The Disappointments Room (2016)

Here we go again, with another ghost story movie that really could've been improved in a number of ways... most of all in this case, if the filmmakers had had any kind of point or plot to anything they were doing. Welcome to The Disappointments Room!

Director: DJ Caruso

Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Mel Raido

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

Apparently this movie was made a few years ago, but only released last year after the studio came back from a bankruptcy filing after a bunch of lawsuits and missing loan payments. Would it really have been too much to ask for it to have just STAYED lost?

Also, director DJ Caruso was also responsible for Disturbia, which is... yeah, great, I guess? I dunno. Let's just dig into this crap pile.

This is another ghost story, paranormal type of film, in the mold of Insidious and The Haunting of Connecticut and God knows how many others. It's got a super original premise where a troubled woman, Dana (Kate Beckinsale) and her family are moving to a fancy house in the country to try and get away from their problems – something people in real life do all the time, and something totally relatable to the modern person. Not feeling good about anything? Just do the totally plausible and affordable thing and move to a fancy old house in the country. If you can't do that, YOU DESERVE TO SUFFER.

It's so simple. Just make sure you have access to enough wealth and personal opportunity to move to a place like this at any time you're sad. Then you'll never truly be in the dark.

The movie actually starts with the family singing in the car driving to the place, and it's really quite annoying. The dad is waaaay too into it, he looks like he's doing his best Off Broadway musical voice. Calm the fuck down, dude. I'm pretty sure there are no talent agents out on the road in the woods that will hear you.

I guess one of the first things that happens is a leak in the roof – you know, the best possible way to start off a horror film. I can't count the number of horror films I've seen where it was good but would have been improved with a subplot about a leaky roof. Also, it starts to rain – so this is a really bad movie to watch if you have to pee really bad.

They do some more boring shit like go into town to talk to the weirdest lady the movie could find – she's just super excited about everything, blathering on about how there's a hot carpenter in town who's father is an alcoholic, which is stuff I'd find really interesting if I was wasted off my ass at 3 a.m. and unaware of my surroundings. But I'm not, so this scene just falls flat.

But there's actually SOME creepy shit that starts happening... like, Dana sees a dog in the yard one time. OOOOOoooooOOOOOOOoooo! Scary!

It turns out to just be a wheelbarrow or something. Easy mistake to make, they look exactly identical.

There's also, of course, the weird little room they never heard about when they were looking at the house, up in the attic. It starts to weird Dana out, but she can't open it at all until a separate scene the next day when she finds a key to the place. Wonderful scriptwriting – no way at all that couldn't've happened in the same scene. But I guess the movie had to fill its insanely difficult hour and 15-minute runtime somehow! These guys really know how to write movies.

Then she does get in, and the door mysteriously closes behind her. That's just how houses in the south work – they're super polite, always wanting to make your living experience easier by taking steps out of everything. She tries to get out, but apparently the house doesn't want her to get out. Oh well. It happens. Then I guess she's just a really unmemorable person, because she falls asleep in there for several fucking hours and nobody notices she's gone.

Seriously? Her husband doesn't notice? I guess he WAS busy playing with his kid outside though. This guy is such a weirdly immature character that I'm not sure whose idea it was to do this.

This is actually advance footage of the next Avengers movie. Looks lazy.

The rest of this is just full of nonsense jump scares that we saw in 2004 and some really bad dream sequence scenes that are so obvious you could see them in space... like, yeah, I'm sure she really woke up and found her kid with blood all over him... no way THAT could be a hallucination. These scenes can work, but only if you have a strong story narrative and connection to the characters. This movie doesn't.

The “story” I guess is that this old house used to belong to a family who had a deformed daughter and kept her locked up in the attic. This is relayed extremely calmly to Dana by an old lady in a museum who knew about it before and didn't tell them when they initially talked about buying the house. GEE, THANKS A LOT, LADY!

"Heh heh heh... fucking with the new people in town is the only way I feel alive anymore."

If you're wondering, like I was, what's going on with that leaky roof thing, then never fear. The movie rushes through all that boring “horror” shit and gets back to that with a scene probably longer than the horror ones – the super handsome construction guy from the town comes to the house and openly flirts with Dana with apparently no shame, and she hashes out a deal for him to work on their house. Wow! WHAT. GRIPPING. CINEMA.

Like, what in the fuck are you doing, movie? There's barely any horror in your horror movie! This thing doesn't even seem like it wanted to be a horror film – it seems much more preoccupied with these scenes of Dana and Hot Carpenter Fuckboy there quasi-flirting. Where's the scares?

