So, remember when I said that Prom Night 3: The Last Kiss seemed pretty tame? No onscreen carnage, very little language, and a general lack of sex? Well, I looked it up on the trusty ol' IMDB, only to discover that what I had seen was apparently an editted-for-cable version. Because, you know, when a fan of horror movies is sitting at home, he'd much rather watch a watered-down version of a campy slasher comedy than the actual movie he expected. SHEESH!
With that in mind, I decided to watch Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil, the second movie on the Prom Night DVD Netflix sent me.. No ghost/demon girls, no Colin Farrell look-alikes, and (thankfully) almost no humor. This was a straight up, old-school, unapologetic slasher film. I loved it.
The opening scene ties this movie to the previous three: It takes place at the same prom that killed Mary Lou 2 movies ago, in the same school that the first 3 movies were set in. We meet a young couple who decide to duck out of the prom to, you know, do what teens do when they leave a prom early. Considering the place became an inferno later that night, I'd say they made a wise choice.
Sadly, a disturbed young man with a religious fetish disagrees. He murders them at their makeout spot, and is arrested. Cut to "today", and we meet 2 priests. One is retiring, and the other is going to be his replacement. His main responsibility? To keep the previously-seen murderer, Brother Jonas, from going apeshit ever again. They keep him locked away, strapped down, and heavily sedated, believing him to be possessed by an evil presence.
The young priest solemnly vows to keep the Jonas Brother(ha, bet you thought I was past the lousy puns after my Mary Lou gag last time, didn't ya?) sedated and confined, and basically says "Screw it" the minute the old codger leaves. He skips Jonas' first dose of happy juice, and tries talking to him, which goes about as well as you'd expect. Later he is knocked out, and Jonas escapes to kill again!
Well, not really. Jonas sticks around long enough to see the young priest make a phone call to his boss, THEN Jonas kills the guy and decides to paint the town red. Why wait? Eh, maybe the film needed some padding to make it feature-length. Anyway, Jonas decides to change his appearance, and settles on looking like that guy from C&C Music Factory. "Everybody dance now!" Seriously, has ANYONE in a movie ever been intimidating, when they wore their hair in a ponytail?
We then meet our 4 main characters: we have Meagan, our Final Girl(a very young-looking, and rather cute Nicole De Boer, the only person in the cast I recognized); Laura, her more-interesting and fun-loving best friend(seriously, why do slasher films always make the best friend so much more lively than the leading ladies? Halloween 4&5 had the same thing going on); and their boyfriends, Mark and Jeff. I know, I know, why such a low body count? But if you count the young priest, the young couple in the first scene, and the trucker who gives a hitchhiking Jonas Brother a ride, it's not really that bad. Plus, we also get a young doofus who is Mark's younger(supposedly, but they looked about the same age to me) brother, Jonathan. So, yeah, about 9-10 victims overall, by closing credits. Not too shabby,
While meeting our "heroes", there's plenty of swearing, so I'm fairly certain this movie wasn't cut in any major way. Oh, and there's some quick lesbianism. I thought maybe the scene was put in as a jokey reference to the infamous shower scene in the second movie, but I could be wrong.
They ditch the prom because the guys had planned a night of partying at an abandoned seminary that had been converted into a summer home. See, I haven't even described most of the deaths yet, and already this movie has more logic, plot and atmosphere. Anyway, the teens freak out when they discover that the party they had set up has been stolen/vandalized by our resident psycho, Jonas Brother. But, since their party would be just as illegal, they quickly decide to keep the theft and vandalism to themselves. Wusses.
There's an odd thing in the film where the Meagan character is barefoot. Now, supposedly they were just ditching their prom, so where the heck did her shoes go? Plus after she breaks a wine bottle and cuts her foot on the glass, why didn't she put shoes or something on at that point? There's a scene late in the movie where the Mad Monk is able to track her because of the bloody footprints. I dunno, if I was in pain from a massive shard of glass that had been imbedded in my foot, I'd find some damned shoes. Fast!
Now, we come to the part of the movie that sets it apart from last week's relatively tame Prom Night 3...nudity. Thank you, movie. The cute friend, Laura, has an equally cute butt, as it turns out. Yay! Sadly, she is waaaaay too quickly dispatched. Her friends think she's just had a tiff with her boyfriend, and decide to search for her.
Laura's boyfriend is the next to go. Now here is where the movie does something nasty. Brother Jonas already killed Laura-with-the-nice-butt and her boyfriend, right? Well, he takes their corpses and NAILS THEM BOTH TO CROSSES. Overkill much? But wait, it gets better: as Meagan and her boyfriend watch, the Jonas Brother lights the dead, crucified bodies on fire. Seriously, how much more dead do they need to be? Still, it's a pretty effective scene. In fact, the whole film is filmed well, with some very effective, moody scenes. There was one scene earlier, involving a flickering candle and a wine cellar that had me somewhat uneasy, what with all the shadows jumping around and all.
Anyway, Meagan's boyfriend is picked off very easily at this point, and Meagan becomes a ripoff of that '80's movie about the hooker who goes vigilante, Angel.(remember THAT franchise? No? Well, I do...) She finds a gun and a box of ammunition, and locks 'n' loads. Kinda cool, in a cheesy b-movie way, until she wastes most of her bullets missing the guy. Eventually he DOES die, because the cavalry arrives. The movie then ends like the 3rd one, on a cliffhanger that will likely never be resolved. Brother Jonas opens his eyes and appears to die, followed by Meagan, in a different rescue vehicle opening HER eyes.
Is she now possessed? Did she just sense his death? Who knows? The ambulances drive away during the start of the closing credits, giving me hope that there might be another scene to resolve this, but alas, it's just THE END.
So, there you have it: a more traditional slasher film that nicely book-ends the series and makes up for the tame edits in the previous sequel. 3 out of 5 trees for this one. Bonus points for making me forget about the dull, toothless remake of the original PN from a few years ago. Not sure yet what next week's slasher film will be: I was hoping to do The Eye 3, but a) it's a ghost story, not really slashery in the parts I saw, and b) I fell asleep waiting for the Netflix Instant thingy to reload it after it said my online signal slowed it down. I guess that's why you don't start a movie at 11 p.m.
