This week's movie(...well okay, LAST week's movie), Perkins' 14, was a part of one of the After Dark movie collections. That means it's either a great scary movie, or total crap. The AD films don't tend to be middle-of-the-road experiences, you either wind up loving an AD movie or hating it. I hope this one ends up being one of the good ones....Get ready, it's SPOILER time....
As the film begins, someone is driving through the countryside. The scenic journey is interrupted every so often by quick flashes of grainy footage, showing a dreary looking building, in which a large group of children are being kept in cages. The images from this place start out looking washed out and dark, then gradually color starts to get into the images. A bald man is dreaming these pictures, and they show him having a picnic with his family. Then he wakes up, and gets ready to head to work.
Before he leaves the house entirely, though, he stops at an empty bedroom, belonging to a child. There's a chess board set up on a small table, and our guy has a flashback to having played chess with his son. Then he stops by another bedroom, belonging to his daughter, who is having a gossip-fest with her best friend. He nearly enters the room to say goodbye before heading to work, but changes his mind.
Instead, he enters the kitchen to have a quick breakfast...which turns out to be leftover pasta. Sheesh. The girls come downstairs, and we at least learn their names: the daughter is Daisy, the friend is Sammy. When Sammy leaves, Baldy asks his daughter about some test she took at school, then informs her that he arrested the boy she likes because he was carrying drugs. Ah, so Baldy is a cop. And a fun dad!
As he gives his daughter the third degree, his wife Janine walks in on the chat. Baldy finally gets a name, Dwayne Hopper....I liked him better as Baldy. Oh well. It turns out that it's not morning, it's actually evening at the Hopper household. Dwayne works the graveyard shift.
He inadvertently eats Daisy's dinner, then has an awkward discussion with his wife over using the family car. Janine also brings up a business venture that she wants to begin, and Dwayne insults her by calling her career plans a hobby. Wow, Dwayne's not just a great father, he's also a terrific husband.
He leaves for work finally, and asks a fellow officer about the few people in the jail that evening. One's a local hooker named Felicity, the other's a guy who attempted to run away during a traffic stop. The other cop checks out for the night, and Dwayne begins cracking open beer cans as soon as he's alone. Great, let's add "Cop of the Year" to Dwayne's growing list of accomplishments.
While getting his beer buzz on, Dwayne falls asleep at his desk. He has a dream about his family, and the day his young son vanished. Apparently, there were 13 other children who also went missing...Hey, where have I recently seen an ominous-looking 14?
Anyway, Dwayne wakes up, and goes through a series of keys, doors and files that make the door sequence on Get Smart! look like a walk in the park. After passing through Middle-Earth, Area 51, and, quite possibly, The Forbidden Zone, it turns out that Dwayne just wanted to visit the holding cell area. No wonder he has no hair, the poor guy probably tore it out whenever he got lost in that maze.
The drunk chick is sleeping it off,but the guy who tried to evade being questioned at a traffic stop is wide awake. He leans forward in his shadowy cell, until only the lower portion of his face is revealed, then reveals a smile only Gary Busey would love. The mysterious Mr. Perkins then speaks to Dwayne, who didn't realize that he was being observed.
After Dwayne has a minor heart attack brought on by simply being spoken to, Perkins asks him if he can make a phone call. It seems that he has several kids at home, and needs to have someone look in on them. Gosh, wasn't there something that happened about a decade earlier that involved "several children" suddenly disappearing? I'll bet the 2 items are completely unrelated.
Dwayne refuses politely, telling Perkins that he'll need to wait until morning to make his call. Perkins gets upset, then asks Dwayne for his name(which is on display right on his uniform, but whatever....), and they officially introduce themselves. Then the drunk chick asks them both to shut up, so she can sleep.
As the 2 men discuss their children, Dwayne sees that Perkins is missing a couple of fingers on one hand. He asks about the injury, and Perkins says that he lost the fingers while trying to fix a lawnmower. Dwayne expresses sympathy, but again tells the man that he can't bend the rules for him. He says goodnight to Perkins and Felicity(who gives him the finger...but probably not one belonging to Perkins), then returns to his desk on the other side of the maze. They should at least give him a piece of cheese when he has to make that journey!
Dwayne goes over the conversation in his head, and apparently Perkins gave him the heebie-jeebies. Dwayne scours through the arrest report and decides to see what other information he can dig up on the guy. This somehow leads to another flashback or dream sequence, where Dwayne and his kids are woken up one night by an intruder. Yeah, because why would we want to get the story going forward, when we can go backward instead?
Anyway, he gets his kids back into the bedroom, then decides to try to sneak downstairs. There's the usual "creaky stairs" moment, and he freezes to see if the intruder heard him coming. Dwayne finishes his trip downstairs, and sees a curtain billowing, implying that either a window or sliding glass door was left open. He looks to his right and left then goes to shut the window.
A slight noise alerts him that the intruder was already upstairs, just waiting for him to leave. He runs back, but by the time he gets there, the wife and daughter are clinging to each other, and the son is missing. Wait, how does that work? Weren't the kids together when he left them? And if the mother was there, how did she manage not to keep track of her son? This doesn't make sense! And why didn't the kidnapper just take the daughter too?Ugh, this movie gives me a headache! But at least the flashback is finally done.
Dwayne returns to the holding area, perhaps slaying a Minotaur or 2 along the way. He holds up the printout that details Perkins' personal history, and angrily points out that the paper says nothing about Perkins having any children. Felicity, the hooker with a heart of syphilis, gets upset about the outburst, but Dwayne tells her to shove it.
When Perkins expresses surprise that his file was opened, Dwayne reminds him that he was trying to help him out. Perkins says that he's been a resident of Stone Cove for his entire life, but Dwayne finds it suspicious that they had never met before that evening. Really? Really??? I've lived, more or less, in the same city for my entire life, and I sure as heck don't know every person here. You don't see me accusing every stranger on the street of a crime spree, though.
Then Perkins makes some reference to Dwayne's daughter, and Dwayne claims that he never told him that he had a daughter. Now, I know they talked about their kids, but I don't recall if anything specific was said. Also, I don't give a crap. We have an hour left to endure, and the whole movie thus far is about as compelling as Amish porn.
Dwayne goes back to his desk and has a hissy fit. Oh, and he drinks some more. A LOT more. Then he fixates on Perkins' big ol' teeth. That pushes the cop over the edge, so he does a drunk'n'dial. He calls the cop who finished his shift earlier, and tells him that he thinks that Perkins is a killer. He makes numerous connections between Perkins and the child abduction("He's missing fingers! He wears glasses! He's a killer!"), and comes across like a wing-nut.
When the other cop asks Dwayne if he's been drinking, Dwayne ends the call. He drinks some more, then places a call to a medical center, looking for any medical records pertaining to "Ronald Perkins". While he waits for them to call back, he examines the clothing and items Perkins had on himself when he was arrested. The hospital calls back, and reports that Perkins has absolutely no medical history in the community.
Dwayne hangs up the phone, then decides to go through the car that Perkins was driving at the time of his arrest. He finds a few large storage containers in the back of the vehicle, and starts opening them up. He finally comes across a sealed plastic bag, filled with pill bottles. By the way, this is only 20-30 minutes into this movie. Anyone else feel like we've been watfching this thing for a month?
Dwayne receives a fax, and places another call. He presents all of his "evidence" to a judge...or tries to, but the judge won't listen.He's either a friends of Perkins', or he owes him a huge favor, because the guy orders Dwayne to stop making trouble for the guy. When Dwayne mentions the evidence from the car, and the possible connection to his son, the judge is shocked that Dwayne conducted a search without having a warrant. Wow, at least SOMEBODY in this film knows the law! That's impressive. The scene ends with the judge ordering that Perkins be released, and that Dwayne should report to the judge on Monday. Ooh, someone's getting fiiiiiiiiired....
Hey, have you been itching to know what Daisy Hopper's been up to, while her dad's been screwing around with a perp? Yeah, me neither. But the movie decides to switch over to her anyway, so I guess we should pay attention. On the bright side, it can't be any more dull than watching her dad at work making phone calls.
She's hanging out with her stoner buddies, in a place that looks like a graveyard designed by Salvador Dali. The particular guy she's into looks about twice her age, and is a terrible singer. After a few pointless arguments, Daisy and FrankenGoth decide to wander away for some good ol' fashioned statutory rape. Isn't being a teenager magical?
Dwayne calls his off-duty pal Hal again, and lays out all of his theories and evidence. He begs the off-duty officer to run by Perkins' house and check it out. Hal reluctantly agrees, but tells Dwayne that he's losing his mind, and probably his job. Yeah, we know.
Dwayne goes downstairs to handcuff Perkins, then takes him back to his desk to question him about the abductions. As they play a verbal tennis match, Hal radios in from the house. That finally rattles Perkins, and he and Dwayne listen as Hal explores the property. He hears a noise coming from the basement, and tells Dwayne that he's going in to take a look. Perkins, begs Dwayne to call him off.
Hal breaks a chain over the bulkhead with some bolt cutters, and descends into the basement. Perkins just keeps saying, "He can't do that, he can't do that...", before begging Dwayne to get Hal out of the house again. Dwayne continues to ignore him.
The basement looks like a museum. Seriously, I've never seen such a clean basement before, right down to all of the weapons--uh, I mean, "tools"--hanging on the walls. Who the heck hangs a shovel up like it's a trophy? I mean, besides the superhero The Shoveler.
Behind a shelf of old nails and screws, Hal finds a false wall. He moves the shelf and, sure enough, the wall behind it opens into another room. We've gone from Hannibal Lecter to The Hardy Boys in about 30 seconds of investigation. That makes logical sense, right?
Hal finds himself in the same area we saw during the opening credits. He sees a gigantic lever on one wall and flips it, expecting it to turn on the lights. Come on, man! It's the same kind of lever Frankenstein would pull before bringing the dead back to life! You honestly think it does something as simple as switching on a lamp or 2?
Of course it doesn't. It controls the doors of all the cages we saw during the opening credits. As the doors all slide up, the fake shelf slides back into place. Hal, being completely clueless, keeps on exploring, right up until a feral monster-child leaps on him and decides to eat his face off.
When Hal no longer responds on his walkie-talkie, Perkins pulls an I-told-you-so out of his ass. Yeah, that's helpful. Then Perkins sheds some light on the situation. See, when he was a younger man, his parents were murdered. He put the blame squarely on the police officers and authority figures who failed to catch the killer, plus he lived in fear of something terrible happening to him. So he kidnapped the children of those he felt were responsible, gave them constant, regular doses of PCP, and kept 'em caged up like undomesticated Kardashians.
Okay, my brain is officially trying to ooze out of my ears after that. This is, for now, The Stupidest Horror Movie Ever...until I see something even dumber, that is. Probably in about a week.
Anyway, Perkins reveals that his mother was stabbed 14 times, and his father was shot. He talks about how he was expected to "move on" with his life, and there are scenes depicting how Dwayne can't move on after his son's disappearance. But eventually, Dwayne gets tired of hearing the smug lunatic talk, and tells him that they're going to his house. He even shows Perkins the paperwork the judge faxed over for his release, which was issued several hours ago.
Again, right in the middle of something happening, the scene changes. Daisy and her misshapen boyfriend, Eric, are in Eric's cozy, romantic Rape Dungeon. Ain't Young Love just grand? Daisy sees past most of his bullshit persona, but still lets him seduce her.
Luckily for her(and us), the scene ends right there. Dwayne and Perkins are doing the "good cop, sociopath citizen" routine, and have arrived at the Perkins home. Be it ever so humble! Dwayne leaves Perkins in the back of the vehicle, grinning like The Cheshire Cat. Dwayne, not nearly as jovial, begins to look for poor Hal.
He finds him soon enough, hanging upside down from the basement ceiling. He examines the bloody body, then manages to look away long enough to explore the rest of the basement. He follows a blood trail into the secret holding area, and finds the empty cages where the children were kept...well, mostly empty: one cage holds a corpse that looks older than Moses. Maybe the film should have been called Perkins' 13 instead. Dwayne also finds shelves of drugs that were used on the children, as well as numerous videotapes. Dwayne snatches up one of the videos to see what Perkins was recording.
That one particular tape shows that Perkins was stalking the Hopper family, and presumably all of the families of the missing kids. He somehow managed to get close enough to film them having a private picnic, without any of the Hopper clan spotting him. Dwayne goes completely bonkers at that point, in an epic montage of reaction shots that would make William Shatner envious. Throughout the sequence, he looks constipated.
He hurries back to his vehicle, and punches his smug captive into La-La Land. When Perkins wakes up, he reveals that Dwayne's son was the one who bit his finger off. Yum! He also says that he wanted the parents to feel as helpless as he did, and that he made the videos for Dwayne to find someday. When he continues to taunt the cop with awful stories, Dwayne shoots him at point blank range, blowing his head apart. So much for the buddy cop routine. Then there's more "emoting", and Dwayne proceeds to hit the corpse several times, just to tenderize the meat, I guess.
Dwayne heads back to the car, and calls in the murder as "an officer down". The dispatcher asks if the "officer" is dead, and when Dwayne says that he is, he's told that the call will have to wait. As Dwayne listens, he realizes that the town is in complete chaos, and that he won't be getting any further help from his fellow cops. He gets back on the radio, and announces that he's going to rescue his daughter.
Yup, that means that we return to the stoners again. Lucky us. One of the Perkins' escapees approaches the group, even as Dwayne races to get there in time. One of the male teens(not Eric) approaches the maniac, and the drug-fueled rage monster(ummmm....the one who escaped from the cellar, not the pothead) cuts the innocent boy's head off with a machete. Where the heck did Perkins' zombie-kids get weapons from? Aren't they all supposed to be mindless drones?
Oh, I recognize the blade...he got it from the basement wall. Okay. He raises it again, and there's a close-up of Daisy's friend Sammy . It looks like she's almost grinning. Man, this is dumb. Can I get a refund on something I watched for free? No?
After a murder and the sound of the police vehicle pulling up, Daisy asks Eric if he heard something. *sigh* I miss the days when slasher movies didn't make me wish for a swift lobotomy. The noise level must have been acceptable, because Daisy and Eric have gone back to fooling around.
Dwayne finds the dead kid with the slashed throat, but no one else is around. He shouts his daughter's name, but gets no response. So....Daisy has bat-like hearing, but can switch it on and off as the script demands it? Nice logic and consistency there, movie. Oh, and as Dwayne continues to scream and shout, there's someone with a certain blade lurking around in his vicinity...
Daisy finally hears the noise, and she and Eric go outside to see what the commotion is all about. While Daisy and her father are distracted by each other, the Perkins kid emerges, and slices several fingers off of one of Eric's hands. This movie has a serious severed-finger fetish! As the killer kid goes after Daisy next, Dwayne shoots him 4 times.
In a scene that's probably not meant to be hilarious, Dwayne hugs his daughter and asks about her condition, all while Eric is howling in the background and holding up his now-stumpy fingers. As Daisy remembers her boyfriend and rushes over to his side, Dwayne momentarily points his gun at the guy. Seriously, am I the only one who finds this to suddenly be funny as Hell?
While Daisy and Eric start to make their way to the police vehicle, Dwayne points his gun at Perkins' 2.(I'm considering the poor kid who died in captivity to be Perkins' 1...I'm numbering them as we see them, so that it'll be less confusing.) As they all pile in and Dwayne starts the engine, Perkins' 3 shows up, also armed. As he raises his weapon overhead, Dwayne slams into him, and rams the guy into a display that looks like paper-mache fangs, or maybe icicles. Bizarre.
They drive away, so I guess if the other kids survived, they are just shit out of luck. Nice. Dwayne looks at his daughter and Eric in his rear view mirror, with one of his patented glares. Over the police band on the radio, they all hear various reports of chaos and violence happening throughout the town of Bay Cove.
As they round a corner, a utility pole is blocking their path, and throwing out a shower of sparks., right in front of a wrecked car. Being a dumbass in a horror film, Dwayne exits his car to check out the scene. He approaches the car, and shines his trusty flashlight in the windows, to check for survivors. Then, not content to survive that quick search, he decides to climb into the backseat.
