As you might have guessed, this led me to some pretty bad stuff, but I figured, what the hell, might as well review some of it, in my now-patented "quick cut" style, as opposed to doing something more in-depth, especially in that nothing I watched really warranted such treatment. Further, I haven't yet had time since I've been back to watch anything to review, and it's been a while since I've posted, so this seemed like a decent stopgap effort to buy some time until I did.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: horror fans aren't that different from rom-com fans or fans of Hallmark Xmas movies or Lifetime's true-crime dramas- we know some of what we're going to watch will likely be bad and by-the-numbers, but we just can't seem to help ourselves. What are you gonna do? Besides, my options were pretty limited at the time.
Anyway, I'll be back to the normal schedule soon enough. Thanks for hanging in there, and for those who care, everything's back on track with the fam as well. Hopefully, all will be well in the immediate future, too, but we'll just have to wait and see on that one. In the meantime, I'm back, lightly tanned (I was in Florida, in case I didn't mention that) and ready to get back to it! 😎
Let's get it started!
Easily the best of the movies I watched, Tragedy Girls is one of those movies that comes along every once in a blue moon that speaks to my dark heart in a way few teen movies do, with the notable exceptions of the classic Heathers and Jawbreaker. As everyone who knew me then knows, I was a bit of an introvert- still am, really- and only truly connected with a few rarified individuals with like-minded interests, most of which made us fellow outsiders.
If anything, I'm really glad I slipped under the radar of the sea change that occurred almost immediately after my graduation, as helicopter parenting and cell phone/texting/ nude pic sharing/et. al became a thing in earnest. If I hadn't, I don't know I would have survived high school- it was bad enough without all that stuff.
Also, I imagine I probably would have been classified as being "problematic" or whatever, in spite of the fact that I never would have laid a hand on anyone. Hell, the few fights I got into, I had my ass handed to me, so believe me when I say I wasn't chomping at the bit for more, nor did I really resent the people I fought with- I fully had it coming and knew it. That's what happens when you're a snarky smart-ass, lol. Fortunately, now I get to do it from the safety of my own home, so at least one good thing did come out of the computer revolution. 😀
Anyway, Tragedy Girls is basically Heathers with a gender flip- instead of a straight couple, we have two girls, at least one of which may have genuine romantic feelings for the other one. They're longtime best friends obsessed with all things serial killers, to the point that they are attempting to ferret out a local one, not so much to catch him and bring him to justice, as to entrap him and pick his brain about why he does what he does and how he manages to keep doing it without getting caught.
This is because the girls have psychotic tendencies, and are interested in furthering them- but without drawing attention to themselves, of course. That said, this is the age it is, so they still want a certain kind of attention, nonetheless: social media followers for their true crime blog. Basically, they want to come off as dedicated crime-solvers willing to go the extra mile that the local cops won't to catch a killer, which, technically, is true, as they really are after a serial killer. However, in the pursuit of such, they end up breaking quite a few rules in a decidedly questionable manner.
I don't want to give too much away beyond that, but suffice it to say, things get dark, but also in an amusing way. This is black comedy played just right- not the easiest thing to pull off, for those of us familiar with such things. For every good one, there's an awful lot of bad ones. Fortunately, this is one of the best I've ever seen, in so far as straddling the line between horror and comedy. It's neither as broadly silly as, say, any given entry in the Scary Movie franchise, nor an outright horror film. That said, while it's not really scary, per se, it is tremendously entertaining.
Co-produced and co-starring comedic actor Craig Robinson, of The Office and Brooklyn Nine-Nine fame, the film is the latest from editor-turned-writer/director Tyler MacIntyre (Patchwork, which I now really want to see as well). Unlike another film on this list (see #Horror, if you must), MacIntyre uses just enough modern technology to get his point across, but deep down, this is basically just a teen movie with a psychotic twist.
