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Reviews
Meridian (1990)
Too much, Too bad
I'm not sure why this film was included in a DVD set of horror movies. Sure it has a ghost and a werewolf, but it's not a horror flick. It's more of a cock-eyed rip-off of "The Beauty and the Beast" with two women (Sherilyn Fenn and Charlene "Charlie" Spradling) and two dueling brothers (both played by Malcolm Jamison), who hate each other. Functioning from an incoherent plot, the film starts with circus performers emerging from a giant stone face. (One of them is played by the irascible Phil Fondacaro, who sadly isn't given much to do in the movie.) This never goes explained as the film seems stuck in some middle ground between the real world and a fairy tale. For example, Jamison's character slips in and out of Fenn's castle without explanation, and Fenn never reports his mysterious comings and goings. One would think castle security wouldn't be this lax. Fenn is wonderful in the role as the sudden princess getting used to her duties (At times, she looks eerily like Mila Kunis or Zoe Trilling.) Spradling isn't given much to do in the plot despite being a victim along with Fenn to some unnecessary nude scenes. One would think she would have a bigger role in the plot other than spending the last half of the movie restoring a portrait that might fill in the huge gaps of logic in the movie. (But doesn't.) Most of the ingredients of the film could have been eliminated for a much more linear and simpler plot. It's not bad enough the film moves incoherently, but it gets ludicrous at time. (In addition to the one guy slipping unseen in and out of the castle, his brother wields a crossbow WHILE he's in werewolf form.) This would-be fairy romance story would have worked a lot better if several of the characters and scenes had been eliminated. What's worse than the film being passed as a "horror movie" is the fact that there's no ending. The characters just wander back into the giant stone face. (I would think someone would miss a princess and an art student.) I'm sure this flick was intended to be some kind of "Beauty and the Beast" homage, but there's too much to follow and not enough explained for me to adequately follow the plot.
The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)
Below Mediocre
Based on the fear of atomic energy, this goofy best forgotten sci-fi flick is about an escaped convict who is turned invisible ("transparent" in the dialogue) by a shifty businessman and his lackey scientist to steal scientific parts. He also goes after robbing banks. It's not a great movie, but it's not a bad one. The characters are kind of one-dimensional, and the acting is silly. It's not up to par on the other Atomic Age sci-fi flicks like "Them" and "Tarantula," but there's a few twists and turns as the convict decides to help the scientist whose daughter is being held captive to force his hand. The sub-plot is more interesting than the main plot, but overall, it's not terribly bad. It's just below mediocre.
The Alien Factor (1978)
Bad, Lame and Unwatchable
First off, I have to ask, what was this movie doing on a DVD set of horror movies? It's not a horror movie; it's a sci-fi flick, and a bad one at that. The plot revolves around a flying saucer that crashes, and its inhabitants breaking free to terrorize the countryside. A local scientist somehow reasons that the craft was carrying "alien criminals and killers" on little to no evidence, and like so many other flying saucer movies, he struggles to convince the local sheriff as the murder count piles up. The acting is wooden, the sets are vacant rooms and the monsters are unconvincing. This is basically the Ed Wood-style of film-making with a "Night of the Living Dead" budget. You know it's a bad movie when the smartest thing anyone can say is, "Well, this thing won't be killing anyone else. That's for sure." One just gets the feeling the film was made up over the course of a weekend because there's no indication that a plot was ever conceived. Cheap production. Bad script. No effort at all.
Daughter of Darkness (1990)
Interesting Start, No Plot
First time I saw this flick, it aired on TV (without the naked scenes), and in recent history, I was lucky enough to find it on a DVD set of horror movies, so I could watch it again. Actress Mia Sarah (Legend) plays a woman who loses her mother and travels to Romania in search of her lost father. Along the way, she has terrifying dreams of a faceless man and while led by images in dreams, she meets Anthony Perkins (Psycho), who tells her father is dead, having been killed during the political turnover in Romania. There's some great political intrigue, but the plot instead descends into a vampire lore (not so much, they're actually vampire knock-offs). The vampires in this movie do not follow the traditional vampire lore and instead drink blood through a tiny mouth in their tongue. (I kid you not.) To make this plot even more insulting to the memory of Bram Stoker, the vampire wanna-bees want to use Mia to allow them to live during the day. By this point, what little appeal the movie had is gone. The last half of the movie just plods along, slowly, No shocks, no thrills. It's not scary. It's barely a vampire movie. Worse part, it ends anticlimactically. The only appealing part is the fact the film was filmed in Hungary so there's a lot of great scenery to appreciate, but beyond that,it's just not that great a movie.