Eh, whatever. See ya next week!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Prom Night III: The Last Kiss
Ask any person what the point of a slasher movie is, and they'll probably say "The kills, the violence, the effects, etc,"...you get the idea. So, when you rent the third movie in a slasher-film franchise, you expect some of that, right? Well, apparently Prom Night 3: The Last Kiss missed the memo. I've seen more blood on the Disney Channel.
Our "hero", a doofus named Alex, looks like a young Colin Farrell. He's feeling pressure to choose a college, to travel with his best bud, or to be seduced by Mary Lou(Retton?), a soul who escaped from Hell. Guess which option he chooses?
The story begins in Hell, which is apparently a Robert Palmer music video. Seriously, the demons are all female, and are dancing in a row to bad choreography. Delightfully batshit. Mary Lou, the antagonist of the previous sequel returns, albeit played by a different actress. Her plan, apparently, is to use her new-found freedom to turn the Prom Night franchise into a horror spoof. And the "comedy" mostly consists of "wacky" school announcements. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either.
Right off the bat, we have several bland murders: the school janitor, who has about a minute of screen time before becoming Mary Lou(Retton's)'s first victim; the principal, who doesn't necessarily die, but does lose a finger in the dumbest, schmuckiest way possible; and Alex's science teacher, a guy who gets a whole TWO scenes before dying. And while there is some blood, most of it is during reaction shots. Lame.
Alex helps Mary Lou(Retton; heh, I NEVER get tired of that joke) dispose of the teacher's body, allows her to seduce him, and even goes along with her idea that they're now an "item". Why? Is she threatening him, blackmailing him, is she the only female who will even look at him? Nope, on all three counts. He does it because without it, I guess there'd be no film. Heaven forbid they just rewrite the script and give the guy motivations that follow a path of logic.
Eh, in the time it took me to write down that rant, we had another murder: the school's guidance counselor is killed by a battery acid perm treatment. They should've called this movie 9021-Ohmygodisthismoviedumb. Okay, back to Alex...he becomes The Fonz(I'm still bitter about Scream, shut up), and manages to look even MORE like Colin Farrell. The movie slows to a crawl, with more "wacky" hi-larity: we get to see Alex's dad go off on a rant, followed by Mary Lou(Retton) killing the dickish football player/bully these movies always have.
After burying another body, Alex decides that maybe he should've stayed with his old girlfriend. Duh. He tries to win her back, in one of those scenes that only ever occur in movies, complete with bystanders clapping and cheering for Alex. Whatever. Demon-Girl demon-strates(ha!) her devotion to Alex by interrupting the one genuinely funny scene thus far: a spoof of one of those "sexual disease filmstrips". Pretty funny, until Mary Lou(Retton!! Try to stop me movie, I dare you!) interrupts to tell Alex that she won't let him break up with her.
Let's fast-forward, shall we? The movie won't mind, I promise. The bodies all get discovered, just as Alex decides to try to go back to being the person he was at the beginning of the film. He tells his best friend all about Mary Lou(Retton!!! HA), which gets the friend murdered. When Mary Lou(Ret--ah, I'll give you a break this one time) threatens to kill all of his loved ones, Alex decides to go on the run. This leads to a montage of Alex arming himself, to the tune of a rap song that is so lame it uses crutches. And he gets arrested anyway, so what was all the planning for?
Demon-Girl tells Alex that she plans to marry him. Why? Who knows, the scriptwriters sure didn't. Oh, and the principal(you remember, the idiot who cut off his own finger several paragraphs ago?) reappears, to announce to the media that despite several murders, the Prom will go on as planned. Yay. At least it's not called a Spring Formal, am I right? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Anyway, Mary Lou Who-The-Hell-Cares breaks him out of jail, and lets him know that she plans to kill the prom(again? She should choose ANOTHER hobby, like collecting state quarters.), so he convinces a cop to drive him to the prom. At gunpoint. Because nothing says "I'm innocent" better than holding hostages. The film-makers then decide to rip off Evil Dead's demon-cam, as Mary Lou flies through the school, kills the nerdy guy who escorted Alex's girlfriend Sarah to the Prom. Alex chooses Mary Lou, but SARAH goes to Hell. HUH?!?
In Hell, Sarah meets most of the movie's murder victims, and is chased by them, but gets the upper hand. Alex and Mary Lou go to a Hell-Prom(like this movie wasn't Hell enough?), filled with demons with no fashion sense. Or zombies. Or whatever. Mary Lou tries to kill Alex, so that he can be her Date From Hell for eternity, but Sarah interrupts the ritual with a flamethrower(if they're all dead, what will THAT do?), and she and Alex get away.
They find a car(yeah, right), and drive out of Hell, and decide to split up, so that Alex can call his folks and tell them that he escaped from a psychotic Hell-Bitch I guess. Turns out, to the surprise of no one, that they're STILL in Hell, and the movie ends in a never-to-be-resolved cliffhanger. Then we get the FULL version of that godawful rap song over the credits. Movie, I hate you. One baby-eating tree out of 5.
So, what did I learn this week?
-You can apparently make a direct sequel to the WRONG film in a horror franchise.
-I'm the only guy who remembers Mary Lou Retton.
-Rappers can make "American Woman" suck.
Next week(or, more likely, later this week): Prom Night IV....
Our "hero", a doofus named Alex, looks like a young Colin Farrell. He's feeling pressure to choose a college, to travel with his best bud, or to be seduced by Mary Lou(Retton?), a soul who escaped from Hell. Guess which option he chooses?
The story begins in Hell, which is apparently a Robert Palmer music video. Seriously, the demons are all female, and are dancing in a row to bad choreography. Delightfully batshit. Mary Lou, the antagonist of the previous sequel returns, albeit played by a different actress. Her plan, apparently, is to use her new-found freedom to turn the Prom Night franchise into a horror spoof. And the "comedy" mostly consists of "wacky" school announcements. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either.
