The Forest (2016)

A while ago, YouTube star and professional fuckhead Logan Paul got some flack for taking a web-video in the infamous Aokigahara forest in Japan, which is known as a spot where people go to kill themselves. People reacted strongly and he got ads pulled and he got temporarily banned from YouTube – though in the time it's taken us to do this review, he's now unfortunately back on YouTube and doing whatever he wants again, which proves to me that there is no God.

But did you know that's NOT the only time the suicide forest has been used distastefully in shitty media? Here's a review of the awful horror movie called The Forest.

Director: Jason Zada

Starring: Natalie Dormer, Eoin Macken

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This is just another rock-bottom, dumb-ass horror movie full of cliches. The message is something like 'be afraid of foreign countries.' After all, America is the only normal place. Everywhere else is just a breeding ground for superstitions and myths that turn out to be true. Stay home and turn on your TV and lock the door! Renew that Amazon subscription!

I guess this is about some woman, Sara, played by Game of Thrones and Hunger Games actor Natalie Dormer, who wants to go all the way to Japan to search for her missing sister. Her reasoning is, apparently, that her sister MIGHT HAVE gone into the suicide forest! Why does she think this? Pure speculation. Like yeah, I'm sure whatever you think happened IS what really happened! Because why have any surprises? That's for wimps and weenies.

So she does go, and along the way, as it goes, runs into some extremely weak-ass jump scares – seriously, they're so soft it's like the movie didn't want to wake up mom and dad napping in the other room but still wanted to have a loud screamy jump scare.

Honestly, she wastes a lot of time when she gets there, just sitting in a bar and looking at the forest but not going in. It doesn't seem like she's really all that interested in finding her sister. I guess she goes to some school her sister worked at, where a girl faints and thinks she IS her sister, and nobody tells the girl she's a twin until later – it's just more fun that way, if you can scare a kid. All of this shit just seems like a waste of time. Didn't she know beforehand that she wanted to look at the fucking forest? Why are we wasting time with all of this other nonsense?

Huh? What's that? Oh, it's just been explained to me that the movie is trite hack work and is padding out the runtime so as not to be a short film. Okay. Carry on, then.

She meets a few other silly characters, like a stereotypical elderly Japanese woman who works near the forest and just... shows her some fucking dead suicide bodies for no reason. How nice of her! The hospitality here is just through the roof! Oh, and don't forget that despite everyone speaking perfect English, to throw in “Konnichiwa” every chance you get just as the bare minimum to remind you we're in Japan. But if that wasn't enough to convince you, there's also some Japanese “mysticism” speeches about screaming spirits and other stuff that sounds cool if you're racist against Asian people and think this is all they talk about.

I guess the REAL “meat” of the movie, if you can call this rotting roadkill “meat,” begins when she runs into this random dude at a bar who starts telling her he'd met her sister and can lead her into the suicide forest. Uh, if this is slang in Japan for “I want to sleep with you,” then I guess this dude is being honest. Either that or he's a horrible opportunistic piece of garbage who somehow got REALLY lucky this one time.

They team up with another random dude to go in. Who are these guys with all this free time? They apparently have no obligations or family or anything. I personally would have asked some questions – they spend ALL FUCKING DAY with her in the woods, at the drop of a hat, with no real preparations. I think these guys are probably fucking lazy bums who have no jobs and contribute nothing to society.

They find a random tent in the woods after walking all day (which Sara is SURE is her sister's! And it is!), and then the one random Japanese guy with them wants to turn back and come back tomorrow. Well then how would you ever get anything done??? It took you all goddamn day to get HERE. Are you just trying to waste time? There are better ways to get your cardio in, you know.

After this, I'll be honest, the movie just kind of turns into mush. We get the truly ridiculous story of how her sister apparently thought the forest was “romantic,” and how one time years ago she didn't answer the phone, and so I guess that's enough to deduce that she killed herself. There's also some story about how they once saw their parents die, and because the sister didn't look away, THAT made her adventurous and want to go do weird stuff all the time. Brilliant! Someone call Freud and tell him he's a hack and he's done! We have a new paradigm of modern psychology and it is The Forest! Oh my God!

