Okay, so I wound up getting myself hospitalizied a couple of weeks ago,so I thought maybe I could watch a flick tonight from bed. The movie is called Stitches, and is about a killer clown. Ugh.
Anyway, the film begins with our "hero", Stitches the Clown, screwing a prostitute. Classy. I sure do know how to to pick them, huh? Luckily,it was followed by a funny sequence showing the clown getting drressed for work. Then we see Stitiches drive to a party, where he drunkenly tries a few minor magic tricks and gags. The birthday boy, though, has other plans, sneaking behind him on the floor, then tying his shoes together. As you might expect, this eventually causes the clown to trip.
The kids see him fall, then there's silence. They gather around him in the kitchen, and he eventually stands up again, but with a large knife protruding from his face. Ouch. They look at each other, then the kid gets a huge spray of blood to his face, and Stitches dies. Later, the young boy sees a group of clowns performing a ritual to bring the dead clown back to life, and they speak with scary, growly voices.
When he heads to breakfast the next morning, the teen thinks the food on his plate looks like a clown face, but it quickly vanishes. Oh, and the kid is on a drug called Hypnocil....wasn't that also the pill the teens in the Elm Street franchise were hooked on? Weird.
We finally also start to get some names straight. The main teen is Tom. There's also Sarah, Paul, and Mary. As they all take a test,Tom hallucinates that the instructor has become a clown, and someone gets castrated. Oh, and now Tom is having a party that weekend. After school, Tom climbs into a tiny treehouse to spy on a female neighbor that he happens to like. Her name is Kate. Tom invites her to his party as well, then sees another possible clown-scare down the hall. As a bully tries to question our hero about the party, Tom Realizes that the celebration is getting waaaay too out of hand.
The first group arrives, and they set up the house for the party. As more kids arrive, we also see that Stitches has begun to rise from his grave. We also see a clown make a few background appearances during the party, but no one else sees the clown or acknowledges him. Then another clown walks throught the front door, and chases Tom with a knife. Tom falls, hurting himself, and it turns out to be a prank by Kate's boyfriend. In the mayhem's aftermath, no one sees a second clown entering the party....
A fight breaks out, and a gay guy has words with a girl named Sarah. Then Tom decides to flee his own party, so Kate follows him. They talk alone for a time, and then Sarah sees the telescope pointed at her house. Then we see that our fake clown,Paul, is searching for a bathroom. He nearly has an encounter with the undead Stitiches, but they barely miss seeing each other. Tom tells Kate about the weird ritual he saw, and we see Stitches corner Paul. The killer attacks the teen, tearing his arm out of alignment, then tells him that he gets to watch the rest of the mayhem as a witness. Then he wrenches a rabbit out of the teen's mouth, decapitates him, and moves on.
While Kate and Mary have a catfight, Stitches removes his rubber nose, then commands it to find the teens responsible for his death. The nose rolls away, finds some of the teens, then Stitchses comes back to retrieve it.
As Tom watches from his treehouse, we see Stitches corner his next victim, Sarah. He opens an umbrella, popping one of her eyes out in the process. Then the nose goes on another search, but a cat brawls with it along the way. Oh, and Vinnie tries to convince some other teens that the killer is loose, but no one will listen.
The killer turns another teen's intestines into balloon animals, then goes after Vinnie next. He gets away, and Tommy convinces him to stay to rescue whoever's left. They work as a pair to search the house for teens.
One fat girl spots the killer outside the house, and her screams get the attention of the others. They all see the clown, and go nuts. Stitches sees Tom and Kate leave on bikes, and he follows them on a tricycle. Tom has this idea that, if it works, might stop the clown permanently. They arrive at the graveyard, then hide behind some of the graves while the clown tries to stalk them. Tom gets nervous, so Kate kisses him to calm down his breathing.
At the crypt, Tom must find and destroy an egg with Stitches' face on it...Trouble is, there are several eggs. Stitches arrives, and the teens battle the clown over his egg. After a brief scuffle, the clown falls on top of the egg by accident, crushing it. He immediately starts to fall apart like the egg, and is soon dead. Then we see a short final scene where another clown is busy rebuilding the egg, while Tom and Kate think that everything is fine. THE END
Well...it was...fast?And not too terrible, I guess.2 out of 5.
And what did I learn from Stitches?
-Clowns are Satanic.
-Hospitals make bad movie theatres.
-I may need to cut down on my egg consumption.
No clue what or when my next entry will be...playing this by ear.
Showing posts with label Dark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dark. Show all posts
Friday, February 21, 2014
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Dark Floors
Well, now that we've all survived Thanksgiving(barely...I feel like I might burst at any second!), let's finish the week with some leftover turkey. But which one? If you recall, Netflix sent me 2 scary movies, one about a group of people in a haunted hospital(Dark Floors), and the other about some partying kids being killed by a pinata(Pinata: Survival Island).
Well, after flipping a coin and getting my meenie's eenied, I went with Dark Floors. I figured I needed some distance between Doll Graveyard and my next "inanimate object kills people" movie(heh, next week...), so that left a clear winner in the battle for my attention. So, put down your utensils, skip the last piece of pumpkin pie, and let's get this turkey SPOILED!
Okay, opening credits: somebody's drawing all over my screen, with a red crayon. Apparently, some kind of hard-rockin' band named Lordi made this film. And I think they're Swedish or something, because the names of the film's crew all look like they're hard to pronounce.
Anyway, the first scene is of a young girl in an MRI machine. She looks scared, and she's mumbling "not again" over and over. From an observation room, we see the girl's father, a nurse and a doctor watching her brain activity on some monitors. Her father asks if the test is hurting her, but the doctor assures him that the machine doesn't inflict pain.
The girl seems to fall asleep, then she regains consciousness with a sudden jolt. As she starts to scream and demand a red crayon, the MRI has a power surge. The lights flicker, then the machine starts to smoke. Boy, this would be fun to watch if you had surgery the next day, huh?
So now we finally learn a few names. The young girl is Sarah, and her father is Ben. The nurse is Emily, and the doctor doesn't get a name. That either means he's the first to die, or he gets to live. Eh.
Ben rescues Sarah from the equipment before she gets burned, then plops her into a wheelchair. He gives her the red crayon, then threatens to take his daughter to a different hospital. Maybe one where crap doesn't explode at random intervals? Doctor Anonymous and Emily try to calm him down, and we find out that Sarah is autistic. They've been studying her case for quite some time, but have never come to any definitive conclusions.
As Ben tucks Sarah back into her hospital bed, a storm rages outside. Sarah still seems agitated, and ske keeps saying, "not again", even after her father backs away. At some point during the night, Ben wakes her up, after deciding to take his daughter to a different hospital.
They get as far as the elevator, then Sarah starts to ramble about her crayons again. The noise gets the attention of the staff, and Nurse Emily asks Ben to reconsider moving his daughter. As Ben backs the wheelchair into the elevator, Sarah grabs the wall.
Emily gets on the elevator with them, as well as a businessman on a phone, a security guard, and an elderly man who looks homeless. The elevator descends toward the lobby, then grinds to a halt after the seventh floor. As the lights go out again, one of the characters mutters, "Not 6, not 7. Not Hell, and not Heaven." Oooh, symbolism!
The homeless man, Tobias, looks like he passed out, so the security guy tries to revive him. When that doesn't work, Emily steps in to assess his condition. She advises them to call for further assistance, but no one has a working phone anymore.
The security guy, Rick, tries the emergency call button in the elevator. No response from that, either. Eventually it works, but all he hears is his own voice. While that's going on, Emily tries to save Tobias with CPR. When he finally starts to breath again, the power also seems to come back on. Tobias stands up, then demands to know why they didn't let him die.
The elevator doors finally open up, but the corridor is empty. No nurses, no janitorial staff, the place is like a museum. Even the patients have deserted the area. Rick suggests that there might have been a fire drill or something, so they wander off to find the nearest stairwell. As the walk away, Sarah eyes a suspicious shadow lurking behind an office door. Hmmm...
At an intersection in the hallway, Ben stops the group to listen to something. It's a machine, and it's in a room right next to them. Rick opens the door, and they discover that a copy machine was left on. Emily examines a few of the images that came through, revealing a screaming mouth.
Emily tells Ben that it's almost time to give his daughter a dose of some new medication they've been testing. It helps control seizures, but is still very experimental. Then they all hear another mysterious sound.
It's a woman in a wheelchair, and she's stuck in a corner. The sound was caused by her repeatedly whacking the chair into the wall. Rick offers to help her, but a closer inspection reveals that she's dead. Oh, and it looks like her eyes were torn out of their sockets.
Tobias starts to flip out, so they cover the corpse's face. Then Rick tries a nearby intercom, but hears only his own message coming back to him. Technology and this hospital don't seem to get along...Oh, and as they continue the search for a way out, we see that Sarah was drawing the face of the eyeless woman. Nice touch.
They manage to find the emergency stairs, but that whole area seems to be covered in mold and fungus. They begin their descent to the ground floor, with Ben carrying his daughter, and Rick lugging around the wheelchair. Great, I guess I have time to grow a beard...
A noise from one of the levels beneath them brings the procession, and the movie to a grinding halt. As they glance over the railing, a gun goes off. No one is killed, but Rick gets nicked around his jawline. It's just my luck to pick a movie with no body count.
They all scurry out of the stairwell at the fifth floor, and hide in the nearest open room. After making sure that the door can't be opened by their attacker, Rick has his small wound examined by Emily. As they all make an effort to calm down, heavy thudding sounds are heard moving toward their location. Everybody stares at the blocked door, with the exception of Sarah. She's glancing nervously at a pair of double-doors at the far end of the room.
As they all debate whether or not they should try the stairs again, Tobias watches Sarah wheel herself quietly over to the other exit. They all decide to follow her. Sure, why not?
They come to a security station, where Rick turns on a series of monitors. They realize, as each monitor powers up, that the entire hospital is empty, as if the building has been abandoned. The phones are still dead, yet the lights and intercom system work just fine.
Speaking of the intercom, Jon(the irritable businessman) decides to use it. He call for help from anyone who can hear the message, then gives out their location. Yeah, someone just tried to shoot you, so you should tell them exactly where you are. Jon's a brilliant strategist.
The other pretty much tell him the same thing, and Sarah looks over at another set of doors. Then the nurse sees something on one of the screens: a couple walking around on the third floor. When they walk offscreen, the monitor fritzes out. Actually, they all do.
Sarah wheels herself to a point directly in front of the doorway she was watching, and the doors seem to open under the power of her gaze. The others discuss their next move, and seem to disagree about just what that should be. Emily thinks that the priority should be to figure out where everyone else went, while Rick just wants to keep heading to the exit. Uh, why can't y'all do both?
They notice that Sarah's gone again, and conduct a search. C'mon, she's an autistic child confined to a wheelchair....tie a freakin' bell to her, if you have this much trouble! Before they leave the security station, Ben grabs a pair of walkie-talkies to bring along. Tobias wordlessly points him to the door she passed through.
Sarah's chair is in the middle of the hallway, and she looks like she might be sleeping. As Ben moves closer, he sees a ghastly female phantom reflected in the window of another door, but she swiftly vanishes again. He rescues Sarah, then rejoins the group.
Emily knows that Ben was spooked by something, but he won't talk about the apparition. Then a television and a portable radio both turn on at the same time, and 2 messages are heard: "There's no time like the present" and "...and it's gonna get colder and colder". As they ponder what it all means, Jon's phone rings.
He answers it, but it's just a recorded "out of service" message. The same thing happens to Emily and Ben when their phones go off. Sarah stops drawing to cover her ears, and Tobias decides to follow suit. As nutty as he is, he seems to be the smartest adult in the film.
There's a high-pitched whistle, and the glass in the television begins to crack, as do some of the windows. That female ghost appears again, and she's got the forehead of a Klingon. Rick fires a gun at her, shattering the glass, but leaving the spirit unaffected.
She grins, then emits a sonic shriek, which breaks even more glass around them. They flee down the hall, seeking refuge in the stairwell again. As they relax, the spirit finds them again, leading to a silly, slo-mo chase back into the hall. How is it possible that so many of these things devolve into ridiculous Scooby-Doo episodes?
The banshee swoops closer, raising her hands like talons, and someone accidentally backs into a control panel. An X-ray turns on, and the radiation it emits causes the spirit to disappear. See? Something in that hospital DID work!
Tobias is confronted by Ben, who wants to know how he predicted that the sound would happen before it did. Tobias turns the accusation back on him, wondering if stuff like this has happened in their family before that day. Jon, always the helpful one, thinks that it's just kind of hallucination, possibly brought on by a gas leak.
As the others scoff at him, Jon decides that he's better off on his own. He leaves the group to find his own escape route, and Emily says that they should do the same. The Amazing Race: Hallway Edition begins!
Jon tries to find a signal on his phone, then strolls down a corridor. He comes to an elevator and finds, to his amazement, that it sounds like it might be operational. He senses a presence behind him, but no one seems to be there.
The elevator arrives, and he steps inside. At the very last second, he sees that his watch has stopped, and senses that he's walked into a trap. He manages to stop the doors a second before they shut, and he screams for help.
The rest of the group hear him, and rush over to see what they can do. As they all work together to try and force the doors to slide apart, something appears to be lunging at Jon from underneath the elevator. Jon gets knocked off of his feet, then a pair of large claws tear through the elevator floor.
Rick grabs a fire extinguisher, intending to batter the doors until they open wider, but he manages to knock out Jon instead. Awesome. A demon clad in armor starts to climb up into the elevator, and Rick bashes it in the head until it lowers itself back into the shaft.