Daisy watches this, dumbfounded, and orders him to get back to his own car. He ignores his daughter, and sees 2 people on the other side of the crashed car, on the ground. One is either attacking or eating the other. He sees Dwayne and leaps into the car, and Dwayne just barely has time to slam the door on his side shut.
But wait, it gets worse. He recognizes Perkins' 4, because it's his son! Oooooooh! The deranged young man breaks through the sunroof to attack his father, and another police officer arrives on the scene. When the other cop draws his gun on Perkins' 4, Dwayne yells at the guy not to shoot his son. That gives Perkins' 4 the distraction he needs to attack the other cop, and drag his body off into the night. So, yeah, cannibalism. Fun.
Nope. The son just decides to bash the other officer into a pulp with his own flashlight. Much better, right? Dwayne finally decides to listen to his daughter, and they take off again. Back the way they came, I'm guessing, given the mess that blocked their way.
Oh hey, Janine's back in the movie now! Remember her? No? Well, I don't blame you--other than quick flashback scenes, we haven't seen Dwayne's wife since the start of the movie. She's at some seedy motel, getting her brains screwed out by a guy who actually looks shadier than his surroundings. He hands her a bottle of champagne, and proudly declares that it has "a cork and everything!" Sheesh. His brains were screwed out 7 movies ago, it would seem.
Janine comments on the fact that the bottle is warm, and Dumbass reveals that it's been sitting in his truck for quite some time. Boy, I'll bet she can't wait to drink THAT! To get away from the dolt, she grabs the ice bucket and offers to get enough ice to let the champagne get chilly again. As she leaves the motel room, she catches the attention of what I assume is the evening desk clerk. Or maybe he's just the world's nosiest night owl.
The music gets scary, and a figure lunges at her from out of the darkness. Oh, it's just the numbskull lover again, proving how inept he is at even walking up to her. There's a quick glimpse of one of the Perkins' killers(complete with, for some reason, glowing eyes), then we get returned to Dwayne with his lights and siren going full blast. Yeah, because why would you want to try to be stealthy and subtle in a town overrun by killer teenagers who attack anything that moves?
They talk about where to go, and somehow the conversation turns to dear ol' mom. Daisy confesses that Janine is having an affair, and that she's currently at a motel. Wow, add in a mud pit and a few more psychotic killers, and this could be hosted by Jerry Springer!
Janine returns to the room, and shoves the champagne into the ice bucket. She and her himbo decide to have another round of sexy playtime, and he pulls her shirt up over her eyes while fondling and kissing her. Then Perkins' 6 somehow gets into the room unseen, and kills him with the champagne bottle. Yay!
Janine realizes that something went wrong, and pulls her shirt back down to have a look. She manages to slide off the bed, just seconds before the maniac jumps on her lover, and bash his skull apart with the bottle. Literally, this one doesn't stop, until his face is gone. Perkins' 6 sees her horrified reaction, and slams the bottle down even harder, just to watch her expressions. This one should see Dwayne's face if she likes reactions....that guy is the king of ham.
Being a genius, Janine just watches her lover getting demolished. No running, no reactions, like crying or screaming, she just sits there and watches him get destroyed. When Janine finally reacts to the danger she's in, she gets chased into the tiny bathroom. Perkins' 6 pushes her weight against the door to get to Janine, and Janine finds a shard of porcelain on the floor. She grabs it, and shoves it through her attacker's eye.
Janine slams the door on her, and crawls to the opposite side of the room. Perkins' 6 scratches at the door until her nails literally start to snap off. Ouch! Whatever she leaves on the pillow, I'm betting it won't be a mint.
Dwayne sees flames up ahead, and a guy who looks like an aging hippie flags him down. They let the dude into the back seat with Eric, and he starts to freak out when he realizes that they're going to pick up Dwayne's wife before escaping Bay Cove. The hippie attempts to take Eric hostage with a knife to force the issue, but Dwayne threatens to drive back the way they came if he doesn't calm down.
When the hippie calls the attackers "monsters", Dwayne tells his passengers what Perkins did to make them that way. Needless to say, the 3 listeners are shocked by the details of the captivity and brainwashing. Even the hippy shuts up, which is nice.
Dwayne stops the car and gets out, followed closely by his daughter. After hearing the hippie whine some more, Eric also asks to be let out. Heh, it looks like we all now have a unified front against the new most-annoying character in the movie. Groovy.
They cautiously approach the motel, and Dwayne orders the young couple to wait outside. Daisy can't resist looking into the room anyway, and sees her mother's boy-toy on the bed, minus his face. She cries and leans against Eric for comfort. Uh, how about comforting him? How many fingers did Daisy lose so far, huh?
Dwayne sneaks over to the bathroom, and hears his wife inside. He finds her cowering on the floor, and he gently gets her standing. She hugs him, then he carefully helps her put her shirt back on, taking care not to further injure the hand she wounded when she picked up that jagged piece of porcelain. Boy, I'd love to sit in on their next couples' therapy session!
Dwayne hugs her again, and covers her face as they exit the motel room. As the foursome start their way back to the car, they see that one of the drones(probably Perkins' 6, although we only get a brief glimpse) has somehow found a way into the police vehicle, and has killed the hippie. Yay!
Dwayne sees someone approaching from behind them on foot, and realizes that they may be trapped between 2 maniacs. He tells them to leave, while he creates a distraction, then he has a confrontation with the maniac wandering around. It's his son again, and he chases Dwayne while the others sneak away.
The trio get back to the Stone Cove/Bay Cove/whatever police department building, but the front entrance is locked. As Daisy realizes that several of the escaped killers are in the area, she loudly begs whoever locked the entrance to let them in. Genius. It's not exactly a shock when her shouts get the attention of the nearby killers.
A cop inside hears them, but he's a bit of a chickenshit, so he hesitates to do the right thing. By the time he finally grows a pair, the psychopaths are nearly at the door themselves. He quickly ushers the group into the building, then slams and locks the entrance doors again. The killers outside don't seem too happy about it.
They get settled in, and Janine starts trying to dress Eric's wounded hand. While that's going on, the deputy who let them in is pacing the room, ranting like a wild man. Then Janine tries to use the phones in the office, but the lines are all dead. They always are, right?
Daisy asks her mother about Kyle, her abducted sibling, and the resemblance he had to Perkins' 4. Janine tells her that she's wrong, and that Kyle is probably long-dead by now. Nuh uhhhhhhh...
Of course, that's more or less when the power goes out, and one of the brainwashed monster-kids manages to get inside. The group decides to make a break for it, and they head for the exact area that the Perkinsbot came in through. Awesome.
As they make their way down the corridor, Eric is dragged away by the brainwashed kid. Eric clings to a wall to keep from getting dragged away, and the others either watch him screaming, or just stand around looking uncomfortable. Nice group you guys have...I hope you all get eaten alive.
The deputy finally works up enough courage to take a peek around the corner, and sees Eric getting his entrails pulled out. And eaten. See? I knew they were cannibals! It's like this movie had a cliche checklist, and just keeps checking them off as we go. I'll be genuinely shocked if a cat doesn't jump out of the shadows at some point.
The deputy is attacked next, possibly by Kyle. I say "possibly", because the lights are strobing in an annoying way, and it's hard to tell what's happening, with all of the MTV-style quick-edits. But yeah, the deputy is definitely attacked next.
Suddenly, a shot rings out! *cue dramatic music* Dwayne's back! He blows away the mindless killer, so I guess it's not Kyle. What does that make this one, Perkins' 7? 6 maybe? A number should flash up on the screen every time one of the drones is picked off. Or maybe Perkins should have bought them sports jerseys, with little numbers on them. That would have been pretty funny to see.
While Dwayne and his wife try to console their daughter about her dead boyfriend(It would have been great if one of them had said something like, "It's okay, there will be other boys..."), that other deputy(wait, didn't he get attacked? Why did he get to live, dammit?!?) claims that he can hear someone. Sure enough, when they all listen, they hear what sounds like a female voice calling out in distress.
Dwayne goes off to check it out, and finds Felicity in her holding cell, right where he left her. Felicity, the foul-mouthed, drunk hooker with a heart of coal! Yay! Dwayne rescues her from the cell, then brings her back to the rest of the group for a meet'n'greet.
Oh, and apparently she's not an intoxicated hooker...no, Felicity is some kind of granola environmentalist, with a specialty in vandalizing construction equipment. Nice. Would have been better to stick with a drunken hooker, though. There aren't enough of those in horror films these days.
Felicity sees one of the prescription bottles of PCP on Dwayne's desk, and suddenly she's the resident PCP expert in the group. She tells them that it makes the user stronger than any normal human, supposedly able to withstand even a large vehicle hitting them. Oh yeah? Tell that to the one who was rammed by Dwayne's car earlier.
The lights in the hallway flicker some more, and we see one of the killers running around looking for more folks to munch on. We see Janine approach her husband like he's some new species of wildlife, and he tells her that their son is out there, still alive. Then he blames himself for not looking for Kyle more, for giving him up for dead too quickly.
Daisy asks him to stop talking about it, but Dwayne's on a roll now. He claims that Kyle's condition is revenge for the way they moved on without him, and that his rage stems from being forgotten. Janine hilariously decides that this would be the best opportunity to discuss the fact that she was found in a motel room with a guy whose face was removed. Like I said earlier, this is going to be the best marriage counseling session ever. Hell, even Felicity's ears perk up!
But Dwayne doesn't want to discuss it. He's too busy brooding. Realizing that there aren't going to be any fireworks, Felicity announces that she's going to go to the bathroom, and she leaves the happy group. She finds a toilet stall that's monster-free, does her business, then writes on the bathroom wall "I was here". Yeah, but not for much longer...
She hears a noise on her way out, and decides to go back in to check it out. That kooky deputy starts a loud argument with Dwayne and his wife just to be an ass, and the noise is pretty much there just to distract them from what happens next. What happens next? Felicity is pulled up into the ceiling by one of the crazed killers, and she's mauled to death. That's what happens next!
The others finally hear the attack, but not in time to do anything useful. Dwayne and the other deputy go check it out, and find Felicity hanging from the ceiling, with only her blood-soaked legs showing. As the other deputy leads the charge, he's attacked as well. Dwayne readies his shotgun, and blows a hole in the attacker that nearly cuts him in half at the waist. The guy still tries crawling after the deputies, though, and his top and bottom halves split apart. Awesome effect.
Another one is seen shambling down the hall, and it turns out to be Kyle. Dwayne begs him not to attack, but Kyle starts sprinting at his father with mucho gusto. Dwayne just barely manages to get back into the room with the others, and lock the door in time. The other deputy insists that they need to kill every one of the escapees, including Kyle. Dwayne, being a reasonable human being, shoots him.
After his wife and daughter stop screaming and crying and realizing what a creep he is, Dwayne tells them that he has a plan. Does it involves sacrificing them to Kyle and getting away by himself? Somewhat to my surprise, no, it doesn't.
Dwayne points out Perkins' car on the security monitors, and mentions that it was impounded when Perkins was arrested. Since the area is inside. it could be relatively secure for them to escape to, as long as they're careful. The problem? The keys are in the evidence room, which involves going back into the hallway and avoiding Kyle to get there and grab the keys. Yeah, great plan, Kojak!
Dwayne decides that he'll be the one to go, but his wife insists that she'll be the next human sacrifice. Well, at least now we know who dies next! Her voice was kind of getting on my nerves anyway, so it feels right for her to be next.
Dwayne escorts Janine to a set of stairs, and she makes him promise to take care of their daughter when she's gone. They hug, then she goes off to die in some improbable, absurd manner. At least, that's my guess. Janine goes up the set of stairs, as her daughter watches her on the monitors, and Dwayne just stands there, being useless. Why doesn't he go with her? He has a gun, at least!
Ahhh, I give up trying to make this movie sound like it makes sense. Janine rounds the corner, and finds a ladder. She uses it to climb up to the ceiling, so she can open up an air duct and crawl to the evidence room from up there. While she does that, you see someone in blurry shadows walking the halls toward her location. Kyle? Dwayne? Another killer drone? Cujo?
She pulls herself up into the tunnel, just as the figure passes by, and then does her best imitation of John McClane from Die Hard. Janine crawls through the narrow tunnel like a snail, to try to avoid making too much noise. She passes over another room at one point, and sees a couple of the drones ransacking the place. One of them has those glowing eyes, which still doesn't make any damned sense.
The creature senses Janine, but doesn't spot her hiding place. As Dwayne and his daughter watch the monitors, Janine tries to resume her journey to the evidence room, but she makes a noise that alerts the predator she just saw. Janine keeps going, unaware that one of the drones has climbed up the ladder to follow her.
Janine gets to the evidence room, then lowers herself in. She waves at the security camera like a loon, then finally sets about on her mission to find the keys to the car. She finds the keys relatively quickly, then wastes time waving them at the camera. What, does she think they want to play charades? Is she trying to amuse a housecat?
As expected, the noise and her inability to get her ass in gear are the main causes of Janine's death. A couple of the Perkins' subjects come running in, and they disembowel her. Daisy yells and screams, probably because she realizes that half of her DNA came from an utter nincompoop, while the other half came from a self-loathing psycho. I'll let you decide which parent is which in that sentence...
Daisy runs into the hallway, in some misguided attempt to save her already-dead mother. Dwayne chases after her, and Daisy ends up standing between him and her demented brother Kyle. Dwayne manages to slam a door on Kyle before he reaches them, but Daisy doesn't think they have a chance at surviving the ordeal. To help her prove her point, Kyle punches a hole in the door, next to her head.
Dwayne and Daisy run to the holding cells, and Dwayne locks her into one. He gives her the rifle, and promises to come back. I think we know how that'll work out. Plus, if he doesn't return, how the heck is she supposed to survive with no food or water? Dwayne sucks at coming up with brilliant plans.
He hugs and kisses her for what is almost assuredly the last time, then goes back to face his doom. He and Kyle stare at each other from opposite ends of a hall, with a barred door between them. Dwayne keeps repeating to Kyle that he isn't going to hurt him, and slowly removes all of his weapons from his uniform. Kyle just stands there, staring at his father.
As there are brief glimpses of flashbacks shown, Dwayne shows Kyle his keyring, and unlocks the door between them. More flashbacks are shown, mostly of Kyle as a cute, curly-haired little boy, as opposed to the thing he is now. Dwayne continues to speak to him in a calm voice, as he tries to get his son to remember who he used to be. Yeah, good luck with that, Einstein.
He hugs his son, and Kyle hugs him back. Awwwww....no, wait, Kyle just snapped his dad's neck. Well, so much for the "Hallmark moment" of the movie. Kyle takes the keyring from his father's corpse, then swaggers down the hall toward his sister's location. This ought to go well.
Kyle unlocks her cell, touches her cheek, then takes the rifle out of her hands. She is seen crying, then a shot is heard. THE END Wait, what? Kyle suddenly knows how keys work(not to mention, which key to use to open the cell!), and how to pump the rifle to make it work? Or did he kill himself? Or did Daisy somehow shoot him, by getting the weapon back??? I call shenanigans!
Eh, it's not worth quibbling about. While the effects were terrific, the script was lousy. They should have shown the town of Bay Cove getting invaded by the crazed teens, and they should have had more scenes with Dwayne and Perkins driving around and talking. And less of the whiny supporting characters. 2.5 out of 5 killer trees, because the negatives tipped the scales on this one.
And what did I learn from Perkins' 14?
-Well, it was more like Perkins' 8 or So....but that would be an awful title for a movie.
-Eyes that get gouged out, or fingers that get chewed off, can grow back!
-PCP turns you into a rage-zombie, and makes your eyes glow...
Next up on my list is either The Ruins or Jack Frost...I thought I had done both already, but I can't find 'em in the archives, so my brain must be deteriorating from watching so many slashers. Also, I'll try to watch and post one in the next day or so, to make up for the weeks I was kicked off of AOL(apparently, somebody hacked my account and changed my password and some of my settings....grrr). See you soon!
Friday, August 10, 2012
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Long Time Dead
Last week's slasher flick was Austrian; this week, we have one from Great Britain. Is it bloody, or just bloody awful? Let's find out! Oh, and....blah blah blah, `blah blah blah blah.
