The Platform (2020)

The Platform is a Spanish horror comedy about a strange prison concept where food is distributed via a system where a giant platform (name drop!) lowers through hundreds of levels and people are supposed to be fair. Unfortunately, people are selfish! There. That’s the entire fucking movie. But they milked it for like an hour and a half, so I guess I have to review it.

Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia

Starring: Ivan Massagué, Antonia San Juan

IMDb

Co-written with Tony and Michelle.

This guy Goreng, the main character, apparently agreed to be part of this, as apparently it’s one way to get a degree. How does that work? Is there a university that’s like ‘well, you can take classes and educate yourself and prove you’re worthy, OR you can go be in jail in a filthy hole for a while!’ How does that make any fucking sense?

The main dude wakes up with some crazy old man. There are some scenes of them doing naked yoga together (???) and reading and bickering and whatnot – it’s all a big waste of time to eat up screentime.

The main meat of the film for the first act, the idea that this platform brings food down every day and they’re supposed to ration it out – but of course, human greed gets in the way and nobody does it that way. Every man for himself, etc. I’m not sure who’s benefiting from this. Is it a science experiment? If so, it’s gone on long enough, I am almost positive. Is it just the cruelty of an uncaring barbaric system? Nice social commentary I guess. But we got over an hour of movie left and I already get the idea! Uh oh!

The old dude ties Goreng up and tries to eat him. Wow – they went straight from honeymoon marriage right into the homicidal phase. They don’t waste time. The old dude reassures Goreng he won’t eat his genitals – well, that’s nice of him.

Where is security during this? And was it worth the degree yet??? I HAVE TO KNOW! But then a crazy lady, I suppose the physical manifestation of Deus ex Machina, comes and murders the old dude just in time. What a convenience.

Then Goreng gets stuck with this other lady who has a dog, who I guess was the administrator for this place who let him in in the first place? Why is she there? I have no idea and the movie doesn’t seem to care. Character development is never really a concern here. They don’t really explain anybody’s motives. This lady is mostly there for exposition we couldn’t get elsewhere, basically spoonfeeding the audience the whole plot about how the prisoners are supposed to ration out food and there should be enough for everyone if they do. We get it! The blinking garish neon sign of your “smart social commentary” is starting to hurt my eyes!

In between all of this, the ghost of the old man returns to haunt Goreng and, mostly, waste more screen time. 98% of the reason for this is wasting time!

I guess some type of a plot finally starts up as the lady and Goreng hatch a plot to try and regulate everything to help everyone eat. The lady just tries to ask nicely, but unfortunately, the kinds of people who exist in a prison like this don’t respond to asking nicely. Goreng then threatens to shit in their food if they don’t listen. Finally, character development! He doesn’t ever shit in the food that we see, though. That’s a shame as it would have made this movie better to me at least a little.

They spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to make this happen and it doesn’t work, so the lady ends up hanging herself, with the intention of letting Goreng eat her. This leads to more hallucinations of the old dude telling him to eat her. The old dude’s ghost also says he was more polite because he didn’t just stab anyone to death – instead he was nice about his homicide attempts. Man, I don’t know, I guess this word vomit is supposed to be a ‘moral gray area’ type of character thing for Goreng. It doesn’t work at all and is stupid as shit! Good job!

I guess then he ends up with this other guy who is sort of manic and crazy, trying to climb up each level to get to the hole. Goreng and this guy team up to make a ‘statement’ to the administration of this prison by stopping anyone from eating the food. This is actually a little bit of an interesting plot, which I assume is why they made us wait an hour before getting to it – because the writer/director/etc are sadistic fucks and want us to experience the movie the same way the characters do, starved for anything of substance.

