Movie Appraisal: Absentia (2011)

Okay, here's an interesting film that I have mixed feelings about in so many ways. This movie is simultaneously very interesting, almost thought-provoking in some ways, and also very dull in others. It's yet another horror film without horror. It's yet another movie that should be terrifying and yet really only comes off as a boring yarn. That's not quite fair,but I certainly found myself less than interested in the entire movie. The story and execution could have been done so much better, but ultimately were done poorly because of the lack of focus on anything even remotely interesting. And that's why this movie feels schizophrenic. It feels all over the place. It feels like it's trying to do everything, succeeds in some areas, but fails in most.

It would be unfair to call Absentia a bad film though. It's certainly not a bad movie, but it never really feels like its own thing. It never really has its own identity. The closest it comes is when it's showing the tunnel, usually the inside of the tunnel, and usually Doug Jones is involved as well. That's the best part of the film. But the movie really bogs down when the story is explored. The two sisters are less than interesting people. Callie (played by Katie Parker) never has more than the most minor of character development, shown as a little wild, a little drugged up, and a Christian. But that's not three-dimensional character development, it's just a list of what she is rather than who she is. Her sister is done slightly better in general, but Tricia (played by Courtney Bell) has her own issues of being a little too intense at times, again not showing the range of emotions she almost certainly should be showing.

So, this movie was a Kickstarter project. If you haven't heard of Kickstarter, well... it's a website where people can try to crowdfund a project, in this case a movie. And I have to show that it is certainly apparent that the budget was not huge for this movie. That being said, I don't really care if the movie looks amazing or looks terrible. Well shot movies can be just as bad as terribly shot movies, but I didn't like the aesthetics of this film. They turned me off constantly, with nothing in the movie looking particularly good at all... but also nothing in the movie looking awful or horrifying either. I'm not even saying that stuff looked mundane. It just didn't look good.

It was a disappointing film for me. I had heard about it for a while and had been trying to see it for a while. The first chance I get to see it, and all I see is not so great acting, a movie that doesn't look good, and hectic direction that just doesn't work. Now, I'm usually kind of nice to these independent films, but I just had a ton of problems with this film, probably because I actually really enjoyed both the premise and the story, but was incredibly disappointed with the execution. Everything felt wrong with the execution, from the acting to the direction by Mike Flanagan. The only actors that stuck out to me as being very good were the few scenes with Doug Jones and Morgan Peter Brown as Daniel, but only towards the end of his appearance in the film.

The movie's plot is pretty much: Tricia's husband disappears for seven years. He's going to be declared dead in absentia. Callie comes to give Tricia some moral support with Daniel being declared dead and also with Tricia having a baby on the way, and then Daniel shows up. Most of the film though is really very dry, and if you have no understanding or liking of the characters it becomes very hard to watch indeed. There are scenes that are almost baffling to me why they are in the movie. for example the scenes where Daniel is describing the bug-things is pretty good, but actually showing those bug things out of the corner of the screen is much less effective. The movie is not scary except one very small scene basically at the end of the film where Callie isn't specific enough about her request and something bad happens. (If you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about.) That right there was a well done scene, but was also one of the few very well done scenes.

I don't even know what else to say. This was not a good movie to me. Honestly it was a movie that offered me very little. It didn't look good. It didn't sound good. The acting wasn't particularly compelling. Yes, the story made the movie a little worth it, and the lines and writing were also pretty decent, but for the most part I could have never seen this movie and would not have missed a thing. I can't recommend this movie. Hell, I can barely even talk about it. It has nothing really to offer and definitely comes off more as a boring execution of an interesting idea than a total failure... but that doesn't make the movie any better. I hate ripping into an independent film like this, but I was not a fan despite thinking that I might really like this movie. There's nothing else to say. Avoid this movie if at all possible. I hate being harsh, but this was just not well done in my opinion. I am totally baffled as to why... how... it won awards for this... and why I'm not seeing the brilliance that others obviously did. Am I missing something? Did I go comatose in the scene that makes the movie good? I don't think I did.

