Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
"Devil" - Snark Review
Things started really going downhill with the release of Signs which got more mixed reactions than his other films. At the time this was just seen as a bump in the road to most fans, after all everybody makes at least one bad film, right? Things just got worse with 2004's "The Village, which is where most former fans of Shymalan's work point to when asked where he went wrong. But the village was still met with some positive reviews, with the major problem being the weak and rather ludicrous twist at the end. Then came Lady in the Water, a self-indulgent modern fairy tail where Shyamalan wrote himself as a man whose writing will bring peace to the world. This is where people started officially saying his career was dead, that it couldn't possibly get worse than that.
Oh, how naive we were back then. Shyamalan began garnering a different type of audience in 2008 with the release of The Happening, a film so campy, ridiculous, poorly written and acted that Shymalan was from then on known as the director to look towards for So-Bad-It's-Good type films. Things would hit their apex 2 years later with the critically panned pile of rat filth known as The Last Airbender, a film that many have compared to the Holocaust of movies. The anti-Citizen Kane. For all of 2010, that film was THE film to point to as the bar for horrible movies. Critics would call a movie terrible, horrible, awful, and they would still say "Hey, at least it's not The Last Airbender." Nearly every critic put it as their #1 worst movie of the year. Also, it had penis hair:
 |
| You can't unsee it. |
Why do I bring up Shymalan's long and storied descent into shittery? Because you need to understand the mindset going into this movie that, while written by Shyamalan, was not directed by him. This could mean only bad. You see, while the writing of his movies has steadily dropped in quality, Shyamalan has always managed to be a decent director, sometimes even brilliant. While this was never enough to rescue his more awful works, it's always meant you were going to have something good to look for amongst all the horse droppings.
But now, you have an M. Night Shyamalan story, with a relatively unknown director, no well know actors, and a story that is accurately summed up with the sentence "Five people get stuck in an elevator in a building, and one of the is The Devil." This has got to be hilarious! So without further ado, we shall go into the first part of the Night Trilogy.
We start off with a title screen with some random bible verse that's obviously only in there because it has the world "Devil" in it. This is a clear sign that the director doesn't know what the hell he's doing, so he stuck scripture in the front to make it seem like this is all an allusion to the bible, or religion, or some crap like that. This, combined with all the meaningless christian imagery in the promotional material and the mention of a road called Bethlehem Pike, makes it clear that these film makers are students of the Neon Genesis Evangelion school of religious iconography.
 |
| Significantly more subtle than Devil |
 |
| Oh god, it's Happening again...I apologize for that. |
Desrcibing it doesn't do it justice.
This prompts Cop #1 and Cop #2 to show up and try and figure out if he jumped or was pushed, and we're told through some extremely forced expository dialogue that Cop #1 is in AA because of some tragedy in his past. Really, this is only set up for the inevitable twist at the end and mostly there for the writer to shove his poorly thought out pathos on the audience.
Next scene, we're introduced to the 5 "main" characters of this thing, where it's quickly established that they're all idiots who freak out at a moment's notice and are complete pricks to one another. They're given names, but they aren't really important until the very end so we'll go ahead and go by their most prevalent characteristics. We've got White Guy, Black Security Guard (BSG for short), Younger Woman, Old Woman, and Jew Fro. They get into an express elevator together to go to their respective floors, and half-way up the elevator gets stuck. These people being who they are, they all start acting like ants under a magnifying glass. Since it's not like elevators get stuck all the time and it's usually a simple fix. No, clearly they all need to start acting like chickens with their heads cut off and start acting like they're each about to be lynched by the other 4, which is exactly what they do.
We switch perspectives to the 2 security guards in the building, who see that the elevator is broken down. They talk to the 5 in the elevator through the emergency radio inside it, and tell them they'll have Dwight, the engineer, try and figure out what's wrong with the elevator and get them out. The security guards are Lustig and Ramirez. Ramirez is our narrator from earlier and he resumes his duty as our disembodied voice when Lustig tells him about the suicide in the building in order to inform us that the devil also will occasionally take an innocent's life in order to preserve his plans. This has the effect of spoiling Dwight's eventual death later on.
A note to screenwriters: DON'T SPOIL YOUR OWN FUCKING STORY. This movie was already too ridiculous to have any sense of tension or suspense, but if it had, that bit of superfluous bullshit would have wrecked any chance at it. All this ever accomplishes is to fuck up your narrative flow and turn the story into a waiting game. The audience is no longer worried or interested in the characters. Instead, they're now just waiting for the person to die. This does not an entertaining story make.
Anyway, Jew Fro apparently tries to grope Younger Woman, then starts bragging about how good of a mattress salesman he is. This manages to piss off everyone else and they start avoiding him. Then the lights go off for a few seconds and BSG practically pisses himself, since he's apparently claustrophobic. This goes fucking nowhere but I bring it up for completion's sake. Anyway, Jew Fro goes on to piss off BSG by calling him "bro". And BSG replies with the funniest line I've heard in a while. In a completely serious attempt to be intimidating he tells him:
"I'm not your bro. Now sit yo' creepy ass down."
The lights flicker again and Younger Woman gets cut or bitten or something, and everybody blames Jew Fro. The guards see that somebody's been hurt and tell Cop #1 and Cop #2 about what's going on. Ramirez then tries to tell them that he saw an image of a face in the camera for a split-second when the lights flickered, and that this is evidence that the Devil is inside the elevator with them, and he's going to kill everyone in there. They don't believe him, and what follows cannot be described. Just watch:
That's right. His toast lands jelly side down, so that means the Devil is here. Jesus christ, what does this guy do in his life when little things go wrong? He gets a flat tire; DEVIL. He stubs his toe when walking to the bathroom in the night; IT'S THE FUCKING DEVIL. He misses a shot in skeeball; EL DIABLO, AYE AYE AYE.
Anyway, the lights go out in the elevator again and there's some scuffle. When the light returns, they find the mirror in the back of the elevator shattered, and Jew Fro dead next to it with a huge shard stabbed into his throat. This gets the police's attention and they start working on a way to get in there. Tensions rise as they try to figure out who's the killer, and security tape reveals that Old Woman stole somebody's wallet before she got on the elevator, Younger Woman only pretended to be groped by Jew Fro, and they discover BSG has been arrested multiple times for assault and that Jew Fro was being charged for running a ponzy scheme. Ramirez deduces that these crimes are the reason the Devil is killing them.
Yes, apparently some random man killing himself provided the chance for the Devil to take mortal form and lay down judgement upon an assortment of white collar criminals. Beelebub must be getting frail in his old age. C'mon man, what happened to raging war against God, and getting humanity banished from paradise? You're the embodiment of pain, torment and punishment, and you're taking time out of your busy schedule of torture and eternal horrors to take care of shit the Better Business Bureau would handle? Laaaaaaame.