Helltown (2017)
It's a Movie
Okay, let's ignore all the people berating and cursing Destination America for trying to lie to them. "Helltown" is just a movie depicted as a documentary; just as "The Blair Witch" and "Paranormal Activity" were passed as "found footage" films. If anything, the style of movie making makes the flick more terrifying because it preys on the fears of people on conspiracies, environmental poisoning and the paranormal. Of course, the flick isn't true, but if you're going to obsess on that, you're really going to miss how inventive this.
The movie depicts a conspiracy theorist named Terry Greenbaum, who believes the closing of Boston Township, Ohio by the government was to cover up the existence of a mysterious creature. Sure, the story is far-fetched. Of course, none of the people are real, and the incidents are definitely fictional, but once I accepted the plot, I just sat back and enjoyed the story. This is actually a really brilliantly conceived plot, and it's crafted by a good script and actors in recreations and dramatizations. It does get preposterous in parts, but then so did the old Universal and Hammer monster movies at times. Just forget attacking "Helltown '' because its depicted as a documentary and accept it as a monster movie. I don't know of anyone cursing the "Blair Witch" films for not being true. Everyone knows they're films. Is "Helltown" really deserving of being lambasted for being inventive in its manner of story-telling?
I think not.
Passed the Door of Darkness (2008)
Not A Horror Flick
I don't know why this is in a DVD set of horror movies. I mean, there's nothing "horror" about it. It runs like a cross between "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue." There's nothing paranormal or supernatural about it. It's just a film about a police investigation tracking a serial killer, and there's not much of anything to catch one's attention. Just endless dialogue, a lot of disposition and not much action. Not even a car chase or a lunch break. (Although, I did get bored watching it and start another weak film calling itself "horror." The production doesn't look bad, and the cast seems strong, but it's extremely tedious and mostly dialogue. I don't recommend this movie unless you're into crime movies or exaggerated detective stereotypes.
Fist of the Vampire (2007)
Not a Vampire Movie
"Fist of the Vampire" is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Not sure why it's in a DVD set of horror movies when the fight club/gangsters/street gang dominates the flick. Despite some of the characters being vampires, there is not much horror to it. Despite coming out in 2007, the film has that hazy low production look of the 70s independent movies. Most of the time, I don't know what the characters were saying because of the bad sound (the film really needs close-captioning), and I never really picked up on what the movie is about because I couldn't figure out what was going on. It seems there were new characters being introduced every five to six minutes so there's no way to follow a plot (if there is one). I mean, if you have to go to the IMDB to figure out the plot and what's going on, it's likely not the kind of movie you'll be watching again.
Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned (2008)
Don't Watch This Movie
Don't watch this movie. It's just not worth it. It's that bad. It's bad enough to be used to make a video on how to not make a movie. First off, don't start off don't use the plot of your movie as a title of your movie
As the title explains, the flick revolves around a bachelor party where the hookers turn out to be vampires, but the guys quickly discover the hookers are vampires and attack everyone (but the host) under a flurry of bad special effects, extreme angles and weird imagery. None of these actresses are remotely attractive, and the rest of the cast look like they just wandered off from a backwoods family barbecue. The host, the groom's best friend, fights them off and his murdered buddies coming back as vampires, but the movie really becomes absurd when the groom-to-be's girlfriend arrives and matter-of-factly discovers her fiance is now a vampire and wants his idiot best friend to "un-vampire" him. (Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds.) Some more nonsense happens before the best friend gets killed. Unfortunately, the flick doesn't take this as a chance to end the film and still drags on a bit longer. Why it drags on with a flashback no one cares about, I don't know. I guess the filmmaker thought, "Hey, we still have some film left. Let's use them up." Anyway, the movie is terrible. It's not worth it. Don't watch it. Try reading a book instead.
Grave Mistake (2008)
Really Really Bad
This is just a really bad movie. I tried to find something in it worth liking, but I couldn't find anything. The actors are wooden, several of the actors seem to be faking accents and voices or trying to sound like different people, there are incidents and moments that are completely implausible and the production is just overall dreadful. If you look beyond the zombies, it just doesn't look like a zombie apocalypse. It looks like an abandoned town. The first few minutes of the film defy explanation. A guy goes out and dumps toxic waste on a gravesite without any reason. Is he a jerk? Does he have a grudge on the deceased? Is he just bored and trying something he saw in a zombie movie? It's not explained. From there, the film just kind of limps along introducing several of the weakest most boring stereotypes I've ever seen. No one in this film is worth rooting for, and when the "apocalypse" finally occurs, no one really makes any attempts to save themselves. The rest of "Grave Mistake" just limps along after that. Bottom line, you can really see the cheap production in this, and when it finally ends, there's really no big interest in this silly script. Maybe if they made it a comedy it might have been better, but all the references and allusions to other much better zombie flicks isn't enough to save this. .
