Bent Out Of Shape

Year: 2021

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Wow. It's been a while since I've had reason to review a current movie on the blog proper (I do still do that occasionally over at Alternate Ending, when I watch bullshit that Tim doesn't want to cover). But we can't just sit with our thumbs up our asses when there's a new Halloween movie out in theaters and also everybody's favorite streaming service Peacock! The film's release (and the subsequent release of the trilogy capper Halloween Ends) was delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so let's see if time has muted by ambivalence toward 2018's Halloween.

Spoiler alert: It hasn't.

Halloween Ends picks up on the same night as Halloween 2018. Well, it spends about eight seconds there before launching into a wholly unnecessary flashback to the events of Halloween night 1978 which both serve as a revision to Halloween II which was erased out of continuity and delivers absolutely no material that is interesting in the slightest, though where would we be if we didn't have a dead-eyed doppelgänger of Donald Pleasence's Dr. Sam Loomis (Tom Jones Jr. in creepily accurate prosthetic makeup, with a spectacularly unconvincing vocal imitation by Colin Mahan)? Talk about a Halloween: Resurrection!

After that flashback gives us insight into two characters who have no major bearing on the plot, we again pick up in 2018. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is being rushed to the hospital by her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). Having smugly and gleefully erased Halloween II from the continuity, the screenwriters can now recreate it themselves by sidelining Laurie into a hospital bed for literally the entire film.

The killer Michael Myers (Nick Castle for the legacy value, but James Jude Courtney for anything that requires physical effort that they can't ask of a 74-year-old man, which is almost everything Michael does in the movie) was left for dead in Laurie's burning basement. Guess how that goes? He emerges and begins his rampage through Haddonfield anew. A mob gathers to take him down once and for all, led by survivors of his original 1978 rampage: babysittees Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall, taking over from Brian Andrews and Paul Rudd) and Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), pisspants coward Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet, taking over for whoever the hell played that kid who Donald Pleasence hilariously scares away from entering the Myers house by shouting "Get your ass away from there!"), nurse and "Dr. Loomis' best friend even though I'm pretty sure they met for the first time that night in 1978" Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), and former sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), whose daughter Annie was killed by Michael 40 years ago.

I know filming was wrapped before the pandemic shut down productions, but Dylan Arnolds cheekbones seem three years more prominent, so I'm not sure what happened.

Can you tell I hated the screenplay for Halloween Kills? I cannot stress enough how richly hypocritical it is that the 2018 film drooled all over itself for retconning the Michael Myers-Laurie Strode sibling relationship that many fans disliked and then proceeded to repeat the much worse mistakes of many other films in the franchise, almost beat for beat. I've already mentioned Laurie getting Halloween II-ed (this is also a result of this being the middle film in a trilogy, but could we not have gotten Laurie and Michael together in one shot, even?), but this film also emulates Rob Zombie's Halloween in presenting Haddonfield as a low rent white trash haven where every word out of a body count character's mouth is shrill and vexing. And no specific spoilers on this, but it has a Myers backstory that's nearly as bad as Halloween 6, to boot.

There is not a single returning character who is treated with anything resembling respect. Not that I necessarily need the film to respect Lonnie Fucking Elam, but this reboot series has consistently failed to recognize any of the actual ways human beings react to trauma or even remember things from 40 years ago. Laurie has always born the brunt of this instinct, being twisted into an unrecognizable gremlin of a woman, but Tommy Doyle doesn't so much go from 0 to 60 as start as 60 and rampage through every scene like Michael Chiklis playing a rabid caveman. It doesn't even do justice to the characters we just met, running Allyson through an absolutely inscrutable arc that doesn't square with anything we know of her from the 2018 film. And dear lord, at one point, Charles Cyphers even gets to trot out his classic "one good scare" line even though he has no reason to recall something he said offhand to a teen girl 40 years ago 12 hours before anything memorable happened that day - honestly it would have had more creative integrity if he had said "It's Halloween. Everyone is entitled to one good scare... motherfucker."

Now don't misunderstand me. I don't mind that some of these characters become bad people or have bad things happen to them. I'm not particularly devoted to the lady who drove Dr. Loomis to Smith's Grove 40 years ago. It's just that every line of dialogue is stiff and unnatural, every action is ill-motivated, and while every character is packed with personality traits rather than being one-note body count fodder, none of these traits resemble anything a person would actually do or say, dunking the audience into a surreal morass of nonsense that's impossible to claw your way out of. There's a gay couple in the film that I have heard criticized for being offensive stereotypes, but I take umbrage with that interpretation considering that you can't be a stereotype if you're not performing a recognizable human behavior.

