of this is that at no point during these Purge movies do you see people trying to really help those under attack. Only the worst of society is ever shown. The whole point is that medical services and ambulances and police don't have to do their jobs. So you're telling me that out of all those doctors and cops and well-meaning citizens who actually have souls, none of them are willing to go help out anyway? All of them are really that selfish and shitty? It's really just every man for himself? That's perhaps the biggest load of bullshit in the movie, and that's not a small feat.

People are better than this movie or the other piece of trash that precluded it think. People would help out where they could, form tons of organized coalitions to save people on Purge night, and they really would not let this stuff go on for like 20 years before saying hey, we need to stop this.

I know this is just a bullshit fictional universe, but come on – you need to have a plausible, believable fantasy. This movie doesn't. And it would be more interesting with more characters fighting back against the Purge, helping people and generally not rolling over and playing dead and letting us only see the worst people in the world on screen. But I guess the movie really needed to push that 'Americans are shitty people' message!

Even aside from that, it's a boring, shitty action movie with no good characters or scenes. There's no suspense and every part of the plot is poorly written cliché. There's nothing to like about this. It's all hack work trash, and I don't have any qualms with saying so. Fuck The Purge: Election Year.

BONUS: WHY THE PURGE IS A STUPID FUCKING IDEA IN GENERAL

As a bonus, Michelle and I were talking the other night about this movie some more, and really, the whole idea of the Purge in general gets more insane the more you think about it - i.e. even thinking a tiny, little bit at all crumbles the entire concept. Let's go over some of the implications of this world:

• Can prisoners rise up and kill the guards and break out of jail on Purge night? That seems like something that should be addressed. There's certainly enough prisoners to do so, like at least 400 against, what, 80 guards at most? Seems like that would be a mess to clean up the next day.

• What about crimes that have nothing to do with murder? Remember, all crime is legal. What if a stockbroker steals a bunch of money from his trading company and throws the world economy off balance?

• I guess rape is legal now on Purge night, so any number of horrible things could happen. If the point of Purge night is reducing crime – well, I'm pretty sure the victims of rape wouldn't be thanking you, jackasses.

• I wonder what it's like for people to have to live with ramifications of the Purge after it happens. Like if a boss kills a competitor – is that looked upon as a legitimate transaction later? Like 'oh, I guess it's okay cause of Purge night'? “Gee, it really sucks that Mike killed our boss last night. He was about to give me that raise and help me feed my starving children.”

• What about when one of your co-workers brutally murders another co-worker? How does the rest of the office look that first co-worker in the eye the rest of the year? Someone's not getting invited to the office party. I'm picturing it like that scene from Office Space where they all pass over Milton and don't let him have any cake. That seems like what would happen.

• Are American territories included in the Purge? Do people on the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico get to participate? What if some rogue state official wanted to bomb another country and had the keys to the nuclear weapons? Would the whole world have to just shrug their shoulders and forget about it because oh, those goofy Americans and their all-crime-is-legal holiday?!

Holy fuck. They really didn't think any of this through. This is what happens when you don't do enough world-building for your fictional world. The Purge just gets worse and worse the more you actually look at the logic behind it. This has to be among the worst bullshit in modern cinema!

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them and are making no money off this.

Cinema Freaks LIVE: Krampus (2015)

WARNING! WARNING! Yuletide spoilers abound!

If your kids believe in Santa, the best thing to do if you're a normal parent is probably just let them keep believing in Santa. But if you're a terrible (read: hilarious and awesome) parent, you just tell them if they're bad, the Krampus will show up and kill us all, and it will be the worst Christmas since Uncle Jerry pissed in the mashed potatoes last year.

Director: Michael Dougherty

Starring: Emjay Anthony, Adam Scott, Krista Stadler

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This is Krampus, guys. Let's dive right in with a podcast:

Michelle and I saw this movie, by the director of Trick 'R Treat Michael Dougherty, which means he is trying to monopolize the holidays with horror movies. And that is a cause I can really get behind. Fuck Toys for Tots, give money to this guy so he can make more movies.