An American Carol (2008)
So Bad I Needed the Wikipedia to Explain It
You know a movie really stinks when you have to go to the Wikipedia in order to get an explanation of it. The only reason I picked up this flick was because of a fondness for movie parodies, but this movie fails on all accounts. Except for some funny scenes about Arab terrorists at the start and the boorishness of the main character, it's just not funny. If anything, it's boring, it's tedious and it's an hour and ten minutes too long. What it really is a potential defamation lawsuit in the works as it slanders director Michael Moore, attempts to legitimize Conservative beliefs and skewers American History to the extreme Far Right for no apparent reason. It is supposedly set to the plot of "A Christmas Carol," but there's so much Far Right exposition here that any plot to this madness disappears, much like "Disaster Movie" and "Epic Movie." The movie features a contentious character named Michael Malone whose only things in common with Michael Moore are glasses, a cap and being overweight. He is supposed to be Liberal but he's just clueless, grouchy and petulant. He is visited by three historical figures (Kennedy, Patton and Washington) to tell him about American History, and the actors playing those characters are pretty spot on, but their side of history paints the United States as a country meant to go to war with everyone else and itself and not much of anything else. It's supposed to be an attack on Liberals, Truth, Justice and the American Way, but it really comes off as a parody of Conservative beliefs. Cut fast to the end because there's not much of anything else except several pointless cameos from actors (ranging to Leslie Nielsen and Kelsey Grammar down to several D-Listers whose careers ended before this movie was made) and a lot of self-serving Conservative dogma. As it ends, Malone is still repugnant, unpleasant and obnoxious. The movie is pointless, a waste of time for the few talented actors in it and just a way too long attempt to rationalize extreme Far Right politics. The biggest problem is that it's aimed for such a small audience and meant more for a Direct-To-DVD distribution. When I think of this film being sent to movie theaters, I start laughing at the foolishness of anyone thinking this long character assassination buried by extreme political bias was meant to be anything resembling "entertaining comedy."
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Awesome Movie - Wrong Spider-Man
It is no understatement that comic book movies nowadays are really kicking out and breaking boundaries in theaters these days. Since Christopher Reeve made you believe a man can fly, Tim Burton has made Batman relevant again (before getting embarrassed by Joel Schumacher and rebooted by Christopher Nolan), and Sam Raimi has brought to life what is possibly the most definite Spider-Man movie ever. Where the "Captain America" movie series has succeeded is by basing its movies on successful espionage stories. "Winter Soldier" was based on the book, "The Manchurian Candidate" and this one owes a great debt to "The Odessa File." After the Avengers unwittingly cause an international incident, U.S. Intelligence decides it's time to restrict their activities, but Cap meanwhile tries to defend Bucky who has been framed for an assassination. Their different opinions split the Avengers in half that culminates in the top scene in the movie, a clash of all the characters from the last several MCU movies excluding Thor and the Hulk while including Black Panther and Spider-Man, making this a super- sized "Avengers" movie that thankfully doesn't get bogged down by the excessive characters. However, where the movie makes its fatal flaw is by not picking up from the Sam Raimi "Spider-Man" trilogy and instead inserting yet another rebooted Spider-Man with a young and hot Aunt May. Even without Tobey McGuire, it should have cast a new actor to pick up where Raimi left off with his version of the character, bringing those movies into the MCU while ignoring the ridiculous Marc Webb DC Universe version of the character. That snafu aside, "Captain America: Civil War" is awesome and spectacular; upping the ante on the previous Marvel movies. I can't wait to see where they go next.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)
Boring, Tedious, Predictable and Anti-Climactic
What do you get when you start a movie franchise on a hit movie that didn't need a sequel using writers with apparently no familiarity with the paranormal? Apparently you get a string of movies that keep declining in quality and interest. I liked "Paranormal Activity." It was scary, creative and told in an unbelievably tedious style that escalated toward the end, much like "The Amityville Horror" and "The Haunting," but the only thing "Ghost Dimension" sticks to is its ability to be long and tedious. The movie features a house built over the site of the grandparents' house that Katy says burned down off-screen in the first movie. The owner finds a jerry-rigged camera that records paranormal activity and before long starts causing them. It's a big old house, because a small one would be too realistic and hence not scary enough. There's another scary little kid as well as all of the old movie tropes (computer trickery, an obsession with cameras, lots of scenes where nothing happens...), and no attempt is made to explain anything in the previous movies. You'd think by this time someone would call in paranormal investigators. It's long, it's tired, it's so boring! The only good thing about this movie is that it killed off the franchise from releasing anymore movies.