As I said, it's British, so of course, the story begins in Morocco. And it's 1979, so how am I even reviewing this on the Internet? I'm 8 years old, fer cryin' out loud! Oh wait, this is only happening in the movie? Okay, then my future self should be okay. Wait, who is that grim-looking guy asking people if they know some chick named "Sarah Connor"? Hmmm....
Anyway, back to the film...There are a lot of people chanting, and they're all sitting on the floor in front of a Ouija board. All of a sudden, the camera goes into "Sam Raimi" mode, zipping and zooming around the room and its occupants. Oh, and there's some kind of locket or medallion that is getting a lot of screen time, so it must be important. Okay, somebody remember the locket for me, in case we need to reference it later!
As these goofballs continue chanting and swaying, we keep seeing a guy who looks like Tommy Chong, if Tommy Chong were dragged behind a pickup truck for about a week. Then we see a rather clean-cut dude(Among hippies? Yeah....), and then the title comes up. Wow, that whole sequence explained everything!
Then we rush to the present day, where 3 guys are getting stoned together in a drab-looking apartment. One of them, Rob, suddenly springs into action, and announces that they should go out for the night. One of his friends laughs as he checks himself out in a mirror, and declares that Rob is as vain as somebody named Stella. Uh, if you say so, Nameless Friend # 1. Oh, and the other friend is played by Lukas Haas, all grown up from his role in the movie Witness. Cool.
We don't get the names of Rob's friends yet, but we do get to meet Stella. She's a pretty cute blond, and she takes college very seriously, unlike the 3 potheads she barely has the patience for. There's some sarcastic banter, which ends when Rob tells one of his buddies that his aunt has a nice ass. The friend, named Liam, somehow took offense to hearing about his aunt's sweet ass(Gosh, that's a real shocker, huh?), and there's a short scuffle.
It's mostly just horseplay, so the 3 friends leave Stella rummaging in the fridge, while they go to a club. We still don't know the name of the dude played by Lukas Haas, so we get introduced to another character instead. That makes sense. Her name is Lucy, and she's Stella's equally cute friend. Sweet! At least if this gets dull, I can just shut off my brain and admire the attractive cast...
Lucy is at the club already, and as she dials Stella's number, another entity(possibly the same one that was flying around in the first scene) shows up and whooshes around behind her. She senses it, but doesn't actually see anything. When she gets Stella to agree to show up at the club, Lucy disconnects. Then Stella hears an object break in another room in the apartment building. She decides to investigate, and we get a cheap jump-scare involving a long-haired guy named Joe. He claims to be a new roommate of the other guys, but she seems suspicious.
After Stella changes her outfit, she and Joe have an unpleasant encounter with the landlord. He looks like a Crazy Ralph-esque old coot, which could be fun. More slasher flicks need crazy old coots in them, to keep the pace up. Let's try to pass that as a law, people!
The old man mentions that some of the wiring in the building seems faulty, and that he might need to enter their unit to examine it. When Stella seems alarmed by the thought, the landlord makes a creepy joke about not reading her diary. Yeah, but I'll bet he tries on some of her clothing. In any event, Stella and Joe quickly get as far from him as they can,
The club they arrive at is the usual generic techno-filled joint, crammed with extras trying to pretend they can dance to the bland music. We meet yet another character, named Spencer, and he seems to be competing with Joe to be The Coolest Guy In The Group. Oh, and I finally decided to give up, and just look up the name of the other character. He's "Webster", which just seems like the unlikeliest name ever for the guy. Why not just name him Floopy-Doo, if you're going to insist on the uncommon name route? Oh, and another anonymous-but-cute female has joined the group, and at least one other male, I think.
This is gonna be one of those movies.....
Anyway, there's a Hee Haw-style montage, wherein we see all of the characters doing goofy crap in between shots of the dancers. We see people having sex in semi-public areas, snorting coke off of a railroad track, that sort of "extreme" crap. And the music is getting on my nerves.
The incident with the drugs on the railroad track somehow leads into a discussion of what provides the "biggest buzz". they suggest mostly sex-related stuff, such as sex in public, sex with someone you love, etc. But then the last anonymous guy(I think... this group is getting big!), Spencer, says that nothing was better than the buzz after he used a Ouija board. Uh oh....I wonder what's going to happen next?
Well, they don't have a Ouija board. Geez, just go to the closest toy store and buy one...Parker Brothers makes a zillion of them! But no, they decide that they should "make" one. Even after Lucy says something about how she heard that you shouldn't use a Ouija board when you're intoxicated or high. If that were the case, no one would EVER use one!
Anyway, their version of "making" a Ouija board is just plain goofy as all Hell. They cut up little squares of paper, on which they write the letters of the alphabet, and place them in a circular pattern, like a clock. Then they put a drinking glass in the center of the circle, to use as a pointer. I don't see any separate pieces of paper for "Yes", "No", "Hello" or "Goodbye", so I guess the spirits better be prepared to enter a spelling bee with this group. No, wait, I take that back...I saw yes/no papers.
Before they begin, some ground rules are laid out: they're each allowed to only place 1 finger on the glass; they can't "force" the glass or push it; and they must, at all times, keep their fingers on the glass, or else the spirit will be unable to return to The Other Side. Everyone got those memorized?
They get the session going, and Lucy takes charge. She asks if there are any spirits nearby, and if they have any messages for the group. For about a minute, nothing happens. Then, just as they seem ready to give up, the glass shoots forward, and a message begins to take shape...
The spirit seems to spell something in gibberish, and they all let out a nervous laugh. Then the glass moves again, faster, and spells out "all die", several times in a row. Whoops! Anonymous Girl gets upset, so Lucy attempts to regain control of the situation by asking the spirit who it is. It spells "Djinn" over and over, until Liam suddenly has visions of the group from the first scene.
Liam gets upset and runs away, breaking the rule about touching the glass at all times during the session. They all seem shocked at first, then some of them start laughing. They decide to see if Liam is okay, and none of them realize that they left Webster's video camera running in the room when they leave.
The anonymous girl turns out to be Liam's girlfriend. She finds him outside, getting some fresh air, and he gives her a ring. She must have asthma, because Liam asks her where her inhaler is, and she figures that she must have dropped it when the group ended their session with the spirit world. She promises to hurry back to him, then goes back inside.
In the room, things look a lot darker. She stumbles around while searching for her inhaler, then finds it in a dark corner of the room. A noise frightens her, then another one nearby, causing her to start yelling that it isn't funny. She runs and runs, eventually winding up on the roof, and tries to climb up a ramped part of the roof made of glass. When she sees a group of people that are dancing, she screams for help, but then plummets toward them when the glass breaks beneath her. She falls to her death, and the partiers stare in shock at her bloody corpse.
The police are called to the nightclub, and our main group ride home in a tension-filled, silent VW bus. The creepy landlord is sitting in front of the apartment building when they return, and he and Liam exchange mean glares. Then Spencer tells Lucy that he needs to see his drug dealer, to get something to calm him down. He begs her to go with him, but she just walks away after looking disgusted with him. He tells her that he'll be back in ten minutes.
The rest of the group more or less head to their rooms, or find places to be alone. That's always a great idea in a horror film! Lucy hears someone/something whisper her name, and heads back inside to do some research on the events that transpired that evening. She finds a book that informs her that Djinn, or genies, are demons made of fire that can easily possess humans if they are summoned by those not trained to control them, like shamen. The best way to exorcise a Djinn after such a possession, is to "banish" it, through some probably-obscure ritual. Awesome.
Lucy decides to make some tea, and a spout of flame shoots out of the burner that she turns on. Is it the Djinn? As Lucy slowly backs away from the oven, she suddenly hears something thumping around outside. She calls out to Spencer, but there's no reply except more thumping noises. She seems to hear it getting closer and closer, then Lucy hears her boyfriend calling her name.
She rushes outside, and finds Spencer and a strange man there. The stranger tells her that he's an electrician(second time we're hearing about electrical problems....is it some kind of clue?), and Spencer gives Lucy a hug of reassurance. They decide to get off of the boat for the night, and join the rest of their friends at the apartment. How the heck do college kids afford a boat to live on?
Anyway, they head to the apartment, and everyone else is already there. There's a discussion going on over how the anonymous girl died, and it turns out her name was Annie. Hey, better late than never, I guess. In addition to the glass and the bones broken when she fell, Annie supposedly also had scorch marks on her body. Was the Djinn copping a feel?
Lucy gets nervous talking about the death of their friend, and mentions that she thinks the Djinn has been with her throughout the evening. She mentions the research that she did, and puts out the theory that one of them has now been taken over by the Djinn. She believes that it may try to kill them all, so that it can remain in a human host with no fear of being banished.
They return to the nightclub warehouse, to let Webster retrieve his camera. Hey, d'ya think there might be something scary on the footage? Nah, I doubt it. It's probably just a wedding video or something. All righty....roll that beautiful bean footage!
They watch themselves sitting down to start the Ouija session. When they see the part where Liam freaked out and left, they wonder what made him react like that. Right on cue, the power goes out, and they all start to get scared. The guys explain that the fuses blow all the time, then Webster and Spencer decide to visit the landlord, Old Man Becker. Anyone else getting a "Scooby-Doo" vibe here?
Anyway, the 2 guys knock on his door, but there's no answer. Spencer finds an open window, but insists that Webster should enter the landlord's place, because he doesn't want to get in trouble with either the police or Lucy. Sure, but it's okay to let the kid from Witness get into potential trouble. Makes perfect sense.
Webster, not being the sharpest stick in the woodpile, goes along with this non-logic, and enters Becker's(that's the landlord's name, by the way) apartment to have a look around. He uses the world's dimmest flashlight to look around with, and nearly wets his pants when he crashes into something. After some more exploration, Webster jumps out of his skin when he finds Spencer in the dark with him. After all the crap about not wanting to get into trouble, it turns out that Spencer was getting too scared outside by himself. Sheesh.
They hear a noise, and realize that it's probably Becker coming home. The 2 guys duck under a nearby table, just as the front door starts to open. Becker comes in(we don't see his face, but it's probably him), fiddles around with some things, then leaves again. After he closes the door and locks it again, they wait a few seconds for him to really be gone. Then they leap back to their feet, and Spencer stupidly flips on the lights...revealing that the apartment is literally covered in various notes, newspaper clippings, and other bits of scrap, all pertaining to the Djinn. Uh oh!
The 2 guys rush back to their friends, and tell them to come and see the place for themselves. Becker seemed obsessed with the Djinn and Ouija boards, and seemingly had every possible bit of information about the ritual that took place in 1979...oh, and a human skull or 2, just for feng shui, I suppose. Of particular interest to the group, is an article about a couple from that hippie group who had a child...a boy named Liam. DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN!!!!!!
Yup, that's why Liam is having those weird flashbacks, I guess. Then we see Liam driving, when another flashback hits him, and he begins swerving the VW bus around on the road. He just barely manages to pull off the road safely, and covers his face with his hands.
They group leave Becker's apartment and call the police. Liam wakes up in his car and continues home, and the cops pore through Becker's apartment, trying to figure out what his master plan was supposed to be. Reunited with Liam, the group sit down to breakfast, and try to figure out what exactly is happening to them. Liam, having missed everything that happened the previous night, demands an explanation about the police presence in Becker's place.
Well, it turns out that Liam thought that both of his parents were dead, and that he knew nothing about the events of 1979. In fact, he has to find out from his friends that his father has been living for years in an insane asylum. Understandably freaked out by all of these new tidbits(plus, the fact that the landlord had been obsessed with the 1979 incident), Liam storms off. Oh, and Joe is being kind of a dick in the scene, making life miserable for the group by doing and saying stuff meant to antagonize everyone. Nice guy.
Liam finds a lonely hallway where he can sulk and brood. At the same time, Stella announces that she needs to get away...and goes to the bathroom. Okay...No sooner does Stella get her stall door locked, when a loud noise startles her. She starts to cry, but a larger girl in the next stall reassures her that it's okay.
Calmed down somewhat, Stella exits the stall and washes up at one of the sinks, only to be dragged back into the stall by the invisible Djinn. We see her feet leave the ground, then her shoes getting drenched in her own blood. The girl in the next stall sees the blood, checks on Stella, and finds her bloody, mangled corpse. Naturally, the girl screams.
Lucy tries to do some research on the Djinn back on the boat, but Becker shows up from out of nowhere. He tells her that his intentions are good, but she obviously doesn't buy that after everything that has transpired. Still, Becker insists that she and her friends need to perform a spell or ritual to banish the Djinn, and that Liam was the cause of it being summoned in the first place. When Lucy still refuses to listen, Becker tells her that she and her friends will all be dead soon.
Then we catch up with Liam again. He's done a little digging, and discovered the facility that his father is residing in is called Pernhill. The man in charge tells Liam that his father has never allowed a visitor to speak with him in at least a decade, so Liam writes the word "DJINN" on a piece of paper, and asks that it be delivered to his father.
Yup, that did the trick. They face each through a window, and communicate with phones, just like any prison. Liam quickly loses his cool, accusing his father of sending Becker to kill him and his friends. As Liam is dragged away shouting and kicking, his dad seems genuinely shocked by the accusation.
That evening Webster and Joe hatch The Dumbest Plan Ever(at least, until I watch next week's movie), and decide to break back into their apartment. Of course, the entire building is a crime scene, and there's a cop outside watching the place, but like I said, it's The Dumbest Plan Ever. The reason for taking such a risk? Because Webster wants to grab the videotape he made of the Ouija board session, and see if any weird stuff happened during the recording.
Of course, as soon as they grab the video, Webster tells Joe that he wants to watch it there, to satisfy his curiosity immediately. It's a stupid idea, and Joe even tells hims so, but Webster refuses to be logical. This would only ever happen in a movie...nobody in real life would be so dumb.
Joe announces that he's going to explore the kitchen for a match or a lighter, so he can have a quick cigarette, but it's really just a dumb way to get them in different rooms. While Joe looks for a match, Webster watches the video with a pretty intense stare. Webster sees something that shocks and horrifies him on the video, and yells over to Joe that he needs to see it. Joe has problems of his own, though, as the Djinn is busy shortening his lifespan.
Webster finally gets tired of waiting, and decides to see why Joe hasn't replied to him yet. He doesn't find Joe, but flipping on a light reveals that Webster is standing in a fresh pool of blood. To make matters worse, he can't get the door open, and the Djinn is coming after him next! *GULP*
Webster runs upstairs to hide, which seems kind of pointless, since the Djinn is invisible, and could be standing beside him the entire time without him even realizing it. Oh, and there's a neat sequence where we see the building from outside, with 3 windows lit up. As Webster is trying to find a place to hide on the second floor, the lights from the other rooms are seen flickering off, one by one. Pretty creepy.
Webster finally decides to hide under a bed, and wait out the Djinn. As he does so, Joe's corpse is unceremoniously dropped onto the floor next to his hiding spot. Webster waits a minute or so, then emerges from underneath the bed to try to make his escape. He gets as far as the locked front door, where the Djinn finds him, and bashes his head into the door, killing him instantly.
Back on the boat, Lucy is told by Rob and Spencer that Stella has been killed. Lucy decides to perform the banishing spell, so they all travel back to the warehouse where they originally summoned the demon. Please God, no more techno music! No music, but as they attempt to summon the Djinn to their location, it lights their Ouija board on fire.
They all take off in different directions, and Spencer fumbles around in a blind panic as he looks for a place to hide. He accidentally causes a metal bar to crash onto the floor, and the Djinn begins flying to his location. Spencer hides in some kind of locker, and sees a blur fly past him. Then, as he relaxes, Rob pops up in front of the locker, and he suddenly has slitted, reptilian eyes. He zooms around the locker, and proceeds to break apart the back of the container, then grabbing and yanking on Spencer's head. He snaps the young man's neck, then shoves him to the ground.
Liam and Old Man Becker arrive on the scene to help any survivors, and Becker has a gas can in one hand. As Liam explores the place room by room, Rob pops up and exclaims that the Djinn is actually Becker, but Becker slams into him from behind, then douses him with the gasoline. Before he can set Rob on fire, Liam attacks the landlord and knocks him out cold.
