Some movies you turn on really anticipating a positive experience. I went into The Perfect Host completely blind - having seen no trailers or hype for it and read no reviews. I turned on this Netflix listing simply because I like David Hyde Pierce.
Pierce: The Face of Horror.
And seriously, a horror film with David Hyde Pierce? The man I would cast to play Food Network's Alton Brown? I've always had an inkling that his acting ability far outweighed the parts I had seen him play, but I was understandably skeptical about seeing him in a horror movie role.
To be fair, The Perfect Host is much more of a thriller than a horror movie - and it is one of the best thrillers I've seen in recent years. It's subtle when it needs to be and does a wonderful job of slowly peeling back the layers of the story, providing a great number of twists and turns without giving you much in the way of exposition.
It's hard to summarize the plot without giving anything away. A fugitive, having just completed an armed robbery, is on the run when his identity is splashed all over the local media. Injured and needing a place to hide, he cons his way into a man's home (played by Pierce) as he prepares for a dinner party. Not all is as it seems, though, and he quickly finds himself regretting his choice of hide outs.
There is so much more going on in this plot. Wanting to avoid spoilers, I can't really elaborate further, but this film does a lot of "turning the tables" on it's characters. Unlike a lot of Hollywood twists, these aren't unbelievable events that come out of nowhere and really don't mesh with the plot. Instead, newcomer writer-director Nick Tomnay does a brilliant job in the planning and execution of this plot. You can tell that he carefully deconstructed his overall story and sprinkled those plot points like bread crumbs for the audience to pick up on. There is very little flat-out exposition. Instead, the audience is given all of the pieces they need to understand what is going on without anyone having to spell it out for them.
I definitely recommend this film. It's strange and mysterious as you learn more about Pierce's character, whom he plays perfectly. They leave a lot of questions unanswered in the end, but in a good way.
I stumbled across this movie when it was added to Netflix a little while ago. Seeing a few names I recognized (and the fact that I would enjoy just listening to Keith David read the phone book to me), I added it to the queue for a rainy day. Well, it's not quite rainy, but I do have a rare day off with nothing in particular to do, so I decided to check it out.
When the final credits rolled, I decided to check out some of the reviews for the movie (something I can't do when on my Xbox, which is how I access Netflix 90% of the time) and was kind of surprised. With every horror movie, you expect to see a lot of low ratings. Part of this is because horror movies tend to be crappy, but it can also be attributed to the fact that people can be incredibly picky about what they're looking for in a horror film. Some are looking for extreme gore and they don't care much about the plot, others look for compelling writing and performances, while still others are just looking to have the pants scared off of them. With a fairly broad scope of points to hit, it only makes sense that horror movies tend to get lower ratings.
Also, horror films tend to be shit.
But I was seeing review after review saying that this was the worst movie ever.
A short list of some horror movies that are worse than or equal to The Inheritance, limited by what I have personally viewed:
Redneck Zombies
American Psycho 2: The All American Girl
Manos and the Hands of Fate
Gamebox 1.0 (which I've been meaning to write a review for)
Ticked Off Trannies with Knives (still trying to figure out how that got a high rating)
RoboGeisha (it's more of an action flick, but it has enough gore to be labelled horror)
Cabin Fever
Deadgirl
Transylmania
Satan's Little Helper
The Sitter
After.Life
Tooth and Nail
Any number of films featured on MST3K
And that's not counting the number of films I've seen detailed reviews for that look 10 times worse. You want to call The Inheritance the worst movie of all time? Go watch some of the films reviewed by The Cinema Snob and then we can talk.
Now, I won't make any claims that I was watching this film with a serious critical eye. Today's movie choice was a film turned on as background noise while I spent some quality time beading.
Diet Coke helps the creative process.
But I will at least say that for a genre that is filled to the brim with stereotypical and formulaic slashers, this film was trying to do something a little different.