So then we get a few somewhat OK moments as Goreng and the guy try and stop anyone from eating in order to save food for the lowest levels and ‘make a statement’ - I’m not sure if both of those are the same goal, or if one contradicts the other; it’s not that clear. There are a few bloody ass fight scenes that are kinda entertaining, if exploitative and goofy. And at least Goreng finally has a fucking goal here. Imagine that – a character who wants something! It’s like finding an oasis after dying of thirst in a desert in this fucking movie.

They find a small child on one of the levels and end up saving her rather than finishing their mission. I guess children weren’t allowed in here which is why this is shocking. But as we’ve seen, this prison doesn’t care if inmates cannibalize each other or hang themselves! So it’s just whatever. They decide they’re fucked anyway and just stay down there, instead letting the little girl ride up on the platform, deciding SHE is now the ‘statement’ to the administration! Ooohhh!

...Nah, they’ll probably just give her to an orphanage and keep doing things the way they always did. Or was that cynicism and pointlessness the ‘message’ all along? If so, fuck this shit anyway.

No world-building to help us contextualize anything, and I hated all these characters actively throughout the movie. I sure hope ole Goreng felt good about his choices to do this to get a degree. Don’t watch this shit, man. This movie sucks and I'd prefer getting the coronavirus to watching this, which I'll regret writing if I do end up getting the virus.

Image copyright of its original owners.

The Nun (2005)

A horror movie about an undead ghost nun killing people. If that isn't the worst idea you've heard all month, I'm really quite afraid to ask what could possibly be less dignified, scary or interesting.

Director: Luis de la Madrid

Starring: Anita Briem, Manu Fallola

IMDb

This review is a personal thing for me. I rented this movie years and years ago and tried to watch it twice, failing both times to even make it halfway through. In the course of doing this I also ruined the rental DVD case the movie came in – by water, nonetheless; which is how the killer in the movie kills its victims, which makes this whole thing extra poetic. It was as if the movie was cursed, and I was the unwitting victim of that curse. Eventually, I gave up and decided never to touch its toxic exterior again.

Until now.

We start off with a bunch of girls at boarding school being taught by a nun who likes to shove paper in girls' mouths and turn into a horrific hell-demon in the middle of class. The second one is expected, but the shoving paper in their mouths is a bit much. Maybe someone ought to tell the head nun about this.

But it turns out that was just a dream. Next we get a party scene where a jackass with a camera talks to some people at a party about going to Spain for no reason other than to get killed by this movie's ludicrously over-thought and simultaneously under-written plot devices.

Why is he filming this? We clearly saw in the previous scene this guy had his own girlfriend he could've been spending time with, but I guess being a weirdo stalker is cool too.

Oh, did I spoil that last part? I'm so sorry. I just can't seem to get this review right. I just know you were all on the edge of your seat about whether or not they'd die in this horror movie.

So I guess tragedy strikes as main girl Eve's mom – the woman from the opening – has some serious plumbing problems as her sink is overflowing.

"I will find the Mushroom Kingdom down here if I flood my whole house doing it!"

Maybe she should reconsider using a plunger in the sink and instead just call the fucking plumber. But while she's doing that she should also call the exorcist – these are supernatural plumbing problems that mean a ghost nun is coming to kill her. 

"How are you taking me seeeerrrrriooooouuuuussssllllyyyyy?!?"

Man, if only she'd have just fixed the pipes when she had a chance, and then a watery nun-ghost wouldn't have been able to get in. That's really the #1 danger when it comes to pipes and plumbing.

Eve comes home and finds out that a clearly hungover cop tells her her mom committed suicide, even though Eve actually saw the nun ghost kill her and she slashed her throat, which isn't a very common way of doing that. But whatever. Investigation shmvestigation.

"Whatever...can I go back to drinking vodka in my car yet?"

At the funeral, Eve meets an older woman who says she knew Eve's mom from a long time ago at boarding school. She talks about what's going on a little bit, but later on I guess the ghost nun didn't like that, because she also gets plumbing problems, followed by a swift arm-decapitation by elevator. Well I dunno about you, but this was the kind of kill I expected when coming into this movie about a ghost nun.