The lights go off again (Anyone else noticing a pattern here? It's like somebody dies every time there's an exposition dump) and Dwight falls to his death trying to go down the elevator shaft. Also there are apparently bats in the shaft. This building really needs to inspect their equipment more often. And while that happens there's another scuffle and they find Old Woman dead, hung from some of the cable in the roof of the elevator.
 |
| "TERN ON TEH LIIIIIIITES!" |
But for the 3 remaining characters there's no time to think rationally about all this. Instead they just start trying to blame each other for the deaths and yada yada yada I hate these people and want them to die. The cops find out that the security company is owned by Younger Woman's husband, who she was planning to divorce in order to get half his stuff. This leads them to believe that BSG was hired by the husband to kill Younger Woman, and had been killing the others to make it look like a serial killer.
But then, the lights go off AGAIN
and BSG dies!
And thus it's just Younger Woman and White Guy. Cop #1 has come to believe Ramirez' bullshit about Satanic Jelly or some shit, and thinks that White Guy, who's the only one who didn't sign in at the front desk, is the Devil in disguise. The lights go out again and Younger Woman is killed. So it looks like they were right. But then, White Guy's girlfriend shows up at the building and says he was here for a job interview!
Then, they discover that he DID sign in. You see, they had believed Old Woman had signed in under the name Jan Kowski, but as it turns out, White Guy's last name was Jankowski!
And it turns out Old Woman was the Devil all along!
The Devil then rises up and starts mocking White Guy for trying to say he's sorry for the bad things he's done in his past. This is where it's revealed that White Guy, several years ago, had been drunk driving and crashed into a car killing a woman and child. This turns out to have been Cop #1's family!
White Guy admits it, says there's no way he could ever atone for what he did, and asks the Devil to take his life in exchange for the others. The Devil then says that he's shown repentance, and thus leaves.
Apparently the Devil is fine killing innocent engineers just doing their fucking job, but drunk driving assholes who avoided punishment and kept it a secret for years are perfectly fine as long as the say they're really, really sorry man.
So White Guy gets arrested for the hit and run, Cop #1 has learned the magic of forgiveness, and Ramirez goes back to his day-to-day life of dousing himself in holy water every time the batteries fall out the bottom of the remote.
This movie is just...the perfect storm of so-bad-it's-good. The premise from the get go sound like a parody of a horror movie premise than anything anybody would ever seriously write. The actors are in way over their heads, and their static, serious delivery of the typical M. Night Shyamalan brand dialogue makes every minute of this film unintentionally hilarious. The cinematography is amateurish and poorly directed, with strange camera angles and effects used without any meaning or intention behind them. It's by no means a good movie, but it's ineptitude makes it incredibly entertaining, I'd recommend watching and riffing it with friends.
Final Score: 4/10
Friday, July 29, 2011
"Transformers" - Snark Review
It's fair to say that I didn't have high hopes when I first watched this movie. I'd never been a fan of Shia LaBeouf as an actor or Michael Bay as a director. But still, I'd been a fan of the Transformers: Armada show when I was younger and the effects looked well done from the trailers, they could still pull out something good, right? Well, I was partially right, at least for the first installment.
The biggest problem that hinders Transformers is that it lacks focus. We have numerous characters that each get their own sub-plots, a truckload of comic relief that isn't funny or needed, and as a whole very shallow characters. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I need to go through the story.
We start out with a voice-over from Optimus Prime that tells us of The Cube/Allspark, a mysterious relic that has the power to grant life and sentience to anything, which accounts for how the titular giant robots came to be. He also mentions a war between the 2 factions of their species that resulted in their world being left lifeless and the Allspark being lost in the void of space. The Allspark eventually landed on earth.
This is where we run into the first problem with the movie; Why couldn't it be about that story? We have an entire species coming into being, forming a planet-wide empire, splitting into factions and warring over the future of their civilization. This is a great scenario to make an action movie about, and yet it's glossed over in a 45 second speech and barely ever mentioned for the rest of the movie.
After that we're introduced to a group of U.S. Special Forces soldiers returning to a military base in Iraq. And here's where we meet what SHOULD have been our main characters. Unfortunately they're all underdeveloped in the film and if they're ever given names in it I can't remember them. It doesn't really matter since they don't amount to much, so I'm forced to name them by the biggest characteristics they're given in the film. We have, in order of importance form first to last, White Soldier, Black Soldier, Hispanic Soldier, and Bespectacled Soldier. We're also shown that White Soldier has a family back home, but that's only ever given 2 words of dialogue and 30 seconds of screen-time. Also, Hispanic Soldier has a tendency to start talking in spanish when he's talking, because we all know that there aren't any Hispanic Americans that are fluent and well-versed in English, right?
Anyway, these guys get to the base just in time for an unmanned helicopter to show up at the base, transform into a robot, blow shit up, and try to hack into the U.S. government's secret files. However they cut the hard line to the database and prevent Decepticon #1 (he's given a name later but it doesn't matter since he's only got about 5 minutes of total screen time, most of which is this scene) from getting hold of the information he needed. As revenge he sends his Scorpion-like sidekick robot to hunt them down.
Then we're treated to our REAL main characters, Sam played by Shia LaBeouf, and Makaela played by living blow-up doll Megan Fox. They're completely useless for 95% of the story and I hate them. Their segment of the movie somehow has the ability to take up a huge amount of screen time without actually adding anything to the narrative. But whatever. We start out with Sam going with his dad to buy his first car, where we meet our first offensive Black stereotype in the movie, played oddly enough by Bernie Mac. He plays a used car salesman who tries to cheat Sam into buying a lousy car, and lives with his mother who he calls Mammy. Not even making that up. (Rather sadly, this was the latest movie featuring Mac that came out before he died. I bring this because, while other movies he had been in came out post-humously, THIS was the film on his resume when he passed a way. Though at least that saved him from the sequel.).
After Same buys a beat-up Yellow and Black Camarro which we'll soon find out is the autobot Bumblebee, he and his superfluous friend go to a party where Sam's crush Makaela is there with her equally superfluous boyfriend who bullies Sam for all of 30 seconds. The boyfriend says he doesn't trust Makaela to drive his super snazy truck home, which causes her to walk off in a huff and leave him. He is never seen again. So glad his character was here. Sam ditches his friend, who is also never seen again, and gives Makaela and extremely awkward ride home that's meant to be funny, but is more grating than it is amusing. After making a terrible joke about how Sam's sure there is "more than meets the eye" to Makaela, we're introduced to Sam's parents.
