Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

The second instalment of the Jumanji reboot turned out to be more enjoyable than I anticipated, and makes for a really nifty little family adventure movie during the winter holidays. Only weeks ago, I declared that the first chapter was 'giving me cancer' while my daughter watched on eagerly, and my main grievances were the waffer-theen stereotypes of characters that were defined by no more than two traits apiece, and the pacing of both narrative and comedy. I wasn't hyped to see this movie, and ended up having a lot more fun this time around.

So my first observation before watching was how and more importantly why the characters would play the game again. The setup had the advantage of the real-life characters being embodied by avatars that could remain consistent, so perhaps Jumanji would be found and unwittingly stumbled into by another group of kids. However, despite the same quartet landing in the jungles of Jumanji for a second time, the movie at least cares to give it some prompting: Spencer (Alex Wolff) has broken up with Martha (Morgan Turner) during their first year at separate colleges, and has hit that part of young adult life where he doesn't know who he is or what he is doing. What he does know is that living in the body of Dwayne Johnson for a brief period won him the girl the first time around, and even gave him a little sense of purpose. When he doesn't show up for the group's reunion brunch, they grow worried and go to his house, where they find he has rewired the game and started again.

This movie had all the potential to be a really dreary retread of its predecessor, and it pulls out several stops to avoid this, the first of which being the additional characters of Milo (Danny Glover), Grampa Eddie (Danny DeVito) and Ming (Awkwafina), the second of which being more body-swapping than you can shake a stick at. What I really loved about this movie was how much fun and freedom the actors were allowed by the script. Due to the game console being smashed, the kids don't get assigned their former avatars, and Eddie and Milo accidentally get sucked into playing too. Later, pools of glowing water are found to have crazy swapping powers, meaning that each actor gets to embody at least two of their costars over the course of the narrative. My personal favourite among these was Ming acting as DeVito: her voice and mannerisms are spot on, and every second was a joy to watch.

Of course, the real original '90s Jumanji fell into the fantasy narrative trope in which characters have to navigate a series of deadly encounters to reach safety, and the reboots are no different. This movie drops its momentum at one point with a few skits that only slow the progress, but generally has a decent flow and is largely exciting. A particular scene involving a maze of rope bridges that move like the staircases at Hogwarts stands out in terms of action and imagination, and the picture generally looks vibrant and fun.

One issue that the film carries on from its predecessor is a lack of game-oriented cinematography. The narratives make great use of the video game environment, with dialogue that reflects the tropes of non-player characters, but in many cases adopt a fairly standard action camera setup with quick cuts and conventional angles. It could have been fun to use more third-person angles that show characters from above and behind like video games tend to do, or perhaps oddities in the developing backdrops as the camera pans. Thinking in more gameish terms with the cinematography could really pull the other elements together and create a truly immersive gaming movie experience. 

The original set of kid and adult actors reprise their roles very nicely, with the particular zest that we have come to expect from Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black. Some great additions include Rory 'the Hound' McCann as the latest evil overlord threatening Jumanji's safety, and the aforementioned Awkwafina as Ming, who was truly entertaining. DeVito and Glover's characters bring a sense of sentimentality that the Williams Jumanji used to humanise an otherwise wacky story, and offer plenty of prime meat for the actors impersonating them to chew on. 

Jumanji: The Next Level delivers more than one might expect from a movie of its sort, and has a relentless sense of fun to it. Director and co-writer Jake Kasdan creates a really cool atmosphere and, aside from the odd slip-up here and there, knows exactly what kind of movie he's making. It's far from a perfect or artistically intriguing movie, but it never takes itself too seriously, ticks all the boxes and leaves its audience feeling exhilarated and thoroughly entertained.

Jeepers Creepers (2001)

Monster movies become more difficult to pull off as the years go by. When we think of a monster, almost all of our perceptions rely heavily on pre-existing stories - werewolves, vampires, swamp things - or misunderstood ferocious friends - Monsters Inc., Gremlins. On top of this, the horror movie scene has gone a long way since the respective heydays of Universal or Hammer villains, and a lot of moviegoers find the more humanly-based frights scarier. Monsters are something that kids fear are lurking under their beds; adults fear other people.

What Jeepers Creepers proves is that a scary monster movie relies not only on a creature that regular adult viewers can actually find terrifying, but on crafting a terrifying viewing experience. The suspense created by Victor Salva and his amazing crew has made this movie stand out in my mind for the past fifteen-odd years. The way they construct realistic yet engaging dialogue is an added bonus. I understand that this may be a controversial opinion: the movie may be lumped in with Juno (2007) and found obnoxious and irritating by some people because of the script style, but for someone of my generation and sense of humour, it is a very welcome departure from normal horror dialogue.

What is Michelle Duggar's vagina doing here?

Trish (Gina Philips) and Darry (Justin Long) are siblings driving the long way home from college at the end of the semester in a fucking sweet vintage automobile. Trish is riding home with her dumbass kid brother because she has broken up with her boyfriend, and Darry is riding home with a bag full of his dirty drawers for his momma to wash. They are cruising along the empty dirt roads somewhere in the Corn Belt of the US when they encounter an aggressive driver in a startling rusty slaughterhouse truck. After being run off the road, they drive right past the same truck, and a darkly shrouded figure dumping bloody-sheet-wrapped shapes down a giant pipe outside an abandoned chapel.

