The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013)

The first Haunting in Connecticut movie was passable for an idiotic movie about ghosts. But then they decided to go and make a sequel, called The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia. Literally any other movie could have been fine with that subtitle, but did you have to keep the Connecticut part? Why was this a sequel to Haunting in Connecticut? Was someone asleep when that title was green-lit? I was so fascinated by the insane brain mash of the title that I just had to check this movie out. That turned out to be a bad idea, because the lack of ideas in the title is reflected in the rest of the movie.

Director: Tom Elkins

Starring: Abigail Spencer, Chad Michael Murray

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

If you haven't seen the first movie, don't worry – just watch The Conjuring, and you'll know everything you need to know.

We start this one off with a woman sitting on a bed with a blank look on her face, popping back prescription pills like they're fucking candy. So, the audience for the movie.

Funny - that's how most look after FINISHING one of these films, not at the start!

This is actually our main character, though, and the movie decided to go instant cliché route by having her be some kind of pill addict, and so that's the reason nobody believes her! Plus, as an added lazy contrivance, it gives them plenty of hack-ass dialogue they can throw in about how she needs to get her shit straight! So they don't even have to try to make a likable or interesting character. This is all they need – the pill addiction. Fucking brilliant, I say.

She and her daughter, a blonde doll of a child with zero personality of her own, are going to move to some cabin out in the woods, or rather, a picturesque place only ever used for greeting cards and commercials that want to look all fake-folksy. Her husband is of course a Southern redneck cop, which means he looks like a magazine cover model who's never stepped outside in his life.

That little girl just realized what movie she's in. Poor thing.

Seriously, why do characters in these movies all look like they just came off a production line, airbrushed and blow-dried to perfection? That guy is supposed to be a police officer. But he looks like he spent his whole life to now locked in a room and never seeing the outside world, bred like some kind of show dog. I hate to break it to you, movie, but real rednecks look more like this very topical reference:

Am I trending yet? Sweet.

The story is full of cliché garbage, like the little girl and the mother constantly seeing ghosts that make the screen go all flickery and spastic, flashing to sepia tone or black and white for a few seconds. Because you know, it's only scary if the directing style reminds you of a bug light losing its power. Oh, and they all constantly pretend nothing is going on – they're just seeing things. At least, they do at first, until the police officer boyfriend finds a bunch of old coins buried in the ground that really prove it!

Yeah, apparently the whole thing is about them uncovering this historical mystery at the house they're at. The little girl keeps seeing the ghost of this old man named Mr. Gordy, who she seems afraid of. Logically, this means they don't fucking do a goddamned thing to take her away from there. Instead they just try to solve the mystery, even printing out a bunch of pictures and getting her to point out the one who she recognizes. Brace yourselves, the asshole detectives are on the case!

But hey, it's cool, they buy her a dog. So now everything's peachy.

The rest of the first act is taken up entirely by scenes of the mom and her redheaded hot sister, or whoever that's supposed to be, arguing about their past and whether or not the mom is abusing the pills like THEIR mom did before them. Since these characters are about as well written as a child's kindergarten doodles of characters from a bad TV show, these scenes are, how to put it delicately, completely ineffectual drivel.

Things get more serious, though, when the little girl falls into a hole in the ground that looks to be part of some underground network of caves. Police Officer GQ Cover saves her, pretty easily actually, and with no danger. Ohh yeah, horror movies, keep bringing the fear and tension! Then we get a scene where they all loudly debate whether or not the ghost is real, because that's a conversation people apparently have in the warped backwards reality of Haunting in Connecticut 2. Sure, go ahead and talk about that instead of moving the obviously in-danger young girl to some place where she's safe. Or doing anything else that makes sense or is actually interesting.

And make sure to talk about it with her right there in the room, because that's the ticket to making everything better. Just start saving up for her therapy bills right now.

Yeah, seems safe enough, let's stick around this wonderful place longer! After all, in this housing market, how can you tell when you'd get an opportunity like this again?