I hate these characters more than any other in the film. They are the type of people that are so annoying, obnoxious, and stupid that I wish them to die in the most painful way humanly imaginable. And they NEVER. SHUT. UP. At all. There's constant banter between them that's MEANT to be funny, but again just ends up making me want to stab myself in the ears to make the pain go away.
Then we cut to Airforce one, where Soundwave, a small sneaky Decepticon, starts hacking into the network again. This alerts a group of NSA agents who have been trying to decode the signal used to hack into the military base's computers. The only NSA agent that has any importance is Blonde British Chick (BBC I like to call her) who tells the military higher-ups she thinks the hacking was done by some sort of organic computer, because a brain is the only thing powerful enough to get the the military's firewall so quickly. The film makers then decide that the plot is moving and too good a pace, so they pull the drag chute and take us back to Sam.
Bumblebee, deciding he's had enough of Sam's poor acting and unintelligible stammering, drives himself away, Sam sees this and, thinking somebody is stealing his car, chases after on a bike. When he finds Bumblebee, he sees him transform and send some message into the sky. Then the police show up and arrest Sam without seeing the giant yellow robot.
After some not-comedy relief at the police station involving drugs, Sam is let out and we cut back to the Soldiers. They've managed to just find a village that has a telephone when the Scorpion robot shows up and starts attacking them. Their guns are fairly useless against it, and both Bespectacled Soldier and Hispanic Soldier die in the ensuing fight. Meanwhile White Soldier, in an attempt to get in contact with the military and call for an airstrike, is prevented by...an indian IT stereotype asking him if he has a credit card. After another not-funny scene of them looking for a credit card in the middle of a firefight, they get the military to chase off Scorpionbot.
Then we switch over to BBC as she makes a copy of the information about the signal they're trying to decode in order to find out what information the Decepticons stole. She says there's only one hacker in the world who can crack it and, instead of telling the higher-ups this and having them bring him in, she instead illegally brings the information to him to have him decode it. We meet Hacker Guy here, and his main characteristics are that he's fat and black. That's about it. He's another stereotype that they try to use for humor, but it again doesn't work out at all. It comes off as more offensive than anything. Anyway, the FBI aren't complete morons and find out that BBC took the info, and they storm into the house and arrest the pair.
Back on Sam's side, Bumblebee returns to the house in car form, and Sam runs away from him and straight into the arms of Decepticon #2 and Soundwave, who ask him about a pair of glasses he'd posted on eBay. Makaela shows up too somehow because they needed some way to get her involved in the plot, and our two useless human characters are rescued by Bumblebee and we get a poorly edited chase scene before a short, unsatisfying fight between Bumblebee and Decepticon #2. Also, we see Shia LaBeouf in his boxers. Whyyyyyyyyyyyy???????
Then we watched the Autobots arrive on Earth, signaled by Bumblebee, and they each get their own short scene of them turning into some kind of vehicle. When one of them crashes into a pool outside a house, a little girl goes out to see and, as at hulking, silver robot larger than her house arises before her, she asks if he's the tooth fairy. Somebody got paid to write that. There is no justice in this world.
Then Sam meets the autobots and they explain that Megatron and the Decepticons want to get the Allspark and use it to destroy humans for...some reason. Racism maybe? I don't know. They tell him that the glasses he was selling, which belonged to his great-great-grandfather, contain the information regarding the location of the allspark that we blasted onto them when a discovery crew unearthed Megatron in the deep arctic. It's stupid and nothing but a convoluted reason to have Sam in the movie at all, and I don't believe it for a second.
Then, we reach what is, hand down, the worst scene in the film. Sam goes to his house, looking for the glasses in his room while the Transformers try to hide from his parents in their backyard. The mind boggles. Predictably one of them walks into the power lines and knocks out the power in the neighborhood. Sam's parents hear him talking to somebody and go to investigate. Makaela hides and Sam tries to get his parents to leave before they see the Autobots because...um...maybe...got me. There's no reason to try and keep the sentient robots that are trying to save humanity a secret. After Sam's mom starts asking him if he was masturbating, Makaela shows herself we're treated to more non-funny comedy. Watching a baby seal die would be funnier than these characters and their dialogue.
All of a sudden, a squad of government agents storm the house and arrest Sam and Makaela and confiscate the glasses. The man in charge of the operation, which is called Sector 7, is a huge asshole who threatens to keep Makaela's father, who we are told is in prison for stealing cars, imprisoned for life. The revelation that Makaela's dad was a criminal, is for some reason a big deal to Sam, who throws a whine-fest about it. When Makaela says that Sam is being a jerk about it, he immediately stops. Glad to know that was completely pointless too. The autobots show up, and free Sam and Makaela, and we're treated to Bumblebee, a robot, peeing "Lubricating fluid" on S7 guy's head. They're about to escape, but then more S7 agents arrive and capture Sam, Makaela, and Bumblebee.
Sam, Makaela, BBC, and Hacker Guy are taken to the headquarters of Sector 7, and meet Black Soldier and White Soldier, where they all see that the government has been keeping Megatron frozen in a cryogenic stasis. Why they didn't just destroy him is never given a reason. They also show them that they have the Allspark, and have been studying it's power for decades. The Autobots set out towards the headquarters, as do the Decepticons when Soundwave reports that they have Megatron. There's a scene following where Decepticon #3, in the form of a tank just drives off of a military base. Nobody reacts strangely to a god damned tank just running over a fence and leaving the base. Is everyone in this movie an idiot?
When the Decepticons attack the headquarters, the Military guys decide to take the allspark and go to a nearby city to have it picked up by helicopter and hidden again. That's right, instead of trying to fight off the enemies at a government headquarters filled with soldiers and guns, they want to take a convoy into a HIGHLY POPULATED CITY, and try and get it airlifted away. Despite the fact that there's tons and tons of empty land for them to do this in, they go to a city. The Autobots meet up with the Convoy on its way to the city, while BBC, S7 Guy, and Hacker Guy try to contact the military using an old radio system so they can call for air support to fight the Decepticons. How do they accomplish this? Hacker Guy "hotwires" a computer to send out morse code over the radio. Somewhere there is a Computer Science Major crying into their pillow.
So they get the air force sent in, but the Decepticons attack and Bumblebee is injured. Sam is told by Black Soldier to take the Allspark to the top of a building so the helicopters can come and pick it up. Because in the middle of a battle, the best way to take care of a crucial hand-off is to do it in the most conspicuous place imaginable. Meanwhile all the interchangeable Autobots are fighting all the interchangeable Decepticons until Megatron shows up and starts fighting Optimus. When Megatron attacks Sam to get the allspark, Sam nearly runs into a car full of teenage girls, who freak out that he might have dented the car. Sam trips, drops the Allspark on the ground, and accidentally activates it, causing the steering wheel of the aforementioned car, the Xbox that some guy on the street is carrying, and a nearby soda machine to come to life and start attacking people.
