Movie Appraisal: Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998)

At least I know that these movies are getting worse and worse with each installment. That's a small comfort. I realize it and understand that I am in the hellish domain of this franchise of movies, and there is no escape for me. Save yourselves, I say. Do not venture on this path as I have. There is no quality here, only pain and misery and very mediocre movies as far as the eye can see.

And that's the problem. The movies aren't BAD per se. They're not horrible and painful to watch. There's nothing about them that make me angry or make me want to punch my hand through the DVD case. These movies are just boring. They make no attempt to be interesting, exciting, or engaging, instead dwelling in this realm of utter mediocrity. I barely remember this movie even though I just sat through it all of ten minutes ago. I barely remember the characters, the plot, or the situation because the movie had no passion to it (and a plot that made very little sense besides).

Should I tear this movie down? I guess a little, but how much can I really say? This isn't a scary movie. There's nothing here to be frightened about. There's about one decent gore shot in the entire film, and it just so happened to be the most engaging moment in the entire film, when the two most interesting people in the movie, David Carradine and Fred Williamson die together. Spoiler alert, I guess.

The movie involves a group of "teenagers" who I thought were college kids or even older than that until I read the synopsis. These teenagers go to do something with their dead friend who has been cremated. I think they're putting him to rest, but why in the town they get to? I have no idea. Well, two of the friends die immediately. And this bears mentioning: why the heck does this first "teenager" who dies have a thing about putting blow-up dolls everywhere? I frankly do not understand at all, but I found it utterly fascinating and more than a little bizarre. I wouldn't have minded an entire movie of him plastering blow-up dolls around town for reasons only his addled mind can comprehend. Even more than that, I seriously believe that this guy has a bottomless bag full of these blow-up dolls. When those kids killed him, they actually killed the creepiest magician in the world: the one who can only conjure up blow-up dolls.

Is that it? That's basically all I took away from this movie.

I don't know. Some people die. The children of the corn come back again and this time He Who Walks Behind the Rows doesn't walk behind the rows, but is instead a fire monster captured in a silo. If the silo were a pokeball, He Who Walks Behind the Rows would be a pokemon. He never leaves. He doesn't really do anything at all but burn a bit throughout the movie. Ezekial, the prophet kid of this movie, is one of the worst prophets yet. I think the fourth movie is still worse about that simply because most of the movie is without the major prophet, but Ezekial is quite ridiculous and more than a little annoying.

What else? What else?

I laughed out loud when Eva Mendes implied she was under eighteen. She totally looks about twenty-five, all of the "teenagers" do. And mentioning Eva Mendes, why does this movie seem like it's shot like a softcore porn movie? Something about the way Eva Mendes in particular is shot makes it seem like at any moment she's going to remove all her clothes. I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but it really feels like it's shot like a porno rather than a horror movie. Nothing about the movie is even slightly scary. Even the moments in the dark just seem like a softcore flick.

I think I've said everything I'm going to say about this movie. It's pretty awful and completely forgettable. It's worse than the last Children of the Corn movie just because most of the characters here are also extremely unlikable on top of being bland and uninteresting. At least Naomi Watts and father of the year in the last movie had something going on. This movie has about two minutes of David Carradine, one good scene, and Fred Williamson being cool for about a minute. And that's all I have to say.

Avoid this movie.

Movie Appraisal: Mirrors (2008)

Mirrors is the American re-imagining (rather than a straight remake) of the South Korean film Into the Mirror, which I reviewed a few days ago. That movie, the South Korean one, was an absolutely brilliant film, full of both subtext and interesting moments that kept me both interested and intrigued from beginning to end. I enjoyed the subtlety of the movie, the intelligence of the film, and ultimately how it handled both the horror and the mystery of its story. Mirrors is an incredibly different film, taking very little from Into the Mirror besides a starting horror premise, a few select scenes, and the main character. Oh, and the ending, even though it doesn't make any sense for that ending to be there like it did in the South Korean film, where it was foreshadowed throughout. Ah well, let's get this thing started, shall we?

Directed by Alexandre Aja and starring Kiefer Sutherland literally just being Jack Bauer, it is a movie that doesn't know what it's trying to do, and also clearly doesn't understand the source material.

You know what? No. I won't even say that. Redact that. Take it back, and forget about it. This is a movie that kind of and sort of understands that Into the Mirror was a good movie, had some great scenes, had some great philosophy, and ultimately thought that an intelligent movie couldn't translate to American audiences. Because, ultimately the story feels forced. It feels like whole storylines were tacked on. It feels like the original intention of what the movie meant was put on the back-burner for gore effects, a relationship, and highlighting actors and actresses that literally did not know how to act.

I want to blame Aja here, but I feel it probably is a much deeper problem than just him. The film is directed competently. That's what I don't get. I don't get how it can be directed decently but written like a five year old trying to translate the original film. It's so simplistic, losing both subtlety and nuance until nothing is left of the original plot but scenes ripped straight from the Korean film.

If you read my synopsis of the plot of Into the Mirror, this plot is vaguely similar. Kiefer Sutherland plays Ben, a detective who shot someone (which never comes up again) and is off the force because of reasons. The only reason this backstory of the character is kept is so that Ben can grab up information from his old detective friend and be good at investigating THINGS and STUFF. It's so convenient it's stupid.

