I saw the movie The Invitation last night at about 1 a.m., which really is the best time to watch a horror film – when everything is dark and the noises go bump in the stillness of the night. Naturally, at that unique time of day and with a movie this strange and eerie, some thoughts were borne out of the experience which I wanted to write down as quick as possible. So I did. Here they are. I'm basically just going to ramble about it for a few paragraphs, just a bunch of loose thoughts. Let's talk about The Invitation. There'll be some spoilers, I guess, but I'm not going through this scene-by-scene like in my normal reviews.
The story is about this guy named Will coming back for this reunion with his ex-wife and a bunch of their friends. Apparently Will and his wife's son died two years ago, and after that his wife joined this religious group out in Mexico, which is always a good sign by the way. The group's philosophy is that apparently, letting go and dying shouldn't be this scary concept. Which seems like an awfully long way to go to make a religion – why not just get some pills and cash out now? Why wait? But it's a religion for them, I guess, and it starts to make for what could charitably be called an awkward house party. There's a sense of unease immediately, with the crowded camera shots full of all these characters and the almost toxic, claustrophobic sense of politeness – you can just tell there's something “off,” and the movie never skimps on that feeling. I was uncomfortable all throughout this thing.
The movie's first two acts especially are so exquisitely creepy. This is masterfully headfucked, bizarre, trippy stuff, like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining – that was really the prevalent influence I kept being reminded of through the whole movie. There are all these weird, head-trip moments where you don't know what's going on and what's just in someone's head. Will, the lead, seems composed at first, but the memory of his lost son slowly starts to show that maybe he isn't a reliable narrator either – you wonder a few times what exactly is just his warped perspective and what isn't. The ending of the movie is much more straightforward, and doesn't have that kind of ambiguity, but I liked the way they built it up anyway. At some moments before the climax, the movie has these surreal scenes that sort of dive down a rabbit hole of fucked-up-ness, but then cut back to normalcy and you wonder if that scene even really happened. It doesn't end up mattering if it really happened, though, because the effect is still so macabre.
The climax turns into an all-out bloodbath. It becomes something similar to the movie End of the Line, which I panned way back in 2014, but the execution is what matters – the 'cult end of days killers' theme is done so well in this film. As I mentioned, the ambiguity and the surreality of the early parts of the film were excellent, but I am not one to turn my nose at a good dose of violence, either. This climax is full of great stark, surprising, bloody moments, and it works. The final twist at the end is one I've seen done before, and maybe it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I was rolling with it the way this movie told it. I had no great complaints.
I think beyond everything else, it was the little touches that made this movie so good to me. The villains in this film are part of this cult that wants to enact mass suicide. But when they die, they don't seem like they're at peace as they said they'd be. When these cult members die, they don't reach some kind of perfect bliss like they blather on about all throughout the first two acts – they're in pain, screaming and they don't want to go. I think that's a kind of insight that puts this movie way above most other horror movies.
It's a nuance that shows an understanding of people's psyches where, even as far gone as these villains are, we're all the same when we're dying. The reactions of the main characters, the good guys, killing them are appropriately horrified, too; another thing most movies do not get right. I think when you can feel the deaths at a more visceral level, see the pain, then a horror movie is even more “real.” That's why The Invitation succeeds.
Image copyright of its original owner, I don't own it.
As this is a brand new movie put on Netflix just a little while ago, I'd like to take this opportunity to say how thankful I am that I can review these movies and help a budding young start-up company like Netflix succeed in this harsh business climate. I'll be waiting for my check in the mail, guys. Just make it out to Cinema Freaks.
After the runaway successes of Mine Games in 2012 and Abandoned Mine in 2013, film producers thought they were really onto something with this whole mine thing. So this year we got the third installment to this epic trilogy with Beneath – a true-life story, apparently, about a bunch of miners that got stuck in a mine or some shit like that. I would try and put some effort into looking up about the true story that inspired this, but frankly that would be doing more work than the writers for this movie did. And I'm not about to do that.
We start this crap off with a bunch of bland white people hanging out in a shitty bar celebrating this girl Sam's dad's retirement from working in a mine. There's a bit of flirting, a little bit of back and forth banter, but really nothing substantial.
"Do you think this movie will seem better if we keep on drinking?" "Probably not, but go ahead and try!"
The first twenty minutes of the movie are like this, in fact. Pretty much just bland people talking about bland things. I'll give it credit for not being complete asinine stupidity or cliché like the other two mine movies I've done, but it isn't replacing that with anything else. I guess the only thing of note that happens is when the guys dare Sam to come down in the mine with them because her whole college tuition was paid for by her father's mine job.
Being a complete idiot, she of course says yes. And to one up her on the idiocy scale, both her father and boyfriend have absolutely no problem with her coming down into the mine with them even though she'll probably just be a liability and will just be standing around doing nothing. I don't really know how I'm supposed to be invested in this – I mean, Bring Your Daughter to Work Day was awkward enough for the daughter of the town gynecologist. You don't really need to compete here, you jackasses.
"Dad, I miss the old days when you just neglected me all the time as opposed to dragging me down into a mine to die."
They have some more very bland, safe dialogue that mostly listens like they were just trying to fill the space. Because you know how it is – creating dialogue is kind of like filling in the cracks of cement on the sidewalk. It's just a utilitarian thing.
"So how much longer do we have to read the boring dialogue from this script? I could come up with better lines in my sleep!" "Hell, I could come up with better lines drunk off my ass!"
You know what else is utilitarian? This crazy looking machine!
Chekhov's Gun? What's that?
Which I'm sure won't be used to kill anyone in this movie. Because that would just be foreshadowing if you showed THAT ahead of time!
Sigh. The movie apparently thinks it's interesting to have the characters wandering around explaining things about the mine. If you really think that's a good idea, just stop watching this movie, drive to West Virginia and ask them what they think about climate change issues and carbon emissions, and you'll have a much better time.
It turns out even the mine itself is bored of them, as it falls asleep and collapses randomly. I guess it was just waiting for the right time to do that, as clearly it's an incredible coinky-dink that it happened when they were inside the mine for five minutes AND the only time they brought a “fish out of water” character in with them! How dramatically convenient!
