Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)

Any basic kid of my generation remembers the craze of Japanese ghost women haunting their dreams in the early 2000s. I distinctly remember getting rather pissed one time off at two friends who slept over, and kept wailing into the night about Samara coming to get them. Ju-On: The Grudge and Ringu were two Japanese horror movies that soon got American remakes and exploded onto the Western mainstream, and both spawned an obscene number of sequels et al. I enjoyed all such movies back in the day, and after more than ten years, I decided to revisit Ju-On: The Grudge.

The throaty croaking, the creaking woman with long black hair and cat screeches are so widely known of The Grudge, but what only fans will recognise it for is the episodic framing, eerie use of sweeping camera and minimal musical score, and overall excellence in creating suspense. For all the Scary Movie-style parody and social recognition that the franchise has attracted, Ju-On: The Grudge remains a quietly scary film that horror rookies will be scared by, and horror experts will be impressed by.

"Bubblegum!"

The story of Ju-On: The Grudge is centred on a particular house in suburban Japan. A typical Japanese family home with paper doors and minimal decoration, its boxy interiors capture the majority of the movie's action and fear. A catatonic old woman lives in the house, and very quickly, the family and acquaintances who set foot in the place are hunted down by a ghostly woman and disappear. What is essentially a basic setup is made more mysterious in its non-linear presentation, jumping around on the story's timeline to ultimately give us a complete jigsaw puzzle.

Get those nuts away from my face!

I've experienced a moderate body of Asian horror movies over the years, and would never claim to be an expert, or even an enthusiast, despite how highly I would recommend the movies I have seen and the genre they represent. I find Ju-On: The Grudge to be an easily watchable movie. I know of many people who really will not give their time to foreign movies, and I swear to God, if I had a nickel for every time I had heard, "If I wanted to read, I'd go to a library!" But I think that this movie is a fairly easy transition for a world cinema novice. Speech, of course, plays an important part, but a surprising amount of the movie is visual, and I believe transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries. Honestly, this could be a silent movie of the '20s with just a musical score and still work terrifically.

All this pussy and nobody's getting laid

As I said, I am no expert in Asian movies, and speak about three words of Japanese, but as an enthusiastic linguist of the English language, I can say that at times, the standard of acting is hard to judge due to the cadences of spoken Japanese. When compared to their corresponding subtitles, some regular spoken sequences can come across as over-acted to an English-speaking audience, but I understand that this could be due to the natural sound of the Japanese language. However, as I have observed with many a horror movie over the years, the actors are largely very convincing and engaging when acting frightened.


Director/writer Takashi Shimizu has fun within the visual and narrative boundaries he set for himself and his crew, and manages to communicate fear up-close and in long shots. Those iconic extreme close-ups of the faces of the ghosts' imminent victims are so well crafted and acted, and truly stand out as the highlights of the movie. The repeated sweeping tracking shots of victims as they succumb to the haunting are wonderfully simplistic while establishing key visual themes; by the third or fourth chapter of this chilling tale, we understand what is to come both visually and narratively, but that doesn't stop it from being absolutely terrifying when it arrives.

Helloooo? Avon calling!

As it happens, I did not find Ju-On: The Grudge as immediately terrifying as I either remembered or anticipated. I did not jump, and no scene gave me the chills or gave me trouble sleeping (as tall an order as that is for me these days), but as a film enthusiast, I really appreciate this picture. It clearly inspired enough tension and excitement in people to spew a whole gooey egg-nest from its cinematic loins, but the humility and understated charm of Shimizu's Ju-On: The Grudge is an entirely enjoyable and magnetic cinematic experience.

Urban Explorer (2011)

Andy Fetscher's Urban Explorer was one of my several cheap DVD store punts that turned out to be, as Roger Ebert once called Last House, "about four times as good as you'd expect". I am a keen urban explorer in real life, and am always totally compelled by movies that use it as a subject. Truth is, amazing suspense can be conjured on the screen simply by having characters be in places they shouldn't, such as in Area 51. The likes of As Above So Below and Chernobyl Diaries keep me coming back again and again, and while Urban Explorer has a lot in common with them, it delivers on the visceral horror aspects that the other titles may be lacking. I discovered this movie by chance about a year ago, and have since snagged a wonderful boyfriend who lived in Germany for many years and is fluent in the language, so I was eager to watch this movie again for his input, if nothing else, for his unique insight into the language and translations. He didn't disappoint.