Tobias, who has remained back in the previous area with Emily and Sarah, somehow stole Rick's gun when he wasn't looking. He plans to kill himself with it, and Emily can't seem to talk him down. Suddenly Sarah speaks, promising Tobias that he will get to sleep when the ordeal ends, and he allows Emily to take the weapon from him. He rambles about how cold he's getting, and Emily just stands between the both of them,looking perplexed. Join the club, babe!
Rick and Ben pull Jon's slumped-over body out of the elevator, but then the scaly monster comes back. It clenches Jon's ankle in its enormous mouth, and the struggle to free him causes some of the elevator cables to snap. They pull Jon to safety as the creature plummets down the elevator shaft.
Emily bandages the wound when they all reunite, then Ben notices that Sarah's latest drawing looks like the monster they just encountered. He attempt to ask her about it, but she gets fixated on wanting the red crayon again.
Jon antagonizes Ben, and they nearly have a brawl right there. Noise from the intercom interrupts the altercation, and everybody gets excited. Help might be on the way! They go out to the corridor to hear it better, then Emily attempts to make contact with the intercom.
A woman replies, and they hear her say that she's on the third floor. Then the voice warns them that "it" is coming, and the transmission cuts off. They figure that they had better make their way down to that person's location.
They get to the next floor, but find a wall where the door should be. They bash the wall until a large hole is made, but it's been bricked over on the other side. Well, so much for the third floor rescue attempt!
They arrive at the third floor, where Emily finds the body of a doctor named Walter. He's clutching a tape recorder in one hand, and they play a message that advises them to surrender Sarah to the creatures. Ben refuses, so the journey continues.
They find a corridor filled with corpses, and the armored beast comes lunging at them through a doorway. They try to escape, but it chases them. Rick fires his gun at the monster, telling the others to escape. He runs out of bullets, and the others hear him getting killed. Then, everything goes eerily calm again.
Jon pisses off Ben when he asks him to sacrifice Sarah to save the rest of them, and another near-fight begins. Then they see the world outside of the closest window. everything appears to be frozen in time, as is evidenced by a flash of lightning that is just hanging out of the sky. Even the rain is stuck in mid-air. That seems...odd...
The intercom distracts them yet again, so Emily answers it. A voice asks her what floor she's on, and they all realize that it's the very same conversation they had earlier, only from the other end. Emily was answering herself, and never realized it.
As a group, they try to come up with a reasonable explanation for everything that has happened so far. The top ideas are either that timed has stopped, or they've somehow slipped into another dimension. Neither of those concepts explain anything, however. Good job!
Emily and Ben return to the brick wall with a sledgehammer, to see if they can make an exit. Oh, and they find a gun on a body covered in sand. They leave Sarah with Jon, and warn him not to harm Sarah. Yeah, he's really good at following orders. Anyone remember how well he did when he took orders in the movie Aliens? (I checked...he was in that one, and he was pretty inept.)
Ben gets to work on that wall, and Emily reveals that she's also a single parent. Then they have a trippy moment, when they nearly come face-to-face with themselves at the stairwell. It turns out that Ben was the one who shot at Jon earlier. Weird, man.
Jon breaks his promise, of course, and prepares to surrender the autistic girl to the demons. Then Ben breaks through that brick wall, and he and Emily explore the new corridor. A noise leads to the discovery of some more corpses.
Jon loudly announces that he's brought Sarah to be sacrificed, and tries to draw them out into the open. Someone plunges a knife through his back, and we see that it's Tobias, attempting to rescue Sarah. Ben and Emily hear some of it on their end of the transmission, then we see Jon giving Tobias the thrashing of his life.
Sarah draws another image, one that predicts Jon's death. The lights flicker, then Jon is bombarded by a hurricane-like wind, and a large mass of sand and dirt. When it stops, a mummy-like skeleton grabs Jon under his chin with one hand, using the other to rip out his still-beating heart.
Ben thrusts a stretcher at the monster, and it crashes into a wall. He checks to see that Sarah's okay, then he and Emily examine Tobias. Not only has he died, but he's well into a state of decay, appearing to have been dead for a few weeks. Not only that, but they find another mound of bodies on their way down to the second floor.
Ben asks Sarah to draw the exit for him, but she doesn't seem able to do that. As they stop to look for Sarah's medication, Emily remembers that there's a shortcut to the exit in the morgue. They celebrate, but then realize that Sarah is missing for the umpteenth time.
They split up to look for her, and Emily is forced to hide when one of the creatures arrives at her location. Unfortunately, Ben tries to make contact with Emily via the walkie, and the monster hears it. When the creature seems distracted by something else, Emily risks standing up, and attempts to escape.
No, wait a sec, she has another idea first...picking up a pair of defibrillator paddles, Emily sneaks up behind the monster. When it(he?) turns around, Emily places the paddles on each side of the creature's head, electrocuting it. Not wanting to stick around to see if she killed it, Emily runs out of the room.
Ben comes looking for her, and rushes through another pair of swinging doors. There's a flash of white light, and he discovers himself back in a very normal-looking area of the hospital again. It's filled with people and light, but no one seems to be able to see or hear him as he asks for help.
When he tries to tap a woman in a lab coat on the shoulder, his hand passes right through her. Is he a ghost, or is she? He leaves to look through a different corridor, and Emily contacts him. Neither none of them has found Sarah yet.
Ben stops outside of door 235, and Emily claims to be standing in front of the very same door. But where his location is brightly illuminated, hers is dark and abandoned. Emily references a poster of a teddy bear to clarify that it's the same door, and Ben sees it too...but it's very ragged and faded in her reality, while Ben sees it while it's clean and new.
Ben walks through another set of doors, and finds himself back in the decrepit hallway again. A fluorescent light flickers, and Ben sees his daughter at the opposite end of the hall. Then the very meager light goes completely out, and a tall demon shows up, something that resembles a typical zombie.
The monster growls like a tiger, and decides to beat the living crap out of Ben. While he's being tossed like a salad, Tobias suddenly pops up again. He sneaks up behind the zombie for a quick attack, but it anticipates his move, spinning around to gut him. As Ben turns to get his daughter, Tobias whispers that he's going the wrong way.
Sarah's trying to get away again, and she tells her father that she's trying to stop what's happening. Before he can clarify what she means, Emily returns. Oh, and the biggest demon so far also shows up, looming over all of them. Emily and Ben carefully back Sarah's chair away from this new monster, and they enter the elevator. The demon strides toward them, soon breaking into a full run. Just as he reaches the elevator, the door slam shut.
They watch the various floors light up, and the light on "1" flickers as they reach the first floor. When the doors refuse to open, Ben tries to jam his finger several times on the button. The elevator starts to move yet again, stopping at a floor designated as "-1". It appears to be the hospital basement.
Sarah covers her ears again, and the ghostly woman pops up again. She screams at Emily, who now also has her ears covered. Then she and Sarah look at each other, and the ghost dissolves.
They proceed down the dark and shadowy hallway, and dead bodies chase them into another area, where the parking garage is located. As they look for a better escape route, Emily is cut off from Ben and Sarah by a door that slams shut between them. They try to get the door open, but then something on Emily's side grabs her.
Sarah warns her father that something is coming, so he gets her into an ambulance. They drive away, but there appears to be no exit. Ben crashes the ambulance into a row of cars, and has trouble getting it re-started. Then the largest demon shows up, complete with big, leathery wings and a bushy beard. They get away, but just barely in the nick of time.
Sarah starts to mutter "what happens will happen", while Ben drives around looking for any kind of exit. Ben decides to pull over, and he gently puts Sarah on the ground with a blanket. He promises that somebody will co,me along to rescue her, then he drives off to face the winged demon.
They see each other, and Ben slams his foot down on the gas pedal. Seconds before he strikes the demon, a white light flashes in front of him. He shields his eyes, then stops the ambulance.
It's Sarah. He walks over to her, and then realizes that he was being lured out of the safety of the vehicle. A black, writhing ooze crawls up his body, and he disintegrates. Then Sarah faces down the winged demon, and demands to go home. He snarls at her, and they seem to engage in a weird sort of debate. Sarah tells him that light can't live in darkness, then she closes her eyes.
We see the lobby of the hospital, as well as the elevator shaft, and several corridors. All are still empty. Then, after another flash of brilliant white light, Sarah finds herself back in the MRI machine. She screams and struggles, and Ben carries her out of the room.
Back in her chair, she lets her father hand her a blue crayon. Then they make their way to the lobby, where Sarah sees Tobias again. He leans over, smiles, then tells Sarah that he's not cold anymore. She drops the blue crayon, and it breaks, so Ben and Emily lean over to help her. THE END...?
Man, I don't know WHAT I just watched. It ultimately wasn't a slasher, even though there were many, many dead bodies. But I'm still not even sure what happened. Were they all dead? Was the hospital even real? Who were the piles of corpses, and why did the demons get overpowered by Sarah? Weird. 3.5 out of 5, because it was pretty great as a visual experience, if nothing else.
And what did I learn after seeing Dark Floors?
-MRI machines are deadly.
-Ghosts are powerless against X-rays.
-Hospitals leaves their dead patients in piles, for anybody to just come across.
Next up: the less grim-sounding Pinata: Survival Island. Happy late Thanksgiving!
Well, after flipping a coin and getting my meenie's eenied, I went with Dark Floors. I figured I needed some distance between Doll Graveyard and my next "inanimate object kills people" movie(heh, next week...), so that left a clear winner in the battle for my attention. So, put down your utensils, skip the last piece of pumpkin pie, and let's get this turkey SPOILED!
Okay, opening credits: somebody's drawing all over my screen, with a red crayon. Apparently, some kind of hard-rockin' band named Lordi made this film. And I think they're Swedish or something, because the names of the film's crew all look like they're hard to pronounce.
Anyway, the first scene is of a young girl in an MRI machine. She looks scared, and she's mumbling "not again" over and over. From an observation room, we see the girl's father, a nurse and a doctor watching her brain activity on some monitors. Her father asks if the test is hurting her, but the doctor assures him that the machine doesn't inflict pain.
The girl seems to fall asleep, then she regains consciousness with a sudden jolt. As she starts to scream and demand a red crayon, the MRI has a power surge. The lights flicker, then the machine starts to smoke. Boy, this would be fun to watch if you had surgery the next day, huh?
So now we finally learn a few names. The young girl is Sarah, and her father is Ben. The nurse is Emily, and the doctor doesn't get a name. That either means he's the first to die, or he gets to live. Eh.
Ben rescues Sarah from the equipment before she gets burned, then plops her into a wheelchair. He gives her the red crayon, then threatens to take his daughter to a different hospital. Maybe one where crap doesn't explode at random intervals? Doctor Anonymous and Emily try to calm him down, and we find out that Sarah is autistic. They've been studying her case for quite some time, but have never come to any definitive conclusions.
As Ben tucks Sarah back into her hospital bed, a storm rages outside. Sarah still seems agitated, and ske keeps saying, "not again", even after her father backs away. At some point during the night, Ben wakes her up, after deciding to take his daughter to a different hospital.
They get as far as the elevator, then Sarah starts to ramble about her crayons again. The noise gets the attention of the staff, and Nurse Emily asks Ben to reconsider moving his daughter. As Ben backs the wheelchair into the elevator, Sarah grabs the wall.
Emily gets on the elevator with them, as well as a businessman on a phone, a security guard, and an elderly man who looks homeless. The elevator descends toward the lobby, then grinds to a halt after the seventh floor. As the lights go out again, one of the characters mutters, "Not 6, not 7. Not Hell, and not Heaven." Oooh, symbolism!
The homeless man, Tobias, looks like he passed out, so the security guy tries to revive him. When that doesn't work, Emily steps in to assess his condition. She advises them to call for further assistance, but no one has a working phone anymore.
The security guy, Rick, tries the emergency call button in the elevator. No response from that, either. Eventually it works, but all he hears is his own voice. While that's going on, Emily tries to save Tobias with CPR. When he finally starts to breath again, the power also seems to come back on. Tobias stands up, then demands to know why they didn't let him die.
The elevator doors finally open up, but the corridor is empty. No nurses, no janitorial staff, the place is like a museum. Even the patients have deserted the area. Rick suggests that there might have been a fire drill or something, so they wander off to find the nearest stairwell. As the walk away, Sarah eyes a suspicious shadow lurking behind an office door. Hmmm...
At an intersection in the hallway, Ben stops the group to listen to something. It's a machine, and it's in a room right next to them. Rick opens the door, and they discover that a copy machine was left on. Emily examines a few of the images that came through, revealing a screaming mouth.
Emily tells Ben that it's almost time to give his daughter a dose of some new medication they've been testing. It helps control seizures, but is still very experimental. Then they all hear another mysterious sound.
It's a woman in a wheelchair, and she's stuck in a corner. The sound was caused by her repeatedly whacking the chair into the wall. Rick offers to help her, but a closer inspection reveals that she's dead. Oh, and it looks like her eyes were torn out of their sockets.
Tobias starts to flip out, so they cover the corpse's face. Then Rick tries a nearby intercom, but hears only his own message coming back to him. Technology and this hospital don't seem to get along...Oh, and as they continue the search for a way out, we see that Sarah was drawing the face of the eyeless woman. Nice touch.
They manage to find the emergency stairs, but that whole area seems to be covered in mold and fungus. They begin their descent to the ground floor, with Ben carrying his daughter, and Rick lugging around the wheelchair. Great, I guess I have time to grow a beard...
A noise from one of the levels beneath them brings the procession, and the movie to a grinding halt. As they glance over the railing, a gun goes off. No one is killed, but Rick gets nicked around his jawline. It's just my luck to pick a movie with no body count.
They all scurry out of the stairwell at the fifth floor, and hide in the nearest open room. After making sure that the door can't be opened by their attacker, Rick has his small wound examined by Emily. As they all make an effort to calm down, heavy thudding sounds are heard moving toward their location. Everybody stares at the blocked door, with the exception of Sarah. She's glancing nervously at a pair of double-doors at the far end of the room.