What? It's not weird at all!

Eve and her friends go to Spain because why wouldn't you after a horrific death in your family that left you an orphan? It just seems the most logical. I also love how the friend is constantly so flippant about Eve's mom dying – she continually tells her to cheer up, wonders why she's acting kind of weird, etc. Jesus. With friends like this who even NEEDS a phantasmagorical watery ghost-nun killing off everyone you know? I mean they're kinda one in the same.

"I know your mom just died, but cheer up, we're on a vacation to Spain!" Also I just realized they don't even do anything there besides the plot of the movie. What was their plan? Go to Spain and just stare at the walls of their hotel room? Good thing Eve's mom died and gave them a mission, then.

Then we get a scene at the library where Eve is researching the old boarding school. Some doofy looking dude who says he's training to be a priest comes up and offers to translate it all for her. She says yes and then later on he meets them at some night club to give it back to her. They bond over the fact that he killed his last girlfriend by running her over with a car. Yes, really. I guess that's just what Eve is into. I don't even have to make jokes here – the movie itself is just one big punchline. How did anyone keep a straight face when working on this? I know I fucking couldn't.

I mean, when you really get down to it, this movie fails at even the most basic tenet of scary movies – setting an atmosphere in which to be scared later. It can't even get that right. Every kill scene starts off with the unsuspecting victim in the bathroom or kitchen when water starts filling up the sink, tub or whatever. When you really get down to it, as an adult, you aren't scared by this – you're just annoyed because in real life, you'd have to clean up all that overflowing, leaking water. How is the movie supposed to scare you when THAT'S the only reaction most of your audience will get out of it?

"Aw, dammit, now I have to clean all this up..."

They leave the club to go do their real passion, which of course is playing detective and finding dead bodies all over the place. They see the one lady's body and then immediately decide they can't call the cops, because there are still two more victims who don't know about the nun-ghost yet and they have to warn them. Uh, so how about calling the cops while you're going to warn the others? Nope, then we couldn't have a movie!

This whole 'not calling the cops' thing goes so far that Eve actually throws the other guy, Joel, out of the car for wanting to do so. Eve persuades Priest Boy that they shouldn't do it because 'she just wants to find our what happened to her mother.' So because you need to chase around some ridiculous story about an old boarding school, that woman's friends and family don't get to know what happened to her when she's lying dead on the floor of her own bathroom. You little asshole.

She also brings up the fact that they are a lot alike, as no one believes HER about the watery ghost-nun, just like no one believed HIM when he said he wasn't drinking when he killed his girlfriend. They really are like peas in a pod!

I also love the scene where Joel is just standing out there in the rain. “Wait! I forgot it was raining out here! Let me back in! No, I can't relent! I have to preserve my manhood and dignity! CURSE MY OWN IMPULSIVE DECISIONS!!!”

"Curse the heavens!"

They make it to the old boarding school and meet up with the other two stock characters who we haven't seen until now, so obviously they have a lot to contribute, by which I mean they only exist to shovel exposition in our faces like melting snow off a driveway in March. We learn that apparently back in their boarding school days, they came across the nun shooting a shower head up Eve's mom's vagina.

Never mind that this is a serious situation we could get her fired for; we need to re-enact I Know What You Did Last Summer!

As this is a horrific abusive situation, they accidentally kill her – you know, like you do.

Don't pretend you've never had a night end up this way...oh, wait, is it really only me and the girls in this movie? Weird.

They somehow haul her body outside without being noticed. Are they the only people in the entire fucking school? How did they not get caught? Then they dump her in the water outside.

"If she ever comes back to life as a ghost through our plumbing, we'll be ready...well, on second thought, that sounds really stupid."