I also love that they decided to bring her down into this mine that apparently was in danger of collapsing. Even disregarding the randomness of nature, you'd think they would've gone “hey, fragile young woman who has no experience in mines, maybe THIS isn't the right mine for you to come down into because it might collapse!” But that wouldn't have been as funny. Or, again, as dramatically convenient, because if real life can't imitate art, what can?
They all make their ways to this special emergency center thing where they can hide out and not die from a lack of oxygen. One of the guys, I guess, hurts his leg when a rock falls on it, and so he's pretty much confined there. They all demonstrate their Oscar-worthy scowls and looking worried skills, but really, unless this is going to be the mine version of The Thing, I just can't bring myself to care.
Just keep scowling at the floor. For inspiration, try thinking of how disappointing the final movie will be when you actually see it.
They eventually make the decision to go look for some of their buddies who might've gotten lost in the chaos of the collapse. One guy says he doesn't want to go wandering around out there, and the others get mad and start bullying him into coming. I don't even get it; if he doesn't want to come, who gives a shit? Just leave him there and go yourselves! Why would you even want someone with you who isn't into the idea? It'd just slow you down in the end! But I guess they're operating on “teenage girls going to the bathroom” rules and have to travel in a pack, you know, like all miners.
"You don't want to go with us? Well that is just unacceptable. You are now the new leader of this group!" "But that means I could just call off the whole thing with my newfound leadership power!" "Durrrrrrrr...."
Because this is a place some of these people have worked for years and should know it like the back of their hand, of course they get lost and spend a lot of the next half hour just stumbling around. If you aren't tired of scenes of characters wandering around in the dark shining flashlights at rocks, well, you will be after watching this shit for 25 minutes straight.
I guess one guy does finally get caught in that wacky death trap machine from earlier, but even then, it's not like the movie lets us see that. Like most great horror movies, it skimps out on the gore and instead just replaces it with a pitch black void of soul-sucking nothingness.
They just do more of the same shit again and again for the rest of the movie's second act. At one point, they're called back and end up losing the oxygen in their tank, which really stresses Sam's father out. He goes on a whole rant about how Sam wanted him to retire because she's a big shot lawyer now and her and her mother both were conspiring against him. It's really quite an insane temper tantrum and has nothing to do with anything in the rest of the movie, nor does it ever come up again. So...good job?
Somebody needs a nap. Or a swift decapitation - whichever's more your bag.
I just really want to see them get out of this alive, then Sam's dad comes to visit her at her lawyer job and the exact same thing happens. Like they get trapped inside a law office and have to navigate through the endless halls of litigation paperwork, manila folders and zombies in order to get out. That would be a good movie.
Because, yes, that’s what this movie has in its third act - zombie-like creatures.
I’m just so glad this based-on-a-true-story film is keepin’ it real for those of us who are really interested in mining accidents. The usual dangers are all here. Suffocation, dying of loneliness...zombies.
They have a battle with this one guy who gets possessed and lock him in a cage. He then turns back to normal and says he’s fine and doesn’t understand why he’s locked in a cage. This character, throughout the goddamn movie, has been consistently abrasive, assholeish and rude. So really, maybe he wasn’t possessed and the characters just finally pulled the wool off their eyes and realized he was a dick.
"Yeah, we know you weren't really a killer. We just really hate you."
They go back to the shelter and come up with the brilliant idea to blow up dynamite to try and make a hole so they can escape. They find the very old dynamite very easily, which looks exactly like they just took it out of a Roadrunner cartoon of course, and really why wouldn’t they have this unlit dynamite from a hundred years ago in a mine that people still use today? It just makes the most sense.
Then they light them and nothing but a small piece of paper with 'BANG' written on it pops out.
Unfortunately, before they can get to that, there are more zombies afoot who can magically change back to human whenever they want! For a movie trying to sell itself as ‘based on a true story,’ they sure are good at pulling these zombie rules straight out of their asses, because I’ve literally never heard of this being a thing at all.
Then they blow up the wall and of course escape the thunderous, fiery ball of destruction that ensues by hiding behind a wall a few feet away, and survive without a scratch on them. Realistic, just the way I like my horror movies.
Then they get saved and it turns out that, DUN DUN DUN, Sam has become a zombie too! Oh no! That will immediately get noticed and then they’ll quarantine or kill her to prevent the spread of it, and nothing will happen at all!
I don't even get it; how did nobody not notice this? Why are they able to transform back and forth at will? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?! I guess we'll never know, because this movie is over. A door that should remain closed, I think.
This movie is boring. I mean, the least they could have done was just go all the way with the abject ridiculousness of the scenario and toss in giant slimy worm monsters in the mine, or characters having sex scenes set to ridiculous 2000s wannabe grunge music. No, those things wouldn’t have made it a better film, but at least it would have been kind of funny.
Instead we got the tired “based on a true story” crap, which apparently for this movie meant making it as dull and bland as they could, with little memorable dialogue, no good characters and really only like one or two half-decent scares. Oh, and zombies and stuff, which totally round out this whole thing as a credible true story. I apologize for continually repeating that sarcastic quip about the movie’s realism, but honestly it’s just baffling to me that these movies even try to pass off that “true story” crap as a legit story device...when you confront them about it, a lot of them will say “oh, well it’s only based on a true story, but we took some creative artistic licenses with it and made it better!”
If you’re really trying to tell a true story, why bother fabricating ridiculous horror cliche tropes around it? Why not just make your own fictional, fantastical story if you want to throw in zombies? You have to pick one - either it’s a true story, in which case you stick to realistic horror (which can’t be that hard to do in a claustrophobic, dark-ass mine), or you just ditch the “based on a true story” angle and tell a goofy fantastical horror tale. But you won’t, because saying it’s based on a true story is an easy shortcut to cover up for crap writing.
Sigh. On second thought, doing these mine movies was a terrible idea. Why didn’t anyone stop me? The only pervading lesson throughout all of them was, don’t ever go in a fucking mine.
Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.
Well, well, we’ve finally reached the film I’ve been putting off
reviewing for so long: I Know Who Killed Me, one of the worst films of the 2000s according to the critics. Hell, it won just about every Razzie the year it came out. This is one of the few times I'm going to just straight up agree with the critics, no qualms at all - this really is objectively one of the worst films of the decade. It’s got an unwieldy, clumsy
sounding title, it stars professional screw-up, former child star and
rehab-clinic regular Lindsay Lohan, and it’s an ungodly piece of cinematic
terrorism. That should be enough to justify this review’s existence! Yup. It
is. Let’s get on with it, then.