There's a lot of screaming and running around in the dark, as the movie is so poorly lit it's near impossible to tell what's happening a lot of the time. She ends up killing herself in a hallucination, and the movie predictably ends with some cops seeing her ghost at the end – ooooOOOOooooh, spooky! I mean, if you're a kid in a shitty haunted house. Who has been sheltered your whole life and never allowed to watch anything besides kids programming.

This is horrible. There's absolutely nothing we liked about it – in fact, it makes what Logan Paul did look like carefully considered, culturally sensitive art-school stuff. I hate this movie and you shouldn't watch it.

13 Reasons Why and all the controversy surrounding

A lot of buzz these days about 13 Reasons Why, the new book-to-Netflix adaptation about a teenager who kills herself and leaves behind 13 tapes explaining what led her to that point. I’ve heard praise for it and also, recently, a lot of criticism based on how the show treats suicide.

The show is basically what I said - a girl, Hannah Baker, kills herself and leaves behind 13 tapes explaining why she did it. Her friend and would’ve-been-boyfriend Clay is the main character and we see things through his eyes as he listens to them and figures out this unwinding mystery of sorts. I was drawn into it almost immediately - not in the least due to the incredibly thick suspense and tension about it. It turns into this bat-shit crazy thriller set in a high school with this group of teenagers trying to keep those tapes hidden and save their own asses from the mysterious crimes that begin to unfold. I couldn’t help but be invested. It was exciting shit. I had to find out what was really going on.

What I did find was also a very well done and poignant show about the teenage experience, the isolation, the confusion - it had powerful and relatable themes, and it wasn’t just a show about suicide so much as it was a show about the whole experience of being in that world and going through these problems. The way the show tells these interwoven stories of escalating isolation, bullying, sexual assault and more is compelling and important to show on screen in some way.

Now, going forward - keep in mind that I have a fairly laissez-faire approach to art. I believe you should be able to talk about absolutely anything in your art if you're going about it with the intention of expressing a sincerely-held truth that you believe. That said, obviously opinions will vary on the execution of those things. That's where pretty much every discussion, debate, etc over film criticism and the meaning of films, especially in terms of important real-world topics, comes from.

This is an unreliable narrator story. We’re seeing things solely through the eyes of these kids, and a lot of it tends to ring true - as high school students, they don’t have the breadth of knowledge to recognize depression or see the long-term consequences of all their actions like the bullying. People can kind of suck and kids are mean to each other. The way the side characters are developed in the wake of the suicide is also excellently done, with a lot of attention to detail and important social commentary woven in there as well. And there are scenes of Hannah’s parents trying to reconcile what happened - they didn’t see the suicide coming either. It happens. No one thinks something like that is about to come their way. I can believe it.

What the show DOESN’T feature is a more in-depth look at Hannah’s own psyche or whatever it really was inside her that made her want to kill herself - the kind of deep depression or illness that, maybe, it could’ve been. So I get why that troubles people, because it seems on the surface like it’s trivializing or glamorizing suicide. But we don’t really see inside Hannah’s thoughts. We just hear her words on the tapes, and teenagers like her character are not fully formed in the way that they can rationally explain everything up front. That’s all we’ve got - it’s an unreliable narrator thing and it isn’t supposed to be the Truth, per se. I took this as a show about bullying and about the American teenage experience, with the suicide as a theme as well, but not as some way to explain or rationalize suicide - merely to present it as a stark fact of something that happens, without offering a true explanation, of which there usually is none. Sure, you get the tapes, which is an over the top and unrealistic thing, but it’s just used as a way to convey this story in an artful manner and move it along to get the point across.

Though I appreciate that people critique this aspect of it - some have said it’s sensational and teaches kids that after their suicide, they’ll be important; that sort of thing. It’s a fair argument. I am not sure how suicide should be handled in fiction. The best we can hope for is that it opens up the lines of discussion. Either you shouldn’t do it at all, or you should do it in such a way that discussion is encouraged. I think this did well for the latter. After watching the little featurette on Netflix, "Beyond the Reasons," I think the creators and cast were doing their best and I can side with them here.

