Critical: Alone in the Dark (1982)

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

Writing these things more than a week after you watched a movie, especially as forgettable a movie as Alone in the Dark, is troublesome, if only because I've already forgotten most of my complaints about this movie. The fact that it's a pretty average movie to start with doesn't help this review at all.

But I haven't forgotten everything bad about this movie, oh no.

On the plus side, this is not Alone in the Dark from 2005. This, of course, is a big plus.

Also, Jack Palance and Martin Landau are great in this. Both play violent psycopaths, one a paranoid war vet and the other a preacher who likes to set fires, who escape from a mental hospital when the power goes out and the electric locks keeping them in stop working. A generator is mentioned only in passing, and that the generator obviously must have failed for the inmates to escape. You'd think this is pretty poor planning, on pretty much every level, but this is what happens when the doctor treating them is just as loony as they are. (Donald Pleasance unfortunately doesn't save that character from being a complete ass. True, you can only do so much with the script you're given, but his Dr Leo is so clearly insane that by the time Leo meets his end, you are not only not surprised but downright happy.) The people outside the asylum are just as crazy, as a simple power outage (hence the title) leads to a riot, complete with looting and FLAMING GARBAGE CANS, in the space of an hour. I don't know about you, but when my house loses electricity, I usually wait half a day before setting garbage aflame.

Palance and Landau have a lot of fun with the roles they are playing, as they are both absolutely nuts and enjoying every minute of it. Scenery is chewed without abandon and they both bring a good bit of menace to the parts they play. They are accompanied by two other pyscotics, one an overweight pedophile and the other a serial killer who hides his face and gets nose bleeds whenever he kills someone, and neither one of those is particularly memorable. The Bleeder, as he is called, is meant to be a shcoking surprise in the climax of the film, but the big reveal of what he looks like is just completely unbelievable. Once the riot begins, a stranger ends up hooking up with the main characters at an anti-nuclear rally and is invited into their home when the other 3 psychos begin their assault. The stranger helps them defend their home and it is clearly supposed to be shocking when he dispatches one of the psychopaths and his nose begins to bleed. If this made any sense, it might be shocking, but what are the chances that The Bleeder would end up at the same rally as the main characters, and that he would be invited home with them, and that he would suddenly turn on his former allies in order to protect the family, and that once his identity is revealed he snaps and tries to kill them? Sorry, it just makes no sense.

The ending proves to be the worst flaw in the movie. Dues ex machine is a generous way to put it, as Palance is talked down from his killing spree by a tv news report. Then, he proceeds to go to a bar that plays lousy music (the band is The Sick F*cks, and this movie was made in the 80's, so three guesses what type of music they play), kills the bouncer, and hits on a girl. And that is it, the movie ends. What the heck, movie?

At 85 minutes or so, it's not an awful movie, and Palance and Landau do their best to make this worth watching. I'd call it a rental, if you have nothing better at all in your Netflix queue.



Read more...

Critical: Vacancy

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

I liked The Strangers better.

I liked The Strangers better.

Vacancy came first and it has roots (however tenuous) in an urban legend that I have always been a bit amused by, but I do prefer The Strangers to Vacancy. It's a little hard to put my finger on why, exactly, as they are basically the same movie.

The premise is that a couple on the rocks is trapped in a single location by a pair of maniacs who are first trying to scare them and then trying to murder them. They employ a lot of the same tricks; the killers bang on walls to frighten their victims and freak out the audience, and both movies have scenes where one of the killers (both masked, of course) wander through the background of the scene unbeknownst to their victims, and they work well in both movies.

I think what it boils down to is that The Strangers succeeds in two places that Vacancy did not. Most noticeably, The Strangers had Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, neither one any great shakes as an actor, and Vacancy has Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale (ditto), but given the choice I'll pick Tyler and Speedman. Luke Wilson does an ok job, but having seen Beckinsale in Underworld and Van Helsing (ick), I really can't see her as a damsel in distress. You may disagree of course, as it's entirely possibly she has played plenty of damsels in distress in movies I haven't seen, but either way she's no Hilary Swank.

The Strangers also succeeds because it doesn't have a lame ending. Vacancy ends on a happy note, which I would be ok with if it wasn't an impossibly happy note. Luke Wilson should have bled out long before the final scene. One could argue Liv Tyler should have bled out, too, but Speedman was dead and it was clear that Tyler was seriously messed up. She also didn't take a knife to the gut, so I can totally get behind her managing to cling to life while Luke Wilson should have been pushing up daises.

Mildly recommended, as a rental.



Read more...

Critical: The Ruins

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

There are really only three moments in this movie that didn’t work for me. Three really annoying, glaring moments, but only three moments nonetheless. Barring that, I had a much better time with The Ruins than I expected.