As they all debate whether or not they should try the stairs again, Tobias watches Sarah wheel herself quietly over to the other exit. They all decide to follow her. Sure, why not?
They come to a security station, where Rick turns on a series of monitors. They realize, as each monitor powers up, that the entire hospital is empty, as if the building has been abandoned. The phones are still dead, yet the lights and intercom system work just fine.
Speaking of the intercom, Jon(the irritable businessman) decides to use it. He call for help from anyone who can hear the message, then gives out their location. Yeah, someone just tried to shoot you, so you should tell them exactly where you are. Jon's a brilliant strategist.
The other pretty much tell him the same thing, and Sarah looks over at another set of doors. Then the nurse sees something on one of the screens: a couple walking around on the third floor. When they walk offscreen, the monitor fritzes out. Actually, they all do.
Sarah wheels herself to a point directly in front of the doorway she was watching, and the doors seem to open under the power of her gaze. The others discuss their next move, and seem to disagree about just what that should be. Emily thinks that the priority should be to figure out where everyone else went, while Rick just wants to keep heading to the exit. Uh, why can't y'all do both?
They notice that Sarah's gone again, and conduct a search. C'mon, she's an autistic child confined to a wheelchair....tie a freakin' bell to her, if you have this much trouble! Before they leave the security station, Ben grabs a pair of walkie-talkies to bring along. Tobias wordlessly points him to the door she passed through.
Sarah's chair is in the middle of the hallway, and she looks like she might be sleeping. As Ben moves closer, he sees a ghastly female phantom reflected in the window of another door, but she swiftly vanishes again. He rescues Sarah, then rejoins the group.
Emily knows that Ben was spooked by something, but he won't talk about the apparition. Then a television and a portable radio both turn on at the same time, and 2 messages are heard: "There's no time like the present" and "...and it's gonna get colder and colder". As they ponder what it all means, Jon's phone rings.
He answers it, but it's just a recorded "out of service" message. The same thing happens to Emily and Ben when their phones go off. Sarah stops drawing to cover her ears, and Tobias decides to follow suit. As nutty as he is, he seems to be the smartest adult in the film.
There's a high-pitched whistle, and the glass in the television begins to crack, as do some of the windows. That female ghost appears again, and she's got the forehead of a Klingon. Rick fires a gun at her, shattering the glass, but leaving the spirit unaffected.
She grins, then emits a sonic shriek, which breaks even more glass around them. They flee down the hall, seeking refuge in the stairwell again. As they relax, the spirit finds them again, leading to a silly, slo-mo chase back into the hall. How is it possible that so many of these things devolve into ridiculous Scooby-Doo episodes?
The banshee swoops closer, raising her hands like talons, and someone accidentally backs into a control panel. An X-ray turns on, and the radiation it emits causes the spirit to disappear. See? Something in that hospital DID work!
Tobias is confronted by Ben, who wants to know how he predicted that the sound would happen before it did. Tobias turns the accusation back on him, wondering if stuff like this has happened in their family before that day. Jon, always the helpful one, thinks that it's just kind of hallucination, possibly brought on by a gas leak.
As the others scoff at him, Jon decides that he's better off on his own. He leaves the group to find his own escape route, and Emily says that they should do the same. The Amazing Race: Hallway Edition begins!
Jon tries to find a signal on his phone, then strolls down a corridor. He comes to an elevator and finds, to his amazement, that it sounds like it might be operational. He senses a presence behind him, but no one seems to be there.
The elevator arrives, and he steps inside. At the very last second, he sees that his watch has stopped, and senses that he's walked into a trap. He manages to stop the doors a second before they shut, and he screams for help.
The rest of the group hear him, and rush over to see what they can do. As they all work together to try and force the doors to slide apart, something appears to be lunging at Jon from underneath the elevator. Jon gets knocked off of his feet, then a pair of large claws tear through the elevator floor.
Rick grabs a fire extinguisher, intending to batter the doors until they open wider, but he manages to knock out Jon instead. Awesome. A demon clad in armor starts to climb up into the elevator, and Rick bashes it in the head until it lowers itself back into the shaft.
Tobias, who has remained back in the previous area with Emily and Sarah, somehow stole Rick's gun when he wasn't looking. He plans to kill himself with it, and Emily can't seem to talk him down. Suddenly Sarah speaks, promising Tobias that he will get to sleep when the ordeal ends, and he allows Emily to take the weapon from him. He rambles about how cold he's getting, and Emily just stands between the both of them,looking perplexed. Join the club, babe!
Rick and Ben pull Jon's slumped-over body out of the elevator, but then the scaly monster comes back. It clenches Jon's ankle in its enormous mouth, and the struggle to free him causes some of the elevator cables to snap. They pull Jon to safety as the creature plummets down the elevator shaft.
Emily bandages the wound when they all reunite, then Ben notices that Sarah's latest drawing looks like the monster they just encountered. He attempt to ask her about it, but she gets fixated on wanting the red crayon again.
Jon antagonizes Ben, and they nearly have a brawl right there. Noise from the intercom interrupts the altercation, and everybody gets excited. Help might be on the way! They go out to the corridor to hear it better, then Emily attempts to make contact with the intercom.
A woman replies, and they hear her say that she's on the third floor. Then the voice warns them that "it" is coming, and the transmission cuts off. They figure that they had better make their way down to that person's location.
They get to the next floor, but find a wall where the door should be. They bash the wall until a large hole is made, but it's been bricked over on the other side. Well, so much for the third floor rescue attempt!
They arrive at the third floor, where Emily finds the body of a doctor named Walter. He's clutching a tape recorder in one hand, and they play a message that advises them to surrender Sarah to the creatures. Ben refuses, so the journey continues.
They find a corridor filled with corpses, and the armored beast comes lunging at them through a doorway. They try to escape, but it chases them. Rick fires his gun at the monster, telling the others to escape. He runs out of bullets, and the others hear him getting killed. Then, everything goes eerily calm again.
Jon pisses off Ben when he asks him to sacrifice Sarah to save the rest of them, and another near-fight begins. Then they see the world outside of the closest window. everything appears to be frozen in time, as is evidenced by a flash of lightning that is just hanging out of the sky. Even the rain is stuck in mid-air. That seems...odd...
The intercom distracts them yet again, so Emily answers it. A voice asks her what floor she's on, and they all realize that it's the very same conversation they had earlier, only from the other end. Emily was answering herself, and never realized it.
As a group, they try to come up with a reasonable explanation for everything that has happened so far. The top ideas are either that timed has stopped, or they've somehow slipped into another dimension. Neither of those concepts explain anything, however. Good job!
Emily and Ben return to the brick wall with a sledgehammer, to see if they can make an exit. Oh, and they find a gun on a body covered in sand. They leave Sarah with Jon, and warn him not to harm Sarah. Yeah, he's really good at following orders. Anyone remember how well he did when he took orders in the movie Aliens? (I checked...he was in that one, and he was pretty inept.)
Ben gets to work on that wall, and Emily reveals that she's also a single parent. Then they have a trippy moment, when they nearly come face-to-face with themselves at the stairwell. It turns out that Ben was the one who shot at Jon earlier. Weird, man.
Jon breaks his promise, of course, and prepares to surrender the autistic girl to the demons. Then Ben breaks through that brick wall, and he and Emily explore the new corridor. A noise leads to the discovery of some more corpses.
Jon loudly announces that he's brought Sarah to be sacrificed, and tries to draw them out into the open. Someone plunges a knife through his back, and we see that it's Tobias, attempting to rescue Sarah. Ben and Emily hear some of it on their end of the transmission, then we see Jon giving Tobias the thrashing of his life.
Sarah draws another image, one that predicts Jon's death. The lights flicker, then Jon is bombarded by a hurricane-like wind, and a large mass of sand and dirt. When it stops, a mummy-like skeleton grabs Jon under his chin with one hand, using the other to rip out his still-beating heart.
Ben thrusts a stretcher at the monster, and it crashes into a wall. He checks to see that Sarah's okay, then he and Emily examine Tobias. Not only has he died, but he's well into a state of decay, appearing to have been dead for a few weeks. Not only that, but they find another mound of bodies on their way down to the second floor.
Ben asks Sarah to draw the exit for him, but she doesn't seem able to do that. As they stop to look for Sarah's medication, Emily remembers that there's a shortcut to the exit in the morgue. They celebrate, but then realize that Sarah is missing for the umpteenth time.
They split up to look for her, and Emily is forced to hide when one of the creatures arrives at her location. Unfortunately, Ben tries to make contact with Emily via the walkie, and the monster hears it. When the creature seems distracted by something else, Emily risks standing up, and attempts to escape.
No, wait a sec, she has another idea first...picking up a pair of defibrillator paddles, Emily sneaks up behind the monster. When it(he?) turns around, Emily places the paddles on each side of the creature's head, electrocuting it. Not wanting to stick around to see if she killed it, Emily runs out of the room.
Ben comes looking for her, and rushes through another pair of swinging doors. There's a flash of white light, and he discovers himself back in a very normal-looking area of the hospital again. It's filled with people and light, but no one seems to be able to see or hear him as he asks for help.
When he tries to tap a woman in a lab coat on the shoulder, his hand passes right through her. Is he a ghost, or is she? He leaves to look through a different corridor, and Emily contacts him. Neither none of them has found Sarah yet.
Ben stops outside of door 235, and Emily claims to be standing in front of the very same door. But where his location is brightly illuminated, hers is dark and abandoned. Emily references a poster of a teddy bear to clarify that it's the same door, and Ben sees it too...but it's very ragged and faded in her reality, while Ben sees it while it's clean and new.
Ben walks through another set of doors, and finds himself back in the decrepit hallway again. A fluorescent light flickers, and Ben sees his daughter at the opposite end of the hall. Then the very meager light goes completely out, and a tall demon shows up, something that resembles a typical zombie.
The monster growls like a tiger, and decides to beat the living crap out of Ben. While he's being tossed like a salad, Tobias suddenly pops up again. He sneaks up behind the zombie for a quick attack, but it anticipates his move, spinning around to gut him. As Ben turns to get his daughter, Tobias whispers that he's going the wrong way.
Sarah's trying to get away again, and she tells her father that she's trying to stop what's happening. Before he can clarify what she means, Emily returns. Oh, and the biggest demon so far also shows up, looming over all of them. Emily and Ben carefully back Sarah's chair away from this new monster, and they enter the elevator. The demon strides toward them, soon breaking into a full run. Just as he reaches the elevator, the door slam shut.
They watch the various floors light up, and the light on "1" flickers as they reach the first floor. When the doors refuse to open, Ben tries to jam his finger several times on the button. The elevator starts to move yet again, stopping at a floor designated as "-1". It appears to be the hospital basement.
Sarah covers her ears again, and the ghostly woman pops up again. She screams at Emily, who now also has her ears covered. Then she and Sarah look at each other, and the ghost dissolves.
They proceed down the dark and shadowy hallway, and dead bodies chase them into another area, where the parking garage is located. As they look for a better escape route, Emily is cut off from Ben and Sarah by a door that slams shut between them. They try to get the door open, but then something on Emily's side grabs her.
Sarah warns her father that something is coming, so he gets her into an ambulance. They drive away, but there appears to be no exit. Ben crashes the ambulance into a row of cars, and has trouble getting it re-started. Then the largest demon shows up, complete with big, leathery wings and a bushy beard. They get away, but just barely in the nick of time.
Sarah starts to mutter "what happens will happen", while Ben drives around looking for any kind of exit. Ben decides to pull over, and he gently puts Sarah on the ground with a blanket. He promises that somebody will co,me along to rescue her, then he drives off to face the winged demon.
They see each other, and Ben slams his foot down on the gas pedal. Seconds before he strikes the demon, a white light flashes in front of him. He shields his eyes, then stops the ambulance.
It's Sarah. He walks over to her, and then realizes that he was being lured out of the safety of the vehicle. A black, writhing ooze crawls up his body, and he disintegrates. Then Sarah faces down the winged demon, and demands to go home. He snarls at her, and they seem to engage in a weird sort of debate. Sarah tells him that light can't live in darkness, then she closes her eyes.
We see the lobby of the hospital, as well as the elevator shaft, and several corridors. All are still empty. Then, after another flash of brilliant white light, Sarah finds herself back in the MRI machine. She screams and struggles, and Ben carries her out of the room.
Back in her chair, she lets her father hand her a blue crayon. Then they make their way to the lobby, where Sarah sees Tobias again. He leans over, smiles, then tells Sarah that he's not cold anymore. She drops the blue crayon, and it breaks, so Ben and Emily lean over to help her. THE END...?
Man, I don't know WHAT I just watched. It ultimately wasn't a slasher, even though there were many, many dead bodies. But I'm still not even sure what happened. Were they all dead? Was the hospital even real? Who were the piles of corpses, and why did the demons get overpowered by Sarah? Weird. 3.5 out of 5, because it was pretty great as a visual experience, if nothing else.
And what did I learn after seeing Dark Floors?
-MRI machines are deadly.
-Ghosts are powerless against X-rays.
-Hospitals leaves their dead patients in piles, for anybody to just come across.
Next up: the less grim-sounding Pinata: Survival Island. Happy late Thanksgiving!
Friday, September 13, 2013
Evil Dead (remake)
I really don't "get" the concept of remaking a movie, whether it's horror, comedy, or whatever. I mean, the story's been done, the script is usually a recycled compilation of great bits from the original version, the cast almost always looks bored...why bother? For every decent one(Friday the 13th, Black Christmas), we get dozens that seem pointless(Nightmare On Elm Street, Prom Night, The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Stepfather, One Missed Call, Halloween, Night of The Demons, House of Wax, Toolbox Murders, Sorority Row, My Bloody Valentine 3D, I could do this for weeks and weeks...). Why not use that time and effort to write something else that we HAVEN'T seen yet?