The fact that both the girls manage to remain likeable even as they start doing more and more despicable things- and they start out at questionable as it is, to say the least- is a testament to the two actresses playing them, Brianna Hildebrand (of TV's The Exorcist and the Deadpool movies) and Alexandra Shipp (of the more recent X-Men movies and Straight Outta Compton). I mean, hell, I was kind of rooting for them to get away with everything by the end, even though IRL I'd be decidedly repulsed by the things they did- within or without of context. That's movies for you.
In addition to starring Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Storm, the film also features a lot of other genre faves, including Jack Quaid, son of Dennis and actress Meg Ryan, currently in the superheroes-gone-bad opus The Boys, and a vet of The Hunger Games, as is his co-star here, Josh Hutcherson. They play love interests for each of the girls that are a point of contention for both, likely as a direct result of their own unresolved feelings towards one another. Yet another superhero film vet, Kevin Durand, of Wolverine fame, as well as TV's Lost, The Strain and Swamp Thing, plays the serial killer that is the object of the girls' affections, such as they are.
Other cast members include horror vet Nicky Whelan (Halloween II, TV's From Dusk Till Dawn), Elise Neal (Scream 2, Logan), Austin Abrams (The Walking Dead, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) and Timothy V. Murphy (Sons of Anarchy, Westworld). The film also features plenty of horror movie references- notably a murder inspired by, of all things, Cannibal Holocaust- and, of course, lots of real-life serial killer nods, many of which are done in amusingly cutesy ways, using new-tech animation. It's all very Post-Millennial/Gen Z, but, in this case, in a good way. Can't recommend this one enough.
An example of Gen Z horror done the wrong way is this arthouse flick- in every sense of the word- that marked the directorial debut of actress/fashion designer/artist Tara Subkoff (The Cell). According to the info I read, Subkoff asked one of her daughter's teen friends what she found the scariest in real life, and she replied: bullying, especially of the cyber variety. With this in mind, Subkoff hammered out a script, which was then rewritten by friend Casey Barnhart.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around a group of tween girls that have a sleepover in which they pass the time in typical slumber party fashion before things get ugly and they start to turn on one another. Eventually, they send one girl packing, out into the literal cold, as she tearfully calls her dad for help when she gets lost in the surrounding woods.
Soon thereafter, someone starts picking off the girls one by one, along with some of the adults concerned. Is it the ousted girl seeking revenge? Her father? One of the other girls? One of the parents of the other girls? Or is it the former owner (and designer) of the house, who reportedly went crazy and killed his entire family when he lived there and then escaped, never to be seen again?
The answer doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, but boy, does Subkoff fumble the ball nearly every step of the way here, not in the least in the way she films the murders, which are almost wholly lacking in any kind of suspense. Only the one on the lighted tennis court shows some promise, but even that is mishandled in the end.
But the film's worst offense by far is the one many other horror films as of late have been guilty of: the characters are all so unlikable that you end up rooting more for the killer than any of them. I'm not kidding. These girls all seem to genuinely hate each other, leading one to wonder why they're friends in the first place.
Also confusing is the website they seem obsessed with- is it strictly a place for people to go to for the express purpose of putting each other down? Or is that just what the girls are using it for? And why single out one of the girls to get the boot, when they're all pretty horrible? The only sense I could make of that was that she was the poorest of the bunch, being on a scholarship, but it seemed like her family was still relatively well off, all things considered, so she might just have earned that scholarship, rather than it being a charity case or whatever.
Also, the way the film is edited is hella confusing- ironic, considering it took longer to edit than shoot (18 days vs. seven months!) - and the script could have definitely used at least another draft before shooting commenced. That said, the cinematography (by Learan Kahanov) is admittedly pretty great, and the art installations and paintings that are all over the house (which were expressly commissioned for the film by a bunch of well-respected artists) are easily the best things in the movie, visually stunning and almost justify seeing the film in the first place. The use of art is the best I can recall seeing this side of Messiah of Evil, and that's saying something. But alas, #Horror is no Messiah of Evil.
Unfortunately, the mostly young cast is incredibly amateurish, even by young actors' standards, with only maybe Haley Murphy, who plays the (justifiably) ostracized Cat, showing any real promise. This is borne out by the fact that she's the only one of the girls with any sort of consistent employment before or after she did this film- for most of the other girls, this film is their sole credit.