Oh – another overly long hallucination dream scene of her kid supposedly getting eaten by a dog. Yeah – not convincing me, movie.

Apparently part of the reason for all this, we find out, is because she accidentally rolled over and suffocated her other child a while back and has been traumatized ever since. This is a horribly tragic thing to have happen. But this movie just isn't doing very well at articulating that. Can't it take a page out of a film like, oh I don't know, Lars von Trier's Antichrist?

Then what? She decides to burn some old paintings in the house for... better interior decorating, I'm guessing.

But who cares about that? What's going on with her and that carpenter guy now?! I guess he finally takes it too far when he offers to sleep over when her husband is away. Ooh, shot down like a U.S. government drone flying over the farm of a devout Luddite with a gun.

Keep in mind, this movie is less than 80 minutes long, and this is what we're focusing on.

How about a scene where the husband is talking to a therapist about his wife's troubles? Is THAT going to be any good?

He is actually talking to just a pair of legs.

What is this movie's fascination with showing us scenes like this that have NOTHING to do with the movie? I get it, character development is good. But they're not developing characters! They're just showing us random bullshit that distracts from the point. It's like if The Shining took a detour to show us Wendy and Jack sitting at the table talking about what color curtain to put in their bathroom at home, no scares or anything else revealed. Just ridiculous.

After finding the grave of the deformed girl in the woods, Carpenter Wonder Boy is then killed by a ghost himself, and hung in a tree where Dana finds him. Later on, it's revealed that apparently he wasn't really in the tree. Even though we see him killed by the ghost from his own point of view, apparently that DIDN'T really happen. These ghosts are up to some super complex Houdini type shit, I'll tell you.

It's extra funny if he really did die though - in that case, apparently they just leave him out there to rot while they have their little family therapy session in the house later. What a bunch of dicks.

I guess there's some sort of a “climax” after that, where she learns through magical unexplained psychic ghost powers that this old guy in the house murdered the disabled girl in the attic. What an awesome revelation that I truly care about.

Then, I guess, the ghost of that guy tells her that her son will die, so she runs to his room with a hammer and attacks a pillow that she thinks is the old man's head trying to attack her son! But really it's just, you know, a pillow, and she scared her kid. Whoops.

Wow, what an imagination she has! She should go into creative writing.

Then she and her husband talk in the kitchen about her grief from letting her baby die, which wasn't her fault, but really kind of was. Her husband says it's cool and they can work on shit, and they hug and then the screen goes to a sunny day with them leaving the house. Because that's all you need to cure emotional trauma! A hug and a 'it'll be okay' and then you're fine. Nothing else necessary! Wow! I never knew it was that easy. Apparently anything is fixable with enough money to move to a nice country house, move out and the support of a loving family. That truly is a great moral, movie. Really learned a lot from this!

This is a lame and awful movie. It didn't even feel like a finished film. But I will give it this – its plot was generic tripe I've seen a thousand times and should've been retired five years ago, but at least this movie didn't spend too much time on it. This one was trying really hard NOT to even be a fucking horror movie, what with all the time spent on the roof fixing plot, that they barely spent any time on the usual cliches I hate.

Speaking of that, what ever did happen with the roof of that place? I guess the family moved out before it could get done, which is the real reason I think this sucks! No resolution to its main plot!

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

A Cure for Wellness (2017)

This is Gore Verbinski's new weird as fuck horror/thriller type movie about a crazy mental hospital and also eels. I went into this expecting something dark and creepy, and, uh, I got it.

There are SPOILERS ahead for the film. Be warned.

Director: Gore Verbinski

Starring: Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth

IMDb

This thing starts off with Dane DeHaan playing Lockhart, an American businessman who does nothing but eat junk food, work 24/7 and be rude to people, like all Americans and all businessmen. His bosses catch him doing something wrong and are going to fire him if he doesn't go to this weird asylum hospital place in Europe and bring back this top official of theirs who seems to have lost his mind there.

"We are business people, and so we have no regard for human life or safety! We'll blackmail you forever!"

Naturally, the place is weird right off the bat, with nurses who look too long at you and speak solely in cryptically threatening messages for the movie's trailer. The head of the place is played by Jason Isaacs, who seems to have drunk heavily from the goblet of Evil Villain Movie Potion and comes out with creepy music following him, a sinister serpentine smile and everything he says comes off as threatening. Gee, I wonder if HE'S gonna be the bad guy?! I bet this guy even comes off as creepy to the employees at the bank or the grocery store.

“I'll check out now with this gallon of milk, these bananas and these eggs... mwa ha ha ha...” (evil music)

“Uh, sir, you're just at the grocery check out counter, calm down. Do you want your receipt or not?”