Still I think he's raather tastyyyy!

A very cosmopolitan movie, Urban Explorer follows the journey of Denis and Marie are a couple ready to snoop around the undercarriage of Berlin for their anniversary, along with other couple Lucia and Juna, under the guidance of local Kris. Naturally, all seems well at first, before things go disastrously wrong, and they are stranded miles beneath the surface where nobody knows they have ventured. However, one of the cool perspectives that this movie offers is the lack of supernatural interference. There are no radiation zombies like in Chernobyl Diaries, no Dante's Inferno like in As Above, and no time-travelling Soviets like in Devil's Pass. All we have to fear this time around is a truly maniacal German fellow with huge teeth, huge eyes and a beard that even I don't find sexy, and isn't a real person always that much more frightening than a monster?

The group are fairly unremarkable, but can all be defined by one trait. Lucia is the dumbass who causes the whole disaster in one absent-minded moment; Juna is the Asian chick who may be into other chicks and wears a dangly earring that will later explain her fate when found on the floor of the Maniacal German's lair. Marie is a Venezuelan nurse and the girlfriend of Denis, who it later transpires once studied in Berlin, and is actually quite a competent German speaker, despite insisting that he only speaks it "a bit". Kris is the shifty German guide who we decide early on must be the antagonist because he's just so damn shifty and German, but we later find out he's the very least of our issues.

I was told I was in a Bob Clarke movie!

Midway through the movie, weird hermit Armin (Klaus Stiglmeier) literally drops into the story, offering suspiciously convenient help to the injured party and his desperate comrades. It all takes a turn that we don't tend to see in these movies, and paces the story in a more patient way, not to its detriment. This is a longer movie than many of its kind, but it works well. There are sequences in which silence and space are drawn out to excruciating lengths, crafting a proper sense of suspense. Urban Explorer is a great and slick-looking picture, and it throws some new ideas into the ring. It also wisely avoids the temptation to format itself as a found footage picture, and by doing so allows itself maximum cinematic freedom. It is not constrained by what the characters would be filming themselves, and has fun with the space and angles this allows. It really is about four times better than you'd expect.

"It's the gayest show in the fucking world!"

Sure, the characters are nothing special and this is no piece of high intellectualism, but it offers a fucking good viewing experience of its type, and goes above and beyond to deliver an engaging show that isn't just a dime a dozen. It also has that typically European ballsy attitude to conclusions that mainstream American audiences don't appreciate: the horrors are man-made, and even when it looks like the nightmare is over, this significantly powerful and relentless human being wipes away all hope in the way that true criminals do in the real world. There is a boldly hopeless tone to the film, and I truly admire a movie that dares to lean into this sort of theme, with no happy ending and no unrealistic escapes. It's a tense and unnerving experience that never lets up, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

(Incidentally, my boytoy advised me that the hermit speaks very colloquial German and that Denis' conversation is suitably amateur for his character, so it is even a carefully written movie.)

A Serbian Film (2010)

How bad can a movie themed on
mid-century communist propaganda possibly be?!

A Serbian Film is one of those controversial movies you get once in a blue moon that the creators insist there is deeper meaning to, much to the disagreement of audiences and critics. Mark Kermode disputed there being any legitimate allegory being made by the movie, and it has gone down in recent history as one of the most horrifying films ever made. Having finally subjected myself to its uncut version, I am baffled as to how anybody can not recognise the statements being made. I know virtually nothing about Serbia, except for it having a history of severe unrest in many senses, but I could very explicitly identify what the movie was trying to convey. Despite what one might expect having heard the grisly keywords associated with it, A Serbian Film is a devastatingly effective movie with plenty of angst.

Miloš is a retired porn actor who has settled down with a wife and child, but given up a good income and lavish lifestyle in the process. Struggling to get by and realising a quiet part of him misses the guy he once was, he is informed by a former colleague of a filmmaker who is producing a new high art form of pornography, and wants Miloš as his star. Coddled beneath several layers of armed security guards is Vukmir, a sinister and eccentric multimillionaire with a chip on his shoulder about the state of modern Serbian society. He is well practised in his prophetic rhetoric, ranting at length about what real art is, and what it is to feel and live. He wants to sign Miloš for big bucks, but is unwilling to tell his actor exactly what he will be performing, as part of some pornographic method acting school of thought or something.