As Becker is lying on the floor, it looks like Rob says to him, "We'll always have Morocco," which would imply that the Djinn is inside Rob. Becker then wakes up and tries to choke him, but Rob delivers several fatal strikes to the man's skull, claiming that he acted without thinking.
Rob and Liam start to leave, and it starts to look like Rob is going to kill Liam from behind. But then they both get distracted by the realization that Lucy hasn't been seen in a while, but might still be alive. Thus begins Star Trek 23: The Search For Lucy.
As he's looking around, Liam sees something in the elevator shaft. Getting the door open, he realizes that it's Lucy, who has a noose around her neck. Liam cuts her down and tries to revive poor Lucy, but she's a goner. Then he faces Rob, who has the Djinn eyes in their full glory.
Grief-stricken, Liam tries to stab Rob, but only succeeds in slicing a deep wound into the possessed man's hand. Instead of blood, flames shoot out of the wound, and Rob retaliates by delivering a few painful injuries to Liam with his now-superhuman strength. He pulls Liam's head back and takes pleasure in the pain it causes.
The Djinn reveals that, ever since the summoning, he has been inside Rob's body, using him like a puppet to kill everyone who was involved in the ritual. He also informs Liam that he's been in a tortured state for a very long time, and plans to let Liam experience that torture in retaliation for his father trying to banish him in the first place.
While the Djinn is taunting him, Liam has another flashback, and sees the Djinn getting defeated by being set on fire. Liam snatches up a lantern, and dangles it in front of his possessed friend. When the Djinn realizes that he's soaked in gas, he pretends to leave Rob's body, and feigns not remembering what happened.
Liam doesn't buy the ruse for a second, and flings the lamp at the Djinn. He goes up like a fireworks display on July 4th, and Liam kicks him down the elevator shaft. Of course, this being a horror movie, Liam is compelled to look into the shaft. Would it really shock you if I told you that Rob popped up as he did, and Liam had to push him in again? Of course not! The killer never dies on the first try! Heck, there's even another burst of flame after that, just for good measure.
In the last scene of the film, Liam visits his father at the asylum. He goes in for a hug, only to reveal that he's now the Djinn. He crushes the old man in a deadly embrace, then the camera pulls back to reveal that the Djinn killed several staff members on the way in. The final image is a rapid zoom on the demonic eyes of the Djinn. THE END
Well, it wasn't much on complexity or character development, but Long Time Dead certainly delivered some suspenseful setpieces. In particular, I enjoyed the evening chase sequence in the apartment, and the bizarre toilet murder. Not the best movie, but far from the worst I've seen since starting to do this. I'll give it 3.5 killer trees out of 5, as I found it to be above average.
And what did Long Time Dead teach me?
-You don't even need a Ouija board to make a horror film about Ouija boards. I miss you, Witchboard movie franchise.
-British chicks are mostly cute and perky, and I need to find one in the near future to fall in love with, before she gets killed in some freak accident involving demonic summoning rituals.
-England is in constant need of electricians and repairmen. Sounds pretty chaotic there.
My next movie is called Perkins' 14. Strange title, but we'll see how it turns out. See you then!
As I said, it's British, so of course, the story begins in Morocco. And it's 1979, so how am I even reviewing this on the Internet? I'm 8 years old, fer cryin' out loud! Oh wait, this is only happening in the movie? Okay, then my future self should be okay. Wait, who is that grim-looking guy asking people if they know some chick named "Sarah Connor"? Hmmm....
Anyway, back to the film...There are a lot of people chanting, and they're all sitting on the floor in front of a Ouija board. All of a sudden, the camera goes into "Sam Raimi" mode, zipping and zooming around the room and its occupants. Oh, and there's some kind of locket or medallion that is getting a lot of screen time, so it must be important. Okay, somebody remember the locket for me, in case we need to reference it later!
As these goofballs continue chanting and swaying, we keep seeing a guy who looks like Tommy Chong, if Tommy Chong were dragged behind a pickup truck for about a week. Then we see a rather clean-cut dude(Among hippies? Yeah....), and then the title comes up. Wow, that whole sequence explained everything!
Then we rush to the present day, where 3 guys are getting stoned together in a drab-looking apartment. One of them, Rob, suddenly springs into action, and announces that they should go out for the night. One of his friends laughs as he checks himself out in a mirror, and declares that Rob is as vain as somebody named Stella. Uh, if you say so, Nameless Friend # 1. Oh, and the other friend is played by Lukas Haas, all grown up from his role in the movie Witness. Cool.
We don't get the names of Rob's friends yet, but we do get to meet Stella. She's a pretty cute blond, and she takes college very seriously, unlike the 3 potheads she barely has the patience for. There's some sarcastic banter, which ends when Rob tells one of his buddies that his aunt has a nice ass. The friend, named Liam, somehow took offense to hearing about his aunt's sweet ass(Gosh, that's a real shocker, huh?), and there's a short scuffle.
It's mostly just horseplay, so the 3 friends leave Stella rummaging in the fridge, while they go to a club. We still don't know the name of the dude played by Lukas Haas, so we get introduced to another character instead. That makes sense. Her name is Lucy, and she's Stella's equally cute friend. Sweet! At least if this gets dull, I can just shut off my brain and admire the attractive cast...
Lucy is at the club already, and as she dials Stella's number, another entity(possibly the same one that was flying around in the first scene) shows up and whooshes around behind her. She senses it, but doesn't actually see anything. When she gets Stella to agree to show up at the club, Lucy disconnects. Then Stella hears an object break in another room in the apartment building. She decides to investigate, and we get a cheap jump-scare involving a long-haired guy named Joe. He claims to be a new roommate of the other guys, but she seems suspicious.
After Stella changes her outfit, she and Joe have an unpleasant encounter with the landlord. He looks like a Crazy Ralph-esque old coot, which could be fun. More slasher flicks need crazy old coots in them, to keep the pace up. Let's try to pass that as a law, people!
The old man mentions that some of the wiring in the building seems faulty, and that he might need to enter their unit to examine it. When Stella seems alarmed by the thought, the landlord makes a creepy joke about not reading her diary. Yeah, but I'll bet he tries on some of her clothing. In any event, Stella and Joe quickly get as far from him as they can,
The club they arrive at is the usual generic techno-filled joint, crammed with extras trying to pretend they can dance to the bland music. We meet yet another character, named Spencer, and he seems to be competing with Joe to be The Coolest Guy In The Group. Oh, and I finally decided to give up, and just look up the name of the other character. He's "Webster", which just seems like the unlikeliest name ever for the guy. Why not just name him Floopy-Doo, if you're going to insist on the uncommon name route? Oh, and another anonymous-but-cute female has joined the group, and at least one other male, I think.
This is gonna be one of those movies.....
Anyway, there's a Hee Haw-style montage, wherein we see all of the characters doing goofy crap in between shots of the dancers. We see people having sex in semi-public areas, snorting coke off of a railroad track, that sort of "extreme" crap. And the music is getting on my nerves.
The incident with the drugs on the railroad track somehow leads into a discussion of what provides the "biggest buzz". they suggest mostly sex-related stuff, such as sex in public, sex with someone you love, etc. But then the last anonymous guy(I think... this group is getting big!), Spencer, says that nothing was better than the buzz after he used a Ouija board. Uh oh....I wonder what's going to happen next?
Well, they don't have a Ouija board. Geez, just go to the closest toy store and buy one...Parker Brothers makes a zillion of them! But no, they decide that they should "make" one. Even after Lucy says something about how she heard that you shouldn't use a Ouija board when you're intoxicated or high. If that were the case, no one would EVER use one!
Anyway, their version of "making" a Ouija board is just plain goofy as all Hell. They cut up little squares of paper, on which they write the letters of the alphabet, and place them in a circular pattern, like a clock. Then they put a drinking glass in the center of the circle, to use as a pointer. I don't see any separate pieces of paper for "Yes", "No", "Hello" or "Goodbye", so I guess the spirits better be prepared to enter a spelling bee with this group. No, wait, I take that back...I saw yes/no papers.
Before they begin, some ground rules are laid out: they're each allowed to only place 1 finger on the glass; they can't "force" the glass or push it; and they must, at all times, keep their fingers on the glass, or else the spirit will be unable to return to The Other Side. Everyone got those memorized?
They get the session going, and Lucy takes charge. She asks if there are any spirits nearby, and if they have any messages for the group. For about a minute, nothing happens. Then, just as they seem ready to give up, the glass shoots forward, and a message begins to take shape...
The spirit seems to spell something in gibberish, and they all let out a nervous laugh. Then the glass moves again, faster, and spells out "all die", several times in a row. Whoops! Anonymous Girl gets upset, so Lucy attempts to regain control of the situation by asking the spirit who it is. It spells "Djinn" over and over, until Liam suddenly has visions of the group from the first scene.
Liam gets upset and runs away, breaking the rule about touching the glass at all times during the session. They all seem shocked at first, then some of them start laughing. They decide to see if Liam is okay, and none of them realize that they left Webster's video camera running in the room when they leave.
The anonymous girl turns out to be Liam's girlfriend. She finds him outside, getting some fresh air, and he gives her a ring. She must have asthma, because Liam asks her where her inhaler is, and she figures that she must have dropped it when the group ended their session with the spirit world. She promises to hurry back to him, then goes back inside.
In the room, things look a lot darker. She stumbles around while searching for her inhaler, then finds it in a dark corner of the room. A noise frightens her, then another one nearby, causing her to start yelling that it isn't funny. She runs and runs, eventually winding up on the roof, and tries to climb up a ramped part of the roof made of glass. When she sees a group of people that are dancing, she screams for help, but then plummets toward them when the glass breaks beneath her. She falls to her death, and the partiers stare in shock at her bloody corpse.
The police are called to the nightclub, and our main group ride home in a tension-filled, silent VW bus. The creepy landlord is sitting in front of the apartment building when they return, and he and Liam exchange mean glares. Then Spencer tells Lucy that he needs to see his drug dealer, to get something to calm him down. He begs her to go with him, but she just walks away after looking disgusted with him. He tells her that he'll be back in ten minutes.
The rest of the group more or less head to their rooms, or find places to be alone. That's always a great idea in a horror film! Lucy hears someone/something whisper her name, and heads back inside to do some research on the events that transpired that evening. She finds a book that informs her that Djinn, or genies, are demons made of fire that can easily possess humans if they are summoned by those not trained to control them, like shamen. The best way to exorcise a Djinn after such a possession, is to "banish" it, through some probably-obscure ritual. Awesome.
Lucy decides to make some tea, and a spout of flame shoots out of the burner that she turns on. Is it the Djinn? As Lucy slowly backs away from the oven, she suddenly hears something thumping around outside. She calls out to Spencer, but there's no reply except more thumping noises. She seems to hear it getting closer and closer, then Lucy hears her boyfriend calling her name.
She rushes outside, and finds Spencer and a strange man there. The stranger tells her that he's an electrician(second time we're hearing about electrical problems....is it some kind of clue?), and Spencer gives Lucy a hug of reassurance. They decide to get off of the boat for the night, and join the rest of their friends at the apartment. How the heck do college kids afford a boat to live on?
Anyway, they head to the apartment, and everyone else is already there. There's a discussion going on over how the anonymous girl died, and it turns out her name was Annie. Hey, better late than never, I guess. In addition to the glass and the bones broken when she fell, Annie supposedly also had scorch marks on her body. Was the Djinn copping a feel?
Lucy gets nervous talking about the death of their friend, and mentions that she thinks the Djinn has been with her throughout the evening. She mentions the research that she did, and puts out the theory that one of them has now been taken over by the Djinn. She believes that it may try to kill them all, so that it can remain in a human host with no fear of being banished.
They return to the nightclub warehouse, to let Webster retrieve his camera. Hey, d'ya think there might be something scary on the footage? Nah, I doubt it. It's probably just a wedding video or something. All righty....roll that beautiful bean footage!
They watch themselves sitting down to start the Ouija session. When they see the part where Liam freaked out and left, they wonder what made him react like that. Right on cue, the power goes out, and they all start to get scared. The guys explain that the fuses blow all the time, then Webster and Spencer decide to visit the landlord, Old Man Becker. Anyone else getting a "Scooby-Doo" vibe here?
Anyway, the 2 guys knock on his door, but there's no answer. Spencer finds an open window, but insists that Webster should enter the landlord's place, because he doesn't want to get in trouble with either the police or Lucy. Sure, but it's okay to let the kid from Witness get into potential trouble. Makes perfect sense.
Webster, not being the sharpest stick in the woodpile, goes along with this non-logic, and enters Becker's(that's the landlord's name, by the way) apartment to have a look around. He uses the world's dimmest flashlight to look around with, and nearly wets his pants when he crashes into something. After some more exploration, Webster jumps out of his skin when he finds Spencer in the dark with him. After all the crap about not wanting to get into trouble, it turns out that Spencer was getting too scared outside by himself. Sheesh.
They hear a noise, and realize that it's probably Becker coming home. The 2 guys duck under a nearby table, just as the front door starts to open. Becker comes in(we don't see his face, but it's probably him), fiddles around with some things, then leaves again. After he closes the door and locks it again, they wait a few seconds for him to really be gone. Then they leap back to their feet, and Spencer stupidly flips on the lights...revealing that the apartment is literally covered in various notes, newspaper clippings, and other bits of scrap, all pertaining to the Djinn. Uh oh!
The 2 guys rush back to their friends, and tell them to come and see the place for themselves. Becker seemed obsessed with the Djinn and Ouija boards, and seemingly had every possible bit of information about the ritual that took place in 1979...oh, and a human skull or 2, just for feng shui, I suppose. Of particular interest to the group, is an article about a couple from that hippie group who had a child...a boy named Liam. DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN!!!!!!
Yup, that's why Liam is having those weird flashbacks, I guess. Then we see Liam driving, when another flashback hits him, and he begins swerving the VW bus around on the road. He just barely manages to pull off the road safely, and covers his face with his hands.
They group leave Becker's apartment and call the police. Liam wakes up in his car and continues home, and the cops pore through Becker's apartment, trying to figure out what his master plan was supposed to be. Reunited with Liam, the group sit down to breakfast, and try to figure out what exactly is happening to them. Liam, having missed everything that happened the previous night, demands an explanation about the police presence in Becker's place.
Well, it turns out that Liam thought that both of his parents were dead, and that he knew nothing about the events of 1979. In fact, he has to find out from his friends that his father has been living for years in an insane asylum. Understandably freaked out by all of these new tidbits(plus, the fact that the landlord had been obsessed with the 1979 incident), Liam storms off. Oh, and Joe is being kind of a dick in the scene, making life miserable for the group by doing and saying stuff meant to antagonize everyone. Nice guy.
Liam finds a lonely hallway where he can sulk and brood. At the same time, Stella announces that she needs to get away...and goes to the bathroom. Okay...No sooner does Stella get her stall door locked, when a loud noise startles her. She starts to cry, but a larger girl in the next stall reassures her that it's okay.
Calmed down somewhat, Stella exits the stall and washes up at one of the sinks, only to be dragged back into the stall by the invisible Djinn. We see her feet leave the ground, then her shoes getting drenched in her own blood. The girl in the next stall sees the blood, checks on Stella, and finds her bloody, mangled corpse. Naturally, the girl screams.
Lucy tries to do some research on the Djinn back on the boat, but Becker shows up from out of nowhere. He tells her that his intentions are good, but she obviously doesn't buy that after everything that has transpired. Still, Becker insists that she and her friends need to perform a spell or ritual to banish the Djinn, and that Liam was the cause of it being summoned in the first place. When Lucy still refuses to listen, Becker tells her that she and her friends will all be dead soon.
Then we catch up with Liam again. He's done a little digging, and discovered the facility that his father is residing in is called Pernhill. The man in charge tells Liam that his father has never allowed a visitor to speak with him in at least a decade, so Liam writes the word "DJINN" on a piece of paper, and asks that it be delivered to his father.
Yup, that did the trick. They face each through a window, and communicate with phones, just like any prison. Liam quickly loses his cool, accusing his father of sending Becker to kill him and his friends. As Liam is dragged away shouting and kicking, his dad seems genuinely shocked by the accusation.