It turns out, I guess, that the whole thing is happening because Mr. Gordy's grandfather was this guy called the Station Master who used to help slaves, and as the characters veeeeeeerrrryyyyyy sloooooooowwwwlllyyyyyy find out, he actually kidnapped some of them and used them as human taxidermy experiments. This was apparently based on a real story, but here it's really not given any weight or importance, instead used as a hollow vehicle for more dumb schizo camera cuts.

Almost nothing of worth happens at all in the long, boring “final battle climax” scene that happens over the next 25 minutes of the movie. I would have said the scene where the aunt lady gets supernaturally stuffed...

Don't worry, she's inexplicably fine after this! Not a scratch on her!

...but she doesn't even die from that. Because this is a cushy world where no bad things happen, and not a horror movie or anything ghoulish or nasty like that.

The movie goes through an extremely shitty final battle sequence full of the movie's most schizo freak out camerawork yet, because we really need to see more of that, right? It's just so fucking trite, really. It's poised as this big battle between good and evil, something out of a children's storybook. Which makes sense, because the whole movie is about as childish a horror movie as any I've ever seen. Just go back and play with your coloring books and action figures, Haunting in Connecticut 2.

Then we get a ridiculous happy ending where everyone is alive without a scratch on them, frolicking in the beautiful picturesque scenery of the lakeside log cabin in bright daylight, like something the Teletubbies would find a bit too kitsch. Could you possibly wimp out any more, movie? We do get a scene of Mr. Gordy again, who it turns out was a good ghost, pushing the little girl on her bike! I'm so glad she's okay at least. And that now she knows the truth that there was nothing worse that ever happened to the slaves, before or after the historical events talked about in this movie.

Just wait until history class in a few years!

If AIDS cells could make a movie, this would be it. What hack work this is. There was nothing good or even tolerable about this movie, and it managed to be worse than most other movies exactly like this (The Conjuring, Dead Silence, any other James Wan-related movie) just out of sheer incompetency and ineptitude at telling a story. There's just so little self awareness about this, so little risk taken or interesting choices done with this story. Even if you like generic horror, it's rote, seen-it-before trash, charmless, gutless and witless. Fuck this movie.

Welcome to 2016, guys!

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

David Cronenberg Classics VS Modern Horror: The Battle

Well, it's almost Halloween again, so that means I'm actually going to have to talk about horror movies at some point! Yes, I know, what a shocker. But enough about that. Let's talk about David Cronenberg.

If you don't know him, well, you'll want to after this – the man is famous now for making movies about Robert Pattinson riding around in limousines, but back in the day, he was famous for horror. Really fuckin' good horror, too. The kind of horror that was unique, creative, weird and trippy, full of social commentary, interesting characters, interesting visuals...man, they were just so goddamn good. What do we get now? Dime-a-dozen exorcist possession flicks, remakes and torture porn. It's just about enough to make you want to build a time machine and head back to that time to experience it all firsthand.

I mean really, where's the contest? In The Fly, Cronenberg wowed us with a tale of a man tampering with science and turning into a monster. There was also a subtext about aging and disease and even a bit near the end that tackled pregnancy in the face of disease. It was a powerful film and was actually about something. Through Jeff Goldblum's frenetic performance balanced against the horror of his on-screen co-stars, there's a real sense of tragedy and horror at what he's going through which mirrors real life decay, disease or just aging – as well as the terror of a man messing with science.

What is Dead Silence about? A fucking dummy makes dumb ghost stories happen while the worst detective in the world digs up puppet graves. Where's the social commentary?

Real horror doesn't just come from the director shoving something scary in your face and saying “boo.” There has to be some kind of story or concept that reflects something in reality – or else, what incentive is there to give a shit? Yes, to some degree horror movies can just be mindless entertainment, as any genre has a subset like that. But we've reached an oversaturating point when movies intended for that purpose fail at being entertaining.

In Videodrome, Cronenberg lays on the satire thick, weaving a tale of the modern day obsession with violence on TV and making it into a warped, psychedelic tale of a smarmy TV station exec who becomes embroiled in a strange otherworldly cult's conspiracy to take over the world. It's completely bizarre and insane, but you do get the point driven in – if with the subtlety of the nails hammered into Christ's hands.