Let me count the ways in which this is completely nonsensical. 1. How did just dropping the Allspark cause it to do that? If it's that sensitive then it should have blown up with how much Same has been jostling it during this fight. Second, why was a guy just carrying an XBox in the middle of a warzone? Third, Why were those girls driving around town all leisurely when there is a GIGANTIC, EXPLOSIVE ROBOT BATTLE GOING ON NOT 100 FEET FROM WHERE THEY ARE, IN CLEAR VIEW OF ANYONE WHO ISN'T BLIND. Fourth, and most importantly, this is never brought up or mentioned again. We never see anything fix this, so I guess we can just assume that the steering-wheel robot killed all the people in the car, that man was strangled by his game console, and a bunch of people on the street got their heads caved in by a can of Mountain Dew.
After that bullcrap, Optimus saves Sam from falling after the oh so ever well planned "take the Allspark to the most visible part of the city and set off a signal flare" plan didn't work out, and then Optimus and Megatron fight. Or rather, Megatron kicks the crap out of Optimus until the military wounds him with an airstrike. Megatron's still going though, trying to to get the Allspark from Sam. To try and keep it out of Megatron's grasp, Optimus tells Sam to push the Allspark into his chest, which would destroy it along with him. Sam instead shoves it into Megatron's chest and kills him.
That's right. At the end of all of this, the person who takes Megatron down isn't Optimus Prime, or Bumblebee, or the other autobots, or even the military. The most powerful and evil robot in the universe is taken out by Shia Fucking LaBeouf.
Other stuff happens after that but it's all inconsequential and just there to set up for a sequel that somehow turned out even worse than this one, so I won't cover it.
If you couldn't tell, I REALLY hated this movie. Like, despised it. It's not funny, it's offensive, the writers had no clue how to tell a coherent and cohesive story, and the majority of the action scenes (also known as the only reason anybody watches a Michael Bay film) are short and rather underwhelming. The acting ranges from average to god-awful wooden (*cough*Megan Fox*cough*) and the characters are either completely devoid of personality or they're moronic imbeciles.
Final Score: 1/10
Thursday, July 28, 2011
"Insidious" - Snark Review
Originally written on Saturday, July 16, 2011
So hey, I've been waiting to get to do a more negative review of something. Thankfully, this cliche-ridden, unfocused mess of a modern horror movie has provided me with more than enough material to tear it a new one.
Insidious essentially contains everything I dislike about modern horror films, and it tosses it all together in an amateurish pile in a choppy attempt to be scary or creepy in the slightest. And not only does it not succeed, in a number of places it made me actually laugh.
The story starts out as your basic horror premise; Perfect family with a perfect life move into their new perfect home, but then it becomes apparent that something is wrong with the house. Renai and Josh are the parents of 3 children, Dalton, Kid Who is Not Important and Quickly Forgotten About, and Crying Baby That Is Also Quickly Forgotten About. The latter 2 are completely superfluous and essentially just there for a few padding sequences.
Anyway, at the beginning our protagonist is Renai, as she starts to notice strange things around the house. Books that she stacked up are mysteriously knocked on the floor, there's a staticy whisper that can be heard over the Baby monitor, and their house is apparently about to fall apart since just about every step they take makes the floor creek, and the door hinges need to be oiled. Pretty soon, while our ever attentive parents are playing with the other 2, Dalton goes into the attic exploring and decides he'd like to try for a Darwin award by climbing an old ladder that's falling apart and can barely support its own weight. Gravity decides to teach him a lesson and he falls down and gets knocked out. The parents find him, and make it obvious that the kid's stupidity is genetic by having him go to bed when he finally wakes up. Because having a kid with a possible concussion go to sleep is a brilliant idea.
The next morning, shockingly, little Dalton is in a coma and won't wake up. After the doctors find no sign of brain damage and are thus unable to explain why he's a vegetable, they just decide to set up a feeding tube and heart rate monitor at the family's house. Because that's totally what they do with somebody who's inexplicably unresponsive, send him home and NOT try to run more tests. Not long after this Renai starts seeing strange things around the house. The door inexplicably close, she think she sees a man standing over the baby's crib, and Josh starts randomly have sepia-toned visions of a small kid in bed. Eventually one of the specters that Renai has been seeing attacks her and, in a move that shows the writers were at least TRYING to be a little original, the family makes the brilliant decision to get out of the obviously haunted house. They move to a new place, but it appears they hired the Real Estate agent from Hell because there's ghosts in this one too. Also, after they decide to move we never see either of the other 2 kids, and are instead introduced to Josh's mom to take their place. Say goodbye!
So anyway, Renee is talking with Josh and his Mom about what she's seeing, and the mom tells them that she had a dream about some demon that's trying to hurt the still vegetative Dalton. Then she sees him for a split second jump-scare and they hear crashing coming from Dalton's room. The go in to discover him still knocked out, but the room's been trashed and wrecked. This convinces Josh to let his mom call in some Medium she knows and we're introduced to Elise and her two poorly placed "comic" relief duo in the form of her two assistants, a pair of guys dressed as Mormon missionaries who make the 3 douchebags on Ghost Adventures look intelligent and subtle.
It's also about here that we jump from one protagonist to another.
You see, until this point the story had been about Renai. She's the one who saw the spirits and the strange things going on in the house, she was the one who had to convince Josh to move, she's the one who knew that something wasn't right about Dalton's coma. But right about here, when the medium starts explaining what's going on with Dalton and the strange demon they saw. It becomes about Josh's story and HIS quest to save Dalton while Renai is downgraded to essentially spiritual cheerleader for her husband.
Elise explains that Dalton is a natural at Astral Projection, the ability to send one's spirit out of their body, and that he's being doing that in his dreams for years. What REALLY caused his coma wasn't the whole head injury combined with terrible parenting, but rather his soul has been trapped away from his body by a demon who is now trying to figure out how to take control of Dalton's body and wreak havoc in the living world. Elise calls the place Dalton is trapped the "Further" because she wants to make sure that nobody watching will actually take her seriously.
Despite this, they decide to hold a seance in order to get Dalton's soul back from the "Further". This apparently requires Elise to put on a gas mask with a microphone that feeds into a set of head phones that her assistant uses to take notation. However this needlessly complex seance doesn't go to well as the demon temporarily takes control of Dalton's body, and he goes all Gage from Pet Sematery and tosses one of the assistants across the room in a sequence that I'm sure would be scary if it weren't so hilariously ridiculous looking. They manage to get the demon (which looks like an extra from the last battle in Braveheart, essentially red and black facepaint and black clothes. ooooh scary.) out of Dalton's body, but the little bugger is still lost somewhere.