That evening Webster and Joe hatch The Dumbest Plan Ever(at least, until I watch next week's movie), and decide to break back into their apartment. Of course, the entire building is a crime scene, and there's a cop outside watching the place, but like I said, it's The Dumbest Plan Ever. The reason for taking such a risk? Because Webster wants to grab the videotape he made of the Ouija board session, and see if any weird stuff happened during the recording.
Of course, as soon as they grab the video, Webster tells Joe that he wants to watch it there, to satisfy his curiosity immediately. It's a stupid idea, and Joe even tells hims so, but Webster refuses to be logical. This would only ever happen in a movie...nobody in real life would be so dumb.
Joe announces that he's going to explore the kitchen for a match or a lighter, so he can have a quick cigarette, but it's really just a dumb way to get them in different rooms. While Joe looks for a match, Webster watches the video with a pretty intense stare. Webster sees something that shocks and horrifies him on the video, and yells over to Joe that he needs to see it. Joe has problems of his own, though, as the Djinn is busy shortening his lifespan.
Webster finally gets tired of waiting, and decides to see why Joe hasn't replied to him yet. He doesn't find Joe, but flipping on a light reveals that Webster is standing in a fresh pool of blood. To make matters worse, he can't get the door open, and the Djinn is coming after him next! *GULP*
Webster runs upstairs to hide, which seems kind of pointless, since the Djinn is invisible, and could be standing beside him the entire time without him even realizing it. Oh, and there's a neat sequence where we see the building from outside, with 3 windows lit up. As Webster is trying to find a place to hide on the second floor, the lights from the other rooms are seen flickering off, one by one. Pretty creepy.
Webster finally decides to hide under a bed, and wait out the Djinn. As he does so, Joe's corpse is unceremoniously dropped onto the floor next to his hiding spot. Webster waits a minute or so, then emerges from underneath the bed to try to make his escape. He gets as far as the locked front door, where the Djinn finds him, and bashes his head into the door, killing him instantly.
Back on the boat, Lucy is told by Rob and Spencer that Stella has been killed. Lucy decides to perform the banishing spell, so they all travel back to the warehouse where they originally summoned the demon. Please God, no more techno music! No music, but as they attempt to summon the Djinn to their location, it lights their Ouija board on fire.
They all take off in different directions, and Spencer fumbles around in a blind panic as he looks for a place to hide. He accidentally causes a metal bar to crash onto the floor, and the Djinn begins flying to his location. Spencer hides in some kind of locker, and sees a blur fly past him. Then, as he relaxes, Rob pops up in front of the locker, and he suddenly has slitted, reptilian eyes. He zooms around the locker, and proceeds to break apart the back of the container, then grabbing and yanking on Spencer's head. He snaps the young man's neck, then shoves him to the ground.
Liam and Old Man Becker arrive on the scene to help any survivors, and Becker has a gas can in one hand. As Liam explores the place room by room, Rob pops up and exclaims that the Djinn is actually Becker, but Becker slams into him from behind, then douses him with the gasoline. Before he can set Rob on fire, Liam attacks the landlord and knocks him out cold.
As Becker is lying on the floor, it looks like Rob says to him, "We'll always have Morocco," which would imply that the Djinn is inside Rob. Becker then wakes up and tries to choke him, but Rob delivers several fatal strikes to the man's skull, claiming that he acted without thinking.
Rob and Liam start to leave, and it starts to look like Rob is going to kill Liam from behind. But then they both get distracted by the realization that Lucy hasn't been seen in a while, but might still be alive. Thus begins Star Trek 23: The Search For Lucy.
As he's looking around, Liam sees something in the elevator shaft. Getting the door open, he realizes that it's Lucy, who has a noose around her neck. Liam cuts her down and tries to revive poor Lucy, but she's a goner. Then he faces Rob, who has the Djinn eyes in their full glory.
Grief-stricken, Liam tries to stab Rob, but only succeeds in slicing a deep wound into the possessed man's hand. Instead of blood, flames shoot out of the wound, and Rob retaliates by delivering a few painful injuries to Liam with his now-superhuman strength. He pulls Liam's head back and takes pleasure in the pain it causes.
The Djinn reveals that, ever since the summoning, he has been inside Rob's body, using him like a puppet to kill everyone who was involved in the ritual. He also informs Liam that he's been in a tortured state for a very long time, and plans to let Liam experience that torture in retaliation for his father trying to banish him in the first place.
While the Djinn is taunting him, Liam has another flashback, and sees the Djinn getting defeated by being set on fire. Liam snatches up a lantern, and dangles it in front of his possessed friend. When the Djinn realizes that he's soaked in gas, he pretends to leave Rob's body, and feigns not remembering what happened.
Liam doesn't buy the ruse for a second, and flings the lamp at the Djinn. He goes up like a fireworks display on July 4th, and Liam kicks him down the elevator shaft. Of course, this being a horror movie, Liam is compelled to look into the shaft. Would it really shock you if I told you that Rob popped up as he did, and Liam had to push him in again? Of course not! The killer never dies on the first try! Heck, there's even another burst of flame after that, just for good measure.
In the last scene of the film, Liam visits his father at the asylum. He goes in for a hug, only to reveal that he's now the Djinn. He crushes the old man in a deadly embrace, then the camera pulls back to reveal that the Djinn killed several staff members on the way in. The final image is a rapid zoom on the demonic eyes of the Djinn. THE END
Well, it wasn't much on complexity or character development, but Long Time Dead certainly delivered some suspenseful setpieces. In particular, I enjoyed the evening chase sequence in the apartment, and the bizarre toilet murder. Not the best movie, but far from the worst I've seen since starting to do this. I'll give it 3.5 killer trees out of 5, as I found it to be above average.
And what did Long Time Dead teach me?
-You don't even need a Ouija board to make a horror film about Ouija boards. I miss you, Witchboard movie franchise.
-British chicks are mostly cute and perky, and I need to find one in the near future to fall in love with, before she gets killed in some freak accident involving demonic summoning rituals.
-England is in constant need of electricians and repairmen. Sounds pretty chaotic there.
My next movie is called Perkins' 14. Strange title, but we'll see how it turns out. See you then!
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Dead In 3 Days
Well, here we are again! This week's movie, Dead In 3 Days, is a slasher flick from Austria. Beyond that, I know almost nothing about this particular movie. Oh, and it's my first movie since I had my NetFlix membership reinstated! No more waiting a week for a BallBuster movie to arrive! YAY!!! SPOILERS, as always, begin here...
The movie starts us out in a green, swampy area. We see somebody skulking in the trees, and making what looks like a noose...no, wait a sec, they're untying the rope from a piece of wood.. The stranger brings the rope up a winding set of stairs, and ties it to a beam in a ceiling. Oops, I was right the first time. The person just made a noose and committed suicide. See, I should never second-guess myself. There's a shot of what is probably the dead man's face, or possibly an extreme closeup of whoever our presumed slasher will eventually turn out to be. It's probably the suicide victim...they wouldn't reveal the antagonist before at least setting the plot in motion.
Anyway, we see a young woman limping through what looks like it might be the same area, and her face is torn up and bloody. She sees a road up ahead, and staggers out of the trees, before collapsing on the road. A vehicle stops, and the girl sees a blurry face above her, possibly also covered with blood. (It looks like there's a line across the driver's face, but the image is extremely blurry, as it's a POV shot.) The injured woman begs her rescuer to help someone named Nina.
Then the movie goes back in time, and shows us what was happening 4 days ago. We see a fairly huge U-shaped building, which turns out to be a school. Inside, a nervous-looking guy is reading a poem to a grim panel of what I guess are teachers and school administrators.. Just outside the classroom, another male teen is watching the door like a hawk.
After reading his poem, the young man stares at the assembled group, and one of them asks him if reciting poetry is his only skill. Ouch! The kid in the hallway enters the women's restroom, where 3 female students are rolling what look like joints. They all look nervous when he walks in(gee, I wonder why...), and ask him if he "got in". He hoots and hollers, and the girls do a little celebratory squealing as well. So.....yes? No?
Then, one girl asks how Martin did. I'm guessing that Martin was the poetry-reciter. Instead of answering the question, the boy leaves the bathroom with all 3 girls, and they head back to wait for Martin to finish up his oral exam. Along the way, they spot another teen boy lurking near some lockers, and one girl comments that he gives her the creeps. Fascinating, Spock.
As they approach the classroom, Martin joins them in the hall. He supposedly passed his test, but feels as if that female teacher was picking on him. Boo-fricking-hoo, dude. Grow a pair. At an assembly, that same teacher announces that they all passed, and will get to graduate, which sends Martin flying out of his seat cheering. As everyone else joins in the victory, that one student who was shunned earlier is seen still sitting, glaring at the students around him.
The students all get their diplomas, and our core group of characters get into a jeep together, and do doughnuts in the parking lot. They nearly wipe out their fellow graduates, including that one grumpy kid. Boy, I'll bet he's the life of every party--funeral party, that is. Oh, and there's this really dopey song playing, where the lyrics explain what's happening. Literally, the singer is rocking out saying stuff like, "We're so happy, because we just graduated, now we get to waste our parents' money at college, unless we get killed by some dude in a swampy forest..."
As they all start singing along and head-banging to the music(seriously...), the vehicle hits something in the road. Pleaseletitbethesonofafisherman, pleaseletitbethesonofafisherman, pleaseletit--
Nope. It's someone's dog. The others urge the driver to put it out of its' misery, even going so far as to suggest running it over again. He yells at them that he can't, and tries to make one of its' paws return to a more natural angle. I don't know why, but the thing with the paw kinda made me snicker. I mean, he doesn't want to kill the poor thing, but torture is okay to do?
Anyway, the driver drops his girlfriend off first, and walks her to her front door. It turns out that he did kill the dog, and he asks her to forgive him. She eventually smiles and they kiss, as another girl in the car stares at them. Possible love triangle?
The girlfriend, a cute blond with a pixie-ish haircut, watches the jeep leave, then she turns back to the house. As she enters, she gets a text message telling her that she'll be dead in 3 days. Neat! Somebody should make a movie with that as the title! Oh, and by the way, when do any of these assholes get names?
Blondie enters the house, and is greeted by the family dog, who probably Knows What She Did After Graduation! She and the dog walk to the back of the house, where her family is waiting to snap the photo of a real, live high school graduate in the family. Oh, and accessory to Scooby-Doo-icide. But they're probably just celebrating that first thing.
Sadly, the blond girl's parents decide to squabble on the happy day. Her sister reveals that they were fighting right before she walked in the door, as well. So much for the graduation party. Let's go somewhere else...
Next up, we see a guy named "Clemens"(no shit, I had to look it up), who is busy scooping up big, fat fish out of a plastic tub with a net, and dropping them into a different container in the back of a vehicle that probably smells like Aquaman's crotch. Oh, and while I remember this, anyone out there remember Sabrina, The Teenaged Witch? Well, Clemens kinda resembles the guy who played Harvey on that show. Weird.
Clemens' dad comes over to the vehicle to talk to him, and tells him that, after he delivers the fish, he can keep the money from the delivery to go out and party with his friends. Then, without warning, we're at a gas station/car wash business. A cute, dark-haired girl(the one who was staring at Blondie and her boyfriend) works there and looks pretty bummed out about it.
The gas station girl is named Mona, I think(seriously....why don't any of the damned subtitles ever mention the names of these characters? Watching a slasher flick shouldn't require a full investigation every 5 minutes!), and she has a quick topless scene, as she changes into a fresh shirt to go out with her friends. Her father, who is in a wheelchair, tells her that her workshift isn't over, but she drowns out his voice with some rock music on her headphones. Then she grabs some cash and heads out.
Oh, and when Mona leaves, she closes the gas station for the remainder of the day as well. WTH? Her dad may be in a wheelchair, but he can certainly pump gas, can't he? But no, he just lets her walk all over him, I guess. She gets on a motorcycle and roars away.
Clemens, meanwhile is driving around and smoking a butt, maybe looking for a place to park the Fishmobile. Before he gets out to make the delivery, he gets the same "YOU'LL BE DEAD IN 3 DAYS" that the blond girl had on her phone. He turns off the phone, then makes his delivery.
Inside the restaurant, Clemens finds the fish tank in the kitchen, and lifts the lid off. He drops his scaly friends in with several other fish, then notices that the glass around the top of the tank looks kind of jagged. He adjusts the air going into the water tank, then mentions the rough glass to one of the chefs, warning them that someone could get hurt if the glass isn't covered with something. Foreshadowing?
Clemens leaves the kitchen behind, and finds himself shuffling down a dark, deserted hallway in what may or may not be in the same building as the restaurant. As he climbs a staircase, he hears something down the hall, and turns to look. He decides that he'd rather investigate a noise in a dark corridor, rather than go up some slightly illuminated stairs, so I'm guessing that he may be about to make a quick exit from the movie.
Clemens finds a door in the hallway slightly ajar, and peeks in. Seeing that it appears to be empty, he decides to go into the room, which looks like a hotel room. While Clemens walks over to a window, a girl follows him into the room. She demands to know why he's there, then she grins and kisses him. she's Alex, his girlfriend.
Then we get some random nonsense with a guy dancing around in his underwear, playing air guitar. After that, the group of friends all go to a nightclub together. I'm just going to take a stab in the dark here, and guess that the club is called something like Der DancinkScrewink Hottootrottzen. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if I was right.
In addition to the group, that moody kid Patrick is also at the club. He glares at all of them, as usual, but he seems to pay particular attention to the blond girl. She tries to ignore him, and gives her boyfriend a big kiss. That also gets the attention of Mona, who tells some poor kid to fuck off when he asks her to dance. That was cruel, but also kind of funny.
They stop dancing so that he can take a potty break. Oh, and I think he's Martin, which would make the blond girl Nina. I've almost got this Rubik's Cube-style script figured out! Yay! Maybe I can even avoid a nervous breakdown when it ends...
Martin steps into an ultra-grungy bathroom, and walks by a sink that looks like someone crapped in it. While he's peeing, someone enters the restroom, and abducts him. When he doesn't return to the dance floor, Nina decides to see what's taking him so long. She starts to worry when she finds no sign of him, save for his phone on the floor with the death threat message on it.
Nina finds her friends, and shows them the text message. When some of them admit to getting the same message, Nina begs them to help her look for her boyfriend. Mostly to shut her up, they agree.
Meanwhile, Martin wakes up in a strange, blurry room, filled with ropes and various tools. Martin begins to cry as a figure approaches him, but that's all we get for now. I wonder if he'll get tortured a little first, or just killed? It's kind of weird to end a scene like that before we get some kind of action.
Nina turns up nothing, and the others are just as empty-handed. She takes Clemens' keys, and drives the group to the nearest police station. She attempts to file a missing persons report, but the officer on desk duty is Martin's cousin, and he laughs off the notion of Martin vanishing. He tells Nina that Martin is either passed out from too much alcohol, or that he hooked up with another girl at the club. Furious, Nina and her friends leave. Before she gets back into the jeep, Nina sees the desk cop looking at her through a window, and she gives him the finger.
Following that, we see Martin in a rowboat with the killer. Oh boy, I think the killer's going to pop the question! If you say yes, Martin, he might even untie you! Oops, no....the killer just shoved poor, trussed-up Martin overboard. Martin somehow manages to keep his head above the water, at least until the killer reveals that the rope is also attached to a circular block of concrete that also gets tossed into the water. Bye, Martin....say hi to Jason if he's down there!
The next morning, Nina hears the ringtone on Martin;s phone. and jumps out of bed to answer it. It's her mother, telling her that she missed her driving test, but that she made sure to reschedule it on Nina's behalf. Nina then goes out for a practice drive, and nearly crashes the car when she spots a guy who looks like Martin strolling on the sidewalk. She leaps out of the car to approach him, but it's just some random guy.
On her way back to her pissed-off driving instructor, Nina collides with a woman walking by. The woman keeps going, but Nina stares at her for a few seconds. Wait! Did Martin get reincarnated as some middle-aged woman with a double chin? Oh man, I hope so. That would be hilarious!