Also these films have an asshole problem. In that every character is one. 

But here's the thing. I don't hate this movie. I would, I really would, if it weren't for two things. First, the kills are generally pretty damn solid. They're a little too brutal to call "fun," but in terms of squeamish slasher movie joy, they deliver on all fronts, more than a typical Halloween outing. The creative weaponry is more Jason's milieu, but in this film, any object in Michael Myers' hands can become a deadly weapon, whether it's a light bulb, a car door, a stairwell, or his own thumbs. There are also some unique angles to the proceedings (when's the last time you saw someone get stabbed in the armpit?). The effects are terrific, the sequences are visceral and gut-jangling, and while they fail to capture the elegance of the violence of the Carpenter original, that is something I am fully willing to forgive for the 12th movie in a slasher franchise. I'm not a monster.

Also, the score is straight-up terrific. John Carpenter, his son Cody, and his godson Daniel Davies have assembled a superb collection of variations on the original electronic score. They have let themselves off the leash this time, no longer tying themselves to amplified versions of the classic Halloween themes, but really creating a minor key fantasia on what Halloween might have sounded like with several more million dollars and the piano was on fucking fire. Nothing reaches the heights of "The Shape Hunts Allyson," which was the standout track of the 2018 film (and is brought back in such a way that the filmmakers clearly figured out what they had after tossing it off in a 50-second scene the first time around). However, this score would have a much harder time giving us a standout, because every new composition is a bone-vibrating success.

Good music and good kills really do elevate a slasher movie. Hell, those two things are the only reasons Friday the 13th is remembered fondly. It doesn't make the horrible script that actively avoids having a plot or accomplishing anything satisfying with even a single character any less crushing. But it is somewhat of a balm for the pain of sitting through the worst scenes of the film, which are largely relegated to anything in the hospital or involving Tommy Doyle (AKA most of the scenes).

TL;DR: Halloween Kills is a sequel that learns all the wrong lessons from the franchise it's attempting to resurrect.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1401

Reviews In This Series

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)

Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)

Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)

Halloween (Zombie, 2007)

Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)

Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

The Shape Of Things To Come

Year: 2018

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I've already done some revisiting of previous franchise marathon entries this October, so it's only appropriate that the fun should continue with an actual movie in theaters! What a treat! We haven't seen good ole Michael Myers on this blog since we concluded our marathon with Rob Zombie's Halloween II a year late in 2016 because I could not convince myself to watch that one. And we haven't seen that pale blank face in theaters since the very same film when it was released in 2009, almost a full decade ago.

Well, here we are at a new entry that has already made so much money I wouldn't be surprised if the sequel is being rushed into theaters next weekend. That is unequivocally good, because if there's one thing I love it's a sprawling horror franchise. But as for the movie itself? Well, let's take a look.

At the very least, I'm glad Michael and Laurie are getting in on the ABBA craze.

It's Halloween, 2018. It's the only Halloween that matters other than the one back in 1978, when Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) was stalked by masked murderer Michael Myers (Nick Castle) while she and her friends were babysitting. Nothing else happened in between then and now, we promise.

Laurie Strode is now a reclusive shut-in at her survivalist compound in the sticks of Haddonfield, IL. Her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) has gone ahead and had her own daughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak). But having a teenage child in Haddonfield is never a good idea, because Michael escapes imprisonment while being transferred to a different facility (which he's already done twice before, once in this very timeline) and immediately begins stalking around town in his good ol' Shatner mask mowing down as many passersby as he can in the process.

Laurie, Karen, the cops, and Michael's new caretaker Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) run around Haddonfield in a state of general distress while Michael wreaks as much havoc as one might expect after being cooped up for so many years.

Oh, how we've missed the big lug.

So, this is the third film in forty years to be titled Halloween. Those are some big shoes to fill, but at least the presence of Rob Zombie's remake means that it could never be the worst one. Unfortunately, this entry barely rises to the middle of the franchise ranking at large.

Halloween has certain good ideas it's working with, but it doesn't seem to have found its own personality. It's actually a lot like Halloween H20, which is now as old as the original Halloween was when it was released: We finally have Jamie Lee Curtis back to play one of her most iconic roles, but this is still a Halloween movie and we need a slate of nubile teens to be offed in the background while she does her thing. H20 very clearly had two different plot threads like this, but it wove them together with reasonable success and cemented the whole thing with a heavy dose of Kevin Williamson snark. 

