REVIEW: Saw (2004)

A couple of years ago, I finished up watching the entire Saw series, even reviewing the last two. And I still stand by what I said about those movies back then: they are garbage. But far be it from me to deprive the Internet of my opinions on the very first Saw film and the one to kickstart a modern revival of the horror genre.

Director: James Wan

Starring: Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannel

IMDb

I remember seeing this right after it came out. I was about 13 or 14 and I had never seen most classic horror films – I was just getting started on the genre. I remember sitting in my house and watching this on our big screen TV. I also remember being spellbound by just how crazy this shit was – I mean for someone my age back then, this was pretty hardcore. As I continued to get into horror films that summer, this one stuck with me.

And it was quite a revolution back in 2004. Back then, when all we had was shitty sequels to low-grade American parody-slasher films and remakes of Asian horror films, something like Saw was a big breath of fresh air. Looking back with the knowledge I have about the genre now, I really think this was a good thing for the genre. It was a unique concept for its time and really set the stage for…well, a whole bunch of crappy direct-to-DVD torture porn films. But the point stands – for its time, and in the climate of horror films at the time, this was a refreshing change.

But does it hold up now? Let’s find out.

We start off with two guys waking up in a dingy, dirty old bathroom. Because all good horror stories start in the same manner as your average drunken trip through the underbelly of Europe. But as Hostel was a few years off, we actually see something else is going on – there’s a dead body in the room with them. Chained up and unable to get out, they find some tapes that inform them of why they’re there: Dr. Lawrence Gordon, played by Cary Elwes, is there because he never did anything as good as The Princess Bride again. Adam, played by writer Leigh Whannel, is there because he helped to spawn this entire series. And both of them are there because they didn’t value their acting lessons enough to actually apply any of them in this movie.

Oh, OK, those aren’t the real reasons – could you tell? But it does point out another thing about this movie…the big theme behind it is that the Jigsaw Killer, the series’ villain, wants to show people the folly of their ways and make them see why they should appreciate life more.

Some tapes in their pockets reveal the objective of the whole game: Dr. Gordon has to kill Adam by 6:00, or else Gordon’s family will be killed instead. Also, apparently, the dead guy on the floor was poisoned and shot himself in the head because of it. They figure out they’re being watched through a two-way mirror with a camera behind it and break the mirror, revealing the camera.

We then get to see some of Jigsaw’s impressive resume. Through flashbacks we see some of how Cary Elwes’ character Dr. Gordon was involved with the case, as they suspected him of being Jigsaw after his pen was found at a crime scene. Apparently Gordon’s sins included being a condescending jackass to the orderlies at the hospital just for saying they knew the patients’ names:

How dare you care about people, you sniveling snot-wart?! Allow me to laugh at you and mock you in front of everyone! I WAS IN THE PRINCESS BRIDE! I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT! MUWAHAHAHA!

And we get some of Jigsaw’s finest moments, sure to make it into the family album, such as putting a man who cut himself into a pit full of barbed wire and forcing him to crawl through them to escape…

"IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT! I SLIPPED WITH A KITCHEN KNIFE IN MY HAND!!!"

Putting a guy who claims to be sick to get out of going to work into a room full of broken glass with a flammable substance smeared on his body, and then forcing him to hold a burning candle as he has to read letters on the wall…

Poor John Cusack, never had a chance after he made Identity...

And putting a drug addict into a room where she has to stab another guy in the gut to get a contraption off her head that would have ripped her head in half.

Oh stop crying, at least you don't have to be in the sequels!

…okay, so they’re all pretty unrealistic and elaborate traps. And honestly, they only tenuously seem to have anything to do with the alleged “crimes” these people have committed. Frankly it makes Se7en look like a down-to-Earth True Crime story in comparison.

The violence in this got its bad rap as torture porn and needless violence, but really, this movie doesn’t have a lot of that. The sequels get way more over the top, but this one remains pretty squarely focused on telling a story and on having a message to it. The amount of actual gratuitous gore and violence is fairly low in comparison with other movies of its kind. The implication of the violence is really what the makers of the film were going for – plus the dingey, dirty settings add a very grisly atmosphere to the whole thing. It really does create an atmosphere of being stuck in a run-down, shit covered bathroom.

So most of the movie that isn’t flashbacks is just Gordon and Adam trying to figure out how to get out of there. These parts are actually fairly good, and as bad as their acting is, I like the characters well enough to be invested – and seeing them try to figure shit out is fairly entertaining. It’s actually a fair bit more character driven than any other Saw film would ever get, which is nice – it’s nothing amazing, but the characters are at least characters, rather than compilements of cliché like in later films. They find some rusty old saws (TITLE DROP!!!1!!!1) in the toilet and also a great family picture of Gordon’s wife and daughter:

Aw, how sweet; the best Manson Family photo ever.

Then we get another flashback to show the last time Gordon saw his family. Apparently Gordon was a giant jackass who, when confronted with the reality that his daughter had a nightmare about a man being in her closet, doesn’t even look at her and instead keeps typing on his computer.

"I'm almost done with this level of Candy Crush Saga!"

To his credit, I guess he goes and comforts her afterwards, so it’s not too bad. Then he and his wife have the most generic, nonspecific argument ever as she accuses him of not being happy. He says he is, she says “I’d rather you just break down and tell me you hated me; at least there’d be some passion in it.” I really hope Leigh Whannel doesn’t try his hand at writing romantic dramas any time soon. If somewhere in the world, there exists a superstore for phoned in, generalized movie arguments, this one would be the best seller.