And don't be fooled by the big names listed in the cast, such as Chloë Sevigny, Timothy Hutton, Natasha Lyonne, Taryn Manning, Balthazar Getty and Lydia Hearst- most of them have only one brief scene, with only Sevigny and Hutton having anything of substance to do, and believe me, neither of them are doing their best work here. Indeed, Hutton in particular, seems to be gunning for Nicolas Cage territory in his over-the-top turn as Cat's father- though, I will say the scene in which he terrorizes the girls after Cat goes missing is verging on worth the price of admission.
But the film is so actively busy with new tech flourishes throughout, between the mental overload of the title credits, and the seizure-inducing flashes of the girls' online activities, that it's like watching old-school MTV music videos on speed- there's such a thing as information overload, you know. And yet, there's precious little information being put across in these scenes- they're just there to be eye-catching, really.
Only the ending montage really imparts any valid info, and by doing it that way, it's sort of anti-climatic. Maybe that was the point? As in, the killer did all that they did to be Insta-famous, when chances are they'll be forgotten by the following week? Who can say?
I'd say this is what happens when an artist makes movies, but I've seen some great ones, notably the work of Julian Schnabel, a friend of Subkoff's- ironically, his daughter, Stella, is in the movie. Maybe Subkoff should have let Schnabel do the honors instead, given what an amazing piece of work The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is. Perhaps he could have done something more interesting for the film beyond providing art and his offspring.
Either way, if you must see this, I'd say put on the pretty decent soundtrack by techno artist EMA, turn down the sound and listen to that instead and just watch the film for the visuals, with maybe a pause when Hutton comes in and does his whack-job schtick or for any actor you might be watching this for, if you must. Trust me, you won't be missing much- it's basically just a scary art installation trying to have a plot and failing miserably, anyway.
Maybe Subkoff should stick to art- it's clearly what she's good at. Or, at the very least, let someone else write the script next time. She's not without promise as a director, but boy, is this a trainwreck of a movie, and not in a good way. It's a hard pass for me. 😝
Another too-cool-for-school horror movie with incredibly unlikable characters, L.A. Slasher is, at the very least, self-aware of its inherent bad-ness. I mean, one of the characters, played by Mischa Barton (of The O.C. fame), even flat-out says that she and her friend are "exactly the kind of person the killer is looking to take out." And, of course, she's absolutely right.
In the film, a masked slasher is stalking the most self-involved and sleazy of Hollywood types, from reality TV stars to sleazy producers to pop stars and so on. Showing its hand early on that it could give less of a shit about its characters, none of them even get names, and instead are identified by their "jobs," i.e. The Actress (Barton), The Mayor (Eric Roberts), The Popstar (Drake Bell), The Reality Star (Brooke Hogan) and so on.
This one probably has the most high profile cast of the films I'm reviewing, what with the cast also including Dave Bautista, Danny Trejo, Tori freaking Black (as "The Teen Mom," no less!) and, God help us all, Andy Dick as the L.A. Slasher himself. None of them get much of a showcase here, though Bautista and Trejo are good for a few laughs as hapless drug dealers- I probably would watch a buddy comedy starring the two of them, I admit. But Andy Dick as the killer? Good God no.
As such, it's impossible to take any of this seriously, with Dick's ridiculous narration throughout, and every character being more despicable than the next, it's impossible to root for anyone, including the killer, which is a new one for me. I mean, even with a lot of newer horror films, while you don't give a crap when the vile characters get killed, you can at least root for a swift death for them at the hands of a merciless killer.
Here, the killer doesn't even finish the job half the time, and is content just to torture them a bit and let them go after "teaching them a lesson." Would you want to be taught a lesson by Andy Dick, who's one to talk? Didn't think so. Not that he's playing himself, mind you, but it's hard not to think of him when you're constantly hearing his whiny voice throughout the film. Talk about annoying- I couldn't wait for someone to turn the tables on him and kill him, even if it was freaking Mischa Barton. Alas- spoiler alert- such is not the case.