That youthful sense of morbid curiosity masked as morality that only those under 30 can muster (or at least I hope so) sees the two turn around and investigate. Darry insists that if his sister were at the bottom of that pipe, she would hope that someone like him would go back and possibly save her life, while we somewhat suspect that the testosterone and adrenaline rushing through his freshman veins is what is truly motivating him. She relents and they drop in on the chapel, and soon come across a weirdly sophisticated cavern of carnage. Medieval-style demonic figures are intricately carved into wooden furniture, and the ceiling is adorned with a mass of preserved bodies "like the fucking Sistine Chapel!"

Deez nuts!

The movie has already got the action going at an incredible rate, and it is not so low as to insert one of those the killer comes home while the kids are rummaging around it and we wonder if they will get caught and killed scenes. The kids get the fuck out and rush to call the police at the first backwoods diner they find. The movie also rises above the we've seen horror and none of the other people believe us scene at this point, clashing our main protagonists and the authoritative character parts together when our monster is finally revealed. The narrative of Jeepers Creepers makes an incredibly fluid job of abandoning cliche from beginning to end, without ever making it seem humorous or ironic like Scream.

Along the way, Trish and Darry come across two women. At first, they come across a house inhabited by a crazy old cat lady, played by veteran Eileen Brennan, which leads to perhaps the most amazingly sinister sequence of the movie. Later, at the police station, a woman named Jezelle barges her way in, acknowledged by the coppers as the unofficial psychic of the force. She is terrified, and knows information about the siblings' ordeal that nobody but the audience could. She explains that there is a local creature that wakes from hibernation every twenty-three years to feed on parts that it "likes", being drawn to the fear it smells in people. Even Trish tries to dismiss Jezelle as a creepy nutjob, but Darry's experiences at the bottom of the pit sees him fall hopelessly into her metaphorical arms.

Tree Surgeon, Have Axe, Will Travel

So what makes the Creeper, as played by Jonathan Breck, such an effective monster? Although the costume design is fabulous, Salva's intent for the character and its embodiment by Breck are the making of a true monster. The DVD features show the director conducting auditions for the antagonist as a "sniff test", and Breck's audition tape sees the actor snap into character before even entering the room. He even turns the door handle creepily, and darts his head around the door, sniffing and snarling like a beast, before literally rubbing cheeks with his stand-in actor, sniffing for life blood. It is such an audacious audition that intrudes entirely on the personal space of even actors, and Breck brings every ounce of this energy, and more, to his every move.

Not only does Jeepers Creepers start and continue strongly, but it manages one of the most memorable horror endings in 21st century cinema, which I shan't spoil here. I fear no dark winged beast that will eat my tongue in the non-sexy way, but the tension conjured by this movie makes me feel, time after time, like I'm standing on a trapdoor with a sack and noose over my head. It's like watching a guitar string being slowly and gently tightened, or even a harpsichord like in The Haunting, knowing that at any second that strip of steel will lick across your face before you even realise you've lost an eye and a quarter of your hair. Regardless of how I know this movie shot-for-shot and line-for-line, the imagery and pacing never fails to suspend my nerves on a knife edge. As long as you are the type of person that would tell your younger brother that he is a "ball licker", you will be in your element.

Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)

Victor Salva has managed to keep his controversial status surprisingly quiet. Many years after having seen, fallen in love with, and watched hundreds of times, his modern horror classic Jeepers Creepers, I did some reading about him, and found out that he had been convicted and incarcerated for raping a young male actor on his debut movie Clownhouse. By the millennium, he was out, back to directing and doing a darn good job of it. Now I maintain that the personal lives of artists should bear no consequence on our freedom to enjoy their material, and Victor Salva has a lot of talent, regardless of his poor choices and criminal record. So here comes a positive critique for his production Jeepers Creepers 2. 

The sequel picks up the day after the ordeal of Trish and Darry, and centres on two separate parties whose paths eventually cross: one is an old farmer and his teenage son, whose youngest boy has been dragged to his doom by the Creeper; and a high school football team and their girlfriends and coaches, on their way home from a victorious game. It is Day 23 of the Creeper’s season, making it his last day of human smorgasbord before he gotta sleep it off for another twenty-three years. And hey, this is like the day before the diet begins, so he’s gonna binge the fuck out, right?!

The Creeper on the bus goes...

The original Jeepers Creepers drew the perfect balance of visibility of our antagonist. The Creeper, a dark Reaper-type figure, was almost always cast in deep shadow and we saw fractions of his features, or simply his silhouette. The sequel takes the opportunity to get us better acquainted to that fabulous villain, and he is serving up demonic realness hun-ty! A standout sequence from within the bus sees the Creeper stalk the vehicle, before hanging upside down and staring straight into the camera, into the eyes of each dumb teenager on board. The first hour of the movie is a hardcore suspensefest that kept me absolutely hooked.

