Exeter (2015)

The month of October is over, and we're all hungover from horror films. So what to do now? I mean, I don't even want to see a horror movie right now. I need a fucking break. My head is spinning from all the gore and suspense and terror. Luckily, this movie, Exeter, has absolutely nothing scary or cool in it, so this shouldn't be too hard to sit through.

Oh who am I kidding, of course it will be.

Director: Marcus Nispel

Starring: Kelly Blatz, Brittany Curran

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This movie starts out with something nice and considerate – a depiction of exactly the state you need to be in to enjoy the movie:

That's right, you have to be a member of the cast of Requiem for a Dream.

How nice of it; a sort of tutorial. What a thoughtful movie.

Then we get a black and white exposition dump told in the way of an old documentary. Apparently there was a mental hospital years ago that burned kids alive, or something like that. Snooooooooore.

Then we get our main characters, a bunch of douchey high school morons who want to have a party at the place years later. Our main character is Patrick, or I think that's his name; a wimp who sucks at everything. I say that because he is working with a church to refurbish the place and on the first day of doing that, he decided to invite every kid in a hundred miles to come destroy the place for a party. I mostly find it highly dubious that he managed to get that many fucking people to come. I very, very highly doubt he's that popular or likable, movie.

He's friends with a couple of douchenozzles who talk about nothing but having sex with random chicks. They see one of them from behind and talk about how hot she is and how Patrick should go talk to her. I just find it depressing that they introduced the main girl in the movie by showing her ass first, without even showing us her face yet, and the main characters ogling her. What a piece of shit this is.

Unless she's going to talk with her ass Ace Ventura style, I don't think this is a viable way of introducing a character.

So the party drags on all night and well into the morning, and I guess none of these bungholes has anything else to do. Patrick and the girl go outside and have a ridiculously poor talk about their personal lives, where we learn they have broken families and yadda yadda. Who gives a fuck? This movie trying to emote is like a crack whore trying to relate to you.

"Blahblahblahblabla."
"Hurr durr derr."
-Pretty accurate for this scene...

If you think that last bit is harsh, well, I'm sorry if I can't get into the “touching” scenes when the next scene you see is them performing fake exorcisms just for shits and giggles. Something tells me these characters are the types of people who stick their tongues into electrical sockets to see what happens.

Anyway, yeah, so the little brother character, Rory, somehow ends up possessed from their fake exorcism game thing. Which the main characters are surprisingly cool with and don't need to think about at all before realizing that. Patrick just instantly knows, and doesn't question it even a little, and the girl says they don't need a hospital, they need a priest! Somebody put these detectives on the case. Nothing gets past them!

"This really reaffirms my suspicions that demonic possession is real!"

The group spends a lot of time just wandering around arguing about what to do. One guy says over and over that there's no such thing as possession, but then immediately reverts that position when he sees Rory. What a pussy. I love the scenes where he's raving about how Christianity is fake and possession is a lie, but then like, ten minutes later he's hugging a big cross like a baby. Fuck that guy.

They all try to figure out how to beat the demon, and the best they can come up with is watching a Youtube video about how to perform an exorcism. I would make fun of this, but honestly, the brain mash required to come up with this sequence is so bizarrely specific and odd that I think the movie's writers should be studied as lab experiment guinea pigs.

Well, they SAY it's Youtube, but really it's just a shitty looking website from 2002 because they didn't have money to use Youtube's likeness. Or maybe they did, but Youtube didn't want to be associated with this movie. In fact, I'm betting it's the latter.

It was around this point that both Michelle and myself began to think this was actually intended as a comedy, but I think that's just because the writers had no idea what they were doing. It comes off like one writer wanted to do a “serious” possession horror movie, but the other wanted to write a jokey horror comedy, so they instead combined into a two-headed, disagreeing chimera, a horrific abomination, and thus the movie was spawned.

At any rate, Michelle did think some of this was funny – so you might, too, ya never know. Your mileage may vary. There's a scene where they use a Ouija board and find out that the demon's name is Devon – that sounds like the name of a member of One Direction or something. This demon really got the short end of the stick when it came to badass demon names.