Ultimately the first half of this movie is pretty solid. I liked it as an opposing way of telling the same (or a very similar) story. Large sections of the first half involve Kiefer Sutherland alone and dealing with hallucinations in mirrors in a burnt out department store where he works as a night security guard. I like this a bit as it owns a different kind of story than the Korean film. And, in all honesty, I found the reopening of the department store in that movie to be pretty overdone and a little silly at times.

This movie sticks with a mystery premise, but instead of crime and money being at play here, we instead get demons and a psychiatric hospital. And mostly we get a psychomanteum (a room with all the walls being mirrors). And that's the big difference. It's primarily an Americanized difference. Of course the old department store was built over a psychiatric hospital where the patients all killed one another. THAT'S OBVIOUS.

The Americanization stuck out to me like a sore thumb. The gore, the relationship pieces of the plot, and the complete disregard for the source material really showed me how much I sometimes can loathe these remakes. While this one had its moments, there were times when I was literally seething with anger watching this movie. And I guess I should get into why.

Gratuitous gore? Did I mention there was gratuitous gore? Holy shit, do I have to mention that. All of the gore scenes are hard to watch (all two of them). My bile was rising when Amy Smart's reflection (Amy Smart playing Angie, the sister of Kiefer Sutherland's Ben) decided to pull apart her own jaw. I don't know what the point of that scene was unless it was just there to horrify, in which case, sure, it succeeded. I was made uncomfortable and creeped out by the scenes. I just don't know quite what the artistic merits of that scene were supposed to be. I assume there were none, and it was all about just being as scary as possible- even though the CGI effects were both obvious and somewhat poorly done at times. I kind of wish there would have been more gore in the film, if only so the movie would have had a second half that might have been scary or interesting in the slightest. Alas though, why would the gore continue in the second half?

Another gripe I have is that the ghosts from Into the Mirror (or the reflections or whatever you want to call them) simply didn't attack innocent people. They went after the guilty, those who were involved in murder, covering up a murder, or refusing to compensate victims of the arson. The victims all were guilty of a terrible crime or two, with none of them being upstanding citizens being punished by the spirit in the mirror. But this film has the innocents being punished, which seems to literally go against the premise of the initial film, and maybe go against what ghosts are supposed to be. Then again, Mirrors doesn't have a ghost in it. It just has a weird mirror-bound demon that somehow can go into any mirror without explanation. It's really dumb and nonsensical and completely tears aside the plotting and well-thought out pieces of the original. I could just keep saying that. This movie doesn't live up to the original. It's not a good movie. It insults the original by existing.

Shots are way overdone. Wow. While there is a focus on artistic shooting at times, the shots become overwhelming in this simple horror film. In the beginning of the film they kind of work a bit, but eventually they just start taking the focus away from the interesting bits of the story, and focus instead on the most obvious. There are some pretty well done shots though, again in the first half of the film, like Ben going down the stairs his first night as a watchman in the burnt out store or some of the night shots in the department store. Amy Smart's death was also quite well done, as is the subsequent reveal of her death to Kiefer. That was the final good shot in the movie though, and with the second half focusing more on Ben's family than the story, the good shots fell aside, replaced instead with insipid dialogue and vacuous scenes.

There is no subtlety here, just jump scares galore, something I am less than fond of. It takes the creeping menace of the Korean film and completely dumbs it down to something that is very American in its horror. It does this rather than focus on character moments and dimensions of the horror universe that we see. Instead the focus is on set-pieces, jumps scares, and long scenes with nothing really happening. The mystery of the movie has disappeared, replaced instead by dumb moments of what I believe the filmmakers think of as "psychological horror." Even more egregious are the times when characters simply come out and say the obvious for the benefit (and only the benefit) of the audience, who they think must be far too stupid to understand what their brilliance is trying to say. "Water creates reflections." No, I would have never guessed that. I WOULD HAVE NEVER GUESSED. It's not obvious to me at all. It needed to be stated in my directed as if I were a simple baby-child who has never heard languages spoken before. In fact maybe I'm not even a human at all, but an insect-person who does not understand your simple language or the subtleties of performance. This is why I need things stated at me. I need the relationship between Kiefer and his estranged wife because I wouldn't understand a story about a man searching through a department store for ghosts if he also weren't successful at one point and had a romantic interest. I needed the relationship because if he didn't have one, I simply wouldn't understand. I would be lost and confused. A single man? A single man in MY MOVIE that I AM WATCHING? I simply can't handle that. It's too much. I'm about to have a breakdown.

The relationship is the biggest failure of the movie, and also the largest original addition to it. I can't begin to state how much I loathe it, how much I despise it, and how much it shouldn't be there. Taking that out takes out a big problem with this movie, the problem of Americanization of a great premise. A straight remake would have made too much sense... and obviously would have been too intelligent for audiences here. And that's why all the philosophy and interesting concepts are dumbed down or removed entirely and why a relationship is added and horror and terror are taken away. This movie is designed to appeal to everyone, and instead it is mediocre at best and forgettable even on a good day.