We both liked it. It's about this mythical beast called Krampus, a monster from Alpine folklore that punishes bad children at the holidays, and which I think is the much better alternative to Elf on a Shelf. Anyway, it is summoned to a house where a young boy named Max is dissatisfied with Christmas. He and his huge, dysfunctional family, stuck inside during a blizzard, have to fend off an assorted array of weird, bizarre creatures in the dark. It's all pretty wacky. But compared to red Starbucks cups, I have to say this isn't the worst slight against Christmas this year.

It's a horror comedy that actually has both horror and comedy – what a fucking revelation, right? That doesn't seem hard, but I guess I just don't understand the subtle nuances of where movies like The Visit and Thankskilling failed. Those films had terrible comedy and were terrible movies. Krampus works because it's funny and knows when to switch it out for the actual horror. Neither one feels half assed or phoned in, so it all works together and makes a better movie. The way all the characters bicker and fight is sort of like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation style. Like Christmas Vacation, too, there is a kind of softening of the characters, too, and they're never portrayed solely as loathsome douchebags like a lot of terrible movies do. They do have a humanity to them.

And also like Christmas Vacation, a monster shows up and kills everyone at the party.

...what? Did I get it mixed up with a different movie?

The horror elements are quite well done, rife with wintry darkness as they are, and the production value is outstandingly high. Finally we have a big budget horror film that uses it to craft some really good scenery and atmospherics. The creatures also look good. In terms of living Jack in the Boxes with vampire fangs and demonic teddy bears, this movie definitely has some of the better ones of those I've seen. A lot of the scares take place inside the house, which is normal for the holidays, but the movie manages to make use of the house well.

So the whole movie basically happens because main character Max wrote this letter to Santa pleading to have a good Christmas without anybody fighting. When his family found the letter and several cousins made fun of him, Max tore it up and threw the pieces out the window. Because he lost faith in Christmas, the Krampus showed up to kill his family, mostly through action scenes so dark that I suspect the power went out in real life on the set.

Now, at the end, Max faces the Krampus – looking like Santa if he spent some time living off the wild of the Everglades – and says he takes back everything and wants to revert things to how they used to be. I was really hoping here that the Krampus would do it, and everyone would be like 'Max, this was the worst Christmas ever, thanks for nothing you little bastard.'

But no, actually the Krampus just drops Max into a flaming hole in the ground too, which is awesome, and the way every Christmas movie should end. The movie doesn't actually end there, which Michelle and I found disappointing, but the actual ending - involving a macabre dream sequence of sorts - was fitting for the dark fairytale-esque nature of the film.

The film is skips along with a gleeful, evil sense of fun. It's a perversion of everything about the holiday is about, and that's great. Though, I do have to say it's kind of funny when you think about it. The Krampus kills people who don't believe in Christmas. That could be stretched, in a very liberal way, to people who want to take the Christ out of Christmas. You could make the argument that he is the ultimate protector of the holiday. Christian rights groups should be loving this guy! He should be their new poster boy.

We both liked the way this movie was a big mainstream horror flick that didn't suck. It isn't cliche, it has a cool idea and a lot of energy. It's a good movie, and it actually is not an indie flick like other luminary films like It Follows or The Babadook. I like that it's this wide-released, big horror movie that isn't a sack of shit. That warms my icy heart. Horror isn't dead, and Krampus is good. Merry pre-Christian Christmas.

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

Tony and I Debate It Follows

Earlier this month, my friend Tony and I (and Michelle) finally saw the film It Follows. And we actually disagreed on it. If you've read my earlier review of the film or seen its spot on my "More Great New Halloween Staples" list, you probably know I really like the film. But it didn't work for Tony, and he said he found it ineffective and un-scary. I guess that's just how it goes sometimes. So we did this:



Who do you agree with? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Halloween, too!

Cinema Freaks LIVE: Goosebumps (2015)

Nostalgia is a powerful force these days. Everyone wants to remember what they sort of forgot. The Internet gave them that, like a golden goose's egg, and now movie studios are milking it for all it's worth. If you want the biggest example of that, well...there are probably a lot. But one of them is the new Goosebumps movie. Which Michelle and I did a podcast about!