Anyway, this is a disappointing flick and should be avoided. Its premise is great, but the execution leaves a ton to be desired.

Series Criticism: Star Wars (Part 1)

I start off this with a piece of concept art for the last good thing in Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. It's a video game, and my favorite video game of all time, for reasons that I'll kind of get into here, and get way more into whenever I review this fantastic game. I start with the last great thing to come from Star Wars because it came out nearly seven years ago. And yet a lot of Star Wars has been coming out since. Very little of it has been any kind of quality, and for the most part, it has essentially kicked the fan of the series that I once had been in the teeth. I can't be the fan I was. Hell, I can't even be a fan at all.

Once this series stood for something. Back in the old days, days I don't even remember, when there were only movies, some comics, some action figures, and maybe a book or two, this series stood for something great. It was a series with infinite possibilities, an entire galaxy at the disposal of a great writer, a great thinker, and it was available to the masses. At one point you could watch the movies and know exactly all there was to know or care about in Star Wars. I've reviewed the original Star Wars movie, and I'm pretty sure I've made some of my feelings on the series known already. Star Wars was once great. Hell, the first time I saw A New Hope it was in theaters when the special edition came out in 1997. I probably saw it before then, my dad was a fan of Star Wars too, but the first time I really remember it, I was eight and I was in a crowded theater, loving the movie, falling into it every bit as much as I could fall into a good book. I fell in love with Star Wars from that moment on. I ate it up. I saw The Empire Strike Back, easily one of the BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME, in a nearly empty theater at midnight, possibly the most appropriate way to watch that bleak film. And then I saw Return of the Jedi and fell in love with the characters and the story all over again, even if ROTJ does have its own issues.

I believed in Star Wars. I believed that it could be great, that it was great. I believed that there could be a galaxy far, far away... a long time ago... that housed Jedi and smugglers, and amazing spaceships, and everything else. Wookiees, Hutts, Greedo, Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin... the list can go on and on. My point here is that I fell into the same TRAP that a lot of people did. I believed in Star Wars, and I believed in George Lucas. And today, I believe in nothing but lies.

It wasn't the prequel trilogy that broke me. No. Of course none of the movies were good, but I saw them when I was young. I knew things were wrong, but I never hated the movies. I still don't. I wish they didn't exist, and I treat them as if they don't exist, but I have ambivalence for them, not hatred. They didn't single-handedly ruin Star Wars, and they certainly didn't ruin the original trilogy for me. What they did was bring Star Wars into the mortal realm, the realm of fallibility, the realm of not being the best. Star Wars fans have, for years, wondered what the prequels did... why did they have to be so bad? Why did the acting have to suck? Why CGI? Why everything? The problem is that the times- they are a-changing. I know plenty of people who love the prequels, despite my own disgust with hearing that. I know plenty of people who like the prequels more than the originals. I know it's a travesty, but it happens. The reason for this is that the times are different. People have their opinions and even if they are wrong, they're opinions.

So, the prequels are simply white noise to me. They didn't affect me, didn't bring about some kind of change. I didn't watch the screen and believe in this unbelievable universe. Instead it brought the harsh reality to my young mind that Star Wars wasn't real. It wasn't real.

It wasn't real.