We start off with what I like to call “positive, deep female character
development”:
Yeah, if all you want in a movie is cheap stripping scenes that aren’t
even really hot at all, you’ll be in paradise with this movie. But more on that
later.
For now, we have some pretentious story being read by the world’s most generic
high school student, Aubrey (played by the best actress ever, Lindsay Lohan). She’s writing about a girl who thinks she’s two separate people? If this
weren’t an annoyingly contrived and asinine set-up for this movie’s very poorly
written plot, I’d say this is incredibly half-assed. But then again, people tell me I nitpick sometimes.
We then see that Aubrey is so dedicated to her mediocre writing that
she even quits piano lessons to focus more on her writing. Because doing both is just unheard of, and it’s really
like she’s so jam packed in her schedule that she couldn’t find time after the lessons are over. Or maybe the
movie is just really shitty, I dunno.
We also see some other exciting things, like how Aubrey has a boyfriend
who thinks it’s a cool idea to tell her he loves
her in the middle of science class, because that’s such a good place to do
it, right? After that, to complete the butt-clenching awkwardness this movie
has to offer, the teacher asks him to locate the female genitalia on their
biology microscopes, and he points out the male genitalia instead. Yeah, that’s
right; he told her he loves her in the middle of a science lesson on genitalia.
Where’s Freud when you need him?
Touching your girlfriend's leg in science class while learning about genitalia; oh yeah, true love! This movie's up there with Cyrano de Bergerac and Casablanca!
At a football game later, we see that high school kids indeed play
football, and afterwards, Aubrey goes missing while going to see her stupid
boyfriend – although the crap-and-a-half editing will make this plot point as
confusing as possible, not really making it clear at first what’s happened.
Which is a pretty common theme in this movie, sadly. Her friends who we will
never see again stand in one place, call her name three times and then deduce
that because she didn’t answer, she must be missing.
"HEY AUBREY! ARE YOU IN EARSHOT? NO? OKAY, MUST BE MISSING THEN!"
Truly they should be the
stars of the new Sherlock Holmes TV series that comes out next. They already
had one with Watson as an Asian woman, so hey, why not? But I digress.
If you think all of this bland nonsense is exactly that, bland nonsense;
well, you’d be right. Fortunately the film has other ways to suck right around
the corner. Rather abruptly, the movie switches to some pained screaming and
torture scenes, with Aubrey tied up on a table and getting her fingers cut off.
This is the other big theme in the
movie: fingers getting cut off! Yeah, if
the stripping scenes didn’t do it for you, at least you have the finger cutting
scenes to get you going. But again, that will come more into play later on.
The jarring transition between the normal school night stuff and this is actually pretty good, but unfortunately this is just the beginning of a long, looooong train of unnecessary, gratuitous gore without any real purpose.
We then cut to a lady driving on the road, who discovers Aubrey
bloodied and disfigured in a ditch – insert your own Lindsay Lohan in real life
joke here; I’m above that. She’s taken to a hospital and is missing an arm and
a leg – in maybe the only genuine moment in the film, she sees what’s happened
to her and the effect is fairly disheartening. It’s probably the only moment
that actually elicits sympathy for Lohan’s character. A notion that will be
ruined by the bland writing and haphazard attempts at being deep to follow…
A tragic, affecting scene that I can empathize with. The movie realized this mistake and thus never did it ever again.
She claims she’s not Aubrey at all, and that she’s actually Dakota, a
down-on-her-luck stripper who has truly lived the tough side of life. Or, what this movie THINKS is the tough side of
life, but is really just a cobbled together pastiche of clichés that white
suburban people think hard living is like. We get some flashbacks, and really,
it’s just so trite. There’s no subtlety or depth here, and the character is
about as believable as a multi-million dollar actress playing a downtrodden
character from a bad neighborhood could ever be. Seriously, movie; just get
real. Lindsay Lohan may have been a strung out, disgusting junkie at the time,
but, in reality, she was being a strung out, disgusting junkie IN A REALLY NICE
PENTHOUSE.
And the circle is complete: it is now impossible to care about her character in this film, after seeing this. Thank you and you're welcome.
And we come now to the most egregious, banal, talking-down-at-audience
“symbolism” ever – literally everything in this movie is bathed in blue
lighting for no reason. At first, for like the opening five or six minutes, it
wasn’t too intrusive, but around the time this torture scene starts up, it just
gets really stupid, and it’s ALL THE TIME. The blue coloring is supposed to
represent Aubrey, and later on we’ll get a lot of red lighting for Dakota’s
scenes. The lighting is supposed to symbolize which character is which, and show
the contrast between their personalities, and honestly I can’t think of a way
the director could have created something LESS intellectual and smart. I mean,
c’mon, do we really need blue lighting for everything?
Even for the tools the goddamn serial killer is using?
Did he just buy those at WalMart? Did he get a discount in the
‘everything blue’ section of the handyman’s construction aisle? Seriously
movie, just because you’re trying to be all deep
symbolism and character meaning doesn’t mean you have to stop making
logical sense. You’re still operating in some form of the real world. It’s not
like this is a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory knock-off. Sometimes, blue
doesn’t have to be a metaphoric symbol for something else – sometimes it can
just be the goddamned color blue.
Sigh. So at the hospital, Dakota talks to some cops who are
unnecessarily hostile towards her and seem to not care at all about her
well-being; just about questioning her because, well, that’s what the FBI does! Get with the program, man. They go
back and forth, recounting some boring flashbacks, and I guess this could have
been a decent mystery, but mostly it’s phoned in, the characters are unlikable
and just spend a lot of time shouting at one another, and the whole thing is a
lead-up to the movie’s first love: stripping scenes.
I know I should think this is really hot and everything, but come on: it’s grungy-looking and dirty
as hell, the editing is like a rejected Rob Zombie music video and the music
sucks. This isn’t sexy; it’s practically in need of a good bottle of Clorox, it
looks so grimy. The way the film looks and the atmosphere being set up are like
being on the inside of a porta-potty at a KISS concert in 95 degree weather.
And the scene just drags on and on for like six or seven minutes or some shit.
