Popcorn Kernels: Sequel-Itis

In which we write mini reviews of films that explore the dichotomy of movie sequels. Both follow flicks released in 2000. One’s a bigger, better improvement and the other is a no good, scum-sucking disappointment that let its nascent franchise wither on the vine.

X2: X-Men United

Year: 2003

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry 

Run Time: 2 hours 14 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

The X-Men and Magneto’s team of evil mutants must join forces to combat a bigger evil: a crazed colonel hellbent on destroying all mutantkind.

If you remember, Bryan Singer’s 2000 film X-Men was a slight but politically aware superhero movie that was fun but no masterpiece. What makes his followup X2 the pinnacle of the series is that it removes the slightness, but as close as it gets, it’s still no masterpiece. Beefing up the already sprawling number of X-Men with the teleporting Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming, rocking flawless blue makeup), the gender-bent Wolverine Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu of Friday the 3th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan – got skeletons in your closet? Let me remove those for you.) and expanded roles for teen polar opposites Pyro (Aaron Stanford) and Iceman (Shawn Ashmore, wistful sigh), the cast is even more cumbersome but the political context is even more charged, coming in the wake of September 11th, 2001.

In X2, America is on the verge of Civil War as humans have become increasingly more aware (and afraid) of the mutants living among them. X2 puts all its cards on the table in the opening scene, in which Nightcrawler attempts to assassinate the president to promote Mutant rights. Not only is it a stunning action sequence on the bleeding edge of film technology at the time, it’s a heady parallel to both Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. The embers of political subtext (namely, gay rights) in X-Men have become a blazing inferno in the edgy paranoid grip of a post-9/11 society.

X2 maintains this social statement from frame one, though its intelligence flags at certain points. It’s astonishing that a film that contains a visual metaphor so complex as the scene where Professor X freezes all the humans at a museum right next to the exhibit depicting motionless Cro-Magnon figurines (indicating that humans are no longer the next big thing in evolution) could also be so wickedly unconvinced of its audience’s IQ that it needs Mystique to flash her eyes yellow in a place where she could easily be compromised just so we can know that it’s her in that dude’s body. But hey, this is Hollywood. Why should they have faith in us? We keep paying to see Transformers movies.

X2’s problem isn’t the occasional pandering, but rather the fact that its eyes are bigger than its screenplay. So many characters are crammed into these 2 hours that major players routinely vanish for half hours a time, and the movie heavily relies on X-Men to provide character backstories. Jean Grey and Cyclops get barely anything to do, Rogue has so little reason to be there that she’s literally tossed out of a plane, and Nightcrawler is shuffled to the back after we learn his tragic backstory, only to be called off the bench when the movie needs some deus ex machina, stat. The only new character given any real depth is its villain, Brian Cox’s Col. William Stryker.

But aside from that, X2 is even more fun and action-packed than the first. The fight sequences show a surer hand behind the camera, and the characters’ powers (especially Iceman) are far more integrated into both their fight choreography and their daily lives (Rogue blowing out ice cold breath after kissing Iceman is a playful, sexy detail that X1 could never have dreamed of). Plus returning arch-nemesis Ian McKellen is clearly having a ball here. His Magneto is alternately sassy, sardonic, and pure evil. He’s a joy to watch, and when McKellen is having a great time, you’re guaranteed one as well.

Rating: 8/10

American Psycho II: All-American Girl

Year: 2002

Director: Morgan J. Freeman

Cast: Mila Kunis, William Shatner, Geraint Wyn Davies 

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Rachel Newman (geddit?) murders her competitors for a sought-after TA position that will help her get into Quantico.

Could there be a more pointless sequel than American Psycho II? Well, Psycho II, I guess, but by all accounts that one’s actually OK. Let me rephrase that: Could there be a more pointless American Psycho sequel than American Psycho II: All-American Girl? Where the original was a cutting satire of yuppie consumerism and the pointless conformity of Wall Street, the sequel is about a quippy college student mowing down hardbodies so she can work for William Shatner. It might have been more at home in the 90’s alongside the likes of post-Freddy killers like the leprechaun, but it certainly has no place in 2002, poised at the very cutting edge of the torture porn zeitgeist. It’s an unnecessary, silly, and shallow slasher in a way that American Psycho is patently not.