Consider the sequence in which the busload of kids realise they are up against a malevolent unseen force. The bus tyres have been shredded by unusual throwing stars decorated with human remains, and their coach sets about setting a string of flares up the road to warn any oncoming vehicles of their predicament. Despite the entire ensemble of no less than twenty five people standing right there when it happens, not a single person is looking at the split second in which coach suddenly disappears into the sky. Most of them notice the flare that inexplicably falls from mid-air moments later. The ways in which the characters baffle over, and try to make sense of, what has just happened are golden realism, and even when the same fate befalls the bus driver minutes later, they are in no hurry to ascribe the events to the paranormal. But they are understandably scared.

The action implores the audience to sit right within that bus, and engage in the frustration. Although we know more than the characters on-board about the fates of their coach and bus driver, the plausibility they try to address the situation with is so very believable, and makes their ordeal the more terrifying. They could move beyond this point had their missing disappeared in more mortal ways, but every sign indicates they flew away, as the only witness of the driver’s demise insists. They are clearly dealing with more than a mad hillbilly, but they are living in the real world, and how else could these events be explained?

Creepiest figure on a cross since Carrie

The thread of the farmer and his son is not so tangible, especially when it comes to the movie’s penultimate sequence that involves the farmer bringing out some OTT harpoon contraption mounted on the back of his battered pick-up truck. The anticlimactic battle that ensues adds unnecessary length and dilution to the picture, and weakens it overall. I mean, had the farmer shown this kind of proficiency in the drawn-out chase of the creature snatching his kid – instead of repeatedly screaming the boy’s name, running and doing nothing with the rifle in his hand – he could have saved himself one stressful retirement. Just sayin’.

However, this is somewhat compensated for by the closing scene, set another twenty-three years later, in which some local kids stop by the farm to see the attraction they have heard so much about. In response to the inevitability of the Creeper’s return – which he expects ‘any day now’ – the farmer mounted the thing’s body on the wall of the barn years before, and sits in front of it night and day, armed and ready for round two. The ending makes me all the more surprised that the third Jeepers instalment took so long to materialise, despite years of rumours, plans and Development Hell, and ended up being so unbearably dreadful.

The movie is not only well conceived, well directed and made with fabulous visual style, but is acted exceedingly well for what is more or less a dead teenager movie. Standouts come from Garikayi Mutambirwa and Ray Wise, an entertainment veteran whose work I really enjoyed in the short-lived series Reaper, delivers the maddened, grieving father almost better than the movie requires of him. He is a real treat. And Jonathan Breck reprising the Creeper is even better than before, going to town on opportunities to get up close and personal with the camera and scare us silly.

Hey Creeper, how's your head?

Jeepers Creepers 2 is solidly entertaining. It is absolutely absorbing, and the kind of movie that you have to commentate: “Stop yelling ‘Bobby’ and just shoot the fucker!”, “Oh my God, no, don’t stick your head out through the roof, no no NO!” It is, by far, one of the strongest horror sequels I have ever seen, in terms of action, quality and scariness. It is a rare thing for me to get the feels from a horror movie these days, and the unflinching tension that Salva and his actors create – particularly in the first hour or so – is contagious. I scold myself for waiting so long to finally watch this movie – it is a right treasure.

The Bucket List (2007)

34. To bash your brains right the fuck in!

Everybody knows what a Bucket List is, and a lot of people will know of the movie The Bucket List, even if they haven't seen it. I was one of these until recently, and unfortunately, I could have remained one of these and been no better off for the experience. But how bad could a movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman really be? I got to thinking, while watching this movie, whether Nicholson and Freeman even have to audition for movies anymore. They both have their schtick, despite having wider acting ranges within their respective repertoires, and it feels like filmmakers write parts with them in mind. I mean, what kind of movie would it be if Morgan Freeman were not narrating the quasi-wisdom in his sagely drawl?

Freeman opens the movie as a booksmart mechanic, who spends his days fixing cars and demeaning his colleagues by showing off about how much random trivia he knows. Nicholson is a soulless multimillionaire who spends his introduction explaining to a court that the hospitals he owns will not offer any frills; this means, among other things, that there will always be two patients to a room. Oh hai Foreshadowing.

After coughing up blood in their respective 'discovery of illness' scenes, they end up sharing a room at one of Nicholson's hospitals, with Freeman smiling smugly about how omniscient a knowledge he has of cancer, and laughing at Nicholson when he promptly throws up his decadent rich-person food. Their banter brings them to an agreement that they will indulge in the world's hedonism before they die, and Nicholson will pay for it because hey, who doesn't this amazing situation befall following a death sentence?!

If this setup already sounds unrealistic and saccharine, then I have described it accurately. But don't be fooled into thinking that the movie somehow makes the concept of palliative care amusing, or strangely less terrifying. Nobody really likes a Lifetime-style movie that dwells on misery, but this doesn't mean a narrative can't give a perspective that provokes thought or any emotion other than depression. American Beauty managed to be almost comforting on the themes of death and fulfilled life, while The Green Mile gave a highly emotive account of man's shuffle off the mortal coil without overbalancing into melodrama. The Bucket List achieves none of these, and simply plays out in an unsettled and tonally irregular slump.