What do we get in Sharknado? “LOL, bad movies are hilarious! Look how bad we can be! Isn't it totally ironic and crazy how bad we're being? But it's on purpose, so you can't criticize us at all!”

There's just no comparison here. In the old days, movies weren't afraid to be totally off-the-wall crazy to drive a point in, in the name of both artistry and entertainment. A film like Videodrome, despite being completely batshit, had a real direction to it and a point to what it was trying to say: modern TV is too gratuitous and violent. And it wasn't afraid of using the most over the top, grotesque imagery to get there, because that's what satire is supposed to be – going all the way back to A Modest Proposal, satire is about being as subtle as a jackhammer to the face. It's about being totally off the wall and ridiculous to drive home a point. (Well, yes, you can be subtle about it too. But that's not the kind I'm talking about here.)

Movies these days don't seem to get that on the whole – a lot of films these days are ashamed to be that way, as being over the top is seen as bad and not cool. So instead, we just get stuff that's ironically bad, removing itself from criticism by going “well, I meant to make something horrible.” Surprise, that's not how it works – you won't be remembered.

In Scanners, Cronenberg tells a surprisingly emotional and dark tale of the journey of a special psychic man (a “Scanner”) to help save the world from what he's told is an evil Scanner. I don't want to spoil too much of it for those of you who for some reason haven't seen it yet, but it's actually a very deceptive story about trusting in large powerful corporations (or whatever deity holds its influence over you) and about belonging to a group – nothing is as it seems. The film is a tortured epic and tells a story about corruption and lies.

One thing the film is great at is explaining its very complex and multi-faceted universe – as this is a science fiction tale about things we don't normally experience in real life, it's obviously necessary to have some explanation and exposition in there. But it's done tastefully. When this movie explains shit, it keeps those explanations short and lets you know the facts without being egregious about it. And you do care, because you want to see the main character succeed and you're interested in what the hell's going to happen next – so the explanations have more gravity. Going off that, you also have NO CLUE what's going to happen – it's not a predictable film and so you're actually sitting there wondering what's going to happen, and thus the exposition is important for that reason.

In The Conjuring, the exposition and explanation are there because the movie has no story. When the psychics Ed and Lorraine Warren are telling the characters what's going on, it's really just because the film had no other substance – there's no real emotional connection or depth to this story, no reason for the audience to care. It's just explaining and explaining and explaining, followed by jump scares, with a possession exorcism climax.

What am I supposed to be invested in there? The film's story – what scant little there is – has already been done a thousand times over, so you can't even fall back on the novelty of a unique idea to cover up for the lazy writing.

I don't even think Scanners is necessarily a perfect film – it's got some flaws. I don't think lead actor Stephen Lack is that great (certainly not good enough for the amount of screen time he has) and, as the movie goes on, I do find it gets a bit slow at times. However, its intrigue, message and overall journey from beginning to end are satisfying and interesting to watch. You at least got the sense of a powerful story being told overall. With The Conjuring, it's just empty – empty “go quiet followed by loud noise” jump scares, empty story clumsily trying to fill its own inadequacies with more exposition...there's just no imagination.

In The Brood, Cronenberg weaves a cautionary satiric tale of new age hippie medicine and healing practices, combining that with a very dark and surprisingly touching family story about a father trying to do what's best for his little girl, while also struggling with his wife who's gone crazy. Lead actor Art Hindle is just incredible in this, delivering one of my favorite lead horror actor performances. You get a real sense of his struggle and the weight on his shoulders. I especially like the scenes where he interacts with Susan Hogan's character, his daughter's teacher who he almost has a budding romance with – it's very tender, fragile and a little sad, and the emotions are complex.

The scares come from the shocking and brutal murders committed, apparently, by tiny gremlins which have a connection to the wife's therapy sessions at the new-age place. It's a strange concept, but the murders are grisly and the way the characters react to them is very honest, dark and tragic – it's just a great story.

What do we get in World War Z? Cardboard cutouts of characters re-enacting the same old zombie apocalypse you saw in a billion other movies, only with zero substance or connection to the characters. It's got to be a world record for making the zombie apocalypse more boring than sitting through your high school calculus class.