In Halloween, unfortunately, the threads just unravel before your eyes. The movie can barely maintain its focus on Allyson, let alone her slate of friends, who exist in disjointed scene fragments usually in pairs but never all together. This slasher movie is really missing a unifying element, and the Halloween dance setpiece they feature early on completely fails to be that. The cast splinters off into a series of stalker vignettes which don't tie together at all, or really make much sense as to how Michael managed to get himself between them. Instead of making a mosaic, these scenes just seem like a bunch of shattered glass littered on the ground at random.

Pictured: The screenwriting process.

Even more unfortunately, none of these fragments are pulled together under a unifyied tone. We get some action hero set pieces with random shards of comic relief sprinkled in (these tend to work, actually, thanks to David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride's familiarity with comedy filmmaking, though one horny teen character in particular gets a monologue that I think is supposed to be funny but it completely odious and made me want him to die all the more), and it occasionally cuts to horror sequences of the most brutal and unrelenting variety.

To that end, I will say that this is certainly the goriest Halloween film ever made, and a lot of the kills are incredibly well-realized. As a bit of a gorehound myself, it was nice to see Michael making a play to join the big boys of gruesome slasher killing (usually he's a bit of a bore, going with a couple swipes of the kitchen knife and not much else), but the murders here seem unusually mean-spirited and difficult to watch. Slasher films are supposed to be fun, especially when the other scenes are as silly or high-octane as they are attempting to be. Halloween is kind of miserable at times, making choices that do up the full-tilt horror, but feel more in tune with Rob Zombie's take on the material. Which I hardly expect anyone was actually asking for.

A la carte, though, I can accept the gore for being a very good example of the form. And John Carpenter's new original score is full of bangers, especially the droning alarm bell of his most frequently used new theme. And I'll never complain when Jamie Lee Curtis or Judy Greer are onscreen, even though the former is stuck in a retread of a character she already pulled off twenty years ago in H20. This is the rare example of a horror movie that actually gets better as it goes along, as it pares down its cast so we can focus on three generations of Strode women, all well-performed, and all kicking ass, fighting for their lives in solidarity with one another. 

And wearing wigs like the dickens.

If the whole movie was just a home invasion with the three of them squaring off against Michael Myers, it might have been the best in the entire franchise, including the first. Unfortunately, there is far too much fat on this one, and the filmmakers - especially in the first act - seem focused on delivering scenes that are quite self-evidently shaky ideas, like tremendously misguided pre-credits sequence. 

It's one I'll almost certainly visit again at some point and re-evaluate, unlike the previous two modern entries in the franchise, but there are a lot of other ones I'd prioritize for a rewatch over it. I will be first in line for any and all sequels that Halloween spawns (and it certainly will, if that record breaking box office weekend has anything to say about it), because I think there's a good movie in there, or even a lot of good movies. This one just doesn't happen to quite hit the nail on the head, and that's fine. Almost is better than nothing, and "nothing" is what we've gotten for too long.

TL;DR: Halloween is a middling entry in the franchise with many decent highs and some tremendous lows.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1211

Reviews In This Series

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1988)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Don't Sweat The Small Stuff

Year: 2018

Director: Peyton Reed

Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña 

Run Time: 1 hour 58 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

So this is how the Marvel movie year ends, not with a bang but with Michelle Pfeiffer. A scant two months and change after Avengers: Infinity War ravaged theaters worldwide, we're getting Ant-Man and the Wasp, a wispy summer treat before the MCU goes dormant until 2019, giving us some much needed rest. In which time we'll be getting Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Teen Titans GO to the Movies, Venom, Aquaman, Hellboy, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. 

Never say Hollywood doesn't try to capitalize on a trend.

So, we pick up nearly two years after the events of Captain America: Civil War (remember those? me neither). Ant-Man is on house arrest for violating the Sokovia Accords (yeah, I don't know), and he is three days away from being allowed to return to the world. Unfortunately, right about this time is when he discovers a quantum entanglement with Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), the long-thought-dead wife of original Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). This reunites him with Hank and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly, who for continuity's sake has to wear her original bowl cut wig in several scenes, causing me to giggle for about twenty minutes straight because I did not remember how stupid it looked and it really caught me by surprise), and they struggle to rebuild their relationship while figuring out how to rescue Janet from the quantum realm. I promise I reduced as much pseudo-science gobbledygook as I could from that paragraph. It was a Herculean effort.