Kid actors are terrible. I have to mention that because nearly all of the actors besides Kiefer and the brief appearance by Jason Flemyng as Ben's detective friend are universally awful. The child actors are especially horrid to behold, but even Paula Patton as Ben's wife Amy and Amy Smart are terrible. Their acting makes me want to cringe. And with Kiefer doing his best jack Bauer impersonation, he isn't much better. The thing is, at least he seems to be trying. He has enough charisma to make up for a bad plot or bad writing or whatever. Feature him throughout this movie and it might work. Feature other uninteresting and bland character whose actors can't act, and the movie falls apart. And that's exactly what happened. The plot with the family of Ben is completely superfluous to the actual plot. It being added into the story makes the story feel very bloated and frankly boring in response. The end of the movie feels like two different movies are playing out at the same time. And that is simply unacceptable for me.

When the ending comes around, and the mirror ghosts are just demon(s) and Kiefer Sutherland kidnaps a nun-

Wait.

Give me a second.





...



I need a moment to collect my thoughts.

Thoughts collected.

Did Kiefer Sutherland just kidnap a nun? Is this movie seriously culminating in Jack Bauer kidnapping a nun? This is literally the best movie. I take everything back. Nun kidnapping makes this movie more unique and greater than anything else. Every movie should involve the protagonist kidnapping a nun. I know Indiana Jones would have been miles better if he had been kidnapping nuns instead of fighting the Nazis.

I don't know what else to say. The nun gets possessed and Jack Bauer kills the demonified nun to death, in the process rehashing the ending of Into the Mirror without a fundamental understanding of that film. And that's it. I have a bad taste in my mouth. So, I want to wrap this review up.

Mirrors has its moments. At times it can almost be a decent film. The first half isn't terrible. Hell, it's almost good at times. The gore, although outrageous, was also quite creepy, effective at putting me into a creeped out mindset. The problems though, are too many to name, even though I certainly named quite a few. Comparing this movie to Into the Mirror will just make you sad. I suppose on its own it might be serviceable at times, but ultimately I think it fails as both a horror movie and an interesting one. I found the plot far too bloated, the story silly and over dumb at times, the characters flat and uninteresting, and the mirror possessions nonsensical. It is a movie that is fascinating though, in a way, because it shows how a movie can be bastardized to something sick and twisted for American audiences. I do not recommend this movie. Stick with the original Korean film.

Mirrors is a real stinker even with its few good scenes.

Movie Appraisal: The Innkeepers (2011)

Every once in a while a movie comes along that I absolutely cannot stand on any level. The Innkeepers is that movie for this October. While I'm unsure of exactly what I was expecting from this movie, it certainly wasn't whatever I just saw. Almost nothing about this movie is good. The pacing is terrible. The acting is nearly atrocious in all given cases. The characters are unlikable at best and unfathomable at worst. None of the decisions made by the characters, particularly towards the end of the film, make any sense whatsoever, and there are long periods of time when nothing at all happens.

I happen to love atmospheric horror, but this is  atmospheric horror without atmosphere. It's a ghost story without a purpose. It's a character study without character. This movie is inept. It doesn't work, wither as a movie or as a horror movie. It's boring, predictable, and somewhat pathetic. Ti West, a director I've heard a great deal of very good things about, is about the only reason this movie is even watchable. His direction is passable, even good at times, particularly when the old man shows up dead. Besides that though, none of the actors even seem to be trying. Well, that's not true, Sarah Paxton, who plays Claire, is trying way too hard. She needs to tone her acting down a notch. All I received from her character is that she was twitchy, impulsive, and really dumb. I'm sure many people are like that, but this just felt like overacting to the extreme.  Pat Healy, playing Luke, does a better job, but there are times, particularly when he is scared in the basement of the inn, where it is painfully obvious what's going on in his acting. I like subtlety in movies of this nature, but this movie looked at the word "subtle," didn't understand it, probably never even heard of it, and moved on.

The plot largely centers around the last weekend of the Yankee Pedlar Inn (incidentally in my home state of Connecticut). I have seen the inn before in Torrington, and I guess it could be creepy. Honestly, anything set in this godforsaken state could be creepy, but for the most part this movie was decidedly not creepy at all. Anyway, this last weekend, involves a bunch of shenanigans, ranging from Claire freaking out constantly, to an actress who happens to be psychic, to ghosts and spooks jumping out from all angles. Luke and Claire have attempted to try to find ghosts in the hotel before, and Luke is even in the process of making a spooky late 1990s internet page about the ghosts in the hotel despite it being 2010/2011 when the movie takes place. Ugh. The inn is supposedly haunted, but they've caught very little in the way of evidence, and near the end of the movie you find that Luke doesn't even believe in the ghosts. He's more than likely doing all of this stuff to appeal to Claire, whom he has a thing for. Claire, on the other hand, is a ball full of twitch. The girl can't stand still. She can't stop touching things and moving and twitching and screaming, and it distracted the absolute hell out of me. I didn't connect with her character at all. I didn't like her at all. I had no emotional connection with her, and that was an absolute shame.