Like to get my hands on whoever wrote this script.

The men gallivant around the world, miraculously not needing their drips, bed pans and hospital beds for extended periods, and doing things that are unrealistic for such illness. Skydiving, banger racing in disgustingly beautiful vintage cars and clocking up a metric fuck tonne of airmiles, are just a few of their pursuits, and not once do they look or act as if they have terminal cancer. Sure, illness looks different on everyone, but this story just portrays it in such an unlikely manner that the whole cancer plot device seems all but abandoned, and because of this, used in a cynical and uncaring way.

Rob Reiner helms this odd piece, with such gems as Misery and Stand By Me in his portfolio. It baffles me that a director of his calibre can have so poorly judged his material, when he has previously exercised jealousy, terror, naivete, loyalty and rivalry so beautifully. As it stands, the actual story is no more than an outdated morality tale that might have been told to children in centuries past. Two polarised characters are united by a common struggle, only to learn what it really means to live; at least that's what the movie thinks it is doing.

All of our characters are as waffer-theen as the mint that causes the combustion of Mr Creosote. It is as if Nicholson and Freeman were each given a single phrase to describe their character, and they improv-ed it on the spot. Freeman is your good old working class fella, who perpetuates the old 'magical negro' stereotype by having an almost supernatural quality to his constant cheer and sagely diatribes. He regularly drills Nicholson on his atheistic attitudes about life, death and afterlife, and just gives him a knowing smirk in response to a difference of opinion. Meanwhile, Nicholson occasionally digs a little into just why Freeman is so damn sure of himself and his beliefs, only to be met with the same sorts of reactions. None of this babble goes anywhere, develops either of the characters or really pays off.

Yup, seems legit.

Other intriguing points of conversation include fucking much younger women, bowel movements and Marconi radio. Every time it feels like the narrative might just be getting a little bit of traction, it disintegrates back into more of this idle talk, with the two men walking about in front of dreadfully green screened tourist attractions. I guess the movie funnelled all its budget into top bill names, because it seemed beyond them to shoot on location at the Taj Mahal or Pyramids of Giza.


I kept telling myself throughout this movie that I should be laughing, or at least have that dreaded feel-good feeling, but I found myself constantly pissed off and kind of depressed. The ending - which really fancies itself as some poignant tying of loose ends - could not have come soon enough, and when it did, I actually felt worse of for having seen it. There is no serious look at illness or life philosophy, and the movie just feels like one big cheap and unfunny joke. 

The Lion King (2019)

The Lion King may have just scooped the medal for the Disney remake I have hated the most to date. It doesn't seem to have any relation with how much I loved its original, or even the level of effort put in by the many hardworking artists who produced the retread. This movie has undoubtedly achieved something monumental, and that is photorealism, but this is its Achilles heel.

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, the problem that stuck out at me was the impossibility of expressing emotion through the look of the animals. We all remember the original sequence that follows Mufasa's death, in which Scar tells Simba to run away. The traumatised little cub gives one last glimpse of fear, turns on his heels and runs. But all that this situation gives us this time around is a lion cub running, and this is how the entire show plays out. All emotion has to be conveyed either in dialogue or in narrative, and because this is not pulled off, the entire movie lacks any sense of urgency, momentum or feeling. Even the speech feels detached from the animals, often coming off as more of a voiceover than characters talking diegetically.

Simba's excited face

The opening sequence is a shot for shot remake of the original's, and serves splendidly as a showcase of the talent and progress that the Disney company consists of. It looks entirely authentic, with beautiful use of lighting and texture, and oddly for a special effects movie, it consistently peaks during its scenes of bright daylight. The actual look, movement and texture of the picture is second to none, and should be recognised, but every other element is weak and drags the whole product down.

Disney's biggest achievement to date

Despite the narrative being copied and pasted from the '90s, the dough has been slammed down on that countertop and stretched to near transparency. The journey of Simba's fur (not a burst of dust that spells out 'sex' in the night sky) to Rafiki's hands goes on for a couple of minutes, allowing us to witness its progress through the wind, the water, and the digestive tract of a giraffe. Trouble is that we gain nothing from this expansion, and such attempts to fill an extended run time causes the film to drag a lot more than it should. Disney Classics were almost always succinct, neatly crafted narratives that start and end exactly where they should, but the live action counterparts seem to think that it's not a movie if it's less than two hours long.

Casting choices for this picture have drawn some attention, and it has its strengths and weaknesses. Prominently, James Earl Jones becomes possibly the first person ever to play the same role in an original film and its remake by returning to voice Mufasa, which is fun, but too many times I found myself thinking I preferred the way he did it 20 years ago. Donald Glover gives perhaps the best performance as Simba, although his younger singing counterpart surprisingly struggles. Chiwetel Ejiofor is forgettable as Scar, John Oliver's Zazu is nowhere near as entertaining as Rowan Atkinson's, Seth Rogen is amusing as Pumbaa. The choice that really got under my skin was Beyonce, whose participation as Nala was stretched with the addition of lots of pointless lines, and was outstandingly poor. Beyonce is not an actress, and her delivery feels totally without direction and mismatched to the action. What really slaps me in the face, though, is the fact that she sings as Nala in Can You Feel the Love Tonight? (incidentally, I couldn't), and minutes later sings as a regular soundtrack contributor, which is nonsensical and sycophantic. They clearly went out of their way to give Mrs Carter a bigger role than she is capable of.

