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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Granny

Well, with my Netflix account not back up yet(long story short:I screwed something up...), and my Blockbuster account telling me that I won't get my next 2 movies for several days(PLEASE hurry, Netflix....can't stand Blockbuster!), I've decided to try watching something slasher-y on YouTube. I was debating between a few films, but I guess I'll watch something called Granny. Grab your walkers and hearing aids, we're entering SPOILER territory ya young whipper-snappers!

The credits are red and blurry. Great. And the movie stars pretty much no one. Even better. Then the first scene starts up, and the dialogue is hard to understand as well. This is not going to be one of the better slashers, I'm boldly predicting that right now. On the plus side though, it's only an hour long. My suffering will be short...

Anyway, the opening scene is at least somewhat self-explanatory: A group of young people are being told a scary story, and the storyteller is passing around various slimy, wet or mushy objects as he tells his tale. It's about his grandmother, and he tries to convince his pals that they're touching her organs. Spoiler: they're pig guts. The group breaks apart, and there's a mostly-muffled chat between 2 females. Both are cute, but the dialogue keeps getting louder then softer, making this film even harder to comprehend than The Forest. I'm sorely tempted to just turn the volume all the way down, and just make up my own plot, like I had to do for most of that movie.

The next scene reveals that all of these folks are finishing college together. Can most of them even spell "college? A guy who appears to be named Vic insults all of the females in the room by drunkenly announcing that only men have contributed anything to history. This leads(eventually) into an inane conversation about whether men or women are more manipulative in regards to sexual encounters and relatiosnships. Can you guys go back to being hard to understand? I liked you better when I couldn't hear you as well.

A new-ish girl in the group, Michele, admits that the thought of sex makes her nervous. THAT somehow gets them to discuss their worst fears(or "paranoias", as they call them, for no discernable reason), and they mostly discuss common fears....being alone, commitment, etc. Then one guy, Tom, tells the others that his "paranoia" is mind-blowing, but also complicated. Tom gets them all to leave for an hour, in order for him to decorate thye house as his "paranoia", or whatever. We're less than 20 minutes in, and I already don't give a crap about any of these people. Either say "phobia" or "fear", or buy a dictionary!

When the group returns, they find a note on The front door from Tom. It seems that he had an emergency, and had to leave. Again, who cares? They all stand around on the front porch discussing what to do, and decide to enter the house after all. Hurray for making a decision!

They all sit down in the living room again, and hear a noise from either the basement or the backyard. They even debate which area the sound is coming from. It's someone crying, and it's just as muffled as everything else so far. A dark-haired guy, John Doe #1, checks out the basement. He loudly announces that Tom is scaring him, even though he has a dopey grin plastered all over his face. As the crying gets louder, he comes face-to-face with someone in a white robe wearing an old woman mask. Wait, don't tell me: Granny?

Before WhatsHisFace can react, Granny picks up an axe, and plants it in his forehead. Then Granny lets the weapon swing by his/her side, and decides to get a closer look at the wound. Take a picture, Granny, just get this horrible movie going again.

Another character, Monica, a cute girl dressed in red, decides to re-apply her lipstick in the bathroom. It's a shame that none of these people can act...the actresses are all very cute in this one. But the quality of the film makes Fear look like Citizen Kane by comparison.

Anyway, she puts on about 7 layers of lipstick to draw the scene out. Yeesh. Then we return to the others, who grow sick of waiting for Monica to return from the bathroom. As a group, they all head into the basement. Boy, the suspense is nail-biting, huh? If anyone decides to make a sandwich, I might piss my pants.

Monica finally finishes her makeup, and then gets worried that she might not be alone. Uh, it's a bathroom, not a corn maze! And yet, her fears prove to be sound, as Granny pops up directly behind her. Unlike the guy in the basement, we don't get to see Granny do anything, as the scene ends right at that point. Booooooooo...

The others tiptoe into the basement like they're auditioning for a remake of Scooby-Doo. Rucking Roopid!! As they all try to frighten one another, we see Granny still upstairs in the bathroom, stabbing a cardboard cutout wearing Monica's shirt. Geez. After Granny stabs her shirt about 20 or so times, we see Monica on the floor covered in Heinz 57. The friends then find Monica themselves, and confirm that she is actually dead. Maybe the ketchup was spoiled, and she was poisoned by it?