I don't think this movie had a promising premise in any case, with or without great characters. Some ghost stories work, but one that seems based on lack of creepy visuals, lack of atmosphere, and lack of actual subtle scares is absolutely doomed to fail. Now, I generally don't like ghost movies anyway, but I had this movie recommended to me by a source I generally trust for compelling spooks and creepy stories. Not this time, it seems. This movie is so devoid of character, scares, or investment that I found myself frequently getting bored, and wishing the movie would just end already. I never do that. Hell, even The Reaping and Marronnier were compelling enough to watch the whole way through. This movie just had nothing for me. It could have been okay. I do like a well handled ghost story... and I happen to watch Ghost Hunters too, so I should love a movie like this if it is well done. But this one was not.

I don't even have more of a plot analysis than that. I have no idea if the ghosts Claire saw were real or not. That seemed to be something the movie was trying to put a question mark on. But the end of the movie completely invalidated any question of the validity of the ghost sightings... or at least of the psychic sights. And that just took away any interest I was clinging too. I figured, "Oh, it might all be in her head. She might be cracking a little. She might be making it all up." But no. Just ghosts scaring her to death because she didn't have her inhaler (since she has asthma). Another thing I have to mention is that my girlfriend had mild asthma. I see her using her inhaler every once in a while. And although Claire uses her inhaler correctly in a few scenes, there are quite a few others when she doesn't use it effectively at all. That bothered me like mad.

There is also forced humor throughout this movie that completely undermines the horror elements. Sometimes humor can be used well with horror, see The Cabin in the Woods or Hausu, but more often than not, humor is not encouraged for movies like this, particularly if it isn't well acted in the first place. I was incredibly disappointed with this piece of garbage movie even though I wasn't expecting anything but some ghosts. The tension was never there; the horror was never there. I would rather watch almost any other horror movie than this one. Avoid it. Don't see it. Don't watch it. Don't encourage it.

Oh, and just to point this out, because I love feeling superior to movie critics who are precisely the worst kinds of people. This terrible movie? Yeah, it has almost an 80% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This movie that I hated because it was a poorly made, poorly acted, poorly executed horror movie? Yeah, give it an almost stunningly positive review number. But great movies like Silent Hill: Revelation, Ghost Ship, 1408, or even the near-classic Jacob's Ladder all have worst scores. Never trust critics. Seriously. If someone tells you a horror movie has a great score, just pretend it's a bad movie. Do the opposite for films that have terrible scores. Nobody seems to know how to precisely score horror movies, especially when most critics already hate them. Well, horror movies are awesome, and true horror movies need to be known. I will always call out the crap and praise the great ones. And this movie is absolute garbage.

Movie Appraisal: Marronnier (Marrionnier) (マロニエ) (Run Like Hell) (2004)

Well, this is a pretty bad movie. Actually... this may in fact be the worst movie I've ever seen. And you know what? People need to know about this one. Everyone needs to actually see how bad a movie can be before hitting the singularity of being some crazy man's home videos or something. Because this movie is a few props short of basically being that. I... I can't even believe a movie like this actually exists. (Okay, that's a blatant lie. Yes, there are bad movies out there, and this one isn't even the worst one I've ever seen- although again, it's pretty terrible.)

Junji Ito, what did you do? Why did you do this? Why, Junji Ito? WHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYY!?

WHY?

As she stares blankly at me, the whys just keep piling up.

Oh boy, this is such an awful movie, but I loved every second of it. I also hated myself ever second I loved it. I mean seriously, I hate those movies that are called so bad they're good. I hate the phrase. I hate the sentiment. This movie is plainly bad. It's never good, never does anything that I could say is even in the same ballpark as good, but I still like it because I'm insane and quite probably demented. Call it a fault of mine. I like bad movies.

I... I have a problem. I have a large problem. People shouldn't like this movie. Marronnier is such a confusing mess of a movie. It shouldn't be a movie that anybody actively enjoys watching... and yet... and yet...

How could anybody say "No" to a face like that?

I was so confused... baffled really... by what was happening if anything was happening at all. I don't think I understood who the main characters were until about 3/4 of the way through the movie. And even then I didn't get it because it was incomprehensible. Honestly, this is the movie version of Cthulhu. That's the only plausible explanation. It felt too dreamlike and too unreal. Too many things made literally no sense. Too many scenes moved too quickly to actually figure out what was happening. Lines would begin and end before I could make sense of what was actually being said. The camera work is some of the worst I've ever seen, pushing aside the lowest of the low budget films. It was like the filter and effects over the actual film had a mind of their own and started putting sparkles and flares all over the movie... over every picture... over... over everything... EVERY THING. Do you understand? Can you even comprehend it?

I can't even believe what I just watched was even an actual movie. I'm baffled and amazed. My mind is absolutely and literally blown. That was such an awful movie, but... but maybe I can make it make sense. Maybe I can see it as something beautiful and perfect... porcelain even...

What.

So, I guess the movie is about a dude, Numai, who kills women and turns them into large marrionette dolls. Numai has a fixation on a woman who really has a thing for dolls that are called marronnier (which I think refer to marrionettes, but I could be mistaken). He stalks this woman, Marino, much to her own dismay. Anyway, a man named Iwata, Numai's teacher or master or something... it's impossible to really tell, but I think Numai is an apprentice or a friend of his or something... Anyway, Iwata kills his wife who he has never so much as touched, gives her a burial in a pond or mud or something... and somehow that burial in that specific place turns her body to wax, which he then carves into a sentient (slave?) doll who is alive for reasons.