Uh...wait a fuckin' second here. What happened next? How did no one notice she was dead? How did she never get found in that pool of water? Was it just a bottomless ocean made possible by the mystical powers of Christ to kill off his most odious of followers? Did the girls just get to go home when their teacher was missing the next day and never have to come back to Catholic school? “Oh, sorry girls, your teacher went missing mysteriously. I'm going to ignore the shifty-eyed, sweaty-faced looks you all have and just send you home. We won't be investigating the disappearance of that nun, either. Have a nice life forgetting all our dogmatic Catholic teachings!”

In the present day again, they go hunting through the old boarding house and find a bunch of paintings that they determine are actually the ways all their friends have been getting killed, because apparently nun ghosts really like to base their killings off of old paintings in boarding schools that no one can see.

And yeah, really; hands decapitated by an elevator sure was an easy thing for those classical psychic prophets to paint back in the day when elevators didn't exist. What a bunch of geniuses they must have been.

Also, to up the stupidity from “eating paint chips while smoking dirt-weed and watching Kim Kardashian videos” to “permanent cranial damage,” we also see that apparently the nun put up a portrait of how to kill her – a harpoon through the heart. I guess she forgot to take that one down in the incredibly rare occasion someone comes in there looking for clues on what's going on, huh?

One of the two women from the boarding school sees that her painting is being decapitated. So logically she locks herself in a room away from everyone else and then somehow, through an overly long sequence, gets her head lopped off by a broken glass door.

That looks like a baby with vampire teeth dressed up in grandma's old nun habit. What the hell am I even supposed to be watching?

We get some flashbacks which reveal Eve's mom had sex with a priest named Miguel, which is why that nun was trying to wash out her ovaries like your dad washing your car for you on Thanksgiving weekend home from college. Because you know how the Catholic Church feels about abortions. They love 'em!

Isn't this like being against gun control by eviscerating gun-control-proponents with a Bowie knife?

Then somehow they flood the place, apparently because that's the only way the nun can't kill them. Even though she apparently comes from water to kill people, having a whole room flooded apparently negates the entire thing and means she can't kill? Why not just go for complete abject randomness and say she can't kill people in rooms with three windows instead of two, or can't kill people on Tuesday nights while Glee reruns are on? Just stop even trying at all. We'll all be better for it.

They split up a bunch of times, which just seems to prove the characters have never watched a horror movie in their lives. If there was any logical reason for splitting up it'd be one thing, but no, really; they just leave one person behind when they go and do things for no reason but “WE NEED MORE PEOPLE IN RANDOM ROOMS FOR SCARES!”

A lot of other random, boring things happen, which lead up to the big twist of Eve being the real killer all along. Yes, apparently instead of the watery ghost-nun killing people, it was Eve being possessed by the nun. Which really doesn't make sense, because of...well, the entire fucking movie before this. Why try to shoehorn in a twist? Did you lose a bet? Did the previous writer die in a plane crash and so the director replaced him with an M. Night Shyamalan devotee?

Actually, really, even a Shyamalan twist would be better than this. At least his are entertaining in that you have no idea what the fuck he was thinking. This is just the kind of “the main character was the killer all along, ooooooh!” crap that you'd get in a Freshman writing class.

There was no logic here – from the idiotic plot to the acting, which was made up of a bunch of exaggerated Spanish accents and all the actors seeming like they were confused at all times. Which doesn't surprise me at all given this movie's abysmal script-writing. All in all, I learned from this movie that plumbing is serious business, and if you don't fix your bathroom or sink pipes, a vengeful ghost of someone you killed will come back and kill your mom's friends. Yeah, that about sums it up.

I also am grateful to finally be able to finally put to rest my curiosities about The Nun, which I started many years ago and never finished. Now I'm kinda just wondering, honestly, why I bothered renting this in the first place all those years ago. Was I just a serious masochist back then? I guess that would explain how I turned out the way I am today; watching these movies and so desensitized nothing in them even remotely surprises me anymore. Such is life.

Eh, whatever. This sums up my opinion on the movie:



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