The Roommate (2011)
Went to see this movie yesterday. Haven't been to the movie theatre in a long time and, despite fairly low expectations of this flick, could not deny my trashy yearnings.
About a young woman (Mink Kelly) who claims to be attending university despite only taking one course there and her creepy roommate (Leighton Meester) who never seems to go to class at all. I don't feel that I really have to elaborate on the plot much more than that but for the sake of filling up space here, Creepy Girl quickly befriends Normal Girl. They are instantly super-buds doing everything together. But when Normal Girl tries to have normal friends, Creepy Girl freaks out.
Turns out Creepy Girl is schizophrenic (always blame it on the schizos - they get a really bad rap, you know that? I'm surprised there hasn't been a louder outburst about the portrayal of schizophrenics, psycho- and sociopaths in movies. When The Da Vinci Code came out folks got pissed off about the constant portrayal of albinos as victims in movies so I have to wonder what the schizophrenics have to say about this shit) and does not want Normal Girl to do anything but hang out with her, going so far as to threaten her slutty friends, getting her sleazy teacher (played by Billy Zane who is way hotter than Normal Girl's boyfriend) fired and murdering her persistent ex.
The only thing she doesn't do is attack Normal Girl's new boyfriend (Cam Gigandet) for whatever reason. Sure, she stalks him in the library but she never actually does anything (insofar as I remember, I wasn't really paying attention). I mean, she rips another girl's belly ring out and keeps a woman tied up in a bedroom for at least a few days but she never even so much as threatens Boy Toy. Go figure.
But whatever. This movie was way too predictable to be even slightly creepy. Honestly, as soon as that little kitten walked on to the screen I found myself going "ah fuck" coz I knew it was going to end up dead and/or mutilated at some point. Yeah, it was kind icky when it actually happened but not that disturbing.
The only thing that surprised me was that the situation didn't escalate to murder before it did, and that there was only one casualty (apart from the kitten, and Creepy Girl herself. And possibly that other woman. Did she die? The camera was shaking around so much at the end, I couldn't really tell what was going on).
The movie sort of tried to push the boundaries of edginess with a really vague masturbation scene and some hinted lesbianism but they really pussied out in that department too. Some hardcore girl-on-girl action probably would have done the movie good actually, not to mention drawing a good sized audience.
All in all, the only good part of this movie was the trailers, and the rest of it should probably end up in the toilet, being little more than a waste of some good looking young actresses who will be lucky to go on to anything more before Hollywood disposes of them.
END
Directed by: Christian E. Christiansen. Written by: Sonny Mallhi. Starring: Minka Kelly, Leighton Meester, Cam Gigandet, Billy Zane, Daneel Harris, Alyson Michalka.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Pet Sematary
Pet Sematary (1989)
AKA: The Cat Came Back
This movie is about a young doctor or something (Dale Midkiff) who moves to a quiet little village in Maine with an evil secret. The evil secret being mainly that it has the highest mortality rate (both for pets and humans) of any small town without a fishing industry. I mean seriously, people seem to drop like flies there.
But whatever. So buddy moves into this big huge house right next to the highway where tractor trailers go zooming by at all times of the day and instead of putting up a fence around his property to protect his cat and two small children from running out onto the road, he sits around and drinks beer with the friendly/creepy guy (Fred Gwynne, who my boyfriend informs me played Papa Munster on the Munsters) next door.
When the family cat gets run over by a truck, Papa Munster takes buddy to bury it in the ancient indian burial ground (fuck) behind the pet cemetery. In a shocking twist of events, the cat comes back to life, only it comes back evil. Why? Because the ground is sour. Why? Because it is. But why???? Probably something to do with Satan. Why? Because it's Stephen King.
A little while later in the movie buddy's kid gets hit by a truck and dies (and it had to be the really cute kid, not the bratty one) so, ignoring the warnings of Papa Munster because apparently he's a friggin tool, buddy goes and plants the little kid in the ancient indian burial ground. Hilarity ensues. The weirdest part being that despite being creamed by a Mack truck and spending a couple of days in the ground the kid exhibits no wounds other than some Chucky looking stitches on his forehead. Then later when chick chick comes back to life (spoiler warning) she comes back full on zombie, like dripping eyeballs and skin peeling off, even though she was hanged an hour or so before she was brought back. What the fuck.
But I digress. There are really only two things which bother me about this situation:
Number one, why is it that when anything cool ever happens, it has to be evil? Like, why couldn't the ground just bring people back to life without turning them into murdering psychopaths? It doesn't make any sense that that would happen anyway. Like, seriously. Okay, I know that things coming back from the dead isn't strictly scientific but I will suspend my reasoning apparatus long enough to accept that. But come on. Why does it make them evil? Not only evil but completely destructive. Whatever.
Number two, why the fuck would buddy do that anyway? He knew that the cat came back evil, Papa Munster told him that the kid would come back evil... seriously. Apparently he was too busy expressing his emotions to an annoying degree to even think about what was going on. I guess that I, having no children, can't really put myself in that mindframe but... well... I just wouldn't do that.
I guess really it comes down to the fact that everything Stephen King does is basically a morality tale. To be fair, most of the best and oldest horror stories are, and this is really just an update of "The Monkey's Paw" anyway but that just bothers me on some level.