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all this, a priest named Father Conway arrives to help them with the exorcism, and then the jock kid of the group, like a moron, hits him with the car and nearly kills him. They go back inside the building, and somehow get locked inside, because even though they're all corporeal humans and should be able to figure out doors, a ghost gets the better of them on locking a fucking door. Yeah, they're real brain trusts. Keep endearing us to them, movie!

This movie sure likes to abuse priests, which I think indicates a deep seated psychological trouble that the movie needs to see a therapist for.

Next we get a long, mushy trudge through soggy horror cliché. Every character basically acts the way you expect – there's a stoner guy in the movie who walks around the entire time in his underwear with two Cheetoes stuck to his back and the phrase 'I Love Fat Cock' drawn on his back in marker. That's so bad that I can't imagine who would write it and think it was funny.

Please stop showing this, movie. Please.

Oh, and you know what this was missing the whole time? Exposition. Looooooots more exposition! So the movie does right by itself, and adds in an over-long scene of the two leads finding convenient videotapes explaining that there was a patient named Devon (like the demon's name earlier! A-ha!) there at the hospital who got mistreated and that's why all of this is happening now, or some shit like that. I do have to say this answered some questions – but not the main one I had, which was: How are they using the Internet and watching things on TV? Who is paying the fucking electric bill in this place? Wasn't it deserted for like 20 years?

Maybe the GHOST paid the electric bills! OooooOOOOooohhh!

Then there's the random guy who comes in and threatens to call the cops on them for being there. The next second, he's sticking a gun in their faces and propositioning (what's supposed to be) a teenage girl for sex. I'm pretty sure the cops wouldn't like that. Isn't that like calling the cops on a guy for breaking into your house, only to immediately order the assassination of the burglar's entire family before the cops get there? Bit of a mixed message.

Anyway, he gets the typical death characters in these movies often have – the demon breaks his neck, then he walks outside with his head twisted 180 degrees backwards, and accidentally shoots himself in the face.

Ho hum. Booooooorrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnnggggg.

Oh and there's a really random scene where the demon pretends to be the normal kid, Rory, again, only to fake them out and then immediately try to attack them again. It makes no sense because we never see the demon try to do this again. But hey, fuck logic! We have super cool possession effects to show!

As the movie slogs on, like a drunk rhino, most of the scenes take place in the middle of the day. Which is the worst idea, because now we can more clearly see how shitty and run down the building they're in looks. They somehow get the demon out of the kid again, for real this time, and then the hot blonde chick of the group who is near 30 but playing a high schooler gets it next. She's the obvious choice because the movie had her take off her bra in an earlier scene and now she's able to run around so her boobs jiggle a lot, and if anyone ever watched this, that would be an obvious pandering reason to do so. Oh, and I guess she kills a lot of people or something.

The next 40 minutes of the movie is basically just disposable – endless scenes of these morons wandering around in the dark with flashlights. The possessed girl kills the stoner guy and stabs the fat kid of the group in the gut, but he doesn't die yet. They all end up splitting up. Patrick and the lead girl find the possessed demon chick in an upstairs freezer room, but they kill her by stabbing her eyes out.

So this is basically the equivalent of a wet T-shirt mud fight between these girls. Glad the movie's not pandering!

You know what, this isn't even funny anymore. The least you could have done was add cartoon sound effects!

It turns out Father Conway is still alive, and actually killing some of the kids himself for no real reason. He even manages to kill the lead girl by sticking a lead pipe through her torso, which was training I never knew they gave priests in the sacristy. Eh, you learn new things every day.

Then Patrick shows up, cries over the fact that this girl he's known for six hours died, and burns Father Conway alive with a lighter. I do think every horror movie should end this way, so I guess that's a point in the movie's favor:

If there weren't already a bunch of heavy metal songs written about this, it might be more shocking.