And you can find a number of articles where mental health experts decry the show’s portrayal of suicide in that it could cause more suicides, or make it look fashionable or glamorous. I understand that. It's a thin line to walk. As I said, I’m not sure what the 100% reliable way to show these topics on screen is. In the final episode, they show this incredibly awful, graphic depiction of Hannah killing herself. The creators say they wanted to hammer home how suicide isn’t the right decision. Opponents say it could encourage more people, particularly young kids, to kill themselves. I think the existence of this scene, and the show, are enough to make the argument that this is exactly why we need to be more active in talking to kids and making sure this does not happen. We should be so open and honest about these topics that we can prevent as much of it as we can. That’s the value of this show and what good art about serious topics should aspire to do.

You should know what your kids are watching and you should talk to them about important stuff like bullying, rape, suicide, etc when applicable. 13 Reasons Why accentuates the reasons for that. I can understand the critiques of this show and I am not saying they’re not valid. In fact I think they’re part of the discussion I think is so important. Keep talking about this stuff.

The national suicide prevention hotline is 1-800-273-8255.

Image copyright of its original owner, I do not own it.

Robin Williams: What He Meant To Us

By now, you probably feel like you have seen it all. Since Robin Williams died on August 11th, thousands, if not millions of tributes have spread across the airways, the web, and everywhere in between. Heck, my Cinema Freaks colleague Lawrence Griffin already posted one here on this site (I encourage you to read it here if you have not already). So the question is, why do I bother? Why should a guy like me, who has seen only a fair portion of the man's full body of work, and is already far behind schedule on his other projects for the site (despite being in supposed semi-retirement) bother writing a post that has probably already been repeated too many times over the past week? Then again, why are any of us bothering when most of us did not even know him personally? What is it about Robin Williams and his untimely passing that has so affected us? I do not claim to completely know the answer, but if you are willing to indulge, I have some thoughts to share:

Of course, one part of it is the initial sock value of his death. Whenever someone even vaguely familiar to you departs this world, for whatever reason, there is this feeling of a void that can never quite be refilled. Few things, if any, are more permanent than death. When it comes in the way that it did for Williams - committing suicide at the relatively young age of 63 - the effect is multiplied tremendously. Still, many people sadly do this to themselves everyday - it has even been noted that Williams, as a middle-aged white male, was in a demographic known for committing suicide at high rates. Why does he get special attention?

One obvious answer is that Williams was famous. And not just somewhat famous - I mean iconic. He worked his way from stand-up to TV shows in the late 1970s (eventually landing his own series, "Mork and Mindy") before then going on to movies. And he never left. It has been pointed out that everyone has a different perception of Williams based on their generation. Baby Boomers and Gen Xers knew him from his stand-up, "Mork" and a handful of movies he did in the 1980s, while Millennials knew him for family-oriented movies he did in the 1990s and 2000s, like "Hook," "Jumanji," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Aladdin" and the "Night at the Museum" films. Some of his more dramatic roles in things like "Good Will Hunting," "The Fisher King" and "One Hour Photo" have also managed to bridge the generation gap. Some spots of his career where brighter than others and not everything he did was golden, but I do not honestly remember a time where people asked "Whatever happened to that Robin Williams guy?" That is because while some celebrities have their moment in the sun and then fade off into the sunset (i.e. join a reality TV show) it seemed like Williams was always up to something. Even at the time of his death, he had completed scenes for four movies that have yet to be released. No matter what, he was always there.

This leads to a follow-up question: why was Williams so famous for so long? His great range certainly helped. He will ultimately be known as a brilliant comedian. I regrettably have not seen any of his stand-up routines all the way through, but even from just seeing him in interviews, you are able to get a glance at this talent: his superhuman abilities to come up with jokes and imitations on the fly and with machine-gun delivery. The fact that he could do all this and make it the majority of it funny is even more of an accomplishment. But in addition, he was also able to actually act. It is very difficult for comedians to break into dramas, as well as for dramatic actors to break into comedies. At least later on in his career, Williams would decide to do either and no one would bat an eye; they knew that whatever goofiness he may display off-screen can immediately give way to sadness or even grittiness once the cameras rolled. I think he was able to pull off this transition because even in his comedies, he knew when to stop and savor the serious moments. I admit to being annoyed by this when I was a kid: "Why is he so sad? This is suppose to be a happy movie!" But as I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate this more; life is not all together happy or sad, and it was great to have someone like Williams to show us both sides of the coin (in fact, my personal favorite movie of his is "Good Morning, Vietnam, " which I think does the best balancing act in this regard).