If you really like any of the movies I've been slagging here, well, that's your prerogative; I'm sure there can be arguments made for enjoying these films as there can be with anything. However, I just think something has to be said here.

Yes, some of what I've said could arguably be called elitist in this article, but is that a bad thing? Elitism is quality control. It's caring about what comes out of a medium you love and having opinions. It doesn't mean I look down on anyone for thinking differently than I do here, it just means I think horror could do well going back to some of the creativity of its earlier years with directors like Cronenberg at the helm. Make of this whole thing what you will; it's just one guy's rambling. And if you haven't seen any Cronenberg flicks yet...well, make it a priority to do so this Halloween.

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

Dead Silence (2007)

Man, if I keep on reviewing these James Wan movies, people are going to start thinking I have some vendetta against James Wan!

...what? I have no clever retort to that. It was just an observation.

Director: The Great Visionary James Wan

Starring: Wooden caricatures of human beings, and also puppets

IMDb

So...Dead Silence. This piece of shit was one of the first in a long painful line of supernatural ghost-vengeance-small town-nice-house-porn flicks that have been coming out like the Octo-Mom’s kids ever since.

A quick glance at the Wikipedia page reveals, for one, that this movie’s script was heavily doctored after its initial draft by SAW writer Leigh Whannel, who wasn’t happy about it at all. Which is understandable given the quality of this movie, but baffling when you find out Whannel also wrote Insidious: Chapter 2 just last year - didn’t learn THAT much, huh? And two, one of the working titles was apparently “Sshhh…”. That...doesn’t even need a comment.

In the opening credits, we see how puppets are really made: in the dark with seizure-inducing flashing lights so you can’t see what you’re doing, with dark ominous music playing, because that puts you in a mood to make toys for children, doesn’t it?

Puppets are dark, scary monsters made in hellish domains by tortured souls. Rent one for your seven year old's birthday party today. Boy, Jim Henson studios got dark in its later years.

Once upon a time there was a boring couple who were unrealistically attractive. The guy, Jamie, loved fixing sinks and the girl flirts by saying that him dialing for take-out for dinner is attractive to her. Lovely! I almost, kinda, sorta believed that you had once been in a room a long time ago with two people in a relationship.

"The smell of hands working under a sink gets me hot! Dialing a phone to order bad Chinese food gets me even hotter!" ... "Hey, is this realistic dialogue yet? No? Well, fuck it; I don't like putting effort into things."

But that doesn’t last long, as apparently Jamie gets a puppet in the mail. I’d say how weird that is, but I’m following the characters’ lead. Because they don’t find it weird at all. They don’t even ask any questions!

"Where did that puppet come from?"
"Who cares? Let's play with it!"

I guess mysterious packages in the middle of the night are just normal for them.

We then see what a catch Lisa is as she talks to the dummy while she’s alone with it and sets it up to “scare” Jamie when he gets back. Seeing as that isn’t something any functioning human being in the history of the world would do, the doll rightfully kills her:

Jamie returns home and finds this, in a suitably obnoxiously edited flash cut with a loud sound behind it, because nothing can be scary without that. I mean, thank fuck they put in that loud sound and the flashy lights and what not; I never would have known to be scared here otherwise.

Then he gets arrested and questioned by the worst cop in the world, who suspects him of killing Lisa even though he didn’t do it and there was that tiny matter of a DOLL being delivered to him right before the murder happened! But the cop doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t consider it. What he DOES care about is interrogating a guy just for the sake of hearing his own stupid voice. Because that’s...really all you’re getting with this, you fucking idiot. I’ll sum up the conversation:

“Did you kill your wife?”

“No, but there was this weird puppet dropped off in front of my door like an hour before---”

“That had NOTHING to do with it! DID YOU KILL YOUR WIFE?”

“But I saw a guy with a bloody knife leaving the scene when I got back to the house!”

“Trivia at best! DID YOU KILL YOUR WIFE? I know ya did! Admit it, you guilty bastard!”