Gordon leaves and then we get a shot of the daughter in her room. And you remember when I said she was scared because of a “nightmare” about a man in her room? Wellllllll…

What happens when Linus from Peanuts grows up and goes insane...

Heh heh…that’s actually pretty funny. Apparently the kidnapper is Zepp, that orderly from before who Gordon made fun of just for knowing patients’ names. He wears all black and likes to hold stethoscopes to his captives’ chests while holding a gun to their heads to see if their heartbeats get faster. How interesting…and utterly pointless…

We see later that he's being forced to do this. Which is odd because it sure looks like he's enjoying this shit much more than any normal person would under the circumstances.

Meanwhile in Not Flashback Land, a note on the back tells Adam to turn off the lights. Despite his confusion, Gordon does and they find an ‘X’ on the wall that leads to a box full of bullets, two cigarettes and a note that tells Gordon he can use the poisonous blood on the floor to put in the cigarette and kill Adam with. Instead, Gordon turns off the lights and they make a plot to pretend Adam is dead. But then the Jigsaw Killer whips out his secret weapon, electrocution:

Should've had this sign in the room with them.

We also see that Danny Glover is playing a washed up, obsessed cop character who slowly goes crazy over the whole Jigsaw case. Danny Glover playing an old cop? How unique. That kind of thing has never been done before and is totally original for an actor like Glover!

So, yeah, if you want a realistic portrayal of a man’s descent into insanity, you might want to stay far away from this movie. Because unless you think decorating your apartment like John Doe from Se7en and talking to yourself in a raspy voice while laughing like a child molester is captivating, you may be disappointed. But how did he get like this when he used to be a pretty straight detective?

"I'm so obsessed! I'm an obsessive cop to END all obsessive cops! LOOK AT MY OBSESSIVENESS!"

So apparently Glover and his partner, Ethnic Stereotype to Show We’re Not Racist, went to this warehouse where they suspected Jigsaw called his home. Because of the Law of Movie Implausibility, they’re of course exactly right, and he has all his killer contraptions and what not just laid right out in the open for any random loser passing by to see through the windows. Since it’s right in the middle of the city, what are the chances that’s never happened before? Apparently pretty high.

So now we come to the portion of every horror movie that I like to call “We Don’t Understand Anything About Policework.” Here we have several different items to check off. Usually I just do a long paragraph of ranting and swearing about it, but honestly I’m just so tired of that. Sooooo it’s checklist time.

[x] Not calling for back-up or even bothering to get a search warrant? Check! Even when they realize it is Jigsaw’s lair after all, they still don’t!

[x] Waiting for him to get further inside the building and even far enough to activate a trap and slit Glover’s fucking throat because “they want to see his face.” Uh. See his face AFTER you arrest or shoot him? What’s the logic there? They could have just shot him right when he came in the door, but nooooo, so Glover’s throat gets cut and we get the next item on the checklist…

[x] Activated a trap that almost killed a guy.

I hope this guy got a nice spot on Jay Leno and a lawsuit settlement with the city police force after this.

But hey, I get it. It’s tough fighting a guy who has the foresight to tie some guns to the roof JUST IN CASE some cops happen to be chasing him down that specific hallway, with a trip wire designed to shoot the guns automatically if someone runs into it. Wow, that is specific.

I just hope he didn’t forget to take the wire down when the owner of the warehouse or someone came to inspect it. “Hey, Jigsaw Killer, I’m here to install your wireless internAAAAAGGGGHHH!” *splat*

Tragic. But what’s even more tragic, is that the Jigsaw Killer seems to think wearing a robe more befitting of a female Marvel Comics villain is scary somehow. Dude, you look like Todd MacFarlane’s conception of the grim reaper. It’s not at all effective!

Back in the dirty old nasty bathroom, Gordon receives a call from his family at gunpoint, and they tell him Adam has known him the whole time and is lying about some things. This prompts a long flashback that tells the story of how Gordon got captured in the first place. Apparently while trying to call his family, he got snatched by a man wearing a pig mask – not on the all-time manliest ways to get kidnapped.

Is there a reason for the pig mask? I mean, wouldn’t any mask technically work? Personally I would like to see this mask on the kidnapper next time:

Some people tell me there are very distinct reasons I’m not in the horror movie making business. I never know what they’re talking about.

So yeah, I guess we get quite a lot of gunshots, wrestling and running around after that as Gordon is under the impression that Zepp has murdered his family. He then undergoes the fascinating and nuanced style of acting commonly known as “which accent do I have?” Really it’s been sort of a problem all movie, but here it just gets to staggering levels of silliness: basically Elwes does this thing where he gets angry and starts shouting like a drunken maniac, but then when he gets sad a few seconds later, he talks like a prissy little girl afraid to miss her first day of school.

The emotion is real, but the way he’s conveying it is just so silly. It totally throws off what should be a very tense moment. I mean jeez, the only way he could get even more melodramatic would be to do something totally over-exaggerated like cutting off his own foo---

Oh. Well. Erm. Hmmm.

I guess if I said this scene wasn’t effective, I’d be lying to you. It really was very shocking the first time I saw it, all those years ago when I was a kid. It did its job and established the horrible price Gordon paid for his indiscretions, namely being so apathetic about his family. And now he’s literally lost a foot for his family in the end. The problem here is that the character development wasn’t deep enough to really make this as effective as it maybe could’ve been, but even so, I don’t think the film was ever intended to be a character study or anything. It works for what it is.

Then Gordon crawls to the dead body, grabs the gun and shoots Adam in the shoulder. All I can think here is how funny it would be if this bathroom was actually in use and had just been abandoned for the weekend. Maybe it’s the bathroom of some corporate building. Then the janitor comes in Monday morning and finds…well…

Yeah.