Carrie (2013)
Updated But Less Scary
There are a certain number of rules to making a remake, but at the top, the first one should be "Stay faithful, but try to be new." In other words, you should try to attract your target audience while also creating a surprise that they won't expect. While "Carrie" is somewhat more faithful to the book than the Brian De Palma book, it has also been updated with the technology and the teenage arrogance of the time. The cast is excellent. Chloe Moretz is a much more liberated Carrie who understands the nature of her abilities and seeks to control them while Julianne Moore as her mother creates a much more unstable and psychotic character. Best known for a string of demented characters, namely Kitty Sanchez from "Arrested Development," Judy Greer is a welcome presence in the role of the sympathetic gym teacher, proving she can do a serious role, but I find the story just a bit too familiar with no new scares and not much new except the contemporary setting. The updated Chloe Moretz "Carrie" becomes more in tune with her powers, even having an "X- Men" moment with witchcraft overtones, whereas in the Sissy Spacek movie, you had the sense she never really understood what was going on around her. The teenage cruelty has no bounds; there's no "Zero Tolerance" rule in this reality. Portia Doubleday as Chris Hargensen is more of a would-be serial killer and career criminal in training than the spoiled brat Nancy Allen portrayed while Gabriella Wilde as Sue Snell has more to do than what Amy Irving did in the role. My faults with the movie has nothing to do with the actors, script or plot but more with production. Did we really need seven to eight shots of one bucket of blood dumping its contents?? I mean, did it just magically keep filling itself up? What's with the stalling in the movie's pivotal scenes. The tombstone graffiti and tag scenes make no sense whatsoever not assigned to a dream sequence. It's not truly a scary movie; it's more of an atmospheric film with tragedy replacing horror. De Palma's version was a slow-plodding style that reached a terrifying crescendo while this version creates a terrifying situation that ascends to less than horrific levels. While Spacek gave us a sympathetic Carrie, Moretz creates a more adjusted version. Not terribly scary, just tragic.
Lucy (2014)
Good Movie, Missing Ending
I'm a writer myself, and I've turned out a few horror novels where the female ingénue and the antagonist turn out to be one and the same; so with "Lucy," I was very interested to see how well this premise could be converted into a "Jason Bourne"-like scenario. First off, Scarlett Johansson is awesome in the movie. It's almost what would be expected if the Black Widow from the "Avengers" went through the Captain America process then went after HYDRA. Unfortunately, in "Lucy," HYDRA is replaced by the Chinese mafia, and the Super Soldier Serum is replaced by a dangerous addictive drug which in small doses causes heightened intelligence. Small doses is the key because when Scarlett's character is unwittingly used as a drug mule, the drugs break open in large doses inside her, granting her heightened intelligence, psychokinetic powers, paranormal abilities and eventually a complete control over reality itself. Along the way, Morgan Freeman narrates what's happening as the expert on this drug who she seeks out for help. While the action and chase scenes are "Terminator" quality, it soon turns into an uninteresting plot that runs out of steam. Starting out, the plot is fascinating and fun to watch, but as it gets closer to the end, and one starts wondering where it's going with the metaphysical discussion, it becomes more tedious and lackluster. The ending does not match the first ninety percent of the film. I don't understand it, it doesn't make sense, and it outdoes "The Shining" on its vagueness. It could have gone anywhere so to end on a question mark ruins what I thought was an otherwise interesting flick. I give it 3 out five.
R.I.P.D. (2013)
Too Much Detail Makes a Crowded Movie
Back when I first saw "Men in Black," I wondered what it would be like if Jay and Kay had to go up against ghosts, zombies, vampires and other paranormal entities. This is not that movie except superficially. Ryan Reynolds plays a police officer who is struck down in the line of combat, but in some sort of almost "Beetlejuice" arrangement, he has to police the world's ghosts before he can cross over. Jeff Bridges is his partner, a former Wild West sheriff, and they can only appear on Earth "Quantum Leap" style as their human hosts, an elderly Chinese man and a stunningly attractive statuesque blonde. If you've watched this far, you've realized it's already more convoluted than "Quantum Leap" and less entertaining or creative than "Beetlejuice." Now, I know "R.I.P.D." is based on a more successful comic book, but maybe more effort should have been put on the script than the special effects. It has a few funny moments, several gross scenes and tries to be exciting, but the only good part is the repartee between Bridges and Reynolds. Kevin Bacon is annoyingly tedious, there are numerous moments that just don't make sense much less feel as if they belong in the movie and some moments seem almost incoherently tagged on (a house that looks normal but is actually condemned??) Even Reynolds own pining for his wife feels stolen from "Spawn." Bottom line, this movie could have been streamlined to a much more tightly and coherent flick. "MIB" had much better acting, writing, visual gags and a stronger concept based on the extraterrestrial phenomenon. For "R.I.P.D." to have worked on a "Beetlejuice" level, it would have been better to have some concepts viewers would have recognized without knowing the comic books.