“But I get phone calls every night from the murderer and he taunts me that he'll never be caught because the police won't do their jobs right!”

“Oh pshaw, you killed her; just admit it!”

AAAGGGHHH!

Then we see the height of good policework - after you question your “suspect” for no reason very harshly, just let him leave town and take the fucking dummy with him. Oh yeah. Why does he take that dummy? Your guess is as good as mine. I guess he just wanted to remind himself of Angel Season 5 while on the road.

He goes to the town we see in all of these movies: the sorta small town with a Victorian mansion in the middle of it, and also with a population of only attractive, slender white people. The houses we see are always squeaky clean with nothing out of place and look like millionaires reside there. Because nothing says horror you can relate to like it’s happening to you, like a bunch of rich GQ cover models living in mansions even The Big Lebowski would call extravagant.

If a black person appeared in any James Wan movie, the whole universe would probably implode.

We get some very bland attempts at drama when Jamie interacts with his father, who apparently he didn’t used to get along with but now the father has changed and wants to reconcile I guess - whoop-de-doo, do you want a fucking medal? Also apparently the father has had multiple ex-wives and celebrates that fact by painting them out of portraits when they die, or some shit like that.

All of this is really just window dressing to the main point that this movie has no fucking idea what it’s doing. Who cares about any of this drama? How does it make us relate to the characters or story any more? That’s really the crux of horror, you know - relating to the characters so we’re scared with them when they get in danger. This movie, like so many before and after it, just wanted an excuse to show pretty looking mansions and attractive people.

There’s no spontaneity to any of this, no mess in the houses, no flaws in the characters’ appearances, speech or personalities - these things, while small, would have made the film a tad bit better, as at least THEN we could have gotten the sense we were watching real people, and maybe then we could have at least been a little more invested in this shitty story. As is, it’s more like watching a bunch of dolls playing in a dollhouse.

So Jamie leaves and goes to some motel where I really am just hoping Norman Bates will pop out and stab him to death. But that doesn’t happen. Instead we get another appearance by Detective Gumshoe McCrimeSolver, who has a brilliant solution - focus in on the dummy NOW. Yeah, before it just seemed like a silly idea, but NOW it’s genius! Detective work is fun when you can just make things up as you go with no logic or reason!

We also get the true height of detective skills when we see Gumshoe here talk to Jamie with the dummy just to be super funny and shit:

"For my next trick, I'll make the rest of this movie seem tolerable by comparison when I come on screen."

What the shit is this, the stand-up comedy hour with the detective? Get the fuck out. We really paid tax dollars for this? Is this really the best the police force could do? Well, I suppose it isn’t actually - it’s just that they probably put all their competent guys on cases more important than the fucking dummy murder case. That makes more sense.

After that we get an exposition scene where Jamie runs into the town crazy lady, and of course her husband is kind enough to sit Jamie down and tell him everything going on in a neat and orderly fashion, because the movie had no idea how to get all of this vital fuckin’ information out to us otherwise…

"Now, let's talk about something so boring the audience will fall asleeeeeepppppppp

So get this - apparently a long time ago, Cruelle DeVille’s even creepier and meaner cousin went on stage all the time in this town and did puppet shows. It apparently was fine and dandy until some snot-nosed kid made fun of her because her lips were moving.

It's like a Disney game; return 101 puppets to Cruelle DeVille's less successful cousin.

Then she killed him and the town pulled a Freddy Krueger and killed her in retaliation. Apparently her will involved them turning her into a puppet after she died, which I’m sure was a bucketload of fun for the embalmers and the morticians:

So do wood carvers in this world ask for their body to be turned into a wood statue after they die? At what point do these after-death wishes become too ridiculous?

And so now she’s a vengeful ghost haunting the town for no reason. Or maybe there is one. But I’ll be fucked if I’m going to listen to the bland writing that makes this thing up. Apparently she also had a bunch of dolls that she made that got buried because, I guess, the town thought they were haunted or something. Whatever.