Life imitates art, and vice versa, and that seemed to be the case for Williams. Behind the cheerful demeanor was a man who dealt with alcohol and drug problems, was divorced twice, and suffered a longtime battle with depression. But as people have pointed out, he never let any of that define him the way it did with other celebrities. He would acknowledge it, joke about it, and then move on to something else. A great example of this took place less than a year ago, when he made what would be his last appearance on The Daily Show. He talked about how he started drinking again in 2006 after being sober for 20 years, while making one joke after another. That says a lot about someone who is able to make light of something that surely must have been a great personal tragedy. It may have worked too well - there is no indication that this was a man who would be dead a year from now. It just seemed like the same old Robin Williams that we have all knew and loved.

And that was the thing about Williams: no matter what, he always seemed to stay the same. Yes, he physically aged and he played different characters as his career progressed, but he never seemed to lose that child-like zeal, that burst of energy that would electrify the room wherever he went. On top of that, he remained a good guy. As I said, I did not know Williams personally, but I have yet to find someone who has said that he was a jerk or full of himself. The time and money he spent helping kids with cancer, entertaining troops overseas, or simply making Superman laugh again, seem to illustrate this point. There are many comedians, and celebrities in general, who have made a career out of playing jackasses. Williams would push people's buttons and lightly mock them, but he was rarely, if ever, mean about it. He only wanted to have a little fun, just like everybody else.

This last part might be the key to why we have felt so bad about William's death. Everything else I have mentioned before is valid, but one part seems to stand out the most: he was nice guy who would be fun to hang out with. No matter how miserable he might have been in real life, he never came off as removed or cold; if he did, it was because he was playing a character that felt lonely and desired a human connection. He certainly felt that way at times, but so do we all do at some point or another. More often than not, he was someone who wanted to be your friend, make you laugh, and have you feel good about yourself at the end of the day. So when we learn that someone like this was himself so unhappy that he chose to end it all, it just does not feel right. We think that he would be immune to something like this, that he can have stumbles in life but will always bounce back in the end. Life often does not have a Hollywood ending, yet no matter how many times we say tell ourselves this, we tend not to believe it. Williams proved otherwise, and it is not only sad, but almost heartbreaking.

So where does that leave us? Is there anything positive to get from this glum outlook? There is, and it is rather cliched but nonetheless true: our lives are better because of Robin Williams. He gave the world his unique talent and kindness, and inspired a number of people to follow in his footsteps. As sad as his death is, it does not take away from the great legacy he left behind. That message goes for both his close friends and family who really knew him, and those who just write a blog post about him to simply say "Thank you."

The pictures and links in this post do not belong to me and are not being used for monetary gain.

Robin Williams: The muse or the madness? A tribute

This is my unfiltered, unedited thoughts about Robin Williams’ death and other related issues.

Let me just get this straight; I was never a devout follower of Williams’. I never saw all of his comedy and I wasn’t familiar with a few of his famous films or his improv work. It was because of this that I was surprised by exactly how affected I was upon hearing of Robin Williams’ suicide earlier this week.

Yes, it was quite a blow...I mean, the man was the voice of several films of my childhood; most notably Jumanji and Aladdin. As I grew up, I appreciated him in other things - the heavyhanded drama of Dead Poets’ Society, the uplifting Good Will Hunting, the dark and eerie One Hour Photo, the bright and jubilant Good Morning Vietnam, the dramatic Awakenings, the cynical World’s Greatest Dad...there was just a LOT of shit the guy did that was SO good. It struck me because I just hadn’t realized exactly how much, as a fan and consumer of film and comedy, Robin Williams had affected my view of both of those things.

I’m not going to spend too much time dwelling on his work, as many people have already done so who were more imbued with passion for it than I was when he was alive. While I love the stuff I have seen, I really want to talk about something I mentioned back when Philip Seymour Hoffman died last February. In my tribute to him, I wrote this:

“In a way it’s the curse of great artists though – can we ever have someone who could dive so fully into a role that isn’t self destructive? It seems to me that self destructiveness goes hand-in-hand with the kind of immersive, chameleonic acting talent Hoffman had. It was like he was trying to lose himself in his roles, trying to escape whatever demons drove him to drugs in the first place.”