The story literally just stops in its tracks, in the middle of a flashback
trying to explain something, to show the stripping scenes. Yeah. We get it. She
has a tough life and needed to take a demeaning job to make money. For a movie
trying to show us how bad this chick has it, it’s sure glorifying the exact undesirable position the main character only
took as an easy way to get cash!
Real good message there, movie. Being a stripper sucks, life is hard,
but just look at those tits and the way she moves that ass! Go to hell, movie;
you’re a goddamned dirty hypocrite!
After that bullshit, we see Dakota fitted for a robotic arm and leg
that will allow her to at least be a little bit normal again, and to go back to
“home,” or Aubrey’s house, as they still think she’s just Aubrey with some
mental trauma. Her boyfriend comes over and they go upstairs and find out how
good sex is when one person only has one leg:
I swear if you cut out the stripping/sex scenes and the gore scenes, you wouldn't even have a movie anymore.
Hahahaha…ha…ha…ahh, where do I even start?
The lighting is all blue, which begs the question: why would you have that much
blue lighting in your room? I’ve heard of having a favorite color, but I’m
fairly sure this would seriously just make you go blind after a while. I wonder
what the process of pitching this to her parents was like…”Hey, mom and dad, I
really feel like getting rid of the regular lights in my bedroom and replacing
them all with really bright, obnoxious blue lighting! Can I have $300 to go do
that?” “Why do you need all blue lighting?” “GOD! YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND MY
DEEP AND COMPLEX NEEDS!”
Another silly thing in this scene is the mother downstairs scrubbing
the kitchen tiles with a sponge. I just think this is so hilariously inept…you
get the sex scene interspersed with the mother cleaning furiously – get those
stains out, mom! If this was intended to be funny as hell, good job, 10/10, two
thumbs up. If it was intended to build character and show the difference
between Aubrey and Dakota…well, back to the drawing board again, guys. You may
just have to stay sober this time.
While they’re lying next to each other afterwards, the boyfriend asks
Dakota what it was like to get cut like she did. This prompts a flashback to
Dakota’s stripping days, when she was doing her thing on stage and her hand
started to hurt. She went backstage afterwards, took off her glove
AAAAAAANNNNNDDD…
Yeah, finger falling off? Not too big a deal I guess…she doesn’t accept
anyone’s invite to take her to the ER like any sane person, no matter how
downtrodden, would. Instead she wraps her hand up in a big towel, pretends it’s
just a cut, and goes home. On the bus, she meets a guy who imparts some brilliant words of wisdom to her. They are
words so poignant, so intelligent and so meaningful that Jesus Christ, Buddha
and Mahatma Gandhi would swoon if
they heard them. Are you ready, viewers, to witness this intellectual gestalt?
Brace yourselves…
Then we go back to the present day, and Dakota repeats the same words
to her boyfriend, as if that answers the whole question. Alright, seriously,
what is up with the pacing in this movie? I guess by that I’m trying to say
that there is no pacing. They set up
that whole flashback for ONE LINE. They really needed like a five minute
flashback to show why the character says one line? You could’ve easily
cut out that whole scene and the movie wouldn’t have suffered for it. And this
isn’t the only time it happens, either; almost every flashback is like this.
The movie stops the story cold, focuses on some stripper bullshit and we forget
where we were before the flashback until we’re abruptly jerked right back. It’s
like the director had permanent short-term memory loss.
After this, the movie sinks into boredom as we get pretty much nothing
worth talking about for like twenty minutes. We see Dakota doing some horror
movie cliché researching scenes on the other girl who was murdered – even going
into her house for a pointless five minute scene in which we learn nothing. I’m
beginning to think ‘pointless’ is just this movie’s thing…like this scene, in which our lord and messiah "people get cut" guy returns for a bizarre cameo in Dakota's dream:
I'm just surprised there's a color in the movie that isn't red or blue.
He talks a lot of nonsense about people getting cut in half, which is related to the upcoming plot twist that, shock and awe, she is Aubrey's twin sister who got separated from her at birth! Why we needed this insane gibberish in the movie to get that point across, I have no earthly idea.
We also get some even more dull scenes where she researches the random
bleeding spells she has and the weird way her fingers and limbs started falling
off…surprisingly, she has waited this long to look into it. Odd. I’d probably
investigate THAT right away, but then again I am not Lindsay Lohan. And yeah,
these finger-cutting scenes are just awful. They’re grotesque for no reason,
add nothing to the film beyond unpleasantness and are just generally a pain to
look at. I guess you could argue that they’re effective in that they’re really,
really hard to look at, but even then, the rest of the movie doesn’t go for
these kinds of gross-outs – just these isolated scenes. And there’s the main
problem with the film – well, one of them anyway: it can’t appeal to the gore
crowd because it’s full of a bunch of stupid, sappy bullshit the rest of the
time, and it can’t appeal to fans of elegant, dark thrillers because of the
abundance of finger cutting scenes. It just appeals to no one.
They follow up a touching mother-daughter scene with this...do I even have to say anything?
But either way, Dakota comes to the conclusion that only mentally
lobotomized horror movie heroines would come to – she actually is related to Aubrey, who really was
abducted by the killer, and the two share a psychic, stigmatic link that makes
Dakota feel whatever pain Aubrey is in when the killer mutilates her. So
whenever the killer cuts off one of Aubrey’s fingers, or a leg, the exact same
thing happens to Dakota. That’s…so retarded I don’t even have words for it, but I’ll play along: this
could have been an interesting idea, with way, way better writing. But the
writing in this movie is about as good as a fifth grader’s school essay, so that’s
out the window.
Sigh…we get some really dull scenes where Dakota finds out that it’s
the piano teacher from the beginning behind it all. Really, the piano teacher
did it? The piano teacher is your
excuse for a Buffalo Bill-styled killer in this movie? Are you shitting me, or did we just get sucked
into a South Park episode? South Park is usually way funnier than this, even at
its worst, and I’m fairly sure there’s no shitting going on here, so I’m just
going to go with the default option: the studio blew all its money on getting
the gore effects, and forgot to hire a talented writer for the script.
Really, movie? Really? This guy would have been one of the random side killers that Hannibal Lecter killed off years ago in any of those movies. But here he's the main villain. Sad day.
And the motivation for him to mutilate and sadistically torture teenage
girls? They dropped his piano lessons class. That’s it. That’s all we get…I’m
really just at a loss for words at this point. Excuse me while I go violently
strangle and murder the test dummies I keep in the back room for when I see
movies like this, to let off some steam.