The movie after this...really doesn’t have any structure to it, and it just meanders around like a drunk at Oktoberfest. There’s way, way too much exposition, with a whole other part where we get lots of backstory about the town and why Jamie specifically is being targeted - I dunno; forgive me for being vague, but do you really even care? It took me Herculean strength to type even this little paragraph - c’mon, I’m trying to make these reviews more exciting, and this movie is NOT helping.

I’m just amazed at the great use our taxpayers’ money is going to with this cop - he spends time digging up ALL THE PUPPET GRAVES to prove the point that, I dunno, something is going on I guess. Are you shitting me? Digging up little puppet graves is official police procedure now? 

"Phew, I didn't prove anything by doing this, but I sure did get a good workout!"

Eventually they make their ways to the set of Lord of the Rings for the final battle:

There, the ghost speaks through a puppet and says the reason Lisa died in the beginning was because she was pregnant. You know, the twist from Se7en doesn’t work when it’s a dumb looking clown puppet saying it.

Then we see the true way to kill ghosts - blow the fuck out of them with a rifle. Genius!

Call of Duty: Retarded Edition

The detective guy finally dies, which I think almost redeems the movie altogether - almost.

Then Jamie goes back home and has a flash-cut revelation when he realizes his father wasn’t his father at all, but instead a puppet the whole time, and his father’s new wife was actually the ghost in disguise!

This is why we can't have nice things.

This whole movie was just awful. Wan’s cliches are already in full force here like a back-full of angry warts. The characters are non-entities, the setting is boring, there are no effective scares and the story is mostly just really, really boring exposition. All in all, shit movie, shit director, nothing good about it and if you’re outdone in quality by an R.L. Stine book, you need to quit making movies.

Oh you bet I went there. At least the Stine books were awesome for twelve year olds. James Wan movies aren't awesome to anyone.

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

The Conjuring (2013)

I know some people like this movie for some reason, so allow me to express my opinion of it in the most balanced, well-reasoned and fair way possible.

It fucking sucks ass! Why would anyone like this cancer-boil on the face of horror? It’s the same thing as every other unoriginal Exorcist-wannabe horror movie released since fucking Emily Rose and there is nothing – I repeat, N-O-T-H-I-N-G – original about it at all! Not to mention it’s boring as hell and incredibly poorly written – like, first-year-college drama students wouldn’t even pen something this dross. I don’t even think there’s a scary moment to be found. Fuck it!

Ahem. Okay. Now that’s out of my system and we can move on with the review.

Director: James Wan

Starring: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor

IMDb

The Conjuring is the latest in a series of modernized horror movies made by James Wan. Wan got really famous back in the day for directing Saw, but then he went on to completely destroy that potential by directing Dead Silence. He made a good move by going with the mega-hit Insidious a few years later, but after that he seems to have decided “fuck it,” and just went back to doing complete shit like Insidious 2 and this movie. The Conjuring is a film that seems to forget there’s anything else you can possibly do with a movie besides rip off Poltergeist and The Exorcist. That’s really about it. Let’s take a look.

We kick off with a bunch of kids talking to the dad from Insidious and the mom from Orphan – a totally credible pair of characters, if you remember anything about their original movies. I’d trust them to exorcise my house about as much as I’d trust Dr. Kevorkian to treat cancer patients who have billion-dollar trust funds somewhere.

He kills old ladies and she slaps little girls in hospitals, I sure trust them any day to deal with my supernatural problems. Added bonus for the fact that Insidious Dad had ghosts following him around most of his life and ended up putting his whole family in danger more than once. Sounds trustworthy to me!

Apparently these two are paranormal researchers. The kids talking to them feed them some dumb story about how they let an evil ghost haunt their doll. Then when it started being, well, evil, they threw it out, but it kept on coming back. This whole thing is really just a Goosebumps story. Night of the Living Dummy? And this is supposed to be a serious modern horror movie. Get the fuck out.

WHAT? I can't believe bad stuff happened when we let an evil spirit live in our creepy ass doll! Yes, that's really the plot here. No, I haven't figured out a way to kill the writers yet.