There's also the mysterious girl who Lockhart sees doing a balancing act on top of the castle – we learn later that this is Hannah, a girl who has lived there her whole life and who the director guy wants to keep safe. So I guess that's why he just lets her stand on thin ledges where she could easily fall to her death.

Then on the way back, the driver guy and Lockhart get into a horrible car crash when a deer runs onto the road and crashes into them, sending the car into a Nascar-style multiple flip into the woods that should have killed them both. But then Lockhart wakes up without a scratch on him anywhere except for one broken leg he is apparently well enough to start walking on crutches with immediately. I guess the crash just looked worse than it was...

No cars were harmed in the making of this movie. Probably.

Things just keep getting weirder and weirder as Lockhart begins to suspect there's something wrong – something he'll CONTINUE to suspect for the next hour and a half of the movie, yet stays there anyway just waiting for worse shit to happen. He finds some weird microbe thing in the water, continually sees odd visions and has characters just act plain strange and ominous – yet he remains DEDICATED to staying there until he can find Pembroke, the guy who his company sent him there to find. I guess it's a commentary on how much Americans are obsessed with work? Or maybe he is just a fucking moron.

Then he does talk to Pembroke, not very long into the film, even persuading him to come back home with him. But then the next day he's told Pembroke's “condition” has worsened, and so now he's not available anymore, and Lockhart is blamed for stressing him out! Lockhart, naturally, sees nothing too wrong with this, and just sticks around waiting for him to come back I guess. This would already be the point where I personally would just leave and tell my bosses things have gotten fucked up. But not for Lockhart – he just sticks around.

Then, the leader of the place tells Lockhart HE is sick and should stay around and receive the same treatment everyone else there has gotten. Bizarrely, with no real logic behind it, he agrees to this. In one bizarre sequence, he is submerged in a tank of water and told to remain there for 30 minutes to simulate birth – okay, well, whatever works for you, man. The guy watching him, however, is distracted when a nurse randomly enters the room and flashes him her boobs, and he just sits there and jacks off to that instead of paying attention.

Unfortunately, that is also precisely the time when the tank fills up with a bunch of eels that really freak Lockhart out. He nearly drowns and is saved by the two guards, which, I guess is good that they prioritize drowning over boobs. This is never mentioned again – you'd think an American businessman, as high strung as they are, would sue the fuck out of the place for this. But nope. Never mentioned again!

Instead it's just more of the movie's elongated storytelling – he never tries to leave or do anything but confront the leaders of this place, which is pointless, because they're the ones who have the power to lock him up and never tell him anything. Just go! Run! I don't get what the hell is so difficult about that. But he stays and just tries to keep discovering the weird shit there. He doesn't have enough evidence yet that this place is weird!

He goes underground and discovers a network full of famished-looking elderly people trapped in tanks full of science-y looking liquid... his course of action is to stay there and shout at the people running the place. Christ. I bet if he witnessed a murder, he would just stick around and try to reason with the murderer; figure out WHY he's doing the things he does. Just go!

"Woah, I better not actually take any drastic measures now that I found this. I'm sure just confronting the owners of the hospital angrily will be good enough! They probably have an explanation!"

He even has a chance to leave, as he and Hannah ride down to town to figure out what's going on. In a very bizarre scene, they stop at a bar and end up getting in a fight with a bunch of kids that look like a schizophrenic's interpretation of the 80s, all mohawks and black leather. Luckily, the hospital people show up and break up the fight, taking Hannah back with them. Lockhart, for some reason, goes too. We know there's a train in this area that could take him out of here - why the fuck he's still staying there is so utterly bizarre to me.

Then his tooth falls out and he's taken to this crazy dentist guy. Just a word of warning – if you go to a dentist and he has a giant jar full of human teeth on his desk, like the guy does in this movie, then leave that dentist and run far away. Lockhart, though, sticks around long enough for them to rip out one of his teeth for no other reason than punishment, and frankly I think he deserves it for being so dumb as to stick around this long.

What a good dentist he must be. Look at all those teeth!

In between all these scenes, there are more weird scenes with eels in them. Just eels. Lots and lots of eels. Why, I have no earthly clue. I think Hollywood just had a surplus of eels that weren't being used in any other movies, and Verbinski just went "I'll use all of them!"

This is the cover for the next issue of the niche fetish mag "Girls and Eels" coming out this month.

Eventually, he figures out that his leg isn't even really broken! You know, just an easy mistake to make. I assume this is to speed along the plot as we're already two hours in and we need him to run faster. He rips off his cast and then goes about finding out even more of this place's secrets – because the rest of the shit he's seen just hasn't really convinced him yet, I guess. He finds out that the guards take dead bodies into this cave area and feed them to a bunch of eels in the water. Because why not?