You may or may not have noticed a pattern emerging. Disney's glaring sense of political correctness is evident in the casting choices. I get the impression that the company was proactive about the inevitable SJW force that would stamp their feet at the prospect of westerners telling a story set in Africa, and decided to cushion that fall by hiring a predominantly black cast. After all, the Disney Store pulled Maui costumes from their stock because crybabies whined that they were appropriating other people's cultures.

Simba's scared face

After the opening number, the action begins to step out periodically in its own direction, but this leads to poorly staged musical numbers. Another strength of the Disney Classic is the arrangement and choreography of musical numbers, which are always so polished in their presentation. This movie all but erases Be Prepared, which certainly contributes to Scar's apparent lack of character and motive, and I Just Can't Wait to Be King consists almost entirely of the lion cubs running. No flair, no backup dancing from the other animals. Also missing, much to my dismay was Timon's hula dance, replaced with a weird meta performance of the first few bars of Be Our Guest. This moment felt so entirely out of left field, and is just one example of Timon and Pumbaa's sometimes odd comic relief.

My feelings are far from original, but I hate what Disney has become - a lazy money machine. All creativity seems to have been drained from the company, which dictates to the  passionate and talented artists who ultimately make the picture. The sequels and remakes have left me wrung down, brung down, hung up and all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things. Despite its many ups and downs, Disney's origins are full of heart and passion, but its modern self has abandoned all principles. The Lion King remake is a prime example of its debauchery.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)

The Human Centipede is as bleak as a decent movie can get, and that is very much to its credit. I vividly recall the cultural hubbub that was The Human Centipede when it first reared its ugly head in 2009, and I found out about it through outraged and disgusted social media posts by friends. Of course, knowing me, when that much outrage has been generated, I simply have to see what all the fuss is about. On first viewing, I experienced the retching and hilarity that was expected, but years later, after two sequels have been made, and the Siamese triplet of a film series has been completed, I was surprised to see that it not only held up surprisingly well, but was a genuinely well done film.

Your basic premise is that two American girls, Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie), are on a European road trip, and for some reason are making their way down woodland roads en route to a nightclub. Well, their car breaks down, and they exchange some terribly delivered bitchery, while trudging through the rainy forest in shorts and high heels. They happen across the house of one Dr Josef Heiter, a retired specialist in separating conjoined twins. He promptly drugs the girls and intends to expand his surgical repertoire by creating a conjoined triplet that is connected via a single gastric system. In layman's terms, they are sewn mouth to ass. Also along for the worst ride since It's a Small World, is Akihiro Kitamura, who at least garners the privilege of being the front part of the centipede.

As a thoroughly cosmopolitan movie in terms of production, we are treated to no less than three spoken languages, and the version I just watched didn't have subtitles. This made for interesting viewing, particularly as I have previously seen subtitled versions, and know the gist of the dialogue, but mainly went by the emotions being conveyed. The good Herr Doktor does the girls (and the audience) the courtesy of mostly speaking English, but the general lack of communication between characters plays nicely into the idea of alien parts being thrust together.

Does this centipede taste funny to you?

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon within the small-time acting community: many an actor can play fear or hysteria quite well, but delivering natural, conversational dialogue seems beyond them. This is certainly the case for our two American leads, whose earlier scenes are poorly delivered, but are saved by strong direction and production values. However, the shining star of this dim and grimy production is Mr Dieter Laser, who was just made to play a part of this kind. His sinewy figure, soulless eyes and boundless physical delivery make for a sinister and utterly unpredictable villain.

What really struck me this time around about The Human Centipede was how well it conveyed total and utter hopelessness. In some ways, it feels like it belongs in the '70s with the other low budget, somewhat artistic exploitation horrors, in that it stirs the most basic of instincts in the audience, by tugging the nerve of vulnerability. The recurring shots of Jenny and Lindsay holding each other's hands in desperate mutual comfort are some of the many silent and bitterly poignant visuals used by writer/director Tom Six, who pulls off a deeply macabre atmosphere from beginning to end.

This movie is oddly absorbing, and it is easy for a new viewer to expect 90 minutes of faecal torture porn, but The Human Centipede is so much more than that, as becomes apparent after the whole 'eating shit' money shot has been and gone. In fact, the concept of being forced to not only eat the faeces of another person, but also to survive solely on it, is remarkably minimal as a focus of the narrative. The real horror comes in being put into such a horrific and vulnerable situation that requires a miraculous combination of team effort and good fortune to survive even for a day, and the idea that this is not a situation that will soon end with death, but could go on for a very long time.