Lucky for me, I have made a life out of enjoying silly and shallow slasher outcasts. Although American Psycho II still isn’t very good when you cut down to the core of it, it’s like Legally Blonde gone berserk, and I have room for that in my black, twisted heart. The novelty of seeing a wet-behind-the-ears Mila Kunis gnaw on a role that she has less than no grip on (her deep psychoses is mostly represented by a bunch of squinting) opposite an earth-shatteringly Shatnerian performance (ol’ Billy hisses every line like a syphilitic snake and It. Is. Sublime.) is certainly enough to power me through the duller parts, which this movie boasts in abundance.

The bloated second act is a repetitive slog of bloodless murder, apathetic alt-rock, and anemic puns livened up only by Robin Dunne as Brian, an entitled rich kid who’s hyperbolically venal and has the ill-advised hots for Mila Kunis. And he’s barely in it. This overly long portion of the film is a damn shame because, without it, American Psycho II would be a bad sequel magnum opus.

The opening act, which features a recast Patrick Bateman (Michael Kremko) being murdered by a little girl (yeah, sure) while Mila Kunis narrates, describing how she thinks they wrote a book about him (ha, ha), is a poppy, exciting chunk of early 2000’s schlock. Mila Kunis prowls the quad in a leather jacket and faces off against a lonely career counselor who has named her cat Ricky Martin. It’s a monster of pure innocence, cluelessly racking up scenes of hideously outdated trends and endearingly dim dialogue (Do you want to catch a bite to eat, maybe some dinner?”).

Then there’s the finale, which majestically unspools for a solid half hour after the plot has already ended, layering twist upon nonsensical twist atop a preternaturally straightforward story like an out-of-control soft serve machine. This is the act where we meet Rachel Newman’s mother, a blithering, incessantly complaining old hag ripped straight from the sweat-soaked pages of The Room (she even has a non sequitur line about breast cancer. What a time to be alive.) The interplay between this banshee and her crusty, leering husband is the stuff of f**king legend, a bad movie gold mine of biblical proportions.

I love so much about this movie’s bookending sequences that I feel bad rating it so poorly, but that middle third is so staunchly unimpressive that it drags its many glittering gems into the muck like a safe tossed into the Boston Harbor.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1272
Reviews In This Series
X-Men (Singer, 2000)
X2: X-Men United (Singer, 2003)
X-Men: The Last Stand (Ratner, 2006)
X-Men: First Class (Vaughn, 2011)
X-Men: Days of Future Past (Singer, 2014)
X-Men: Apocalypse (Singer, 2016)

American Psycho (Harron, 2000)
American Psycho II: All-American Girl (Freeman, 2002)

Census Bloodbath: Intensive Scare Unit

For our podcast episode about this very film, please click here.

Year: 1982

Director: Jean-Claude Lord

Cast: Lee Grant, Michael Ironside, Linda Purl

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

For all their reputation of politeness, the Canadians really know what they’re doing when it comes to making movies about serial murder. On average, any Canadian slasher flick is miles ahead of its U. S. counterpart. My Bloody Valentine is way more loveable than the thematically similar The Prowler, the States’ Bloody Birthday couldn’t hold a candle to Happy Birthday To Me, Terror Train rattles the fraternity prank revenge flick Hell Night right off its track, and Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is pretty much the Empire Strikes Back of slasherdom.

Sure, they’ve made their share of duds (I regret renting a tux for Prom Night and Humongous has miniscule worth), but in general the country knows what’s up when it comes to sticking sharp objects in people. Which is how we come to Visiting Hours, a 1982 hospital slasher that came late in the game but still lacerates the competition. Halloween II might be the medical horror people put on a pedestal form that era, but Visiting Hours is a filthy, gorgeous thoughtful treat.

As if we needed any more reasons to be scared of hospitals. Did you know they keep sick people there?

In Visiting Hours, outspoken TV anchorwoman Deborah Balin (Lee Grant) espouses nonviolent philosophies and vows to defend a woman who is being tried for shooting her husband after he beat her. Unfortunately this sets off misogynist serial killer Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside of – drumroll – Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II), a daddy’s boy whose mother severely burned his father after he hit her. After Colt attacks Deborah in her home, she is sent to County General Hospital to recuperate.

As she heals with the help of devoted/elfin and gorgeous nurse Sheila (Linda Purl) and her doting producer/boyfriend Gary Baylor (William Shatner of William Shatner), Colt stalks her over the course of Labour Day weekend. It’s a holiday, he can afford to take his time with it. Killers need to relax, too. In his deadly pursuit, he murders anystaff or patients who get in his way.