While our heroes run through a video game-esque gauntlet of "Need Object A? Acquire Object B to gain access to Object C to get it," they must avoid the FBI officer Jimmy Woo (my boy Randall Park), the rogue tech black marketeer Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a girl whose particles keep expanding and contracting, allowing her to phase through objects, but keeping her in intense pain. She thinks she can cure her condition by sucking the science juice out of Michelle Pfeiffer, or something.

Though honestly, the pain seems like a fair trade for such a rad evil suit.

So far both Ant-Man movies have felt like a bit of a break from the MCU at large. The first one had a stronger separate core for its own story (namely, the heist element), whereas this one does have to deal largely with the implications left behind from a previous spinoff, but for the most part it's equally contained. The plot itself is a bit more sprawling, but it doesn't spill over into any other characters or plot lines, which is a welcome respite after the world-shattering character collisions of Infinity War  that required an MCU encyclopedia to get through.

And also much like the first one, there isn't a lot of meat on these bones. Anytime the story turns its focus to its feeble character drama, it becomes almost laughable. Lilly and Rudd's total lack of romantic chemistry exposes the mechanical artifice of the script. Whenever they exchange a glance or a kiss, you can hear the plot gears chunk into place. These things don't happen because they want them to, they happen because the narrative needs them to. The same goes for this film's wrinkle, the fact that Ant-Man's suit is a prototype and sometimes malfunctions, randomly changing his size at inopportune moments. But this happens only when its most convenient to the plot for a joke, and doesn't cause any major strife other than yet another one of the film's endless video game side missions.

"Alright, who ordered the plot contrivance?"

Honestly, I'd be more content if this was just a comedy about being on house arrest, because as usual the humor is by far the strongest element of the movie. The bulk of this is delivered by Michael Peña, who returns to once more prove that the entire movie lies in the palm of his hand, but we also, blissfully get an appearance by Randall Park. I've long been a proponent of Park, but this is the first side role he's gotten in a comedy where he really gets to shine, allowing his character's businesslike exterior and seriousness convert into awkward ineptitude and confusion at the drop of a hat. It's his best work in a long time, and he's always doing his best work.

Paul Rudd is of course on fire as well, but whenever he has to deal with Lilly and her bleating nothing of a character, he flounders a little bit. He flounders a lot bit during a scene where [SEMI-SPOILERS] he channels a woman's spirit into his body, which he plays like a high school freshman trying drag for the first time in drama class [SPOILERS OVER]. But come on. He's Paul Rudd. He acts his way back out of that paper bag over and over again. And then there's Michael Douglas, who at this point is just expensive window dressing. 

At least they fixed Hope's hair. This is an even bigger triumph than Jurassic World correcting Bryce Dallas Howard's footwear.

But even if the drama is firing on zero cylinders, the action is solid enough to provide a satisfying popcorn superhero romp. They really lean into our heroes' abilities to change size here, turning various small rooms and San Francisco cityscapes into wonderful Alice in Wonderland playsets, finding new, creative uses for everyday objects that is tremendously satisfying, even if it's not particularly groundbreaking.

Really, Ant-Man and the Wasp does what it needed to do. It provides us a (blissfully short, for one of these movies) two hours of distraction from the world outside (and, if you live near me, the blistering heat wave we got last Friday). It doesn't try your patience or test your brain in any way, it just lets you sink into a morass of fun, funny people doing spectacular things and not asking you to feel too much about it other than excitement. It won't go down in the pantheon of great summer movies, but it hits the spot, for sure.

TL;DR: Ant-Man and the Wasp is a forgettable popcorn movie, which is exactly what it needed to be.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1048
Reviews In This Series
Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015)
Ant-Man (Reed, 2015)
Captain America: Civil War (Russo & Russo, 2016)
Doctor Strange (Derrickson, 2016)
Black Panther (Coogler, 2018)
Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo, 2018)
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)

There’s No Such Thing As Safe Sex With A Werewolf

Year: 2005

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, Joshua Jackson

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

There’s a reason Wes Craven took a six year break from feature filmmaking after 2005. Two of his films came out that year. One was the excellent airborne thriller Red Eye. The other was Cursed, a Kevin Williamson-penned werewolf thriller. On paper, it’s a match made in Heaven. The duo had previously collaborated on the massively successful Scream trilogy, which reinvented the slasher genre. Why not do the same thing with Craven’s first foray into werewolf mythology?