Right off the bat, we have several bland murders: the school janitor, who has about a minute of screen time before becoming Mary Lou(Retton's)'s first victim; the principal, who doesn't necessarily die, but does lose a finger in the dumbest, schmuckiest way possible; and Alex's science teacher, a guy who gets a whole TWO scenes before dying. And while there is some blood, most of it is during reaction shots. Lame.
Alex helps Mary Lou(Retton; heh, I NEVER get tired of that joke) dispose of the teacher's body, allows her to seduce him, and even goes along with her idea that they're now an "item". Why? Is she threatening him, blackmailing him, is she the only female who will even look at him? Nope, on all three counts. He does it because without it, I guess there'd be no film. Heaven forbid they just rewrite the script and give the guy motivations that follow a path of logic.
Eh, in the time it took me to write down that rant, we had another murder: the school's guidance counselor is killed by a battery acid perm treatment. They should've called this movie 9021-Ohmygodisthismoviedumb. Okay, back to Alex...he becomes The Fonz(I'm still bitter about Scream, shut up), and manages to look even MORE like Colin Farrell. The movie slows to a crawl, with more "wacky" hi-larity: we get to see Alex's dad go off on a rant, followed by Mary Lou(Retton) killing the dickish football player/bully these movies always have.
After burying another body, Alex decides that maybe he should've stayed with his old girlfriend. Duh. He tries to win her back, in one of those scenes that only ever occur in movies, complete with bystanders clapping and cheering for Alex. Whatever. Demon-Girl demon-strates(ha!) her devotion to Alex by interrupting the one genuinely funny scene thus far: a spoof of one of those "sexual disease filmstrips". Pretty funny, until Mary Lou(Retton!! Try to stop me movie, I dare you!) interrupts to tell Alex that she won't let him break up with her.
Let's fast-forward, shall we? The movie won't mind, I promise. The bodies all get discovered, just as Alex decides to try to go back to being the person he was at the beginning of the film. He tells his best friend all about Mary Lou(Retton!!! HA), which gets the friend murdered. When Mary Lou(Ret--ah, I'll give you a break this one time) threatens to kill all of his loved ones, Alex decides to go on the run. This leads to a montage of Alex arming himself, to the tune of a rap song that is so lame it uses crutches. And he gets arrested anyway, so what was all the planning for?
Demon-Girl tells Alex that she plans to marry him. Why? Who knows, the scriptwriters sure didn't. Oh, and the principal(you remember, the idiot who cut off his own finger several paragraphs ago?) reappears, to announce to the media that despite several murders, the Prom will go on as planned. Yay. At least it's not called a Spring Formal, am I right? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Anyway, Mary Lou Who-The-Hell-Cares breaks him out of jail, and lets him know that she plans to kill the prom(again? She should choose ANOTHER hobby, like collecting state quarters.), so he convinces a cop to drive him to the prom. At gunpoint. Because nothing says "I'm innocent" better than holding hostages. The film-makers then decide to rip off Evil Dead's demon-cam, as Mary Lou flies through the school, kills the nerdy guy who escorted Alex's girlfriend Sarah to the Prom. Alex chooses Mary Lou, but SARAH goes to Hell. HUH?!?
In Hell, Sarah meets most of the movie's murder victims, and is chased by them, but gets the upper hand. Alex and Mary Lou go to a Hell-Prom(like this movie wasn't Hell enough?), filled with demons with no fashion sense. Or zombies. Or whatever. Mary Lou tries to kill Alex, so that he can be her Date From Hell for eternity, but Sarah interrupts the ritual with a flamethrower(if they're all dead, what will THAT do?), and she and Alex get away.
They find a car(yeah, right), and drive out of Hell, and decide to split up, so that Alex can call his folks and tell them that he escaped from a psychotic Hell-Bitch I guess. Turns out, to the surprise of no one, that they're STILL in Hell, and the movie ends in a never-to-be-resolved cliffhanger. Then we get the FULL version of that godawful rap song over the credits. Movie, I hate you. One baby-eating tree out of 5.
So, what did I learn this week?
-You can apparently make a direct sequel to the WRONG film in a horror franchise.
-I'm the only guy who remembers Mary Lou Retton.
-Rappers can make "American Woman" suck.
Next week(or, more likely, later this week): Prom Night IV....
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Jennifer's Body
This week's movie is Jennifer's Body, a Merchant Ivory production starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. It's the heartwarming tale of....no, wait, that's Howard's End, or Remains of the Day or something. As with my first movie commentary, SPOILERS A-PLENTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jennifer's Body was great the first time I saw it...when it was called Tamara. Seriously, the plots are so similar, I can't believe it's not outright plagiarism. Don't movie studio guys hire lawyers to keep tabs on this kind of thing?
Anyway, for those of you who haven't seen Tamara, you might still like this one. Jennifer, played by Megan Fox, is the sexy, popular, smart girl in high school. Her best friend since early childhood is Needy, the smart, kinda mousy, but still cute girl. No, I'm not being a jerk, Needy is actually the name of the character. She also narrates the film, told in flashbacks. As the story begins, Needy is in a mental hospital, recalling the events that brought her there. She lives in a town called Devil's Kettle, because there's a waterfall that leads to some kind of bottomless pit. Maybe that's where the originality vanished. (Once brought up, by the way, this weird water portal is only really referenced one more time. HUH???) But, I digress....
Being Besties, they go everywhere together, to the annoyance of Needy's boyfriend Chip. So, it's hardly stunning when Jennifer drags Needy out to see an up-and-coming rock band, called Low Shoulder. It's even more predictable when Low Shoulder invites them backstage after the show to hang out(after a pretty tasteless recreation of the Station Nightclub/Whitesnake fire)...you know, to talk, drink a little, become virgin sacrifices to a satanic rock band....
Needy, being a Good Girl, knows this isn't right, and she leaves. Alone with the band members, Jennifer doesn't realize the danger she's in, until it's much too late: These guys will do ANYTHING to make it in the music industry, including murdering the buxom jailbait they invited backstage. They even sing "867-5309". These guys are hardcore, yo. And Tom Hanks' son is in the band. Like, groovy, man.
Well.....the ritual required a VIRGIN sacrifice, and sexy Jen did NOT fit the bill. So, when she turns up alive back home, and covered in blood It's suddenly an episode of the sitcom "Jennifer Doesn't Live Here Anymore". She's still sexy, but her hickeys are murder!!