We then switch over to bland 70s family with bland 70s wannabe lighting and color on the screen. They’re moving into a new house. This house has all the perks – places to play hide and seek in AND scary doors that open and close with ominous sound effects laid overtop! We get a long string of just dull as hell scenes – just this family going through every dull attempt at a scare this movie tries to pass off. Their oldest daughter is incredibly bitchy and annoying, and one of the younger daughters sleepwalks.

Witchcraft! Well, maybe if it was the 1770s, but I know it’s not that time period. This movie is too busy trying to shoehorn in blatant references to the 1970s. It’s about as subtle as the Brian De Palma Black Dahlia’s attempt to recreate the ‘40s. Sepia tones and stupid haircuts don’t make your movie any better.

Oh, and the dog dies:

Oh man, our dog just died! Let's never investigate why this happened and never mention it in the movie again. We are so awesome.

Fuck you. Also it’s never mentioned again, and they never investigate it. Glad to see they cared so much about their pet.

If that doesn’t make them care about creepy happenings at the house, how about their daughter having a nightmare and then waking up talking about someone wanting the family dead?

No, I guess that’s not enough to care or move out of the house at all. What’s the reason given for this again? Oh yeah, because they have money invested in the house. That trumps the safety of your family.

You know what does finally get them to do something about it though? One night they’re all sleeping and the sleepwalking daughter comes in, waking up bitchy daughter. Then they see a Grudge ghost and the bitchy daughter starts fighting with herself.

The daughter needs to quit watching bad Japanese movies before bed - they're not doing her imagination much good.

That apparently is enough. They hire Insidious Dad and Orphan Mom onto their case and they get right on it. What follows is about an hour of some of the most boring crap you’ll see in a horror movie these days. It has everything. You got the endless, boring scenes of people talking about whatever ancient histories and pasts the movie somehow thought was interesting – it’s not. It’s really not.

What kind of brain-mash thought this up? It’s practically just an afterthought – toss in some Satanic warbling about ghosts and killing babies, and you got yourself a poorly written horror backstory. Who even gives a shit? Just be honest about it. “We don’t really care at all about establishing a coherent, meaningful or scary story. We just wanted to make a cash grab in time for the end of the summer season. Just send us your money now, you corporate whore rider!”

"Why yes, this scene has been done in every other horror movie in the last decade. But we're still doing it. Because we just don't give a crap."

Play that over these scenes – it’ll be less deceptive. It’s not like there’s anything going on. Some crap about Satanic sacrifice and possession. Bitch, please. If you sacrificed anyone involved in this movie to Satan, he’d just send them right back to Earth with a little pink sticky note saying “Please try again” on it. But I digress – the movie sucks. That’s all I was trying to say.

We also get cliché jump scare scenes, of which there are too many to name. Ooh, are they going to have a quiet scene and then get real loud for the jump scare? Fucking don’t keep me waiting too long – the suspense is killing me. Yes, movie, bouncy balls truly are the way to keeping an audience on the edge of its seat:

40 minutes in and the scariest thing in the fuckin movie is a bouncy ball. Man, this is such a giant piece of shit.

"A bouncy ball killed my father..."

AAAAAGGGGHHHH THAT’S MY ONE GREATEST FEAR!

Don’t tell anyone. I can trust you, right?

But hey, it’s not like we’ve hit every cliché. There’s still one we’re missing! At least they haven’t done anything involving an exorcism yet – oh, wait. It’s the next scene where they mention that. And here I was having some form of hope for humanity left in my soul.

We’ll get to the exorcism soon enough. Before that wonderful scene, we have other things to contend with, like dying birds:

Those are never really talked about either. This movie just seems to hate animals.

We also get some despicably poor dialogue from almost every character. Like when they’re all having a sunny breakfast together the following morning – always good after a fresh round of bird suicides – and the mother says “The house hasn’t been like this in a long time!” Yeah, especially considering you moved in and the creepy shit started the next morning when the dog died. Oh, wait, I forgot nobody in the movie gave a shit about that – my bad.

How about when Insidious Dad gets handed some pancakes from the little girl who was also in Orphan? He’s like “They really are a nice family.” Yes, nice families truly are judged by the number of times little girls hand you pancakes. You goddamned weirdo.