Honestly, best shot of the entire movie

It is hard to ignore the evident inspiration (for lack of a better term) taken from Josef Mengele for Heiter's character. In fact, it would not surprise me if the likes of this movie took place in Mengele's basement somewhere in Brazil after the war. This connotation also forces us to remember that the likes of this gross movie are not merely the twisted imaginings of some Dutch nutter, but that humans have been devising cruel and unusual ways to punish each other since the dawn of time.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019)

Making films, music and literature based - either loosely or otherwise - on real events, and more specifically, on true crime, is far from a modern trend, and yet it is still a divisive topic on moral grounds. The better known serial killers, such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, continue to inspire recreations of their lives and crimes, and the human condition of morbid curiosity keeps ensuring return on profit is seen. The question of whether it is ethical to rehash such crimes for 'entertainment purposes', and how such recreations can impact the survivors and their loved ones, continues to be asked, yet it seems to have little effect on the industry's production of such movies, or on audiences' viewing of them. Monster and The Girl Next Door are serious and well-made productions based to varying degrees on true crime, but for every Monster, there are easily a hundred The Haunting of Sharon Tate.

Critics have been slamming this movie for many reasons, and Lionsgate have been pulling out all of the damage control stops to ensure people still give their movie the benefit of the doubt. Not only is this not a well-made film, but it is a very inconsiderate one. It doesn't seek simply to recreate the crimes of the Manson family in 1969, but to put a supernatural twist on things, and perpetuate dismal rumours first circulated by the media mere hours after the news broke fifty years ago: talk of infidelities, open relationships and devil worship somehow being the cause of those events is tasteless and speculative at best. What, I ask you, could possibly be gained, or added to this story, by the suggestions of Roman Polanski (who is not portrayed onscreen in this movie) 'cheating' on his wife, or Gibby Folger and Wojciech Frykowski manipulating Sharon into a position of vulnerability? It drags this whole sorry tale to the depths of tabloid fodder in the least tactful way possible.

The media spin that continues to embody the Tate-LaBianca murders could be an interesting way to tell this story, but this is clearly not what the makers had in mind. If nothing else, its only real goals are to paint Sharon and her friends as people they were not, with an aim to add a sense of suspicion and tension that never existed. And this is not to say that this movie manages to achieve even the slightest feeling of suspense. It consists primarily of repetitive sequences of Sharon creeping wide-eyed around her dark house, convinced that she is in danger but for some reason doing nothing about it.

For some reason, Hilary Duff 'stars' as Sharon Tate, and we are suddenly and rudely reminded of why her repertoire never really expanded beyond Lizzie McGuire and being Steve Martin's stroppy teen daughter in Cheaper by the Dozen. She looks and sounds nothing like Sharon Tate, despite her fleeting attempts at some sort of regional accent. Duff is very strangely directed throughout this picture, in every way from accent to emotion and mindset. There are odd moments at which she seems to react to things in ways that just don't match the action, and her character's thought processes are sloppy. This heavily pregnant woman, whose several friends are literally in the next bedroom, keeps creeping around this dark house when she suspects intruders. No guns, no phone calls, she doesn't even turn on the lights or scream for someone. She just keeps skulking around in the dark.

The main narrative bookending this piece is what pissed me off the most. The movie opens in black and white, and purports to show us Sharon giving an interview in 1968. The interviewer asks her if she has ever had any experiences she considered psychic. Now this in itself is not crazy, as there was quite a trend for metaphysics, spirituality and psychedelia in the '60s and '70s, and this could have been an interesting approach in more competent hands. But Sharon responds that she had a nightmare in which she and her friends are murdered, which "I guess you could consider a psychic experience". We are given no other indication at this point in the story's timeline that could give weight to this idea that a simple bad dream is some form of premonition, and the narrative only seems to show Sharon come to recognise this much later on. This terribly contrived plot device is the frayed string from which the entire narrative precariously hangs.

Now when I did some basic research into this film (which I did when I got to this very point in writing my review), I made a striking discovery about the resume of writer/director Daniel Farrands. Not only is his filmography comprised almost entirely of horror sequels and true crime movies, but he actually wrote the aforementioned The Girl Next Door, which was a very good and considerately handled movie. Interestingly, that was more or less the first thing he wrote in twenty years, preceded by Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers in 1995. This in itself makes me wonder why and how Farrands' ability to craft believable dialogue that propels a difficult narrative seems to have evaporated. On top of this, his more recent credits include another dreadful Amityville movie, and production on an upcoming piece titled The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. There is a definite pattern there, which I might not take such a distaste to if not for Farrands' sharply declining standards. In 2007, he proved himself capable of taking a horrific true crime, dramatising it in a way that gives context to the behaviours of its characters, and approaching what is essentially an exploitation picture with utmost dignity, respect and care. Somehow, he is now a shadow of his former professional self.

Farrands' habit of running with the scrag ends of existing narratives smacks of commercial and artistic cynicism. He demonstrates little ability to create original material, and he has absolutely forgotten - or neglected - the way real people speak, which is so crucial to his line of work. Often when we hear of true crime stories, particularly those in which people are somehow convinced or manipulated into committing crime by others, the mind really boggles at how things get from A to B. What does a person have to say, and how do they have to say it, in order to get another person to commit such cruelty on innocents? With The Girl Next Door, Farrands showed us just how an evil adult could have manipulated neighbourhood children into torturing and killing a young girl, and it was his way with dialogue that made these unimaginable events believable. Now, he can't even convince us that a woman is trying to tell her friends she thinks she is being stalked. I mean damn, that's not a lot to ask of a writer who has previously shown his mettle with conveying difficult ideas on screen.