The story starts with a family reunion - five "cousins" from five close-knit families are called up to the old plantation where their ancestors were once enslaved for a get-together with their Elders. There was some confusion of people writing reviews thinking it was weird that two of these cousins were in a relationship, but they establish that these five are not actually related. Back in the days of slavery, there was a mysterious African shaman who was lynched but survived. He ensnared five slave families with promises of freedom, power, wealth and prosperity if they made sacrifices to him. Agreeing to do so, these families have stayed incredibly close to one another throughout the generations, considering themselves different branches of one spiritual family.
As far as these young people are concerned, it's just a weird family story. The real purpose of them meeting up with their Elders is so they can ask for some financial help.
In my opinion, the premise had promise. It kind of ties together the tropes commonly found in both witchcraft ritual horror and slasher films and it's interesting to see the concept of "evil ancient African magic" from the perspective of a film with an all-African-American cast (except for two out-of-place white people... guess who dies first?)
The performances were solid, but the script was really weak. The characters are put into an inescapable situation far too early in the film and don't make many intelligent attempts to save themselves, despite an obvious desire to. Toward the end, it seems that they wrote themselves into a corner: characters who know they have no chance of getting out of there simply jump into danger as if the writer didn't know how else to get rid of them. Because of this, the film doesn't really have an ending, which is it's biggest flaw.
Do I recommend this movie? Not really. It isn't great. Hell, it isn't even really good, but it fell into the following criteria:
1) I made it through to the end credits.
2) I didn't regret watching it.
3) I've seen a hell of a lot worse.
So, no. Sorry Netflixers. It's not the worst movie ever. It had the potential to be something much better, with a really strong cast, some good visual effects, and an interesting story idea. The script and storytelling was too weak to save it from being a 2.5 out of 5 in my book.
The Fright Night remake wasn't really on my radar as far as must-see-movies were concerned. I have a long standing love of the vampire genre, but most of the films tend to disappoint me. From the trailers I saw (which, granted, were brief and infrequent) it looked like your oh-so-predictable teen flick that I felt I could summarize without even seeing: the virgins and/or drug users will get killed, the kid will find out about a vampire but no one will believe him, his parents will be unwitting obstacles to what he needs to accomplish, he will seek advice from an unwilling or unreliable Van Helsing, his girlfriend will be in peril and he'll figure out a way to save the day. Roll credits.
And this is without having seen the first film.
The first act of the film unfortunately played into my expectations - it seemed incredibly slow because I knew what was most likely going to happen and therefore no tension was built up. It wasn't bad, I just felt like I was watching an episode of a tv show I'd seen before.
Yes, I'm talking about you.
If I wasn't a fan of the genre and hadn't seen many films like this, the first act probably wouldn't have bothered me. It really establishes the main characters and the environment they live in. I just felt that, at times, the pacing was a little slow because I was waiting for the main character to know what I was already told in the trailer: Your neighbor is a vampire, try not to get eaten.
But things really picked up for the better in acts two and three. Without giving too much away, it was refreshing to see a vampire really take initiative and really pursue those who pose a threat to him rather than do nothing while the main characters stew and fret over the situation. The way the main character's mother was written was also a nice change. At one point, she is put into a situation in which she is asked not to answer the door. She has no reason to believe that she shouldn't, but because her son pleads with her to trust him and do as he says, she leaves the door unanswered. Rather than falling back on the same-old-same-old storytelling of automatically pitting the skeptical parent in the way of the teen protagonist, they subtly showed that their relationship is more realistic and complex than the average cardboard cut-out that we often get as parents in a teen flick.
Without gushing too much or going too fan girlish: this was the main reason I saw this film:
Totally going to be my new desktop wallpaper.