Nina tells her driving instructor to kiss her ass, then walks away. She eventually finds herself at the lake, staring into the water, lost in her thoughts. From quite a distance behind her, creepy Patrick is just giving her his usual 1,000-yard stare, but she's facing away from him. Dude, go fixate on Jodie Foster. It worked for that guy who shot Reagan. He had a successful future after that, right? Yeah, I'm sure he hit it big soon after.
Nina pays a visit to Mona at the gas station, and moans and gripes some more. Mona decides to cheer her up, by quitting early again, so they can head to the lake. When they get there, Mona, Clemens and the others meet up there as well. Everyone starts ribbing each other, and it almost seems like old times....
...that is, until Nina realizes that she can see Martin's corpse just below the surface of the lake. She dives in, and the others soon follow when they realize what she spotted. Nina plunges underwater, coming face-to-face with her dead boyfriend. Naturally, she screams. Her friends help her get back out of the water, and they all just helplessly put their arms around her while she cries.
When the police arrive, the lake becomes a 3-ring circus. Detectives search the land around the lake for any evidence, dive teams are sent down to examine the body(and hopefully retrieve it), and even Martin's cousin is there, looking ashamed for the way he treated Nina the night she came into the station.
At the police station, Nina and her friends get picked up by their folks. There's a lot of crying and hugging, until some cops walk in, leading Patrick into the office to be questioned. I doubt it's him, that'd be too easy.
Nina goes to bed that night, but just lies there in the dark, staring straight ahead. Martin's cousin is also restless, driving around with a female passenger in his car. He tells her that his cousin was still alive when he was thrown into the lake, and she tells him not to blame himself. Boy, this is getting depressing.
Nina has a nightmare about drowning, then wakes up to find her bedroom window open. She heads downstairs, and decides to go to the kitchen. While looking for a snack, she gets snatched up by the killer.
She wakes up in the trunk of a car, and the abductor then hauls Nina into some kind of shack. As Nina tries to scream past her gag, the killer's face is partially revealed. It kinda looks like the woman she bumped into on the street, which is pretty weird.
Anyway, the killer then turns away to do something, and Patrick suddenly pops up out of nowhere. He shushes Nina, the begins to loosen her wrists and ankles. When he looks back at the killer, they're no longer in that spot anymore! Uh ohhhhhh....
They make a mad dash out of the room, and quickly find the exit door, but it's either locked or jammed. As they try to force it open, the killer is seen coming up fast. Nina finally gets out, just as Patrick is grabbed. The killer pushes his face against a window, and Nina gets to watch as he gets murdered.
Nina then runs out into the street, and we get a re-enactment of the first scene in the film, except that Nina suddenly doesn't seem nearly as injured as she was when we saw this before. The driver gets her to the hospital, and the staff there wheel poor Nina into surgery. While all of this is happening, Clemens and Alex wake up after a nice, leisurely snugglefest.
Clemens heads down to the kitchen, where he grabs some booze and checks the fish tank. He fixes the air hose again, then walks away. In a dark area of the hotel, Clemens drops the bottle and gets a jump-scare from Alex. Alex tells him to go back to the room, while she cleans up the mess.
Alex throws away the shards from the bottle, then sees a fish on the floor, flopping around. When she goes in for a closer look, the killer grabs her from behind. Alex is lifted off the floor, and her throat is split open when the killer pushes her face into the fish tank. Clemens then comes back to the kitchen, where he discovers the blood-filled tank, as well as the mutilated body of his girlfriend. Naturally, he doesn't react well.
But hey, Nina's awake in her hospital bed! A nurse offers her some assistance, then slits poor Nina's throat wide open. Within seconds, the bed is drenched in blood, while Nina can do little more than go into death spasms.
Oops, still yet another nightmare sequence. The same nurse is in the room, and offers to bring in Nina's family. Then we see the authorities take away Alex's body, and the police decide to get Nina, Clemens and Mona together for a group interview. They show them all a sketch of the killer, and it gives Nina awful flashbacks. Neither one of her friends seem to have much of a reaction either way.
When asked if they know of anyone who might have a grudge against them, all 3 play dumb. Still, it's clear that they know much more than they're telling. Once they get alone again, we finally get to hear the full story.....I hope.
When they were all kids, a very young boy named Fabian wanted to be part of their little group. Being jerks, they refused. It got to the point that, one winter day, as they all played hockey on the frozen lake, they asked the boy, Fabian, to play in a remote section, to keep him from interfering with the game. The ice in that section, however, was thin, and poor little Fabian fell through and died. When the boy was finally rescued, he was in a coma, and died after 3 days....hence the title.
Anyway, eventually Fabian's father couldn't handle his grief, so he hung himself. Despite this fact, Nina clearly believes that the police sketch looks like the father. The mother is still alive, but the cops claim that she left town, even after Nina tells them that she bumped into her on the sidewalk the other day.
Okay, so are these hallucinations? Is Nina insane? Or is there more going on here than we know? Whatever the answer is, it's a restless night for all. Nina can't sleep, so she finds both Clemens and Mona to hang out with. The desk cop guy can't sleep, so he makes some calls to follow up on a few loose ends. And Nina's kid sister can't sleep, so she gets to be the one to warn the authorities if Nina and her friends don't come back from exploring the empty home of Fabian Haas and his family.
Before they get to the house, though, 2 things happen: First, they make a stop at Clemens' house, so that Clemens can steal his dad's gun; and secondly, Nina's sister leaves their home, either to follow the teens or head to the police station.
At the creepy Haas house, the 3 teens find an open door, and enter the premises. Nina's sister observes from the bushes, then somebody grabs her. Oh well, another one bites the dust.Oh, and their are indications inside the house that a person might still be living there.
Clemens hears someone, and decides to check it out. At the same time, Nina and Mona find a shrine to the Haas family, as well as numerous masks that would allow the killer to look like Mr. Haas. And that's exactly when Mrs. Haas shows up. She has Nina's sister as a hostage, but Clemens has the gun.
As they try to get answers from her, Mrs. Haas shoves a knife into Clemens' side, In the chaos, Clemens falls to the ground, Nina's sister rubs away, and Nina and Mona run in different directions, to confuse the killer. Mona is chased first, into a bedroom. She breaks a window just as the killer arrives, and jumps through, unaware that large spikes are waiting below to impale her. Ow.
Mona still lives! Despite her painful injuries, she manages to stagger into the road so---A-HA! It was her, not Nina, seen in the opening sequence. We then see Nina's sister get rescued, but Nina appears to be missing.
That's because Mrs. Haas took her out on the lake to drown the girl. But when the maniac moves to throw her into the lake, Nina stabs her, then dumps her overboard instead. Sadly, things get worse, as Nina realizes that the weighted rope is going into the water, and dragging her with it.
After some darkness and dreamy images of the ice hockey tragedy, Nina wakes up in the hospital, next to Mona. They exchange glances, then hold hands. The final image is of Mrs. Haas in the lake, standing there for eternity. THE END.
Wow, what a downer. Still, it had some pretty good plot twists and suspense going for it. Minus 1 point, though, for making me guess all the damn names.
And what did Dead in 3 Days teach me?
-Names are closely guarded secrets.
-Fish tanks are death machines.
-If you let someone drown, try to remember the event later in life! It might be important.
My next movie is a supernatural thriller, Long Time Dead. See you later, all!
The movie starts us out in a green, swampy area. We see somebody skulking in the trees, and making what looks like a noose...no, wait a sec, they're untying the rope from a piece of wood.. The stranger brings the rope up a winding set of stairs, and ties it to a beam in a ceiling. Oops, I was right the first time. The person just made a noose and committed suicide. See, I should never second-guess myself. There's a shot of what is probably the dead man's face, or possibly an extreme closeup of whoever our presumed slasher will eventually turn out to be. It's probably the suicide victim...they wouldn't reveal the antagonist before at least setting the plot in motion.
Anyway, we see a young woman limping through what looks like it might be the same area, and her face is torn up and bloody. She sees a road up ahead, and staggers out of the trees, before collapsing on the road. A vehicle stops, and the girl sees a blurry face above her, possibly also covered with blood. (It looks like there's a line across the driver's face, but the image is extremely blurry, as it's a POV shot.) The injured woman begs her rescuer to help someone named Nina.
Then the movie goes back in time, and shows us what was happening 4 days ago. We see a fairly huge U-shaped building, which turns out to be a school. Inside, a nervous-looking guy is reading a poem to a grim panel of what I guess are teachers and school administrators.. Just outside the classroom, another male teen is watching the door like a hawk.
After reading his poem, the young man stares at the assembled group, and one of them asks him if reciting poetry is his only skill. Ouch! The kid in the hallway enters the women's restroom, where 3 female students are rolling what look like joints. They all look nervous when he walks in(gee, I wonder why...), and ask him if he "got in". He hoots and hollers, and the girls do a little celebratory squealing as well. So.....yes? No?
Then, one girl asks how Martin did. I'm guessing that Martin was the poetry-reciter. Instead of answering the question, the boy leaves the bathroom with all 3 girls, and they head back to wait for Martin to finish up his oral exam. Along the way, they spot another teen boy lurking near some lockers, and one girl comments that he gives her the creeps. Fascinating, Spock.
As they approach the classroom, Martin joins them in the hall. He supposedly passed his test, but feels as if that female teacher was picking on him. Boo-fricking-hoo, dude. Grow a pair. At an assembly, that same teacher announces that they all passed, and will get to graduate, which sends Martin flying out of his seat cheering. As everyone else joins in the victory, that one student who was shunned earlier is seen still sitting, glaring at the students around him.
The students all get their diplomas, and our core group of characters get into a jeep together, and do doughnuts in the parking lot. They nearly wipe out their fellow graduates, including that one grumpy kid. Boy, I'll bet he's the life of every party--funeral party, that is. Oh, and there's this really dopey song playing, where the lyrics explain what's happening. Literally, the singer is rocking out saying stuff like, "We're so happy, because we just graduated, now we get to waste our parents' money at college, unless we get killed by some dude in a swampy forest..."
As they all start singing along and head-banging to the music(seriously...), the vehicle hits something in the road. Pleaseletitbethesonofafisherman, pleaseletitbethesonofafisherman, pleaseletit--
Nope. It's someone's dog. The others urge the driver to put it out of its' misery, even going so far as to suggest running it over again. He yells at them that he can't, and tries to make one of its' paws return to a more natural angle. I don't know why, but the thing with the paw kinda made me snicker. I mean, he doesn't want to kill the poor thing, but torture is okay to do?
Anyway, the driver drops his girlfriend off first, and walks her to her front door. It turns out that he did kill the dog, and he asks her to forgive him. She eventually smiles and they kiss, as another girl in the car stares at them. Possible love triangle?
The girlfriend, a cute blond with a pixie-ish haircut, watches the jeep leave, then she turns back to the house. As she enters, she gets a text message telling her that she'll be dead in 3 days. Neat! Somebody should make a movie with that as the title! Oh, and by the way, when do any of these assholes get names?
Blondie enters the house, and is greeted by the family dog, who probably Knows What She Did After Graduation! She and the dog walk to the back of the house, where her family is waiting to snap the photo of a real, live high school graduate in the family. Oh, and accessory to Scooby-Doo-icide. But they're probably just celebrating that first thing.
Sadly, the blond girl's parents decide to squabble on the happy day. Her sister reveals that they were fighting right before she walked in the door, as well. So much for the graduation party. Let's go somewhere else...
Next up, we see a guy named "Clemens"(no shit, I had to look it up), who is busy scooping up big, fat fish out of a plastic tub with a net, and dropping them into a different container in the back of a vehicle that probably smells like Aquaman's crotch. Oh, and while I remember this, anyone out there remember Sabrina, The Teenaged Witch? Well, Clemens kinda resembles the guy who played Harvey on that show. Weird.
Clemens' dad comes over to the vehicle to talk to him, and tells him that, after he delivers the fish, he can keep the money from the delivery to go out and party with his friends. Then, without warning, we're at a gas station/car wash business. A cute, dark-haired girl(the one who was staring at Blondie and her boyfriend) works there and looks pretty bummed out about it.
The gas station girl is named Mona, I think(seriously....why don't any of the damned subtitles ever mention the names of these characters? Watching a slasher flick shouldn't require a full investigation every 5 minutes!), and she has a quick topless scene, as she changes into a fresh shirt to go out with her friends. Her father, who is in a wheelchair, tells her that her workshift isn't over, but she drowns out his voice with some rock music on her headphones. Then she grabs some cash and heads out.
Oh, and when Mona leaves, she closes the gas station for the remainder of the day as well. WTH? Her dad may be in a wheelchair, but he can certainly pump gas, can't he? But no, he just lets her walk all over him, I guess. She gets on a motorcycle and roars away.
Clemens, meanwhile is driving around and smoking a butt, maybe looking for a place to park the Fishmobile. Before he gets out to make the delivery, he gets the same "YOU'LL BE DEAD IN 3 DAYS" that the blond girl had on her phone. He turns off the phone, then makes his delivery.
Inside the restaurant, Clemens finds the fish tank in the kitchen, and lifts the lid off. He drops his scaly friends in with several other fish, then notices that the glass around the top of the tank looks kind of jagged. He adjusts the air going into the water tank, then mentions the rough glass to one of the chefs, warning them that someone could get hurt if the glass isn't covered with something. Foreshadowing?
Clemens leaves the kitchen behind, and finds himself shuffling down a dark, deserted hallway in what may or may not be in the same building as the restaurant. As he climbs a staircase, he hears something down the hall, and turns to look. He decides that he'd rather investigate a noise in a dark corridor, rather than go up some slightly illuminated stairs, so I'm guessing that he may be about to make a quick exit from the movie.
Clemens finds a door in the hallway slightly ajar, and peeks in. Seeing that it appears to be empty, he decides to go into the room, which looks like a hotel room. While Clemens walks over to a window, a girl follows him into the room. She demands to know why he's there, then she grins and kisses him. she's Alex, his girlfriend.
Then we get some random nonsense with a guy dancing around in his underwear, playing air guitar. After that, the group of friends all go to a nightclub together. I'm just going to take a stab in the dark here, and guess that the club is called something like Der DancinkScrewink Hottootrottzen. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if I was right.
In addition to the group, that moody kid Patrick is also at the club. He glares at all of them, as usual, but he seems to pay particular attention to the blond girl. She tries to ignore him, and gives her boyfriend a big kiss. That also gets the attention of Mona, who tells some poor kid to fuck off when he asks her to dance. That was cruel, but also kind of funny.
They stop dancing so that he can take a potty break. Oh, and I think he's Martin, which would make the blond girl Nina. I've almost got this Rubik's Cube-style script figured out! Yay! Maybe I can even avoid a nervous breakdown when it ends...
Martin steps into an ultra-grungy bathroom, and walks by a sink that looks like someone crapped in it. While he's peeing, someone enters the restroom, and abducts him. When he doesn't return to the dance floor, Nina decides to see what's taking him so long. She starts to worry when she finds no sign of him, save for his phone on the floor with the death threat message on it.
Nina finds her friends, and shows them the text message. When some of them admit to getting the same message, Nina begs them to help her look for her boyfriend. Mostly to shut her up, they agree.
Meanwhile, Martin wakes up in a strange, blurry room, filled with ropes and various tools. Martin begins to cry as a figure approaches him, but that's all we get for now. I wonder if he'll get tortured a little first, or just killed? It's kind of weird to end a scene like that before we get some kind of action.
Nina turns up nothing, and the others are just as empty-handed. She takes Clemens' keys, and drives the group to the nearest police station. She attempts to file a missing persons report, but the officer on desk duty is Martin's cousin, and he laughs off the notion of Martin vanishing. He tells Nina that Martin is either passed out from too much alcohol, or that he hooked up with another girl at the club. Furious, Nina and her friends leave. Before she gets back into the jeep, Nina sees the desk cop looking at her through a window, and she gives him the finger.
Following that, we see Martin in a rowboat with the killer. Oh boy, I think the killer's going to pop the question! If you say yes, Martin, he might even untie you! Oops, no....the killer just shoved poor, trussed-up Martin overboard. Martin somehow manages to keep his head above the water, at least until the killer reveals that the rope is also attached to a circular block of concrete that also gets tossed into the water. Bye, Martin....say hi to Jason if he's down there!