Anyway, I found myself wondering this the other day at the movies, while watching a trailer for a remake of Robocop. Maybe not the best mood for watching a remake of Evil Dead. We'll see...SPOILERS from this point on...and apologies to Bruce Campbell for not doing the original trilogy first.
Okay, opening scene: A young woman is scurrying behind some trees in a forest, breathing heavy and looking very rattled. Some redneck-farmer type gets the jump on her, and forces a burlap sack over her head. Wait, were we just invited to a hillbilly wedding ceremony?
She sees shadowy figures in front of her and begs them not to hurt her. An older woman tells her not to be afraid, but there's a table next to her covered with bloody tools. The elderly woman opens an ancient-looking book, and begins to recite strange verses.
At this point, a man approaches the prisoner, then whips the burlap sack off of her head. They stare at each other, and he turns out to be her father. The girl asks him what's happening, and who these strange folks are, and he informs her that her mother has died, and at her hands no less.
Then he procures a bottle of water and dumps the contents on his daughter's head. Acid? Holy water? Dr. Pepper? Nope...it's gasoline. And apparently he's being too slow, because the old woman orders him to hurry up.
Realizing that she's about to become a crispy critter, the girl once again begs her father to take her back home. Then her face changes, and she goes full-on demonic. Even after being set ablaze, she grins and continues to deliver her threats. Dad steps back, then raises his trusty shotgun. He shoots her to death, then the title slams onto the screen. Heh, reminds me of the way they did the title for Cabin In the Woods. Funny.
Now there's a long road, closed in by trees. Maybe this is Wrong Turn 12: Three Finger Makes a Treehouse. Nope, a jeep has pulled off the road, and now we're outside a cabin. In the woods. Like in that movie, Atonement.
As everyone stretches their legs, we meet our victims: Olivia is a cute brunette, and a registered nurse to boot; Eric is the token hippy, a young teacher with an attitude; Mia, a druggie-artist in need of an intervention; And David is Mia's estranged brother. There may be 1 or 2 others, but they don't have names yet.
David gets the front door open, and the interior looks like a bomb recently went off in there. Mia finds herself in a bedroom filled with old family pictures, and David wanders in behind her. They reminisce about their childhood memories, blah blah blah.
Later, Olivia tells David that this is Mia's second intervention. She left the first one after only 8 hours. Oh, and she OD'ed later, and nearly died. They decide that, in order for the intervention to succeed, they must resolve to force Mia to stay if she attempts to leave again.
That first night doesn't go well. Mia's screaming her head off about a bad smell, and she's being held, as if she could suddenly go crazy on them. Even after Mia's calm again, she still insists that there's something rotting in the cabin (in the woods), The dog one of the guys brought along seems to smell it as well. When he tries to dig through the floor, they all take a closer look.
The dog found a trapdoor, probably leading into a basement. They explore, but not before grabbing their trusty flashlights. Smarter than the usual fodder! That's refreshing.
Anyway, the cellar isn't exactly out of Better Homes and Gardens. Dust? Check. Cobwebs? Yup. Multitudes of little kitty-cat corpses? You betcha! Book of the Dead, bound up in barbed wire? Well, that's a little bit specific, but, yes.
They quickly vacate the creepy basement, and they bring the book with them. After a brief debate over all of the satanic-ritual paraphernalia that was down there, they decide not to decide anything just yet. The bad weather kicks in outside, and Mia paces around the muddy yard while the other girls prepare a meal that looks like something that Leatherface would drool over.
Hey, let's see what Eric is doing! He's actually off by himself, staring at the mysterious book. Using a pair of pliers, he begins the process of snapping the wires from around the book. It's wrapped in plastic, so he rips that apart, as well. Then he opens the book up, and begins to read the Latin inscribed within. If the original version and Cabin In the Woods have taught me anything, it's this: Never Read The Frickin' Latin Out Loud! Dolt.
He finds a page with a warning scrawled across the top: DON'T SAY IT, DON'T WRITE IT, DON'T HEAR IT. Beneath that ominous phrase there is a block of text that has been scribbled over. Using a pencil and a thin sheet of paper, Eric makes an etching of the message that was blacked out: Kunda Astrata Montossa Kanda". Yeah, Hakuna Matata you too pal.
Dumbass reads the words out loud, and a malevolent entity flies into Mia's body, possessing her. She drops to the ground, pukes, then sees Samara from The Ring standing in the forest. Okay, maybe not, but the demon sure does resemble Samara.
Mia rushes into the cabin(in the woods...), and starts to pack her stuff. She tells her friends that she needs to leave immediately, and they assume that it's a drug withdrawal thing. Eric informs Mia that they decided that they couldn't let her leave until she was better, so she turns to David for help. When he refuses as well, she tears off the protective amulet he gave her, then stomps outside to steal the car.
No one's smart enough to stop her, so she takes off. Ghost Girl appears again, so Mia swerves to avoid her, landing the car in a small body of water. Awesome. She gets out, nearly drowning in the process. Then Samara-Lite calls her name again, and bursts out of the water. Mia screams and runs.
As the demon-ghost thingy chases her around the forest, Mia gets tripped out by some twisty vines and branches. Her leg gets caught, then a tendril wraps itself around her throat. The entity appears to her again, then Mia gets tree-raped. Yeah, you read that right. A tree fucks her. Worst case of morning wood EVER. (My heartfelt apologies to any readers who've ever been sexually assaulted by trees. They can be vicious. Take back the splinters, am I right?)
Her friends find her, and manage to bring her back to the cabin(in the woods. By the lake. Yeah, I could do this all day...) Olivia examines her wounds, but disregards her rantings about demon-girls and tree-rape as nothing more than delusional mumbo-jumbo brought on by withdrawal. When the suggestion is made that she might be better off in a hospital, Olivia gets pissed off and tells them that Mia's getting the same care that a hospital would provide for her.
Olivia also theorizes that the assault on her body could have been self-inflicted. She claims that they can't trust Mia not to harm herself, as she'll likely do anything to get a fix. David then leaves the room to see Mia, who begs him to take her away from the woods. She tells him about the demonic presence, claiming that it's in the room with them. He leaves the room after being convinced that Olivia was right, and Mia actually sees the demon girl glaring at her from a dark corner of the bedroom.
Eric's still poring over the book, even finding a picture depicting the tree-rape that Mia described. Olivia suggests that he should put the book away, so that he can help David clean up the aftermath of Mia's incident, but he selfishly declares that David should do it by himself, because he's been out of their lives for so long. Wow, this is a tight-knit group here!
David heads outside with some trash, only to find his dog, named Grandpa, dead. It's covered in blood, so naturally he assumes that Mia must have killed it with a hammer. While he tries to confront her, she's locked in the bathroom, being boiled in the shower by hot water. The demon inside her then sets the room on fire.
He finally breaks the door down, and finds the bathroom filled with steam and smoke. The water was so hot that he nearly burns his hand trying to turn the faucet off. David picks Mia up off of the ground, then attempts to drive her away in the other car.
Eric finds a picture in the book that depicts a figure pouring boiling water on themselves, and he suddenly realizes that life is somehow imitating art. Mia begins to cough up some nasty spew in the car, then David is forced to pull over when he sees that the road is now underwater. Man, this is turning out to be a pretty fucking horrible weekend for these guys, huh?
Everyone heads back to the cabin(in the woods), and Olivia discovers that Mia now has second- and third-degree burns all over her body, from her hot shower. A heated argument then develops, everyone blames each other for not leaving sooner, and none of them notice that Mia has snuck into the room.
When they do finally see her, they realize that she now has a rifle. David begs her not to use it, and she just barely misses shooting him, hitting the window next to him instead. In the demon's voice, Mia announces that they will all die that night, then she faints.
Olivia makes a grab for the gun, but the demon stops her. Mia leaps on top of the other girl, pins her to the floor, then vomits about 20 gallons of bloody puke into her face. Best vomit scene since Meaning of Life, I swear. Fun for the whole family.
They manage to trap Mia in the basement, and talk about the physical changes she's undergone; most noticeably, her demonic black eyes. Gee, think maybe she's possessed?
Eric checks in on Olivia after things have calmed down, and the light in the bathroom goes out. He creeps over to the shower, only to find that her eyes have gone monstrous as well, and that she's used a knife give herself a wider smile, Sardonicus-style.
Horrified, Eric tries to leave, but trips and falls. The bathroom door slams shut, and Olivia stabs Eric in the shoulder before he can get up again. She then stabs him several more times with a hypodermic needle, until he manages to knock her out with a large chunk of porcelain.
He crawls over to the furthest corner away from her body, then sloooowly pulls the broken needle out of his eyelid. Ouch. Then he sees Olivia crawling toward him, ready for another round. He picks up the chunk of porcelain, repeatedly bashing it into the back of her skull.
David bursts into the room, and Eric tries to explain what happened. David tries to patch up his wounds, and Eric tells him about the contents of the book. Natalie leaves the room and considers making a run for it, but a voice stops her at the front door...It's Mia, trapped in the basement.
Mia tells Natalie that she doesn't have any memory of what transpired, and that she's suffering from some severe injuries, so Natalie offers to come down to have a look. Not the smartest banana in the bunch, is she? Y'know, something just know occurred to me: The people in horror movies have NEVER WATCHED a horror movie! That must be it. How else can you explain the rampant stupidity in their actions?
To no one's surprise, Mia is not herself. By the time that Natalie figures that out, she's almost at the bottom of the stairs, and tries to scurry back up to the ground floor. The demon collapses the steps, but Natalie manages to hoist herself up through the trapdoor anyway. The demon grabs her by the ankle and pulls her back down into the cellar. Bye, sorry we barely got to know you...
Oh look, Nat lives! She finds herself flat on her back, unable to move much. Mia is by her feet, sniffing and apparently "tasting" her. When she gets closer to Natalie's upper body, she growls that she can smell her soul, then she bites Natalie's hand like a rabid dog. After cutting into her own tongue, Mia then kisses Natalie, making her ingest blood. Anyone hungry?
David opens the basement door, and yanks Nat to safety. Before he traps Mia again, she tells him that his sister's soul is "being raped in Hell". He slams the trapdoor shut, then nails the door down for good measure.
As the storm outside picks up, Eric gets the bright idea to burn the evil book. Nice try, but the tome remains intact, showing no visible signs of damage in the least. Then Eric tells David everything he's read in the book so far.
Okay, so apparently a demon wants to be restored to his full power, so that he can come to Earth to conquer humanity. The ritual to make that possible requires 5 human sacrifices. Gee, I wonder who the victims might be?
Natalie examines her wounded hand in the kitchen, and now realizes that it's possessed. She does the easiest thing possible, by preparing to sever her arm off to save herself. Meanwhile, Eric and David have to figure out whether or not killing Mia will put an end to the ritual.
Natalie runs water over the hand, trying to disinfect it. It twitches uncontrollably, and now she knows that the demon infection is spreading. She picks up an electric knife, sawing through the monster arm. When Eric and David find her in the kitchen, Natalie announces that she feels much better, then stands up...while her arms plops to the floor.
Dave and Eric continue to brainstorm a plan, when the trapdoor flies open once more, unhindered by the nails. Our favorite demon-girl shows up, armed with a nail gun. She attacks the men, shooting Eric a handful of times in the arm. Then she corners him against a wall, damaging his face, legs, arms, torso, etc. with a bunch of nails. No, wait, the attacker is Natalie, because Mia is still down below.
After another bloody battle, the guys defeat Natalie. Eric needs assistance to escape, so they limp away together. Then David returns to the house to destroy it with fire. As he prepares to drop the match into the gas-soaked house, he gets another idea.
He readies a syringe, then heads back down to the basement, where there is now extensive flooding. Mia leaps out of the water to take David down, but Eric shows up and shoots her.
Eric injects himself, and he seems to be himself again. David digs a grave for the demon-Mia, and she tries to get into his head with her words. David apologizes for never being supportive enough, then finishes with the burial. After the demon supposedly leaves her body, David makes several attempts to resuscitate her. They all seem to fail.
As David finally surrenders and steps away, he hears Mia calling his name. They hug, and he apologizes for never being there for her. As they pack up to leave, David gets mauled by Eric, who damages his neck and throat. David urges Mia to escape, but she refuses.
David forces Mia out of the room, then faces Eric for their final brawl. David sets off a spark that ignites a gas leak, and the entire cabin(in the woods) goes up.
Mia wanders around outside for awhile, and demons attempt to grab her. She gets to the car, but they pursue her. She gets back to what's left of the house, crawling through some tunnels, as demons try to grab her the entire way.
They walk on ceilings, crawl beneath the floors, it's like a bug infestation. Finally she gets a chainsaw out, and then hides under one of the vehicles. She uses the chainsaw to remove the stalker's legs, but the demon is strong enough to lift the car off the ground. Mia nearly escapes, but the car lands on top of her hand. As the demon crawls closer, Mia manages to completely tear her hand off, grab the chainsaw with her good hand, then split her friend in half, right down the middle.
Mia walks back toward the ruins of the cabin,picks up her amulet, then staggers away into the woods. The book can be seen on the ground, and, as the movie ends, the pages rapidly start to flip. THE END, with the exception of an incredibly brief scene of Bruce Campbell, looking into the camera and saying "Groovy!"
Eh. Was expecting much, much worse from this one, but it was average. The gore was good, but it felt like the pace was off. They should have just funded Evil Dead 4 instead. Still, it wasn't the worst remake ever, so...let's say 3 killer trees out of 5 for this one. An average movie.
Oh, and what did Evil Dead teach me?
-Originals rock.
-"Possession by puke" is a bad way to go.
-DON'T READ THE %@!$ING LATIN!!!