No autographs, please.

Miloš is dubious about the unspecified nature of the work, but his wife Marija is heavily swayed by the money he will receive in return, so he decides to go for it. First day on set, Miloš is directed by Vukmir via an earpiece while flanked by several armed heavies holding cameras. Some odd domestic is going on between a mother and her adolescent daughter, both of whom go on to be central co-stars in this weird improv. By the second day, Miloš' convictions are being tested too hard by Vukmir's depraved setups, and he decides the next day to throw in the towel.

Suddenly Miloš awakens, hungover and bloodied, and it is three days later. Haunted and unable to find anybody he knows, he racks his brain for scraps of memory and tries to piece together what the hell happened to him. Through flashback and footage on a stolen camera, the movie takes us through Miloš' dreadful search for the truth, and we know things will somehow never been the same for him again.

Fans of Last House on the Left may recall that the original draft of its script was a more pornographically-oriented take on things, and as A Serbian Film was wrapping up, I couldn't help but compare it to Last House. It ultimately tells the same story, of an innocent and loving family torn apart by cruel outsiders, and how the family members react and are irreparably damaged by the ordeal. It is hard to classify either movie as horror, because they are really more like hard dramatic tragedies; they show us relatable and likeable characters whose terrible experiences stir emotional reactions in us as viewers. If I felt anything at the end of A Serbian Film, I felt sadness.

This is the greatest show!

Another element that these two movies have in common is that they narrate from the perspective of the family while framing them visually from the voyeuristic view of the aggressors. A Serbian Film is a very slickly produced picture, with sharp and very precise camerawork and sound. As we follow Miloš through this dark chapter, the camera always follows him like a stalker: we see him from over the shoulders of the people he converses with, or the corners of rooms. The feeling of being watched is intrinsically woven into the style of the movie, while sound forces the foreboding atmosphere upon us like a millstone, with inventive use of string plucking, static-like electronics and even what sounds like tearing paper. An incredible tension is created, starting with small tugs and stirs, and finally climaxing (eh-hem) in the film's closing minutes as an unbearable outburst.

This film is nothing short of ballsy. Srđan Todorović gets to show off an incredible range in the role of Miloš, and wouldn't work so well were it not for his courage to do exactly what the character requires of him. Were his performance to lack a certain emotion and vulnerability, we would not be able to feel for him anywhere near as much as we do by the time his nightmarish ordeal finally ends. I cannot imagine any of the roles in this movie being easy to fill for a director or for an actor, and every single person gives it their all, and absolute sincerity. Sergej Trifunović as Vukmir grasps just the right note of villainy and cunning. He is eccentric without being cartoonish, and measured enough for us to never quite peg him as a straight-up bad guy; he genuinely believes in what he does, and there is more to his motives than simply enjoying causing pain.

If this scene doesn't turn you on, you
clearly don't understand high art.

There is a great scene early on in the movie in which Miloš and Marija are in bed together watching one of his old skinflicks. They have the old "difference between love and fucking" discussion and Marija tells him that she quite fancies just being fucked once in a while. So he tries on the rough, underwear-tearing persona that he hung up years ago, and while she seems somewhat turned on by it, he clearly is not. The action cuts back and forth between the couple fucking, and Miloš' onscreen performance, before he recedes, turns his wife back over, starts to kiss her, and goes on to actually make love to her. This tells us so much about Miloš, and about his relationship with Marija. Although he clearly has the capacity (and from what we all hear, quite the knack) for your classic porn-style fucking, it is a compartmentalised section of his personality that he realises he doesn't like to open out into other sections, and just maybe, he has grown to dislike that side of himself.

Many an exploitation flick is accused of doing exactly what it says on the tin: exploiting suffering. More specifically, they are accused of 'glorifying' violence. A Serbian Film has definitely met its fair share of this vein of criticism, but it never once looks at violence through a rose tinted filter. Every second of pain is depicted as cruel and senseless, and despite its inherently sexualised framing, is never presented for titillation or kicks. It wants us to look at its content in the harsh, brutal way that it truly exists in the world, and ultimately, it wants our understanding of Miloš to grow as a result. The impact of the movie hinges on how we feel for the characters being wronged, not how gross and sensationalist it can be.