After Gordon crawls off to be doomed to appear in the last movie in the series too (SPOILERS!!!111!!), Adam is bleeding to death and looking for a key in Zepp’s pockets to unlock his chains. However, he just finds a tape recorder in there that reveals Zepp was never the Jigsaw Killer at all. But you know who IS the Jigsaw Killer? That dead body on the floor the whole time!

This scene, where he gets up, is probably the best in the whole movie – most of the movie’s flaws are completely redeemed by scenes like this, as well as the ending climax in general. Good shit.

Through some snappy flashbacks, we establish that the Jigsaw Killer’s real name is John and he was the patient Zepp got made fun of for connecting to earlier. Apparently John has an inoperable brain tumor and thus wants to show people how much they don’t appreciate their lives, teaching them “lessons” through sick torture games where they have to fight to survive. Man, cancer can make people do some bizarre things!

He tells Adam the key to the chains was in the bathtub, which flushed down the drain as soon as Adam woke up and accidentally unplugged the tub. Whoops! Then Jigsaw leaves Adam in the dark to die, saying “Game over,” and that’s it – we close out on the credits with Adam screaming over top.

So that’s Saw. It has its moments, and while I don’t love it like I once did, it’s still pretty decent overall. The main problems it has are that it’s just too shallow to really reach the kind of depth it’s going for. It’s trying to tell a story about people who don’t appreciate their lives learning lessons. But I don’t know, I don’t really get a sense that these people would ever really learn anything from these. Shawnee Smith’s character did, but what the hell did hers have to do with drug addiction anyway? She has to cut open some guy’s stomach to get a bear trap off her head? C’mon. The one in the second movie about the syringes was a better representation of that, even if it was a lot dumber than what we got here. Mostly these “lessons” just come off as needlessly complex.

That’s the other problem: it’s just too convoluted. All these different variables, the elaborate set-ups, the traps…it’s fun, sure, but it doesn’t really instill fear in me. It’s too far-removed from reality to ever really feel like “gee, that could happen to me.” Which is the most important thing in any horror movie, bar none. The closest it gets is just the scenes where the people are unsuspectingly awaiting kidnapping in the dark of their homes, which isn’t the bulk of the movie.

I enjoyed the “one room” scenes with Whannel and Elwes the most, as those were by far the most original scenes, and the ones the movie should’ve focused on more – Danny Glover’s cop character got far too much screentime in comparison, and the story with the kidnapped mother and daughter wasn’t all that interesting. The Whannel/Elwes scenes were cool because, like I said, seeing them figure out why they were there was cool. The chemistry they had on screen was pretty good and their characters were the most interesting ones in the movie.

So this is still the best Saw movie. It’s got a sort of underground charm to it that the others did not have. It’s just ironic to me that this movie, which was so refreshing for being an underground, bloody horror film in an age of corporate sell-outs and “ironic” attempts at pleasing the mainstream, quickly turned into exactly what it was fighting against with the sequels. The sequels all got less and less interesting because the traps were harder to get out of and the films became less about storytelling and more about the amount of plot twists crammed in per scene. And as such, they got less entertaining over time.

But at least we have this one. It may not have influenced horror’s most honorable subset of films, but it did make a mark and at the time, it was important. Entertaining if nothing else.

Images copyright of their original owners.

Why do modern horror movies suck?

Modern horror movies suck. Or a lot of them do. People who like the genre or even just watch it casually often espouse similar views and pose the question: why do modern horror movies suck so much? Well, fortunately I am here to help explain the problem. How am I going to do this? By going to my local video store and pointing out examples, of course. If you think I’m being incredibly cynical by judging these movies based on their covers and descriptions without ever watching them, well, maybe I am. Maybe I am just jumping the gun here and being too judgmental.

But honestly, just look at some of this shit. This is the kind of sewage you’re likely to find in any video store just sitting on the shelves un-rented. And why not? We’ve seen the same things over and over and over again in horror. Let’s take a look at our first candidate for a whipping, Paranormal Asylum.

Let’s just start a check list here…

[x] Pale ghost girl with only the whites of her eyes visible, with a vacant look on her face that mirrors that of brain dead drug addicts or people who actually watch these films – two groups who would overlap quite well in a Venn diagram, honestly.

[x] Cheap dark blue lighting that seems to forget there was anything in the horror genre before Paranormal Activity.

[x] Shaky cam frame to illustrate that the movie will have some kind of “found footage” element to it.

[x] The word “Paranormal” in the title. Almost an immediate candidate for the garbage bin these days.

Without even knowing what this movie is about, I’m already tired of it. I mean Jesus, did they miss a single cliché? This is like when you go to some shitty local grocery store chain and they have regular Oreos for an inflated price, but their own cheap knock-off brand for three bucks less. It’s just pure whitewashed blandness! But hey, let’s not stop there! Let’s pick it up and look at the back of the box.

“Mary Malone (aka Typhoid Mary) was committed to a NY insane asylum to live in solitary after being blamed for spreading Typhoid Fever in the early 20^th century.”

Okay, not too bad so far – a pretty decent historical backdrop. Nothing indicating that it will be great, but maybe it won’t be that bad…until we get to this sentence:

“Now, nearly 100 years later, two best friends and aspiring filmmakers are setting out to find out what really happened.”

Gee. What a unique plot idea. Surely they’ll find nothing, go home and live the rest of their boring lives without any interruption, right? I mean, surely nothing BAD will happen…

“What starts as a simple investigation turns into a battle for survival, as they discover Mary may be dead, but she’s certainly not gone! In her quest for vengeance, torture and death appear to be the only outcome.”