616: Paranormal Incident (2013)
There is no point to this movie -
This is one of the most boring ghost movies I've ever seen. The strange thing is that it's set up like some sort of action movie with an FBI team invading a derelict prison for what seems to be a forensic investigation but in fact turns into a paranormal investigation. Right from the start, the movie has lost all credibility, and with that gone, the chances for a decent ghost story are practically out the window. In fact, the movie doesn't even start with ghosts but with a porn scene, right off the start insulting its core audience. The FBI team investigating the location describe vague events of a major riot in the prison and end up discovering a female vagrant living on the site, the woman from the first scene, and with no reason whatsoever, they lock her up in a cell until they figure out what to do with her. From here, the movie has no conscionable plot; it seems as if it's being made up as its going along by three to four directors each making their own movie. The agents report unseen haunting activity and start getting picked off by experiencing terrible visions of death or aspects of their greatest wishes turned against them that take them far beyond the prison. One African-American guard, for example, is spirited far beyond the prison to the 1960s South where he's murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. Another is butchered by the willowy ladies he thinks were going to seduce him. This is probably the only interesting aspect of the movie which also treads through one female agent getting possessed, a reported cycle of disasters that occur the same years apart and a presence that reportedly alters the perceptions of reality in the agents. This is one of the most incoherent, poorly executed so- called horror movies I've ever seen. The acting is tedious, the plot confusing, the profanity endless and the ending poorly conceived. The setting was filmed in the former Linda Vista Community Hospital in Los Angeles, and despite supposedly being abandoned, parts of it look like an empty doctor's office while others look like an empty parking garage. Bottom line: this is not a movie. This is more like the first draft of a movie before recasting, re-scripting and adding the special effects. The majority of this movie is just plain awful; more evidence that some people just should not be actors or directors.
Old Dogs (2009)
Not Up to Robin William's Legacy
Sometimes, I thought there were two Robin Williams. There was the one who made "Aladdin," "Hook" and "Mrs. Doubtfire," and one who made "Awakenings," "Bicentennial Man" and "Man of the Year." This movie may belong to the latter one. "Old Dogs" stars Robin Williams and John Travolta who play two entrepreneurs in the middle of a large business deal, but then Williams discovers he has two kids from a wild fling Travolta created a few years earlier. Promising the mother to take care of the kids for two weeks very obviously wrecks their deal, their lives and their bank accounts. It's a plot device we've seen several times before done better in several other movies like "Jungle 2 Jungle" and it ends pretty much the exact same way it always has with the sudden father giving it all up for a life with the kids. There's no new spin, no real jokes and no credibility. In fact, the set-ups to the jokes are predictable. When Williams and Travolta talk about the after-effects of their medications, you can predict they're all going to be mixed up. What the movie does have is a stellar case of celebrity cameos from Seth Green, Lori Loughlin, Kelly Preston, Dax Shepard, Luis Guzman, Matt Dillon, Justin Long and Ann-Margret. Unfortunately, the cartoonish gags aren't very funny, and the plot isn't believable. At no point does Williams even come close to acting like a father and placing some boundaries on his kids to save himself some grief. However, the movie did do well enough to be called successful so apparently it has enough appeal to kids if not to parents.