(SPOILERS are in the podcast and review, for those who want to avoid those!)



Wasn't that great? On second thought, don't answer that. Instead, you can read the review if you're not convinced.

Director: Rob Letterman

Starring: Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

Basically about a kid who moves to a new town, befriends a girl and finds out her father is RL Stine, and also that he has a bunch of books which, if opened, unleash all the monsters from the classic Goosebumps books on the unsuspecting real world. You know how it goes. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy has to fight off obvious marketing tools in a kids' horror movie.

The movie is rife with all sorts of witty puns and dialogue from every character. They spew them like gumball machines. It's like all of them sat down in a room and wrote out their dialogue before actually going out to speak to one another. Main character Zach at this point might as well get a job writing for Buzzfeed, he's so quick with a light jab or quip.

"Hang on, mom, I need to consult my joke writer to see what funny stuff he's got for me to say!"

The movie really shows its true colors with a scene of this girl, Hannah, calling to him and making friends. They exchange some dialogue that will be repeated over the course of the film in a predictable way, but is still rather likable anyway, so I'm torn on what degree I should make fun of it – a full on inferno-burn, or a mere sizzling like bacon on a griddle? Eh, it's not terrible.

But I love the part where Jack Black as RL Stine pops out of the window and tells Zach not to talk to his daughter, like a threat against him – come on, SHE talked to HIM first! What is he supposed to do? Ignore the cute girl in front of him flirting with him in the middle of the night? At like 16 or whatever age he's supposed to be, I think a Catholic priest would have an easier time resisting his urges!

"Hey, let's exchange some light hearted, scripted-sounding banter!"
"Sounds good! Can we flirt more?"
"No, this is a PG movie and that would get us thrown in jail."
"Well sheeeeeeeeeeeeaaaatttt."
"Sssshhhh!"

"I'll make sure you turn GAY before you talk to MY DAUGHTER!!!"

The next day at school, we get all kinds of wacky scenarios, like Zach's mom starting her new job as the vice principal at the school and saying “Twerking” in her opening speech rather than “Tweeting.” Oh the hi-larity! And also, Zach meets this weird kid named Champ, who asks him to go to the dance together...to pick up girls. Yeah. That's why he wants to. Uh, yeah...cough...then Champ hands him a business card, which really makes sense for a high school kid to have and also points out how fucking weird this kid is.

At night, Hannah takes Zach out into the woods, where she shows him an abandoned carnival that somehow still has the power on. I guess they just forgot to turn that off and just chalk up the thousands of dollars in extra electricity towards residents' taxes to a fluke. If it seems weird that I am spending time thinking about that shit during a kids' movie, well, don't pay attention to me. There's another scene  right after where they climb up the old Ferris wheel with nobody around and hang out there, because apparently death excites them.

There's really nothing that can save them here from death – Zach even asks how they get down at one point, which I'm sure Hannah's real answer to was “you can't get down, I own you now!” But they had to cut that out and continue the movie, because otherwise nobody would have gotten paid. Oh well. All I'm saying is, it's insane that this fairground thing is a plot point in the film.

They eventually make their ways back to RL Stine's house, where Zach thinks Stine is abusing Hannah. I remember thinking the trailer showing this plot point was really fucking dark, and not even knowing what movie it was at first. But then of course, they break in and discover Stine's secret – he has every book he ever wrote locked up, and if they're unlocked, the monsters come to life and terrorize reality.

"Why is there one copy of a Bearenstein Bears book in here?"

There's never really much of an explanation for why or how this happens, except that Stine has a magic typewriter that can do it. I guess he never considered STOPPING writing the books even after he had to have known it was possible after a FEW of the fucking things. What a psycho! And why does he have them just displayed like that on a shelf? Shouldn't they be locked away in a safe at the bottom of the ocean or something?! Something tells me this RL Stine in the movie is less a horror writer and more a demented and hell bent sadist bent on humanity's violent destruction.

Stine: "I could have stopped this, but I secretly wanted this to happen!"