Although The Haunting of Sharon Tate is nowhere near as technically inept as I had expected it to be, it is just a sad, sorry and puzzling excuse of a film. A film doesn't have to be a masterpiece to be redeemable, but this is just the laziest form of 'retelling', and is not entertaining, scary, intriguing or compelling. As unethical as it can seem, it is undeniable that our nature as humans is to find curiosity in the extraordinary, in the things we don't see every day or have never seen before. Whether this is a motorway pileup or a murdered film star, we can't help but be fascinated. But there are so many elements of the Manson crimes that actually warrant elaboration and exploration, that don't disrespect the memories of the victims, and better filmmakers have explored these. Cult mentality, the transition to a life of crime, the death of a social movement; these are all insights that can be gained from these awful events that people can learn from. We gain nothing from 60 minutes of Hilary Duff creeping around in the dark and 25 minutes of crass crime scene recreation. This movie is utterly worthless.

Terrifier (2016)

Several years ago, I wrote here about a movie my sister got me for Christmas, having seen it at an LA film festival. I wrote about how Rell told me that it was the scariest movie she had ever seen, and how I concurred, and how I had actually had trouble sleeping the night I watched it. This movie was All Hallows Eve by Damien Leone.

In 2017, he made his second movie from the Art the Clown universe, entitled Terrifier. It is very clear from the off that Leone was working with a much higher budget this time around, as well as a more liberal deadline. All Hallows Eve was infamously amateur while being well made, and Terrifier is slicker, cleaner (so to speak) and more polished in its presentation, from framing to credits. The single element of the movie that jumped out at me was use of colour. The whole picture is perfectly coloured, with Art's black and white suit blending seamlessly into the nighttime shadows in an urban street. Every sequence is so aesthetically pleasing that it's as if it has been painted on a canvas rather than storyboarded, and in this way the movie is outstanding.

For putting me through this, you are the middle piece!

The narrative of Terrifier is entirely more conventional than that of its predecessor, with the entire film manifesting through a straight, chronological storyline captured by a traditional invisible camera. Because of this, and the lacklustre plot and action, Terrifier is underwhelming on the heels of the traumatising All Hallows Eve. It is not particularly scary, and of all things that I took away from what should have been a scary movie, it was "Wow, that use of colour was fabulous!" I mean, this movie is not trying to be a Tarantino or an Argento that expects the audience to say, "Wow, this disgusting violence is being presented in a very picturesque manner!" I have a feeling it was trying to be disturbing and gross, like the first movie was, but it just doesn't pull it off, despite a single sequence that was slightly darker than the rest of the movie was willing to be.

Apart from the blatantly higher production values, the other thing that slapped me right in the face within the first few minutes of Terrifier was that we were no longer dealing with the same Art the Clown. This Art is obviously trying to be the All Hallows Eve Art, as played by Mike Giannelli, but he is considerably skinnier, and is just... not... Art. I don't know why Giannelli didn't reprise the role that he played so menacingly, but this time round, David Howard Thornton is trying to carry the movie, and not managing to do so.

I thawt you was in a hurry!

Terrifier has its moments, in particular a demented sequence inspired by Buffalo Bill's darkest fantasies, but on the whole, it is an entirely conventional horror movie, and while it is artistically worthy of Damien Leone and his hard working crew, its narrative is not. Leone proved with his humble origins, from YouTube favourite short film maker, to learned devotee of horror with All Hallows Eve, and managed to creep out two hardcore horror fans, which is no mean feat. I see him developing a career like that of Adam Green: he may try his hand at other stories, but will probably continue to expand with Art the Clown on the indie circuit. He definitely has the craft and the passion, but I hope that for his next project, he develops a stronger scripts, and frames it as powerfully as he did with his first feature length film. I have my eye on this fellow.

Toy Story 4 (2019)

You know how I found out about the passing of veteran entertainer Don Rickles? I saw Toy Story 4 and noticed that Potato Head was present throughout, but only spoke a single line (off screen) the entire time. By the time the credits rolled, I was busy googling whether or not Rickles was still alive, and found my answer way before the brief post-credits dedication to his memory. Rickles died in 2017, by which time voice recording had not yet begun, and it would seem that Pixar decided the most graceful way to deal with this issue was to steal an unused sound byte from a previous instalment and simply tack it on. This move sets the bar for the entire movie, which left me angry in a way unlike any movie in recent (or even more distant) memory.

Having heard from critics I respect that Toy Story 4 held up surprisingly well, I went in with middling expectations and by the 30 minute mark, I was absolutely over this shit. What I was faced with was 90 minutes of live vivisection of a childhood icon. I hope that by the end of this diatribe, I have successfully expressed my disdain for this picture, and haven't been sidetracked by animalistic rage and many four-letter words.