Okay, that is all. Next up is either Miner's Massacre or The Wraith. Don't know much about either one, so it could be a mixed bag. See ya!
Anyway, I found myself wondering this the other day at the movies, while watching a trailer for a remake of Robocop. Maybe not the best mood for watching a remake of Evil Dead. We'll see...SPOILERS from this point on...and apologies to Bruce Campbell for not doing the original trilogy first.
Okay, opening scene: A young woman is scurrying behind some trees in a forest, breathing heavy and looking very rattled. Some redneck-farmer type gets the jump on her, and forces a burlap sack over her head. Wait, were we just invited to a hillbilly wedding ceremony?
She sees shadowy figures in front of her and begs them not to hurt her. An older woman tells her not to be afraid, but there's a table next to her covered with bloody tools. The elderly woman opens an ancient-looking book, and begins to recite strange verses.
At this point, a man approaches the prisoner, then whips the burlap sack off of her head. They stare at each other, and he turns out to be her father. The girl asks him what's happening, and who these strange folks are, and he informs her that her mother has died, and at her hands no less.
Then he procures a bottle of water and dumps the contents on his daughter's head. Acid? Holy water? Dr. Pepper? Nope...it's gasoline. And apparently he's being too slow, because the old woman orders him to hurry up.
Realizing that she's about to become a crispy critter, the girl once again begs her father to take her back home. Then her face changes, and she goes full-on demonic. Even after being set ablaze, she grins and continues to deliver her threats. Dad steps back, then raises his trusty shotgun. He shoots her to death, then the title slams onto the screen. Heh, reminds me of the way they did the title for Cabin In the Woods. Funny.
Now there's a long road, closed in by trees. Maybe this is Wrong Turn 12: Three Finger Makes a Treehouse. Nope, a jeep has pulled off the road, and now we're outside a cabin. In the woods. Like in that movie, Atonement.
As everyone stretches their legs, we meet our victims: Olivia is a cute brunette, and a registered nurse to boot; Eric is the token hippy, a young teacher with an attitude; Mia, a druggie-artist in need of an intervention; And David is Mia's estranged brother. There may be 1 or 2 others, but they don't have names yet.
David gets the front door open, and the interior looks like a bomb recently went off in there. Mia finds herself in a bedroom filled with old family pictures, and David wanders in behind her. They reminisce about their childhood memories, blah blah blah.
Later, Olivia tells David that this is Mia's second intervention. She left the first one after only 8 hours. Oh, and she OD'ed later, and nearly died. They decide that, in order for the intervention to succeed, they must resolve to force Mia to stay if she attempts to leave again.
That first night doesn't go well. Mia's screaming her head off about a bad smell, and she's being held, as if she could suddenly go crazy on them. Even after Mia's calm again, she still insists that there's something rotting in the cabin (in the woods), The dog one of the guys brought along seems to smell it as well. When he tries to dig through the floor, they all take a closer look.
The dog found a trapdoor, probably leading into a basement. They explore, but not before grabbing their trusty flashlights. Smarter than the usual fodder! That's refreshing.
Anyway, the cellar isn't exactly out of Better Homes and Gardens. Dust? Check. Cobwebs? Yup. Multitudes of little kitty-cat corpses? You betcha! Book of the Dead, bound up in barbed wire? Well, that's a little bit specific, but, yes.
They quickly vacate the creepy basement, and they bring the book with them. After a brief debate over all of the satanic-ritual paraphernalia that was down there, they decide not to decide anything just yet. The bad weather kicks in outside, and Mia paces around the muddy yard while the other girls prepare a meal that looks like something that Leatherface would drool over.
Hey, let's see what Eric is doing! He's actually off by himself, staring at the mysterious book. Using a pair of pliers, he begins the process of snapping the wires from around the book. It's wrapped in plastic, so he rips that apart, as well. Then he opens the book up, and begins to read the Latin inscribed within. If the original version and Cabin In the Woods have taught me anything, it's this: Never Read The Frickin' Latin Out Loud! Dolt.
He finds a page with a warning scrawled across the top: DON'T SAY IT, DON'T WRITE IT, DON'T HEAR IT. Beneath that ominous phrase there is a block of text that has been scribbled over. Using a pencil and a thin sheet of paper, Eric makes an etching of the message that was blacked out: Kunda Astrata Montossa Kanda". Yeah, Hakuna Matata you too pal.
Dumbass reads the words out loud, and a malevolent entity flies into Mia's body, possessing her. She drops to the ground, pukes, then sees Samara from The Ring standing in the forest. Okay, maybe not, but the demon sure does resemble Samara.
Mia rushes into the cabin(in the woods...), and starts to pack her stuff. She tells her friends that she needs to leave immediately, and they assume that it's a drug withdrawal thing. Eric informs Mia that they decided that they couldn't let her leave until she was better, so she turns to David for help. When he refuses as well, she tears off the protective amulet he gave her, then stomps outside to steal the car.
No one's smart enough to stop her, so she takes off. Ghost Girl appears again, so Mia swerves to avoid her, landing the car in a small body of water. Awesome. She gets out, nearly drowning in the process. Then Samara-Lite calls her name again, and bursts out of the water. Mia screams and runs.
As the demon-ghost thingy chases her around the forest, Mia gets tripped out by some twisty vines and branches. Her leg gets caught, then a tendril wraps itself around her throat. The entity appears to her again, then Mia gets tree-raped. Yeah, you read that right. A tree fucks her. Worst case of morning wood EVER. (My heartfelt apologies to any readers who've ever been sexually assaulted by trees. They can be vicious. Take back the splinters, am I right?)
Her friends find her, and manage to bring her back to the cabin(in the woods. By the lake. Yeah, I could do this all day...) Olivia examines her wounds, but disregards her rantings about demon-girls and tree-rape as nothing more than delusional mumbo-jumbo brought on by withdrawal. When the suggestion is made that she might be better off in a hospital, Olivia gets pissed off and tells them that Mia's getting the same care that a hospital would provide for her.
Olivia also theorizes that the assault on her body could have been self-inflicted. She claims that they can't trust Mia not to harm herself, as she'll likely do anything to get a fix. David then leaves the room to see Mia, who begs him to take her away from the woods. She tells him about the demonic presence, claiming that it's in the room with them. He leaves the room after being convinced that Olivia was right, and Mia actually sees the demon girl glaring at her from a dark corner of the bedroom.
Eric's still poring over the book, even finding a picture depicting the tree-rape that Mia described. Olivia suggests that he should put the book away, so that he can help David clean up the aftermath of Mia's incident, but he selfishly declares that David should do it by himself, because he's been out of their lives for so long. Wow, this is a tight-knit group here!
David heads outside with some trash, only to find his dog, named Grandpa, dead. It's covered in blood, so naturally he assumes that Mia must have killed it with a hammer. While he tries to confront her, she's locked in the bathroom, being boiled in the shower by hot water. The demon inside her then sets the room on fire.
He finally breaks the door down, and finds the bathroom filled with steam and smoke. The water was so hot that he nearly burns his hand trying to turn the faucet off. David picks Mia up off of the ground, then attempts to drive her away in the other car.
Eric finds a picture in the book that depicts a figure pouring boiling water on themselves, and he suddenly realizes that life is somehow imitating art. Mia begins to cough up some nasty spew in the car, then David is forced to pull over when he sees that the road is now underwater. Man, this is turning out to be a pretty fucking horrible weekend for these guys, huh?
Everyone heads back to the cabin(in the woods), and Olivia discovers that Mia now has second- and third-degree burns all over her body, from her hot shower. A heated argument then develops, everyone blames each other for not leaving sooner, and none of them notice that Mia has snuck into the room.
When they do finally see her, they realize that she now has a rifle. David begs her not to use it, and she just barely misses shooting him, hitting the window next to him instead. In the demon's voice, Mia announces that they will all die that night, then she faints.
Olivia makes a grab for the gun, but the demon stops her. Mia leaps on top of the other girl, pins her to the floor, then vomits about 20 gallons of bloody puke into her face. Best vomit scene since Meaning of Life, I swear. Fun for the whole family.
They manage to trap Mia in the basement, and talk about the physical changes she's undergone; most noticeably, her demonic black eyes. Gee, think maybe she's possessed?
Eric checks in on Olivia after things have calmed down, and the light in the bathroom goes out. He creeps over to the shower, only to find that her eyes have gone monstrous as well, and that she's used a knife give herself a wider smile, Sardonicus-style.
Horrified, Eric tries to leave, but trips and falls. The bathroom door slams shut, and Olivia stabs Eric in the shoulder before he can get up again. She then stabs him several more times with a hypodermic needle, until he manages to knock her out with a large chunk of porcelain.
He crawls over to the furthest corner away from her body, then sloooowly pulls the broken needle out of his eyelid. Ouch. Then he sees Olivia crawling toward him, ready for another round. He picks up the chunk of porcelain, repeatedly bashing it into the back of her skull.
David bursts into the room, and Eric tries to explain what happened. David tries to patch up his wounds, and Eric tells him about the contents of the book. Natalie leaves the room and considers making a run for it, but a voice stops her at the front door...It's Mia, trapped in the basement.
Mia tells Natalie that she doesn't have any memory of what transpired, and that she's suffering from some severe injuries, so Natalie offers to come down to have a look. Not the smartest banana in the bunch, is she? Y'know, something just know occurred to me: The people in horror movies have NEVER WATCHED a horror movie! That must be it. How else can you explain the rampant stupidity in their actions?
To no one's surprise, Mia is not herself. By the time that Natalie figures that out, she's almost at the bottom of the stairs, and tries to scurry back up to the ground floor. The demon collapses the steps, but Natalie manages to hoist herself up through the trapdoor anyway. The demon grabs her by the ankle and pulls her back down into the cellar. Bye, sorry we barely got to know you...
Oh look, Nat lives! She finds herself flat on her back, unable to move much. Mia is by her feet, sniffing and apparently "tasting" her. When she gets closer to Natalie's upper body, she growls that she can smell her soul, then she bites Natalie's hand like a rabid dog. After cutting into her own tongue, Mia then kisses Natalie, making her ingest blood. Anyone hungry?
David opens the basement door, and yanks Nat to safety. Before he traps Mia again, she tells him that his sister's soul is "being raped in Hell". He slams the trapdoor shut, then nails the door down for good measure.
As the storm outside picks up, Eric gets the bright idea to burn the evil book. Nice try, but the tome remains intact, showing no visible signs of damage in the least. Then Eric tells David everything he's read in the book so far.
Okay, so apparently a demon wants to be restored to his full power, so that he can come to Earth to conquer humanity. The ritual to make that possible requires 5 human sacrifices. Gee, I wonder who the victims might be?
Natalie examines her wounded hand in the kitchen, and now realizes that it's possessed. She does the easiest thing possible, by preparing to sever her arm off to save herself. Meanwhile, Eric and David have to figure out whether or not killing Mia will put an end to the ritual.
Natalie runs water over the hand, trying to disinfect it. It twitches uncontrollably, and now she knows that the demon infection is spreading. She picks up an electric knife, sawing through the monster arm. When Eric and David find her in the kitchen, Natalie announces that she feels much better, then stands up...while her arms plops to the floor.
Dave and Eric continue to brainstorm a plan, when the trapdoor flies open once more, unhindered by the nails. Our favorite demon-girl shows up, armed with a nail gun. She attacks the men, shooting Eric a handful of times in the arm. Then she corners him against a wall, damaging his face, legs, arms, torso, etc. with a bunch of nails. No, wait, the attacker is Natalie, because Mia is still down below.
After another bloody battle, the guys defeat Natalie. Eric needs assistance to escape, so they limp away together. Then David returns to the house to destroy it with fire. As he prepares to drop the match into the gas-soaked house, he gets another idea.
He readies a syringe, then heads back down to the basement, where there is now extensive flooding. Mia leaps out of the water to take David down, but Eric shows up and shoots her.
Eric injects himself, and he seems to be himself again. David digs a grave for the demon-Mia, and she tries to get into his head with her words. David apologizes for never being supportive enough, then finishes with the burial. After the demon supposedly leaves her body, David makes several attempts to resuscitate her. They all seem to fail.
As David finally surrenders and steps away, he hears Mia calling his name. They hug, and he apologizes for never being there for her. As they pack up to leave, David gets mauled by Eric, who damages his neck and throat. David urges Mia to escape, but she refuses.
David forces Mia out of the room, then faces Eric for their final brawl. David sets off a spark that ignites a gas leak, and the entire cabin(in the woods) goes up.
Mia wanders around outside for awhile, and demons attempt to grab her. She gets to the car, but they pursue her. She gets back to what's left of the house, crawling through some tunnels, as demons try to grab her the entire way.
They walk on ceilings, crawl beneath the floors, it's like a bug infestation. Finally she gets a chainsaw out, and then hides under one of the vehicles. She uses the chainsaw to remove the stalker's legs, but the demon is strong enough to lift the car off the ground. Mia nearly escapes, but the car lands on top of her hand. As the demon crawls closer, Mia manages to completely tear her hand off, grab the chainsaw with her good hand, then split her friend in half, right down the middle.
Mia walks back toward the ruins of the cabin,picks up her amulet, then staggers away into the woods. The book can be seen on the ground, and, as the movie ends, the pages rapidly start to flip. THE END, with the exception of an incredibly brief scene of Bruce Campbell, looking into the camera and saying "Groovy!"
Eh. Was expecting much, much worse from this one, but it was average. The gore was good, but it felt like the pace was off. They should have just funded Evil Dead 4 instead. Still, it wasn't the worst remake ever, so...let's say 3 killer trees out of 5 for this one. An average movie.
Oh, and what did Evil Dead teach me?
-Originals rock.
-"Possession by puke" is a bad way to go.
-DON'T READ THE %@!$ING LATIN!!!
