This week we picked up some "scary" movies to set the mood for the exciting day.
1408: Please don't rent this film. You may think it's fun, I mean, yay for John Cusack? Samual L for the Jack son A? Haunted hotel rooms and mysteries and adventure? No, I promise you, no. This movie is just mean. It's just a mean, mean movie. It's not scary, it's not fun, at times it's baffling and so overboard that it's frustrating, but in the end it's just mean. I'm going to save yourself the trouble of renting this, because it's not worth it. He investigates haunted places for fun and profit, goes to this place, gets the room, is warned a lot not to for 30 minutes but decides to anyway. Goes in, isn't scared, then thiiiings beeegiiin to geeet weeeird. Sounds great so far, huh! But it's ridiculous, it starts with being a little scary, and then it just goes so overboard that it's not reasonable at all. Pictures on the wall of a boat in water suddenly makes craashing wattter flood the room! I mean come on, is that scary? Oh no, the tv comes on! That's scary! But the tv is showing his memories of the past... backstory? Backstory time of sadness with his daughter who has a terminal disease. This isn't scary, it's just sad. Ok, so character development, fine, but not needed. It just makes people sad, it's not scary. Suddenly the radio goes on! But he pulls it out of the wall and it's STILL ON! >< And then.. it gets... so.. cold.. that it's snowing in doors! Oh noes! This room is really freaky, huh! But then he wakes up and realizes all of ti was a dream from when he bumped his head earlier in the movie. It goes on for 15 minutes of everyone worried about his head, ah, it was all a dream, but no! it wasn't! Twist! And he's in the room again! And he can never leave! Noooo! And there's his daughter, talking to him, is this scary yet? And he's hugging his daughter saying how much he misses her, and there's so many flashbacks about all the sadness and stresses of having a terminally ill daughter, and then, poof, she explodes into dust. So scary! No, just mean. Is this a scary movie or a movie about how to pull on your heartstrings and make you really sad? And the grand finale, he's got 1 minute before help arrives, but the room wont' let anyone out and will just suck more people in, oh no his x-ish wife is coming to save him but she'll get sucked in.. so he just lights the whole room on fire, killing himself and burning the room. The end! Except, it's not, the funeral scene, everyone is sad, Samuel shows up to say hi but twist ending! The room isn't burned, or something, it continues to live on somehow doing something! Duhn duhn duhnnn!
28 weeks later: I remember liking the first one a lot, but at the moment, I can't remember why. I know Meg will say it's the church scene, where they're all silent and then look up and it's scary, sure, but what else besides that? I heard from Maryl that the dvd has alternate endings, endings that go sooo far back that they never actually reach the army people. That's a significant change, and I'll be happy to rent it some time to see. The sequel though, eh, dunno. I have issues with the premise, maybe someone can shed light on my subject. These aren't zombies, right? Just people that are super angry and need to eat other people. But why don't they eat each other? Stop reading if you haven't seen this movie yet and plan to. But in this sequel, something like "5" weeks later all the "zombies" starve. It's deemed that the virus has been completely wiped out. Because people starved after 5 weeks? Even humans will eat each other when starving, why wouldn't super angry humans do so? Ok, ok, say somehow zombies don't eat each other because of something in the virus compelling them not to. Why won't they eat rats and dogs and birds and frozen foods in the store? There's reasons, but it just sort of started the movie off on the wrong foot for me, just assuming after 5 weeks everyone infected died out. Then they start relocating people back after 4-6 months. Why? Just for fun? Ok fine, let's relocate people back, but, with such shoddy protocols that would allow two kids to just waltz right out into the previously infected zone, and they weren't tracked down until hours later? And they find their mum, pseudo-immune due to awesome eye-power, fair enough, but they come back into the base and no one guards her? She's obviously infected, or even if they weren't sure, why assume she's safe when the janitor himself can walk in and start smooching her? And they decide to lock everyone up in a flimsy chain that has an open back door? And to contain it they decide to shoot just the infected, then when 50% of the people run through, then decide to just shoot everyone? And then, to firebomb the whole place? Why bother, when all you have to do is just evac your friendlies and hover around the air for 5 weeks? Isn't that a lot easier than rebuilding the entire infrastructure and buildings? And the firebombs didn't even get them all, so, why, what's the point? Why bother sending out torching units to attempt to track down the strays, when you won't get them all anyway. It's a zombie movie, but it just made me furrow my brow and say, why, when it should have me furrow my brow saying, woah, gross, scary, and/or neat...? That looks like %_&
I'm not looking forward to the sequel of this, 28 minutes later, where the entire film is subtitled from french.
We also got the Addam's Family. Just as wonderful as it was when I saw it 100 times on HBO when I was a kid. It was neat, the week before we got the original tv series in the black and white. Now THAT show was scary! :)
Hm, what else. Oh hehe Black Sheep: have you ever wanted to see baby (puppet) sheep crawling on someone's back and then bite their neck? No? Are you sure? You don't want to see mobs of sheep devouring people?
So what exactly is a scary movie. Is it something that grosses you out, like Day of the Dead? Is it something that has tension and suspense and drama like Night of the Dead? What if it's just something that's horrifying because it grosses you out, has tension and suspense and drama AND has a sense of realism to it that really puts you in the main character's shoes, like Dawn of the Dead? Does it need to have ghosts to make it scary, like in 6th Sense, or Demi Moore in Ghost? Was The Labyrinth scary because of David Bowie's haircut? Or dancing trolls switching heads? I don't know what's scary anymore, being older and wiser and more cynical. The typical Jason/Freddie movies are laughable, and anything coming out nowadays needs to go overboard so much with special fx that it draws me out of the realism of it to make it more of an escape. I especially hate the type of "scary" which is basically a really loud annoying noise out of the blue. Oh yeah, you reeaaally made me jump there, thank you. I'm talking about the type of scary that sends shivers down your spine, where you can't breathe, where you can't do anything but watch and be horrified.
Actually, I know what scary is.