The beginning is a bit slow. 4 Americans vacationing in Mexico hook up with some other travelers and make plans to visit a Mayan ruin that is so secret, it isn’t even on the map. Well, anyone with half a brain cell can what happens once they get to those ruins, and it’s not a picnic. Once they finally get to those ruins, twenty minutes in, the movie turns into a very satisfying experience. Did we really need a first act that shows Americans being lazy at their hotel, getting drunk ad making out with strangers, and implied sex off-camera? No, not really. Maybe if the obviously Final Girl wasn’t annoying in every way, you could excuse it, but she really is. She doesn’t want to leave the pool, doesn’t mind getting so drunk she almost cheats on her boyfriend, has no compunctions about almost blowing off her friends the next day just to stay in bed, and whines all the way to the ruins. Once there, she continues to do as many annoying things as possible, even going so far as to indirectly kill an innocent child while throwing a temper tantum. She’s just not likeable.

This leads me to the first moment that doesn’t work. At one point, one of the girls begins to lose her mind. You would, too, if you had sentient vines crawling around inside your body. You, too, might become obsessed with surgically removing those vines yourself. But imagining that your best friend (The Annoying Final Girl) is having sex with your boyfriend is a bit of a stretch. Yes, we know Final Girl has no compunctions about trying to hook up with other people when she’s drunk, but that entire sequence just rankled me. Conflict for no reason, and the film would be better off without it.

Next up, Vine Girl gives her boyfriend a handjob under the covers while in the same tent as Final Girl, and I’m sorry, but it comes out of nowhere and really makes no sense to me. Your mileage may vary on that one, though.

The final moment that didn’t work for me is when the girls descend into the ruins to try and retrieve a lost cell phone. It’s all perfectly good up to the point where all the vines on the walls come to life, and it just looks bad. The vines movement throughout the rest of the movie is excellent and believably, but here it looked like CGI and totally took me out of the moment.

Aside from those three moments, The Ruins was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes and I’d recommend it for general viewing.


Read more...

Critical: My Blood Valentine (1981)

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

Missed opportunities. That's what this movie is.

Imagine, for a moment, how many movies you have seen where there is a love triangle. Main Character and Other Guy are both trying to win the hand of That Girl, but Other Guy is a Secret Asshole, so you know Main Character is going to end up with That Girl. It's a trope that repeats itself time and time again in practically every facet of the media. Usually, Other Guy will get his comeuppance at the climax of the film where That Girl realizes what a jerk Other Guy is, and the type of movie you are watching determines the comeuppance. In a comedy, for instance, That Girl realizes Other Guy is cheating on her and dumps him for Main Character. In a horror movie, That Girl will realize Other Guy is cheating on her, and then Other Guy will probably be decapitated by Jason Voorhees. Such is life.

Now, take My Bloody Valentine, a pretty decent slasher movie from the 80's (81, to be precise, so this movie is as old as I am). You have Main Character, Other Guy, and That Girl. Other Guy, of course, is a Secret Asshole. However, TJ is just as much as a Secret Asshole as Axel, because TJ basically dumped Sarah and all his friends to head for the West Coast some time ago without a word of explanation. Now that he is back in town, he's doing everything he can to steal his ex-girlfriend from his ex-best friend, all while playing shuffleboard with his hairy chest bared and rocking a neckerchief. So, TJ is not someone to root for by any means. Even considering the main antagonist is (presumably) a cannibal who hates Valentine's Day so much that he is going to kill anyone who dares have a Valentine's Day Party.

How refreshing it would have been to have a love triangle where both Main Character and Other Guy were both decent guys fighting for the same girl. Present us with two viable outcomes to keep up guessing a little bit, even present a bit of sympathy for the guy she doesn't pick because it wasn't like he was unworthy of her, he just didn't end up being the lucky one.

Or, even better, what if Main Character was the Secret Asshole and That Girl knew about it. Other Guy turned out to be the decent one and ended up winning the girl, while the Main Character gets shafted, and rightly so. But no, TJ may be a Secret Asshole, but he's also The Main Character, so Other Guy is going to end up doing something awful in the last ten minutes of the film and TJ is going to get Sarah no matter how much you wish he took a pickax to the face.

Speaking of pickaxes, hopefully you like them. Hopefully, you like them a lot, because that is pretty much the only way someone in this movie is going to die. Pickax, pickax, pickax, pickax, pickax, nail gun, meat hook, death by hot dog. A variety hour, this really is not. On the plus side of the equation, the effects are pretty well done and a lot gorier than I've seen from other movies released around that time. Eyeballs hang out, people get cooked in a dryer (post mortem, however), people get hung on a meat hook and shoot bloody from their mouths like a fountain, it looks good. Most of the footage itself of these gory bits is grainy and washed out, but that's because all the good stuff was cut from the theatrical release and clearly was not handled very well between 1981 and 2009, but while it's noticeable it's not enough of a detriment to the film to warrant further discussion.

One final thing I'd like to mention about this movie is the acting. It's not great, and really it's not even very good. But it never gets to the level of Night of the Demons or Sleepaway Camp III, and a few of the characters play things just campy enough to be enjoyable, so this is right up my alley. My Bloody Valentine is definitely worth a rental, if not a purchase, and the plot is significantly different enough from last year's remake that you might even be caught off guard a time or two.