But oh well – so the plot doesn't make sense. What do you want? All we're really here for are the action scenes. They're generally well done. We get a few pretty enjoyable scenes of the characters fighting a snowman and a werewolf in various places. And Jack Black (again) as Slappy the dummy is hilariously good – he's almost worth the price of admission by himself.

I guess there are a couple of forced 'serious' moments as the film tries to give us a plot about how Stine was bullied as a kid and that's why he grew up to write the Goosebumps series. It's really rather silly and doesn't come off well. Mostly because we needed another bullied-kid story like I needed a bag full of fire ants at the foot of my bed. Oh boo hoo, you got bullied as a kid? Let me play you the world's smallest guitar, doing the intro to Stairway to Heaven.

...wait, I don't think THAT'S right...

But the real reveal is when they find out that, shock and awe, Hannah is actually a creation from one of his books! She isn't even real and doesn't know it. Goddamn. That means he can create functional human beings out of thin air. I mean, yeah, THIS time he created a sweet teenage girl. But what about when he gets the urge to replace a politician in power with his own pawns? Can he just create a proxy who will do whatever he wants? Will we all end up under the thumb of the totalitarian RL Stine reign without even knowing it? Jesus. This just became the most terrifying movie of the year, easy.

I'll put this image here to balance it out.

So the only way to defeat the monsters is, apparently, by writing one final book about all of them, which will end with them getting sucked back into the book. Stine tries, and even almost finishes a book in an extremely short amount of time while Zach is doing something else – maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seems like this movie has mixed messages. On one side, Stine is a terrifying potential dictator who can do anything with a keyboard. On the other, “hey, he writes his books in under an hour!” Maybe both are true.

This goes fairly well until Slappy breaks Stine's fingers, rendering Stine unable to write. So it's up to Zach to go finish the last page of the book without getting his head torn off by monsters. Meanwhile, though, Champ saves this really hot girl in a skimpy dress from a werewolf, and she rewards him by kissing him. Because, you know, if you can save a girl from a werewolf, you deserve her as a prize, I guess.

I went to acting school and all I got was a shit role where I had to give myself to a dorky character!

Zach manages to finish the book, but only after a terrifying near-death experience in which a Ferris wheel almost kills them when it comes off its hinges and rolls down a giant hill. Seriously, how did they survive that? I think a career in stunts would seem as harmless as a knitting job after that. Jesus.

"WE REGRET DOING OUR OWN STUNTS!!"

So yeah, they stop all the monsters at the end, but Hannah gets sucked back into the book as well. The next day at school, I guess everyone just got over that whole 'most of our town was annihilated' thing pretty easily, as no one seems to care anymore. Stine is even a teacher there now, because I guess almost destroying an entire town with monsters you created makes you qualified to teach whatever kids didn't get massacred the previous night by said monsters. Life is fun when it makes no sense, huh?

To add an extra dose of pandering, apparently Stine wrote Hannah back to life just so she could be with Zach. A literal fictional girl created just to be someone's girlfriend. What do I even have to say? It's pretty lame. Should our movies really be teaching young boys that if they do absolutely nothing, a children's author will write a girlfriend into existence for them? Ugh. I've just seen that bad lesson in movies way too often.

This film is just silly, mostly. Nothing in the plot makes sense. But then again, when did the original Goosebumps plots ever make that much sense? The film is pretty true to its source material! The whole thing really is just intended to be like an extended, over the top version of what the classic Goosebumps stories were - it has the same structure and format; a kid meets a girl and gets into supernaturally-laced trouble.

It's nonsense, but it's fun nonsense. The characters are enjoyable in a dumb way and the story is fast and exciting enough, especially for younger kids and teenagers. Jack Black is electrifyingly fun as RL Stine and the effects are enjoyably cheesy. While I can't say this is that good or anything, it is entertaining in its own silly way. So go see it, especially if you used to like Goosebumps.

But seriously, guys. Be careful of who you piss off. You don't want to run afoul of RL Stine, as he is a master of the arcane old arts and possesses unspeakable powers with which he can ruin your life. He rules us to this day from his horrific mountain lair, creating monsters wherever people irk him. On second thought, if you don't see me any time soon, just assume he did something to me because of this review.