So she's alive? No, not really. Jenny's now demon-possessed...or, as Needy puts it, she's "really evil" as opposed to "high school" evil.(one of the film's funnier lines) She has a ravenous appetite, her mouth does that "SyFy Channel Saturday movie" thing where it elongates and grows cartoony shark teeth, her eyes become lizardy, she spits up the Black Oil monster from The X-Files.. In other words, they could've hired Tara Reid for the role and saved a chunk o' cash in the FX budget.
Now, I can hear you at this point: Hey, Dude, which band member does she go after first? Well, that would have made a better film by about a thousand percent. But no, instead of channeling her demony side and directing it at the band, she just chooses various victims that we could care less about. Oh, don't worry, the rockers do get their comeuppance...but you have to wait for closing credits to see it. Lame.
So she pretty much just picks her victims by just saying, "Oh look, Random Guy #3 is in this scene, he'll do!"...seriously. Almost none of the victims are characters we give a crap about. Let's see, there's "Jonas", a football player who literally has 2 scenes before she kills him; "Colin", the punk/emo/goth/whatever-you-crazy-kids-with-your-internets-and-your-loud-music-call-it-these-days; "Ahmet", a classmate everyone assumed had died in the fire.....and then nothing for awhile. Jennifer even acts like she might eat Needy a few times, but alas, no.
Instead, we skip ahead to Prom Night(or, as they call it in this movie, Spring Formal...maybe it's me, but "Spring Formal II: Hello, Mary Lou" would've been a craptacular title), where Needy goes to the Pro...uh, dance stag. To keep Chip safe, Needy felt it would be best to crush his tender widdle heart and let him roam around without her to keep him safe from Jen. Whatever. Oh, and the band hired for the dance? Yup, Cold Shoulder, Low Shoulder, Over-the-Shoulder-Boulder-Holder, whatever the Freakin' Fanelli they're called.
So, whatever, Needy, the 8th Dwarf, shows up at the dance wearing a dress and hairdo from 1987. I guess the theme was "RETRO", or something. While she keeps a lazy eye out for Demon Girl, Jen is actually stalking Chip outside. Jenny From The Block tells Chip that Needy is cheating on him, and then proceeds to seduce him right there, in a field. Needy's Vagina-Sense begins tingling, and she finds them before Chip is fully digested. There's a catfight(over CHIP?!?), Jennifer is impaled by Chip while distracted by Needy(I feel reaaaaaaaally stupid writing these names...seriously, was Diablo Cody using Mad Libs when she came up with this script?) , and as Needy watches Chip die, JennifWhore slips away. THE END.
Wait, what? The movie's still going? Awww, shit.....
So, anyway Demon-Jen is hanging out in her Holly Hobby/Barbie Dream-House bedroom, and Needy sneaks in and attacks her. They wrestle a bit, which, by this time, isn't even turning ME on, and I'm a total sleazebag!! Needy shows her the nifty box-cutter she intends to use, makes the corny joke about "box" cutting we all expect, then tears off Jen's BFF necklace. It's the source of all her Goblin-Magic, or whatever. I shit you not. She becomes powerless after Needy takes it, allowing Needy to stab her fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally. I haven't wanted Megan Fox to die so much since seeing Transformers 2 in theatres.
And now we come back to the present. Needy reveals that if a demon bites you, and you live, you eventually become a demon as well. We then get to see the aforementioned credit-sequence attack on the band. It looks AWESOME. So glad we spent time with Jonas and Chip, instead of seeing how the blood-drenched bathtub corpse got that way. Way to go, movie. If this thing hadn't bombed so badly, I'd almost hope we'd see the carnage in a sequel, but oh well.
So, what did I learn after watching Jennifer's Body? Well...
-Tamara was a pretty great film. I'm-a gonna go watch it again and again and ag....
-Juno was apparently a fluke, making Diablo Cody a female M. Night Shyamalan.(spelled right? don't care.)
-I was smart to skip my Prom(oops, I mean my "Spring Formal").
Oh, and I've decided to implement a rating system, as of this film. Based on my experiences with The Guardian, each movie is going to be given "trees". This one gets one tree, outta 5. Who knows? Maybe I can even find a tree font or something, just to give these reviews a little pizzazz.
Jennifer's Body was great the first time I saw it...when it was called Tamara. Seriously, the plots are so similar, I can't believe it's not outright plagiarism. Don't movie studio guys hire lawyers to keep tabs on this kind of thing?
Anyway, for those of you who haven't seen Tamara, you might still like this one. Jennifer, played by Megan Fox, is the sexy, popular, smart girl in high school. Her best friend since early childhood is Needy, the smart, kinda mousy, but still cute girl. No, I'm not being a jerk, Needy is actually the name of the character. She also narrates the film, told in flashbacks. As the story begins, Needy is in a mental hospital, recalling the events that brought her there. She lives in a town called Devil's Kettle, because there's a waterfall that leads to some kind of bottomless pit. Maybe that's where the originality vanished. (Once brought up, by the way, this weird water portal is only really referenced one more time. HUH???) But, I digress....
Being Besties, they go everywhere together, to the annoyance of Needy's boyfriend Chip. So, it's hardly stunning when Jennifer drags Needy out to see an up-and-coming rock band, called Low Shoulder. It's even more predictable when Low Shoulder invites them backstage after the show to hang out(after a pretty tasteless recreation of the Station Nightclub/Whitesnake fire)...you know, to talk, drink a little, become virgin sacrifices to a satanic rock band....
Needy, being a Good Girl, knows this isn't right, and she leaves. Alone with the band members, Jennifer doesn't realize the danger she's in, until it's much too late: These guys will do ANYTHING to make it in the music industry, including murdering the buxom jailbait they invited backstage. They even sing "867-5309". These guys are hardcore, yo. And Tom Hanks' son is in the band. Like, groovy, man.
Well.....the ritual required a VIRGIN sacrifice, and sexy Jen did NOT fit the bill. So, when she turns up alive back home, and covered in blood It's suddenly an episode of the sitcom "Jennifer Doesn't Live Here Anymore". She's still sexy, but her hickeys are murder!!