Okay, that is all. Next up is either Miner's Massacre or The Wraith. Don't know much about either one, so it could be a mixed bag. See ya!
Saturday, August 18, 2012
The Ruins
Well, after the complete lunacy of Jack Frost 2, we're back to the usual grim, mostly humor-free stuff we usually watch together. it's unfortunate too....this week's movie, The Ruins, is pretty damned bizarre, with a killer twist that's hard NOT to do as a comedy! Without ruining the surprise(yet..), let's just say that it was pretty funny when Rick Moranis did it. Anyway, SPOILERS are "dead" ahead...
It begins at night, with a frightened young woman huddled on the ground, in a poorly-lit area. She looks skyward, then shouts for help several times. As she fiddles around with a cell phone she's clutching in one hand, it appears as if something drags her away off-screen. Hmmmm...
Then it's bright and sunny and green, tra la la la la. The faint sound of the female screaming can be heard again, then the scenery changes to a resort. 2 college-age kids, Jeff and Stacy, are playing Gin Rummy by the pool, and Stacy proposes that they play War next. When Jeff responds that War is just a game of luck, a girl named Amy reminds him that they had decided that the winner gets to pick the next game. Compelling stuff.
A second young man, Eric, brings over some alcoholic beverages to share. Oh, and Jeff's dating Amy, while Eric's with Stacy. Okay, we all on the same page now? Groovy.
As the drinks are being passed around, Amy discovers that one of her earrings has fallen off. A scruffy-bearded dude on the other side of the pool watches them search for it as he sips a beer. He then saunters over and introduces himself as Mathias, Finder(or, more likely, Absconder) of Lost Jewelry. Amazingly, nobody in the group ever questions how a guy who was nowhere near their side of the pool when they began their search, managed to get his hands on the earring.
As they share a drink with him, Mathias reveals that he's with a group on an archaeological dig at a Mayan temple. He invites them to tag along when he leaves for the site the next morning, and they all agree that it sounds like a fun adventure. Yeah, go off with some strange guy with a German accent, who stole something from you and wants to lure you into a jungle. That sounds safe!
They all remain on the beach until the sun sets, and play a silly game where they have to continue a story, one sentence per person. Then Stacy mentions that Jeff is studying to be a doctor, and the topic seems to make him uneasy. Oh, and just to add to the confusion, a couple of new characters show up, referred to as The Greeks. *cue ominous music*
Amy takes a huge swig from a bottle, and Jeff tries to coax her into calling it a night. Smashed out of her gourd, Amy falls over, and tries to pull him down with her. When Jeff declares that he's heading back to the hotel room, Amy remains behind and tries to flirt and dance with Mathias. Then Eric and Stacy talk about how Amy is behaving like a loon, because Jeff's med school will take him a couple-thousand miles from her.
As they watch Amy stagger-dance around with Mat, they place a friendly wager on whether or not Amy will kiss their new friend. The winner gets oral sex from the loser. Right before it looks like Stacy might lose the bet, she rushes over to Amy, and asks her friend to dance with her instead. Aw, cheater!
The following day,Jeff finds Mathias mapping out the travel route on a map for The Greeks to follow. *cue ominous music* Jeff tells them that he can get the others ready in half an hour, and they agree to meet up at the hotel. While that discussion is going on, Eric tries to "collect his winnings" from the bet he made with Stacy. They also debate over whether to tell Jeff that his girlfriend kissed another man. This is quickly becoming a soap opera....and a dull one, at that!
As Eric promises Stacy that it'll be quick, there's a segue to Amy puking in a toilet. Pretty funny, if you think about it. I guess this film's got more humorous touches than I remembered. Anyway, Amy tries to remain behind in the room, but Jeff won't hear of it. She lets him talk her into going on the hike.
They all take a bus to a poverty-stricken village, and try to figure out if they can hike the rest of the way or not. as nthe girls take pictures, the guys approach a local in a truck, to ask if he can drive them at least partway there. A dog in the back of the truck nearly scares them shitless, as well as me. Geez.
The guy in the truck agrees to drive them, but seems to want to take them to a different temple ruin. No one in the group seems concerned about that though, and they all pile into the back of his pickup. They speed off down the dirt road, going God-only-knows where. Seriously, are they all suffering from head injuries or something? These folks are dumb, even by typical horror movie standards!
The driver takes them, well, "somewhere", and they all jump off the truck. At this point, there isn't even a basic dirt road, it's all just grass and trees. None of them think it's weird, and one guy even goes so far as to announce that he thinks it looks like they're in the right place. Hell, it's not even a PLACE!
The driver hurries away, and they all begin to panic as they wonder how they're going to get back to the village. Mat announces that he has a "world phone", whatever the heck that is, and they also find his brother's vehicle parked near where they were dropped off. Okay, problem solved!
Even as they follow the map, the journey gets to be fairly strenuous. They stop to take a break, and spot some local Mayan girl silenly watching them. The girls try to communicate with her, but she either doesn't understand, or doesn't want to speak to the tourists. It's probably a little bit of both. I guess maybe they don't feel the jungle love, oh wee oh wee oh!
A path is found, but it's been covered up by leaves and branches. They argue over whether or not it's the right path, considering that someone went to pretty extreme lengths to conceal it. In the end, they decide that it must be the route to the temple, as no other path seems to exist in the vicinity. I hope they all paid their MENSA dues this month!
The path leads to a clearing, and they do indeed find a massive temple. Mathias spots what looks like a tent at the top of the structure, and the girls take more pictures. Then an old man comes charging into the clearing on horseback, and yells at them in words they can't comprehend. He has facial hair that makes him resemble a capuccin monkey. I'll bet he's down with the sickness.
Another pair of Mayans arrive with more horses, and both of the new men are armed with bows and arrows. Amy takes photographs of all 3 men, and the Mayans don't seem bothered by it, until she steps backwards into some bushes. Then all Hell breaks loose.
The trio of Mayans suddenly all start shouting at the same time, and reaching for their weapons. Dimitri approaches Amy to grab the camera, thinking that it's what set the Mayans off, but it wasn't. One of them shoots off an arrow into the young tourist's shoulder. As everyone stares at the arrow in shocked silence, the older man shoots a gun right at Dimitri's face.
Terrified by the sudden turn of events, the remaining students climb the temple to get to the safety of the tent. They immediately observe that the site is set up, but no one from the dig seems to be there. This leads to more fighting and fear, as they wonder what they've gotten themselves into.
There's an opening into the temple, and a rope-and-pulley system. They shout into the temple, but there's no response. Mathias steps over to the edge of the platform and stares down at the crazy Mayans as they settle in to wait the students out. Then he sees something nearby, covered by a vine, and examines it closer. It's the body of one of the dig crew. Not only was it concealed by plants, but the vines were clinging and growing over the body, and even in the corpse itself.
Jeff decides to take over, and begins by rationing their water supply. He also suggests that they conduct a search for food, to buy themselves some time as they wait for The Greeks *cue ominous music* to show up and save them. Then they faintly hear a ringtone, and it appears to belong to Heinrich, the brother Mathias mentioned.
Working together, they get Mathias straddled into the rope-pulley device, and lower him slowly down into the darkness. The phone in the ruins keeps ringing the entire time. As he gets closer, the rope snaps, and poor Mathias plummets into the darkness.
A quick rescue plan is agreed upon, one that involves sending Stacy down to rescue the injured man. She is lowered down the shaft(wait, isn't the rope broken now?), while Amy tries to get help from the Mayans. When she fails to make them understand, Amy gets frustrated, and throws a balled-up pile of the vines at the Mayans. The vine hits a boy, and the adults murder him(another gunshot to the face...these guys have a face fetish), then threaten the teens again.
So, Amy gets to join Stacy down in the temple, with a makeshift gurney for Mathias. Good thing too, because Stacy was hearing a cell phone in the dark and freaking out while sitting around. They disagree about moving him or not, but to leave him there would be a death sentence. Working slowly, the set up the gurney, then try to figure out how to lift the injured guy without making it worse.
In a shocking plot twist, amongst much screaming and agony, they lift Mathias onto the gurney. Presumably, they make things much worse. Jeff has everyone check the tents for anything that can be used to treat Mat's wounds, but it doesn't look good. Jeff figures that the injured legs will be what kill the poor guy.
That night, while Amy tries to slepp, Stacy makes a production out of giving Eric a handjob under their sleeping bag. Glad to see that a little thing like "impending doom" hasn't dampened their spirits. Eric, by the way, just lays there like a lump.
Early the following morning, Jeff finds Amy sitting outside, and he decides to take a piss on the vines. He detects movement in the vines near his area, and finds a decaying corpse underneath. Amy walks up behind him, and gives Jeff a reassuring embrace.
Stacy is the next one to wake up, and she doesn't feel quite right. She feels something under the sleeping bag with her, and pulls it back to reveal that her legs are now covered with the vines that they've seen surrounding the area. She gets upset, and she and Eric work at pulling them off of her legs. It's not as simple as it sounds...one strand of the vine has somehow burrowed INTO her leg, requiring Eric to tug and tug at it, until it comes out.
I'll bet you thought that was the end of the morning fun, right? Nope! Mathias is awake, and complaining about something being wrong as well. Amy approaches him, pulls back the covering over his lower half, and discovers that his legs are completely bound up by even more vines. Amy and Jeff work at getting the vines off of him, and the legs are a bloody, grisly mess. What's left of them, anyway.
At that point, they all hear the ringtone in the temple again. Amy and Stacy get sent down together, and are armed with makeshift torches doused in alcohol. They are told to remain together, and work together to locate the mysterious phone. They pinpoint the location of the sound at a vine-covered wall, and discover the body of (I'm guessing) Heinrich, the brother that Mathias mentioned earlier.
They search his body for the phone and quickly locate it, but there's a problem: the phone is cracked and broken. Then they hear the ringtone yet again, still coming from the wall. Amy leans closer to look, and sees red flowers on the vines opening and emitting the sound of the ringtone. Then the vines try to grab her, and more bodies fall away from the wall in the process.
Yup, killer vines and parrot-flowers. I'll bet you never saw that plot twist coming, huh??? Of course, that now technically disqualifies this as any kind of slasher, but since there are humans causing their deaths too, I'm going to soldier on. It's no dumber than a killer made out of electricity or dreams, right?
Anyway, the vines latch onto Stacy, but Amy comes back to help her to her feet. They return to the rope, and shout at the guys to pull them up. The vines try to grab at them the entire way, and both girls scurry out of the opening when they reach the top. Jeff asks if they found the phone, and they tell him that there is no phone, which requires a much lengthier explanation.
When both women are calmer, they describe what happened. Neither Eruc nor Jeff believe them, but Amy and Stacy both insist that they saw the vines making the ringtone sound, then attacking them. Eric springs into action, and decides that he needs to try to make a run for the vehicle, but Jeff points out that the Mayans now outnumber them, by 60 to 4(not including Mathias, who is busy becoming plant food). They decide that the best course of action is still to wait for either a search party, or the arrival of The Greeks. *cue ominous music*
They gather to take their ration of water, and Jeff brings some over to Mathias. He examines the progress of the leg wounds, then returns to the others, and announces that he has to amputate the legs in order for Mathias to survive beyond that day. Boy, I'll bet Mathias is really regretting grabbing that earring, huh?
Eric opposes the plan, mostly because Jeff has next to no experience in medicine. When he asks Jeff what he plans to use for anesthesia and a scalpel, Jeff holds up a piddly little knife that looks like it would have trouble slicingn through bread. As for a numbing agent, Jeff reveals that the vines have eaten the skin right down to the bone, and that he thinks it might be relatively painless. Yeah, sure it will. You try it first, Jeffy boy. Let us know how that works out.
It devolves into a situation where they all have to vote, and it comes down to a tie. Then Mathias speaks up, and also votes for the amputation. Having made the decision, Jeff gives Mathias a heavy swig of alcohol, then tells him that he's going to begin by breaking the bones first, and then cutting them off. Fun!
Hey, guess what? Jeff was wrong! It's incredibly painful, and it's also time-consuming! After Jeff removes the carnage that used to be a pair of legs, he cauterizes the stumps with a frying pan that was held in the fire. This is going to be the most epic "How I Spent My Summer Vacation..." essay ever!
The girls emerge from their tent again, and start up another disagreement with Jeff. They remind him that he claimed that Dimitri wouldn't feel a thing...but then he did. As the anger rises, they almost miss seeing the vines sneaking toward Dimitri, and dragging away the bloody severed feet.
Later that night, Eric shows an image from one of the phones to the girls, and he doesn't look too pleased. Meanwhile, Jeff is pacing the temple roof, and watching the Mayans bring in more fires and tents, as they move closer to the ruins to watch the teens better. Amy finds Eric sitting by himself, and she asks about Stacy.They talk about how bleak it all looks, then end up comforting each other with a hug.
Stacy then wakes up, convinced that they're screwing behind her back, because the vines are making moaning sounds near her. When she gets up and confronts them, she tells them that she heard them having sex, with lots of groaning and moaning. Jeff also wakes up, and all 3 try to calm Stacy down. That just makes her yell louder.
As they all work out the problem, Mathias is getting cocooned by the killer vine. They all hear his cries and struggles, but far too late to actually help him. I hope he's in a better place...and that his legs joined him as well in that place...
Anyway, the gore and killings have pushed Stacy right over the edge into LooneyLand. She grabs the knife and begins an attempt at cutting the vines out of her body. When her friends try to take the knife, Stacy backs away and screams, "You're not listening to me!"
That phrase catches the interest of the vines, and the red flowers shout it back to her as a taunt.The humans all look fairly disturbed by the sound.Amy and Jeff get some alone time, and both apologize for how they reacted. Then they hear Eric, asking them both to come look at Stacy for a moment.