Numai then brings Iwata more girls to turn into dolls, but Iwata rebels and is subsequently killed by Numai. There's a lot more, like a man who looks like he's gong to rape Marino at one point, but it murdered is a fairly gruesome fashion by Numai, I believe, only to be found by his stalker ex-lover, who cradles the would-be rapist and takes him home with her. What? I don't even know. The world of Marronnier is a strange and often baffling place. I would certainly be terrified to live there.

Anyway, it seems that Numai mostly wants to have Marino as either his lover or a doll or both, although that's never made entirely clear. He seems to at first just be stalking her and wanting to give her presents and shower her with affection and such... and then he suddenly wants to make her a doll by any means necessary. His motivations are all over the place and make no sense whatsoever, but his character is a self-contradiction anyway. The dude won't die and randomly teleports more times than I can count just to be slightly more intimidating. Or maybe that's his magical power in this.. can I even call this place a world? Or should I just call it like I see it and say that it's some kind of broken realm of humanity that has the most disturbing people populating it.

See, the problem here though is that Numai is not intimidating in the slightest; he's simply creepy. I mean, seriously, the dude is the creepiest man I have ever seen in my entirely life. LOOK AT THAT MAN'S FACE UP THERE AND TELL ME HE ISN'T! Just looking at his smile kind of makes my skin crawl ever so slightly.  Anyway, the entire time that Marino is stalked, she is looked after by her best friend, Mitsuba... who may also be in love with her? I don't even know. Japan is a weird and terrifying place for love. There's at least one longing look from Mitsuba to Marino. That's all I know. Hell, maybe they're even lovers. I don't even know. In my headcanon they are totally lovers and Mitsuba is awesome. Then again I have no way to prove or disprove my assertion there. I just want to write raunchy fanfictions about this terrible movie that nobody even knows about. For kicks and giggles.

The main point of the movie seems to be the sentient dolls. They're supposed to be the talking point about the film and the scary part, I think. And I'll tell you, at 1AM, they are pretty creepy. I'm currently in a room that probably has... oh... let's say ten dolls or so in it, all of various sizes and looks about them. I have never been the biggest fan of dolls, sometimes I can feel their cold, dead eyes staring at me. It's creepy is the point I'm making here, and I'm kind of creeping myself out here too... whoops... I thought that many of the bits with the dolls in the movie were actually creepy and kind of effective as a horror type of thing. I certainly didn't hate them. I felt that they were some of the strongest bits of the movie. They could even be the reason I find the movie watchable.

The confusion of the movie run through the roof though. I mean, most of the time I had no idea what was going on or who was on camera or what the plot was. The beginning introduced and subsequently killed off characters so quickly that I had no idea who I was even supposed to be identifying with. And the ending was a jumble of thoughts and images put into a camera. It was more a dream sequence than a story by that point. Now, I don't mind a dream sequence, but the whole movie felt like an extended fevered dream and a doll fetish dream to boot.

The gore effects were pretty good all around despite everything else. They were obviously fake, but that made it easier to watch for me. I hate tons of realistic gore in movies. Lots of gore makes me feel uncomfortable. Instead it looks like they had a fun time with fake body parts and buckets of blood. And I enjoyed the ride of blood myself. You could call me a fan of riding the blood train.

I think I've lost my mind.

Hideyuki Kobayashi directed this film and he sure made one ugly and strangely beautiful film. It's certainly not good, like I said, but it has a feel to it that I kind of like despite the terrible quality and nonsense that could be only called a plot by those who are deranged mental patients. Junji Ito is usually good at writing, and maybe the plot itself would have been fine, if a bit simplistic, but there were so many sequences of unreality and confusing times (and what was even going on?) that Junji Ito's best quality of writing really suffered. The plot came off as hacked together. The dialogue was so simple as to be inane, and the characters, besides Numai and Mitsuba, came off as clunky one-dimensional pieces of fluff, not fit for any movie. Numai was there as the creepy dude and he did what he was paid to do, and Mitsuba, strangely, did a great job as the hero part, hacking limbs off and genuinely looking like she was having a good time throughout the movie. I enjoyed her performance the most.

Junji Ito's cameo though was the absolute best part of the entire movie, and probably the best acting performance of the entire movie as well... sadly. I wish the movie could have just been him driving Marino around. It would have been a better movie all around... and everybody would have been happy.

The movie should have been simplistic. It's House of Wax but Japanese. Simple. There. But it turns out to be an overlong and incredibly complex, almost psychological and symbolic, look at a confusing and baffling premise. I'd like to think that the film has more to it than what it showed, but I don't think I'd believe it myself. It could be an allegory on stalking, and sometimes that would make sense... but other times it just comes off as a not great movie without any deeper meanings. I like the allegory of stalking idea, it would make some scenes actually make sense rather than being some of the worst scenes I have ever seen in movies.