So she's alive? No, not really. Jenny's now demon-possessed...or, as Needy puts it, she's "really evil" as opposed to "high school" evil.(one of the film's funnier lines) She has a ravenous appetite, her mouth does that "SyFy Channel Saturday movie" thing where it elongates and grows cartoony shark teeth, her eyes become lizardy, she spits up the Black Oil monster from The X-Files.. In other words, they could've hired Tara Reid for the role and saved a chunk o' cash in the FX budget.
Now, I can hear you at this point: Hey, Dude, which band member does she go after first? Well, that would have made a better film by about a thousand percent. But no, instead of channeling her demony side and directing it at the band, she just chooses various victims that we could care less about. Oh, don't worry, the rockers do get their comeuppance...but you have to wait for closing credits to see it. Lame.
So she pretty much just picks her victims by just saying, "Oh look, Random Guy #3 is in this scene, he'll do!"...seriously. Almost none of the victims are characters we give a crap about. Let's see, there's "Jonas", a football player who literally has 2 scenes before she kills him; "Colin", the punk/emo/goth/whatever-you-crazy-kids-with-your-internets-and-your-loud-music-call-it-these-days; "Ahmet", a classmate everyone assumed had died in the fire.....and then nothing for awhile. Jennifer even acts like she might eat Needy a few times, but alas, no.
Instead, we skip ahead to Prom Night(or, as they call it in this movie, Spring Formal...maybe it's me, but "Spring Formal II: Hello, Mary Lou" would've been a craptacular title), where Needy goes to the Pro...uh, dance stag. To keep Chip safe, Needy felt it would be best to crush his tender widdle heart and let him roam around without her to keep him safe from Jen. Whatever. Oh, and the band hired for the dance? Yup, Cold Shoulder, Low Shoulder, Over-the-Shoulder-Boulder-Holder, whatever the Freakin' Fanelli they're called.
So, whatever, Needy, the 8th Dwarf, shows up at the dance wearing a dress and hairdo from 1987. I guess the theme was "RETRO", or something. While she keeps a lazy eye out for Demon Girl, Jen is actually stalking Chip outside. Jenny From The Block tells Chip that Needy is cheating on him, and then proceeds to seduce him right there, in a field. Needy's Vagina-Sense begins tingling, and she finds them before Chip is fully digested. There's a catfight(over CHIP?!?), Jennifer is impaled by Chip while distracted by Needy(I feel reaaaaaaaally stupid writing these names...seriously, was Diablo Cody using Mad Libs when she came up with this script?) , and as Needy watches Chip die, JennifWhore slips away. THE END.
Wait, what? The movie's still going? Awww, shit.....
So, anyway Demon-Jen is hanging out in her Holly Hobby/Barbie Dream-House bedroom, and Needy sneaks in and attacks her. They wrestle a bit, which, by this time, isn't even turning ME on, and I'm a total sleazebag!! Needy shows her the nifty box-cutter she intends to use, makes the corny joke about "box" cutting we all expect, then tears off Jen's BFF necklace. It's the source of all her Goblin-Magic, or whatever. I shit you not. She becomes powerless after Needy takes it, allowing Needy to stab her fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally. I haven't wanted Megan Fox to die so much since seeing Transformers 2 in theatres.
And now we come back to the present. Needy reveals that if a demon bites you, and you live, you eventually become a demon as well. We then get to see the aforementioned credit-sequence attack on the band. It looks AWESOME. So glad we spent time with Jonas and Chip, instead of seeing how the blood-drenched bathtub corpse got that way. Way to go, movie. If this thing hadn't bombed so badly, I'd almost hope we'd see the carnage in a sequel, but oh well.
So, what did I learn after watching Jennifer's Body? Well...
-Tamara was a pretty great film. I'm-a gonna go watch it again and again and ag....
-Juno was apparently a fluke, making Diablo Cody a female M. Night Shyamalan.(spelled right? don't care.)
-I was smart to skip my Prom(oops, I mean my "Spring Formal").
Oh, and I've decided to implement a rating system, as of this film. Based on my experiences with The Guardian, each movie is going to be given "trees". This one gets one tree, outta 5. Who knows? Maybe I can even find a tree font or something, just to give these reviews a little pizzazz.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Scream
So, for my first post, I was torn: Do I write about The Collector, which I had just rented last week, but didn't exactly like? Or do I look around in my personal DVD pile, and do a review from one olf those? Well, I eventually settled on consulting Netflix's Instant movies, and decided to rewatch Scream, Wes Craven's spoof/deconstruction of slasher flicks. (SPOILER WARNING: Just to give you a head's up, I'm going to be going into fairly great detail about the movies I watch. If you haven't seen them, you might not want to read any further until you have)
So, we begin with what is probably one of the most-spoofed/copied/talked about opening scenes in modern slasher film history: A young woman(the always-cute Drew Barrymore) is home alone on a school night, and is receiving a series of prank calls, a la When a Stranger Calls. The Voice(as he's referred to in each film--which seems kinda bizarre, when you consider that each film's killer is a different person, wouldn't the voice sound different from film to film?) at first seems kind of playful, but things quickly go bad for poor Drew. Seems he has her boyfriend tied up, and will kill both of them if her knowledge of horror movies isn't up to snuff(pun intended).
I'll be honest, I've never really liked these opening scene kills. They give you an opening kill, sure, but why waste the talents of Ms. Barrymore in a scene that merely requires her to panic, run around, and then die? It's almost as if Craven wanted to have a "James Bond"-ish opening setpiece to set the mood, pre-credits, but to me it just seems like an excuse for a few cheap "boo" scares. And we don't ever meet the boyfriend character prior to his appearance as a victim, so I certainly don't give a crap if he lives or not. So, in summary, we have 2 people die we don't have any emotional investment in, and their deaths don't really have any impact, storywise.