She's covered in the vines, beneath her shirt. Knowing no other way to get rid of them, Jeff offers to cut and pull them out by force. He starts with her leg, pulling out a lengthy strand of the plant, with Stacy yelling with the pain and shaking. The next one, attached to her back, is much worse. He pulls several handfuls out of that area, and the pain becomes unbearable for her.
After the procedure, Stacy sits with the others again. She starts out by saying that they didn't get all of the vines, because she can still fell them moving inside her. She even claims to feel one in her head, and the others look pretty scared. She suggests more cutting, but Jeff tells her that it wouldn't be safe. When she tries to cut herself, Jeff makes sure that she can't have the knife.
At dawn, Stacy wakes up before her friends, and silently searches for the knife. She limps around the campsite, and then announces to the plants that she's going to get them out of her. Yeah, she's now a lunatic. Poor Stacy.
The others wake up, find that Stacy has left the tent, and find her at the edge of the roof, with her back to them. They attempt to speak to her, and she turns around, revealing that she's bleeding pretty bad. Jeff and Eric come up behind her, and Stacy stabs Eric in the chest.
She watches him fall and die, then screams his name. Amy tries to soothe her, but Stacy gets even more agitated when she sees the vines start to drag poor Eric away. Jeff fights off the vines, while Stacy begs Amy to kill her. Jeff picks up the knife, and either hacks away at poor Eric, or kills Stacy. Either way works for me.
The next scene shows Jeff covering Amy from head to toe with blood...but is it Stacy's or Eric's blood??? Jeff has an escape plan, but it looks pretty strange. He gives her instruction about the car and the path, and insists that she must follow the plan exactly for it to work.
Jeff picks up Amy, now drenched in blood, and walks down to the clearing. With the Mayans watching, he places her gently on the ground and kisses her. Then Jeff faces the Mayans, tells them a little bit of his background, and hers as well. The entire time, he's getting further and further away from Amy's "corpse". Then he screams her name, and she gets up and begins running into the jungle. Sadly Jeff is shot full of arrows.
Amy runs through the dark jungle, and only stops when she hears a gunshot. It was the elderly Mayan, who finished Jeff off with a bullet to the face. This dude really enjoys placing bullets into faces... Hey, let's rewind, and take a drink every time someone is shot in the face!
That motivates Amy to move again, but her trackers are catching up. They shoot at her a few times, but miss. Then she gets to the jeep, and it starts, letting her speed down the road. As she gets away, it's revealed that a piece of the vine is crawling around in her face, just under her eye.
The last scene features The Greeks! *cue ominous music* They arrive at the ruins, calling out to Dimitri... THE END
Yeah, pretty somber, for a premise that usually isn't so serious. Terrific kills, though....Dimitri's death, in particular, was grueling to watch. And like I said earlier, most of the deaths in the film were related to things the humans did, not the plants. I'll give it 3.5 killer trees out of 5, just for the crazy subject matter and numerous deaths.
And what has The Ruins taught me?
-Well, avoid the plants in Mexico!(See, and you thought it was the water that would harm you...)
-Mayans make terrible neighbors.
-If you want folks not to trespass, some kind of sign would really help!
-Having a couple of characters in a movie, and not naming them, automatically makes them scary!
No movie this week coming up(Aug 19-25), as I have 2 surgical procedures within days of each other. The following week, I'll be watching a movie called Body Parts. Now go off and watch something happy this week!
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Alone in the Dark
Now THIS is more like it! Remember last week, when I talked about how fun the slashers used to be, before the 1990's? Well, this week's movie, Alone in the Dark, is a pretty good example of that. SPOILERS, of course, beyond this point...
The movie begins in a diner, during a cold winter night. A man named Preacher asks for "the usual", which turns out to be a plate of fish that a huge frog leaps onto. Hoo boy, it's gonna be one of those weeks, I have a feeling. Preacher, played by Martin Landau, hardly has time to be bewildered, though: the cook, played by Donald Pleasance, appears out of the blue, wielding a weird cleaver and quoting Bible verses.
The diner goes dark, and it starts to rain indoors. A pile of chains loop around Preacher's stool, and he falls to the floor, his legs raised up in the air by the chains. The cook raises the meat cleaver over his head and brings it down on Preacher's crotch, and he wakes up from the nightmare as the opening credits start to roll.
As the story resumes, we see a doctor, played by Dwight Schultz(old fogeys like me will remember him as "Howling Mad" Murdock on "The A-Team", or as Ensign Barclay on "Star Trek: TNG" and many of the spinoffs that followed. He plays Dr. Dan Potter, a nervous psychiatrist late for a job interview. He tries to talk his way past the receptionist, but she insists that her boss, Dr. Bain, can't be seen. She then explains that he's invisible. Allllll righty, then!
Dr. Potter finds a REAL employee, and she's nice enough to escort him to Bain's office. Bain's played by Dr. Loomis himself, the classy Donald Pleasance. When they first meet, Bain locks Potter in a massive bear hug. They talk about the "secretary", then the movie shifts to Potter's family unpacking their stuff. Potter gets into a brief argument with his daughter Lila, breaks a vase and kisses his wife. Talk about a full day!
Late that night, a mental patient named Hawkes makes a window alarm go off. The next morning, Bain explains the 3rd floor's extra security to Potter, then gets a report on the night's excitement. After that, we get properly introduced to our dangerous nutcases: there's Preacher, the guy who walked us through a nightmare; Hawkes, played by Jack Palance, who is prone to explosive outbursts of emotion; Ronald, a portly child molester; and John Skank, a man who hides his face because of some kind of disfigurement and spontaneous bleeding. After the introductions are made, the 2 docs start to leave, but Hawkes shout at them. Turns out he just wanted to say "Happy...trails..." Uh huh, that was not weird at all.
That night, as the dangerous psychotics lie awake in their beds, they discuss their general mistrust of Dr. Potter. They even go so far as to imagine that he murdered the shrink he replaced. Hawkes proposes that Potter wants them dead as well, so they begin to formulate an escape plan, in order to kill him first.
At the Potter house the next morning, the spouses discuss a relative who will be a houseguest for awhile, a woman named Toni. She had some sort of nervous breakdown, and is still getting her life back together. While meeting with Bain, Dr. Potter discusses his boss' form of therapy. It boils down to he's a drugged-out wackjob who shouldn't be in charge of a goldfish. Ray, the orderly that we met a few scenes ago warns Potter that the patients are paranoid about his presence. Then the orderly confesses that he's scared shitless by the patients.
They're interrupted by Preacher who demands a match. When both men refuse to give him one, he screams Bible verses at them both, then stomps away to find Bain. Bain is busy trying to calm down a woman with OCD, and gives Preacher an entire book of matches without giving it much thought. See what I mean about him? Wacko....
As expected, Preacher removes his shirt, lights it on fire, then starts to swing it around like a wild man. Bain rushes forward, then either begins whispering something or licking his ear, beats the heck outta me. Either way, Preacher looks as confused and horror-stricken as I feel. Bain tells Potter that he made a gruesome threat toward the mentally ill man. Nice doctor. As all of this is happening, Ronald sneaks into Potter's office and discovers a picture of the doctor's family, as well as an envelope with their address on it.
Toni arrives at the Potter house, and Mrs. Potter hugs her. Apparently, she and Toni are sisters. Lila's still at school, so the 2 women decide to gossip and catch up on old times. Toni's into reggae, which seems kinda random-ish, and she invites the Potters to a club. Boy, this thing is REALLY exciting!
Dr. Potter walks with Hawkes, and asks him about his previous doctor. The questions make Hawkes nervous, and he tells the doc not to listen to Ray. He also briefly explains why some of them are patients at the asylum: Preacher is an arsonist-murderer; as I mentioned before, Ronald molests kids, specifically girls; and Hawkes describes himself only as a person who enjoys "the social life".
On the way to the club that night, Toni and the wife make fun of all of Potter's psycho patients. The club is some kind of metal-punk hangout, where the singer sounds like a cat being microwaved. Fortunately, the power goes out, all over the town. Gee, I wonder if the patients will escape tonight?
DUH.
Driving home, Dan and his family hear that the outage is the result of a power plant accident. At the hospital, Ray hears the dangerous patients moving around in his office. They find his hiding place, and Ronald threatens him with a knife while Preacher screams at him. Then Ronald kills Ray by picking him up and snapping his back, after Preacher kicks him in the face.
Outside, a motorist sees many patients wandering around, and as he tries to drive away, Ronald smashes the driver-side window and hits the guy with his fist. Then he literally throws him out of the car, and the loonies escape in the stolen vehicle.
The Potters get home, and find the babysitter asleep. Downtown,the stores are being looted, and fires are set everywhere. A cop finds Dr. Potter standing by his car, and fills him in on the murder of Ray and the escape of the dangerous group of men.
As the crazies join the looters, Preacher grabs a knife the size of my last car. Pointy pointy!! Ronald grabs a bat, Skank(the bleeder) puts on a hockey mask, and Hawkes grabs a gun. Then Lila grabs the scariest thing of all from the kitchen: a SPOOOOOOOON!!! *screams like a girl*
Toni and Lila talk about being afraid of the dark. Skank, meanwhile gets a van, by stabbing the surprised owner with a gardening tool. Ewwwwwww! I guess Skank has a RED thumb, huh? The others notice Skank bleeding through his mask, then they all take off in the van.
The next morning, after Lila goes off to school, the escapees frighten a bike messenger. He insults them, so they hit him with the van, hard enough to send his body flying several feet away. As they examine the body, Preacher takes the dead guy's hat.
Toni and Mrs. Potter are preparing to go to a nuclear energy protest, when Preacher shows up, pretending to be a messenger. He tries to see Dr. Potter, but is refused access to the house, so he promises to return. Both women agree that he is reallllllly creepy.
At the hospital, a head count is made, and the dangerous patients from the 3rd floor are listed as missing. Again, DUH. When Potter criticizes Dr. Bain's methods, the men have a brief, pointless debate. Oh, and Lila meets Ronald the Molesting Giant. Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!
At the local jail, the two women argue with a cop about making a phone call after being arrested at the protest. Doc Potter calls a woman named either "Lucky" or "Bunky", and asks if she can go by the house to check on Lila. She gets there, but no one appears to be home, so she enters the house anyway.
Upstairs, Lucky/Bunky finds Lila fast asleep. She calls the doc back, then decides to invite her boyfriend over. Heh, he's gonna get Lucky! When he arrives, he follows a trail of her clothes upstairs, where he finds her in one of the beds, in her underwear. Both of them are bony, so it's like watching 2 scarecrows do it. Geez, if they rub together too much, they'll start a fire!
Lucky/Bunky gets scared by a noise, so her anorexic boyfriend checks the closet. As he saunters back to the bed, a hand under the bed grabs him by the ankle, then drags him underneath to murder him. Lucky/Bunky makes a face that definitely makes her "Un-Lucky". As she calls his name("Billy? BILLY???"), the blade of a knife tears through the mattress. A second stab gets dangerously close, and a third one goes between 2 fingers. She scurries off of the bed, and Ronald meets her as she opens the bedroom door, lifting her off the floor by her throat and letting her suffocate.
Mrs. Potter gets home, and finds the place crawling with cops. Dan tells his wife that one of his patients killed the babysitter, but didn't harm their daughter. Then, inexplicably, they invite one of the investigators to stay for dinner. Dr. Bain calls their house, and worries when no one answers the phone.
At dinner, everyone mumbles. Yay. As they eat and talk by candlelight, they hear a noise. The noises continue, so the cop decides to check it out. After checking the windows, he urges them to stay inside, then he leaves to investigate the porch and yard. As he makes his way around a tree, everyone in the house watches him get shot by a crossbow.
Toni's boyfriend Tom, who she literally met about 5 minutes ago, tries to take charge. He and Doc Potter start locking up the house, and Toni is asked to go check the rooms upstairs by herself. Yeah, THAT sounds safe! She freaks, Tom goes upstairs instead, then the cop's corpse vanishes.
The patients start to smash the windows, and when the men put up heavy furniture to barricade them, another arrow damages one of the barricades. Dr. Bain tries to call them at home, but a nasty operator tells him that the line is out. He hangs up, and starts to worry even more.
In the house, Tom and Dr. Potter argue over who is manly enough to start DOING SOMETHING!!!!, then Bain arrives. As they all try to shout warnings to him from a window, Bain tries to reason with the lunatics. Preacher approaches the house, and Bain tries to be cheerful, but Preacher appears to either cut his ear or the side of the head. Then Preacher says, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord," and cackles like a loon.
Dr. Potter checks a window, but he can't see anyone outside. He opens a window, then tells them that he didn't kill their previous doctor. He gives them the phone number where the guy works, but gets no response at all. In one of the funniest moments, Potter leans nearer to the window, and the rest of the group stand as far away as possible...then Lila waves bye-bye to Daddy. Classic!
The cop's body is flung through a window, and the household scurries to cover the window and/or hide. Toni, for no good reason, approaches a window, and Skank pops up, in all of his gory glory. Or maybe not, because Potter convinces her that she was hallucinating. Whatev.
A fire is set in the basement, and Lucky/Bunky and "BILLY!!!"'s corpses fall out of the closet where the fire extinguisher is kept. Preacher tries to stab Potter when he goes down to put out the fire, but the doc gets away.
Potter announces that he's going to try to get to the car, and then Ronald bursts in screaming like a banshee with diarrhea. Lila thrusts a knife out as he runs into the kitchen, stabbing him. Then Tom stabs him in the back when he falls. Ronald tries to get up, and Tom uses a bat to push the meat cleaver DEEPER into his back. Owwwww!!!!