Torture and death? Aw man. I was hoping she was going to bake them cookies. I am just so shocked that something bad would happen to these characters in the horror movie with the dead zombie ghost girl on the cover posing for this month’s issue of Miss Undead USA.

Why would you make this kind of shit? If you’re making a movie, and you think you have this inspiration, this drive or passion – is “supernatural ghost revenge torture movie” the best you can come up with? HAVE AN IDEA. THINK. USE YOUR BRAIN. Jesus. Wouldn’t it be more interesting to skip the whole “friends in the 2000s take a road trip with video recorders and encounter ghosts and demons and stuff” bullshit and just make a historical horror film about Typhoid Mary? Wouldn’t that be cool? I think it would. But that would require a brain. And actually doing real work and not just aping everything that came before.

It just points out one of the chief problems with horror movies now and back in the old days. These days, it’s easy to make a movie. Technology and a greater knowledge of how it’s done have made it something that anyone can do. Provided you have the money to buy a good set of cameras and a video editing program, of course - but even the latter is negligible with certain, ahem, "Internet services." And with the increasing amount of resources, you can not only make a movie much more easily than you could in the old days, but you can distribute it too, and have it stocked in video rental stores and Redbox machines everywhere. Even if no one rents it, ever, you still win because it’s out there.

You can put it on Netflix streaming, and they’ll keep it up on there forever because it’s cheaper than haggling with big studios to put legitimate movies on the site. As Netflix is so omnipresent in the movie market nowadays and is so cheap, more people come across these films. The increasing number of these cheap-ass bargain bin movies means that more people see these (as in, they see the covers and notice them) instead of legit, good and creative horror films – which DO still come out, just not as much in comparison to the sheer landslide of shaky-cam shit with blue lights, set in insane asylums and featuring titles that contain the word “Paranormal.” It’s just a no-win situation.

Back in the old days, yes, amateurs could still make movies. I would never claim there weren’t rip-offs. Sure there were. People could make movies in their garages with their buddies and if they were lucky, maybe they’d hit it big and have their movie gain somewhat more of an audience. But there wasn’t anything like what we have now. The big studios still put effort into scaring audiences. They still had to try – audiences wouldn’t accept bargain bin shit on the level that they do now:

Yeah. Real great cinema there…surely these will be remembered in the same breath as Kubrick’s The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. Sigh. But that’s just the way it works in any medium. Something catches on because it has some kind of context in which it matters and makes an impact. The studio, whether it sees that or not, cares about the profit made, which inevitably does happen when something catches on like The Exorcist did.

Caring about profit is the nature of the beast – it is how these corporations work and keep making money. So when movies like The Last Exorcism 2 or The Conjuring or The Possession oh-so-wonderfully grace our mainstream theaters, they are not the work of some insidious (or Insidious) corporate evil plot to destroy the genre, as much as I like to pretend they are. They’re simply tools of the money-making wheel that keeps on turning, nothing more.

So, with that said, what’s the next movie on our tour through bargain bin horror on video store shelves?

Uh, no. No, no, no. NO. I refuse to believe that something called “Heebie Jeebies” can be anything resembling quality. That’s unbelievable. Right off the bat you just throw all caution to the wind and come up with something so stupid even Bill and Ted would turn up their noses at it. That is an accomplishment.

So what’s this one about?

Haunted gold mine…reopened after 150 years…horrific supernatural creature emitting a maddening mist that paralyzes its victim with fear or “Heebie Jeebies”…yeah, I dunno movie, you’re not instilling in me any great confidence here. You couldn’t just title it “Fear” or something? Because you really can’t make the words “Heebie Jeebies” sound scary. There is simply no way you can pull that off and have any kind of serious effect. If it’s supposed to be a comedy, well, good job if you were trying to lower the bar as far as you could, I guess. Maybe they were trying to outdo Jeepers Creepers for the worst name for a horror movie ever.

But hey, that’s another big trend with modern horror…trying to be all ironic and silly. Why bother actually writing jokes and being clever when we can just give a movie a stupid name, or make it bad on purpose?

Horror is about ideas. It’s about taking what people are afraid of in society or just in their own minds, and putting it on screen. It is an imaginative doctrine, a trade of sorts that needs something to jump off of. In the 50s and 60s, it was the fear of the Atomic Bomb that kept horror movies going. Then with the post-war culture, it was the fear of disillusioned psychopaths and killers among us as regular human beings. The 80s brought a wave of cultural satire films that talked about consumerism and the rise of Reagonomics. In the 90s, we got urban legends with Candyman, the soulless repercussions of corporate America with American Psycho and the reality-bending terrors of The Sixth Sense and Jacob’s Ladder, which ask us to participate more actively in the viewing and think about what we saw before, and how much of it was “real” in the film’s world.

And honestly, there’s been some really good parallels to our current situation in modern post-2000 horror films too. The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity have brought a wave of new “found footage” films which aren’t a bad idea in principal. We live in the generation of do-it-yourself. We are obsessed with experiencing things firsthand, recording them, and showing them to the world. Why do you think Facebook and Twitter are so popular? We love recording ourselves – we have the camera away from the horrors outside and pointed them inwards, holding them ourselves, wanting to see personally what lies out there waiting to scare us. We want to be part of the experience.

Films like [REC] and V/H/S, for example, have taken traditional horror stories and done them up the modern way by placing the camera in the viewer’s hands and letting us see the action as if it were actually happening to us, rather than to a detached third party like in a traditional narrative. There are pluses and minuses with this style as with any new trend, and I don’t even really think their full potential has been realized.