Images copyright of their original owners. We own none of them.

Cinema Freaks LIVE: The Visit (2015)

M. Night Shyamalan is something of a punchline now, and all of his movies have been reviled by everyone for years. He’s basically the equivalent of that guy in town no one likes and everyone has a story about him they laugh about over drinks - a clown not respected by anyone. It’s easy to get sucked into that, and rag on him - but he’s an easy target, so I don’t do it very much. However, The Visit is the worst shit I’ve ever seen from him. Tony and Michelle and I did a podcast about it. Check it out!

(Both the podcast and the review contain heavy SPOILERS, so if you actually want to see this for some reason, don't say we didn't warn you.)



This movie is an insane disaster, complete hot, wild garbage stinking up to the high heavens. It’s bad in every sense of the word. I could go on and on like this, but I don’t think it’s really a good form to do nothing but bitch about how bad it is with no actual criticism. Cough...yeah...I'd NEVER do that...

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle and Tony.

The problem is...I just don’t know where to start. Pretty much everything about this is either unpleasant, grating or poorly done. I mean, what was the plot behind this? Shyamalan got drunk off some fruity cocktail drinks and then said, "I have a new movie idea: old people are bad!" And then, for some inexplicable reason, a studio gave him money to make the movie.

To make matters worse, it's produced by the people who gave us Paranormal Activity, Sinister, The Purge, Ouija and more. Which is like two Japanese Kaiju monsters combining in a horrible lab accident and forming some sort of super monster to destroy Tokyo. M. Night Shyamalan teaming up with the people who gave us Ouija and the Insidious sequels - I think superhero movies typically feature less evil villain team-ups.

The premise is that these two kids are going to visit their grandmother and grandfather in a small town, who they’ve never met because their mother hasn’t spoken to them since she was 19 years old. Also, their father is out of the picture after a divorce. Hooray, dysfunctional families!

"Bye, kids! I'm glad you're leaving so I can get wasted and have tons of irresponsible sex!"

So, okay, not TOO bad so far. I mean, it is a story at least, even if it’s a flimsy one. Until we get to the fact that it’s a found footage movie, anyway. As I’ve said before, the genre can be done well. However, here it’s a couple of annoying white kids exchanging witty quips and blathering about how they think movies should be directed. I guess it’s kind of realistic, but both of them are so obnoxious to watch that I find it hard to be invested in at all.

Unless the movie wants you to be his ear, nose and throat doctor, this shot is pointless!

It's a shame because the young actors are pretty good and I hope they do more stuff as they get older, but here, they were victims of the Shyamalan Curse, which renders any actor awful.

There’s one scene where the girl is pointing the camera at a swing and saying they need to let it swing naturally. This is important because it shows that Shyamalan’s own directing skills are the same as that of a 15-year-old amateur.

Also, the little brother is constantly rapping, and it’s awful. I know he’s just a kid, and it’s mean to discourage kids from their hobbies and passions, but whoever made that rule up never heard this kid rap. I mean, holy fuck. What was the writing process like for that? I'm guessing Shyamalan decided that him walking into the middle of the scene himself and saying in a loud voice amplified above the rest of the movie, "I hate you, audience, and I want you to die," over and over, would have been a bit much. So the rapping was the next worst alternative.

The kids have a 9:30 bedtime, because after that specific time every night, the grandma gets naked, claws the walls with her fingernails and walks around with a knife. These obvious signs of mental illness probably would have been mentioned to the kids before they got there in real life, but it makes for good gross-out gimmicky shock scenes, so that's more important than storytelling!

How do they time it at exactly 9:30 anyway? What if grandma decided to strip down and grab her favorite kitchen knife at 9 p.m. when they’re down in the living room watching Nickelodeon? Weird.

There’s a part in the beginning where the brother’s phone doesn’t work, which I guess is the excuse for why the characters can never call the police. But we see that Skype works just fine, and they use the Internet later to look up stuff. Shyamalan could have easily just written out the part where the phone didn't work, but I think he was deliberately doing this just to piss everyone off. He had a plot that made sense, then he decided to make it confusing and bad for no reason, like he was protesting imaginary ghosts in his head who wanted to challenge his creative process. He is a special snowflake, after all, and the laws of reality don't apply to him.