Potter dashes to the car, but the damned heap won't start! He tries the car Bain came in, and it roars to life. As Toni is hugging Tom, he gets a nosebleed, which gushes all over her head. Oops, guess who Skank is!!!???? As they all scream like ninnies, Skank bites Toni in the face, and Potter rushes to the rescue. The family pries them apart, then Mrs. Potter stabs Skank in the stomach.
As they all take a moment to relax, Preacher comes crashing through the kitchen door, holding a knife over his head. Potter stabs him first, and they wrestle, before Preacher gets stabbed in the back. As the family breathes ANOTHER sigh of relief, Hawkes shows up! Sheesh. He aims the crossbow at them, delivering a speech about how even "sane" people are killers, then Potter begs for his family to be spared.
At that EXACT moment, the news comes on. They watch as a reporter interviews the very doctor that the inmates thought Potter had murdered, then Hawkes smashes the television. He walks away from the house as they all stand in the kitchen, blood-soaked and traumatized.
At the nightclub that Toni brought them to earlier, Hawkes beats up the doorman, then enters the dance floor. As Hawkes watches the dancers flail around, a bimbo tries to "flirt" with him. He pulls a gun on her, aims it under her chin, then just grins. THE END
Wow, this movie was crazy! It certainly wasn't the most gory or scary '80's horror film, but it sure was kooky! I'll give it 3-and-a-half killer trees out of five, just for not being entirely predictable, as well as having a pretty good group of actors. And for making me laugh and jump throughout.
Oh, and what did Alone in the Dark give me to contemplate this week?
-Well, apparently, shouting "HAPPY TRAILS!" isn’t always the best way to end a conversation...
-Chronic bleeding and disfigurement can apparently be turned on and off like a faucet.
-Mental hospitals are only effective during calm weather, and never have back-up generators. Good to know.
Next week, I’m watching something called Late Fee. Sounded like a slasher, so we’ll see how it goes. If not, then I get a week off! As Charlie Sheen would say, "WINNING!"
The movie begins in a diner, during a cold winter night. A man named Preacher asks for "the usual", which turns out to be a plate of fish that a huge frog leaps onto. Hoo boy, it's gonna be one of those weeks, I have a feeling. Preacher, played by Martin Landau, hardly has time to be bewildered, though: the cook, played by Donald Pleasance, appears out of the blue, wielding a weird cleaver and quoting Bible verses.
The diner goes dark, and it starts to rain indoors. A pile of chains loop around Preacher's stool, and he falls to the floor, his legs raised up in the air by the chains. The cook raises the meat cleaver over his head and brings it down on Preacher's crotch, and he wakes up from the nightmare as the opening credits start to roll.
As the story resumes, we see a doctor, played by Dwight Schultz(old fogeys like me will remember him as "Howling Mad" Murdock on "The A-Team", or as Ensign Barclay on "Star Trek: TNG" and many of the spinoffs that followed. He plays Dr. Dan Potter, a nervous psychiatrist late for a job interview. He tries to talk his way past the receptionist, but she insists that her boss, Dr. Bain, can't be seen. She then explains that he's invisible. Allllll righty, then!
Dr. Potter finds a REAL employee, and she's nice enough to escort him to Bain's office. Bain's played by Dr. Loomis himself, the classy Donald Pleasance. When they first meet, Bain locks Potter in a massive bear hug. They talk about the "secretary", then the movie shifts to Potter's family unpacking their stuff. Potter gets into a brief argument with his daughter Lila, breaks a vase and kisses his wife. Talk about a full day!
Late that night, a mental patient named Hawkes makes a window alarm go off. The next morning, Bain explains the 3rd floor's extra security to Potter, then gets a report on the night's excitement. After that, we get properly introduced to our dangerous nutcases: there's Preacher, the guy who walked us through a nightmare; Hawkes, played by Jack Palance, who is prone to explosive outbursts of emotion; Ronald, a portly child molester; and John Skank, a man who hides his face because of some kind of disfigurement and spontaneous bleeding. After the introductions are made, the 2 docs start to leave, but Hawkes shout at them. Turns out he just wanted to say "Happy...trails..." Uh huh, that was not weird at all.
That night, as the dangerous psychotics lie awake in their beds, they discuss their general mistrust of Dr. Potter. They even go so far as to imagine that he murdered the shrink he replaced. Hawkes proposes that Potter wants them dead as well, so they begin to formulate an escape plan, in order to kill him first.
At the Potter house the next morning, the spouses discuss a relative who will be a houseguest for awhile, a woman named Toni. She had some sort of nervous breakdown, and is still getting her life back together. While meeting with Bain, Dr. Potter discusses his boss' form of therapy. It boils down to he's a drugged-out wackjob who shouldn't be in charge of a goldfish. Ray, the orderly that we met a few scenes ago warns Potter that the patients are paranoid about his presence. Then the orderly confesses that he's scared shitless by the patients.
They're interrupted by Preacher who demands a match. When both men refuse to give him one, he screams Bible verses at them both, then stomps away to find Bain. Bain is busy trying to calm down a woman with OCD, and gives Preacher an entire book of matches without giving it much thought. See what I mean about him? Wacko....
As expected, Preacher removes his shirt, lights it on fire, then starts to swing it around like a wild man. Bain rushes forward, then either begins whispering something or licking his ear, beats the heck outta me. Either way, Preacher looks as confused and horror-stricken as I feel. Bain tells Potter that he made a gruesome threat toward the mentally ill man. Nice doctor. As all of this is happening, Ronald sneaks into Potter's office and discovers a picture of the doctor's family, as well as an envelope with their address on it.
Toni arrives at the Potter house, and Mrs. Potter hugs her. Apparently, she and Toni are sisters. Lila's still at school, so the 2 women decide to gossip and catch up on old times. Toni's into reggae, which seems kinda random-ish, and she invites the Potters to a club. Boy, this thing is REALLY exciting!
Dr. Potter walks with Hawkes, and asks him about his previous doctor. The questions make Hawkes nervous, and he tells the doc not to listen to Ray. He also briefly explains why some of them are patients at the asylum: Preacher is an arsonist-murderer; as I mentioned before, Ronald molests kids, specifically girls; and Hawkes describes himself only as a person who enjoys "the social life".
On the way to the club that night, Toni and the wife make fun of all of Potter's psycho patients. The club is some kind of metal-punk hangout, where the singer sounds like a cat being microwaved. Fortunately, the power goes out, all over the town. Gee, I wonder if the patients will escape tonight?
DUH.
Driving home, Dan and his family hear that the outage is the result of a power plant accident. At the hospital, Ray hears the dangerous patients moving around in his office. They find his hiding place, and Ronald threatens him with a knife while Preacher screams at him. Then Ronald kills Ray by picking him up and snapping his back, after Preacher kicks him in the face.
Outside, a motorist sees many patients wandering around, and as he tries to drive away, Ronald smashes the driver-side window and hits the guy with his fist. Then he literally throws him out of the car, and the loonies escape in the stolen vehicle.
The Potters get home, and find the babysitter asleep. Downtown,the stores are being looted, and fires are set everywhere. A cop finds Dr. Potter standing by his car, and fills him in on the murder of Ray and the escape of the dangerous group of men.
As the crazies join the looters, Preacher grabs a knife the size of my last car. Pointy pointy!! Ronald grabs a bat, Skank(the bleeder) puts on a hockey mask, and Hawkes grabs a gun. Then Lila grabs the scariest thing of all from the kitchen: a SPOOOOOOOON!!! *screams like a girl*
Toni and Lila talk about being afraid of the dark. Skank, meanwhile gets a van, by stabbing the surprised owner with a gardening tool. Ewwwwwww! I guess Skank has a RED thumb, huh? The others notice Skank bleeding through his mask, then they all take off in the van.
The next morning, after Lila goes off to school, the escapees frighten a bike messenger. He insults them, so they hit him with the van, hard enough to send his body flying several feet away. As they examine the body, Preacher takes the dead guy's hat.
Toni and Mrs. Potter are preparing to go to a nuclear energy protest, when Preacher shows up, pretending to be a messenger. He tries to see Dr. Potter, but is refused access to the house, so he promises to return. Both women agree that he is reallllllly creepy.
At the hospital, a head count is made, and the dangerous patients from the 3rd floor are listed as missing. Again, DUH. When Potter criticizes Dr. Bain's methods, the men have a brief, pointless debate. Oh, and Lila meets Ronald the Molesting Giant. Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!
At the local jail, the two women argue with a cop about making a phone call after being arrested at the protest. Doc Potter calls a woman named either "Lucky" or "Bunky", and asks if she can go by the house to check on Lila. She gets there, but no one appears to be home, so she enters the house anyway.
Upstairs, Lucky/Bunky finds Lila fast asleep. She calls the doc back, then decides to invite her boyfriend over. Heh, he's gonna get Lucky! When he arrives, he follows a trail of her clothes upstairs, where he finds her in one of the beds, in her underwear. Both of them are bony, so it's like watching 2 scarecrows do it. Geez, if they rub together too much, they'll start a fire!
Lucky/Bunky gets scared by a noise, so her anorexic boyfriend checks the closet. As he saunters back to the bed, a hand under the bed grabs him by the ankle, then drags him underneath to murder him. Lucky/Bunky makes a face that definitely makes her "Un-Lucky". As she calls his name("Billy? BILLY???"), the blade of a knife tears through the mattress. A second stab gets dangerously close, and a third one goes between 2 fingers. She scurries off of the bed, and Ronald meets her as she opens the bedroom door, lifting her off the floor by her throat and letting her suffocate.
Mrs. Potter gets home, and finds the place crawling with cops. Dan tells his wife that one of his patients killed the babysitter, but didn't harm their daughter. Then, inexplicably, they invite one of the investigators to stay for dinner. Dr. Bain calls their house, and worries when no one answers the phone.
At dinner, everyone mumbles. Yay. As they eat and talk by candlelight, they hear a noise. The noises continue, so the cop decides to check it out. After checking the windows, he urges them to stay inside, then he leaves to investigate the porch and yard. As he makes his way around a tree, everyone in the house watches him get shot by a crossbow.
Toni's boyfriend Tom, who she literally met about 5 minutes ago, tries to take charge. He and Doc Potter start locking up the house, and Toni is asked to go check the rooms upstairs by herself. Yeah, THAT sounds safe! She freaks, Tom goes upstairs instead, then the cop's corpse vanishes.
The patients start to smash the windows, and when the men put up heavy furniture to barricade them, another arrow damages one of the barricades. Dr. Bain tries to call them at home, but a nasty operator tells him that the line is out. He hangs up, and starts to worry even more.
In the house, Tom and Dr. Potter argue over who is manly enough to start DOING SOMETHING!!!!, then Bain arrives. As they all try to shout warnings to him from a window, Bain tries to reason with the lunatics. Preacher approaches the house, and Bain tries to be cheerful, but Preacher appears to either cut his ear or the side of the head. Then Preacher says, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord," and cackles like a loon.
Dr. Potter checks a window, but he can't see anyone outside. He opens a window, then tells them that he didn't kill their previous doctor. He gives them the phone number where the guy works, but gets no response at all. In one of the funniest moments, Potter leans nearer to the window, and the rest of the group stand as far away as possible...then Lila waves bye-bye to Daddy. Classic!
The cop's body is flung through a window, and the household scurries to cover the window and/or hide. Toni, for no good reason, approaches a window, and Skank pops up, in all of his gory glory. Or maybe not, because Potter convinces her that she was hallucinating. Whatev.
A fire is set in the basement, and Lucky/Bunky and "BILLY!!!"'s corpses fall out of the closet where the fire extinguisher is kept. Preacher tries to stab Potter when he goes down to put out the fire, but the doc gets away.
Potter announces that he's going to try to get to the car, and then Ronald bursts in screaming like a banshee with diarrhea. Lila thrusts a knife out as he runs into the kitchen, stabbing him. Then Tom stabs him in the back when he falls. Ronald tries to get up, and Tom uses a bat to push the meat cleaver DEEPER into his back. Owwwww!!!!
Potter dashes to the car, but the damned heap won't start! He tries the car Bain came in, and it roars to life. As Toni is hugging Tom, he gets a nosebleed, which gushes all over her head. Oops, guess who Skank is!!!???? As they all scream like ninnies, Skank bites Toni in the face, and Potter rushes to the rescue. The family pries them apart, then Mrs. Potter stabs Skank in the stomach.
As they all take a moment to relax, Preacher comes crashing through the kitchen door, holding a knife over his head. Potter stabs him first, and they wrestle, before Preacher gets stabbed in the back. As the family breathes ANOTHER sigh of relief, Hawkes shows up! Sheesh. He aims the crossbow at them, delivering a speech about how even "sane" people are killers, then Potter begs for his family to be spared.
At that EXACT moment, the news comes on. They watch as a reporter interviews the very doctor that the inmates thought Potter had murdered, then Hawkes smashes the television. He walks away from the house as they all stand in the kitchen, blood-soaked and traumatized.
At the nightclub that Toni brought them to earlier, Hawkes beats up the doorman, then enters the dance floor. As Hawkes watches the dancers flail around, a bimbo tries to "flirt" with him. He pulls a gun on her, aims it under her chin, then just grins. THE END
Wow, this movie was crazy! It certainly wasn't the most gory or scary '80's horror film, but it sure was kooky! I'll give it 3-and-a-half killer trees out of five, just for not being entirely predictable, as well as having a pretty good group of actors. And for making me laugh and jump throughout.
Oh, and what did Alone in the Dark give me to contemplate this week?
-Well, apparently, shouting "HAPPY TRAILS!" isn’t always the best way to end a conversation...
-Chronic bleeding and disfigurement can apparently be turned on and off like a faucet.
-Mental hospitals are only effective during calm weather, and never have back-up generators. Good to know.
Next week, I’m watching something called Late Fee. Sounded like a slasher, so we’ll see how it goes. If not, then I get a week off! As Charlie Sheen would say, "WINNING!"
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