After Father Conway kills the lead girl, it's revealed that the girl's name was Devon and she was the one sent to the asylum! And also the drug addict woman who shot herself in the opening scene was her mother! Shock and awe! What a twist! So Patrick goes from mourning over her to mutilating her with a fan blade, cutting her arms off and then shoving her into an incinerator in like, ten minutes. His mind is like Silly Putty; he never sticks to just one idea for long!

Also note the complete dead-eyed lack of empathy at the horrific violence he just committed. Maybe the movie is trying to make a point about how we're all so desensitized now. Or maybe it's just total shit, either way.

So that's Exeter. It sucks. It's poorly paced, poorly acted and poorly characterized, and the scares are as good as any you would find in your local Kindergarten class. The plot makes no sense, with a bunch of random threads never connected, like the world's worst-made Christmas sweater, coming unraveled at the seams. Like, yeah, a story about a random possessing demon with no rules or logic to how it works, and the magical priest who can survive being hit by a car and then becomes an stone badass killer for no reason. Sign me the fuck up for that.

But at least it's not a total loss. There are a few redeeming factors. Like, uh, well...actually, nevermind.

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

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (2014)

The first Woman in Black movie with Daniel Radcliffe was an excellent real estate ad for those looking to buy old English country homes. The movie itself was a contest by the filmmakers to see how long they could stay awake during endless scenes of Radcliffe walking around in the dark with nothing happening. I guess that description sounded good to somebody, because now we have the sequel, Angel of Death.

Director: Tom Harper

Starring: Phoebe Fox, Jeremy Irvine

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This one is set in World War II, and sure, there was a war going on, kids were in the trenches fighting for their lives and there were unspeakable horrors going on at the concentration camps, but hey, we NEED to focus on this silly haunted house ghost story right now! That's amazing to me. You could do anything – it's a fucking period piece – but instead, we just get the same stuff we're used to from movies set in the plain old modern day. "But they set THIS one in the 40s!" Well, okay. It must be better then.

I mean, surely there were no better story ideas? How about a bunch of soldiers come across a house and stay there for shelter during a storm? Maybe a wounded or discharged officer trying to cope with the war AND the ghost? Nah. We really need another bullied loner kid story and a cliché romantic subplot! That's really original, guys!

On the plus side, it does work as a sleep aid – Michelle actually told me it worked for her that way after the movie ended.

The movie begins with a bombing in London during World War II. Gee, I have never actually seen a movie start off with such an accurate description of how it did at the box office.

Then we get our main character, a woman named Eve Parkins taking a bunch of kids to this house on an island to keep them safe. She is introduced to Edward, whose parents died in the bombings, and who now wears the permanent expression of sorrow more fitting for a kid who's just realized his acting career won't be helped by starring in this.

His loss of his parents could be a positive thing, if he spins it and becomes English WWII Batman. That would actually be awesome. Much more awesome than this movie.

They go to this old house, which gives us more of the movie's favorite thing ever – showing us the house as if we have the option to come to the open house next Tuesday. It's not a very good real estate agent though, as rather than warm and inviting, we just get a broken down house with everything ruined. Thanks for nothing, guys!

"Ugh, the LIGHTS aren't even on?! Worst open house ever."

It turns out the movie did find one use for the World War II setting – pseudo-intellectual dialogue that doesn't really reveal anything insightful about the characters or story or even, really, the times. But what would we do without characters talking about how strong they need to be to survive, which is something that could be from literally any time and any situation? Aren't there better ways to develop characters? Nah. Just throw bullshit hollow platitudes in and call it a day. Back to our bland supernatural lobotomy-fuel horror!

Most of the first hour is just boring as fuck. It's all played out scenes of Edward, who is silent, withdrawn and likes drawing pictures, being bullied by the other kids. Sure, like one girl is sort of nice to him, but even she's just doing the bare minimum any character does in these sorts of movies – every once in a while she'll call out for them to stop being so mean. Whoop-de-fucking-do.