There was just one little thing in the way… The Weinstein Company. What should have been a nice and easy teenybopper shoot grotesquely stretched into a two and a half year nightmare of reshooting, rewriting, recasting, and general meddlesome nonsense that twisted the film into a wholly unrecognizable form. It started off as a normal movie, but ended up a misshapen monster.

I suppose the real werewolf is the movie itself.

In Cursed, Ellie Myers (Christina Ricci) is a late night talk show producer who takes care of her high school-aged brother Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg, already Social Networking it up) after their parents died. She is dating Jake (Joshua Jackson), a lothario who is opening a horror-themed club (because Kevin Williamson), and who has been pulling away as of late, much to her chagrin. After Ellie and Jimmy get into a car accident, they witness a young woman (Shannon Elizabeth) being mauled by a giant wolf, and both of them get scratched in the process.

Over the next two days, during the full moon, they begin to exhibit increasingly wolfish tendencies. Ellie is freaked out by her sudden aggression and attraction to blood, but Jimmy has a great time Teen Wolfing it up with his heightened sexual charisma a (AKA flat-ironed hair. This was 2005, after all) and newfound athletic prowess. But a werewolf keeps attacking people around town. Is it one of them? The original wolf that cursed them? Or somebody else entirely?

You know how it is in Hollywood. Every waiter you get is either an aspiring actor or a werewolf.

Although it’s almost impossible to discern a film in the finished product of Cursed, there is a 100-minute block of images and sound in front of us, so let’s talk about it.

The two year delay didn’t help much, but even in 2003 Cursed would have felt way too 90’s. Kevin Williamson’s particular brand of postmodern winking worked in 1996, but sarcasm’s lease hath all too short a date. Cursed is chock full of weird rock band cameos (go Bowling for Soup!), movie references, and too-polished teenspeak, stuff which was getting unfashionable by the time the millennium rolled around, but in the post-Saw period was downright humiliating.

And I hate to say it, but the script just isn’t very good. Obviously, it has been cobbled together from about 19 different drafts, which would explain the jumbled structure, the jerry-rigged romance between Ricci and Jackson, and the two finales in a row that proudly contradict each other. But the script is putrid all the way down to the dialogue, and there just ain’t no excuse for that.

Most of the teen scenes are preoccupied with exuberant homophobia, culminating in this mid-wrestling match gem: “You know the best thing about being a fairy? Getting to fly,” which is deeply offensive on both a personal and a syntactical level. Cursed is packed with this kind of anemic quippage (my personal favorite being “You’re playing games with us… Well, play this!”), finally exhausting Williamson’s seemingly endless reserves of arch wit. It’s telling that he too would retreat from motion pictures for over half a decade following Cursed’s release.

It seems like this film really was… cursed.

Pretty much everything in Cursed is underwhelming, but it’s difficult to pinpoint a central problem within the infinite vicious cycle of blame. The actors are subpar (especially the bland Ricci and Portia de Rossi, who is hideously miscast as an ominous fortune teller) because their characters were crumbling beneath them as the script was cannibalized by the writer, who was working with a harried director, who was being squashed under the pressure of producers, who didn’t like the script, and on and on and on. It’s an unsolvable Sphinx riddle. At this point, it would have been better if it hadn’t gotten a release at all.

All that being true, it must be said that while nothing in Cursed could really be called good, it’s not quite so rotten as I’m making it sound. Sure, it’s a wretched, hybridized monstrosity, but during the bulk of its run time it’s merely mediocre rather than actively terrible. Craven manages to milk some suspense out of several sequences, especially in the initial wolf attack, which features a jump scare that is the single most effective scene in the film. His stalk sequences see him pulling a lot of old tricks out of his toolbag (scraping claws a la Freddy Krueger, things subtly going wrong in an increasingly dream logic manner), but there’s a reason they were put in there in the first place: They work.

Cursed also features a terrific entry in the Craven/Williamson canon of loony killer reveals when the werewolf turns out to be [SPOILERS Judy Greer], who gives the best performance in the film once outed as a psychopath, final proving that there was something comedic lodged in the script that could actually click when a performer got a crack at it. This scene also provides the second best moment of the film, some werewolf body shaming that is deliciously over-the-top and lampoons the Hollywood lifestyle at a level the movie had been feebly attempting to reach for an hour and change.

