#Horror (2015)

Well, it's been a hot minute, but we're finally back to doing what we were born to do on this blog – reviewing terrible, never-heard-of-it horror films found in the bowels of Netflix's giant stomach. This week, the one we are looking at is called #Horror. Yes, Hashtag Horror, or, the movie most likely to confuse the fuck out of your elderly aunt who thinks that's still just the pound sign on the phone. But then, isn't confusing elderly people the main aim of all horror movies?

Director: Tara Subkoff

Starring: Chloe Sevigny, Timothy Hutton

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

I guess this was directed by artist and fashion designer Tara Subkoff. If that's your thing, great! Personally I did not have an opinion on her one way or the other before this, and now afterwards, I am very confused.

We start off with an old classic for a horror movie: people having sex in a car and then getting murdered! Wow! What a way to set up a story!

Apparently fucking Carmen San Diego is a real fetish... why would she wear that fucking hat?

Then, in a truly inexplicable choice, we see that the credits of the film are a seizure-inducing blend of horrific CGI graphics and garish, cartoonish colors that, I think, are supposed to be the Internet or some sort of app popular with teenagers. I'm guessing the reason it looks like the vomit of a Care Bear who just woke up from a bad hangover is because they couldn't afford better effects – in which case I think they definitely should've saved up more money and then bought the rights to use Facebook and Twitter in their low-budget horror film. It's so simple!

These images brought to you by... I honestly don't know. I've got nothing on this one. This is beyond insane that anyone would put this shit in a movie.

Our main characters include an asshole father who constantly tells his pre-teen daughter Cat to stop playing with her cell phone, and a wealthy lady who spends much of the first 20 minutes of the film whining about the fact that her family is falling apart because her husband is fucking his therapist, or some nonsense like that. They're so dysfunctional that they live in separate wings of their huge mansion and almost never talk to each other. Wow, I'm sure they do a lot of crying into their wads of hundred dollar bills every night. Boo fucking hoo.

The blonde lady is just a caricature of what a rich person is like – she constantly walks around in bathrobe type clothing with her hair up, screams at her clearly hyperventilating and overworked servant to find her phone, which ends up being under the couch she's sitting on. Great scene, five stars!

"Lick my boot, peasant!"

Oh, and all the main characters the movie focuses on the most are teenage girls around 12 to 14 years old – which hasn't been done before either. But maybe that's because it's a terrible idea.

See what I mean?

Seriously – I guess it could work if you had good characters and writing. But this movie just seems to be content with having bad characters and writing. Like, did we need a several-minute long scene of the one girl, Cat, bullying the fat girl at the party? It's like, did they just leave the camera off? Why is this going so long? She tells her to KILL HERSELF for fuck's sake. It hasn't been that long since I was a kid – who are these little sociopaths?!

Oh, and the backstory here involves this guy named Ray Jameison who used to live in the house, who once killed all the people at this party he was hosting because they wouldn't leave! There's your ghost story. Just that. I guess it IS a way to make sure no one COMES to your future parties... but honestly, I'm just amazed that they chose Ray Jameison as the name of the ghost. That's not a ghost name – it's the name of a burnout hippie guitar player who you can find six nights a week in that bar by the beach playing to ten people.

The movie becomes a faceless run of mush after that – a lot of scenes of the girls just talking about bullshit, including one where they point a gun at one another! Glad that one was in there.

Maybe Russian roulette would be a good thing for this movie? Please consider it.

Finally, they kick Cat out after she won't quit bullying the fat girl. I don't know why, though – it isn't like the other girls are any better really; they're all mean as fuck to each other too. They have a few scenes where they're nice to each other, but then by the climax they all hate each other too.

There's some talk about how the fat girl's life is ruined because of stuff posted about her on the internet, and some other scenes where they actually decide to stop looking at their phones. That's actually the least realistic thing in the fucking movie. But then they also have scenes like this one after they lock their phones away:

Movie... please stop. PLEASE STOP!

So really, I am not sure how much of a victory this was at all. Girls, just get your phones out and go blind looking at them. It would be preferable to more of... whatever the fuck this is.

Then Cat's father, Dr. White, shows up – a real asshole, who seems to get off on screaming at little children. He's there, I guess, because his daughter is still missing and the others kicked her out of the house. This leads to him threatening them with a large knife!

I'm sure glad we're dealing with this situation in the best most mature way possible. Phew. What a relief to have a real adult here!