Anyhoo....we then meet Sid(Neve Campbell, looking mighty fine), our Main Girl. We learn in this scene that:
a) her mother, Maureen Prescott, also died prior to the events in the film
b) her dad apparently lurks outside her bedroom door at night, waiting for excuses to burst in
c) her boyfriend is obviously Spider-Man, as he has a hard time entering a room by way of the door
Oh, and we get a completely ridiculous scene where Sid and her boyfriend(Skeet Ulrich, channeling the first NOES's Johnny Depp) are making out, and apparently Sid is pure and chaste, so won't do anything with her boyfriend beyond necking....except where she completely contradicts herself and exposes her breasts to him(but not the audience, dagnabbit!). Yeah Sid, way to stick to your guns.
So, next day at school. We get to meet most of our main characters now: In addition to Sid and Billy(the Skeet Ulrich character), we meet Sid's BFF Tatum(Rose McGowan, doing her impersonation of Dolly Parton); Tatum's boyfriend Stu; and Stu's buddy, horror-film buff Randy, the lovable "geek-we're-supposed-to-identify-with" character. How I'm supposed to identify with a guy who does Columbo shtick, I have no idea. Just go with it, I guess.
So, they all learn of the murder of their friend Casey, which we all just watched about 10 minutes ago(keep up with us, movie!), and mourn her death by cracking jokes and generally just forgetting her name about 5 minutes after this scene ends. Nice friends. She never even got a funeral. *sniff*
Oh, and The Fonz is now a high school principal. I guess his substitute teaching job during the last season of Happy Days paid off. Grats Dude. He's working with the local cops to try to figure out if any of the students had a motive to kill Casey, I guess. Whatever. The town police force consists of a Chief, and Deputy Dewey(David Arquette). Dewey's main role in each film is apparently two-fold: He's a human punching-bag, and he's the one guy in each film who plays his character as such an oddball, I keep saying, "How is this guy NOT the killer???"
So, Sid goes home, gets a scary phone call, and Johnny De--Uhhh, I mean "Billy" shows up again. He drops a cell phone the size of the Titanic, and is immediately arrested by the police, who took lessons from Sid's Dad about lurking outside her door. Oh, and we get a 3-second view of the man who (allegedly) kill Sid's mom on t.v., with the improbable name of Cotton Weary(the equally awesome-named Liev Schrieber. Seriously, it's like they came up with names after playing Mad Libs).
Turns out a local reporter, Gale Weathers(even SHE wonders why she's not a weathergirl, with a name like that!), doesn't believe Cotton did it. What does this have to do with anything? Not much, at this point. As a result, Sid doesn't trust her. Which is weird, because the reporter I wouldn't trust would be the one who used to be possessed by Pazuzu. Different Strokes for different folks, I guess.(Seriously, we have had, up to this point Drew Barrymore, Henry Winkler and Linda Blair appear at this point. Throw in Charo, and it could be an extra-gory episode of Love Boat.
Oh, and we have a great little scene in a bathroom. Sid is upset, and wants some "me" time(well, not "me", "her"...but you know what I mean), so she ducks into a school bathroom. After checking under the stalls to make sure she's alone, she starts trying to get her shit together, when she hears 2 students coming in. She hides in a stall, and listens as they both pretty much win Bitch Of The Year, by mocking her mother's death. Nice school.
So, Henry Winkler dies, a few scenes after bitching out two kids who would've been better victims(seriously, wouldn't you rather watch two guys who mock a murdered friend, get killed than a kindly, nebbish principal? Add in the 2 girls from the bathroom scene, and we have a great body count) Oh, and before he dies, we get the films lamest joke: He says something to the school janitor Fred. Fred who is wearing a beaten-up fedora. And a striped sweater. And is played by Wes Craven himself. Subtlety, thy name is Scream. And Fonzie dies right after doing the very thing he was lecturing the two teens about. SHEESH.
So, now we have a few murders, a killer loose in a small town, several characters who might've done it, and a town curfew. What's a girl who gets constantly reminded of her mother's murder and the deaths of those around her to do? Why, go to a party of course! But first, we get a scene where Sid is hanging out at Tatum's house, and gets another call from the killer. This lets Billy off the hook, because he was apparently in jail when the call came in. This scene also further makes me suspicious of Dewey, as he makes a point of picking up the hung-up phone and saying "Hello?" in a weird way. Maybe Arquette's just a weird guy, I dunno. He just comes off as creepy to me in these films.
And finally, the film's major setpiece: the party. A crowd of mostly forgettable extras yelling and hooting and hollering in a living room for most of the rest of the film. They've just recently been told of a schoolmate's gruesome and painful death, so of course they want to watch slasher films and generally just act like a-holes. This is also the oft-parodied scene where Randy lays out "the rules" for surviving a scary movie:
-Don't go anywhere alone
-Don't ever engage in anything, you know, FUN. This includes smoking, drinking, sex, and possibly playing on the Wii.
-Don't ever say stuff that'll get you killed. Stuff like, "I'll be right back", or "I just saved a bundle on car insurance by switching to Geico" or whatever.
-Don't ever feed them after midnight. But this might be from something else, I dunno. I stopped caring after Fonzie died, you bastards.
So, everyone still alive is at this party. Gale and her camera guy show up, Dewey's there, Sid shows up, Skeet's there, Lindsay Lohan shows up to score some blow, you name it. I swear I saw Waldo in one scene. Gale gets in and manages to hide a spycam in the house to film all the slaughter. Skeet(sorry, "Billy") manages to sneak off with Sid to a bedroom about 5 miles away, as you can't hear the rowdy party from where they are. Dewey manages to slip away from the camera guy, to leave him in the van to get slaughtered. Oh, and camera guy's name is Kenny. So, when he dies, wait for the great joke when someone screams "Oh my god! They killed Kenny! You bastards!" And keep waiting. 'cause it never happens. Damn, movie, do I have to think of EVERYTHING???
Anyway, Billy and Sid decide to "just do it", and get an endorsement by Nike. We STILL don't get any good TnA. Tatum decides to get more beer, and heads out to the garage, which is apparently in a soundproof room in another country, as no one hears her get murdered. Does Ghostface stab her? Nope. Does he shoot her? Nope. He lets her assault him several times, makes enough noise to make Marlee Matlin take notice, then kills her by waiting until she gets stuck in a doggy door built into the garage door. Did that make any sense to you? Yeah, me neither.