The expressions in this movie are priceless. I have to point that out. Boy oh boy do the characters make some absolutely perfect expression. There is also a banging soundtrack, it's another fun part of the film. This movie though, despite my saying I enjoyed it kind of is really best to be watched with others and to make fun of it. Numai is creepy and believable as a villain and the movie is so weird that it actually starts becoming quite creepy itself, but it never reached that pinnacle of actually being scary. It's easier to make fun of than it ever could be to be scared of.  Case in point: Marino catches a goddamn high heel in her mouth. WHAAAAAAT? Then there's Mitsuba and her buster battle axe which she uses to cut off limbs. Piles and piles of limbs. Somehow Marino gets a sledgehammer out of nowhere. I assume she took it out of her nonexistent pockets. Then there's Numai at the end of the film, suddenly teleporting bandages to wrap around his disfigured face out of nowhere. I mean, unless he was expecting a terrible injury and came prepared with a bunch of bandages. I would have loved to have heard his thoughts there. "Oh dude, I should bring some bandages just in case these two women somehow injure me. I mean, they won't kill me obviously, but there's always that chance that I might get some scrapes and stuff and I really would rather not get those suckers infected. That would just hella suck." Also how the hell did Numai get Marino again after being in a bear trap? Did she help him? Did he somehow get out himself after being in a bear trap? Why wasn't that scene shown? Why did he teleport out of the bear trap? Why wasn't he limping after being in a bear trap? Why wouldn't he die? Why were the dolls alive? Why was Iwata so weird? Hell, why was half the cast so weird? Why didn't Marino do anything effective?  Why didn't she just stab him to death? Why was she thinking that stuff at the end? Why would she keep a doll of her doll brother and his doll girlfriend/wife with her in the same apartment? Did she actually get away or did Numai win? What the hell was with the whole scene where she's in white and he's under some covers? What about that whole bath scene earlier in the movie? What was going on there?

A lot of those questions seriously have led me to believe that the whole film is an allegory on stalking and what it does to one's psyche. Marino is plagued by terrible thoughts and bad dreams because of Numai, her stalker. He wants her to be a puppet on strings for him, but she refuses even if she isn't the stronger girl around. She fights him with the help of her friends, who eventually leave her to play their own parts. Her brother leaves her to be with his beloved. And her loyal friend Mitsuba stays with her until the bitter end, until eventually she too becomes victim to the terrible pain of dealing with a stalker. Marino is all alone at the end. Maybe she actually kills her stalker or maybe it's simply that she finally makes him go away, finally tells him off for good. She feels that she is free finally, but even as we see her "normal" life we see that she sees others as dolls and... yes, she herself is a doll too, her strings being pulled by her own stalker. She is controlled by him every bit as much as she feels that she controls her own actions. He dictates how she reacts, what she does, and  how embittered she is. Dead or not he still is in her mind, still controlling her, still causing her to fear even despite not being there.

And right there, if that's actually what the movie is about, I'd like it quite a bit more. I think I've put more thought into it though than the filmmakers ever did, but maybe I'd be surprised.

Anywho, I cannot in any way recommend this movie. It's not easy to find. It's not easy to watch. It's not really a fun experience. If you are a die-hard fan of Junji Ito's writing or really crappy movies about puppets, I guess I can't tell you to stay away from this movie, but do realize that it's not good even if I personally did kind of get a kick out of it. Watch other movies. So many other movies are better. It's a travesty that you aren't watching them. It's a travesty that I'm not watching them. Instead I'm a puppet on a string, subjecting myself to terrible movies so often that... that I must be losing my very mind. Heh heh...

(Also, as some housekeeping, this movie is incredibly hard to find information for. Some of the other reviews I looked at had multiple different names for the director of the movie, either with the name being Akira Kobayashi or Hideyuki Kobayashi, which I've gone with. Also, this is a very low budget film, so I don't want to be really mean about the whole thing. I did kind of enjoy it, but you can really tell the extreme low budget of the movie. Hell, I made a student film a few years ago on a lower budget than this and it looked better. The visuals here are legitimately painful to watch. The pacing is terrible, with the movie moving too quickly through many scenes and an eighty minute or so running time feeling like so much longer. The editing is painful... hell, most of the movie is simply painful. I may like some parts of it, I may like the idea of it... I may even think that the movie isn't the worst movie I've ever seen... but that's me being generous. It's a terrible, painful movie that nobody should be subjected to at all. Many of the reviewers I've read have an intense dislike of the movie. It's certainly a bad movie, but I can't say that I hate it. I just simply can't muster up the emotion to hate it. Another note is that I can't find exactly when the movie came out. I've seen most dates be 2004, but Wikipedia (a reliable source if there ever was one OBVIOUSLY) lists the movie as coming out in 2002. And at least one reviewer lists the release date as 2005. So, I'm playing it safe and going with the majority. I've found so little on the movie that I think it's best to play it safe.

Anyway, that's my housekeeping notes. Avoid this movie at all costs. If you have watched it, I'm so sorry that you probably had no fun at all watching it. At least I kind of thought it was amusing and okay... but I can find a lot to like in a movie that's hated. Most people can't. And I don't blame them at all for that.)