There’s also a scene later where Mr. 70s Bowl Cut Dad finds Insidious Dad working on an old car. 70s Bowl Cut Dad says Insidious Dad “really looks like he knows what he’s doing,” even though all Insidious Dad is doing is sticking his hands inside the open hood of a car. How does that equal “knowing what he’s doing,” you fucking idiot? He could be wiring a car bomb to your engine! Granted, that’s implausible – though it would make this movie so much more entertaining.

Ugh, point is, the dialogue sucks. I guess that’s to be expected when most of the movie consists of dog-shit exposition spouted out like a broken leaky faucet in that scummy bathroom on the subway.

After that we get a scene where the demon tries to snatch the bitchy daughter. I’m not really sure what he’s trying to accomplish – he kinda just drags her around the room. Maybe that’s how he “gets to know” new girls. Or maybe he’s just really bad at “Tag.” Either way, you want to know what they do to free the daughter? Well, no, you don’t care. But I’ll tell you – they just cut off the part of her hair that the demon is holding onto. That somehow stops the demon from doing anything else.

Awesome, she can fly!

What the hell? What kinda pansy-assed pussy demon is this? Is cutting off that one part of her hair really enough? What a wuss. He probably slinked back into the shadows with his tail between his legs. Captain Howdy is laughing at you, you moron.

Elsewhere in the film’s rolls of fat we get references to other movies, like the aforementioned Captain Howdy – referenced here in a music box one of the little girls is holding. It’s poorly thought out and means almost nothing.

Well, “almost” is actually giving the film too much credit. We also get references to the previous movies these actors have been in, like several nods to Insidious in the house and the layout of the rooms. I’m pretty sure the scene where the Orphan mom is looking around the house is almost identical to the beginning of Insidious. Later on we get people looking around a bedroom with UV lights, similar to a certain scene in Orphan.

The first and third pics are from this movie, the second and fourth are from Insidious and Orphan respectively. Can you tell the difference? I wouldn't be able to if I hadn't been the one who took these screenshots. I really think this just points out the deficiency in how samey all of these modern horror movies look, both in the lighting/cinematography and the set pieces. We need some more original shit in the mix.

Originality, what’s that?!

The crowning failure of this whole mess is the climax, in which we get all the same old exorcism clichés you’ve seen before. I’ve gone on rants about this before, but honestly, fuckin’ honestly, what is the appeal? I understand not hating this kind of scene – maybe if these kinds of scenes really scare you for whatever reason. Maybe if you are actually the son of Satan yourself, hissing at the cross, that would scare you. Otherwise I just don’t see it.

Worst frat party hazing ever.

The scene is overly long and cluttered, with maybe a couple nice shots I guess – but mostly it’s pretty weak. There’s some crap shoved in about how the possessed wife has to remember this one really nice day at the beach with her family – this day she apparently said she would never forget.

And nobody is wearing a swimsuit for some reason.

It’s just so forced and contrived – those are the only words. What do we know about this character? She likes the beach. What does that tell us about her personality? She … likes the beach. What relevance does that have to the overall meaning of the story or of her character arc? She likes the fucking beach! God! Can’t you deliver one thing of substance?

Eh, I guess not. Just have a bland happy ending scene of the family hugging out in the sunlight. Because horror movies always have happy endings.

Wait, no they don’t. That’s pretty much the cincher on why this sucks: name one good horror movie with a totally happy ending like this one. I mean it really fucking is – it’s wrapped up nice and neat in a pink bow with a complimentary box of Peeps along with it and a note from the Easter Bunny. There’s no darkness here! Where’s the foreboding and the fear? Name one horror movie that’s any good, that ends in a happy-go-lucky manner like this one does.

Maybe the reasoning for this was the “Based on a True Story” tagline. But really, if the defense is “oh, they’re keeping it true to the original family” – well, no, that is not an excuse at all. You clearly showed no regard for any semblance of reality when you included the exorcism scenes with the screamy bloody ghosts and rolled-backwards eyes. I don’t care how people remembered it in real life – the way it’s presented here is just like any other craptastic exorcism horror film. Not real life.

Frankly, I think this got it closer to real life:

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