To anyone who doesn't recognize him: that is David Tennant doing his best Russel Brand impersonation. I really have to give both him and the screenwriter credit for how his character is introduced: as our unwilling Van Helsing, he initially comes across as shallow, selfish, and a bit of a prick. However, while our main character gets his first chance to talk to him one-on-one, he slowly sheds the physical facade of his stage persona: he removes his wig, fake piercings, and starts wiping away the "tattoos" that cover his neck and chest. I could be reading into this, but it really seemed like a brilliant but subtle way to tell the audience that Peter Vincent is a more developed and meaningful character than your first impressions would indicate. (Note, the following clip is trimmed down for time.)
I felt like everyone gave great performances in this film. It wasn't campy like I'm told the first Fright Night was, but the film didn't take itself too seriously. It was very genuine about the whole situation: what do you do if you're put in such an unbelievable situation - especially when lives are at stake?
It doesn't over-romanticize vampires: there is definitely a sex factor to Colin Farrell's character, but sex and attraction is used as a ploy to lure in victims. The film consciously responds to the Twilight version of vampires and makes it clear that this is taking us back to the vampires that made you hide under the covers as opposed to the ones who just stand there and watch you sleep because they're possessiveobsessed "romantic".
Speaking of sex, I also liked how teenage sexuality was represented here. Rather than having the hot girl who wants to have sex be represented as a slut, talking about whether or not to have sex is simply a part of being a teenager in an intimate relationship. There isn't really any pressure whether or not to have sex- it's expressed at one point as just a "let's get under the covers and see what happens" situation. And when sex is going to occur for the first time, talking about whether or not they really want to is represented, albiet briefly. I just feel like this is more realistic and therefore makes it seem more genuine. From personal experience, and what I've heard from just about any one else I've talked to about sex, many teens/young adults feel they were a bit duped by how people fly passionately into each other's arms and sex simply happens rather than a couple deciding, whether through a long conversation ("Do you really feel you're ready for that sort of thing?") or a short one ("Wanna have sex?" "Sure.").
Given how much praise I have for the screenplay, it should have come as no surprise that it came from Marti Noxon - a writer/producer who I've loved for quite some time for her work with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and others. Also, for her cameo in the musical episode "Once More With Feeling":
All-in-all: Go see Fright Night. It's well written, well directed, and the performances are more than you would normally expect to see from your average teen horror flick.
As you can imagine, I was not going into White Noise 2 expecting it to be a good movie. I remember seeing a booth promo'ing this straight-to-DVD thing back in 2006 at Comic-con. (Man, I need to get my ass back there. It's been too long.) Consider that it's taken me about 3 years to get around to watching it, despite having some very compelling reasons to be interested in it.
Okay, only one reason to be interested in it.
Fillion is good in it. I don't say that as a fan girl apologist. With what he is given, he gives a fairly believable performance. But this film has a horrible premise, followed by a terrible conclusion. It's not quite 'horribafuckus', but it's pretty damn close.
TMNT 3 was my favorite as a child. :(
In fact, many of the performances range from great to at least decent. The actors can't really take blame for the badness of this film. For example, Katee Sackhoff, while given very little to work with, is able to show her character as reasonable, strong and still vulnerable. Though she does suffer from the writers not knowing how to use her properly. For example, I know that it's a common trope to have women be incapable of fighting back while the men folk jump in to throw the punches but watching Starbuck flail about, smacking a guy repeatedly with her purse when he just tried to slit her throat is just ridiculous. Hell, watching any woman respond that way just seems silly.
It's like some weird Firefly/Battlestar Galactica crossover fan fic.
And that's the core problem to this film: the script. It is just simply poorly written. First off: this movie isn't about EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena). At all. It's a sequel to a movie about EVP. It advertises itself as a movie about EVP. Hell, it even has an awkward tie in trying to convince you that this is in fact a movie about EVP. It isn't. It's about near death experiences allowing someone to see when someone was about to die. That concept has nothing at all to do with EVP. This movie should have just embraced that fact and not tried to bend over backwards to make it fit into a franchise that it had nothing to do with. Not that it would have made it a good film. Just potentially better and less awkwardly written from the start. That, and they probably wouldn't have had as many TV-static themed jump scares.