But, as with anything, there’s a lot of shit you have to sift through. As I said earlier, the fact is, horror movies are easy to make. They always have been, really; they’ve always been a DIY endeavor and have prided themselves on being a genre that didn’t need big-budget props and effects to be effective. Horror was the redheaded stepchild of cinema for so long, existing in the underground as a “B” movie artform for decades. Recently it has caught fire in the mainstream, but even so, the “B” ethos will always be there. And like I also said before, the current generation of “look at what I can do” has people making their movies and getting them out there for very little cost – even though the profit they gain back may not be earth-shattering, at least their names are out there. And that matters more than it may initially appear. Notoriety is its own form of currency.

Via Facebook and other mediums like local film shows and festivals you can submit to, these directors can get their movies out and become well known in niche communities. With an artist and the right low budget regional production company behind them, wallah, their low-grade, cheap movie becomes a reality, spreading through Netflix and video stores like wildfire. They clog the arteries of the horror genre like dairy products for a diabetic. And so the cycle continues and we get…

And no, I'm never finishing that series.

The negative effect of this is not just that there are bad movies around. It’s that really GOOD new horror flicks, such as Absentia, Pontypool or The Children, get buried in the morass and don’t get any of the attention they deserve. Take a look at Absentia:

That pretty much looks like any old random ‘ghost’ movie you’d find these days. But it’s really a complex story about a woman who lost her husband and has no idea what happened to him. He just went missing. The story unfolds as a complex drama about these peoples’ troubled lives, and also as a bone-chilling atmospheric horror film about what happens when people go missing. It’s an interesting movie because it takes a very real concept – people going missing with no explanation – and turns it into something larger than this life, giving us an explanation for it, but a terrifying one that maybe we would have rather not known at all. In these times, with our paranoia after 9/11 and the general distrust we have for strangers, a film like Absentia plays to those fears. It’s quite brilliant.

But because it appears alongside films like this in the Redbox computer or the video store…

…it doesn’t get noticed as much. Yeah, Abandoned Mine is awesome, I’m sure. A movie about teenagers going into an old mine to celebrate Halloween really sounds so vital to the genre, doesn’t it? More like Abandoned Hope for Humanity. Or Abandoned Rectal Thermometer.

So those are the big problems with horror now. Too much low-budget crap cheaply stocking the shelves of stores and Netflix/Redbox instead of good stuff, too little effort on the part of studios to actually put out good stuff. Too much copying of what came before, without really paying attention if it’s quality or not. But these things are just how the industry has come to be, for better or worse. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs.

What can we do about it? Pay attention to good movies. Don’t be satisfied just watching every single home-invasion or ghost possession film out there when they hit theaters. Dig around a little bit. Be open minded to stuff you may not have noticed – foreign films, underground films, et cetera. Care about what you watch. Every little bit makes a difference.

Fortunately, none of the crappy movies I took pictures of for this piece are going to be remembered at all. They are just like any number of other obscure films from the 80s and 90s that just got forgotten as time went on. But there are some movies out there that have a widespread influence on every modern horror film, which I think I’ll take a look at to commemorate the scariest month of the year. What’s first up, you ask? Well…

“Let’s play a game…”

All images copyright of their original owners. Thanks to Reel Video for having those DVDs in your store so I could take pictures of them!

REVIEW: 11-11-11: The Prophecy (2011)

Back in January, I reviewed a steaming, festering disaster of a movie called 11/11/11, made by The Asylum. It was a complete and total waste of my time. The Asylum’s penchant for making terrible ripoffs of Hollywood blockbusters just infuriated me back then. So, I figured, why not take a look at the original film, the one that inspired this to begin with…and I use the term ‘inspired’ loosely.

Director: Darren Lynn-Bousman

Starring: Timothy Gibbs, Michael Landes, Wendy Glenn

IMDb

Yes, from the visionary brain of the second, third and fourth SAW movies, Darren Lynn Bousman, comes this little gem, 11-11-11: The Prophecy…and I do mean little, as this thing is only 82 minutes, and it shows. I mean, this thing has got to be the worst example of super-obvious cutting of a movie down to size I’ve ever seen. I bet the director’s cut is like a totally different movie. But then again, why would I want to see any more of this shit than I did tonight? I think 82 minutes was about 82 minutes too much for this. But it’s one thing to talk about it and quite another to actually witness it, so let’s just do that, shall we?

The movie begins with our main character Joseph Crone, a writer whose family was killed in a home invasion, and so now he sees choppy, annoying visions of fire and angel statues everywhere…get used to it; it’s all throughout the movie.

"AH! Man, I really hope I don't have any more flashbacks to The Omen sequels in my dreams...that would be terrible..."

Mostly this character is just crap. He constantly whines and complains all the time and a lot of the film’s runtime is his super-serious deep diary recollections, which is cool because all I ever want out of a thriller movie is the pretentious “dark” narrations of an obvious self-centered asshole like this character is. Oh, please, more of that! By the way, the editing in this movie is just atrocious, being compiled mostly of quick jump cuts that serve no purpose but to ham-fistedly show the passage of time…instead it’s just like the editing room had a collective seizure.

He goes to some grief counseling group where a woman is speaking about getting through loss. She approaches him afterwards and gives him a notebook, and then he gets into a car crash. He somehow survives this and goes on to mope some more about that – yes, he even bitches about not dying, because this character is so tortured and pained that only death could cure it! He gets a voicemail at home almost immediately after telling him that his father is going to die in a few days. Man, this guy just doesn’t get much luck. What’s next, is he going to get cancer? Is he going to get blackmailed by a Russian mafia boss into working as a male sex slave? Don't stop short of TRUE HUMAN SUFFERING, movie!