He spends so much goddamn time screaming at these little girls that I think he could've found his daughter by now if he'd actually been doing something constructive. Jesus Christ. This scene also goes on for an inordinately long amount of time and I'm inclined to think Subkoff fell asleep in her chair at some point and the actors just started improvising. Because if THAT wasn't the case, then it means someone watched this and thought it was a good idea to show the world. And that scares me more than most horror movies ever could.

By the blessing of Odin and all the other gods, the guy finally goes away and bothers someone else. That just leaves the girls to start freaking out like the apocalypse is happening. The one fat girl begins to eat cupcakes constantly, and that is all everyone else talks to her about for the rest of the movie, just a constant barrage of fat jokes. Another girl, they think she lied about having sex once, so they just start bashing her for that. DIALOGUE, THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT!

Then, mercifully, the killer realizes it's almost the end of the movie, and so starts killing everyone. This happens in extremely interesting and new ways, like their throats getting cut with a knife. Wow, a real Jack the Ripper here. Real original.

Totally unoriginal, 1/5.

Finally, I guess, the killer is revealed to be Cat the whole time, the little girl who they kicked out before. Woah, I totally couldn't see that one coming! But then again, I am an idiot. She then kills herself with a gun in the driveway of the house, which is really the ending this miserable fucking movie deserved all along.

Oh, except for the insanely trite ending where they have a bunch of fake news clips about how there were a lot of people watching and doing nothing except taking videos on their phones for social media. What incisive social commentary! You are the new George Orwell! What a fucking genius you are, and everyone should immediately blow you right now.

What was the point of any of this? It was long, boring and had almost no story structure, to the point where it was hard to even write about what happened scene to scene. The whole plotline about Ray Jameison the ghost went absolutely nowhere since it turned out to be a real person killing everyone. If it was supposed to be social commentary about people being on their phones, what was it really trying to say? It's totally a muddled message because they don't do anything with it beyond have the kids USING their phones. Not exactly a biting social satire.

I guess it was supposed to be about cyberbullying? I don't know. I can see it now that I've read the Wikipedia page, but honestly, it didn't come across very well in the film. I appreciate the attempt to tackle a real world issue, but it came off as muddled and confused the way the film did it. I didn't like or sympathize with any characters, either, which could've helped in a movie about bullying victims...

So what are we left with in #Horror? A really dumb title and an excruciatingly boring, annoying film. I guess you should see it if you want to know what a bad movie looks like? Either that, or if you've watched literally everything else on Netflix.

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

Cinema Freaks LIVE: Unfriended (2015)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nostalgia, Ghostbusters and the Movies

If you've been on any movie or entertainment site lately, you probably want to kill yourself because of all this Ghostbusters news. If you haven't been, I'll sum it up in the most non-wrist-slittingly-way possible: Sony, that master of franchises, wants to put out a Ghostbusters movie with an all female cast. The Internet reacted poorly as it always does. I personally just thought it was at least something different from a remake with an all male cast, which would just be contrived as hell, so eh, whatever.

But lo and behold...

I swear it's like they're just trying to spite me now.

It's the nostalgia dollar at work again. People just love stuff from when they were kids now. I'm a 20-something millennial whatever, so I can speak from experience – we all just love remembering the late 80s and early-to-mid 90s. Why? I think it's a product of the Internet, fast moving technology and what it's all doing to our poor, putty-like brains.

With the Internet, time moves faster and people are closer together. We grew up with this Internet thing foisted on us by the over-eager minds of big tech companies. With that came the ability of hindsight to things we couldn't just watch normally without a Youtube or torrents. When people my age were young, we watched shows like everyone used to – you know, on the TV and then we had to use our memories. Nostalgia! Then Youtube came along and Netflix followed and it was all a snowball effect from there – no longer did we have to rely on just thinking about things we were nostalgic about. Now we could relive it and watch it in all its glory!

Now, even though it's not that old, we're reliving that sweet nostalgia like 80 year old men discovering childhood favorite storybooks on a trip back to our childhood home before we die of cancer. I know that sounds sardonic, but really I think it's just a human thing that everyone goes through no matter the age – we all love remembering things from when we were younger. Nostalgia doesn't have a time limit. Everything in our pasts has some kind of rosy border.

The problem came when movie studios dug their pudgy fingers into that proverbial rosy-bordered nostalgic pie. As they are wont to do, they turned it from a sort of charming, somewhat happy new trend - “we can watch all our favorite Nickelodeon cartoons on a tiny screen in our bedrooms!” - into a giant corporate megalith: the remakes and reboots we have all come to loathe more and more every year.