It’s the same thing with Williams, though a bit of a different angle. We know now that Robin Williams was suffering from depression and had been for some time. He had drug problems in the past too. And yet he was a comedic genius; he knew exactly what made comedy work and was quick to make jokes and get a crowd laughing in a variety of ways. He was a fucking funny guy and he went after his passion and his art with a tenacity that most people would kill to have.

And yet he was so, so immensely troubled that he hanged himself this week. I just now read, before starting this piece, that he apparently tried to cut his wrist as well with a knife. I don’t need to point out that these are not the actions of a man of sound mind.

Genius of any stripe comes at a price. Many people who do art, write, act in movies or plays, play music, etc, etc, etc - are just fucked up inside. Whether it’s from a bad childhood, a wrong decision made in childhood turning to drugs or just that general emptiness inside, they aren’t perfectly balanced … something is off in them. Like a wire loose. There have been various studies and reports that justify that, and it makes sense. You get real deep into writing a book or making a movie or anything like that. Your brain goes to places most peoples’ don’t. If you’re really possessed with the kind of manic creativity that leads you to just keep doing it and doing it and doing it, it isn’t just a facet of your life you can turn on and off - it’s something that seizes hold of you and won’t ever let go.

And it does seem like there IS just such a price for that genius...people get depressed and they sink into that like a trench, like a black bog from which there’s no return. And they don’t tell anybody because they’re human and there are a thousand reasons why they wouldn’t - or maybe people just don’t notice. Suicide is tough and complicated and it’s not always a clear sign that you’ll see right away. It’s not really a strong thing to do or a weak thing to do. It just is - it’s a fact of life inevitable that some people just can’t go on anymore and they make their own choice. It’s not something to judge.

People can certainly create and be mentally alright and live full lives. Not everyone who makes great art kills themselves or lives a life full of nothing but misery. But I do think there’s a truth to saying that those with really unbridled, brilliant creativity do end up paying a price for it in their own ways. It’s like the chicken-and-egg question - which comes first; the creativity or the mental instability? The muse or the madness? They feed off one another really. You have a big wide crevasse in you and it can only be filled for a little while by making art and telling stories and telling jokes and singing - and that isn’t a catch-all cure and it doesn’t last that long, and you can’t beat it forever because to create great art, there’s always some part of you that’s coming unhinged. Art isn’t made by studied, focus-group-tested and balanced methods of creations...it’s made by a soul willing to reach into the abyss. And many of those souls are broken, lost and living on the edge even when they have millions of dollars.

I don’t know Robin Williams’ situation, but the whole thing made me think a lot about these issues in a broad sense and I think they deserve to be talked about. I’m not romanticizing mental illness nor am I suggesting that we tolerate it for the sake of art - I’m just saying it’s a thing that needs to be talked about.

As for Williams...R.I.P., you strange, crazy, hilarious man. We’ll miss you.

REVIEW: The Road (2011)

The Road (2011) is not a Cormac McCarthy-based film about a post-apocalyptic world, but a wretched, miserable experience which causes me pain even to acknowledge that it even exists. I really can’t even tell you how bad this is and really convey it in full like actually watching it – there is too much horrendousness in this thing to do that; like a possession-ridden whore in a Satanic horror film. But unlike The Devil Inside, for example, this isn’t only stupid and pointless, but also relentlessly unpleasant, making the viewers feel ungodly depressed and making them want to kill themselves. Isn’t that just the goal of any successful film? If you said yes…well, what you’re thinking of is probably much different than the vomited-up hack work found in this film.

Director: Yam Laranas

Starring: TJ Trinidad, Carmina Villaroel

IMDb

So the movie begins with a suicide…don’t all great movies? Isn’t that the best way to introduce a film that you can think of?

I’m serious, right from the start; a suicide. That’s the opening shot (ha ha…ha). Way to set the bar high, movie! We also see some shots of roads, which is the closest we’ll get to the title of the movie in this whole thing, so I guess we’ve already seen everything worthwhile it has to offer. Just turn it off now, and you’ll walk away with your sanity much more intact.