The irony of a character who wants to die not being able to, however, is funny enough to almost make up for it.

So it turns out his family home is in Barcelona, Spain, even though his brother and father are as white as can be and none of them is really shown speaking Spanish much in the film. That makes no sense, and was clearly just put in there to give Bousman an excuse to shoot in Spain. It doesn’t matter where this story takes place and setting it in Spain just doesn’t make any logical sense given the situation the characters are in. They lived in the US but then moved to Spain when Joseph was a kid, only for Joseph to grow up and leave Spain and come to England as an adult? Tell me how that couldn’t have been simpler. I know it’s a petty thing to bitch about, but…it’s just so silly!

It turns out Joseph has a brother, Samuel, who is in a wheelchair. So not only did he lose his wife and child to a crazy murderer, get into a car accident and now his father is dying, BUT ALSO he has a brother in a wheelchair? Jesus! You know, there IS a limit to how much suffering is realistic, you know! This just comes off like they were trying to cram in as many horrible things to do to these people as possible. It’s totally hackneyed, and feels incredibly half-assed.

The father is lying in bed about to die, but that doesn’t stop him from sitting up and doing a silly scene where he speaks in a goofy voice about how everyone is watching - my god, the movie's become self aware! Run for your lives!

That face...ha ha ha...that's gotta be the only funny thing in this whole damn movie.

There’s also a nurse lady named Ana whose only job seems to be making shitty jump scares. If you think that’s scary, though, just wait until you see Samuel’s church service, in which people can apparently just show up randomly with guns and try to attack the pastors…eh, no big deal.

Aw, poor guy...he just is extremely sensitive...

No, really, apparently it’s no big deal. That’s what Samuel says. “Oh, he’s been under a lot of stress lately,” is his rationale for being OK with a member of his congregation pulling a gun on him. DUDE. HE PULLED A GUN ON YOU. WAKE UP. What’s going to happen next time? “Oh, he stabbed me seven times and then raped and murdered my girlfriend? He’s just going through a hard time. Don’t fret it.”

Joseph spends a large amount of time in the next few scenes just bashing Christianity and bitching about how his childhood sucked. Because his wife and kid got murdered, he has lost his faith in God – that’s understandable. But what isn’t understandable is the sheer jackassery he displays by constantly acting like a dick to the people who care about him. This guy is just a douchebag! If you think your own pain and grief is an excuse to be rude and insensitive to everyone else, you lose the right to grieve, asshole. Go sit in the corner.

After that is over, we see another trademark of this movie: fast, jerky-camera action scenes with tons of quick cuts and screaming. Because if you don’t have that, your movie just can’t be scary at all. Who cares about atmosphere or tension build up? Just have Rob Zombie-esque puke-worthy camera cuts and lots of screaming to nauseate the viewers further. That’s the true way of horror.

Supernatural visions that don't really mean anything? Yup it's a crappy modern horror flick.

If that isn’t enough, Joseph then starts to notice a pattern that everything bad happens to him involves the number 11:11 – when his wife and kid died, when his brother got attacked, and the time displayed on a crazy looking video that is probably the next Paranormal Activity movie:

I will also accept 'Blair Witch 3: The Stupidity of Idiots Who Think Random Fog Means Something.' Well, OK, I guess that title could use some trimming down.

The real cincher – the real gem – here is the following scene, which consists of Joseph saying that he now believes that celestial beings from beyond are controlling everything through the numbers 11:11:11. Yes. The same man who has been ALL MOVIE denouncing Christianity is now believing in this crazy shit. “Your belief in God is silly, BUT I BELIEVE IN MYSTICAL BEINGS AND NUMBERS REAPPEARING!” I…I just can’t even follow this now. It makes no sense. It has no logic. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER that this should have progressed beyond the drawing board.

So Joseph goes over to that one crazy guy’s house, the one who pulled a gun on Samuel at the service. His wife says he’s troubled and has been reading about dark magic and stuff. Uh, movie, I’m not sure you’re really focusing on the right thing here. This man pulls guns on innocent people. He should be locked up until he is of sounder mind. That’s all there is to it! Joseph gets a hold of the guy’s camera which apparently has some crazy stuff on it, and has to go develop it. At the camera shop, it really makes sense that he can’t speak Spanish to the employees and instead impatiently shouts at them in slow enunciated English like they're retards, because it’s not like he grew up there or anything…oh wait, he did…

Then he gets a call from that British stalker chick, who flies all the way to Sweden to meet him even though they don’t really know a thing about each other. Life is just dandy! I love the first scene she’s in with Samuel. Joseph comes in in the morning and finds them sitting together at the table. Samuel says she just popped in and he was telling her about the break in the other night. Yeah, really – hey, random stranger, come in and let me tell you about the break-in we had the other not. God, this movie is shit. It’s not even any big problems really – it’s a bunch of little, silly things like this that build up and fester over time.

There’s a scene where the father gives Joseph some hokey ‘mystical’ speech about how he has to protect his brother, which apparently is more than enough to get him to renounce his atheism (and…weird voodoo crap he believed in with the 11/11/11 thing) and convert to Christianity! I guess he really was just blowing hot smoke this whole time…heh heh…the father then dies and the first thing Joseph does is take the British chick out to walk in a maze! There they encounter the crazy guy again and he points a gun at them some more…it’s OK, he’s just going through a hard time.

"My father just died! Let's go walk around town and have some alone time together instead of staying at the house, comforting my crippled brother and waiting for the ambulance to arrive."