This is always how it goes. They listen to us, they listen to the demand – not out of some kind of love for genuine art and fun, but because they see us as money-spewing machines that will churn out dollar bills at the drop of any new movie about something we used to love. That's the corporate machinery at work. Maybe at some minuscule level someone enjoyed what they were doing, but I dunno, I just get the feeling a lot of these guys have to go visit guys wearing cowboy hats in the middle of the night and get threatened with death if they don't obey what they say:

Unfortunately, this is the way it always goes – something starts off genuine, then the big bucks come in, and it becomes a corporate, controlled version of itself. So I imagine we'll probably get a live action Hey Arnold movie with kids from various teen pop acts and maybe Shailene Woodley or Ansel Elgort thrown in as a consolation prize. Or a Rugrats movie that imitates Baby Geniuses. With dialogue written by low-rent Diablo Codys. Maybe they'll make a Powerpuff Girls movie next and then make a male version of that to appease all demographics! The possibilities!

I also just think it's strange how political pretty much everything has become thanks to the Internet. I mean, people always liked to spout off about politics, and movies have always – always – been powerful tools to espouse certain viewpoints. But with the Internet, we can make anything political now! Now, everything that comes out gets scrutinized to no end and held up or beat down by increasingly polarized, extreme opinions. When the all-women Ghostbusters idea came out, people went nuts – some people were hailing it as a victory for feminism; others just beat the old dead horse of “women can't be funny” with some bitching about "feminists ruining everything" to round out the horribleness...either way, it was a circus. Rinse and repeat with the announcement of the all-male one again.

Can't this just be a fun movie? It's fucking Ghostbusters. It was a silly 1980s comedy with great comedians in the starring roles. Now, it's a big political debate. That's what the Internet does, though – it gives all these people voices and they become so loud, they dwarf the qualities of the films we're arguing about. Movies like Ghostbusters aren't so much about the movies themselves now, so much as they are political tug-o-war talking points for feminists and anti-feminists and who the fuck ever else.

Not to say you shouldn't discuss or argue about things that bother you in these films, but you shouldn't lose perspective either. By all means, talk about feminism in movies and the all-white-male demographic of Hollywood's moneymaking elite, but not everything has to be another hurdle in the battlefield for equality – as important as it is for men and women to be equal and for there to be diversity, I just don't see Ghostbusters as being any part of that equation. I guess some people do though, so...more power to you, I guess?

(Plus, the funniest part of the whole "all male Ghostbusters cast" thing is that people have apparently forgotten that they did two movies already with an all-male Ghostbuster cast...so, whether or not you're happy with an all-male cast in some new movie, it's just hilarious that you'd act like this is some unprecedented thing. I get the idea that eventually, in an Idiocracy-esque way, people are going to forget the original Ghostbusters even existed. They'll keep on arguing about the remakes, but then go "who?" when Bill Murray's or Harold Ramis's names come up.)

I'd be lying if I said I expected greatness from a new Ghostbusters movie in 2015. But that's not even the main point, and neither is the male/female cast debate.

The point is that they're only now making any new Ghostbusters movies, because now, people think everything from their childhood is God. Why didn't they make a Ghostbusters III or spin-offs back in the 90s when the original was still fresh? Because there was no market for it then. There is one now, thanks to the nostalgia craze born from the Internet. Hollywood saw dollar signs and decided they could make money off it. That's the truth. It's commercialized, focus-tested nostalgia and it's how they do everything, from superheroes to remakes of classic horror films to now, classic childhood movies and cartoons. Nothing new under this sun, folks.

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

REVIEW: Trust (2010)

There are some minor SPOILERS in this review...so if you want to check out this rather recent film, read on with caution!

Director: David Schwimmer

Starring: Clive Owen, Catherine Keener, Liana Liberato

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1529572/

A powerful and disturbing picture about a young teenage girl who talks to a guy she met online and finds out eventually, when they meet in person at a mall, that he's about 35 or so. He coerces her into having sex with him, and when everyone finds out, a media scandal and FBI case ensue. At first the girl really likes the guy still, and wants him back, even despite the alarm and shock of everyone around her at the situation. The film shows the decline and breaking apart of the family as the father (Clive Owens) becomes more and more obsessed with finding the rapist and bringing him to justice in his own way. I'm pretty sure this was based off a true story, and so I'm glad there wasn't much Hollywood-style glamorization. Owens never actually goes and catches the guy, and his attempts are realistically in vain, brought down by his own very human limitations. Like there’s one scene where he goes and thinks about buying a gun – his fatherly protectiveness is very real, very clear, and it blinds him to the more sensible ways to act. In another scene, he attacks a guy at one of Annie’s basketball games when he sees him taking pictures. These are rash, impetuous, human things to do, and it’s interesting to see the movie bring them out.