More weird stuff starts happening, which they try to tell their mom, but she shrugs it off and says they’re old. Yeah! That’s it. They’re old. You’re the best mom ever. Old people are always stripping naked and carrying knives around! You kids have got to learn the hard and brutal facts of life sometime or other.

He could be suicidal and need real help, but nahhh, just senile!

There’s a bunch of filler scenes of them running around with the camera and filming shit, and it’s about as boring as it sounds. There’s no real development of the story. The camera stuff is so badly ingrained into the story, it’s practically a square peg into a round hole. I mean fuck. Most of the time it’s just the kids filming their grandparents making breakfast, or them driving. We don't get scenes of the two kids in the bathroom, but that's probably because Shyamalan's lawyers intervened before he could do that.

I don’t know if there’s even a point in saying so, but kids don’t use a camera like this. Nobody does, unless you’re directing a real, budgeted, scripted movie. No sentient human being does this. And it's also too clean looking for what's apparently just a reel of everything they filmed in the movie's world. Real life, there’d be way more errors, breaks in the video, et cetera. I just don't get what this was even supposed to be in the movie's universe - just a collection of footage from her camera, or a finished project? If it's the latter, hoo boy, I hope she's ready to submit it to Sundance! It'll be a gem.

But hey. Shyamalan knows it’s dumb. While they’re setting up a secret camera to spy on grandma and the sister wonders if it’s ethical to do that for a documentary, the little brother quips about how there’s no cinematic standards anymore. Which I think is obvious based on this movie.

Zing!

There are multiple scenes of the grandparents telling insane stories about seeing ghosts and monsters in the lake. It goes nowhere every time, and while I don’t think the movie would’ve been better with some supernatural elements, it would have been better if our time wasn’t wasted listening to these asinine stories from a bunch of senile old people.

The twist at the end is that the two old people are NOT actually the real grandparents. After like, five fucking days, the mother finally notices that they’re staying with the wrong old fucks. The movie has shown them several times speaking with the mother via Skype, and somehow that was never noticed. The mother, by the way, has been at a beach resort having fun and partying all movie long, and she didn’t even bother to make sure her kids got to the right grandparents. Parenting: it’s easy so long as you have no brain! Are you even really divorced, or did you forget to tell him when you moved?

Oh, and I guess the two old people are escaped mental patients. Who, I guess, nobody noticed were missing from the asylum they were being held at! That's just great. Keep up the awesome security at that mental facility there, jackasses. After all, who cares if a couple of serial killers escape? Fuck it, not even worth sending out cops to look for 'em.

"But if someone's got some weed, we'll gladly arrest them!"

Also, due to convenient writing, the two old fucks were able to keep it together okay until they were found out to be impostors, at which point they went crazy and started acting like the murderous psychotics they are. Writing is easy when you don't want to try! Anyone can do it.

See?

The climax involves a game of Yahtzee in which the grandma wolfs down a bunch of cookies and then screams right into the camera, crumbs dropping from her gaping maw of a mouth. Yahtzee issued a public apology saying they were sorry they ever invented the game after seeing this, and if they knew it would have been in this movie when they first made it, they would’ve aborted the game creation and set their building on fire.

Irreparably damaged now. Shame...

Then we get a bunch of scenes of shaky-cam fumbling in the dark as the kids discover the bodies of their real grandparents in the basement. Oh, and there’s a scene where the grandpa shoves a shit-stained diaper into the brother’s face. Thanks for that one, Shyamalan. I'm sorry I don't have a joke for that. I was...completely unprepared for movie scenes about diapers thrown in little kids' faces. Next movie I see it in, I promise I'll have something.

The fact that these fight scenes made it into the project is dizzyingly stupid, when you consider the fact that, in the movie’s universe, this whole thing was supposed to be edited together by the sister as a documentary project about her family. What made THAT worth putting in? What kind of documentary is this?