We then get to the biggest twist in the film. As the garage door is being raised and Tatum is facing certain death, her head is revealed to be made out of the same rubbery material as her breasts. Sadly, we never get to see the alien face under her mask, but we know it's there, don't we?
Meanwhile, Sid and Billy finish the most disappointing 5 minutes of either of their lives, and Sid decides that pillow talk should include accusing the guy you let have sex with you of being a killer. Why she waits til now, I dunno. Ghostface then shows up and attacks Billy, which makes this his Worst Night Ever. Sid drags Billy downstairs, where they run into Randy and Stu, who are accusing each other of being the killer. Randy eventually reminds them that if they don't let him in they'll get "X'ed", so he wins.
Realizing they're about to run out of film, the crew decides to wrap things up: Randy, safely inside, blurts out how happy he is to be a virgin, and Billy shoots him. We then learn that Billy and Stu were the killers? Why? Who knows? The writers certainly didn't. They decided that murdering their friends would make them famous, which is incredibly stupid, because to get away with it, they'd have to take the secret to their graves. Well thought-out plan guys. Realizing the stupidity of their scheme, they begin stabbing each OTHER.
So, Gale and Dewey burst in, get injured, and serve no purpose at all, other than to distract Billy and Stu. Sid uses the opportunity to slip away, and calls Stu. She eventually gets the upper hand on two mass murderers, and shoots them both. Of course, this being a slasher film, they're not yet dead, and neither are Gale and Dewey. (Oh, and Sid's dad turns up, too....I had forgotten an entire subplot about him vanishing earlier in the film, until Stu and Billy reveal they abducted him to set him up as the killer. Or something.) Sid kills them again, and the movie ends.
What did I learn from this experience? Several things really:
-Sex with Neve Campbell gets you shot.
-The Fonz doesn't practice what he preaches.
-Courtney Cox has weird taste in men.
-There's a magic box that can distort your voice, and make EVERY voice sound like the same guy.
-Rose McGowan IS AN ALIEN.
Eh, whatever. It has many silly moments and plotholes, but Scream is still pretty entertaining. I just hope Dewey's the killer in the new one they're making...it would at least explain SOME of his weird "character moments".
In keeping with my love/hate relationship with the killer druid/baby-eating tree movie The Guardian, I give Scream 3 trees, outta 5
See ya next week!(C'mon Netflix, mail me my next movie....)
So, we begin with what is probably one of the most-spoofed/copied/talked about opening scenes in modern slasher film history: A young woman(the always-cute Drew Barrymore) is home alone on a school night, and is receiving a series of prank calls, a la When a Stranger Calls. The Voice(as he's referred to in each film--which seems kinda bizarre, when you consider that each film's killer is a different person, wouldn't the voice sound different from film to film?) at first seems kind of playful, but things quickly go bad for poor Drew. Seems he has her boyfriend tied up, and will kill both of them if her knowledge of horror movies isn't up to snuff(pun intended).
I'll be honest, I've never really liked these opening scene kills. They give you an opening kill, sure, but why waste the talents of Ms. Barrymore in a scene that merely requires her to panic, run around, and then die? It's almost as if Craven wanted to have a "James Bond"-ish opening setpiece to set the mood, pre-credits, but to me it just seems like an excuse for a few cheap "boo" scares. And we don't ever meet the boyfriend character prior to his appearance as a victim, so I certainly don't give a crap if he lives or not. So, in summary, we have 2 people die we don't have any emotional investment in, and their deaths don't really have any impact, storywise.
Anyhoo....we then meet Sid(Neve Campbell, looking mighty fine), our Main Girl. We learn in this scene that:
a) her mother, Maureen Prescott, also died prior to the events in the film
b) her dad apparently lurks outside her bedroom door at night, waiting for excuses to burst in
c) her boyfriend is obviously Spider-Man, as he has a hard time entering a room by way of the door
Oh, and we get a completely ridiculous scene where Sid and her boyfriend(Skeet Ulrich, channeling the first NOES's Johnny Depp) are making out, and apparently Sid is pure and chaste, so won't do anything with her boyfriend beyond necking....except where she completely contradicts herself and exposes her breasts to him(but not the audience, dagnabbit!). Yeah Sid, way to stick to your guns.
So, next day at school. We get to meet most of our main characters now: In addition to Sid and Billy(the Skeet Ulrich character), we meet Sid's BFF Tatum(Rose McGowan, doing her impersonation of Dolly Parton); Tatum's boyfriend Stu; and Stu's buddy, horror-film buff Randy, the lovable "geek-we're-supposed-to-identify-with" character. How I'm supposed to identify with a guy who does Columbo shtick, I have no idea. Just go with it, I guess.
So, they all learn of the murder of their friend Casey, which we all just watched about 10 minutes ago(keep up with us, movie!), and mourn her death by cracking jokes and generally just forgetting her name about 5 minutes after this scene ends. Nice friends. She never even got a funeral. *sniff*
Oh, and The Fonz is now a high school principal. I guess his substitute teaching job during the last season of Happy Days paid off. Grats Dude. He's working with the local cops to try to figure out if any of the students had a motive to kill Casey, I guess. Whatever. The town police force consists of a Chief, and Deputy Dewey(David Arquette). Dewey's main role in each film is apparently two-fold: He's a human punching-bag, and he's the one guy in each film who plays his character as such an oddball, I keep saying, "How is this guy NOT the killer???"
So, Sid goes home, gets a scary phone call, and Johnny De--Uhhh, I mean "Billy" shows up again. He drops a cell phone the size of the Titanic, and is immediately arrested by the police, who took lessons from Sid's Dad about lurking outside her door. Oh, and we get a 3-second view of the man who (allegedly) kill Sid's mom on t.v., with the improbable name of Cotton Weary(the equally awesome-named Liev Schrieber. Seriously, it's like they came up with names after playing Mad Libs).