…
Still there? Cool.
Hey, now that I think of it, how did the police not suspect this guy?
If the piano lessons are the common denominator between Aubrey and the other
chick he killed, how did the FBI not immediately finger this guy for the
killings?! I’m not even making a joke this time – I’ll just let this sink in.
So two girls with a very obvious common denominator – their piano teacher – get
killed/kidnapped, and the piano teacher isn’t questioned. WHAT PLANET IS THIS.
Good GOD, man - what are you even doing? All the Looney Tunes combined, Nicolas Cage and that plant lady from Troll 2 together couldn't beat this whackazoid in mugging to the camera! And yes, this is the image I am leaving you on.
Dakota kills him, I guess, and then goes outside and digs up the coffin
where Aubrey got buried – of course the coffin is colored bright blue, ugh…and
that’s just kind of how it ends. It doesn’t even really end. The camera just
moves away from those two, focuses on some trees, and then the credits come up.
I guess they just figured they’d tortured us too much already, and the only
worse thing they could do at this point is physically send a madman to our
houses and have him cut off our fingers.
This movie is horrible. It’s just a pain in the ass to watch and even a
pain in the ass to think about. There’s literally nothing about it that comes
off as well done – the acting is awful, the story squanders what little
potential it had in a ton of unnecessary gore and stripping scenes and the
directing is a confusing mess that can’t even tell the fairly basic story that
well. Add to that the laughable pretension of trying to talk down to us with
how obvious and blatant the symbolism of the red and blue lighting is – yeah,
that’s got to be the worst attempt at complexity in a film I’ve ever seen in my
life – and you’ve got a movie that makes a good alternative to brainwashing
people for a sort of Clockwork Orange-esque youth correctional facility. Lord
knows seeing this movie has already turned my brains to mush.
Frankly, I can’t think of a more wretched experience I’ve had lately.
Just everything about this was botched beyond belief! If you really want to see
this, if the plot just looks too irresistible, don’t bother renting it or even
wasting the bandwidth to download it. Just follow these simple steps and you
will get the effect of watching I Know Who Killed Me all the same:
1. Stand in front of a police car with the flashing red and blue lights
on.
2. Cut your finger off.
And wallah! Now you can enjoy this movie with all its perks and wonders
without ever actually having to pop in the DVD. Isn’t that great? I think it
is. Well, I’ve said all I can say about this film, so I'm going to go off and do more productive things, like banging my head against a wall until I can forget everything I just saw and thought about. Let me know how those steps
work out for you, guys!
The images in this review do not belong to me. They are copyright of their original owners. Please take them and never come back.
A film with a title like this at least merits a look. Pinocchio’s
Revenge? What’s next? Dumbo’s Godlike Wrath? Ronald McDonald’s Satanic Powers?
Nah…neither of those is as catchy as Pinocchio’s Revenge…yeah, I’ll review it.
Sure. Why not?
The movie kicks off “five years earlier,” whatever that means…with some
cop who looks more like an orderly in a nursing home, he’s so wimpy, driving
along the road at night in the rain when he comes across an abandoned car. He
then goes through a DO NOT ENTER sign which the movie makes sure to notify the
audience of by doing a lingering close up shot of it. Weird…but then we see
that the road was blocked off because some guy was burying a creepy wooden
puppet in the ground!
"Man, 12th time this week that we've found a doll at a crime scene! What with that whole Good Guy Doll thing in the next neighborhood over...it's like an epidemic or something."
Then we learn that the guy was arrested for several murders “in the
present day,” and was actually burying the body of his own son out there. The
prosecutor is arguing for the death sentence, and the defendant, who is also
the movie’s main character, says he should get off because he only murdered his
son as opposed to the others, which had a different M.O. and variations on the
style of killing. Yup, he only killed a
child, and his own son at that! What’s the big deal, right?!
The main character’s name is Jennifer, and she has a daughter named
Zoe. Their relationship is apparently based around the fact that the father
left I guess, because otherwise it’s not very well defined…and really the first
half hour of this movie is pretty much just a big courtroom drama where they go
back and forth for a while with terrible acting until the guy is sentenced to
death. Like all courtrooms, they just haul him right in there after the trial
is over and kill him.
Yup, they just take you from the courthouse to the electric chair. True Life.
Jennifer sees it aaaaand I guess that scene was in the movie to show
that she saw the execution! The end result? The movie is five minutes longer.
Then we get a scene where she talks to a priest about the nature of
evil over a cup of coffee. She goes into this Episcopalian church but then tells the priest that she’s
not Catholic anymore because she got divorced. So what, she was just blindly walking around and just went into the first church she found, not paying attention to what type of church it was, but knowing she would just snub whatever she found no matter what? Isn't that kind of like...the most religiously intolerant, bitchy thing a person could possibly do to a church?
The priest’s response to this nonsense is to agree to go out to
coffee with her. Did we miss a few lines of the script here? It’s like, “Hi, I’m
not a Catholic but I’m willingly using your church anyway, by the way I’m
divorced, want to go out and get some coffee?”
"Your religious intolerance amuses me."
And check out the awkward acting on priest guy! Newsflash, guy: when
you laugh, try to actually make it sound like HUMAN LAUGHTER. Not…whatever
creepy, vaguely pedophilic “I’m covering my ocean of insecurities” sort of
expression you’re doing here. Can’t you just see that face on To Catch a Predator in a few years?
So in case you were wondering why the movie is a half-hour in and there
is no sign of any revenge or any Pinocchio, the creepy puppet that almost got buried
alive is in Jennifer’s office and mysteriously ends up in her car later, too.
Does she question this at all, or stop the car to remove it and take it back
into the office? Of course not! I personally love having evidence from murder
trials in my car, so I guess I can see why she doesn’t seem to care.
Ha! I remember last week when I took home a blood-soaked knife and gave it to my girlfriend to cut up vegetables for dinner. Fun times.
She finds out her daughter’s birthday present, some random doll, won’t
be there in time. Most parents would just accept this inconvenience and stop by
Wal Mart to pick up some cheap knock-off instead. However, THIS parent decides
the best thing to do is to give the daughter the creepy puppet that belonged to
a murderer who was just executed that very day as a “substitute” until the real
gift arrives…at times like this, I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to
have a test you have to pass before you can become a parent. Seriously, IT’S A
PIECE OF EVIDENCE FROM A MURDER TRIAL. I don’t think passing it along to the defense
attorney’s kid is really in order here!