The only thing that never ever works in Cursed is the werewolf itself, which feels like a pretty big oversight. While the original effects were provided by FX genius Rick Baker, who pulled off An American Werewolf in London without anything remotely resembling the technology of 2003. Yet for some unfathomable reason he was yanked from the project and replaced by KNB, whose work would be plastered over with crappy CGI. To be fair, the computer work here is a smidge better than a lot of recent lazy CGI (here’s lookin’ at you, The Hobbit), but the werewolf looks far too much like Bobo the Bear to be menacing.

Seriously, they could be brothers.

With that, let’s leave Cursed to rot in peace. It’s a pitiful creation that doesn’t deserve all the stellar people who worked on it. It’s not the worst film of Craven’s filmography, but it’s the one where his creativity and humanity are least apparent, which is far more damning than simply being crappy.

TL;DR: Cursed is an endlessly fiddled-with film that wouldn’t have been good in its original form.
Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 1150

Raptor Buddies

Year: 2015

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins

Run Time: 2 hour 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Jurassic World is not a better popcorn movie than Jurassic Park. But to be fair, I can list the number of popcorn movies better than Jurassic Park on a Post-It. With room to spare. But as a peer to this summer's Mad Max: Fury Road, which is also a decades-later followup to an inordinately successful trilogy, I can comfortably say we're two for two in fourth sequels that aren't total garbage wastes of time. 

Mind you, Mad Max is a luminescent, damn near perfect masterpiece of balls-to-the-wall action that challenges the very notion of what cinema can be and Jurassic World merely isn't quite as dumb as Jurassic Park III. We're measuring on vastly different scales here, but two successful franchise continuations in the new Millennium? For Hollywood, this is like Christmas.

Though I daresay Santa's reindeer have slightly fewer teeth.

Jurassic World is a direct sequel to Jurassic Park, depicting the successful application of John Hammond's dream to create a fully functioning theme park with genetically modified, de-extinct dinosaurs. Run by the eccentric billionaire Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan), Jurassic World is now a well-oiled machine attended by thousands of happy tourists a day. Hoewver, as time has passed, children have become immune to the technical wizardry of the past. They long for bigger, better, more exciting adventures, and Jurassic World is prepared to give it to them. The park, that is. The movie is content to slop a bucket of CGI onto the screen and call it a night. But I digress.

Headed by the emotionless businesswoman Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), the park has been developing a new attraction designed by the noteworthy scientist Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong, the only returning cast member from the original film). Called the Indominus Rex, this massive creature has been designed to be scarier, deadlier, and larger than any creature the park has ever attempted before. Evidently they failed on that front, because we learn from a too-early reveal (and a quick scan of any nearby Toys R Us shelves) that the creature is pretty much just a kinda tall, albino T-Rex. Wheeeee.

Needless to say, the highly intelligent animal escapes, putting Claire's nephews - surly teen Zach (Nick Robinson) and his wide-eyed younger brother Gray (Ty Simpkins of Insidious) - and the entire park at risk. Together with the gruff raptor trainer Owen (Chris Pratt), they must work to bring the theme park back from the brink of total disaster, butting heads along the way with Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio), a militaristic meathead who wants to use the raptors to bring down the beast in order to prove their viability as military weaponry.

As you can probably tell, Jurassic World has a bit too much on its mind, and that's without even mentioning the subplot about Lowery (Jake Johnson), the comic relief control panel worker, or the ongoing divorce proceedings of the kids' parents, Karen (Judy Greer) and Scott (Andy Buckley).

Trying to keep track of them all is like trying to keep four raptors from biting your pretty hands off.

Jurassic World has too many plates spinning in the air, which prevent it from ever truly realizing its full potential. 

The first plate to wobble and crash to the floor is its characters. There's too many of them drifting on and off the screen to really find a hero to root for, only two of them have any semblance of an arc (Claire, who seems to be the protagonist, if only because she happens to be onscreen the most and her costume design actively reflects her transition, is the first; the second is Zach, who goes from being a surly teen to a less surly teen, so let's not dust off our Oscar shelves just yet), and the rest are shallow ciphers: Hoskins is a picture of avaricious evil, Gray is the whiz kid, Owen is the badass knight in shining armor, and so on.