Movie Appraisal: Psych: 9 (2010)

I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be a psychological horror movie. But it's just so blatant in the way it's trying to be psychological. It hits you over the head again-and-again as if to say, "Hey buddy, I am a Psychological Horror movie that is trying to be like other, better, psychological horror movies, and I want to be crazy and scary and..." And then it just keeps going on and on about nothing for some time, all the while you've stopped listening because you already know what the movie is going to say. It's insanely predicable from beginning to end, so much so that I have to believe that it was the intent of the filmmakers to make it that predictable, despite it taking all tension and horror out of the movie.

While the directing is decent, and some of the acting (especially from Michael Biehn and Cary Elwes) is arguably very good, the movie suffers from an insufferable main character who nobody in their right mind (literally) could ever relate to in the slightest way. This character ruins a great deal of the movie for me simply because she offers nothing to the narrative despite basically being the lynchpin of the narrative. Her entire character exists to redirect any and all suspicion from her character, but it is so badly done that very early on in the movie its apparent that she's the killer, she's making up people in her head, and she's pretty crazy in the head. I certainly sympathize with her plight, but I find that the writing of the character was... not great... not even a little bit great. If you're going to make a movie like this, don't make it predictable. Don't make it so that the main character is definitely the bad guy and it's apparent that the main character is the bad guy early on in the movie. Don't give me fake tension that somebody else close to her is the bad guy when it's apparent that she's the bad guy. Don't show me her doing crazy things like writing "Give me my baby." on a wall a hundred times and tell me that she's perfectly normal and not murdering women.

I know the movie kind of sort of leaves it a tiny bit up to your interpretation, but that's stupid, and anybody who believes that it wasn't her doing all of those awful things actually must be as crazy as she is. I simply found this movie annoying in a great deal of ways. Despite the decent directing, decent acting, and decent imagery, the movie never hits me as anything but bad. It's never scary. NEVER SCARY. There's never any tension, be it plot tension, character tension, or any other kind of tension. NEVER TENSE. There's no way to relate to the character we spend most of the film following around. MAIN CHARACTER DOESN'T WORK. And the backstory is presented in such a hamfisted and awkward way that I didn't care. Of course she's nuts. Of course she was raped as a child. Of course she was a patient at the same hospital she's doing records for. It was all so predictable and all so convenient. And of course she has selective amnesia. I mean, this is every cliche in the book of writing. It's ridiculous. I mean it. I can literally do nothing but make fun of the writing of this movie because it is simply so bad.

Psych: 9 could have been handled better in so many ways that it's actually upsetting that they mishandled it so badly. It could have been a story of a woman coming to terms with an old psychosis, but no, they had to add in that she was murdering women, imagining people, overtly going insane, and basically being a clear candidate for being locked away forever. The fact that Michael Biehn's detective character basically gives up on the case and never pursues her is literally baffling with just how crazy she is coming off. And at the end of the movie she gets her damn baby because that's how crappily written plots work out. The ending was just so standard and off-putting and boring. Hell, most of the film could be described like that but most standard psychological horror movies have some subtlety and are usually not overtly apparent in their plots points.

I watched this whole movie, but I didn't necessarily enjoy it. With all the good psychological horror templates to take from, they came up with this nonsense? And I can't blame the actors. They did a good job with what was there, and the director was very competent and although the movie is never scary, it does have some creepy vibes. It's the writing that really gets me down on this film.

Anyway, this is a psychological horror film to avoid. Also, what is it with the "9" at the end of titles, these days? You have this movie,  Session 9, District 9, 9, and on and on. I have no idea why the 9 had to be in any of those titles really, and it's alarming how prevalent the number 9 has become in movies. I'm definitely overreacting, but it was one of the first thoughts I had while watching the movie.

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.

Movie Appraisal: Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

"There is no way out of here. It will be dark soon. There is no way out of here."

You said it, Torgo. I don't think I'll ever be able to get this film out of my head. It's like a disease that won't let up... It's like I've watched the movie in The Ring except it's not some creepy little fifty pound girl who's going to come out of my television and get me, it's a brain aneurysm caused by anger and confusion over this film and just how bad it was.

I watched this film not knowing what to expect. I knew it was bad... Hell, I knew it was REALLY BAD, but I thought that maybe somebody got it all wrong... maybe they didn't know what they were talking about and this is really and fantastic and underrated gem of a movie. No... no... It's not. Don't watch this film. Don't even think about watching it. It's not fun, not enjoyable... it's like getting repeatedly stabbed in the chest with all the pain that entails, without dying, and also being completely bored and wishing you could just end it all right there and then.

Am I even making sense anymore? Okay, this film, nowhere near as bad as the abomination that is Space Thunder Kids, but it's bad. The film is amateurish, and is shot like a really bad high school student film. The acting, although bad, is actually usually palatable when the main female lead isn't on screen. The main female lead, I believe her name is Margaret or Maggie... possibly both... I don't know or care and I'm not going to use my brain to think about it... well, she happens to be my least favorite character is any film I have ever seen. I wanted her to suffer in a way I've never wanted any character to suffer. Useless doesn't describe her... I want a word that is more intense to describe her... rocklike... a big sack of nothing... DAMMIT, WOMAN! Why couldn't she do anything? Why did she get tired constantly? Did she have brittle bone disease? Some kind of horrible disease that make her weaker than a newborn kitten that also happens to have no legs, and may in fact be pond scum. THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!!! I hate that woman so much! She gives human beings a bad name. No, Maggie, when it seems like some creepy guy might try to take advantage of you, you do not just stand there staring at him awkwardly, not backing away or trying to get away at all... you don't do absolutely nothing... The only thing that saved you was that Torgo was a decent dude, who although a bit of a moron himself, was smarter than your stupid idiotic self. WHY THE HELL DID YOU KEEP CHANGING YOUR STUPID MIND ABOUT WHERE TO GO AND WHAT TO DO!!?!? Why did you fall on the ground every five seconds? Were you that tired? How can any human be that tired and not be on a freaking respirator in some hospital somewhere looking for a lung transplant or dying of awful cancer or something. I'm not even saying this in jest. What the hell was that woman doing?