Oh, but of course! If I did that, we wouldn’t have a review. So I guess I’ll persevere. We next get introduced to a super-cool cop guy named Luis, who is getting a medal for all of his accomplishments, none of which will be shown or talked about in any kind of detail. So glad this part was in the movie! He gets pulled aside by a grief-stricken woman asking if they have found her missing daughters yet, to which he tells her they are still looking. Best cop ever, or best cop ever? I say the latter.

We then cut to a couple of kids who can’t be more than fifteen. They’re going out driving to teach the one girl how to drive in time for her test tomorrow. Guess it’s good they’re doing that then…what? You don’t wait until the night before your driving exam to even practice driving? You nerd!

So being that they’re not all that experienced, and it’s the middle of the night, you’d think they would just stick to a place they all know pretty well, right? Not these kids! They go out and find a creepy deserted road in the middle of nowhere that clearly none of them is very familiar with. What a bunch of dumbasses. I sure hope they don’t run into the Jeepers Creepers monster on this road:

There’s also a ton of dialogue about how the boy apparently cheated on the girl by kissing some other girl. Dude, these kids are like fourteen or fifteen! How do they have this level of drama already? I guess this kid is growing up to be Josh Hartnett in The Black Dahlia. Christ…that’s all we need. More of that movie. Frankly, with the way this is going, I’m expecting one of the girls to kill him off and then sleep with his best friend, totally out of nowhere and without logic. Ugh.

But no, what happens in this movie is far worse actually, as we see these kids getting spooked out of their right minds in scenes that wouldn’t have even made it as bloopers in a movie like Dead End. They see some ghosts here and there, scream a lot, and keep on driving down the road and looking for the scary stuff anyway – isn’t that kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

"Hey, I think they have some great outtakes from Shutter on this road!"

I’ll give credit that one of the girls actually does call her father and ask him to come get them – that’s smarter than most characters in movies like this. But it just comes down to, really, this is hideously unnecessary. What did these kids do to deserve what they get here? Yes, terrible things happen to innocent kids all the time in real life. But, for one, this isn’t real life, because there are all kinds of supernatural things going on. And two, this is a movie, and it doesn’t have to just relentlessly depict the realistic world without any dramatization. There can be catharsis for these horrible things; there can be rights to balance out the wrongs. There are well done examples of how to depict the harsh cruelty of the world, but this movie isn’t one of them. The effect here is not dramatic, not shocking, but just incredibly unpleasant and needlessly grotesque.

At first I thought, well, okay, so they’re showing these horrific deaths and the rest of the movie will be about Luis the super cop trying to solve what happened, right? No, actually not. Actually, this is the last damn time we really see anything to do with these characters for a long, long time in the film, and the last time ever that the story is solely focused on them. You unholy abomination of ass.

No, what we actually get is a sort of collection of stories, going back ten years each time chronologically. Like Memento if it was written by a depressed Hannibal Lector. The next story we get is set in the late 90s, where two young girls are driving along the road talking about boys – because, you know, girls have nothing else going on in their lives ever besides boys. Their car breaks down and they are approached by a silent young man who tells them he can help them. Instead of doing the smart thing and just waiting at the car while telling him to go get his supplies by himself, like idiots they just follow him through the dark, isolated woods to a place where nobody knows they are. Is it any bit a surprise when he knocks them out and kidnaps them in his big, dark house?

Are you loving the color scheme yet? Either it's blinding contrasting oranges, browns and greens or grim and dark like the inside of a septic tank after a year abandoned.

The next twenty minutes or so is nothing but dark, grimy walls and the two sweet, innocent girls who did nothing wrong crying and in pain. It would be one thing if we got more character development, if the film took time to set up some atmosphere or even just tell the very basics of a real narrative, but no; it’s just that. There aren’t any real scares and there is really no point to anything going on beyond showing us how screwed up this kid is.

Like this scene – he keeps the younger girl locked in a closet and then drags her downstairs, tied up and crying her eyes out, so he can beat the shit out of her, throw her head against a wall, and, it is implied, rape her afterwards. Real nice, movie!