Uh... no homo.

The casual moviegoer is unlikely to accidentally stumble into this picture without any prior understanding of what they are getting themselves into, but let it be known: this is a gruesome and hard-hitting picture which in its uncut version uses some very disturbing imagery. It is stuff you won't shake off easily, but if you feel you can handle it, it is very worth seeing. I got so much more from watching this movie than I had anticipated, and am still somewhat surprised to be declaring it a moving and very effective piece.

I wonder what Roger Ebert would have made of this movie. Although he was still alive and critiquing when it came out, he never reviewed it. I feel like his 70s self - the same one that commended Last House - would have seen redeeming qualities in it, and perhaps even recommended it, much to the horror of the average moviegoer. In his mid-80s, Siskel-centric era, he may have decried it for its sexually-oriented violence. I know that by his twilight years, he had grown pretty damn tired of the hardcore exploitation flicks. That was his taste. I love me a hardcore exploitation flick, and A Serbian Film is as extreme as it gets in terms of content and context.

Slender Man (2018)

Who is the real savage?

How in the hell can you make a horror movie so boring and ugly to look at? How do you make a 90 minute movie feel so goddamn long? How do you make a movie without any sense of framing, momentum or feeling of any kind? Well I don't know, but I have a feeling director Sylvain White does. For some reason, makers decided that 2018 was not in the least bit five years too late to milk a buck out of the old creepy pasta Slender Man, and for reasons unclear, a fictional character that thousands around the world have crafted intriguing stories or ideas around wasn't able to become a good movie. It's irritating, seeing as the character has all the pieces to be something really scary, but what was turned out by (who else?) Sony in 2018 was not scary, not entertaining and not even watchable.

Forget everything you know about even the most basic storytelling techniques, because they have no place in this goddamn neighbourhood! Almost every good (or even mediocre) horror knows to open with an attention-grabbing scene to establish thrills and some idea of antagonist--hell, even the really crap movies know to do this. Know how Slender Man opens? With the most bland shots of a high school you can imagine, and then two girls sitting on the bleachers taking selfies. Cor damn! Unencumbered thrills are certain to follow. I don't know how they will possibly top this informative and exhilarating introduction.

Their exact reactions to receiving parts in this film

The first dialogue we get is from the four main girls talking about what age they would be if they could stay that way forever, before they cross paths with a group of boys who say they're going to be having a sleepover and doing secret stuff. As sexual as that sounds, one of the girls later tells the others that the boys are in fact summoning Slender Man--which still sounds pretty sexual. This serves as our very unceremonious introduction to what we know will be the antagonist, but only because the title tells us so.

Within five minutes, the girls are also having a sleepover and soon watch a stupid Ring-style 'website video' that supposedly summons the creature. The pacing of the first act (not that traditional acts are even decipherable) is so jarringly abrupt and sets the tone for the rest of this dull, dull movie: two minute scenes of nothing that continuously fail to establish any flow or linearity. Despite denouncing the concept of Slender Man as bullshit just moments before, they are suddenly creeped out by the video and begin to have crazy visions and stuff.

Although a caption helpfully informs the stupid audience that it is now a week later, the kids are suddenly on a class trip to a cemetery (?!?) and one of the girls just vanishes. Suddenly the cops are here to look for her, and she's a missing person. We're no more than fifteen minutes into the film. You thought that one of the four main characters would get any actual screen time or development? You should have known better. Next one of the other girls starts going crazy and stops coming to school. I can't even remember if she dies or what, the movie just forgets about her and I have no idea what we're supposed to make of it all. By this point Joey King's character has covered every inch of her bedroom wall with scribblings and newspaper clippings and is convinced that Slender Man is after them. It feels like perhaps they are positioning her to be the main character, but then she dies in tree-mendous fashion (sorry), and the one remaining girl is suddenly the central figure.

Sony could legit be the next Jason or Michael. True evil.