Then Elise reveals that the reason Josh's mom knew to call her was because the same exact god damned thing happened to josh when he was a kid, only he was stalked and almost taken over by some creepy old lady spirit. This begs the question why she didn't immediately call Elise when Dalton went into the coma, but then this movie might not have made the 70 minutes mark required for theatrical release. Anyway, they decide the only way to get Dalton back now is for Josh to astral project, go to the "Further" and find Dalton.
So Josh goes into the spirit world like he's the Last Airbender, wanders around until he finds the first house, goes in, is greeted with several more ineffective jump scares, and then goes up to the attic. He spots a red door in the wall and I had to resist the urge to hum The Rolling Stones. He goes through the door, finds where Dalton is being held, and we're treated to our first (and thankfully last) full glimpse at the demon who's been behind this whole thing and man, is it ever ridiculous. The facepaint and prosthetic teeth are already unconvincing, but we then see him sharpening his large, clawed metal hand that just scream Freddy Kruger, not to mention his feet, which are goat hooves that look way too big to actually belong on his legs. He spots Josh trying to save Dalton and...just kind of stands there while Josh runs off with him.
Dude, you're a demon, earlier during that seance you threatened to find Elise and rip out her innards, then bathe in them and eat her flesh, and you can't even stop a reverse kid napping? Laaaaaaaaaaame.
So we're presented with some non-tension as Josh tries to find his way back to his body and Renai starts shouting in his ear to hurry up. It seems the spirits of the astral plain are starting to physically manifest in the mortal realm and are very...very...sloooooooowwwwwwwwwlllllllllyyyyyyy approaching them. Why are they suddenly able to manifest like this? Hell if I know, I guess because "Then the father just strolls back to their bodies, everything is fine and dandy, cue end credits" wouldn't make as good a climax? It wouldn't really be much worse than this choppily edited, poorly shot mess of video.
Josh eventually makes it back to the house, and tells Dalton to go upstairs and get his body, while he stops for no apparent reason and tells the old lady spirit from his past to leave him alone. Well at least we know Josh is still just as good a parent as he was at the beginning of this mess. And that's literally what he does. He stares at the Old Lady (who is just inexplicably there) to "Leave [him] alone" a whole bunch of times, while the Demon finally gets around to chasing Dalton. She just starts laughing and slowly floats backwards because having your scenes have any sort of logical progression is too mainstream for these movie makers.
Anyway, Josh apparently gets back to his body, as does Dalton, and everything's going to tie up nicely. The dipshit duo or assistants are planning on writing a book about this whole thing and make a bunch of money, Dalton is back to being as uninteresting as his long forgotten siblings, and Josh has moved on from his fears of the old woman that he apparently had but were never mentioned. Yep everything is fine...
Oh Wait, If forgot for a second that this is a modern horror movie, which means there has to be a twist at the end to we can get an unnecessary sequel. As it turns out, Josh DIDN'T get back to his body. The Old Lady took over it instead and when Elise figures it out, she gets strangled for her troubles. Renai finds the body, puts together what happened, and then turns around in a shot lifted straight out of Evil Dead. Cut to Black, play one more SCARE!Chord, and cue end credits.
Now if I haven't made it clear, my problems with this movie run deeper than the fact that the plot was rock stupid and unfocused to the point where we just switch protagonists an hour in. It, like Drag Me To Hell before it, relies almost exclusively on jump scares, coupled with quick scare-chord crescendos in the music to try and startle the viewer. I dare those of you with high alcohol tolerances to watch this movie and take a drink every time the music crescendos or there's a quick cut to a jump scare. I guarantee you'll have Cirrhosis by the 45 minute mark.
The movie runs into the problem of trying to get quick, cheap scares from the audience every few minutes rather than trying to build a creepy or disturbing atmosphere. Not to mention that this pattern leaves the movie ludicrously predictable and as a result isn't engaging in the slightest.
Final Score: 3/10
So hey, I've been waiting to get to do a more negative review of something. Thankfully, this cliche-ridden, unfocused mess of a modern horror movie has provided me with more than enough material to tear it a new one.
Insidious essentially contains everything I dislike about modern horror films, and it tosses it all together in an amateurish pile in a choppy attempt to be scary or creepy in the slightest. And not only does it not succeed, in a number of places it made me actually laugh.
The story starts out as your basic horror premise; Perfect family with a perfect life move into their new perfect home, but then it becomes apparent that something is wrong with the house. Renai and Josh are the parents of 3 children, Dalton, Kid Who is Not Important and Quickly Forgotten About, and Crying Baby That Is Also Quickly Forgotten About. The latter 2 are completely superfluous and essentially just there for a few padding sequences.
Anyway, at the beginning our protagonist is Renai, as she starts to notice strange things around the house. Books that she stacked up are mysteriously knocked on the floor, there's a staticy whisper that can be heard over the Baby monitor, and their house is apparently about to fall apart since just about every step they take makes the floor creek, and the door hinges need to be oiled. Pretty soon, while our ever attentive parents are playing with the other 2, Dalton goes into the attic exploring and decides he'd like to try for a Darwin award by climbing an old ladder that's falling apart and can barely support its own weight. Gravity decides to teach him a lesson and he falls down and gets knocked out. The parents find him, and make it obvious that the kid's stupidity is genetic by having him go to bed when he finally wakes up. Because having a kid with a possible concussion go to sleep is a brilliant idea.
The next morning, shockingly, little Dalton is in a coma and won't wake up. After the doctors find no sign of brain damage and are thus unable to explain why he's a vegetable, they just decide to set up a feeding tube and heart rate monitor at the family's house. Because that's totally what they do with somebody who's inexplicably unresponsive, send him home and NOT try to run more tests. Not long after this Renai starts seeing strange things around the house. The door inexplicably close, she think she sees a man standing over the baby's crib, and Josh starts randomly have sepia-toned visions of a small kid in bed. Eventually one of the specters that Renai has been seeing attacks her and, in a move that shows the writers were at least TRYING to be a little original, the family makes the brilliant decision to get out of the obviously haunted house. They move to a new place, but it appears they hired the Real Estate agent from Hell because there's ghosts in this one too. Also, after they decide to move we never see either of the other 2 kids, and are instead introduced to Josh's mom to take their place. Say goodbye!