Moving on, I need to talk about some of the positives of this film to get the awful taste out of my mouth. I liked the music mostly, believe it or not. It was pretty decent and it set the mood pretty well. Torgo, the caretaker of... wherever they were... was pretty awesome. I would have watched a film of him just talking or doing stuff. Hell, a film of Torgo doing his taxes would have been more enjoyable than this. The Master's mustache was pretty awesome. I think that's it for positives.

Since most of this film is made out of negatives, it's really hard for me to precisely focus on what the worst things are, although I am damn well going to try.

The dubbing was awful. The cinematography (That is way too technical a word to call the crap that is this film.) is atrocious. I'm pretty certain every cut is awful... right before the editing cut the character might be running away and then it cuts and the character has stopped, turned around INSTANTANEOUSLY and looks very comfortable talking to another character.

I've never seen a movie make a cat fight (and by "cat fight" I mean women fighting each other for some reason only they seem to know) unappealing and frankly weird. It was awkward and uninteresting. I'm not the kind of dude who even cares about stuff like that because it's sexist or whatever... but I was bored to tears of the movie by this point, and I see that these chicks are going to start fighting and I start thinking, "Man, this might get at least a little fun to watch." No. It wasn't fun. It wasn't fun at all. It was like watching grass grow. Worse. It was worse than watching grass grow.

The movie was boring, made no sense, had little to no quality to it... had stupid women... stupid men... stupid everything... and I just... I want it to end! Stop playing those images in my head! Torgo, save me!

I can praise Torgo. He was really the sole saving grace of this film. (Okay, he didn't save it, but I enjoyed when the dude was on screen.) He really was the only decent thing to see here and I thought he was entertaining.

Okay, on to more negatives: "Well, sound does travel a long way at night." 

.....what.....? 

...what...? 

WHAT!? 

I don't think night has anything to do with the way sound travels, genius. I don't think darkness or light HAS ANYRHIGB TO DO WITHT HE WAY SOUND TRAVELS.  I know there are typos there in the previous sentence. I don't even care. I can't type without almost throwing my computer across the room I'm so angry at that STUPID line. So, that's the best I can do without breaking anything. I'm not ever reading that sentence again because I'll probably start spitting blood out of every orifice in my body hoping I can create a rage explosion rather than just plain flipping out and watching my brain rip itself out of my head and hunt down the actor who said that line, living or dead, and telling him about simple physics and sound waves... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I'M GOING TO THROW MY TOASTER THROUGH DEATH ITSELF BECAUSE OF THIS MOVIE!!!

Okay... hey, Torgo... no, I'm fine. I'm fine. Thanks, buddy... No, I'm calm. Look, I'm very calm. Okay... yeah... Do I need to keep going, Torgo? Please, I want to stop. I don't want to remember anything else...

Okay... okay... you're right... I'm almost done. I'm almost done...

So, the noises in this "film" are atrocious. There's an EXPLOSION at the end that's supposed to be thunder and instead sounded like nuclear fusion. I seriously thought that the shack had been H-bombed out of existence... not even kidding. Oh, and earlier in the film some... uh... I'm going to say that they were supposed to be animal noises... were going on, and it sounded like a whole bunch of people were howling and vomiting off-screen. They must have been watching the finished version of this film because those were the exact EXACT sounds that I was making after I saw this film.

This movie is more of a comedy than... uh... whatever it was supposed to be. There were a few times I laughed, but I don't think I was supposed to laugh. I don't think I was meant to laugh. I don't think they wanted me to laugh... I don't want to laugh anymore... TORGO! TOrgo, I don't want to laugh anymore! Make them stop... I don't... no... no... The movie's not funny, Torgo... It's a bad film... full of bad people... bad everything... I want it all to stop. WHERE'S MY TOASTER!? I'M GOING TO TAKE YOU DOWN, MASTER!!!!

Give me a second.

Okay... okay... Torgo gave me a strange look and now I feel a little better. DO YOUR TAXES, TORGO! I'LL BE FINE HERE REVIEWING THIS MOVIE!!

So, a lot (and when I say "a lot" I simply mean, "more than there ever should have been") of the film has a couple making out in a car and drinking... at various different times... and the police come and tell them off... Why not, I guess? I guess it makes sense. (No, it doesn't. it has nothing to do with any of the main story of the film and is, in the end, completely useless and astoundingly stupid.)

Torgo, I think that's the end of my review. Are you proud of me for keeping my sanity?