"Teacher, can't we get one decent line or some kind of identifiable character trait?"
"NO!!! As punishment for asking that, you must write I have been a bad child 100 times on the blackboard!"

I mean, I guess we could have had actually well written dialogue for the kids that made you like them, and actually treated them like human beings. Whoa there, bucko, don't get TOO progressive on us there!

There's nothing overly annoying about most of this stuff, but they just do so little with their story. It's like having the ingredients to make a really great five-star cuisine, but then just settling for McDonalds for dinner instead, out of laziness and convenience.

But hey, at least we have a bunch of jump scares! Shitty ones! Ones where you see a glimpse of some Grudge-style white-faced ghost and then the character turns around and sees nothing! Give me a hip, hip, hooray for that!

….Guys? GUYS?!

Oh well. The film trudges on as we see Eve has a tragic past that can easily be explained in a short flashback complete with cliché orangey colors and slow music. Apparently she had a baby and since she wasn't married, the hospital took it away from her – that's really all we get.

This is almost a scary scene. You're closer to hot than to cold. But this is the closest you'll get, I'm afraid. Sad...

It's a story, I'll give them that – but that doesn't mean they did much with it. They didn't really do anything. It's the equivalent of a guy winning the lottery and spending the money incrementally on the same stuff he bought at CVS every day before he won. Complete waste of time.

But at least we have another backstory scene as Mr. Pilot Man, whose name I suppose is actually Harry, stops the car with Eve just to tell her his sob story about how he was a coward in the war and left his buddies to die. This character constantly has a deer-in-headlights look, like he has been locked in a room his whole life waiting for a Pantene commercial that he's been specially bred to star in. So I can believe he's a World War II pilot if I stretch my disbelief far enough!

They find one of the bully kids dead in the thorns outside in the morning, which I guess is really the point when they start to ask questions.

...Or it would be in a movie that had any logical sense. But in this movie, it's just another thing that happens – nobody really questions it or has a big reaction. I guess you could argue they figured that kid just wandered outside and died accidentally – but even then, nobody really seems to care. That child's death is just glossed over like nothing. I realize these kids have all the personality of a pack of playing cards left out in the rain, but that's not THEIR fault – that's the writers' fault at Satan's Movie Studio.

The movie rolls slothfully along, with some more random jump scares and some scenes with scary toys that should have probably been removed by now. But we needed some dismally small attempt to scare the audience, so it's pandering time on a level usually reserved for four year olds watching Barney the Dinosaur. If you think this is scary, you probably shouldn't go Trick or Treating this year; you'll probably have a heart attack.

It's scary because that stuff was found in an abandoned toy factory and ominous lighting was put on it. OoooOOoooohhh...

Eve, meanwhile, gets locked underground with a zombie version of this one doctor character from earlier. He blabbers on about some prophetic sounding nonsense, and once she gets out, she realizes she has to take the kids away from the house, putting together the clues from the nonsense that ghost was mumbling about. Because she is the type of teacher who lets supernatural ghosts and ghouls guide her decisions. Today, they would probably call her crazy and fire her for this, but in the 1940s, she was just being a good teacher.

"You look like a credible person that I should listen to!"

So they recruit Mr. Pilot Coward Man Harry to take them off the island, which he does – he takes them to the greatest place possible, a decoy airfield used to make the enemy bomb them during the war. That sounds like an amazing place to hide a bunch of scared children, doesn't it? Take them on a field trip there, pop open a bottle of wine. Why not?

I also love the contrived romantic scene we get here - Harry reveals that he had been making up a lot of his stories about being a pilot, and that he never made it out of training. Eve's response to this is to kiss him right there. Which just goes to show you - cowardice and lying gets you chicks.

Harry shows off his true nature when the place gets bombed like, a few hours after they arrive (great place to take kids, remember?!), and Edward tries to run back to the island. Harry tries to save him, but pusses out at the last second and instead goes back to the bunker like the weak-ass bitch he is. It would be one thing if we saw the conflict of his character doing this. But this is his face when he's telling Eve about how Edward was lost:

Amazing. The heartbreak is achingly obvious. I feel for this man in a way I've never felt for a movie character.