"Bitch, I don't even need electronics. I'm just a spooky granny in an elevator - FEAR ME!"
The movie isn't scary in the least. It's a series of jump scares. Not only that - jump scares with no suspense to lead you into them. I've seen screamers with more skill in crafting their jump scares than this film. (I can still remember when I first encountered kikia... Dammit, Matt. You woke up my whole house with that one.)
A good jump scare (trust me, there are such rarities in existence) occur when the film builds suspense and then plays against the audience's expectations. They direct your attention to under the kid's bed. You know something is going to pop out and scare him as little Timmy leans down, slowly, oh so slowly, his breaths shallow and swift and his heart pounding in his ears. He lifts back the bed skirt and...
Nothing comes out from under the bed. The film plays against your expectation of something scary being under the bed, builds suspense, but doesn't deliver there. They deliver in the creepy jump scare that happens when Timmy decides he's safe and goes for a glass of water, but gets eaten by something in the hallway between his bedroom and the kitchen.
Poor little Timmy.
This film is also generally confused when it comes to back story. Let's break this down as if we were the ones constructing the plot. It has it's central plot device: Dude can see when people are going to die. Dude saves people from dying. Seems like the beginning of a super hero plot. But this is a horror movie. There has to be a negative consequence for it all, right? We can't just have a guy going about and saving people without something bad happening because of it, right? So, we make it so that he's disrupting their fates: these people were supposed to die anyway and in three days of them being saved, they die some horrible death that takes some other people out with them.
So why do they die in three days?
Answer: the Devil.
That's it, really. They try to tie it into this confused twist about how Christ rose on the third day, so the Devil kills people who were supposed to die on the third day... you know what, I'm not going to waste time trying to explain it. The movie certainly doesn't.
The Devil did it. Three days. Yadda yadda. Moving on.
White Noise 2 is a confused mess from beginning to end. Thank goodness I have much better things to watch Fillion and Sackhoff in. I'd imagine most of these actors (even the mediocre ones) are far too good for this movie.
"I don’t like it when black characters become white in movies, or things like that. That was something I found deeply problematic with the attempt by some people who had a lot of money and a lot of clout, and who wanted the rights to Anansi Boys, at one point. Somewhere in there, they made the fatal mistake of saying to me, “And, of course, the characters won’t be black in the movie because black people don’t like fantasy.” They were suddenly very surprised that we were no longer interested in selling them the book."
What in the world? Why on Earth would anyone want to re-cast Anansi Boys as not Black (pressumably White)? How? What? Why?
Spoilers ahead. If you haven't read the book, immediately go to your bookseller of choice and buy it. There's also a very good audiobook recording of it floating around the internet. It is brilliant. One of my favorite books.
Get it. Read it. Love it.
Ok, let's dig into this.
This is a story about Afican gods and the son/sons of one African god in particular - Anansi, the spider. The story is steeped in African mythology and modern African American culture. While it is written by a white Englishman, it gives what feels like a very authentic and respectful nod to the mysticism of African American culture, particularly in the South East.
(Note: There is some debate as to whether or not Anansi is really considered a god or just a character in a number of fables. As the book takes the god perspective, I'm going to refer to him as such.)
Anansi is the spider out of a number of West African folk tales, presented in the book as a trickster god and the keeper of stories. The stories he is in often focus around his sly ways of fooling others for the benefit of himself:
I remember hearing stories of Anansi and others as a child, even though I was fairly culturally separated from their origin. While not incredibly common in the US, these stories are still told widely through West Africa and Jamaica. (If they're common elsewhere, I'd love to know more.)
That's one of the beauties of Anansi Boys. While it is told from the perspective of a modern day African American man who seems to have a bit of a disliking for his past (particularly because of his father's antics), it is deeply rooted in the stories and mythos of the "Old World" as it were.
So how on Earth could you recast the main characters as anything but Black?