Then they manage to get him again and stick him in this full-body tank with only his head sticking out, where they put a tube in his mouth and then flush a bunch of water with eels into his body. Because, again, why not? If you can think of a weird thing to do, just do it! That's the motto of this place.

You'd think this – with Lockhart now being brainwashed and part of the place – would be the end. But nope! We have a bizarre final 20 minutes where it's revealed that all of this weird stuff has been going on to sustain the head doctor played by Isaacs, who is actually a 200 year old baron in disguise who wants to fuck Hannah, who is actually his daughter. I guess this makes as much sense as anything else, sure. Isaacs' real form looks like a Marvel Comics villain complete with scaly green skin and super strength. Sure! Why not!

So I guess Lockhart kills him and he and Hannah burn the hospital down and then escape. The end!

Honestly, I kind of enjoyed this whole thing. It's frustrating as hell the way Lockhart continually makes the worst choices just to elongate the movie and keep him in the hospital. And a lot of these plot twists have been done before. But the whole thing is just so brazenly crazy, not giving a fuck what anyone thinks of it, that it's almost impossible not to be entertained by it. It's a ridiculous film, totally ludicrous, but it takes itself just the right kind of seriously that it becomes a gloriously bizarre freak show ride of a movie.

In summary, I learned two things from this:

1. Americans work too hard and are stressed out, but that's still better than what goes on in weird healing therapy hospitals in the backwoods of Europe by far.

2. Eels are terrifying and should be feared in the way that evangelicals fear God.

I guess that's as good of a lesson as any. Review over.

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

Cinema Freaks LIVE: The Gift (2015)

It's time again for Cinema Freaks Live, this time talking about the 2015 thriller The Gift. I'm joined by Colin (The Observer), Michelle and Chris as we all talk about what was good and bad about the movie. I'll also go into it a little bit in this post, as well - just in case any of you are stuck in the soul-sucking 9 to 5 routine in a cubicle somewhere. Also note that there are SPOILERS a lot in this one. Here's the podcast:

Director: Joel Edgerton

Starring: Joel Edgerton, Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall

IMDb

The movie is basically about a couple, Simon and Robyn, who move into a new house. They almost immediately run into Gordo, an old buddy of Simon's from college, who starts acting a little weird and overly friendly. He comes over a lot when Robyn is home alone, which starts to get on Simon's nerves. Tensions rise as Simon tries to tell Gordo to back off - but in the process, some secrets about Simon's past are revealed.

The movie is pretty good. It's got a nice visual style to it and the settings don't look like every other thriller out there. The story and atmosphere tend to remind me of early 2000s thrillers, and the acting is pretty solid. I like how you don't really know who to feel sorry for at first, and the murky ambiguity early on makes it an interesting watch. It also doesn't really pander to anyone by throwing in any stupid twists, gore or tits or anything like that - it's just a solid story, written and directed by acting veteran Joel Edgerton - who also plays Gordo, mind you.

The problem is, I don't think Edgerton really knew where he was going with the story. He takes the easy way out too often as the story hurtles toward a conclusion. Characters figure things out too easy, and what was once an ambiguous, shady story becomes a story where both Simon and Gordo are obviously bad, bad guys. You find out Simon was a bully who ruined Gordo's life as a kid - fine. That could be interesting. But then you see he also isn't any different NOW. Now, he's cheating his way into a promotion at his job and lying to everyone - it's just kind of goofy, the way it's done. It doesn't really engage you to the character when there's so little complexity.

Gordo, on the other hand, is a psychopath. He clearly had this planned, or else it made no sense. He met Simon randomly on the street and then had this whole plan to fuck with his head. He breaks into Simon's house later, drugs Robyn and makes a video tape where he may or may not have gotten her pregnant. When they have a kid at the end of the movie, Simon is tormented with guilt that the kid may not be his - it might be Gordo's.

It's all just too over the top. There should have been a more subtle plot - maybe about Robyn seeing Simon's real self and then choosing to side with a more sympathetic Gordo. Or show Simon as a conflicted man who used to be a bully but now is pretty OK, but he's being chased by this vengeful psycho he once bullied. But it doesn't work when they're both just flat out bad guys. It becomes a story talking about how bullies never change and how if you're bullied, you might grow up to be a fucking psychopath. Not exactly a great story.

It wasn't bad, though. As far as directorial debuts go, it was solid. If you like thrillers, you'll find something to like here.

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