Turns out a local reporter, Gale Weathers(even SHE wonders why she's not a weathergirl, with a name like that!), doesn't believe Cotton did it. What does this have to do with anything? Not much, at this point. As a result, Sid doesn't trust her. Which is weird, because the reporter I wouldn't trust would be the one who used to be possessed by Pazuzu. Different Strokes for different folks, I guess.(Seriously, we have had, up to this point Drew Barrymore, Henry Winkler and Linda Blair appear at this point. Throw in Charo, and it could be an extra-gory episode of Love Boat.
Oh, and we have a great little scene in a bathroom. Sid is upset, and wants some "me" time(well, not "me", "her"...but you know what I mean), so she ducks into a school bathroom. After checking under the stalls to make sure she's alone, she starts trying to get her shit together, when she hears 2 students coming in. She hides in a stall, and listens as they both pretty much win Bitch Of The Year, by mocking her mother's death. Nice school.
So, Henry Winkler dies, a few scenes after bitching out two kids who would've been better victims(seriously, wouldn't you rather watch two guys who mock a murdered friend, get killed than a kindly, nebbish principal? Add in the 2 girls from the bathroom scene, and we have a great body count) Oh, and before he dies, we get the films lamest joke: He says something to the school janitor Fred. Fred who is wearing a beaten-up fedora. And a striped sweater. And is played by Wes Craven himself. Subtlety, thy name is Scream. And Fonzie dies right after doing the very thing he was lecturing the two teens about. SHEESH.
So, now we have a few murders, a killer loose in a small town, several characters who might've done it, and a town curfew. What's a girl who gets constantly reminded of her mother's murder and the deaths of those around her to do? Why, go to a party of course! But first, we get a scene where Sid is hanging out at Tatum's house, and gets another call from the killer. This lets Billy off the hook, because he was apparently in jail when the call came in. This scene also further makes me suspicious of Dewey, as he makes a point of picking up the hung-up phone and saying "Hello?" in a weird way. Maybe Arquette's just a weird guy, I dunno. He just comes off as creepy to me in these films.
And finally, the film's major setpiece: the party. A crowd of mostly forgettable extras yelling and hooting and hollering in a living room for most of the rest of the film. They've just recently been told of a schoolmate's gruesome and painful death, so of course they want to watch slasher films and generally just act like a-holes. This is also the oft-parodied scene where Randy lays out "the rules" for surviving a scary movie:
-Don't go anywhere alone
-Don't ever engage in anything, you know, FUN. This includes smoking, drinking, sex, and possibly playing on the Wii.
-Don't ever say stuff that'll get you killed. Stuff like, "I'll be right back", or "I just saved a bundle on car insurance by switching to Geico" or whatever.
-Don't ever feed them after midnight. But this might be from something else, I dunno. I stopped caring after Fonzie died, you bastards.
So, everyone still alive is at this party. Gale and her camera guy show up, Dewey's there, Sid shows up, Skeet's there, Lindsay Lohan shows up to score some blow, you name it. I swear I saw Waldo in one scene. Gale gets in and manages to hide a spycam in the house to film all the slaughter. Skeet(sorry, "Billy") manages to sneak off with Sid to a bedroom about 5 miles away, as you can't hear the rowdy party from where they are. Dewey manages to slip away from the camera guy, to leave him in the van to get slaughtered. Oh, and camera guy's name is Kenny. So, when he dies, wait for the great joke when someone screams "Oh my god! They killed Kenny! You bastards!" And keep waiting. 'cause it never happens. Damn, movie, do I have to think of EVERYTHING???
Anyway, Billy and Sid decide to "just do it", and get an endorsement by Nike. We STILL don't get any good TnA. Tatum decides to get more beer, and heads out to the garage, which is apparently in a soundproof room in another country, as no one hears her get murdered. Does Ghostface stab her? Nope. Does he shoot her? Nope. He lets her assault him several times, makes enough noise to make Marlee Matlin take notice, then kills her by waiting until she gets stuck in a doggy door built into the garage door. Did that make any sense to you? Yeah, me neither.
We then get to the biggest twist in the film. As the garage door is being raised and Tatum is facing certain death, her head is revealed to be made out of the same rubbery material as her breasts. Sadly, we never get to see the alien face under her mask, but we know it's there, don't we?
Meanwhile, Sid and Billy finish the most disappointing 5 minutes of either of their lives, and Sid decides that pillow talk should include accusing the guy you let have sex with you of being a killer. Why she waits til now, I dunno. Ghostface then shows up and attacks Billy, which makes this his Worst Night Ever. Sid drags Billy downstairs, where they run into Randy and Stu, who are accusing each other of being the killer. Randy eventually reminds them that if they don't let him in they'll get "X'ed", so he wins.
Realizing they're about to run out of film, the crew decides to wrap things up: Randy, safely inside, blurts out how happy he is to be a virgin, and Billy shoots him. We then learn that Billy and Stu were the killers? Why? Who knows? The writers certainly didn't. They decided that murdering their friends would make them famous, which is incredibly stupid, because to get away with it, they'd have to take the secret to their graves. Well thought-out plan guys. Realizing the stupidity of their scheme, they begin stabbing each OTHER.
So, Gale and Dewey burst in, get injured, and serve no purpose at all, other than to distract Billy and Stu. Sid uses the opportunity to slip away, and calls Stu. She eventually gets the upper hand on two mass murderers, and shoots them both. Of course, this being a slasher film, they're not yet dead, and neither are Gale and Dewey. (Oh, and Sid's dad turns up, too....I had forgotten an entire subplot about him vanishing earlier in the film, until Stu and Billy reveal they abducted him to set him up as the killer. Or something.) Sid kills them again, and the movie ends.
What did I learn from this experience? Several things really:
-Sex with Neve Campbell gets you shot.
-The Fonz doesn't practice what he preaches.
-Courtney Cox has weird taste in men.
-There's a magic box that can distort your voice, and make EVERY voice sound like the same guy.
-Rose McGowan IS AN ALIEN.
Eh, whatever. It has many silly moments and plotholes, but Scream is still pretty entertaining. I just hope Dewey's the killer in the new one they're making...it would at least explain SOME of his weird "character moments".
In keeping with my love/hate relationship with the killer druid/baby-eating tree movie The Guardian, I give Scream 3 trees, outta 5
See ya next week!(C'mon Netflix, mail me my next movie....)
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