What? What point does this death serve to the story? What does it establish beyond 'HUR HUR HEY HE'S A SUPER COOL SERIAL KILLER, GUYS!'? Go to hell you despicable piece of shit movie.

I am so glad you showed us this scene, for really, what would our lives have been without seeing this horrific abomination against human decency? I am simply blown away by how brutal and shocking this all is, because truly that is what makes a good horror film, and not atmosphere, tension or build-up. Please, keep the unpleasantness coming!

Oh, like this scene, where the other girl makes her way outside and finds her friend/sister/whatever she was dead, bloody and tied up in a hole in the ground, even falling down right next to her face. Aren’t scenes like this just the bread and butter of modern horror? The very foundations on which to build the next logical progression of the genre?

Maybe they did something to deserve this in a past life...? Nah, trying to rationalize this unsalvageable crap in any way is just pointless. It's still crap.

Yup, and that’s the end of the story! Misery, torment and hell for these girls who did nothing to anyone in their entire lives! Isn't that great? Onto the next raping of our senses with needless violence with no purpose!

Yes, the next story is about that kid when he was a child. If you were among the very small percentile of viewers who wondered why he locked that girl in a closet in the last segment, this one will explain it. Apparently when he was a kid, his mom would lock him in the closet for hours just because some chick outside talked to him for a minute. Does that make sense? No? Well tough. It’s all we’re gonna get.

Look at that expression on her goddamn face. How perfectly horrible. Like she's permanently smelling a manure truck all the time.

That’s another problem with this film…it’s just so simplistic and banal that there really isn’t much to gain from all the shit they’re throwing at us. All we get is explanations for stuff that happened in the other scenes, like, why do all the ghosts appear with sheets wrapped around their heads? Why does he lock girls in closets? And then the movie just shows you, from point A to point B, no actual drama or interesting stuff involved at all. It’s a very elementary, almost insulting way to tell a story, made all the more idiotic by how awful the rest of the film is. This isn’t so much a story about a serial killer’s upbringing and history so much as it is a glorified Wikipedia entry about his life.

So, yeah, if you’re wondering what other great things are in store for us in this segment…how does seeing a little kid smacked around and forced to mop up the blood of a dead girl sound? What about seeing him cleaning up his father’s drunken vomit? Or his father dragging him outside and showing him the unfinished grave of his murdered mother after his father kills her? Yeah, isn’t that last one an astounding display of intellect? “Durr, hey, I’ll just leave the dead body out in the open where any moron can stumble upon it, call the police and get me thrown in jail for the rest of my life!” I’m guessing this father’s strong point in school wasn’t logistics.

Parenting: the easy way!

Parenting: the hard way!

Further points of mind-numbing idiocy involve the entire character of the mother (before she gets killed, obviously). She’s completely heartless, cruel and awful throughout the entire thing. To the point where I was questioning why the hell she even has kids or a family at all if all she’s going to do is smack them around, lock them in closets and shout at them – yeah, she does it to the father too! It’s like “I HATE KIDS! I HATE MEN! I THINK I’LL GET MARRIED AND HAVE A KID ANYWAY!” It’s stupid, imbecilic writing and whoever penned it needs a good punch in the throat.

Second, the father makes no sense. Yes, he’s a religious zealot and a bit of a pushover, but to the point of begging his abusive, cold, unrealistically cruel wife to stay with him out of a Christian duty of marriage? I’m sorry…I just don’t buy that! This woman is the Devil! Throw her ass out and take your kid and LEAVE, you whiny piece of shit! Aaaaaaggggghhhhhh!

Oh, and the father is so Christian, but then like a few scenes later, he kills his wife and then takes his own life via hanging, thus leaving his son to fend for himself? Truly a Christian man! Never has such a pious, devoted soul been seen on this Earth! God damn, is there any justice in this wretched pile of horribleness? Is there even one decent person to balance the scales and show us that maybe, just maybe, there is some semblance of reality in this whole thing at all?