Everything is just so disjointed and inconsequential. I have never seen a movie so jumbled and pointless. The split-ended thread of a plotline is padded out to bursting point with pointless sequences of nightmares, hallucinations, stupid visual segues and the worst evil of all... Sony product placement. The movie seems certain that if it throws enough CGI mist and trees and dismembered limbs at you that it'll be scary or even somewhat arty. The real events of the movie could just about make a short, but it has nothing to offer a feature length picture. Decent movies use their run time to create tension and build characters that the audience cares about, whereas all the filler in Slender Man is boring and useless and does nothing to move anything along.

Slender Man is also understood to cause a beanie hat epidemic

The performances never once hit the right note, always falling into either underacting or overacting. Joey King is easily the strongest in the movie, but even she is poorly directed and always seems to be playing a part rather than being a person. White's direction is completely misjudged, coming off as either incompetent or lazy. Slender Man doesn't seem to fit very naturally into White's scant filmography, and he seems way in over his head with directing a horror movie that actually engages the audience. I kept wondering how fucking long the thing had left to run, and when it did end, it was in keeping with the rest of the crappy movie. One shot could have made a reasonable cut to black, but it goes on to another pointless scene, but then it still doesn't end. The final note is a voiceover and schoolkids in the hallways, talking about how we let ideas infect us like viruses or some such shit. The ending aims at some weird Lifetime TV movie moral, and doesn't fit at all with what came before it.

There are plenty of bad horror movies that are at least watchable or entertaining, but Slender Man is the dullest and least scary viewing experience I have had in a good long time. It really is as bad as people say, and having watched it twice now, can confirm that you will gain nothing for checking it out.

Chaos (2005) - A Retrospective

Now we know that we can't even be in our houses without
getting murdered, so we may as well end it all now.

Years ago, in my quest to find the world's most gruesome movies, I came across a little old picture by the name of Chaos (not to be mistaken for the Jason Statham movie of the same title and year). Chaos achieved perhaps more notoriety than it deserved when Roger Ebert was the first big critic to write about it, and he hated, hated, hated this movie. In a scenario not unlike that of The Brown Bunny, Ebert managed to land in a back-and-forth with filmmakers who were displeased with his take on their projects. He denounced the movie as "ugly, nihilistic and cruel", and I honestly can't think of three words that better sum up the vibe it gives off.

I first reviewed Chaos in a long-winded essay here and broke down in minute detail my problems with it. Dialogue was boring and for some reason often racist; the narrative was a near beat-for-beat retread of Last House on the Left; the last few minutes just insulted everyone from audience to characters. So perhaps as a result of deep-rooted self-loathing, I had a spare hour and watched it again today (it's a thankfully short movie, although it doesn't feel short enough), and felt the need to go into a few finer points that ultimately make Chaos as horrific as it is.

Within the first minute I realised that I was all geared up for round two of hating, hating, hating this movie, so had to make a conscious effort to lower my guard and try to see it through fresh eyes. The action leading up to the main plot point of the film - that being the killing of the girls - is all rather pedestrian and does the bare minimum required of it in giving us simple intros to our characters. The action following the killing of the girls is some of the most bewildering stuff I have ever seen. The second act, the top of our story arc, the money shot, is how the girls get done in, and even the more stoic horror goer may find this part simply too much. I always knew it was too much, but in all my rage and discomfort, neglected to consider why I felt that way.

This doesn't seem familiar in the slightest.

Chaos is entirely diegetic in terms of its soundtrack; that is, there is no score, sound editing or anything. It is just spoken word and muffled scream. It can often feel like watching a reel of dailies, though I assume the makers were going for the verite style which I have to admit they pull off to a pretty remarkable degree. There is accounting for angles and camera movement - this is not your conventional found footage - but other than this, it is a very raw experience in terms of composition. Almost no FX were required for what has to be one of the most gruesome films I've ever seen, and the knifeplay can't add up to more than one minute of the runtime, but a truly sinister and hopeless atmosphere is created, making what we watch all the more effective.

Our ring leader Chaos is played with terrifying realism, and at times apparent ease, by Kevin Gage. He is really ballsy with his performance and never once restrains himself or seems like he's even trying. There is a particular shot in which he goes to lug Angelica from the van, and simply grabs her by the back of her jeans and carry her like a bag of groceries. His take on this villain feels authentic, with wavering tempers and eerie coolness. He doesn't feel like a regular guy playing make believe, and I cannot imagine how uncomfortable a shooting experience this must have been for him and his co-stars. Gal pal Daisy feels similarly real as we see her stance and loyalties fluctuate throughout, and we manage to scrape just a sliver of sympathy together for her.