Nothing could have prepared me for that disappointment. I was a lonely child, a nerd of nerds, a reader of novels at a time I should have been reading crappy little  pop-up dog books or whatever. "See Spot run (away from Darth Maul, what a terrible name)." I was holding onto Star Wars, putting it up as some kind of king of stories, of movies, of everything... and the day that I learned it was a broken series was the day I also learned that nothing in this world was perfect. I became cynical so long before I ever should have. I brought myself into horror, into other pursuits that were far removed from the atrocities of Star Wars. You think, my reader, that you have seen war crimes? No, not until you read some of the Star Wars novels, not until YOU UNDERSTAND the worst the world has to offer. Let me proceed, but I warn you, if you haven't been a big part of the Star Wars fandom or fanbase or whatever over the course of the last fifteen years or so, much of this will not make any sense to you. I speak of Yuuzhan Vong, New Jedi Orders, comics, Karen Traviss, the deaths of characters for convenience, and how so many characters never change, never evolve, never adapt, and... at eighty are just the same as they were at thirty. I talk of character assassination, galaxy destruction, the butchering of stories, and an absolutely broken fanbase that simultaneously praises and hates.

"Tell me a story of how greatness falls." That is the statement that initiated this writing, this "article", this diatribe on the good things that can turn so bad so quickly. It's not that the series fell from grace, or even that it broke apart just as it was on top. Instead it was a downward spiral. It was as if the series that was so dear to many of us was addicted to something terrible. Call it CGI, call it overdone and contrived plots, call it terrible romance plots, or fanfiction styled writing. Hell, call it what it is: a trainwreck. I loved Star Wars once, at a time when I could dream beyond the stars and see the world full of infinite possibilities. I used to think about what other wonderful worlds there were, if Luke ever found more Jedi, or if he truly would be the last. I used to think about what would happen now that the Emperor was dead and the Rebels would celebrating it up with a bunch of teddy bears. Would there be Ewok pilots? Would they have an embassy or something? What about Jabba's palace and all of his dancing girls?

What I'm saying is that the universe felt so large because it left me asking so many questions, but not caring about the answers. I can truly say that Star Wars is the series that gave me the desire to first start writing. It was also the series that sparked me to do this blog for the internet. I didn't want to blast the prequels or yell or rant or hate, I just wanted to be able to speak my mind, to say that I have been disappointed, fans of Star Wars have been disappointed. Some people may read this, may agree, may even like it, but I wish that people who had control over the franchise would read it. I wish that they could understand that Star Wars was never about gimmicks and crappy romances and appealing to the masses. It was a world of infinite possibilities. It was an action space fantasy about a ragtag group of rebels facing off against some terrible empire, even if the Empire seemed as okay as the rebels. Yes, some Imperials were bad like Tarkin and the Emperor, but most were simply regular guys. Some didn't even want to face off with the rebels. And the rebels probably had the same kinds of good and bad people too. Look, it created a realistic world where people acted like people and the universe made sense, not like the YOU ARE EITHER GOOD OR EVIL sense that the prequels gave to Star Wars.

Darth Vader wasn't evil, he just had different ideas. He disagreed with Obi-Wan and he disliked incompetence when his time was limited. He was focused and driven. Obi-Wan's term of describing him as "twisted" works well and fits. Then you look at Darth Maul. Yeah, not really feeling the complexities there. You can compare the bland and lackluster, almost confounding, General Grievous (What a name...) to Grand Admiral Thrawn from Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy of novels. How can you even compare the two characters? How can they even be seen as comparable at all? Yes, both are commanders of military things or whatever, but General Grievous is an absolute travesty of a character, whereas Grand Admiral Thrawn is a well done morally ambiguous "antagonist" to the main characters. He is both well-written and well thought out, which can be easily said for all of Zahn's characters, most of Michael Stackpole's characters, and Aaron Allston's characters in the X-Wing series before he became a big part of what is wrong with the Star Wars expanded universe.

So, this is my first part of an entire series analysis and criticism of Star Wars. I'm just getting started, giving you an introduction. I have no idea how many parts this will be, but next time I'll be focusing on where Return of the Jedi screwed over Star Wars, and the expanded universe stuff that came out until around the time the prequels came out. We're going to touch upon some incredibly awful parts of Star Wars, including Kevin J. Anderson, Barbara Hambly, The Crystal Star, Luke's love life, and the end of an age. Stay tuned...