I also didn't get the rhyme or reason behind the killer killing some and not others. One could make the case that he only kills one of the guys to protect his location, but it seems like he kills the others because they're more obviously sexually active- the Teen Mom did porn (imagine that!), so she is hacked to death with an axe, and The Stripper is, well, a stripper, so she's killed as well. I mean, it's standard operation procedure in a slasher for the sexually active to be killed, but why does he let the others go, when they're just as guilty as anyone else, save maybe The Actress? Certainly The Producer had it coming- Harvey Weinstein, anyone?
I suppose it's idiotic to expect logic from such a goofy film. But the thing is, the premise did have promise- who among us hasn't been annoyed by, say, a reality TV star? Or a socialite? Or a sleazy producer or politician? We might not want them dead IRL, per se, but this is a movie we're talking about. Why not go for broke? L.A. Slasher just doesn't have the courage of its convictions, and that's why the film falls flat.
Well that, and the annoying overall tone of the thing and the iffy script. Though there are a few amusing lines of dialogue here and there, most of it is as clichéd as the characters, who are literally more types than actual characters, given that none of them have actual names. It's almost like the script was a post-Millennial Mad Lib with a slasher theme that the writer didn't bother to fill in the blanks on.
In the area of "if you can't say something nice...," I suppose there's something to be said, once again, for the appropriately glitzy, colorful cinematography, by Chase Bowman, which has more primary colors than Suspiria-era Argento. The film also boasts a score by none other than the Emmy-winning Mac Quayle, of Mr. Robot and American Horror Story fame, which is pretty solid.
As with #Horror, maybe watching this with the sound off and the score on might be the way to go- at least then you don't have to listen to Dick's whiny ramblings or the other characters self-involved nonsense. Maybe pause it to watch Bautista and Trejo riff, but otherwise...meh.
So, yeah, another hard pass for this one, sorry to say. 😜
I didn't really expect much with this one, and TBH, I didn't really get it, but you know what? I still really kind of enjoyed it. Unlike #Horror and L.A. Slasher, which have delusions of grandeur and set out to be all artsy-fartsy and unique, but only ended up being eye candy completely lacking in any manner of suspense, Girl House knows exactly what it is, what it wants to be, and how to deliver the goods, while still updating the formula for a modern audience.
Basically, it's a slasher movie, with a "cam girl" twist- think TV's Big Brother, only with an all-girl cast, if one of the viewers went ape-shit because one of the cast members insulted him and subsequently tracked down the location and started bumping everyone there off. Pretty simple, pretty straight-forward, right? Hard to mess up, in other words, though, as we've already seen on this list, many still do.
Here's what sets this one apart- the characters. With the exception of the one bitchy character, Devon (Alyson Bath, The 100, Anon), who's supposed to be unlikable, all the characters are pretty sympathetic, and the film even manages to find time to discuss modern sexuality and whether doing the cam girl thing is necessarily a bad thing or inherently makes the girls doing it automatically "bad" by design.
Leading lady Ali Cobrin (American Reunion, Neighbors) is endearing, and remarkably manages to seem pretty girl-next-door and down-to-earth, even while being obviously gorgeous and doing the whole cam girl strip tease thing. Not that, mind you, a girl simply being a cam girl or a stripper, for that matter, is synonymous with being "bad."
In fact, that's sort of the point: as we meet the various girls, some of them are sweethearts that just happen to get naked for money- one has a committed boyfriend that she isn't above having sex with on camera, and two of the girls are lesbians in a committed relationship that aren't afraid to share their love with the world.
In other words, Girl House shows us that camming is just a job, when all is said and done. Sure, it's unconventional, but that doesn't make it a bad thing. These girls are just trying to pay the bills, and if they happen to enjoy it, more's the better. Nothing wrong with that.
Of course, it also points out how, in spite of all the best laid plans, how such things can go horribly awry, if dealing with someone smarter than the average cam consumer. Cam girls may be better protected than, say, a stripper, much less a hooker, but things can still go horribly awry.