Pixels (2015)
Entertaining Movie but very basic Sandler material
I'm a big Adam Sandler fan. With the right plot, he can be incredibly funny ("Click," "50 First Dates," "Hotel Transylvania" "Water Boy," "Grown Ups,"
), but when the script isn't on his side, he tends to crash hard ("I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry," "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," "Bedtime Stories," "Jack and Jill,"
). I would place "Pixels" somewhere in between. It's an interesting premise to have aliens attack Earth using video games brought to life, but the problem is that Sandler is still basically playing the forgotten screwball character we've seen several times before. Maybe if he had played this role straight, it might have worked. In the movie, he plays Sam Brenner, basically Billy Madison as a video game player whose life went nowhere after losing a contest against his rival Eddie, played to the hilt by Peter Dinklage. His character is rude, offensive and immature, basically an eight-year-old in a forty-year old body. Kevin James is his best friend, Will Cooper, who as President calls him up to fight aliens using video games as weapons and battlefield strategies. The entire premise is played as straight as it can be with the three of them joining up with Josh Gad to fight the invasion or at least show the military how to do it. It's really hard to believe that in a country of over several billion people that there are only three top video game experts to be found. There are a lot of juvenile characteristics in the main characters; Gad himself acting annoyingly unbearable, obnoxious and creepy at times; there is absolutely no point for any of this. Michelle Monaghan of "True Detective" plays the woman meant to be his female foil and future inevitable love interest accompanied by Matthew Lintz as her son. Possibly the best part is the recurring 80s pop culture moments (young Madonna is transmitted by the aliens giving a declaration of war
). While the movie is fun to watch, the credibility eventually gets strained to the limit. It's not all Sandler's fault; the problem is that the movie is over-stuffed with stuff like androids with glass heads that serve no purpose and plot points (Gad somehow wins the "love" of a pixel-created "Lara Croft" character) that stretch the credibility of a plot that is already incredible. There are some funny moments, like an old lady obliviously watching TV as Sandler battles aliens in her living room, and several cameos by Jane Krakowski, Brian Cox, Sean Bean and Dan Aykroyd among others, but overall, the movie just seems to be one long special effects-laden acid trip. I like the movie, but there's no substance to it.
Ghostbusters (2016)
Not based in any sort of reality
I'm a big fan of ghosts and haunted house movies. When they're scary, they're wonderful. When, they're funny, they can be charming. When they can be funny and scary, it can be a miracle. Unlike "Beetlejuice" and the original "Ghostbusters," this movie is a disappointment. It could have had so much potential. I really tried to like this movie. It had a few funny moments, some memorable quotes, the special effects are far superior and most of the cast are passable. However, the major problem I have with it is that it's just a retread of the original plot. Do you mean to tell me that in the years we've had since with TV shows exploring the paranormal that we can't make an entirely new "Ghostbusters" without just ripping off the original plot, inserting a few vomit and slime jokes and just completely embarrassing the cast with moronic lines and idiotic scenes. The best part of the first movie is that it was hilarious for being played straight; the humor coming from the characters reacting to each other and the phenomenon. Also, the main cast had a purpose. Murray was the cynic, Aykroyd was the heart, Ramis the brain and Hudson the everyman. Sigourney Weaver was the straight man, and Moranis was the comic foil. In this movie, the cast comes across as someone's dirty little fantasy as they somehow replicate piece by piece the same inventions and create the exact same work uniforms as the first movie. It's almost as if the characters saw the first movie and said, "Well, let's make one of those that works and dress like them too." Now, I like Kristen Wiig; she's one of the movie's most likable redeeming features, but Melissa McCarthy is just woefully miscast, ruining every scene she's in. She is just freaking annoying, but then that's what happens when you cast an actress who plays the same character in virtually every movie in which she stars. She really might have worked better in Kate McKinnon's role and vice versa, and then there's the tall Sasquatchy actress, I just can't recall her name, I'll just call her "Patty," but she also seems miscast when she should have been playing one of the demonic entities this movie is passing off as ghosts. The problem is the good jokes are immediately followed by bad jokes, the so-called ghosts look more like "Scooby Doo" villains and the so-called villain is tacked on like as afterthought. There is absolutely no follow-up to his appearance, and his so-called apocalypse looks more like just some annoying inconvenience. It's just incredibly boring. The worst part is that Chris Hemsworth is woefully underused and embarrassed by playing an affable idiot that by all rights would be in a special school than holding a job. It would have been funnier if they had treated him like how guys have been treating women for the last fifty years. For an interesting premise, the plot focuses too hard on trying to be funny than staying on plot, the jokes are predictable before they even land and some of them don't even land; maybe if they had stayed on the plot instead of playing up the jokes. The cameos of the original cast are kind of pointless; the one by Ozzy Osbourne is really embarrassing for him. The plot has holes in it that don't make sense. (How does Rowan know he'll become a ghost? He could have gone directly into the afterlife.) For that matter, the paranormal facts in this movie are non-existent – it just seemingly makes stuff up as it goes along. At least the original didn't stray off-field as much as this one does.
House of Darkness (2016)
Don't bother turning on the lights.