At the actual end, they get rescued and then the daughter and her mom have a heartwarming ending where we find out the BIG REASON she and the grandparents had a falling out years ago. It’s been hinted at all movie long and now we’re finally getting the answer. So. What is it? Take a seat here, this is going to be intense and I want to make sure you all can handle this huge revelation.

Are you ready? Okay: Apparently, when the mom was 19, she yelled at the grandparents and they pushed each other around a little. Wow. That’s why they never talked again? That’s why this whole mess happened? I'd say that's underwhelming, but that's like saying most school shooters just need to have a cookie and a beer and they'll be fine. It's not an accurate statement.

There’s also this really tacked-on moral about forgiveness and family and stuff. Really, was THAT what I was supposed to take from the shit-diaper-in-face scene, or all of the scenes of the grandparents telling conspiracy UFO ghost stories? Wow. That went totally over my head! Shyamalan is clearly much smarter than we thought. I guess this was a good movie after all.

The end credits are played over a scene of the brother rapping again. This time it’s full of product placements, because I guess Shyamalan needed to whore himself out to pay for this shit heap of a movie and also, for all the diapers he needed as props. I mean, there were a lot of those!

M. Night Shyamalan, now sponsored by adult diapers.

This is practically the dictionary definition of a bad movie, and I think Shyamalan did it on purpose. There's a nauseating level of self-aware 'bad on purpose' pandering about this. I think he made this just to fuck with Hollywood and the viewers/critics who hated his other movies, because the whole thing is pretty much the movie critics who hate him THOUGHT his other movies were. Hell, he's literally smearing shit in our faces. This movie is pretty much like a bratty child frustrated that no one gets his "brilliant" ideas, so he's passive-aggressively lashing out. My mother, upon seeing the trailer for this some months back, said it looked "exhausting" to watch, and frankly, that's the best summary I can think of.

This really is up there for worst movie of the decade. It's just so, so bad; everything about it is. Nothing makes sense. Fuck, I need to go lie down.

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

Cinema Freaks LIVE: The Gift (2015)

It's time again for Cinema Freaks Live, this time talking about the 2015 thriller The Gift. I'm joined by Colin (The Observer), Michelle and Chris as we all talk about what was good and bad about the movie. I'll also go into it a little bit in this post, as well - just in case any of you are stuck in the soul-sucking 9 to 5 routine in a cubicle somewhere. Also note that there are SPOILERS a lot in this one. Here's the podcast:

Director: Joel Edgerton

Starring: Joel Edgerton, Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall

IMDb

The movie is basically about a couple, Simon and Robyn, who move into a new house. They almost immediately run into Gordo, an old buddy of Simon's from college, who starts acting a little weird and overly friendly. He comes over a lot when Robyn is home alone, which starts to get on Simon's nerves. Tensions rise as Simon tries to tell Gordo to back off - but in the process, some secrets about Simon's past are revealed.

The movie is pretty good. It's got a nice visual style to it and the settings don't look like every other thriller out there. The story and atmosphere tend to remind me of early 2000s thrillers, and the acting is pretty solid. I like how you don't really know who to feel sorry for at first, and the murky ambiguity early on makes it an interesting watch. It also doesn't really pander to anyone by throwing in any stupid twists, gore or tits or anything like that - it's just a solid story, written and directed by acting veteran Joel Edgerton - who also plays Gordo, mind you.

The problem is, I don't think Edgerton really knew where he was going with the story. He takes the easy way out too often as the story hurtles toward a conclusion. Characters figure things out too easy, and what was once an ambiguous, shady story becomes a story where both Simon and Gordo are obviously bad, bad guys. You find out Simon was a bully who ruined Gordo's life as a kid - fine. That could be interesting. But then you see he also isn't any different NOW. Now, he's cheating his way into a promotion at his job and lying to everyone - it's just kind of goofy, the way it's done. It doesn't really engage you to the character when there's so little complexity.

Gordo, on the other hand, is a psychopath. He clearly had this planned, or else it made no sense. He met Simon randomly on the street and then had this whole plan to fuck with his head. He breaks into Simon's house later, drugs Robyn and makes a video tape where he may or may not have gotten her pregnant. When they have a kid at the end of the movie, Simon is tormented with guilt that the kid may not be his - it might be Gordo's.

