HEAR YE!!! HEAR YE!!! Many of us, myself included, are coming down from the euphoric high of Project Hail Mary. Will the month of April be able to deliver movies that will reach similar heights? Or was my announcement of a generational run in movies too premature? Come with me, as I recount all that I saw in April.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
Oh Gore Verbinski, please forgive me. My sole regret of the year is skipping out on his sci-fi romp Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die in order to see Crime 101 instead. For those who missed this gem, just as I did, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a story about a time traveler from the future trying to find the correct combination of diner patrons who will give him the best chance of beating the latest sci-fi disaster that threatens the world. The premise seems complicated, but Sam Rockwell as The Man from the Future, is able to describe it all in an opening scene that makes his character seem both heroic and insane. The film then Intertwines back stories from various diner patrons that not only expand the characters, but also weave perfectly into the mysterious threat the Man from the Future is fighting. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is not only one of the wackiest stories, but one of the best written sci-fi stories I’ve seen in a while. Don’t make the same mistakes I made by writing off this film.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
If you don’t laugh at any point in this movie, I will immediately drop you into a vat of dip, because you are clearly the villainous Judge Doom in disguise.
Fallout: Season Two
MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! THIS IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE ON WHY I AM WEARY OF TV SHOWS. So often do I find shows that feel like they are going in circles and just playing for time. It’s a feeling I couldn’t escape when watching Fallout: Season Two. As someone who was completely enthralled by the first season of Fallout, I couldn’t wait to see where Lucy and The Ghoul’s journey took them. With them teasing that they would be venturing to New Vegas, my imagination began to run wild with possibilities. I’ll confess, my followers, I haven’t spent many hours within the Fallout video games; however, I am familiar with the reputation that Fallout: New Vegas holds. Especially when it comes to the game’s driving antagonist force: Robert House.
Alas my excitement was quickly snuffed out as the series went on. Lucy is able to finally catch up to her father, but is unable to get any real answers from him. The Ghoul is still unable to reach his family and has to go on another trek to find them. Lastly, Mr. House is a complete and utter let down; he doesn’t feel like the mastermind behind the curtain pulling the strings. He feels more like a sore loser, getting completely outmaneuvered by the Enclave: a villain that some Fallout fans might be excited for, but leave me completely unenthused to watch another faceless shadow government be the antagonizing force for Season 3. Feel free to pelt me with your stones and rotten fruit Fallout fans, but the Enclave feels like a cliché rather than a true real villainous force.
MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! Lord knows I have certainly watched worse than Season 2 of Fallout; the acting, directing, and set design is just as good as it was in Season 1. Yet, I can’t give my time to a show that is content to circle the drain with its overarching story. If there is not some serious payoff within Season 3, I struggle to see myself returning to the world of Fallout.
Exit 8
A CONFESSION FOR YOU, MY MOST LOYAL OF FOLLOWERS. I’ve become fascinated by how adaptations are made in movies. When I hear a movie is based on a book or video game, I have been seeking out the original media just to see how drastically it differs from the movie. With the Exit 8 film coming up, I decided to give the video game a try and I thought it was just fine. The Exit 8 video game clearly helped pioneer the “spot the anomaly” style of horror games that game developers have flocked to. However, Exit 8 was clearly missing that melding of gameplay and story that I prefer. It basically has no story other than you are trying to reach the titular exit, and with that in mind, I was very curious how they could possibly make this into a film.
The solution the filmmakers came up with was to create their own original tale. The movie Exit 8 begins with a young man receiving a call from his ex-girlfriend where she informs him that she is pregnant. Unsure if he should support her and the child, he wanders into a corridor labeled Exit 0, making him both physically and psychologically lost. He must properly navigate the hallway by spotting the anomalies while wrestling with what to do if he is ever able to escape the metaphorical maze. It’s a perfect marriage of the original game’s mechanics and a story the game was severely lacking. It even provides a quick but haunting backstory to the infamous man who just walks down the hallways. Much like Project Hail Mary, Exit 8 is another film that is able to rise above the original source material to be a standout movie. Do not sleep on this film.