The next morning, Nina hears the ringtone on Martin;s phone. and jumps out of bed to answer it. It's her mother, telling her that she missed her driving test, but that she made sure to reschedule it on Nina's behalf. Nina then goes out for a practice drive, and nearly crashes the car when she spots a guy who looks like Martin strolling on the sidewalk. She leaps out of the car to approach him, but it's just some random guy.
On her way back to her pissed-off driving instructor, Nina collides with a woman walking by. The woman keeps going, but Nina stares at her for a few seconds. Wait! Did Martin get reincarnated as some middle-aged woman with a double chin? Oh man, I hope so. That would be hilarious!
Nina tells her driving instructor to kiss her ass, then walks away. She eventually finds herself at the lake, staring into the water, lost in her thoughts. From quite a distance behind her, creepy Patrick is just giving her his usual 1,000-yard stare, but she's facing away from him. Dude, go fixate on Jodie Foster. It worked for that guy who shot Reagan. He had a successful future after that, right? Yeah, I'm sure he hit it big soon after.
Nina pays a visit to Mona at the gas station, and moans and gripes some more. Mona decides to cheer her up, by quitting early again, so they can head to the lake. When they get there, Mona, Clemens and the others meet up there as well. Everyone starts ribbing each other, and it almost seems like old times....
...that is, until Nina realizes that she can see Martin's corpse just below the surface of the lake. She dives in, and the others soon follow when they realize what she spotted. Nina plunges underwater, coming face-to-face with her dead boyfriend. Naturally, she screams. Her friends help her get back out of the water, and they all just helplessly put their arms around her while she cries.
When the police arrive, the lake becomes a 3-ring circus. Detectives search the land around the lake for any evidence, dive teams are sent down to examine the body(and hopefully retrieve it), and even Martin's cousin is there, looking ashamed for the way he treated Nina the night she came into the station.
At the police station, Nina and her friends get picked up by their folks. There's a lot of crying and hugging, until some cops walk in, leading Patrick into the office to be questioned. I doubt it's him, that'd be too easy.
Nina goes to bed that night, but just lies there in the dark, staring straight ahead. Martin's cousin is also restless, driving around with a female passenger in his car. He tells her that his cousin was still alive when he was thrown into the lake, and she tells him not to blame himself. Boy, this is getting depressing.
Nina has a nightmare about drowning, then wakes up to find her bedroom window open. She heads downstairs, and decides to go to the kitchen. While looking for a snack, she gets snatched up by the killer.
She wakes up in the trunk of a car, and the abductor then hauls Nina into some kind of shack. As Nina tries to scream past her gag, the killer's face is partially revealed. It kinda looks like the woman she bumped into on the street, which is pretty weird.
Anyway, the killer then turns away to do something, and Patrick suddenly pops up out of nowhere. He shushes Nina, the begins to loosen her wrists and ankles. When he looks back at the killer, they're no longer in that spot anymore! Uh ohhhhhh....
They make a mad dash out of the room, and quickly find the exit door, but it's either locked or jammed. As they try to force it open, the killer is seen coming up fast. Nina finally gets out, just as Patrick is grabbed. The killer pushes his face against a window, and Nina gets to watch as he gets murdered.
Nina then runs out into the street, and we get a re-enactment of the first scene in the film, except that Nina suddenly doesn't seem nearly as injured as she was when we saw this before. The driver gets her to the hospital, and the staff there wheel poor Nina into surgery. While all of this is happening, Clemens and Alex wake up after a nice, leisurely snugglefest.
Clemens heads down to the kitchen, where he grabs some booze and checks the fish tank. He fixes the air hose again, then walks away. In a dark area of the hotel, Clemens drops the bottle and gets a jump-scare from Alex. Alex tells him to go back to the room, while she cleans up the mess.
Alex throws away the shards from the bottle, then sees a fish on the floor, flopping around. When she goes in for a closer look, the killer grabs her from behind. Alex is lifted off the floor, and her throat is split open when the killer pushes her face into the fish tank. Clemens then comes back to the kitchen, where he discovers the blood-filled tank, as well as the mutilated body of his girlfriend. Naturally, he doesn't react well.
But hey, Nina's awake in her hospital bed! A nurse offers her some assistance, then slits poor Nina's throat wide open. Within seconds, the bed is drenched in blood, while Nina can do little more than go into death spasms.
Oops, still yet another nightmare sequence. The same nurse is in the room, and offers to bring in Nina's family. Then we see the authorities take away Alex's body, and the police decide to get Nina, Clemens and Mona together for a group interview. They show them all a sketch of the killer, and it gives Nina awful flashbacks. Neither one of her friends seem to have much of a reaction either way.
When asked if they know of anyone who might have a grudge against them, all 3 play dumb. Still, it's clear that they know much more than they're telling. Once they get alone again, we finally get to hear the full story.....I hope.
When they were all kids, a very young boy named Fabian wanted to be part of their little group. Being jerks, they refused. It got to the point that, one winter day, as they all played hockey on the frozen lake, they asked the boy, Fabian, to play in a remote section, to keep him from interfering with the game. The ice in that section, however, was thin, and poor little Fabian fell through and died. When the boy was finally rescued, he was in a coma, and died after 3 days....hence the title.
Anyway, eventually Fabian's father couldn't handle his grief, so he hung himself. Despite this fact, Nina clearly believes that the police sketch looks like the father. The mother is still alive, but the cops claim that she left town, even after Nina tells them that she bumped into her on the sidewalk the other day.
Okay, so are these hallucinations? Is Nina insane? Or is there more going on here than we know? Whatever the answer is, it's a restless night for all. Nina can't sleep, so she finds both Clemens and Mona to hang out with. The desk cop guy can't sleep, so he makes some calls to follow up on a few loose ends. And Nina's kid sister can't sleep, so she gets to be the one to warn the authorities if Nina and her friends don't come back from exploring the empty home of Fabian Haas and his family.
Before they get to the house, though, 2 things happen: First, they make a stop at Clemens' house, so that Clemens can steal his dad's gun; and secondly, Nina's sister leaves their home, either to follow the teens or head to the police station.
At the creepy Haas house, the 3 teens find an open door, and enter the premises. Nina's sister observes from the bushes, then somebody grabs her. Oh well, another one bites the dust.Oh, and their are indications inside the house that a person might still be living there.
Clemens hears someone, and decides to check it out. At the same time, Nina and Mona find a shrine to the Haas family, as well as numerous masks that would allow the killer to look like Mr. Haas. And that's exactly when Mrs. Haas shows up. She has Nina's sister as a hostage, but Clemens has the gun.
As they try to get answers from her, Mrs. Haas shoves a knife into Clemens' side, In the chaos, Clemens falls to the ground, Nina's sister rubs away, and Nina and Mona run in different directions, to confuse the killer. Mona is chased first, into a bedroom. She breaks a window just as the killer arrives, and jumps through, unaware that large spikes are waiting below to impale her. Ow.
Mona still lives! Despite her painful injuries, she manages to stagger into the road so---A-HA! It was her, not Nina, seen in the opening sequence. We then see Nina's sister get rescued, but Nina appears to be missing.
That's because Mrs. Haas took her out on the lake to drown the girl. But when the maniac moves to throw her into the lake, Nina stabs her, then dumps her overboard instead. Sadly, things get worse, as Nina realizes that the weighted rope is going into the water, and dragging her with it.
After some darkness and dreamy images of the ice hockey tragedy, Nina wakes up in the hospital, next to Mona. They exchange glances, then hold hands. The final image is of Mrs. Haas in the lake, standing there for eternity. THE END.
Wow, what a downer. Still, it had some pretty good plot twists and suspense going for it. Minus 1 point, though, for making me guess all the damn names.
And what did Dead in 3 Days teach me?
-Names are closely guarded secrets.
-Fish tanks are death machines.
-If you let someone drown, try to remember the event later in life! It might be important.
My next movie is a supernatural thriller, Long Time Dead. See you later, all!
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Triloquist
Triloquist, this week's movie came in the mail just under the wire, arriving Friday afternoon. It's the story of a brother and sister ventriloquist act, and their crazy delusions. And it's narrated by their dummy, named Dummy. Expect some damn strange SPOILERS this week!
Thanks to the opening narration, we find out that siblings Norbert and Angelina were raised by an abusive mother who had once been a famous ventriloquist in Vegas. Once the fame vanished, she became a junkie, and tormented her children whenever she could.
That didn't last too long, though, as the mother was evicted right before she overdosed. Norbert and Angelina were then passed from one foster home to another, after a sleazy uncle couldn't keep his hands to himself. And you thought YOUR home movies sucked...
When they became adults, they formed a strange family, and learned to get by. Norbert grew up as a mute, while Angelina grew up to assume the leadership role in everything they did(like stealing, murdering, torturing....you get the idea). Ironically, though, it was Norbert who was put away in a mental ward, leaving Angie and Dummy to break him out.
Angie seduces a guy in charge of Norbert's file, then mutilates him during a sexual encounter. Then she drives over to visit Norbert, and attempts to convince her brother's doctor to release him to Angie's care. Then she sneaks in to see him.
That night, using Dummy as a distraction, an orderly is bitten in the throat, and Norbert gets away. In the car, Dummy continues to insult Angie, and she shuts him up by showing the dummy a lighter. Travelling cross-country proves to be difficult, and the trio end up hitching rides.
Oddly enough, Angie discovers that showing off her "goods" doesn't make anyone stop and offer a ride. She settles on a different approach, lying down on the solid center stripe. Sure enough, the next car stops, and it's a convertible being driven by Larry Manetti, who played Rick on Magnum, PI.
While Angie tries to negotiate a ride from Larry and his wife, Dummy recognizes him. Larry humbly admits that he is from the show, then Dummy tells him how much he hated watching it. Mere seconds later, we see Larry and his wife dead, being dragged away from the road. Geez, why couldn't they have killed Higgins instead? Or Tom Selleck?
While Angie takes a picture of herself with Larry Manetti's corpse, Dummy is in the front seat of the convertible having a driving fantasy about picking up topless hitchhikers. Angie snaps him out of it, but he keeps whining that he wants to drive, until Angie flings him out of the car. When Norbert picks him up, Dummy tells him that Angie is losing her mind.
They stop at a roadside restaurant for hot dogs, where Dummy reveals that chili dogs give him gas. Then Angie accuses some men who were ignoring her of wanting to screw her, and some cops approach them. Angie and Norbert give off so many "we're guilty" vibes that it borders on ridiculous, but the cops merely wanted to tell them that they have a broken tail light. That's another slasher/horror/suspense cliche that needs to be retired. Why is it always a broken light? Just once, I want to hear a movie cop say, "Hey, your rear bumper fell off 5 miles back", or "We saw flames and smoke belching forth under your vehicle"...anything but a busted light.
Anyway, Dummy almost botches the conversation by being mouthy, but the cops ignore him. After the officers move on, Angie proposes that they should find a woman to kidnap, so that Norbert can get her pregnant. We then see a woman listening to the radio. When she switches it off, she can still hear singing, because Dummy is sitting on her backseat. The young woman pulls over and rushes out of the car, but Norbert and Angie catch her. Oh, and Norbert performs the world's worst dance moves.
Somehow they knock her out, gag and bind her, and stuff her in the trunk. The next time we see her, she's jolted awake by Dummy's off-key singing. Angie warns her not to make any noise, then they drop a sheet over her. Oh, and Angie tells her that Norbert's going to rape her soon.
The movie then briefly goes B&W, as we see Angie pull over and enter a convenience store. She picks up a few groceries, then lures the clerk to the back office to have sex, but she murders him instead. When she's done, Angie calmly picks up her groceries and exits the store. Uh, dumbass, why didn't you also grab the money in the register? Geez, do I really need to do all the thinking here?
The car gets pulled over, and Angie warns the girl in the back that if she doesn't stay quiet, Dummy will eat her eyeballs. Oh, and now the victim is in the backseat. Anyway, she makes noise, and the cop looks at the backseat, and finds her. Norbert does a dance to distract the officer, while Dummy sneaks up behind him. Then he gets his neck bitten by Dummy, and tries to run down the road. Angie shoots him twice, and they just leave the cop's body in the spot where he died.
Then Angie pulls over at one point when she sees a stranded motorist trying to fix his car engine. He's glad to see the trio, until Angie ties him up. She gets his truck working again, robs the guy, then sends the truck sailing down the road. Yikes!
That night, Dummy again tries to convince Norbert to abandon Angie and drive away. Angie overhears him, then does a Wonder Woman spin and sends Dummy flying again. When she asks Dummy for a good reason not to rip him apart, he tells her that she has nice breasts. Amazingly enough, that actually works.
They fail to notice that the police have caught up to them. Thinking swiftly, Angie rushes towards the cops, claiming that she was kidnapped. No one buys the story. The cops split up Norbert and Dummy, and one of them(played by Brian Krause, who was in Sleepwalkers) finds and rescues the kidnapped woman. Wait, did the movie end early?
Nope. As the police vehicle carrying Angie and Dummy speeds toward HQ, one of the officers comments on how creepy Dummy looks. While Angie makes one of her typical dumb statements about sexual harassment, Dummy's eyes begin to glow red. Detective Kislow(the character played by Krause) and the rescued girl then find the police car crashed, with Angie and Dummy gone.
Gone, but not for long. Kislow calls in the crash to the station, then sees Dummy in front of him. As he's distracted, Angie bashes him from behind several times, while Norbert grabs the girl again. They storm a bar, and Angie lets a handful of people leave. Then she asks a rap group onstage to play a song for her. She and Norbert "get down", while Dummy, the abducted female, and any survivors still in the bar look on.
The three of them leave the bar at some point, and find a motel. Following that, Angie decides to go through the girl's belongings. We finally discover that the girl is named Robin, and Angie taunts and threatens her until she cries. Then Angie orders Norbert to screw Robin, while Angie ditches the stolen police car. As usual, everyone forgets that Dummy is even there.
Dummy speaks up after Angie leaves, though. He tells Norbert that if he doesn't rape Robin soon, it'll tick off his sister. Robin pleads with Norbert to release her, but Dummy cautions him against it. When Robin asks for her phone at least, she and Dummy negotiate a deal: if they help her escape, she has to help them get away from Angie on a permanent basis.
Angie, who stopped on her way back to grab a soda from a vending machine, is seriously pissed when she finds Robin using the phone. She knocks the girl aside, then makes Dummy tell her what happened. After she knocks Robin around for a bit, she tortures Dummy by holding a lighter up to his tongue. Then she ties Robin up again, and cuts her hair.
When Robin wakes up, she asks Dummy how his tongue feels. Then she begs him again to help her get away. While that's going on, Angie gets drunk, talks to Norbert about "magic" that they were taught as children, and seduces him into having sex with her instead of Robin. Geez, I hope they have mutant flipper-babies!
After the deed is done, Dummy and Angie debate over what it means to be alive, and whether or not Dummy has a soul. Then it looks like another dream sequence kicks in, as Dummy finds himself in a strip club, surrounded by half-naked women. As expected, Angie wakes him up and drags him outside. She uses his head to smash an emergency axe out of a glass case, then starts to chop off his limbs.
This also turns out to be a dream sequence Dummy is having. He sits up in bed, gasping, until he realizes that he was just having a nightmare, then he goes back to sleep. In the morning, he and Angie have their usual insult-fest, then she leaves to check on the now-very-expendable Robin. Things don't look so good for the kidnapped lady, do they?
Lucky for her, a knock at the door distracts Angie. It's the maid service. The "maid", a rather large male, enters the room. He hears Robin trying to speak past her gag, and mistakenly thinks that someone in the room is having sex, so he leaves the cabin/room/whatever alone.
While Robin panics over her predicament, the cleaning guy sneaks back in and finds her. He tells her that he'll rescue her, then someone throws a noose around his neck. Robin watches as he gets dragged out of the room. Norbert, Angie and Dummy take him outside, where Dummy rides him like a horse, but the noose chokes the guy to death.
As Angie lectures Dummy(and throws him again) about killing too many people(wait, SHE lectures HIM???), she finds a newspaper article about their killing spree. After seeing photos of herself and Norbert in the article, Angie decides that they should kill Robin that evening, bury her in the middle of nowhere, then drive directly to Vegas.