Back in the present day, we figure out what most intelligent viewers have known since the first flashback – the messed up kid with the messed up home life grew up into that superstar cop who is investigating the dead girls now. Yup, the movie expects us to be surprised that Luis, the cop, is actually the same person as the killer/screwed up kid from the other parts of the film. Except for the fact that it was so damn obvious that the only way you wouldn’t have figured it out by this point is if you were just so brain-dead from the rest of the film that your thought process literally couldn’t comprehend it. I mean, God, just look at these pictures back to back:

How is that even a twist? It’s so obviously the same person! You’d have to be blind not to see it! That’s even kind of insulting to blind people…I’m sure if they could understand the language, they would get it pretty quick, too. So, really, since the twist sucks, we’re just left with the ground works of filmmaking to carry us through. Unfortunately for this film, the story, acting, characters and overall plot are about as appealing as the insides of a week-old hot pocket left underneath your couch. The effects, I guess, are pretty good, but the movie does nothing with them, and they’re just left sort of sitting there for only a split second at a time before the film cuts away from them. How are we supposed to get invested in that?

Oh well, maybe at least the film will do us SOME good and explain all the supernatural, gory scenes that pop up throughout the film…let’s continue our viewing, shall we?

So the one chick found alive from that car story in the beginning points out that Luis is the one who has been keeping her there hostage the whole time. Why he hasn’t killed her yet, I have no idea. The chief of police is suddenly surprised now, even though at the beginning of the movie he was all-guns-blazing in support of Luis. But now he says Luis’s name in a slightly foreboding tone, which prompts Luis to open fire and kill him instantly. If he’s so smart that he hasn’t been caught for all these years doing all of this shit, then HOW THE HELL is he this dumb? Why didn’t he just play dumb and pretend the girl was just hysterical and didn’t know what she was talking about? If he’s this trigger-happy, to the point where he’d just open fire at someone saying his name wrong, I find it hard to believe he would have lasted this long as a crazy serial killer. Movie, you have lost me on this one.

Also, it’s good to know that the Filipino police force hires guys with shady backgrounds who may or may not kill young girls in his free time. That’s a real stunning accolade for the Filipino police force. I’m sure they were elated to be portrayed this way…E-LATED!

Okay, so Luis is chased into the house by a few other cops. He knocks one of them down and then yanks his bedsheet off the bed to wrap around the guy’s head, similar to his other victims. I just love that for some reason. “You made me waste a perfectly good bedsheet! I bought that from Bed, Bath and Beyond, you sonovabitch!”

"Am I really...about to get killed...by a pillowsheet? Wow, this...sucks..."

He then goes outside, gets in his car and…is accosted by guilt over all the people he’s killed? Why? Oh, who cares, I’ve done enough ranting about the rest of the movie. Plus, at least he finally kills himself afterwards. That makes up for the rest of this movie, even if it’s only a little bit. I also love how the cops approach with caution even when they’re already looking in the mirror and can see that he shot himself. Plus, they must have heard the gunshot from that close…what, are they afraid his ghost will come back and kill them? Fair enough, I guess, since the rules of the supernatural shit in this movie are so lenient. I’d expect just about anything now.

"Stand back, men! He might be contagious!"

And that’s it. It just kind of ends with some more promotional shots for the Phillipines countryside. Pfft, yeah, imagine the promotional text to go along with that: “Welcome to the Phillipines! If our unpaved dirt roads don’t kill you, our police officers sure will!”

This movie is abhorrent. I’m not even kidding around, people – this has got to be one of the most repulsive, mean spirited films I’ve ever seen. There’s simply nothing to it beyond child abuse and people screaming, in pain and seeing their loved ones murdered, and if you can’t give us a suspenseful story and some good, creative thrills to support those things, why should I bother watching this ugly, puerile hack work of a film? It's - and I never use this word lightly - offensive; just flat out offensive to my sense of human decency. It doesn’t help that, as I mentioned, everything else in the movie is done horribly, and also that it never explains any of the supernatural bloody ghosts that appear numerous times throughout. What kinda crap is that?

The effect is that it just comes off like the director half-assed everything else to get to the violence and depravity in the film. Which would make this exploitative, bottom of the barrel trash like no other. I personally can’t wait for the sequel, which will probably just be two hours of people getting crucified with broken nails. Happy happy, joy joy!

The images here do not belong to me, but to their original owners. I own none of them.