The girls Angelica and Emily (Maya Barovich and Chantal Degroat respectively) are what sell the film in terms of realism. I have often documented my dislike for horror actors who just can't convince me that they are in real pain or terror; there is movie screaming and then there is real life screaming, and the two are very different. Both actresses get to wail and scream and cry their hearts out, and it is their willingness to push their comfort levels and endure snotty noses and coughing dust that makes you engage more than you might with your average genre victim. What I liked the most in this sense - as disgusting as it is - is Degroat's almost lack of reaction when she is murdered. The pain exceeds the human body's capacity, and rather than scream, she just groans and screeches as the life drains out of her. I don't know how, but these actresses managed to deeply understand fear, physical and mental pain and portray them in a disturbingly real way.

Nor does this.

The lack of score where you feel there should be one (I noted a few occasions where any other movie would have obeyed specific musical tropes) manages to tie all the horror together and leave us no escape route. The movie somehow makes good use of the parent characters, by cutting back to them every now and then to give us time to breathe. This was what Craven was going for with the cop duo in his film, and in Chaos you can feel it full force -- it is actually a relief when the horrifically stereotyped black mother starts whining and chatting shit for a minute.

Director DeFalco managed to bag himself actors who were far, far better than his movie required them to be, but generally demonstrates that he does know what he's doing. It's just that he pulled his evil plan off so well that we have nothing to think about except how horrifying all of this is. When it's over you feel zero sense of satisfaction or really any emotion at all. It is a deadening slog of a movie that leaves you drained and no better for having watched it.

I didn't feel that Chaos was a particularly badly made movie the first time I saw it, but it had zero entertainment value in the traditional sense. Even the edgier 'torture porn' like the Saw sequels are exciting and enjoyable in their own funny way, but Chaos is just as bleak and deadpan as it gets. I notice this time around that it is a more competently made picture than I initially gave it credit for, and most of the choices made by the director seem fairly justified. At least up until the final sequence. But I maintain that it is a thoroughly uncomfortable, unsettling movie that has not a drop of fun or relief to offer its audience.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

Daniel Farrands has caused something of a stir in recent years with his choice of film projects. Last year he threw bees into so many bonnets that Nicolas Cage practically showed up to scream about his eyes, with the controversial Haunting of Sharon Tate. This year he has swiftly followed it up with The Murder of Nicole Brown, and with these two titles coming consecutively, people's ears have pricked at the not-so-subtle trend emerging. Farrands has been universally branded as a smut-peddler  thanks to these projects, and I was inclined to consider him such myself after watching Sharon Tate, but my research into that picture dragged up something a little odd.

A good ten years ago, my sister raved to me about "the most disturbing" movie she had ever seen, titled The Girl Next Door, and I didn't get around to seeing it until about 18 months ago. I was pleasantly surprised by this grimy and largely unheard of little movie, and in retrospect, it plays rather intriguingly as a part of Farrands' filmography.

This writer's choice to make films based on true crime events is far from recent. The Girl Next Door is taken from the crimes of Gertrude Baniszewski and her children towards Sylvia Likens, and while it never shies from the grit of the ordeal, it shows an incredible amount of craft and care -- almost sensitivity. I cannot help but wonder how, in the space of fifteen-odd years, Farrands' approach to filmmaking can have deteriorated so terribly.

Any bozo can string together 90 minutes of depravity and call it a movie, but not many manage to pull off true human horror in a way that feels real or relatable. Last House on the Left, Eden Lake and Creep are fine examples of well-crafted stories of man vs. man, and while The Girl Next Door may not be quite as competent a picture as these, it gives it a bloody good go, and delivers an unexpectedly strong and engaging look at child abuse.

Mom, you're blocking the TV!

Based on Jack Ketchum's novel of the same name, the movie is about two young carnival girls taken in by a single mother. Meg (Blythe Auffarth) and her sister Susan (Madeline Taylor) go to live at the home of Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker) so that their carny parents can more freely make a living on the travelling circuit. Ruth is a smoky, emaciated mother of many adolescent children, whose house is always full of local kids. The narrative chooses to focus on David (Daniel Manche), a kid who hangs out at the Chandler residence, and tells the story from his perspective. This proves a very clever choice; not only does the audience endure the cruelty on screen, but considers it from the innocent stance of a child who is free to come and go as he pleases. There are some great little scenes in which David tries to broach the subject of Ruth's abuse to his parents, but doesn't quite know how to, or simply sits in silence alone, fretting over what should be done.