So Zoe starts to bond with Pinocchio while her mom starts to bond with
Mr. Replacement Dad here:
Yes, because when I think erotica, I think Pinocchio's Revenge every time.
And since it’s right next to Zoe’s room, she can hear all the fun next
door as she’s trying to go to sleep!
Give the kid some credit, that's some good acting there. The look on her face is so appropriately scarred. And I love that her mom has the gall to have sex with her boyfriend at her house ON HER BIRTHDAY...yup, happy birthday kid! You get to listen to your mother having sex with a man who is not your father, because nobody loves you. Ha ha! Oh the wackiness...
Can you spell ‘psychiatrist for the rest of her childhood life’? Especially since she starts trying to mimick what her parents do except with Pinocchio...eugh, NO! Just NO!
Please hand me the brain-bleach so I can erase the implications of this scene from my mind forever.
As if the movie is apologizing for this scene, we have to have a typical slasher movie ‘naked
girl in the shower’ scene, with the babysitter! It’s got no purpose besides
gratuitously showing off tits and ass from a woman who clearly doesn’t have her
green card yet, so she probably was forced to do this. And we see that
Pinocchio is perving out on the bed…well, he’s got his needs too! And no, I’m
not going to make a ‘wood’ joke. That is beneath even my standards.
At school, Pinocchio gets thrown over a fence by some mean girls. So in
retaliation he pushes one of them in front of a bus…dammit, this movie stole my
idea for an anti-bullying campaign: don’t bully other kids, or else a small
wooden puppet will push your bike in front of a bus. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN GENIUS!
In the middle of all of this nonsense, there is a subplot about how
Pinocchio is “killing off” all Zoe’s other toys, including the gruesome
stabbing and intense mutilation of a female doll and throwing a plush whale in
the garbage. Somehow I don’t really think those two are equal kills. But hey,
what do I know? I’m not the kind of numbskull who would make a slasher movie
where more toys die than humans.
Well, I am just outraged. I have never seen such outrageous brutality against a toy...I will be contacting the Association for the Protection of Dolls immediately!
So, yeah, after that we see more of the mother’s brilliant
career-defining defense attorney work as she tries pathetically to defend a guy
who hung a pimp from a hook, burned and tortured him to death and recorded the
whole thing “so he could listen to it again and again,” according to the
prosecutor. They even play the tape and listen to the screams the whole way
through, which are about as subtle as a wrecking ball smashing into your mom’s
house. It’s completely ridiculous, over the top and probably also the best part
of the movie. It’s just so out of nowhere
and is completely hilarious to boot…like the prosecutor’s hilariously over the
top smug smile, or just how fake those screams sound. And then the criminal guy
starts cracking up while the screams are playing…it’s too much. Just too much!
What is this, a lost member of the Hell's Angels gang?
I also just love this; the guy tells Jennifer that his TV told him to
kill the pimp. She’s writing notes on her legal pad and…
Insanity defense QUESTION MARK? Yes, he says his TV told him to do it…maybe he’s crazy! I dunno! Maybe the
2012 election will result in a president that will divide public opinion! Maybe
Adolf Hitler wasn’t exactly the best role model for children! ANY OTHER
GROUNDBREAKING OBSERVATIONS I NEED TO CLEAR UP HERE?!
Yeah, didn’t think so; anyway, next we see Mr. Replacement
Dad-Boyfriend guy get pushed down the stairs. Zoe sees a psychiatrist, but
brings Pinocchio with her. When the psychiatrist leaves the room for a second,
Pinocchio starts talking to her in a silly voice and questioning what exactly happened to the boyfriend guy
when he fell. Did Zoe actually kill him and is just imagining the puppet
talking, or is Pinocchio really super-real? Such psychological intrigue is just
bending my mind!
So Pinocchio goes and pulls the plug on the boyfriend guy and then we
see the psychiatrist telling Jennifer that Zoe is crazy, showing her the tape
from before, only now we don’t hear Pinocchio talking, so it just looks like
she’s talking to herself. Jennifer feels attacked and starts shouting at the
psychiatrist that, despite obviously just looking out for the best interest of
his patient’s safety, she will go after his license if he tries to recommend
Zoe for further psychiatric treatment. She says there isn’t enough solid
evidence to show that Zoe is insane. Okay…where do I start with this?
First, “HOW DARE YOU DO YOUR JOB?! I’LL TRY TO HAVE YOU DISBARRED FROM
IT FOR ACCEPTING MY MONEY AND DOING YOUR JOB!” Sheesh. You know, it’s not like
he’s insulting your daughter or your parental skills…he’s saying she needs
help. Is such a vitriolic response really necessary? I wonder if she treats all
work employees that way. Does she scream her lungs out if the guy at McDonalds
gets her order wrong?
Second, how the HELL does this woman NOT think that a videotape of her
daughter screaming at thin air, or rather at an inanimate puppet, constitutes
tangible proof that the daughter needs psychiatric help?! What kind of parent
are you, lady? You’re stupid! You’re absolutely retarded! YOU are the WORST
DEFENSE ATTORNEY EVER! God! Somebody just take away this woman’s right to be a
parent and a lawyer. She doesn’t deserve either one!
Then she sees the priest guy again and they have a contrived
conversation about the nature of evil, because yes, when I watch a movie called
Pinocchio’s Revenge, I’m really in a contemplative mood about the nature of
evil. Jennifer has apparently figured out that it was the crazy guy’s son who
was killing all the people and that he killed his son to stop him. That WOULD
make sense if this weren’t a movie with an evil, talking puppet in it…but it
is, and so you just wonder why the hell the puppet is in the movie anyway. But
more on that in a bit, as first we have the climax to contend with!
Yes, apparently Jennifer goes home and finds Zoe scared and hiding from
Pinocchio. Jennifer gets attacked by Pinocchio and they stumble around in the dark
a bit. Look at this one scene:
This puppet should start a club with the SAW doll, Chucky, Rumplestiltskin and the Puppet Master dolls and call it the Toy Mafia. That would be cool...man, what am I even talking about?
Doesn’t it just look like the doll just got thrown on her back by
someone off screen? C’mon. At least try a little more than that…and what, how did he jump that high? Was he wearing his Air Jordans?