It's all just too over the top. There should have been a more subtle plot - maybe about Robyn seeing Simon's real self and then choosing to side with a more sympathetic Gordo. Or show Simon as a conflicted man who used to be a bully but now is pretty OK, but he's being chased by this vengeful psycho he once bullied. But it doesn't work when they're both just flat out bad guys. It becomes a story talking about how bullies never change and how if you're bullied, you might grow up to be a fucking psychopath. Not exactly a great story.

It wasn't bad, though. As far as directorial debuts go, it was solid. If you like thrillers, you'll find something to like here.

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

Cinema Freaks LIVE: Ex Machina (2015)

Here's another thing we did. This time, my friend Tony and I looked at Ex Machina, a strange sci fi film about a kid and an android interacting as part of an experiment. We found it a clever movie with some good twists, some subtle undermining of the usual stereotypes, and well done characters. Director Alec Garland has a good feel for ambiance and atmosphere, and there are a lot of beautiful settings and creepy, desolate atmospheric moments to go along with the story - accentuating it lightly like frosting on a cake.

There were a few silly moments, and maybe the movie tried too hard at times to cram in too many different genres and elements. However, I'd personally still take that over a movie that didn't do enough.

See you guys next time!

Cinema Freaks LIVE: Unfriended (2015)

Welcome to our first sloppy attempt at doing an audio review of Unfriended. You can listen above for me and Michelle and our friend Mercedes talking about this film, but I'll also talk about it a bit down here as well - you know, for you poor saps looking at this in a cubicle at work or some shit. There are definite spoilers in the video and in this review, so if you really want to see this, don't read or listen to this yet.

This movie is getting a shitload of attention for being a found footage horror movie set all on Skype. The basic story is as follows: cyberbullied girl kills herself, then comes back for revenge on all the kids who had a part in bullying her through making a video and telling her to kill herself, etc. Conveniently all of them are online and chatting on Skype exactly when she decides to enact this revenge.

The title and plot sound like an SNL skit more than a serious movie. Unfriended? Really? But the actual movie, in practice, isn't too bad or anything. I've certainly seen worse found footage films, and at least this one is putting a new, unique spin on things. The film IS set only on Skype and only in these characters' rooms - a lot of movies like this tend to stretch it and have characters using their webcams while walking outside, or in any random room they happen to be in, and that isn't really how we act in real life. Not most of us, anyway...

The acting is actually surprisingly good, and you can believe these people as shitty, petty, cat fighting high school cliques who keep stabbing one another in the back. They're not good characters for the most part, but they're believable for this story at least. You know, unless you wanted people who actually looked high school aged. These people were either held back several times in school and have now become bitter as a result of a perpetual loop of high school clique (which would explain a lot), or they're actors in their 30s. Pick your own answer.

Plotwise it's pretty basic; just an anti-bullying story and nothing else. It's not done with any particular subtlety. One of the main things that really irritated me about this was how silly all the reveals were that all these characters had done bad stuff to the dead girl. Like they kept denying it and shit and then the ghost would prod some more, they would scream and cry about how sorry they were, and then they would die. This happened over and over again, and we were supposed to be surprised when one of them had done something bad - but after a while it was just stale. Too many long scenes of the characters just screaming at each other and crying gets grating in general. My ears!

Overall it really is more of a funny movie than anything scary. A few of the deaths aren't bad, but really with this set up, over Skype and all, it's near impossible to make a death scene anything less than ridiculous. The movie has fun with the deaths though, and doesn't try to get too supernatural on you or anything. It's more worth seeing for the visual style than the story - the way the film uses the computer desktop and the mouse cursors and Skype text chatting to convey story and character is pretty interesting and well done. Even when the film itself can drag or get too irritating to listen to, the visual style was obviously well thought out and constructed.

If you already hate the premise and don't want to be impressed, well, you'll hate the movie. But if you're like us and actually want to see what the fuck they could possibly do with a Skype horror film, check it out, it's worth your time for at least that one viewing. All I gotta say is, I'm staying off Skype next time I decide to humiliate someone to the point of suicide.