Now that I think of it, there is a third problem I have with this movie which is more characteristic of Stephen King stories - they couldn't just have one thing going on in here. It's not bad enough to have this satanic graveyard that brings its dead back as evil monsters. No, there have to be ghosts (forgot to mention that not only was buddy warned by Papa Munster not to put the kid in the cemetery, there's also this guy who gets smucked by a truck and comes back frequently in ghost form to warn buddy and his family to avoid the "place where the dead walk"), psychic phenomena (the obnoxious little girl has visions warning buddy and his family to avoid the place where the dead walk) and hallucinations of chick chick's terminally ill, psychotic and possibly possessed older sister which doesn't have anything to do with the movie really.
I mean, when they first brought up the Scary Sister, chick chick goes on about how they kept this girl alive and locked in a bedroom until she turns into a hideous, deranged monster so I was kind of expecting them to do that with the kid (i.e., lock him in a room and keep him alive until it becomes completely unbearable) but no, they didn't do that. Mind you, had they done that it would have added like an hour plus to the movie but then they could have cut out all that other horseshit at the beginning, including but not limited to Ghost Dude.
To summarize, this movie is not terrible. It's mediocre, but watchable Stephen King filler and compared to some other movies based off of his novels (Cujo for example) it's pretty good. It's just kind of... lame. Over and out.
END
Directed by: Mary Lambert. Written by: Stephen King, based on his own novel. Starring: Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, Blaze Berdahl, Miko Hughes, Brad Greenquist.
AKA: The Cat Came Back
This movie is about a young doctor or something (Dale Midkiff) who moves to a quiet little village in Maine with an evil secret. The evil secret being mainly that it has the highest mortality rate (both for pets and humans) of any small town without a fishing industry. I mean seriously, people seem to drop like flies there.
But whatever. So buddy moves into this big huge house right next to the highway where tractor trailers go zooming by at all times of the day and instead of putting up a fence around his property to protect his cat and two small children from running out onto the road, he sits around and drinks beer with the friendly/creepy guy (Fred Gwynne, who my boyfriend informs me played Papa Munster on the Munsters) next door.
When the family cat gets run over by a truck, Papa Munster takes buddy to bury it in the ancient indian burial ground (fuck) behind the pet cemetery. In a shocking twist of events, the cat comes back to life, only it comes back evil. Why? Because the ground is sour. Why? Because it is. But why???? Probably something to do with Satan. Why? Because it's Stephen King.
A little while later in the movie buddy's kid gets hit by a truck and dies (and it had to be the really cute kid, not the bratty one) so, ignoring the warnings of Papa Munster because apparently he's a friggin tool, buddy goes and plants the little kid in the ancient indian burial ground. Hilarity ensues. The weirdest part being that despite being creamed by a Mack truck and spending a couple of days in the ground the kid exhibits no wounds other than some Chucky looking stitches on his forehead. Then later when chick chick comes back to life (spoiler warning) she comes back full on zombie, like dripping eyeballs and skin peeling off, even though she was hanged an hour or so before she was brought back. What the fuck.
But I digress. There are really only two things which bother me about this situation:
Number one, why is it that when anything cool ever happens, it has to be evil? Like, why couldn't the ground just bring people back to life without turning them into murdering psychopaths? It doesn't make any sense that that would happen anyway. Like, seriously. Okay, I know that things coming back from the dead isn't strictly scientific but I will suspend my reasoning apparatus long enough to accept that. But come on. Why does it make them evil? Not only evil but completely destructive. Whatever.
Number two, why the fuck would buddy do that anyway? He knew that the cat came back evil, Papa Munster told him that the kid would come back evil... seriously. Apparently he was too busy expressing his emotions to an annoying degree to even think about what was going on. I guess that I, having no children, can't really put myself in that mindframe but... well... I just wouldn't do that.
I guess really it comes down to the fact that everything Stephen King does is basically a morality tale. To be fair, most of the best and oldest horror stories are, and this is really just an update of "The Monkey's Paw" anyway but that just bothers me on some level.
Now that I think of it, there is a third problem I have with this movie which is more characteristic of Stephen King stories - they couldn't just have one thing going on in here. It's not bad enough to have this satanic graveyard that brings its dead back as evil monsters. No, there have to be ghosts (forgot to mention that not only was buddy warned by Papa Munster not to put the kid in the cemetery, there's also this guy who gets smucked by a truck and comes back frequently in ghost form to warn buddy and his family to avoid the "place where the dead walk"), psychic phenomena (the obnoxious little girl has visions warning buddy and his family to avoid the place where the dead walk) and hallucinations of chick chick's terminally ill, psychotic and possibly possessed older sister which doesn't have anything to do with the movie really.
I mean, when they first brought up the Scary Sister, chick chick goes on about how they kept this girl alive and locked in a bedroom until she turns into a hideous, deranged monster so I was kind of expecting them to do that with the kid (i.e., lock him in a room and keep him alive until it becomes completely unbearable) but no, they didn't do that. Mind you, had they done that it would have added like an hour plus to the movie but then they could have cut out all that other horseshit at the beginning, including but not limited to Ghost Dude.
To summarize, this movie is not terrible. It's mediocre, but watchable Stephen King filler and compared to some other movies based off of his novels (Cujo for example) it's pretty good. It's just kind of... lame. Over and out.
END
Directed by: Mary Lambert. Written by: Stephen King, based on his own novel. Starring: Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, Blaze Berdahl, Miko Hughes, Brad Greenquist.
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