The emotional impact of the storyline lacks sinew thanks to the protagonists' lack of inner life, and many of the broad strokes masquerading as character development only weakly prop up the cardboard cutouts populating its world. The parents' divorce adds next to nothing to the film (save about 5 more minutes of screen time), and the awkward, forced romance between Owen and Claire is about as credible as the McDonalds "Healthy Choices" menu.

Just look at that crackling chemistry. You can feel the heat from here.

The second, and largest, plate to fall is the special effects. CGI graphics are improving as time goes on, and nothing here is quite as egregious as the weightless copy-and-paste construction robots in Tomorrowland, but the fact remains that Jurassic Park was a success thanks to its conscientious use of computer graphics. Instead of using computers to augment and aid practical effects, Jurassic World  liberally - and lazily - slathers the film with pixel grotesqueries. 

The only abominably unconvincing dinos are the T-Rex and occasionally the raptors, but there is no lasting spectacle to be found in Jurassic World. Chockablock with flat, obtrusive CGI that lingers even in the furthest corners of the film (Really - A gate? A bird? You're telling me there's no birds pecking around the windowsills at Amblin that you could grab?), even the most convincing visuals lack impact thanks to their remarkably spotty brethren.

When you set uninspiring CGI monsters against a cadre of dull stereotypes, all running around the island madly bumping into one another, it becomes extremely difficult to muster up any cobwebs of suspense.

I mean, look at this. I'm pretty sure I played this computer game in third grade.

The third and final plate is the script. Along with a complex tunnel system of plot/logic holes, nearly every decision made by any human is the worst possible outcome for whatever situation it happens to be. I of all people am willing to accept some gaps in logic from dumb characters in suspense movies, but many key moments (and nearly every aspect of the "release the raptors" subplot) are idiotic and, worst of all, generic.

It would be one thing if the flaws in the story were in service of unparalleled action and suspense, but for the most part they form a loud background hum to one of the most hideously cliché adventure movie beats in years. Bad government, mad science, wan romance, and blockbuster drama collide in Jurassic World, careening pointlessly in all directions. The film is self-important in the worst way, packed to the gills with Important Lines that characters say while staring off into space. In fact, I don't think a single shot exists in the first act, where Chris Pratt doesn't saunter into frame (even if he's already in the middle of a conversation) to say something Badass and Insightful.

Chuck in a production team that somehow thinks it's appropriate to resurrect John Williams' classic theme when the characters are riding an escalator and you've got yourself a bit of a mess on your hands.

Nothing a good barber can't fix.

OK, are we done complaining? Good. Because, in spite of its ample flaws, Jurassic World is still a fun, dumb summer flick. The shadow of Jurassic Park is a terrifyingly tough one to escape, and of course this film - with its supremely rickety foundation - does not manage it. But it does manage to scrape together a pretty decent thrill ride for the new generation of dino lovers.

There's a negligible amount of genuinely effective suspense in this film thanks to its thin characters, but more than a couple scenes have moments that startle the senses into something above complacency. Likewise, there are a handful of comic relief moments that strike gold and have the capacity to elicit actual, bona fide peals of laughter. The rest of the film coasts on effects-filled action and, when it gets a chance to abandon its pretenses at telling an authentically human story, it does not disappoint.

Jake Johnson is funny as always, and Bryce Dallas Howard is more effective than the trailer gives her credit for, but the real conflict comes with Chris Pratt. He does more than enough to prove himself as a viable candidate for future non-comedic roles, but Owen gives him absolutely nothing to work with. He's awash in the contradictory pages of the script, relying only on his natural charm to get the point across rather than any act of true character creation.

It's shallow and it's messy, but it's still a good time at the movies. Maybe the rampaging dinos don't have they heart they used to. Maybe the humans they tread upon fall short of interesting. But as a slick, surface level thrill ride, Jurassic World does its job. No more and no less than that, but it's something I don't dread seeing again.

TL;DR: Jurassic World is a totally fine popcorn movie, all things considered.

Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? I ain't gonna stop ya.

Word Count: 1514

Reviews In This Series

Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)

Jurassic Park III (Johnston, 2001)

Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018)

Thy Will Be Done

Year: 2013

Director: Kimberly Peirce

Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

There is, of course, only one question that any review of Carrie needs to answer: Is it as good as the 1976 Brian De Palma classic?

The answer is of course not, but the film itself is nothing to scoff at.

I'm just as shocked as you.

Let's switch things up and start with the problems for once so I can actually end this review on a good note. And there are a number of them, but they aren't nearly so critical as all that.