Joseph goes back to the crazy gun-wielding guy’s house again and breaks in, looking for more evidence, until the movie goes all David Lynch again and starts giving us psychedelic camera angles as Joseph gets shot. Finally. Can he please just die now? No, because that would destroy the movie’s outlet for piss-poor whining and faux-dark speeches about inner pain…he is fine apparently.

Was this guy's entire job description 'hold a gun at the main character'? Seriously. It's getting old.

Good to know that when you get shot, you don't die but rather just see visions of your dead family members standing in front of the DVD cover to the movie.

Then Joseph goes to get the photos and we don’t get to see what they are, but that’s cool because back at home, the demons are attacking. There’s a lot of running around in the dark, screaming, odd camera angles where you can’t see the action, and screaming. It’s mostly a big unwatchable mess and there’s nothing to be gained from it. Our final climax is when Joseph saves Samuel from being stabbed by the demonic creatures, and ends up finally dying…that’s right, a car crash couldn’t kill him and getting shot couldn’t kill him – it was like he was so wretched a character that even the Grim Reaper was like “dude, no!” – but getting stabbed once kills him. Make sense? No? Good!

Oh, I forgot to mention that these demonic creatures are a) never explained and b) looking a lot like Pinhead's retarded cousins who he sits far away from at family dinners.

Then we get the aftermath, in which the brother Samuel turns out to be evil along with everyone else in the film…they start a new religion based around Joseph dying. You know, it’s not exactly a BAD twist or anything but we all knew SOMEONE was evil anyway, and there wasn’t really a whole lot of options. And what exactly are we supposed to take away from this? One unlikable asshole dies, so a freaky cult starts a new religion. So what? Are they going to destroy the world or something? Infiltrate the highest forms of government in the country? Or maybe they’ll just have tea and crumpets. Either option is equally likely.

This is a terrible, stupid movie and I can’t see how anyone would enjoy it. There’s just nothing good about it, from the piece of shit main character to the vapid storyline and rushed, haphazard editing style. 11-11-11 is so bad that I think there ought to be an end-of-world prophecy made around THIS shitty movie. “And on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month, a godawful movie will arise, and it will be spawned from the creative black hole that made the SAW sequels…and the heavens wept in fear.”

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Images are copyright of their original owners and I do not own any of them.

REVIEW: My Soul to Take (2010)

It’s Wes Craven time! This famed director can really go either way. On the one hand, he directed A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Scream. On the other hand, he directed The Serpent and the Rainbow and the subject of today’s gala of wrongness, My Soul to Take.

Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Max Theriot, John Magaro

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0872230/

This is a very interesting type of bad movie. It looked like a generic Nightmare on Elm Street rip off – I mean, it’s a story about a bunch of kids stalked by a serial killer who died years ago; come on – but really, it’s bad for COMPLETELY DIFFERENT reasons! I know I’m usually a lot grouchier than this when a movie this terrible comes around but…I can’t help it; this is just too interesting to me! I’m like a kid in a candy store with this shit.

The film starts off with some guy who can’t act, trying to act. He’s a father with a wife who likes to watch on the news about what kind of knife a serial killer currently on a killing spree uses, because, you know, THAT’S something the news would broadcast! What, do they just think people are going to be able to get a close enough look at the knife to be able to quickly call 911 and report it before they get slashed? And for that matter, the knife says ‘Vengeance’ on it…why? It’s never explained! Not even two minutes in, and I’m already confused!

"Ooh, a knife! Cool!"

Then the father finds the knife in the sink and the movie has an epileptic seizure trying to convey the idea that the father is crazy. He does some silly voices and the camera flashes in-between really choppy scenes of creepy angles of him. Then we find out he killed his wife, and the cops come and get him, but he won’t die, and talks to them in a voice that sounds like Jigsaw from the SAW series. Then some stuff blows up, we find out that seven babies were born at exactly midnight and…we flash forward 16 years later!

Okay, I gotta take a breather; this movie is exhausting. That was like 5 minutes of screentime right there. Maybe even less! This whole thing is like the cinematic equivalent of a speed junkie’s personal video blog. You don’t have to cram EVERY SECOND of screentime in with nonsense, Craven. You CAN have a quiet, atmospheric moment or two, you know! Why am I the one telling him how to make his movies? I’ve never made one!

So in the present day, I guess, a bunch of kids are all gathered around in the woods where they apparently glorify the killer from before every single year on the exact day he died, which is their birthday – that’s right, these seven kids who were born when the killer supposedly died all get together each year to ritualistically pretend to kill a big puppet made to look like what they imagine he looked like. They get stopped by the cops because apparently there’s a curfew in town, and they’re all really surprised at this. Why? They do this every year. They should know about the curfew! Why is it such a surprise to them?

Anyway, we see our three main heroes, Bug, random black kid we won't see much, and our main star, Asian kid!

Hey, it's The Goonies/the kids from The Sandlot/the kids from IT/the kids from Chronicle...

Now, in an interesting twist, the Asian kid is actually a really well developed character in this movie. He has a clear motivation, a lot of depth and faults that anyone can relate to…nah, just kidding, he gets killed off in the next scene:

Yes, apparently this serial killer does it execution style and throws his victims off bridges...

After that it’s high school time, as we see one of the kids, Alex, getting into a fight with his drunk, abusive jackass of a stepfather, who drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon, so according to South Park, that’s why he’s a drunk, abusive jackass of a stepfather. I’m so glad Matt Stone and Trey Parker are there when I need them. But hey, if my stepson was in The Box, I’d be pretty angry at him too, so I can kind of sympathize with the stepfather a little.