Hunting Matthew Nichols
HEAR YE!!! HEAR YE!! MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS, I’ve been infected by the Strange Harvest bug. I want … NO, I NEED MORE MOCKUMENTARY HORROR FILMS!!! Thankfully, my prayers have been answered with Hunting Matthew Nichols. Unfortunately, as I entered the theater that quiet April night, the monkey paw of fate curled its fingers in cruel delight. Gather forth everyone, as I tell my tale.
Hunting Matthew Nichols starts with the mockumentary revolving around Tara and her quest to find her brother Matthew. It goes into detail about how Matthew and his friend Jordan went into the Vancouver woods and never returned. Tara interviews the police and neighbors, giving us some insight into what might have happened that ill-fated day. The mockumentary portion of the film was beautifully executed, capturing that same uneasiness I got from Strange Harvest. Unfortunately, with little evidence or clues, the police mark Matthew as a missing person and close the case. Thus, ending the mockumentary.
From this point, Hunting Matthew Nichols shifts to a more standard horror movie. Tara, convinced someone is withholding evidence from her and her brother’s missing person case has been unjustly closed. We then watch her go on a tirade throughout town, accusing anyone and everyone of trying to bury her brother. Once Tara is able to get her hands on her brother’s camcorder, we are able to bear witness to the demonic rituals Matthew and Jordan were performing. From there, we get a third act that plays out like a standard found footage film with Tara and her cameraman trying to contact Matthew from beyond the grave.
Despite the strong start with the mockumentary first act, later acts completely turned me off from the film. The second act in particular was giving me a case of secondhand embarrassment. I understand Tara wants nothing more than to find Matthew, but the scenes come off more like temper tantrums than genuine pleas for help. It really detached me from the story, making the stock standard found footage chases at the end, unable to really pull me back into the movie. Unlike Strange Harvest, where every bit of it seems committed to its story, the second act of Hunting Matthew Nichols really snapped me out of the immersion that it needed to keep me in. If you are desperate for some horror mockumentaries, this might sate your hunger, but frankly once was enough for me.
Faces of Death
A HISTORY LESSON FOR ALL OF YOU, MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! There is a 1978 film called Faces of Death, it’s a collection of footage showcasing deaths from a man eaten by an alligator, a man gunned down by a SWAT team, a monkey having his brains eaten, and many more. Naturally, this film was exiled to the deepest darkest corners of video rental stores in an attempt to hide its shock value from kids. Well in an attempt to out meta Scream, Faces of Death has been brought to life in an attempt to show how dangerous our “anything for a click” mentality can be.
Our story begins with Margot, who gets a job as a content moderator at a social media site. She soon begins to see videos from one user looking to go viral by recreating many of the graphic scenes from the 1978 Face of Death film. A quick confession for you, my loyalist of followers, I utterly despise how the more recent Scream films have retconned the events of first few Scream films into these fictional Stab movies. It’s an ouroboros of self-refacing that Wes Craven actively mocked in the first Scream. All of this to say that Faces of Death’s new story about someone obsessively recreating scenes from the original is a better meta-narrative than modern day Scream films.
Again, I will confess to you, even though Face of Death’s meta-narrative is quite clever, I don’t think the movie went as hard as it could have. Yes, our fame-chasing killer does a good job hamming it up for the audience, but for someone trying to go viral, I don’t remember many of the kills throughout this movie. Yet, there are many Saw torture traps that are vividly burned into my mind; thinking of you Razor Box trap from Saw II. It all gives Faces of Death a student film quality that might turn people off from trying or giving it a second watch. I am certainly glad I watched it, but I’d only dedicate my time to a second viewing if I could rent it for pennies or with no charge.