Y'know partner, this used to be a respectable franchise.

Unlike every other chapter, Toy Story 4 does not begin with a fantasy action sequence, but with some incident in Andy's childhood in which RC is somehow getting sucked into a storm drain outside while a Gumtree user rocks up to the house to collect a lamp he has purchased, which is apparently where Bo Peep originates, despite us never having seen her act as part of a lighting appliance. We don't kinow how or why RC ended up outside in torrential rain, but it serves to give Woody and Bo an odd farewell scene. Flash to nine years later, and the toys are in the possession of Bonnie, as the third film left them. The less than likeable kid is about to start kindergarten and Woody tags along to make sure things go well. The kid creates a crude figurine out of a plastic spork, pipecleaners and lolly sticks, the aptly named Forky, and brings it home, where Woody sets about trying to teach the developmentally stunted creature to live as a toy.

Of course, the toys have to have an adventure away from home, so the kid's parents suggest a road trip. The retarded spork acts like someone's senile parent, constantly wandering off, and eventually throws itself from the RV window, prompting Woody to follow, assuring the other toys that he is entirely capable of catching them up at their destination five miles down the road. On foot; on toy foot. Of course this is stupid, but how else are we going to send Woody off on his latest wild goose chase?

The substance of the movie, if it can be called that, is so unforgivably lazy: the previous scores are recycled, with the addition of a single uninspired song by Randy Newman; scenarios veiled as homage directly rip off preceding chapters; the new characters are inconsistent and not at all relatable. Toy Story 3 was a retread of Toy Story 2 in terms of plot, but it still showed creativity, poignancy, humour and thematic strength. Toy Story 4 feels a lot like the family film equivalent of Game of Thrones Season 8: it is entirely disinterested in engaging our minds or emotions, takes half-assed shortcuts, and seems to think that its validity relies on their ability to remind us how good the previous instalments of the same story were. Hey, remember how awesome Randy Newman's music wqas? Here it is, literally all over again. Hey, remember how the toys launched themselves in a conga missile through the catflap of Sid's house in a rescue attempt? Here is pretty much the same thing all over again.

My face throughout this movie

All characters but Woody are resigned to the background. Buzz is occupied with a stupid and nonsensical microplot that hangs on conscience and voicebox being synonymous in the toy world; Jesse and Bullseye have absolutely nothing to do, and favourite bit players such as Potato Head and Rex may as well not even be there. Bo Peep is given an inexplicable makeover, from her voice, to her origins, to her physical makeup. She was previously an entirely porcelain figure, but now her clothes are made of fabric and are removable. Her sheep now have names, and she drives some sort of vehicle disguised as a skunk. She claims she has been living her best life as a free and independent woman for the last nine years, but later laments that she spent years gathering dust on the shelf of an antique store. Everything is so confused and nonsensical, and it made my blood boil to watch.

The villain of this piece is the most underdeveloped and unstable of the series. A Gabby Gabby doll, who purports to date from the '50s, just like Woody - uhh, what?! - has never been loved because her voicebox never worked, and so her evil plan is to get Woody drunk at a bar, seduce him and allow him to wake up in a bathtub full of ice. Well, actually, she just straight up tells Woody that he is about to get organ trafficked, but after hearing her half-hearted spiel, Woody just relents and allows her to take his voicebox, and later wakes up having his back stitched up by a ventriloquist dummy. It was so dark in a way that hasn't fit the Toy Story tone since the very first movie, and struck me as kind of disturbing. Then it is never touched on again. Nothing about how they never needed their voicebox to be loved by a kid or anything. Woody just gets his fucking organs stolen by some mad doll, who then becomes a sympathetic anti-hero for the narrative, and gets a happy ending nothing like that awarded to Stinky Pete or to Lotso. The tone of this movie is up and down like a tart's drawers.

Another questionable addition is that of what I refer to as 'ghetto comedy'. You know, that kind of thing where a black character makes any loud and sarcastic comment, and it is played like it is funny, regardless of whether it actually is. Two stuffed animals from a carnival tag along with Woody for some reason, and serve no purpose other than to yell "Nawwww way, man!" every now and then.

The ending is perhaps one of the most maddening elements of the movie, so *spoiler alert*. When the rest of the toys finally reunite with Woody and Bo at the end of the ordeal, Woody does that weird thing that has become more prevalent as the Toy Storys have gone along, where there are long shots of his furrowed brow as he reflects on something that we cannot interpret. He then murmers a few words to other characters like "Are you sure?" and we just have to wait impatiently to find out exactly what he is referring to. This time, it turns out that Woody has decided that he doesn't need a kid anymore, and is instead going to become the Mickey to Bo's Mallory. That's right, he leaves all of his longtime friends behind in order to enjoy some porcelain pussy. What the actual fuck?!

I'm sure there are one or two other annoyances that have slipped through the cracks of my exhausted bullshit detector, but quite frankly, I feel that I have given this shite movie enough of my precious time for one day and one lifetime. I will never watch this movie again, and I hate to say that it takes twisted glee in slowly picking the stitches that Toy Story 3 had so neatly sewn. Fuck this movie.