So anyway, Renee is talking with Josh and his Mom about what she's seeing, and the mom tells them that she had a dream about some demon that's trying to hurt the still vegetative Dalton. Then she sees him for a split second jump-scare and they hear crashing coming from Dalton's room. The go in to discover him still knocked out, but the room's been trashed and wrecked. This convinces Josh to let his mom call in some Medium she knows and we're introduced to Elise and her two poorly placed "comic" relief duo in the form of her two assistants, a pair of guys dressed as Mormon missionaries who make the 3 douchebags on Ghost Adventures look intelligent and subtle.
It's also about here that we jump from one protagonist to another.
You see, until this point the story had been about Renai. She's the one who saw the spirits and the strange things going on in the house, she was the one who had to convince Josh to move, she's the one who knew that something wasn't right about Dalton's coma. But right about here, when the medium starts explaining what's going on with Dalton and the strange demon they saw. It becomes about Josh's story and HIS quest to save Dalton while Renai is downgraded to essentially spiritual cheerleader for her husband.
Elise explains that Dalton is a natural at Astral Projection, the ability to send one's spirit out of their body, and that he's being doing that in his dreams for years. What REALLY caused his coma wasn't the whole head injury combined with terrible parenting, but rather his soul has been trapped away from his body by a demon who is now trying to figure out how to take control of Dalton's body and wreak havoc in the living world. Elise calls the place Dalton is trapped the "Further" because she wants to make sure that nobody watching will actually take her seriously.
Despite this, they decide to hold a seance in order to get Dalton's soul back from the "Further". This apparently requires Elise to put on a gas mask with a microphone that feeds into a set of head phones that her assistant uses to take notation. However this needlessly complex seance doesn't go to well as the demon temporarily takes control of Dalton's body, and he goes all Gage from Pet Sematery and tosses one of the assistants across the room in a sequence that I'm sure would be scary if it weren't so hilariously ridiculous looking. They manage to get the demon (which looks like an extra from the last battle in Braveheart, essentially red and black facepaint and black clothes. ooooh scary.) out of Dalton's body, but the little bugger is still lost somewhere.
Then Elise reveals that the reason Josh's mom knew to call her was because the same exact god damned thing happened to josh when he was a kid, only he was stalked and almost taken over by some creepy old lady spirit. This begs the question why she didn't immediately call Elise when Dalton went into the coma, but then this movie might not have made the 70 minutes mark required for theatrical release. Anyway, they decide the only way to get Dalton back now is for Josh to astral project, go to the "Further" and find Dalton.
So Josh goes into the spirit world like he's the Last Airbender, wanders around until he finds the first house, goes in, is greeted with several more ineffective jump scares, and then goes up to the attic. He spots a red door in the wall and I had to resist the urge to hum The Rolling Stones. He goes through the door, finds where Dalton is being held, and we're treated to our first (and thankfully last) full glimpse at the demon who's been behind this whole thing and man, is it ever ridiculous. The facepaint and prosthetic teeth are already unconvincing, but we then see him sharpening his large, clawed metal hand that just scream Freddy Kruger, not to mention his feet, which are goat hooves that look way too big to actually belong on his legs. He spots Josh trying to save Dalton and...just kind of stands there while Josh runs off with him.
Dude, you're a demon, earlier during that seance you threatened to find Elise and rip out her innards, then bathe in them and eat her flesh, and you can't even stop a reverse kid napping? Laaaaaaaaaaame.
So we're presented with some non-tension as Josh tries to find his way back to his body and Renai starts shouting in his ear to hurry up. It seems the spirits of the astral plain are starting to physically manifest in the mortal realm and are very...very...sloooooooowwwwwwwwwlllllllllyyyyyyy approaching them. Why are they suddenly able to manifest like this? Hell if I know, I guess because "Then the father just strolls back to their bodies, everything is fine and dandy, cue end credits" wouldn't make as good a climax? It wouldn't really be much worse than this choppily edited, poorly shot mess of video.
Josh eventually makes it back to the house, and tells Dalton to go upstairs and get his body, while he stops for no apparent reason and tells the old lady spirit from his past to leave him alone. Well at least we know Josh is still just as good a parent as he was at the beginning of this mess. And that's literally what he does. He stares at the Old Lady (who is just inexplicably there) to "Leave [him] alone" a whole bunch of times, while the Demon finally gets around to chasing Dalton. She just starts laughing and slowly floats backwards because having your scenes have any sort of logical progression is too mainstream for these movie makers.
Anyway, Josh apparently gets back to his body, as does Dalton, and everything's going to tie up nicely. The dipshit duo or assistants are planning on writing a book about this whole thing and make a bunch of money, Dalton is back to being as uninteresting as his long forgotten siblings, and Josh has moved on from his fears of the old woman that he apparently had but were never mentioned. Yep everything is fine...
Oh Wait, If forgot for a second that this is a modern horror movie, which means there has to be a twist at the end to we can get an unnecessary sequel. As it turns out, Josh DIDN'T get back to his body. The Old Lady took over it instead and when Elise figures it out, she gets strangled for her troubles. Renai finds the body, puts together what happened, and then turns around in a shot lifted straight out of Evil Dead. Cut to Black, play one more SCARE!Chord, and cue end credits.
Now if I haven't made it clear, my problems with this movie run deeper than the fact that the plot was rock stupid and unfocused to the point where we just switch protagonists an hour in. It, like Drag Me To Hell before it, relies almost exclusively on jump scares, coupled with quick scare-chord crescendos in the music to try and startle the viewer. I dare those of you with high alcohol tolerances to watch this movie and take a drink every time the music crescendos or there's a quick cut to a jump scare. I guarantee you'll have Cirrhosis by the 45 minute mark.
The movie runs into the problem of trying to get quick, cheap scares from the audience every few minutes rather than trying to build a creepy or disturbing atmosphere. Not to mention that this pattern leaves the movie ludicrously predictable and as a result isn't engaging in the slightest.
Final Score: 3/10
"I Am Number Four" - Snark Review
Welcome to the first ever Snark Review, where instead of trying to by critical and offer and informed and civil opinion on things, I mock the thing I'm reviewing like it's nobody's business! Hope you enjoy!
Originally written on Friday, June 24, 2011
So I just watched I Am Number Four and I'd like to share my thoughts on it.
I went into this movie expecting it to be a mediocre action flic with some decent special effects and average acting and storytelling. Lo and behold, I got what I expected. Number Four is obviously a film set up to start a franchise, since it's essentially an origin story for the main character, the aptly titled Number Four (that's who he is). It's an interesting premise, if not a particularly original one. The Number Four and the 8 other "Numbers" are essentially last remaining survivors from the planet Lorien, which was taken over and destroyed by the Mogadorians (Yes, it's a stupid name.). The 9 children were taken to earth as infants to eventually become the protectors of earth, each with a sworn warrior protector to raise them.