Anyway, Jennifer finally manages to throw Pinocchio through a glass
table, only when the lights come up…
Truly up there with Vertigo or Psycho for an ending twist, huh? But seriously, while I'll give the movie credit for a twist I never saw coming...I didn't see it coming because it makes no sense. So it balances out.
WHAT? PLOT TWIST!? Seriously, that doesn’t even make sense…so what, was
the daughter attacking people the whole time, or was this just a trick by the
puppet? Was she crazy, or is the mother just seeing things? Was the puppet
possessing the daughter the whole time? What about the guy who got executed
from before – what was the deal there; did the puppet kill everyone then, too,
and make him think his son did it? If so, how did the puppet even get such
powers? Or was the entire movie just sort of a mind game and everything was all
in the characters’ heads? You can’t have a plot twist if you don’t even know
what you’re trying to imply with it, movie!
Well that’s Pinocchio’s Revenge…it’s a silly train wreck, there are so
many problems with it I couldn’t cover them in one of these reviews, not by a longshot. The characters are
ludicrous, the story is confusingly vague and spends most of its runtime as a courtroom drama rather than a slasher film and the killer is just weak as hell. What 'revenge' was there in this movie, pray tell? Pinocchio had no motive beyond just killing everyone around him so he could be closer to Zoe - where's the revenge? I find this title highly misleading!
And it’s amazingly fun to watch. I mean, this is a terribly incoherent mess of a movie, but man is it hilarious! I
laughed so much when I saw this, and it truly is one of those bad movies that
becomes golden by virtue of how over the top goofy it is. Give Pinocchio’s
Revenge a watch, you guys – you won’t regret it. As an unlicensed professional
doctor, though, I will recommend ceasing to view the movie if you start to see
visions of a small puppet trying to kill you. In that case, remind yourself that this is only a movie...for real lawyers would never be this stupid or this incompetent, and real killer puppets are a little more considerate of the feelings of other toys. They'd at least ask them to form an alliance first...sheesh, movie, you really got a lot wrong!
Pictures copyright of their original owners, I do not own any of them.
I’ve been debating recently as to whether the ending of a film can literally be so bad as to ruin the entire experience. If the rest of the film up until the third act has been a relatively pleasant and investing experience, can the ending really take it all away that fast? In Super, for example, it did kind of ruin the movie, as the ending undermined what the rest of the film was trying to do. In other movies, like today’s subject, however…it’s less complicated than that. In movies like Identity, the ending ruins the movie simply because it makes the whole thing completely suck while at the same time making you wish they hadn’t tried so damn hard to make something intellectual! Argh! But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s watch this stinker.
The movie begins with a bunch of cops preparing for a late night hearing the last night before a convicted murderer is about to get executed, and apparently the defense found some new evidence conveniently right before he was supposed to croak. What timely events!
Then we cut to a seedy looking motel where a family that looks like they should be in that god-awful Cape Fear remake is driving around. They run over a spiked heel in the middle of the road – weird, right? The movie thinks so, too, so it takes the time to flash back to a hooker played by Amanda Peet playing bondage birthday cake games with an old fat man, like something out of a horrible caption contest picture. Seriously, just look at this:
Anyway, she packs her stuff and then remembers she has to get something while driving later, so even though she’s all alone on a deserted road, she can’t just pull over and stop to look for it, no; she has to try and do it WHILE DRIVING. So she loses a bunch of stuff from her suitcase, including the shoe that the family ran over. Was this flashback…at all necessary to explain why a shoe was in the middle of the road? Actually yes, yes it was. I was actually hoping they would show MORE of that flashback, like why Amanda Peet became a hooker to begin with! Or what she ate for lunch the previous day. Or the first time she saw Two Girls One Cup.
Anyway, then the mother who was in the car gets hit by another car driven by everyone’s favorite limo driver, John Cusack, who was in 2012 several years later where he also played a limo driver. Amanda Peet was also in 2012. I SMELL CONSPIRACY! Anyway Cusack wants to go help the woman he just ran over, but the bitchy actress he’s driving around says no, because…well, there is no reason. She’s just a callous and horrible person.
Cusack, being a decent person, helps them anyway and they all go into a motel run by this guy, who was in Winter’s Bone and…yeah, he was certainly in that…anyway, in this movie he's just really prejudiced against Amanda Peet's hooker character. This unnecessary and senseless bias makes up the core of his character.
"I'm the highest class of cheap seedy motel owners!" Seriously you dumbass, don't prostitutes come in there all the time? Look at the place you run! Must be hard to get what very little business you get if you're selective about your customers!
And yeah, Amanda Peet is back. She drives back by the place where she lost her stuff – hours later? Really? What was she doing that whole time? Did she just reach her destination and then think, “gee, I really liked that one shoe I lost! Better go get it!”? That…just seems strange to me. Anyway, she gets stuck, too, and picked up by the Cusack. They find this other couple driving around, Lou and Gina, who don’t have a cell phone for them to use. What? Don’t have a cell phone? In this day and age? Pfft…it’s like this was made in 2003 or something…
Meanwhile, since this movie had too much dignity before, Ray Liotta shows up as a cop transporting a murderer to add his own input to the movie. He’s a short-tempered gun-crazy lunatic of a cop, but he’s still better than his character from Hannibal.
"Allow me to prevent you from ever finding me likable at all...mmmm...sleaze..."
His convict is played by Jake Busey from Starship Troopers, rounding out the cast of B-level actors you know you've seen in other movies, but can't remember exactly which ones. Joyous.
Then we see that Cusack apparently has the magical main character powers that every hero in these movies has as he manages to stitch up that George guy’s wife who he hit with the car earlier – oh, did you not even remember that with all the other nonsense going on in this movie? My bad. Allow me to never correct this convoluted insanity. But I digress – you know how in all of these poorly written films, the protagonist is a guy with a shit job who can somehow, almost magically, do unexpected things like fix wounds and take charge in tense situations? Cusack is like the poster child for that in this movie.
John Cusack is God! He can do ANYTHING!
Meanwhile in the courthouse, people shout because apparently that’s what this movie thinks is dramatic. Don’t have any actual depth? Try HAVING ALL YOUR CHARACTERS SHOUT ALL THE TIME AND LOOK SERIOUS. Screenwriting 101!