The strongest element of this movie is how the narrative handles the events. Many a lower picture simply shows us people inflicting cruelty on others and just expects us to believe in their reasons for doing so. When you hear of such a twisted true crime story on the news, often the toughest thing to comprehend is how things get to that point, particularly when multiple aggressors are involved. Who first suggests such crimes? What does one have to do, or say, to a person to get them to behave in such ways? In the real world, everything has momentum and contributing factors that move situations from A to B, and so if we are to truly engage with a movie like this, we have to understand the villains as real people and not caricatures of evil.

It's not as if Ruth and her children just randomly start torturing the girls the day they arrive. There is a slow build up, a series of escalating incidents that eventually lead to the abuse, and Farrands' writing is integral to this realism. Everyone likes to think that they would have the morality and strength to stand up to bad people and prevent them from doing harm, but human behaviour is complex and some people have the capacity to manipulate and influence others negatively. When defending the use of violence in movies, I sometimes use Game of Thrones as an example. If we hadn't been shown Joffrey's many escalating acts of cruelty, would we have understood him in the way that the characters around him did, and would we have felt satisfied by the end of his story? A good narratives fleshes out its antagonists in a way that uses them as more than a plot device or pantomime villain.

There is a largely unnecessary framing device that follows David in middle age, beginning with him witnessing a hit and run, and ending with his conviction to let go of his decades-old guilt. It's not a bad idea to try and give some indication of the long term effects of this trauma on David as our young narrator, but what it could have added to the picture as a whole is undermined by how rushed and tacked on it feels. The ending is rather abrupt, and the momentum of the drama might have been better served by simply scrapping the framing and brooding on the dark basement where the ordeal finally screeches to a halt.

Suck my fat one, ya cheap dimestore hood.

Acting is surprisingly good, particularly from Blanche Baker, and good use of colour and space is made to convey the freedom of wide open spaces and the rigidity of the house's four walls. There is a tangible sense of atmosphere, of time and place, in a way that reminds me of Stand By Me. The kids feel real, and do and say things that creatures unsure of who or what they are would. Against the backdrop of colourful '50s suburbia, the visceral goings-on in the house appear that much darker and dirtier. It's not a long or rambling movie, but it succeeds in crafting a very believable world in creative ways. 

The abuse inflicted upon the girls is upsetting and difficult to forget, so this is not an exploitation movie for beginners, but those with the stomach for such scenes and an appreciation for good writing will really dig The Girl Next Door. Meanwhile, Farrands should seriously go back to the drawing board with the way his career is going, and maybe take a Screenwriting 101 refresher course, as he seems to have forgotten everything.

Hostel (2005)

The 00s was an era of reimagining horror. 9/11 had a profound effect on almost every facet of modern life, and movies were far from immune. Not unlike the way the Vietnam war influenced a new chapter of horror in the early '70s, 9/11 brought real-life terror and gore to the forefront of the public conscience, and changed what viewers looked for in entertainment. Although action movies and TV serials scrambled to rearrange into a less close-to-home format, the horror genre leaned into it, and a new wave, later dubbed Torture Porn, was born.

The two key figures in the Torture Porn movement were Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005), each of which divided audiences in their ultra-visceral depictions of violence. Nobody around in the '00s can forget people asking "Did you see Saw?" before chuckling at their own comic brilliance, and talk of Hostel was hot on its heels. As a younger teenager during this period, I had to wallow in hearsay until each of the movies was released on DVD, and I clearly recall my first viewing of each. Hostel I acquired by taking advantage of my older boyfriend, and we watched it at his house with my sister. At the time I deduced it to be one half softcore porn and one half slasher gore with a nice memorable eyeball schtick, and have gone on since to develop a real fondness for it.