Truly heart-rending.

Anyway, Eve decides Edward is still alive, and so she goes back to the island and the old house. This results in an extra endurance round of 'boring scenes of searching the house while sad music plays,' where nothing is accomplished except for padding this movie out some more. It's only an hour and forty minutes, but goddamn, does it drag like a deflated wet balloon across a hot blacktop.

The movie also seems to think that rocking chairs are scary. A lot of these kinds of movies do this - see also Paranormal Activity, The Conjuring - they all do this scare. Why? Did a rocking chair traumatize the writers when they were young?

While looking out a window, she sees Edward walking on the frozen marsh toward this giant cross thing sticking out. She somehow makes it out of there super fast, and runs to him, but they both sink into the water. Fortunately, Harry the Pilot Man comes to save them, jumping into the water and helping to pull them out of a pile of corpses. He sacrifices himself in doing this, and they bid him farewell as he slowly dies underwater.

"Bbbrbrrgggbbb.... I knew I should have just gone back to the mainland and started telling women that I saved these two instead of actually doing it! That would have been in line with my character and also kept me alive!"

So, wait a second. Pause the movie. This represents him finally having the balls to do something brave – all movie long and even in his backstory, he's been a coward who survives only by running away when things get tough. Now, he finally does something brave – and HE DIES INSTANTLY the second he does so! What kind of message is that? Clearly, he should have stuck to being a coward, as that was the best way to stay alive.

I guess that ends the whole thing, as we then see that Eve and Edward now live together and Edward is on his way to becoming a normal kid. I mean okay, there IS that one moment where a picture is shattered on his desk, which might allude to the ghost still being around:

But I think that's just proof that picture frames were in short supply during the war, and this one was just poorly made craftsmanship. I turn up my nose at your shoddy handiwork!

Overall, this was lame. No good character, a story that's been done a thousand times over, and no good scares. The settings, like the first one, are nice – but they rarely use them to their full potential. You can tell they're trying to go for atmosphere, but the movie just shoves your face in these long, dull scenes of the characters walking around in the house – atmosphere can only take you so far. You need something else aside from a creepy setting – I know this might be an unrealistic expectation for a modern horror flick, but how about an actual scary scene? How about trying that?

No? Oh well. I can't wait for the third movie set in the 2000s with a bunch of partying college frat bros staying at the house on a dare. Come on, you know that's what they'll do.

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

Abandoned Mine (2013)

A year or so ago, I did a post about what was wrong with horror movies today, and in that post I took pictures of a bunch of DVD covers at my local movie rental store. One of those DVDs was Abandoned Mine, a film about a bunch of dumbass kids getting trapped in an abandoned mine as part of a Halloween prank. You could also call it “the Darwin effect.” And since I have run out of ideas completely, of course I'm just going to cannibalize my own past and do this as the last review for October this year!

Director: Jeff Chamberlain

Starring: Saige Thompson, Reiley McClendon, Alexa Vega

IMDb

This movie starts off with several minutes of boring nothingness for the opening credits, because I guess they thought they really needed an opening that made people shrug and go “ehhhh.” Then we get our main character Brad, who has the distinction of having the most punchable face in the entire film.

He's going around trying to get his friends to join him in this SUPER COOL HALLOWEEN PROJECT yo, or rather what I already said – going down into this old abandoned mine to just hang out. Like I've said before...I really miss when kids just did drugs and got eachother pregnant.

If you need proof this movie has no idea what it wants to convey, well, get this – apparently Brad has invited his ex-girlfriend Laurie along, which is weird because his current girlfriend Sharon is also coming. And not only that, but Laurie and Sharon are also friends, who play wonderful tricks on one another like Laurie pretending to be a serial killer and then stabbing a ketchup bottle on the ground right next to Sharon. For some reason, Sharon is still panicked by this even after she isn't stabbed – does it just take her longer than most people to realize she hasn't been stabbed?