The movie starts out with the Mogadorians or Mogs as they're referred to for the most part, kill Number Three, because they apparently need to got in a certain order because...the film makers thought the title sounded cool? There's never a mention in the film of why exactly the kids are numbered or why the Mogs insist on hunting them in said order, so I don't know. Anyway, we're then introduced to Number Four, who goes through the movie under the moniker "John Smith" because when you're looking to go undetected, it's best to get an alias that immediately sounds fake. As we meet John, his leg starts lighting up like a christmas tree, and when it's over he's got a new burn mark, symbolizing that Number Three is dead. He and his protector, Henri, take this as a sign to get right the hell out of there.
The pair end up moving to Paradise, Ohio where they're followed by a terrible CGI lizard that turns into a terrible CGI dog that comes to live with them. Because why not. After a brief argument, John makes the decision that he's going to go to school like a normal kid, because he's just such a dedicated student that he won't let something like an intergalactic man-hunt stop him from learning Calculus! No, that's just his shtick for the first half of the movie; He wants to be normal, and have a normal life, because he's just so sick of not being normal. At school he meets the inevitable love interest Sarah, a sweet girl who constantly looks like she's on the verge of tears even when she's happy and seems to have learned all her acting from Kristen Stewart. She likes to take pictures and wants to get out of her small town life and...that's about it. That's all she ever talks about. Ever. John also meets her Ex-boyfriend Mark who will be doing what every ex-boyfriend in every movie ever does; Act like an asshole to the main character and get his ass kicked. John's eventual side-kick, Sam, is also brought in to bring in probably the most interesting backstory of any of the non-aliens.
You see, Sam's father was a conspiracy theorist who spent his offtime dragging his son into the mexican wilderness in an attempt to find aliens. After going out on an expedition on his own, Sam's dad disappeared. Sam eventually grew to become ashamed of his father's history and wrote the man off as a nutjob. It's eventually revealed that Sam's dad was meant to bring the 9 together for some reason they were going to explain in the sequel. This is important because it gives Sam a stake in the whole Alien mess. The same cannot be said for Sarah, who spends the majority of the movie in woeful ignorance of everything, and only manages to scream and run around once she's let in the loop.
Anyway, this is where the movie grinds to a halt for a while. It stops being about the Mogs or Lorien or any of that interesting stuff, and instead we're presented with Smallville: The Motion Picture. Seriously, that's what it is. John discovers he and the other 8 (Well, 5 now) are gifted with "Legacies", essentially super powers, and that they are destined to protect earth from being destroyed from the Mogs. But John can't be bothered with all that crap because he's IN LOVE! The people who eliminated his entire culture in a planet wide genocide? That's not important when he's got to worry about the school quarterback pulling pranks on him! Spliced in with this are shots of the Mogs travelling, trying to track John and Henri down. This would be the time to set them us as threatening antagonists...except the most memorable scene of them is when one of the looks out the window of their car and uses makes a face to scare some chubby kid in the car next to them.
So let's see, we've got a Hero who's more concerned with high school than his impending murder, a female lead about as intriguing as a hunk of plywood, a Mentor that hasn't actually done anything, and Villains that are less intimidating than a teenager in a cheesy Halloween costume. This is a rough 2nd act.
Eventually though, the plot DOES finally pick up when the Sheriff (Mark's father) gets suspicious about the two people living in a foreclosed house that have no previous records or ID's. Henri rightly decides to leave and start over somewhere else, but John refuses because he can't bear to live without Sarah, a girl he's known for, oh, about a week, maybe two? Henri rightfully tells him to get his priorities straight, but then decides he needs to track down the webmaster of a website that has a video of John's Electric Lights and Magic scar from earlier, since apparently video evidence online of where they used to be is a risk to where they currently are. As it turns out though, the Mogs did in fact have a youtube account and set up a trap for Henri. John is then instructed to come to where they are if he wants to see Henri alive. John rushes in valiantly once he gets Sam to give him a ride.
To make a long story short, they go in, get Henri, are attacked by Mogs, Henri's injured and dies because he's the mentor and he has to die. John goes to tell Sarah goodbye, while Sam decides to root through his dad's old things to find a glowing rock that will apparently help them find the other Numbers. It kinda makes sense in context.
So John heads to a party that Sarah's throwing at her house after he hears on the news that the police have searched his house and now suspect he and Henri are terrorists because apparently having more than one computer in your house makes you a terrorist in Ohio. As it turns out, going to a party that is being attended by every teenager in the small town, including the Sheriff's son, isn't the best way to avoid cops. The police show up and John has to show off his telikinetic powers to get out, bringing Sarah along with him. They then decide that the best place for 2 teenagers running from the cops is at the school! Of course!
Following this, they're predictably cornered by the Mogs and are about to get their asses turned to dust when they're saved by a mysterious young woman who's also been tracking John. After killing 2 of the Mogs while making it look easy, she introduces herself as Number Six. She reveals that since her protector was killed by the Mogs a few years back, she decided to hunt the mogs down instead. While also trying to reunite the rest of the Numbers. And I think it's time I just say it now: I want to see a movie called "I Am Number Six".
If Six had been the main character of this movie, I would have liked it a LOT more. First of all she's already got control of her powers, she comes armed to the teeth with Alien technology, and she's all around just a more impressive and interesting character than Johnny boy and his "I just wanna be normal" bullcrap. Plus she rides a motor cycle, that's just cool.$ Alas, she's only around for the last 15 minutes.
After a big and admittedly impressive final action scene in which Six is firmly established as being better than every other character, and it's revealed that the terrible CGI dog is able to turn into a terrible CGI monster to fight off the Mogs' two terrible CGI monsters, the Mogs attacking them are all killed and John, Sam, and Six use the tracking rock to find out where they need to go to find the others. Sarah, as she has no actual stake in this other than she wants stick her tongue down John's throat, is left behind in her podunk town and they drive off into the horizon as John tries really hard to sound badass as he narrates.
Overall, the movie had some promise, with some interesting ideas about the various powers and abilities, but it comes off as trying too hard to start off a franchise, when it should be concerned with just telling a good story. The second act is pretty weak, with it feeling derivative of Spider-man and Smallville in a very bad way. The third act is definitely the highlight of the whole shebang, and the effects are used fairly well, awful CGI animals aside. It's not a great movie, but it has enough to offer that I don't regret watching.
Score: 6/10
Originally written on Friday, June 24, 2011
So I just watched I Am Number Four and I'd like to share my thoughts on it.