Anansi is the father of the main character and his "brother". If you recast these brothers as not black, then would Anansi himself not be African? Were the movie makers intending on making Anansi any race they wanted to because he wasn't human and therefore could take any form? What about the friends and family, whose characterizations are very closely tied to their cultural and racial identities?
And would these movie makers not consider the implications of taking an African god and casting him or his children as not African?
I'm generally in support of color blind casting. For example, having a mix of races representing the gods in Thor was a pleasant surprise for me. While those characters should, in the purest sense of the mythos they are based on, be Nordic, having a mixed-race cast gave it an interesting diversity that didn't bother me in the slightest or take me out of the film.
I loved this guy. Seriously. Awesome casting, as far as I'm concerned.
There are grey areas in color blind casting, like the issue over the "racist" casting for extras in the Hobbit. I still don't really know where I stand on that one. Did Tolkein specify the skin color of the hobbits? No. But he was writing an alternative mythology for the peoples of Western Europe, particularly England - ethnically, white. And he specified that the people to the South who fought under Sauron were dark skinned. So, is it wrong to cast light skinned people as hobbits? In fitting with how the racial makeup was presented in the Lord of the Rings series, it would make sense to keep them pale. But is it racism?
Pic Barely Related
And if it is racism to cast only white people because of the cultural setting, would it have been racist to cast only Asian actors in the Avatar: The Last Airbender film? After all, that film should be cast as all Asian due to it's cultural inspirations. (Personally, I would have preferred that. However, a shitty film is still a shitty film despite the race of the actors involved.)
That's part of a store-bought Aang costume. Nightmare fuel.
So yes, there are grey areas when it comes to racial casting, and there always will be. But when the race of the characters is so ingrained in who and what they are...
Let's just say, I'm glad someone was dumb enough to tell Gaiman of their casting choices before they got the rights to the book.
PS - Just a note about strange book cover designs:
I found that under the listing for a Japanese copy of Anansi Boys. Um, what? Why is there a chubby white angel on the cover? Does that really describe a book about African folklore that has nothing to do with angels or Judeo-Christian mythology?
All I can say: Oy.
Agree? Disagree? Let me know! As long as we keep things civil, I'm happy to host some debate and discussion.
My fiance is a huge Green Lantern fan. Huge. Outside of just reading comics, he owns two Green Lantern hats, one Green Lantern shirt, and a denim jacket that I stitched the Lantern logo onto the back of. He and I have watched each of the animated Green Lantern stories. He would have a Green Lantern ring of his own if he didn't have a chronic case anti-jewelry-itis.
Part of a comic I drew for him for Christmas. Seriously. He's that into it.
So when he and I heard they were making a Green Lantern movie, we were understandably excited. Seeing a fan trailer for it starring one of our favorite actors didn't hurt, either:
Alas, it was not to be. We knew it wasn't a real trailer, but it got us both jazzed about the possibility of an awesome film. Unlike many other superhero stories, Green Lantern really dances along the line between traditional superhero and traditional science fiction. Hollywood can make awesome science fiction movies, so why not an awesome sci-fi superhero flick?
Then Ryan Reynolds was cast. Not a terrible choice, but we weren't expecting a great performance out of him. Then pictures of the goofy-ass costume came out. Then the first trailer hit. Oh boy. With questionable CGI and costumes that looked bizarrely painted-on, I was worried.
It's like Zorro decided to start LARP'ing as a wood elf.
We saw the film together, decked out in Green Lantern gear, and I was half-expecting to duck out of there at the end of the film, hiding behind the brim of my hat, ashamed to be seen in a fandom associated with that crappy film (If Avatar: The Last Airbender's movie could do that to me, Green Lantern certainly could. Thank goodness I didn't buy any merch for that movie before it came out. Yeesh.)
And then it happened. The movie didn't suck.