"I should realize I wasn't stabbed, but my brain moves at the pace of climate change, so I can't tell yet!"

"HA HA HA! You obviously are traumatized and I should be apologizing, but I'm a shitty friend. So nope!"

Maybe she's just empathic with condiments.

Then we get a several-minute long musical number scene where the two girls are trying on various costumes. It's really just an excuse to look down their shirts and watch girls who are supposed to be in high school getting dressed. It also comes off like it should have been in a Bratz movie.

Is it that hard to find a real live woman after writing a scene like this, show her what you wrote and ask "is this accurate?" Oh wait, yes it is, because you don't care about that - you just wanted jerk-off fuel. Being perverted is A-OK so long as you put it under the guise of characters dressing up for Halloween!

They all meet up in some empty field and we're introduced to some other characters, like Ben, who is a fat kid who plays football. And Ethan, who is an Indian guy who talks in a funny accent, is polite to a fault, misspells words and constantly knows everything about every trivia the characters need for the mine. I'd call this racist as fuck, but I think you actually would need to invent a new word to talk about what this is. It's at least as bad as blackface.

Somebody's going to hell for this, for sure.

There's some dialogue about how he used to work in a call center in India and how lots of Indian kids get those jobs – I refuse to become complicit in your attempt to make me confront racial stereotypes, movie!

While they're driving, someone mentions they're going to the old Jarvis Mine, which really freaks Sharon out, prompting her to start screaming about how SHE DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS THAT MINE, SHE THOUGHT IT WAS ONE OF THE OTHER HAUNTED MINES AROUND TOWN! Funny. I guess haunted mines are just like Walgreens around this town – there's one on every block.

They have a lot of really stupid conversations, which give off the aura that the writers just didn't want us to enjoy our time watching this. Like take a look at this gem:

LAURIE: I didn't know if I was supposed to be his mom or his girlfriend.

SHARON: Both, maybe.

LAURIE: Both is hard.

One, is it that hard to have your girl characters talk about ANYTHING besides the boy they dated? Two, that's gross and you should feel bad. I don't need to hear about any Oedipus complexes related to this face:

Then they sit around a campfire and Brad tells the longest ghost story ever – apparently in this story, some kid found gold in a mine and then grew up to have a family, but then the bosses tried to cut him out of his share of the mine. They kidnapped him and his daughters and raped the daughters in front of him – because there can't be a good horror story with women if they don't get raped... Then they became vengeful ghosts and spend the rest of eternity down there waiting to possess women, because possession is gender specific now.

Uh oh, better tell Pazuzu he got it wrong...

Then it starts to rain, so like idiots they hide inside the mine. They could just hang out there, but no! That wouldn't be stupid enough. They have to go further into the mine! I'm really just not sure what I'm supposed to be rooting for here. They're dumb characters doing a dumb thing on a whim – there's really no conflict or drama there. If the movie were scarier or more intense it might be easier to forget, but there's nothing but a bunch of obnoxious kids wandering around spewing putrid dialogue. What's there to latch onto?

They start going into the mine and somehow get lost in like five minutes – even though it was clear how to get out and they have nothing to gain by going deeper and deeper into this fucking place, I guess the story is running on the power of “hey! Putting my tongue in a wall socket sounds fun!” logic.

"Wait, let's check...nope, no point to what we're doing up there..." 

So they keep wandering around, going further up the ass of this old mine. Ethan keeps on hurling out random facts about mines, which starts to get ridiculous after a while. And by “after a while,” I of course mean it was never not ridiculous. He's Indian! He must know everything! That's just how Indians are. They're super-smart. Like Braniac from Superman, except with a funnier and more exaggerated accent.

"Wait, stop everything...I feel a psychic brainwave coming on that will give me the magical exposition-spewing powers all Indians have!"

When they come across a tight tunnel that may or may not lead to certain death, of course our brain-dead heroes are up for it. Except the fat kid doesn't want to get stuck and Sharon is just a wimp. Then it's bad dialogue time again!