They all get in the car, and Angie tells Robin that she'll try to kill her as painlessly as possible. Then, before they drive off, she decides to get another soda from the machine. While she tries to get the stubborn machine to spit out a soft drink, Dummy once more begs Norbert to kill his sister, so they can be free of her. As usual, Nobert does nothing.
Angie drives them down a dark, deserted stretch of road, unaware that Robin has managed to get the tape off of her mouth, and is dialing her phone with her face. She connects to a 911 dispatcher and begs for help, but Dummy interrupts the call. Still, the dispatcher and another person listen carefully to the short call.
Angie pulls the car over, and forces Robin to run ahead of them, into the woods. They stop at a clearing, and Angie forces the frightened woman to get on the ground and dig her own grave. In the background, Norbert does another one of his goofy dances. Then he and his sister share a kiss, and Robin uses the momentary distraction to fling dirt in their faces and try to run away.
Angie fires the shotgun into the air to make Robin freeze, then points it right in her face. It's empty though, and Robin resumes her escape attempt. She eventually gets disoriented, and Dummy pops up from behind a tree to scare her. Robin takes off again, and Dummy appears to fly at her from the branches of another tree. Luckily, Robin is smart enough to dodge and run away yet again, and Dummy crashes into the tree she was leaning against.
She runs until she finds a small town, and enters a bar that looks like it might be occupied. Inside, she finds Detective Kislow bleeding on the floor. She asks him if he has a phone, and he tells her that it's in his pocket. She approaches him, only to find that he's dead, and that Angie was speaking through him, using the "magic" she and Norbert had been taught.
Angie orders her brother to kill Robin, and he drags her into a gameroom to throw her onto a pool table. She asks him to spare her, but Dummy tells her that Norbert has no soul either, and only does what Dummy and Angie tell him to do. In a last-ditch effort to survive, Robin tells Norbert that she loves him.
Well, that did the trick! He hesitates, and Robin gets him to kiss her. She takes the knife away from him, and plunges it into Dummy's eye, causing Norbert to cover his eye too and start bleeding.While Robin uses the chaos to try to get free again, Angie blocks the door, and knocks her out.
Then Angie corners Norbert, telling him that she made up the stuff about magic ventriloquism. She shows him how she can mimic all of the characters voices in the movie, and informs Norbert that he is nothing special at all. She pushes him up against a neon sign, and Norbert gets electrocuted.
Norbert may be dying, but he still staggers across the room to die next to Dummy. Angie prevents Robin from leaving, but they have a chick-brawl, and Robins gets away again. A very frustrated Angie tries to strangle Norbert, who has suddenly found his voice. They clutch at each others' necks, but Angie wins. Norbert rests next to Dummy as they begin to die, and Angie watches to make sure they're really dead this time.
Robin travels down the road until she sees numerous police vehicles heading in her direction. She takes them to the bar she wandered into, and they find evidence that Angie made good on her threat to dismember Dummy.
Then we get treated to another scene devoid of color, and Dummy reveals what occurred after Norbert passed away. He and Angie found themselves homeless in LA, and Angie was severely depressed over the death of her brother. She even seemed to resume her old life as a junkie and prostitute.
As Dummy tells it, Angie passed away immediately after having the baby that Norbert gave her. Dummy reveals that the baby looks like a distorted baby doll toy, and then it's THE END
This was a terrible movie. The characters were under-developed, the dummy looked horrible, the soundtrack was inane, and no one could act. But that could all have been forgivable, if the movie had given us a decent origin story for Dummy, along with more flashbacks to his creation. Instead we get a rip-off of Seed of Chucky, and a lame soundtrack. .5 out of 10 killer trees.
And what did I learn while watching Triloquist?
-Apparently, today's writers don't want us to be invested in their movies, because they refuse to ever show us any kind of explanation for anything you see in a movie like this.
-When you see a goofy-ass guy dancing by himself, run as far away as you can.
-Never help someone wounded by a monster, because he's already dead, and being used like a puppet.(and Dead Silence did it better.)
My next film is something called Dead in 3 Days. Sounds like a fun time for all. Later!
Thanks to the opening narration, we find out that siblings Norbert and Angelina were raised by an abusive mother who had once been a famous ventriloquist in Vegas. Once the fame vanished, she became a junkie, and tormented her children whenever she could.
That didn't last too long, though, as the mother was evicted right before she overdosed. Norbert and Angelina were then passed from one foster home to another, after a sleazy uncle couldn't keep his hands to himself. And you thought YOUR home movies sucked...
When they became adults, they formed a strange family, and learned to get by. Norbert grew up as a mute, while Angelina grew up to assume the leadership role in everything they did(like stealing, murdering, torturing....you get the idea). Ironically, though, it was Norbert who was put away in a mental ward, leaving Angie and Dummy to break him out.
Angie seduces a guy in charge of Norbert's file, then mutilates him during a sexual encounter. Then she drives over to visit Norbert, and attempts to convince her brother's doctor to release him to Angie's care. Then she sneaks in to see him.
That night, using Dummy as a distraction, an orderly is bitten in the throat, and Norbert gets away. In the car, Dummy continues to insult Angie, and she shuts him up by showing the dummy a lighter. Travelling cross-country proves to be difficult, and the trio end up hitching rides.
Oddly enough, Angie discovers that showing off her "goods" doesn't make anyone stop and offer a ride. She settles on a different approach, lying down on the solid center stripe. Sure enough, the next car stops, and it's a convertible being driven by Larry Manetti, who played Rick on Magnum, PI.
While Angie tries to negotiate a ride from Larry and his wife, Dummy recognizes him. Larry humbly admits that he is from the show, then Dummy tells him how much he hated watching it. Mere seconds later, we see Larry and his wife dead, being dragged away from the road. Geez, why couldn't they have killed Higgins instead? Or Tom Selleck?
While Angie takes a picture of herself with Larry Manetti's corpse, Dummy is in the front seat of the convertible having a driving fantasy about picking up topless hitchhikers. Angie snaps him out of it, but he keeps whining that he wants to drive, until Angie flings him out of the car. When Norbert picks him up, Dummy tells him that Angie is losing her mind.
They stop at a roadside restaurant for hot dogs, where Dummy reveals that chili dogs give him gas. Then Angie accuses some men who were ignoring her of wanting to screw her, and some cops approach them. Angie and Norbert give off so many "we're guilty" vibes that it borders on ridiculous, but the cops merely wanted to tell them that they have a broken tail light. That's another slasher/horror/suspense cliche that needs to be retired. Why is it always a broken light? Just once, I want to hear a movie cop say, "Hey, your rear bumper fell off 5 miles back", or "We saw flames and smoke belching forth under your vehicle"...anything but a busted light.
Anyway, Dummy almost botches the conversation by being mouthy, but the cops ignore him. After the officers move on, Angie proposes that they should find a woman to kidnap, so that Norbert can get her pregnant. We then see a woman listening to the radio. When she switches it off, she can still hear singing, because Dummy is sitting on her backseat. The young woman pulls over and rushes out of the car, but Norbert and Angie catch her. Oh, and Norbert performs the world's worst dance moves.
Somehow they knock her out, gag and bind her, and stuff her in the trunk. The next time we see her, she's jolted awake by Dummy's off-key singing. Angie warns her not to make any noise, then they drop a sheet over her. Oh, and Angie tells her that Norbert's going to rape her soon.
The movie then briefly goes B&W, as we see Angie pull over and enter a convenience store. She picks up a few groceries, then lures the clerk to the back office to have sex, but she murders him instead. When she's done, Angie calmly picks up her groceries and exits the store. Uh, dumbass, why didn't you also grab the money in the register? Geez, do I really need to do all the thinking here?
The car gets pulled over, and Angie warns the girl in the back that if she doesn't stay quiet, Dummy will eat her eyeballs. Oh, and now the victim is in the backseat. Anyway, she makes noise, and the cop looks at the backseat, and finds her. Norbert does a dance to distract the officer, while Dummy sneaks up behind him. Then he gets his neck bitten by Dummy, and tries to run down the road. Angie shoots him twice, and they just leave the cop's body in the spot where he died.
Then Angie pulls over at one point when she sees a stranded motorist trying to fix his car engine. He's glad to see the trio, until Angie ties him up. She gets his truck working again, robs the guy, then sends the truck sailing down the road. Yikes!
That night, Dummy again tries to convince Norbert to abandon Angie and drive away. Angie overhears him, then does a Wonder Woman spin and sends Dummy flying again. When she asks Dummy for a good reason not to rip him apart, he tells her that she has nice breasts. Amazingly enough, that actually works.
They fail to notice that the police have caught up to them. Thinking swiftly, Angie rushes towards the cops, claiming that she was kidnapped. No one buys the story. The cops split up Norbert and Dummy, and one of them(played by Brian Krause, who was in Sleepwalkers) finds and rescues the kidnapped woman. Wait, did the movie end early?
Nope. As the police vehicle carrying Angie and Dummy speeds toward HQ, one of the officers comments on how creepy Dummy looks. While Angie makes one of her typical dumb statements about sexual harassment, Dummy's eyes begin to glow red. Detective Kislow(the character played by Krause) and the rescued girl then find the police car crashed, with Angie and Dummy gone.
Gone, but not for long. Kislow calls in the crash to the station, then sees Dummy in front of him. As he's distracted, Angie bashes him from behind several times, while Norbert grabs the girl again. They storm a bar, and Angie lets a handful of people leave. Then she asks a rap group onstage to play a song for her. She and Norbert "get down", while Dummy, the abducted female, and any survivors still in the bar look on.
The three of them leave the bar at some point, and find a motel. Following that, Angie decides to go through the girl's belongings. We finally discover that the girl is named Robin, and Angie taunts and threatens her until she cries. Then Angie orders Norbert to screw Robin, while Angie ditches the stolen police car. As usual, everyone forgets that Dummy is even there.
Dummy speaks up after Angie leaves, though. He tells Norbert that if he doesn't rape Robin soon, it'll tick off his sister. Robin pleads with Norbert to release her, but Dummy cautions him against it. When Robin asks for her phone at least, she and Dummy negotiate a deal: if they help her escape, she has to help them get away from Angie on a permanent basis.
Angie, who stopped on her way back to grab a soda from a vending machine, is seriously pissed when she finds Robin using the phone. She knocks the girl aside, then makes Dummy tell her what happened. After she knocks Robin around for a bit, she tortures Dummy by holding a lighter up to his tongue. Then she ties Robin up again, and cuts her hair.
When Robin wakes up, she asks Dummy how his tongue feels. Then she begs him again to help her get away. While that's going on, Angie gets drunk, talks to Norbert about "magic" that they were taught as children, and seduces him into having sex with her instead of Robin. Geez, I hope they have mutant flipper-babies!
After the deed is done, Dummy and Angie debate over what it means to be alive, and whether or not Dummy has a soul. Then it looks like another dream sequence kicks in, as Dummy finds himself in a strip club, surrounded by half-naked women. As expected, Angie wakes him up and drags him outside. She uses his head to smash an emergency axe out of a glass case, then starts to chop off his limbs.
This also turns out to be a dream sequence Dummy is having. He sits up in bed, gasping, until he realizes that he was just having a nightmare, then he goes back to sleep. In the morning, he and Angie have their usual insult-fest, then she leaves to check on the now-very-expendable Robin. Things don't look so good for the kidnapped lady, do they?
Lucky for her, a knock at the door distracts Angie. It's the maid service. The "maid", a rather large male, enters the room. He hears Robin trying to speak past her gag, and mistakenly thinks that someone in the room is having sex, so he leaves the cabin/room/whatever alone.
While Robin panics over her predicament, the cleaning guy sneaks back in and finds her. He tells her that he'll rescue her, then someone throws a noose around his neck. Robin watches as he gets dragged out of the room. Norbert, Angie and Dummy take him outside, where Dummy rides him like a horse, but the noose chokes the guy to death.
As Angie lectures Dummy(and throws him again) about killing too many people(wait, SHE lectures HIM???), she finds a newspaper article about their killing spree. After seeing photos of herself and Norbert in the article, Angie decides that they should kill Robin that evening, bury her in the middle of nowhere, then drive directly to Vegas.
They all get in the car, and Angie tells Robin that she'll try to kill her as painlessly as possible. Then, before they drive off, she decides to get another soda from the machine. While she tries to get the stubborn machine to spit out a soft drink, Dummy once more begs Norbert to kill his sister, so they can be free of her. As usual, Nobert does nothing.
Angie drives them down a dark, deserted stretch of road, unaware that Robin has managed to get the tape off of her mouth, and is dialing her phone with her face. She connects to a 911 dispatcher and begs for help, but Dummy interrupts the call. Still, the dispatcher and another person listen carefully to the short call.
Angie pulls the car over, and forces Robin to run ahead of them, into the woods. They stop at a clearing, and Angie forces the frightened woman to get on the ground and dig her own grave. In the background, Norbert does another one of his goofy dances. Then he and his sister share a kiss, and Robin uses the momentary distraction to fling dirt in their faces and try to run away.
Angie fires the shotgun into the air to make Robin freeze, then points it right in her face. It's empty though, and Robin resumes her escape attempt. She eventually gets disoriented, and Dummy pops up from behind a tree to scare her. Robin takes off again, and Dummy appears to fly at her from the branches of another tree. Luckily, Robin is smart enough to dodge and run away yet again, and Dummy crashes into the tree she was leaning against.
She runs until she finds a small town, and enters a bar that looks like it might be occupied. Inside, she finds Detective Kislow bleeding on the floor. She asks him if he has a phone, and he tells her that it's in his pocket. She approaches him, only to find that he's dead, and that Angie was speaking through him, using the "magic" she and Norbert had been taught.
Angie orders her brother to kill Robin, and he drags her into a gameroom to throw her onto a pool table. She asks him to spare her, but Dummy tells her that Norbert has no soul either, and only does what Dummy and Angie tell him to do. In a last-ditch effort to survive, Robin tells Norbert that she loves him.
Well, that did the trick! He hesitates, and Robin gets him to kiss her. She takes the knife away from him, and plunges it into Dummy's eye, causing Norbert to cover his eye too and start bleeding.While Robin uses the chaos to try to get free again, Angie blocks the door, and knocks her out.
Then Angie corners Norbert, telling him that she made up the stuff about magic ventriloquism. She shows him how she can mimic all of the characters voices in the movie, and informs Norbert that he is nothing special at all. She pushes him up against a neon sign, and Norbert gets electrocuted.
Norbert may be dying, but he still staggers across the room to die next to Dummy. Angie prevents Robin from leaving, but they have a chick-brawl, and Robins gets away again. A very frustrated Angie tries to strangle Norbert, who has suddenly found his voice. They clutch at each others' necks, but Angie wins. Norbert rests next to Dummy as they begin to die, and Angie watches to make sure they're really dead this time.
Robin travels down the road until she sees numerous police vehicles heading in her direction. She takes them to the bar she wandered into, and they find evidence that Angie made good on her threat to dismember Dummy.
Then we get treated to another scene devoid of color, and Dummy reveals what occurred after Norbert passed away. He and Angie found themselves homeless in LA, and Angie was severely depressed over the death of her brother. She even seemed to resume her old life as a junkie and prostitute.
As Dummy tells it, Angie passed away immediately after having the baby that Norbert gave her. Dummy reveals that the baby looks like a distorted baby doll toy, and then it's THE END
This was a terrible movie. The characters were under-developed, the dummy looked horrible, the soundtrack was inane, and no one could act. But that could all have been forgivable, if the movie had given us a decent origin story for Dummy, along with more flashbacks to his creation. Instead we get a rip-off of Seed of Chucky, and a lame soundtrack. .5 out of 10 killer trees.
And what did I learn while watching Triloquist?
-Apparently, today's writers don't want us to be invested in their movies, because they refuse to ever show us any kind of explanation for anything you see in a movie like this.
-When you see a goofy-ass guy dancing by himself, run as far away as you can.
-Never help someone wounded by a monster, because he's already dead, and being used like a puppet.(and Dead Silence did it better.)
My next film is something called Dead in 3 Days. Sounds like a fun time for all. Later!
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