It wasn't a miraculous piece of film making, but it wasn't terrible. The story was easy to follow and they covered most of the basics. There were definite weaknesses, but it wasn't a travesty. Reynolds didn't play the smarmy jack ass I expected out of him, but he didn't turn Hal into a cardboard cut out with no personality.
If anything, I think the movie had some serious editing issues. The decision to use Parallax created a lead into making the Yellow ring for the next film. The changes they made to Hammond created an interesting parallel to Hal (both given powers by their contact with alien life, one for good and one for evil), though they did little with this parallel to make the characters foils of one another. They gave us a decent look at Oa and some of the other Lanterns who often play crucial roles in Hal's interactions with the Corps. But spending so much time on his friends and family, his love interest, his job situation, etc. made the film really bloated and made me wish I could have seen more of what makes Hal's story stand out from the others. Nearly every superhero movie focuses, at least in part, on the hero's love interest. They just didn't need that in this movie. There was so much interesting material to work with in the Corps - the politics of the Guardians, the mentor/antagonistic relationship between Hal and Sinestro, etc.
Over at pajiba, they make an interesting point about the editing of this film:
One thing I feel needs mentioning: this is not Martin Campbell’s cut of the film, but the studio’s. I live in New Orleans where it was shot, I read the shooting script, all of which was painstakingly filmed with intense research, and all of that was left on the cutting room floor — a sort of combination of what happened to Daredevil and Watchmen, respectively — character development sacrificed for CG, scenes made irrelevant by removing their setup. The movie in the theater starts with an explanation of mythos that is made redundant by the more natural, scripted questions from Hal when he gets the ring. Ten minutes of childhood Hal, Carol, and Hector that sets up Hal’s first ring construct is reduced to an awkwardly placed flashback in the middle of another scene. The training with the ring is almost completely excised except for one minor scene. Most appallingly, the ending completely deletes the fact that Kilowog, Sinestro, and Toma-Re arrive at the end and help Hal defeat Parallax. Not to mention Parallax was supposed to be a 3rd act reveal after we spend the film worried about Hammond going evil, not the main villain for the entire film. I sincerely hope we get a director’s cut or at least all the deleted scenes on the video release.
So, maybe a director's cut is in order. Would it be any better? It depends. If they leave in all of the content that it has in the final release but inject a ton of extra scenes, I think it may still feel bloated and out of place. The sequences with Parallax seemed very tacked on and disconnected from the rest of the film. Not only that, but the threat that Parallax poses against the galaxy seemed played down once they finally got to the big show-down. Placing in exclusively in the third act would increase the sense of danger he poses, rather than having him float around the galaxy while the Lanterns talk up how destructive he can be.
I would definitely be interested in what they cut from Killawog, Toma-Re and Sinestro. Some people think that there was too much Sinestro in this film, but I think there wasn't really enough. They hinted at it, but I feel like his relationship to Hal as a comerade is much more important in setting him up as a [SPOILERS] villain [/SPOILERS] than giving face time to his girl-back-home. I don't think that he needed much more screen time if they had used what time he was given more effectively. He's not all buddy-buddy with Hal, but if they're going off of Secret Origin (the comic that I believe they cited as inspiration) then Sinestro should be a bit more of a mentor, like the sensei who doesn't particularly like his pupil, but still aims to push him to be better.
This movie wasn't terrible and it definitely deserves a sequel rather than having to scrap it and start over.
If you want a better way to be introduced to the series, check out the animated Green Lantern: First Flight.
I finally got my Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan in the follow up animated piece Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. It's also pretty awesome and will give you a lot of the history of the Corps without being a total exposition dump. I highly recommend it. Still, it's not a piece that focuses heavily on Hal specifically, so it doesn't really fulfill the desire to see Nathan take on the role.
One day, Fillion. One day.
Agree? Disagree? Then let me know. Leave a comment below. I don't claim my word as law. Keep it civil and I'm all up for discussion and debate.
I posted this video on Youtube after the film came out - but considering the subject, I figure it makes sense to share it here:
Some light film analysis. More serious content to follow.