Though, to be fair, those are somewhat false equivalencies- cam girls often work alone in isolation, and if they do feature someone else, it's of their choosing, and often someone they're involved with IRL, which is definitely different than a typical stripper or even a high-end call girl, both of which tend to deal almost exclusively with strangers.
I like that Girl House actually delves into this stuff, and takes the time to have conversations about it, along with how doing it can affect one's personal life or their relationship with their family, something it has in common with the in-the-same-wheelhouse Cam.
When all is said and done, yes, Girl House is just a straight-forward slasher with a more modern hook. But guess what? There's a reason they're still making slasher movies after all this time- when done right, they still work. This one does. Kudos to first-time director Trevor Matthews, who also wrote, produced and starred in Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer and The Shrine, and a special shout-out to it being a Canadian slasher, just like a lot of the best of the slasher bunch back in the day.
Oh, and heads up, Gotham fans, Selina Kyle/Catwoman herself, Camren Bicondova, has a brief cameo in the opening scene, which is set in my current location, Alabama, which was pretty cool. Girl House may not bring much new to the table beyond its cam-girl set-up, but it's well done and shows that all horror movies need not be populated by idiots and/or unlikable characters. In short, this is how you do a modern slasher right.
On the other hand, we have this film, which is basically how not to do a modern slasher. Almost every character is unlikable, including the leading lady, and only really fun one is the batty old house mother (Lisa K. Wyatt, of The Crazies and all of Richard Kelly's movies to date), who steals every scene she's in with her choice bad dialogue, and who seems to be the only one in on the joke that is this movie.
I kind of knew it was going to be awful within the first five minutes, in which a girl goes to her married boyfriend's house to confront him about these notes she's been getting and, apropos of nothing, decides to get naked and skinny dip in broad daylight when he (or his wife) proves to not be home. Naturally, she's killed by a maniac soon after, kicking off the movie.
Now, mind you, I've got no problem with nudity- see my positive review of the last movie, Girl House, which features plenty- but this one clearly has sex on the brain, not horror, making it come off for the most part as a soft-core porn that just so happens to have some murder in it. Actually, even that is half-hearted, in so much as, not unlike the aforementioned L.A. Slasher, the killer doesn't always kill the girls or guys, sometimes he just maims them a bit. Is this some weird trend I'm just now becoming aware of?
Whatever the case, the end results are just laughable, as the killer often just strolls into a jam-packed room and slides a note onto the table without anyone being the wiser, and oftentimes just chills out in the girls' rooms, watching them, in spite of sticking out like a sore thumb in his white terry-cloth outfit in plain view. Despite this, no one is able to so much as describe him, leading the girls to all turn against each other, accusing one another of being the killer, even though it's obviously not one of them.
The film has porn-level production values- and acting, for that matter- which I suppose is about right, given what the filmmakers really seem interested in, which is getting girls naked. As per usual with films like this, the girls are ostensibly playing underage, in spite of looking to be well into their thirties. The film is supposedly set in a group home for juvenile delinquent types- hence the title- but these girls are clearly full-blown adults across the board, and don't look much younger than the other house mother, Claudia.
Speaking of which, the main reason I watched this, in case you were wondering, was that the actress playing Claudia was none other than former teen queen Ami Dolenz, daughter of Micky (of the Monkees), and star of such cult faves as Can't Buy Me Love, She's Out of Control, Children of the Night, Stepmonster, Ticks, Pumpkinhead II and Witchboard 2: The Devil's Doorway (lol- see what they did there?).
I used to be pretty sweet on her back in the day, having grown up with her movies and TV shows, and it was nice seeing her here, in spite of the low quality of the film overall. She's still quite a looker- more so than some of the "girls," quite frankly- and is the only truly appealing thing in the film. I suppose, if you were a fan as well, you'll want to see it for her alone, but be forewarned, it's just terrible.
The FX in particular, most of which are executed via CGI, are some of the worst I've ever seen and are hilariously bad, ruining what suspense or enjoyment one might have had in the process. Only Birdemic was worse in that regard, and that was one hell of a lot more entertaining in its awful-ness than this was. Don't get me wrong- House Rules, the movie itself, is just mediocre at best- but the CGI is next-level bad, let me tell you. Skip it, unless you're a hardcore Dolenz fan, but remember, you've been warned.