BEN: Me and Sharon will just stay here. We'll probably, like, make a family or something together by the time you come back for us.

SHARON: I never would've been friends with you all these years if I had known how disgusting you were.

Because you know, friendship just means pulling the wool over your eyes and not caring who the fuck you're hanging out with, like at all! You could be friends with a serial killer and not notice until you literally just come across them stabbing some guy in an alleyway. Then you'd have just cause to be like “I never would have been your friend if I'd known THIS was what you meant when you said you killed people!” It just makes the most sense.

Then they get even more lost. Things finally start to look up a bit when Brad is killed, apparently by some kind of monster:

No, not that kind. I’m picturing something more like this:

Yeah, that ought to do it.

The other three wander around like this is their first day on Earth at all for a while until the movie decides it’s time to rip off [REC].

Then it’s just Laurie and Ethan. I will give the movie props for killing off its most annoying characters - not usually a consideration movies give the audience. But here it’s like sweet bliss.

We do get some more idiotic dialogue though, when Ethan reveals a stunning secret: he isn’t even really Indian! And what’s more, he never worked in a call center! Well, stop the fucking presses, I say. He should be left down in that mine to die for this heinous lie.

"How DARE you lie to me about your nationality?!?"

In my imagination, the actor for this kid is friends with the guy from Life of Pi. They were childhood buddies, let's say. I like to picture those two actors meeting up again after not seeing each other for years. Maybe the conversation would go like this:

"Hey, man, what have you been up to?"

"Well, I was in a movie called Life of Pi, which got critical fame and success! What about you?"

"Uh, well...let's change the subject."

Laurie has him beat, though, when she goes on an epic temper tantrum about the fact that the ghost is down in the mine and she wants to destroy him, I guess. This is clearly an Oscar-winning performance and will go down in history as the best scene to reference when putting a plot in your movie about an angry mine ghost trying to kill annoying teenagers. This will be one for the history books.

As the rest of the film progresses, I see I was wrong about it - it has more merit to it than I ever gave it credit for. For instance, the transcendental scene where Laurie seems to get the idea she’s actually a Game of Thrones character.

"Just keep the camera there and I'll look dramatic as hell."

And hey, bats are yummy!

Ozzy would be proud.

The film blends these diverse influences together into a strange amalgamation neither too silly nor too serious - it’s right on the borderline, leaving the viewers to decide how to feel! Such ambiguity certainly deserves at least a passing nod.

The directing also becomes more and more spastic and artsy, which is clearly a choice made to accentuate the confusion and bizarre nature of our own lives as we continue to forage into adulthood. The characters are clearly representative of a larger truth. Yes, the dialogue was bad in the beginning and yes, they could be annoying, but overall it was part of a larger plan. The movie is trying to tell us that life is confusing and there are no answers. Everything we see is just a cover for something that lies beneath. There is no good or bad, just a moral gray area. The mine, clearly, is supposed to represent the darkness and turmoil of our inner souls and minds - a complex and confusing labyrinth with no way out. Just like how we are as we try to figure out what to do in real life.

This is especially demonstrated when it’s revealed the whole thing was a big prank by Brad to get back at his friends for leaving town, because I guess they were all moving on with their lives and he wasn’t. What we thought was a devilish plot by monsters in a mine was just a sad kid afraid of losing his friends:

To get this effect, they stubbed his toe.

This is just like real life. In real life we constantly fear the worst. We always think things are one way when they’re really another. We tend to not see the underlying motives behind other peoples’ actions. That’s what this movie is conveying. What a masterpiece.

And it’s even more muddied by the actual ending, where it’s revealed Brad died in the cave and everyone else is somehow at his funeral. Were they all conspiring to kill Brad the whole time? That would certainly be advisable, but it isn’t clear. Were they all possessed by the ghosts? Or did Brad just kill himself, Laurie remain possessed by the ghost, and everyone else just get out completely oblivious? There are no clear answers. Just like in real life.

…

Actually, no, on second thought, none of this made sense.

Happy Halloween!

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