This is not, shall we say, a trivial pursuit.

The really exciting thing about Visiting Hours is that – uniquely in the slasher genre – it doesn’t just depict violence against women, it’s about violence against women. At every level, in nearly every scene, Visiting Hours engages with the real problems that manifest both in society and the media. Of course this means that the film isn’t free from the unpleasantness of those very same films, occasionally dipping into the post-grindhouse unpleasantness akin to Don’t Answer the Phone or Eyes of a Stranger.

But despite its scuzziness (most prevalent in a pretty arbitrary sequence I dubbed the Rape Interlude), Visiting Hours never asks you to enjoy the violence you’re watching. That’s a very important distinction, and its unrelenting focus brings it to a level that very few slashers even dream of reaching: it’s actually scary. From the opening attack on, Visiting Hours toys with your nerves, constructing tension sequences with all the right ingredients: well rounded, sympathetic characters, unpredictable outcomes, and multiple threads coming together for a big reveal.

The whole thing culminates in a Final Girl sequence so drawn-out and harrowing that she can hardly even scream by the end. Deborah is vulnerable, resourceful, indomitable, and very worthy of being at the center of the most meaningful character arc of early 80’s slasherdom. [SPOILERS This nonviolent woman is relentlessly pursued by Colt – an emissary of the rampant cult (geddit?) of misogyny. He so doggedly attacks her that she is eventually driven to thwart he ironclad morals and end her suffering with a violent act: gutting Colt like a fish. She is a pacifist driven to violence by a patriarchal society that devalues women and only creates more evil in the world.] It might not be perfectly expressed, but damn if it isn’t one of the most engaging slasher storylines I’ve seen in months.

And that’s saying something. Pray for me.

Happily, much of the grittiness of Colt Hawker is scrubbed away by either circumstances (the girl he brings home to torment later plays a key role in his downfall) or a hearty inoculation of camp. Because you can’t have existed in 1982 without being inherently embarrassing, there’s plenty of silly moments to cheer you up. A big source of amusement is the fact that Colt Hawker changes costumes more often than a Lady Gaga concert, including a bizarre tribal getup complete with clip-on piercings. He actually stops to change in the middle of a chase sequence! My current working theory is that Visiting Hours is an aborted prequel to the Dana Carvey classic, Master of Disguise.

Another plot point that will have you and your friends debating for hours is Sheila’s “babysitter.” She’s always around, has no qualms about using the shower or the bed, and drapes herself lovingly over the duvet wrapped only in a towel. They’re about as explicit as a lesbian couple could get back in the day, while remaining maddeningly determined to act like there’s nothing unusual going on beyond being the hired help.

Although my dream job does involve nobody giving a damn what I wear, so maybe she just hooked it up.

As if that weren’t enough, the movie is just plain good. I know I’m a sucker for a bold color scheme, but the hospital exterior and many key scenes are lit with a chilling blue that creates a dark fairy tale atmosphere that’s hard to shake off. The cinematography is as classically skillful as Canadians could get, and they’re even on the ball enough to sneak in a little symbolism hither and thither.

So there you have it. Visiting Hours is a fun, well constructed, frightening, smart, satisfying slasher flick. The fact that I could write for this long without even bringing up William Shatner speaks to how arresting it is. I do wish that some of Colt’s scenes were a little less… rapey, but they’re tolerably managed and play a huge part in the thesis of the film. Oh, Canada. What would I do without you?

Killer: Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside)

Final Girl: Deborah Balin (Lee Grant)

Best Kill: An elderly patient has her air tube cut and Colt takes her picture as she asphyxiates.

Sign of the Times: Lisa wears a leather jacket over a hot pink outfit with diagonal stripes and she isn’t arrested.

Scariest Moment: Sheila gets a call revealing that the killer is at home with her daughter.

Weirdest Moment: Colt squeezes a stress ball as he murders people.

Champion Dialogue: “You’ve got a lot of friends. Or else you know a lot of florists.”

Body Count: 7

1. Francine is killed offscreen.
2. Mrs. Corrigan has her air tube cut.
3. Connie is stabbed in the gut.
4. Vinnie is stabbed in the chest.
5. Cop #1 is thrown through a window.
6. Cop #2 has his jaw broken.
7. [Colt is gutted.]

TL;DR: Visiting Hours is a grimy but intelligent slasher that engages very well with the violence against women inherent to the genre.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 1210