Alex goes to school and meets Bug, where they hatch a plan to put Bug’s phone in the girls’ bathroom to overhear what they’re saying. Am I in the same movie still?

No, really; am I in the same movie? This IS a horror movie, right? And not Bratz: The Movie or some kind of fashion model photography shoot? Because you're not making a very good case for the former, Craven, I gotta tell ya.

Yeah, apparently the girls in this movie are like the mafia of high school, led by this one chick who’s watched way too many Helena Bonham Carter movies, Fang. Yes, Fang, that’s what they call this girl. They talk shit about Bug and Alex and some other people and it gets them both slightly pissed off at one another. They say that Bug has been in institutions and has killed people before. They say Alex just uses Bug like a monkey. This of course causes both friends to turn on one another with disbelieving looks! But wait, if they’re such good friends, why are they so ready to believe random shit-talking they secretly overheard from the girls’ bathroom? Shouldn’t they be good enough friends to where they would KNOW that whatever the girls said wasn’t true?

We also get this really strange scene where Bug starts imitating everything Alex does and says somehow, like he’s possessed, and has to be slapped to snap out of it. It’s…mostly incredibly pointless. Just like this little paragraph!

We see some religious girl talking to another girl who the head jock of the school got pregnant, I guess. Isn’t there supposed to be a serial killer in this movie? We’re 40 minutes in, and not more than one poorly explained, brushed over kill scene has happened! The pregnant girl is worried about her baby, so religious girl says “It’s a baby, not a bomb.” Well unless you’re in Dracula III: Legacy:

I bet you didn't expect me to reference Dracula III again, did you? But yeah, to make a long story short, they both get killed I guess.

Then we see this girl named Brittany running away from head jock asshole guy Brandon, who wants her to give him a blowjob. She comes across the dead body of the religious girl outside, which is weird, because they weren’t even anywhere CLOSE to there when she was killed just ONE SCENE AGO…but what’s even stranger about these scene is that Brittany assumes Brandon did it, just at the drop of a hat for no reason. She accuses him of killing this girl like she’s accusing him of stealing her homework. What a smart character. Luckily her punishment for this moronic dialogue is death!

Not EXACTLY a good shot...

Then Brandon gets axed, too, and the killer utters the brilliant line: “Fuck your fucking unborn child!” Wow, Wes Craven…just wow. I don’t know why I expected better lines than this from a movie serial killer…OH WAIT it’s because Craven directed A Nightmare on Elm Street, which was famous for its killer’s witty one liners that DIDN’T involve profanity and ridiculous try-hard tough guy-isms! Silly me.

At home Bug finds out that his mom baked him a birthday cake. He tells her he likes that Brittany girl – you know, the one who just got killed – and she says “Isn’t she a little sophisticated for you?” What the hell? I guess she won’t be winning any Mother of the Year awards! You might as well just tell him “Honey, you’re a hopeless loser and you can’t even talk to most girls; just give up.” I mean…wow! That was pretty cold.

After that we see one of Craven’s brilliant plot twists as that Fang girl who was acting like the Godfather of the high school mafia is actually Bug’s older sister the whole time. Yeah. Real riveting twist, right? She tells him she hates him and that he ruined her life because he’s actually the son of the serial killer from the beginning of the movie, who everyone thinks is back and killing again. Then she beats the living crap out of him, because nothing says horror movie protagonist like getting beat up by your own sister:

So…HOW did this never come up in any of their no doubt wonderful familial conversations in the past SIXTEEN YEARS?! I’m sorry, I don’t buy it! There is NO WAY none of this crap was just NEVER brought up that whole time Bug was growing up!

After that we see Alex again for the first time in about a half hour. He comes in and talks to Bug about some stuff and then casually mentions, near the end of the conversation, that he just got back from murdering his stepfather. Yeah…wouldn’t have mentioned that FIRST THING, would he? I guess he just didn’t think it was very important.

Bug goes to get him a drink, sees his dead religious girl friend in the mirror, gets his father’s knife with ‘Vengeance’ written on it back somehow, and then goes downstairs and finds his mom dead. One cop comes in – yes, one cop; I guess sending more would have been a stupid idea – and tries to arrest him, angry that Bug would kill his mom NOT because he killed his mom, but because he was a symbol of hope for the town after his father killed his actual mother in the opening scene. Yes, HOW DARE HE HAVE A SERIAL KILLER FOR A FATHER AND COME OUT SCREWED UP BECAUSE OF IT! What an inconsiderate little shit.

The cop then gets killed by the actual killer a second later.

Bug and the killer fight a little bit and the killer apparently has teleportation powers, avoiding every gunshot fired at him somehow. Bug goes upstairs where it’s revealed that Alex was the killer the whole time, because the killer’s soul randomly picked his body at birth 16 years ago to transfer into…I don’t know, just go with it. Alex goes outside while he internally monologues about how he isn't the hero the city needs, but the one it wants right now, and that he can fake it FOR THE SAKE OF THE TOWN…

Actually on second thought, no.

Yeah, this movie was special. I don’t even know what to say about it. Craven conjures up, somehow, some decent drama with this thing, but there are so many plotholes, stupid scenes, terrible acting and horribly inconsistent storytelling moments that I can’t overlook them all. My Soul to Take is honestly a trainwreck of a film that you could probably miss and be a better overall person for it, and if you really want a GOOD 'troubled teen' movie, go watch Chronicle instead. But if you want something so terrible and so ridiculous that it's actually hilarious, well, My Soul to Take will do the job. Happily, in fact.

None of the images or videos here belong to me. They are copyright of their original owners.