The acting here is very good (props to newcomer Liana Liberato for an excellent performance!), and the scenes are incredibly disturbing in their stark nature. Some of the ones in the beginning when the girl meets up with her online 'friend' are just spine-tingling uncomfortable – hell, all of those scenes are. The final scene with her and her dad outside is quite good for the exact opposite reason – it is honest, emotional and full of nostalgia and love. The film doesn’t have a big Hollywood ending where the killer gets caught, and that added a lot to the film, making it all the more hard-hitting and captivating as the audience is hit with the realization that this is real life, that these things happen sometimes, and all you can do is pick yourself up and move on. Overall I enjoyed this, and found it relevant and meaningful - a depiction of the darker side of our cybernetic revolution. I wasn't sure how to rate it at first, but frankly, this has not left my head since I finished it, and so I have no choice but to recommend it very highly to anyone who wants a realistic, harsh, emotional journey through a very sensitive situation. This will be remembered.

Review: The Social Network (2010) TH

How a massive site was born

This revolves around the inception of current social networking giant Facebook.com, along with a bitter feud between those who were closely related to its creation. In the ancient days people settled their differences in a battle of strength, nowadays it requires shrewd brain power and a laptop to one up your opponent. Swords are replaced by keyboards, brave words are replaced by written law. The modern age, which includes phenomenons such as social networking on the internet on a computer powered by electricity, made the world a little smaller but also more interconnected and complex than it has ever seen in its history.

One of the most iconic rises to the top from competition was "Pumping Iron." It focused on bodybuilding but audiences learned the general rule of thumb for anyone getting ahead is you're going to either purposely or inadvertently step on others. That goes for someone taking ideas, to another giving out help. Mother Teresa had enemies, as does a CEO. Someone out there is going to have their feelings hurt or rights violated when someone else wants to advance. Although, if there's a line where does it get crossed? At the expense of your friends and business partners over your own ambitions? "The Social Network" centers around a remediating legal case in progress between different parties who feel they had their rights violated. This switches from past to present with some stylized filmmaking mechanics to make one think more is going on than meets the eye. The backdrop is basically your average college kids--think National Lampoon minus the comedy--doing what they do between classes. There is no doubt a minor story to had, though the filmmakers slipped in some tabloid scandal to pad the rest and it didn't require two hours to tell it, insignificant ties to it, or extremely loud music that drowns out conversations to sell it. This would have been better suited as a documentary as it would cut away the flash and trivial fat.

Conversations range from incoherently fast to frequently drawn out. Literally word for word is expressed without pulling away or cutting back on whether it's significant. This isn't rewarding like a "A Beautiful Mind" where you got a balanced understanding of how a unique process works and an intimate knowledge of the unconventional person behind it without wanting to wring their neck. Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg is like Spock from "Star Trek" or Chloe from "24" who looks at situations as logical as opposed to emotional. Zuckerberg doesn't see companionship like you or I, but sometimes wants to fit in despite mostly being a jerk without necessarily doing it on purpose. Possibly his only true friend and co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, gets the short end of the stick as he's a nice guy in a dog-eat-dog world. Napster renegade, Sean Parker, is a leech that sucks onto opportunity without actually bringing in technical skill but instead charisma and connections. The three who originally brought their social network idea to Zuckerberg--Divya Narendra and Winklevoss twins--range from reserved, outspoken to confrontational, though each equally want what is deserved by bringing lawyers to the table as a last resort to negotiate. For all parties, it turns into he said this, he said that bickering. When millions of dollars are on the line maybe you would too, though that shared connection doesn't make this any more intriguing or even noteworthy to watch with all the minute nit-picking and overdramatization.

"The Social Network," like the film "Flash of Genius" about Ford using windshield wipers without permission, brings a deal gone sour to the public's attention. It's hard to say if this is 100% accurate as it's based on the book "The Accidental Billionaire" from the perspective of Eduardo Saverin: the co-founder who got the short end of the stick. If all parties were involved, this would have been better suited towards a sanctioned biography, as it's still interesting that these sexed up, drinks down college guys started out young and made something out of themselves by sheer luck and risk. The film tries to tie it all together by hinting that a socially awkward guy used the only skill set he had to create a massive social network to win over the girl. Of course, he doesn't care about those billions of dollars but the love of the game: writing code. Though getting to that point and trying to sympathize after dragging through the nitty gritty was an exercise in ad nauseam.

Director: David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac)
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Rashida Jones
Website: IMDB