They run back into the living room, where they find Tom standing around. As they all accuse him of murder, they see Granny at the top of the stairs, watching them. Well, I guess the killer isn't Tom...

Tom and ? decide to try to capture the killer themselves, and go after her. As ? opens a door to see if Granny is hiding, the killer emerges behind both men, and closes the door on ?. With Tom alone now, Granny begins to club him to death. The rest of the group hear the noise, but they all remain downstairs. Nice friends! To finish the job, Granny throws ? out of an upstairs window. Bye ?....I'm sorry I never knew your name.

A girl named Kristine makes a dash for the door, and escapes the house. Tom sees her through a window, and rushes downstairs to find out what happened. He tells the others that Kristine will most likely be killed outside, and that he blames the others for not making her stay. Um.... WHAAAAAAAT? Is Tom on crack?

Tom tells Vic to stay with Michele, as he and Nancy go searching for Kristine. Yeah, splitting up is always wise. We see Kristine just sort of roaming around in a daze, until Granny finds her. Granny wraps a rope around her neck, then binds her hands together as well. Granny makes her march a short distance, then appears to snap her neck.

Back in the house, Michele sees Granny outside the nearest window, so she runs away to find Vic. She discovers Vic in a chair with his back to her, and tells him that she saw the killer. When Vic fails to respond, she turns his chair around, and reveals that it's actually Granny that Michele found. Which lacks any kind of sense at all. What, can she teleport now?

Michele runs away, and Granny pursues her. Deja vu, anyone? Michele runs into Vic, and he tells her that he found a gun, but with only 1 bullet in the chamber. Vic tells her that he can get her to safety if she follows his every order. Then he gives her a 40-minute kiss, which gives Granny enough time to stab him in the eyes with knitting needles. Lucky bastard...I still have to watch the rest of this steaming pile.

Michele is found by Tom and Natalie, and Tom urges the girls to escape in a car. This somehow leads to Granny attacking the girls from the backseat, where she wraps Natalie's head in plastic, suffocating her to death. Michele just passes out, and revives almost immediately, so we get yet another tedious chase sequence. Even at 58 minutes, this whole thing seems bloated and overly padded.

Natalie goes back to the house, and finds Tom still alive. They're separated by glass, though, and we all know that glass is impossible to break... Before Natalie can reach him, Granny drags Tom away. Damn you, impenetrable wall of transparent, breakable material!

Michele gets the gun and goes looking for Granny. They have a reallllllly short confrontation, and Michele shoots Granny. Then she staggers to the front door, and appears to have either a heart attack or an asthma attack. Maybe a Big Mac attack. Somne kind of attack, at any rate.

In the final scene, we learn that there was no Granny. It was all a prank on Michele, and none of them knew that she had a heart condiion. At her funeral, they all start fighting over who was to blame for scaring her to death. Oh, and it turns out that Granny was actually Tom's brother the entire time, and probably Tom at some points, to account for Granny being in 2 places at the same time in some of the chase sequences.

Everyone gets upset, and then a car drives up to the graveyard. Even though it doesn't quite look like her behind the wheel, I'm going to assume that the twist here is that Michele faked them all out, and out-pranked them. Otherwise, it doesn't really make much sense...but that then begs the question, who the heck did they just bury? THE END

This monstrosity was only an hour long, but it felt like 3. The Granny costume was somewhat cool, but it was wasted on the dumbest movie ever. And I'm getting pretty sick of these "fake" slasher movies. It was okay once or twice, in movies like April Fools' Day and cry_wolf, but after the 4th or 5th time you see it, it sucks on an epic level. No killer trees for this turd.

And did Granny actually leave me with any wisdom?

-Well, I know which slasher movie plot twist I hate the most.....

-If you have a kind of cool killer, wait until you have a script that deserves to have them in it.

-Don't expect classics when you watch movies for free on YouTube. Lesson learned.

-And a bonus one: What kind of idiots bury someone without knowing who they just buried?

Assuming that they arrive sometime this century, my next 2 movies from BallBuster will be Wrong Turn 4 and Husk. Both will be better than Granny...I feel very safe in making that particular prediction. And if Netflix ever sends me movies again, I'll be watching Bad Dreams. Either way, I think it'll be a better week. I hope so...