1) Chloë Grace Moretz is not an outsider.

This girl's a superstar and she can't entirely shake that charisma, which I suppose isn't a bad thing for Chloë. But occasionally it's hard to watch this amazing girl cowering in the corner without thinking "Stand up straight and take charge, you got this girl." Also her shower scene was way more sensual than the story called for. Sorry girl, you're awesome. But Carrie White... isn't.

2) The film is a little too eager to punch those early moments.

We get it. She's discovering her powers. When she gets angry, things start to move. We figured that out with the tampon hurricane in the locker room. And the water cooler exploding. And the mirror shattering. And the door cracking. And the fact that we've all already seen Carrie. It's just like Twilight drawing out the part where Bella discovers that Edward is a vampire. Yeah, you're your own story, but calm down. American audiences aren't as dumb as the Zac Efron trailer before the film would have you believe.

3) Really? This is high school?

This is Carrie's friend Sue.

This is Carrie's enemy, Billy.

If those two are high school aged, I really missed out.

4) The film relies too much on creaky CGI.

How hard is it to unspool some fishing line and go to town? The visual effects really show their seams and it all ends up feeling too glossy and sharp, like licking a page of a magazine.

That last flaw is the most evident and comes closest to dampening the movie's effect but where Carrie has strengths, Carrie has strengths.

Pictured: Strengths.

Now that we have those out of the way, we can talk about nice things and plot! If you are one of the few people who doesn't know this story (And they're out there. There are tens of them!), Carrie is about a young woman named Carrie White (Moretz) who lives under the iron fist of her devoutly religious mother Margaret (Julianne Moore).

One day when she gets her first period in the locker room, she is mercilessly mocked by a gang of girls led by Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday), a Regina George if there ever was one. In her anger, Carrie discovers that along with her period has come a mysterious power to make things move with her mind.

Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) has extreme guilt about having been part of the group that made fun of Carrie and she talks her boyfriend Tommy (Ansel Elgort) into asking Carrie to prom to make her feel better. Meanwhile, Chris and her hot boyfriend Billy (Alex Russell) make a plan to ruin Carrie's special night via a lovely pig's blood facial.

High school is like being pelted with bloody tampons every single second of your waking existence. My grandfather claims it was the best time of his life. He must have been really hot back then.

One of the most exciting things about Carrie is its old fashioned approach to horror. There's no jump scares here, just plain old nerve wracking creepiness. Now, a lot of the tension is lost because you know exactly what's going to happen (The Statute of Spoiler Limitations has long since run out on a 1976 film based on a 1974 novella), but the film still packs plenty of punch, mostly in the scenes where Julianne Moore and Chloë Grace get to square off.

The decisions to cast Moore and Moretz were the first and third most effective choices for the film, the second being Judy Greer as Ms. Desjardin, the gym teacher who just wants to see Carrie succeed. Greer (whose career highlight thus far has been as the inimitable Kitty Sanchez on Arrested Development) works in a pitch perfect comic register that balances out the film quite nicely and her motherly affection toward Carrie is utterly compelling.

Between that, Moore's gut-wrenchingly terrifying and zealous histrionics, and Moretz's naïve charm (her nervous smile put me in the mind of Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein more than a few times), Carrie has more than enough legs to stand on.

Two. You only need two.

And frankly this is a story that, although simple, deserves to be retold. Openly lesbian director Kimberly Peirce (whose biggest feature by far is her debut film Boys Don't Cry) updates the timeless themes (namely: teenagers suck) and pulls them into a new world pervaded with social media and cyberbullying.

This past decade, the dangers of bullying have been receiving a lot more press and activist groups are becoming much more numerous and involved with high schools across the country. People are beginning to stand up for themselves and fight against something that has up until now merely been seen as an unpleasant but expected institution in the lives of young men and women.

Essentially, the time has never been riper for a reinvention of Stephen King's fabulous freshman debut, and although the film feels somewhat insubstantial when held to the light of his masterwork of exploring a young woman's development, at the end of the day it has something to say, it's disturbing when it wants to be, and it never slows down.

Carrie is enjoyable to the very end, no matter how many times this story has been reworked.

The devil never dies, it just keeps coming back. And this devil of a tale is unstoppable.

TL;DR: Carrie is perhaps unnecessary, but not even remotely unenjoyable.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Yes, especially considering this is the only wide release horror film of this year (gag me with a spoon). Support horror! Happy Halloween!

Word Count: 1053