Each Eli Roth movie is a real character; some people can't stand his sophomoric blend of blood and humour, while others revel in his silly, in-your-face approach to making films. My sister and I have always been firm fixtures in the latter group, and share a particular fondness for the most divisive aspect of any Roth movie: the dialogue. If your patience is stretched by Roth's style, Hostel will be far from your cuppa soup, but those who enjoy a bit of silly humour in place of the pointless ramblings that usually open up earlier slashers find his style refreshing. Of course, Roth is also fond of elaborate practical effects, with which he likes to have a lot of gory fun. Anti-TorturePorners point out that violence doesn't equate to scare, which is certainly true, and that a good movie wouldn't have to resort to explicit violence, which I don't believe is true.

Beanie hat! 

Now what I do think is that violence and other forms of cruelty can be absolutely necessary to properly tell a story. Hostel doesn't deliver much real narrative to 'justify' its gore, as we are ultimately not really supposed to like or relate to any of the characters (another Roth trademark), but this doesn't mean there is no thought or perspective to it. Even if the audience doesn't explicitly notice that the movie's style is deliberate in its depictions of violence, they notice the effects.

Roth is far from a tactless filmmaker, and I think that his childlike enthusiasm for every single frame he shoots is his real strength. His work is always more than competent on a technical level, and all gore considered, he makes really good-looking and engaging movies. He is not looking to win any prestigious awards or merge his way into the Hollywood elite, but simply wants to have a really good time making the sorts of movies he would watch himself, and for other people to have fun watching them. For sheer entertainment value, Roth is always a safe bet for me.

World's most trustworthy travel agent

There is not a lot to say about the plot of Hostel, as the fun is in the experience as a whole, but let's give it a try. Paxton (Jay Hernandez) is backpacking across Europe with his meek friend Josh (Derek Richardson), and other tourist Oli (Eyþór Guðjónsson) has been picked up at some point in their travels. We meet them in Amsterdam, where they are busy doing what all good Roth characters do: partying. They get thrown out of clubs, dip in and out of whorehouses, and of course, refer to many things pejoratively as "gay". They come across a seriously weird-looking fella named Alexei, played by Lubomir Bukovy, who tells them that if they want the pure shit from source, they need to trek through the Slovakian wilderness to a village that is populated entirely by Page 3 girls and child thugs. The guys are all pretty stupid, so do they consider this trip a good idea? Of coursh, ma horsh.

While on the train to Slovakia, they are buttonholed by some geeky old dude (Jan Vlasák) whose defining characteristic is eating chicken salad with his twitchy fingers. When said fingers get a little too close to Josh's junk for comfort, the guys throw an all-American freak-out at the gayness of it all, and the Salad guy skulks away apologetically. In response to the sexual assault of their buddy, Paxton and Oli throw a few more homo jokes out for good measure. They arrive in the whore village and stay at a...*dun-dun-duuuuun* hostel, where they lament the lack of English dubbing on local television and how very gay it is that they have to share a room at a hostel. It soon becomes clear that the situation isn't quite so guy-on-guy as they had anticipated, when two hot women in their room invite them over to the spa.

The only time Paxton hated having balls in his mouth

So the partying is in full swing, but after the first night, Oli has disappeared. Paxton insists that this shouldn't spoil their fun, so they do some more partying, and the next day Josh is gone too. Curiouser and curiouser! All the locals are kinda shady, and a gang of kids mug people for such riches as bubblegum, but hey, it's probably just be because they're European.  In the course of trying to find the friend that actually matters enough to rouse his suspicions, Paxton is also set upon, revealing that this quaint little village not only has hot women and kid thugs, it also has millionaires who pay to torture foreigners in an abandoned building. And what's worse... they're all in on it! Ooh, faced!

What got under people's skin about Hostel and Saw was that they were more than just corn syrup and condoms full of sausage meat - they were presented in a vivid and immersive way that felt inescapable. Scores of slasher movies from yesteryear would throw lots of blood around, but rarely focused so hard on the suffering of those being minced. Hostel lingers on the victims of the situation, emphasising the experience of being tortured, tears and blood and vomit. None of the characters is a big badass who just tells their assailant what a "sick fuck" they are while having their limbs removed with table cutlery. They behave like real people, and show violence for what it really is - long, slow suffering.

It's the gayest movie in the fucking world!

Roth's tongue-in-cheek style does require a somewhat turbulent tone that may not make for comfortable viewing by all, but it functions as his charming little take on the genre that I can never help but enjoy and watch repeatedly.

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.