Read more...

Critical: The Reaping

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

Well, you got me, movie.


I underestimated you. Based on the previews I saw, I assumed you would be a very straight forward, run of the mill anti-Christ movie. You looked pretty enough, what with your fancy budget and all, but still I thought you were a one-trick pony. You've got a skeptical scientist who makes it her business to investigate miracles and prove they have scientific explanations, because the death of her husband and children at the hand of insane cultists has warped her sensibilities and made her turn her back on the church, and then she comes upon a case of the Biblical plagues and, shock of shocks, this time it's for real!

And yes, all that does happen. So, no surprises there, movie. You did take a bit of a turn when you made the anti-Christ a girl, as usually movies stick to Damien-types for that, but changing the sex of the Child of Satan isn't exactly radical. I still figured that I had you pegged, movie.

But there you go and hit me with an actual, honest to goodness plot twist that I did not see coming. Had I not been so narrow-minded, I could have guessed the twist, because you did foreshadow pretty nicely and everything, but I did not give you nearly enough credit and I lulled myself into believing you were much baser than you were. So, kudos there. You were smarter and better than I gave you credit for. It's a mistake I won't make again soon, and it's all because of you.

What The Reaping is, to put it simply, is a good movie. I have some issues with it, mainly the renumbering of the plagues for dramatic effect, and you rely on wacky dream sequences a bit too much, and that final scene in the car felt tacked on and just out of place, but you can't let those three things detract from the overall impression, and The Reaping is good. It's beautifully shot, and although I complained about excessive use of dreams, some of them played with light and dark so masterfully that I can forgive some of them. There's even a few bits that are incredibly creepy, so you've got that going for you, too.

Not worth owning, but I wouldn't be adverse to watching you again some time, movie. Next time, I'll treat you better, I promise.


Read more...

Panic

William H. Macy is not a hit man.

I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it.

That makes Panic troublesome, as to fully accept this movie, you need to accept that William H. Macy is a hit man. And I can’t do it. That’s not to say he doesn’t give it his best shot, and it’s not to say he doesn’t put on a pretty decent performance, but I don’t find him intimidating enough or cold-blooded enough to be a hit man. Maybe this is because the movie goes out of its way not to show him actually being a hit man. You see, Macy no longer wants to be a hit man. He is having a midlife crisis and wants out of the family business. But the movie is so concerned showing that Macy wants to stop being a hit man, that they only show him being a hit man in two quick scenes. So, I’m sorry, but I don’t accept the central premise.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie isn’t much better. Pretty much everything with Neve Campbell is boring and could be excised very easily, and in fact I almost wish her role had been excised to answer some of the movie’s other, more interesting questions. How did the matriarch of the family get them involved in the business? Was Macy’s wife really a hooker or did she just dress like one for the purposes of that one scene? Why did John Ritter not have a meatier part? Why is David Dorfman such a creepy little kid?

Unanswered questions all the way…


Read more...

Critical: Pathology

Critical is a series of examinations about media in popular culture. It's an explicit look, which means those who don't want key plot points revealed to you should likely avoid continuing. Critical does not even know what the word spoilers MEANS.

Of this movie’s 93 minute running time, I think there was about 10 minutes of decent stuff. This, of course, is a not a good ratio.

The problem is not that the concept is a bad idea. Med students kill people for fun and then try to guess how it happened. It’s sick and twisted and could make for a decent picture. Unfortunately, there’s no one to root for. The main character is Ted (Milo Ventimiglia) and I suppose you are meant to side with him, but there are two big problems with this. One, he’s as much a murderer as the villains are, and two, he cheats on Alyssa Milano multiple times, so screw him. Making matters worse is that Ted has no real reason for going on a killing spree. He starts because killing people is part of human nature (sure, that’s a good motivation for the protagonist to have) and he stops because of his classmates takes it too far (by killing 3 people at once…but how is that any different from what Ted has been doing?).

The rest of the cast are woefully two-dimensional. Three of the five members of the murder club have a total of 15 minutes of screen time, and they never display any real characters at all. The black-haired girl, whose name I never discerned, likes to get high and is bisexual. The smug jerk with the glasses is a smug jerk with glasses. The other guy is just a random guy who has no defining traits at all. Only Juliette and Jake get any real development, and even that basically amounts to: Juliette is a loose woman and Jake is crazy as a loon.

A couple sequences do save Pathology from being a complete waste. There’s a montage in the middle of the movie that features murder, autopsies, and sex set to a Renholder tune, and that 5 minutes seems like it belongs in a much more competent movie. Additionally, the last few minutes of the movie feature a final kill that is very well done and sufficiently creepy, even if it does come out of nowhere. 10 minutes is not enough to save a movie, but it does a good job of making it tolerable.


Read more...