A far better example of how to do a bad slasher is this film, which, like Bad Girls, has a porn-level budget, only, production-level-wise, it may even be worse than that film. Basically, we're talking student film level. And yet, I had far more fun with it than Bad Girls. Go figure.
I think a big part of it is that you can tell everyone involved was having fun with it, as evidenced by the copious amount of bloopers at the end, which are used to pad out the running time to a whopping 75 minutes, including the ever-popular slow-crawl credits, which, mind you, are featured separately from the film and the bloopers. Still, there's something to be said for not overstaying your welcome- the film knows when to say when, in other words.
It was also kind of endearing that the cast was composed of what amounted to the polar opposite of, say, a typical CW show cast. These really do seem like the people next door, especially if you live in the South, like I do. Only the chunky guy might have passed muster on the CW or in a given Hollywood teen flick, and even then, just strictly as the comic relief. The rest just look like normal college students, down to the famed "Freshman 15," albeit, as per usual, looking a bit older than most actual college students.
But there's something to be said for a group of film students/actors getting together to just have a lot of fun and make a silly movie that basically delivers what the title promises. As you might guess, there's copious amounts of nudity and yes, sex, which seems to be what sets off the killer, which, in this case, is of the man-in-a-monster-suit variety.
I mean, hell, the first thing that pops up on screen is a rating-like classification screen, only this one is unrated and promises "blood, boobs, gore, genitalia and more!" There's something to be said for delivering as promised. Like I said, if you're looking for SI models or whatever, this is not the film you want. These are just ordinary, average-looking people, with ordinary average bodies, most of which would likely be considered of the alternative/emo type, i.e. dyed hair, tattoos, piercings, et al.
The two leads are a lesbian couple, which is cool, and they're not portrayed in a unrealistic way for once- aside from the chunky guy daring them to make out at one point (perhaps needless to say, he gets a little more than he bargained for), their sexuality is beside the point and never mentioned. They just happen to be gay, and they just happen to be the leads. That's it.
This is oddly refreshing, given how fake a lot of stuff we watch is in that regard. Not everyone is perfect-looking and some of the angles aren't exactly flattering at times. Guess what? They aren't in real life, either. Now, I'll allow that this may have more to do with the limited budget, and finding people willing to do copious amounts of nudity, but given the across-the-board normalcy of everyone involved, I feel like it might have been more intentional than entirely a necessity.
As in, the filmmaker just wanted to make a movie where everyone looked normal, not heightened into something they're not- something no one really is, if you think about it. Last I checked, no one has a team of makeup artists and costume designers helping them out every day, unless they're supermodels- and even then, it's questionable. Otherwise, as they say, celebrities are "just like us"! (Ok, not really, but you know what I mean.)
Don't Fuck in the Woods is absolutely ridiculous, but it's a lot of fun and more than delivers on that title, which is more than you can say for a lot of movies. How many times have you rented/watched a movie based on the title and/or the premise (or even the poster/cover art) and come away disappointed? Not the case here. You see a movie with this title, you expect to see people fucking in the woods, then killed for doing so, and by God, that's what you get. What more can you ask for?
Oh, and for the record, there's already a sequel in the works, but of course, which looks to be following the same template as the original, thank God, rather than trying to take things in a "flashier" direction. I'm in. Sometimes the only thing between being a bad movie and an enjoyably bad movie is a warped sense of humor- and this one has it in spades. By all means, if you enjoy a silly, down-and-dirty slasher- emphasis on the dirty part- check this one out.
Well, that about does it for now! Join me next week as we get back to normal. I'll also have a special announcement, in regards to my intentions for October and Halloween in general. As my loyal readers know, I covered the entire Halloween series last year, so I'll be doing something different this year, which I'll let you know about soon enough.
Thanks again for your patience as I dealt with some family matters- it's good to be back, and back to work. And, as ever, thanks for reading! 😉
No comments:
Post a Comment