So before you start to think this whole thing is the set-up for a horrible Nancy Drew book, things get hairy as the actress Cusack was driving around is found murdered in the washing machine, because I guess she wasn’t clean enough! This of course sends everyone into a panic, especially when they find out that the convict Ray Liotta was transporting has escaped. This causes Lou and Gina to go have a sporadic fight for no apparent reason. Apparently, Gina lied about being pregnant to get Lou to marry her because her best friend told her that she saw him talking to some girl at a bar and…oh, do you care? Just put it on Jerry Springer. The whole thing ends with Lou gutted in the corner:
Well that's a LITTLE bloodier than most couple fights get...
Then they find out that Liotta's convict, who has been tied up to prevent him from doing anything crazy, has been murdered - SO WHO WAS THE KILLER? They get their answer when they find out that Larry has a dead body in his freezer. He tries to drive away but actually just hits and smashes George against a wall like a cartoon character turned to a pancake, killing him instantly. So they tie him up and he tells them the story of how he was broke and strapped for cash and came across the motel and found the owner dead, so he just started acting like he was the motel owner.
Then all the dead bodies start disappearing without a trace, like they were cleaned up by Samuel L. Jackson in Cleaner!
Except that was actually pretty good.
Then it's wacky fun escaping time as that Gina chick and the little kid, Timmy, try to drive away, but unfortunately the car has other plans for them, as it's tired of being in this movie and wants a quick out:
Then things get even WACKIER as everyone realizes they all have the same birthday and that their names are all named after states, like Ed Dakota, Larry Washington and so on, so forth. What relevance does this have to anything? Well, just wait a few minutes - you're about to be horribly disappointed.
And then time just unravels as John Cusack wakes up and gets told by Shakespearean actor Alfred Molina – yes, they got a guy who was in The Tempest to be in this garbage – that he (Cusack) is actually just one of this serial killer’s split personalities, of which there are 10 in total (i.e. all the main characters in the film), and one of them has been “killing” the other personalities inside his mind at the motel for the entire movie up until now.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet THE ONLY REAL CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE!
So yes. This movie just basically did a ‘none of it really happened’ trick on us. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I’m not even going to be able to review the rest of this in a linear fashion – it’s bullet point time!
+ First off, I must repeat – ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This is the worst ending twist I’ve maybe ever seen! How do you even DO something like this…you have a relatively good story going on and then you just completely BOTCH it with one of the outright stupidest ending twists ever! Couldn’t these idiots have just stuck to the motel story? That actually wasn’t bad! Sure, it was hammy, ridiculous and over the top, but it was at least an interesting story! The characters had some depth and they were getting kind of interesting. Why would I even WANT to watch a movie about some fat POS in a chair about to be electrocuted with multiple personalities? The movie has clearly picked the wrong plot to come out on the forefront.
+ So what, all of these characters are inside his mind, right? So Amanda Peet, John Cusack, Ray Liotta and that Winter’s Bone guy all live in the head of an overweight version of the Pillsbury Dough Boy? Somehow I don’t think that’s going to hold up. And since this guy was actually ‘acting out’ the whole movie in his head all along, just picture him doing that scene with the prostitute and the guy handcuffed to the bed with the birthday cake on his chest. Isn’t that a pretty picture?
Eugh.
+ Third, the premise behind this is that the multiple personalities this guy has are the characters we’ve been watching this whole time, and they are killing each other off in a mental “battle” for a dominant personality to emerge. This could possibly be interesting if it were handled in a better way (more on that in the next bullet point), like in some kind of really artsy film, but for what is supposed to be a grounded, semi-realistic psychological thriller? It’s beyond bad. The whole premise is that the defense lawyer for the guy is trying to get the court to overturn his execution by proving that the “killer” personality is gone. How are they supposed to prove that? Are they just going to point at him and say “Look, he’s cured now”?
There is NO WAY this would ever fly in any actual US courtroom. He would be sent to the killing chair the second that idiotic psychologist brought up the concept that his multiple personalities were literally killing each other off in his mind like a bad Friday the 13th sequel. I mean really, you might as well just use the South Park Imaginationland argument and argue that leprechauns are real even though they’re imaginary – in fact that argument was much better handled than the one THIS crockpot of a lawyer is suggesting!
+ And FOURTH and finally, this story is handled in a crapsack, hamfisted, clumsy-ass way! There’s no subtlety to this! Oh, it’s raining all the time because his mind is in chaos! Oh, the characters all have the same birthday because it’s really HIS birthday! SUCH SUBTLE CLUES! Why don’t you just slap a B-roll on the bottom of the screen explaining how we’re supposed to be SO AMAZED at this movie’s intellect the entire runtime? You might as well.
To sum it up, this plot twist is total, complete and utter ass!
Phew. So let’s wrap it up – Liotta is revealed to be an escaped prisoner who just disguised himself as a cop. He kills off Larry and eventually shoots John Cusack, too, who is a saint for actually giving a crap about his performance in this thing – seriously, acting like he cared about any of this must have been an exercise in sheer mastery of will – and then Amanda Peet kills him, too, escaping to an orange grove in Florida, a plot point which was explained somewhere while you were marveling over how stupid the end plot twist was.
Then we flash back to the real world again where the courts, probably because they were just tired of being in this piece of shit movie, have decided that the killer’s execution will be stayed, since they apparently DID believe that Liotta was the “killer personality” and that now that the Ray Liotta portion of his brain has been removed, he is no longer a danger to anyone. But since Ray Liotta has no brain, what does this really mean? Is it a statement on how little our minds actually see that’s true? Or is it saying that you should have spent your money on a different movie? I’m going with the second one.
Really, the only thing that could possibly make this movie any worse is if the little kid, who disappeared earlier, turned out to be the killer all alo---
Don't f*ck with little kids!
AW, GODDAMN, YOU JUST HAD TO DO IT, DIDN’T YOU?! You morons! Were you just trying for the worst possible ass-fest of twists you could think of? The Sixth Sense and Signs were still pretty recent; were you just trying to outdo those for worst ending twists ever put on screen? It’s made more insulting when they actually put in horrible over the top flashbacks from the kid’s point of view that explain how he killed everyone, like we couldn’t “get” it otherwise. Ugh! I don’t even care. This review is over. I don’t even have to explain why this one sucks, do I? Just don’t watch it. You’ll have a better day.