Normal
GATHER FORTH, MY FOLLOWERS!!! AS I REGALE A TALE OF MY OWN VISION OF A MOVIE GETTING IN THE WAY. The movie in question today is Bob Odenkirk’s Normal, a film about a temporary sheriff named Ulysses Richardson, who discovers a dark secret lurking beneath the quiet town of Normal, Minnesota. Trailers made it look like Fargo with a dash of Nobody’s bloody violence. Alas this was not the film Normal gave me; the film is more of a dark comedy with some over the top violence. At one point, Ulysses starts throwing sticks of dynamite at his enemies like he’s Bugs Bunny. I could see a world where I forgave the Looney Tunes-like violence if the initial mystery surrounding the town was compelling. Unfortunately, Normal gives away the mystery of the town right at the start of the second act.
The film just feels like it’s not capitalizing on any of its ideas. If you want to have a dark mystery, don’t give it away half way through the movie. If you want cartoonish violence that Bugs would be proud of, go further than just sticks of dynamite. If you are truly aiming for a dark comedy, then write some truly comedic scenes; the scene that comes to mind is the one where they try to convince a gangster that nothing suspicious has happened in the town, but it just falls flat. All of these half-baked ideas just makes the film feel like second screen streaming fodder, which is ultimately the true shame here.
Cape Fear (1991)
GATHER FORTH O LOVER OF MOVIES, AND HEED MY WORDS. I want it to be clear that I am not disparaging the work Martin Scorsees or Robert de Niro put into this movie. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say de Niro should have been given more roles in horror movies. Yet, as someone who has watched The Strangers, Hush, and Scream, it’s hard to escape the feeling I have seen all the punches Cape Fear is trying to pull. Scenes where de Niro’s character Max Cady sneaks into the Bowden’s house or onto their boat, gave me a feeling of deja vu. Frankly, the scene where Cady is talking with the young Danielle gave me more chills than anytime Cady attacked the Bowden family. I believe Cape Fear serves as dipping of the toe into horror for those who don’t frequent the genre, but horror fanatics, such as myself, might find it lacking.
Over Your Dead Body
HEAR YE!!! HEAR YE!!! With all the success the horror genre has received this year, it’s easy to forget the red headed stepchild of the horror genre: horror comedy. Even as I stand before you all atop my soapbox, very few recent horror comedies come to mind. Well the wait is finally over as I present Over Your Dead Body; a horror comedy about a married couple who both plot to kill each other at their vacation cabin. With our titular couple played by Jason Segel and Samara Weaving, they both bring a great energy to characters who are not only funny, but incredibly deep and well written. Over Your Dead Body feels like a homemade apple pie; the premise isn’t groundbreaking, but with the high quality ingredients of great jokes, multidimensional characters, and stunts and gore effects from the great 87 North studio, you have yourself a pie that hits just right. I implore all of you, my followers, to watch this movie.
Pretty in Pink (1986)
MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS, sometimes you need to crack open the time capsule and watch a movie from previous decades. Today, the capsule presented to us is the coming-of-age Pretty in Pink. The premise of the film revolves around our heroine Andie having to choose between dating her childhood sweetheart, Duckie, or the new mysterious kid, Jack. Unfortunately, the film’s primary conflict, Andie choosing Duckie or Jack, is not really a conflict. Andie shows no real affection towards Duckie, to the point Duckie’s efforts come off, as the kids say, quite cringe. If Duckie just took the hint that Andie only saw him as a friend, he could have easily found someone else by the end.
Despite the awkward attempts to break through the friend zone, Pretty in Pink does an adequate job highlighting growing up in the mid 80s. Alas, Pretty in Pink fails to be one of my favorite coming-of-age films, simply due to the fact I have no nostalgia for that time period. I know with my long beard and raggedy clothes, some of you might think I come from that decade, but my nostalgia belongs to the early 90s era. So if I had to choose between watching a coming-of-age film, I probably would choose Mid 90s over Pretty in Pink. However, if you are someone longing for those days of long hair and wild clothes, then I imagine Pretty in Pink would satisfy that desire quite well.