I went into this movie expecting it to be a mediocre action flic with some decent special effects and average acting and storytelling. Lo and behold, I got what I expected. Number Four is obviously a film set up to start a franchise, since it's essentially an origin story for the main character, the aptly titled Number Four (that's who he is). It's an interesting premise, if not a particularly original one. The Number Four and the 8 other "Numbers" are essentially last remaining survivors from the planet Lorien, which was taken over and destroyed by the Mogadorians (Yes, it's a stupid name.). The 9 children were taken to earth as infants to eventually become the protectors of earth, each with a sworn warrior protector to raise them.
The movie starts out with the Mogadorians or Mogs as they're referred to for the most part, kill Number Three, because they apparently need to got in a certain order because...the film makers thought the title sounded cool? There's never a mention in the film of why exactly the kids are numbered or why the Mogs insist on hunting them in said order, so I don't know. Anyway, we're then introduced to Number Four, who goes through the movie under the moniker "John Smith" because when you're looking to go undetected, it's best to get an alias that immediately sounds fake. As we meet John, his leg starts lighting up like a christmas tree, and when it's over he's got a new burn mark, symbolizing that Number Three is dead. He and his protector, Henri, take this as a sign to get right the hell out of there.
The pair end up moving to Paradise, Ohio where they're followed by a terrible CGI lizard that turns into a terrible CGI dog that comes to live with them. Because why not. After a brief argument, John makes the decision that he's going to go to school like a normal kid, because he's just such a dedicated student that he won't let something like an intergalactic man-hunt stop him from learning Calculus! No, that's just his shtick for the first half of the movie; He wants to be normal, and have a normal life, because he's just so sick of not being normal. At school he meets the inevitable love interest Sarah, a sweet girl who constantly looks like she's on the verge of tears even when she's happy and seems to have learned all her acting from Kristen Stewart. She likes to take pictures and wants to get out of her small town life and...that's about it. That's all she ever talks about. Ever. John also meets her Ex-boyfriend Mark who will be doing what every ex-boyfriend in every movie ever does; Act like an asshole to the main character and get his ass kicked. John's eventual side-kick, Sam, is also brought in to bring in probably the most interesting backstory of any of the non-aliens.
You see, Sam's father was a conspiracy theorist who spent his offtime dragging his son into the mexican wilderness in an attempt to find aliens. After going out on an expedition on his own, Sam's dad disappeared. Sam eventually grew to become ashamed of his father's history and wrote the man off as a nutjob. It's eventually revealed that Sam's dad was meant to bring the 9 together for some reason they were going to explain in the sequel. This is important because it gives Sam a stake in the whole Alien mess. The same cannot be said for Sarah, who spends the majority of the movie in woeful ignorance of everything, and only manages to scream and run around once she's let in the loop.
Anyway, this is where the movie grinds to a halt for a while. It stops being about the Mogs or Lorien or any of that interesting stuff, and instead we're presented with Smallville: The Motion Picture. Seriously, that's what it is. John discovers he and the other 8 (Well, 5 now) are gifted with "Legacies", essentially super powers, and that they are destined to protect earth from being destroyed from the Mogs. But John can't be bothered with all that crap because he's IN LOVE! The people who eliminated his entire culture in a planet wide genocide? That's not important when he's got to worry about the school quarterback pulling pranks on him! Spliced in with this are shots of the Mogs travelling, trying to track John and Henri down. This would be the time to set them us as threatening antagonists...except the most memorable scene of them is when one of the looks out the window of their car and uses makes a face to scare some chubby kid in the car next to them.
So let's see, we've got a Hero who's more concerned with high school than his impending murder, a female lead about as intriguing as a hunk of plywood, a Mentor that hasn't actually done anything, and Villains that are less intimidating than a teenager in a cheesy Halloween costume. This is a rough 2nd act.
Eventually though, the plot DOES finally pick up when the Sheriff (Mark's father) gets suspicious about the two people living in a foreclosed house that have no previous records or ID's. Henri rightly decides to leave and start over somewhere else, but John refuses because he can't bear to live without Sarah, a girl he's known for, oh, about a week, maybe two? Henri rightfully tells him to get his priorities straight, but then decides he needs to track down the webmaster of a website that has a video of John's Electric Lights and Magic scar from earlier, since apparently video evidence online of where they used to be is a risk to where they currently are. As it turns out though, the Mogs did in fact have a youtube account and set up a trap for Henri. John is then instructed to come to where they are if he wants to see Henri alive. John rushes in valiantly once he gets Sam to give him a ride.
To make a long story short, they go in, get Henri, are attacked by Mogs, Henri's injured and dies because he's the mentor and he has to die. John goes to tell Sarah goodbye, while Sam decides to root through his dad's old things to find a glowing rock that will apparently help them find the other Numbers. It kinda makes sense in context.
So John heads to a party that Sarah's throwing at her house after he hears on the news that the police have searched his house and now suspect he and Henri are terrorists because apparently having more than one computer in your house makes you a terrorist in Ohio. As it turns out, going to a party that is being attended by every teenager in the small town, including the Sheriff's son, isn't the best way to avoid cops. The police show up and John has to show off his telikinetic powers to get out, bringing Sarah along with him. They then decide that the best place for 2 teenagers running from the cops is at the school! Of course!
Following this, they're predictably cornered by the Mogs and are about to get their asses turned to dust when they're saved by a mysterious young woman who's also been tracking John. After killing 2 of the Mogs while making it look easy, she introduces herself as Number Six. She reveals that since her protector was killed by the Mogs a few years back, she decided to hunt the mogs down instead. While also trying to reunite the rest of the Numbers. And I think it's time I just say it now: I want to see a movie called "I Am Number Six".
If Six had been the main character of this movie, I would have liked it a LOT more. First of all she's already got control of her powers, she comes armed to the teeth with Alien technology, and she's all around just a more impressive and interesting character than Johnny boy and his "I just wanna be normal" bullcrap. Plus she rides a motor cycle, that's just cool.$ Alas, she's only around for the last 15 minutes.
After a big and admittedly impressive final action scene in which Six is firmly established as being better than every other character, and it's revealed that the terrible CGI dog is able to turn into a terrible CGI monster to fight off the Mogs' two terrible CGI monsters, the Mogs attacking them are all killed and John, Sam, and Six use the tracking rock to find out where they need to go to find the others. Sarah, as she has no actual stake in this other than she wants stick her tongue down John's throat, is left behind in her podunk town and they drive off into the horizon as John tries really hard to sound badass as he narrates.
Overall, the movie had some promise, with some interesting ideas about the various powers and abilities, but it comes off as trying too hard to start off a franchise, when it should be concerned with just telling a good story. The second act is pretty weak, with it feeling derivative of Spider-man and Smallville in a very bad way. The third act is definitely the highlight of the whole shebang, and the effects are used fairly well, awful CGI animals aside. It's not a great movie, but it has enough to offer that I don't regret watching.
Score: 6/10
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)