I don't know why, but the SyFy Channel runs very few haunted house movies while Lifetime occasionally runs these family dramas with vague paranormal ingredients and calls them horror thrillers. It doesn't really work. The ghosts aren't scary, and the drama is often unbelievably cookie-cutter routine. Probably based on the events that inspired "The Conjuring," "House of Darkness" is about a family that relocates to a remote house with paranormal activity. The parents have the anxiety of Jack and Wendy Torrance from "The Shining," and the daughter is a loose clone of Carol Ann from "Poltergeist," but the scares are nowhere close to "The Amityville Horror." There are a few shots of the local neighbors looking over nervously to suggest there's something wrong with the house, but these foreshadowing elements don't work because the house looks more like a small motel than a haunted house. One of the more ridiculous plot elements is the fact that the couple is keeping up with their marriage counselor in short video diaries that they keep making through the movie. What consists of the hauntings are the wife seeing signs of children in old Halloween episodes she thinks is her daughter, and the daughter and her cousin experimenting with toys rolling by themselves across the house. The father sees a few things happen, but his situation is not to believe in what's happening and instead lose his mind much like Jack Torrance in "The Shining." It's not really scary, nor is there anything done that truly creative. Almost everything in this movie from the psychic attacked by flies to the daughter who turns up in a sealed up room has already been done in other more successful horror movies. This is what happens when one tries to turn a familial drama into a horror movie without having a real understanding of how horror movies work. There's just nothing to really pull the audience in. The activity isn't scary, the plot is slow, the characters are boring and the script drags on uninterestingly as the viewer waits for something to happen. Even the attempt for a twist ending is left vague, not that the effort really matters by now. I give it 2 out of 5.
Holla II (2013)
When the plot doesn't match the movie -
If there's one thing that annoys me, it's a movie whose plot doesn't match its description. The description for Holla 2 on its DVD is about several friends who stay at a haunted mansion implying it is some sort of ghost movie, but it's anything but. First off, it's a long boring set-up that takes forever to get started and never really goes anywhere. It's boring as hell, the characters are tedious and the plot plods on slowly. The production values are so cheap that it might as well be someone's home movies. What it really becomes is a weak slasher flick lacking the strength of "Friday The 13th" or the power of "Nightmare on Elm Street." The nude scenes are seriously offensive and obviously gratuitous with absolutely no purpose at all. The so- called killer is disguised as a man-sized golly, a racial cultural character from the 19th Century, which is actually more culturally insensitive than scary or threatening. Overall, it's one of the dumbest most uninteresting under-developed so-called horror movies I have ever seen. It's only worth is if it was used to torture terrorists into giving up secrets to the U.S. Government.
Poltergeist (2015)
From The Reboots We Didn't Need Department
Did we really need a modern remake of such a horror classic? The idea was there but not the spirit. If anything, this movie reminded me of a high school play version of the original movie. Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt both give good performances to a movie that is almost a scene by scene recreation with few modern updates (the daughter's cell phone acts weird) and rehashed ingredients from the original made more ghoulish (the clown and the tree). For me, the movie races forward way too fast, there's practically no time to get to know the characters, no chance to really care about what's happening and no effort made to let this movie stand on its own ground. The only nice touches is allowing Rockwell play an out-of- work dad, another victim of the George W. Bush administration, and the fact that the ex-owner of the house abandoned a closet full of clown dolls, nice foreshadowing to later familiar events. The hauntings start mildly enough, but then they escalate way too fast to get to the plot. While the first movie had the Americana feel of the Eighties, this movie has the two-second attention span of the Digital Generation. Generally entertaining, there's just nothing to make this remake stand out like a good horror movie should. "The Shining" had the hotel, "House on Haunted Hill" had the basement and the original "Poltergeist" had Heather O'Rourke and Zelda Rubenstein. What does this movie have? A new ugly clown doll and an even creepier tree? Not even the updated special effects and the faked spirit photography nor the trip through Purgatory help this movie. It's visually stunning, but it's lacking in substance.
Frozen (2013)
A New Generation of Disney Movies Is Born
Have you ever been around a movie that everyone liked and whose endorsements and promotions were exploding everywhere, yet you were reticent to go see at the theater. That was me in the 90s when "Aladdin" came out; I didn't actually see it until several months after it came out on DVD and left the New Releases wall for the regular movies of the rental place. After I saw it, I thought it was one of the best movies I had ever seen and was quoting and singing the songs afterward. Same thing happened with "Frozen." I didn't rent this until long after it was no longer a New Release, and I have to admit, it really is infectious without being obnoxious (Disney's "Beauty and the Beast"). It's a modern fairy tale loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" about the sisters Anna and Elsa, who seems to have a mystical ability to create ice. When Elsa's power is discovered after keeping it secret for years, she flees her home and creates an ice palace in the mountains, unaware the snow storms left in her wake are destroying the land. The songs are unavoidably memorable, the characters and voices are excellent and the plot moves forward evenly, barely sagging or slowing at any moment. What it is is an icy version of "The Little Mermaid" for the new generation, and one movie like "Aladdin" I wouldn't mind having in my collection.
Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)
Lightning Almost Hits Twice
When I was in high school, I started a comic strip called "Horror Inc." It was loosely part-"Casper," part-"Addams Family" and part-"Far Side" as it developed the satirical side of ghost stories and horror movies in general. I developed almost 200 single-panel toons in the series, but I was never able to get it published much less get interest in it for distribution. If it had been animated, it would have been very much like "Hotel Transylvania" with an under-appreciated Dracula, a tired Frankenstein Monster, an exhausted Wolfman and a disrespected Mummy surrounded by various unsuccessful horror serial killers bungling their way through a universe where ghosts and zombies struggle to live normal lives. That's why I love "Hotel Transylvania" so much; it was a rip- off of my material, but it was a condensed roller coaster ride of it highlighted by the talents of Selena Gomez, Adam Sandler and friends. Sadly, as great as the first movie is, "Hotel Transylvania 2" doesn't seem to catch the same creative lightening in a bottle as the first movie, which by itself, didn't really need a sequel unless it was a strong enough script to warrant it. Unfortunately, the plot we get isn't nearly as strong as I would have hoped. In the movie, Dracula's daughter, Mavis has married Jonathan, her first love, and has become a parent herself. (Being a vampire, I don't get how this is possible.) There's some great comedy with Dracula as a grandfather and with Mavis in the real world, but where the movies fails is in repeating much of the same jokes of the first movie. Truth be told, "Hotel Transylvania 2" isn't a bad movie; there's a lot of great material in it, but where it drags is in the form of Dennis, Mavis and Jonathan's son as Dracula waits to see if he will be a vampire. The kid isn't funny, he's a plot device, and the movie wastes so much time on him, but there are volumes of new material to be made off the expanded universe of monsters, undead and assorted creatures trying to cohabitate with humans. Some of the better jokes involve giving human frailties and idiosyncrasies to Dracula and the other monsters. Of course, the mere fact that Mavis being undead and Jonathan still being immature makes them very unlikely parents, facts that also interfere and deter from the overall humor of the movie. It would have worked so much better if Mavis and Jonathan were still just dating, and Mavis was just still discovering the real world. Still, there's a lot of humor to appeal to children and youths alike. Sandler shines as Dracula again, as does Gomez, David Spade, Kevin James, Keegan-Michael Key (replacing Cee-Lo Green) in their roles, though Steve Buscemi doesn't have nearly the room he originally had to really explode as he did in the first movie. The animation is just as vivacious as the first, and most of the comedy is equal parts wacky and clever, but the plot just doesn't have the emotional impact as the first. Mel Brooks as Drac's dad is dragged in way too late, which is a shame considering the man's legendary talent. Only Brooks could have yanked this movie out from under Sandler and company, but his material is sadly restrained by the character he plays. "Hotel Transylvania 2" is a great follow-up to the first movie, but in this instance, I think there was an obvious missed opportunity to let it excel the original.
Annabelle (2014)
Chucky has a sister?
I'm a big fan of horror movies, especially those that cater to the paranormal genre, which generally means I cater to haunted houses movies than anything else in the genre. "The Conjuring" was a pretty good movie up until three quarters through so the idea of a film based entirely on the Annabelle doll and avoiding the sudden turn to an annoying possession plot line seemed to have some merits. "Annabelle" fits in very well with the new twisted horror transition that created "Insidious" and "Sinister." It doesn't try to scare you with something, it just scares you. It doesn't waste time with the "Chucky" point of view of something running around at floor level either. The movie is completely revealed in the fears and experiences of Joan and Maria who own Annabelle who seemingly runs through the apartment from the top shelf, somehow returning when she is dispatched and even at times warping reality to cast doubts in the minds of the main characters. Some of the scares are reminiscent of scenes from "The Amityville Horror" and other films, but the acting and direction almost makes up for the fact. Where the movie really succeeds is creating a true paranormal horror character out of "Annabelle" in what has been lately a string of serial killers and undead maniacs since the 1980s. Bottom line, "Annabelle" is a return to the real horror movies of the 30s, 40s and 50s before the field was inundated by blood and gore flicks, and for that, I greatly approve.