Movies

I like having Netflix. I really do. But I honestly think its rating system is backwards. I keep selecting movies with four or five stars and end up wanting to stick an ice pick in my brain to stop the stupidity from infecting it. Here is a select

Dead Silence

One of the guys who did Saw was behind this and I had heard good things on Tumblr about it. Those were all lies. It is terrible. It’s about this guy (who we might as well call Bland Whiteman because I sure as hell don’t remember his name) who’s convinced this ventriloquist dummy killed his wife and he goes back to his hometown to prove it, and Donnie Wahlberg is the detective who follows him because he obviously thinks that story is frigging crazy. The acting is poor, the plot nonsensical, and come on, if a dummy is trying to kill you, you set the thing on fire because it’s a dummy and you’re a human. And I really don’t think it’s scary, like at all. I’m not usually scared by horror movies anyway, but this one was especially dull. There are a few jump scares and some mild gore, but none of that is actually frightening.

Secrets in the Walls

Wow, this one was bad. Like, so, so bad. Like, it has a montage in it, that’s how bad and trope-filled it is. Jeri Ryan is a single mother of two girls gets a deal on a mysterious house because that’s always what happens and then really boring ghost stuff starts happening and everyone’s in denial about it even when it’s slapping them in the face, and OMG the acting is so bad, the writing is so bad, the dialogue is sooooooo bad. No one speaks like a person would. I think the script was turned out by a computer that just pulled scenes from other, better movies and then approximated human speech from average word usage.

After

Of the movies I’ve seen recently, this one is probably the best and that’s kind of sad. These two people, a man and a woman, meet while riding on a bus and then wake up in their home town completely alone. They do the only smart thing done in the movie and try to leave, but the town is surrounded by darkness that’s slowly consuming everything and just to make things interesting there’s a monster lurking out there because…I’m not really sure. It kind of has an explanation, but like most things in this movie it doesn’t really make sense. Like the fact that the main female character is a brunette with an accent, but flashbacks to her childhood show her has a blond girl without one. I feel like that sums up the entirety of the movie: they have explanations, but none of it makes any kind of sense. The romance between the two characters for example. Besides the fact that they have no chemistry at all, you find out something at the end (it’s a spoiler, so I guess I won’t go into details) that makes the two of them ending up together seem like the last thing that would happen.

Come Back to Me

Sometimes you can get away with the thing holding up your plot not being explained. But most of the time you can’t and this is no exception. The basic plot is that this creepy loner moves in across the street from this couple and shortly after, weird things keep happening to the woman. She’s obviously suspicious of the creepy neighbor and tries to figure things out, then she gets pregnant and her husband leaves her because he’s sterile and she goes to visit creepy neighbor’s mother and blah blah blah who cares? I sure don’t. None of these characters have anything resembling a personality and the plot isn’t interesting at all. It’s just like, “Here, this totally impossible thing is happening. What? You want to know how? Ha ha, no.” There was one genuinely good moment, the very end, and not even because the movie was finally over. I’m not going to spoil it—although no, it’s definitely not worth sitting through this mess for—but it was something that was a good twist (as in, not out of nowhere) and even with the non-explanation-y nature of the movie, actually made sense.

San Andreas
A bonus movie that’s actually out in theatres. Although probably not by the time you’re reading this. Because it’s terrible. I only went to see it because I have a friend who has a thing for The Rock and she didn’t want to go alone and I owe her and she apparently hates me. This movie was basically every single action movie ever. They didn’t try anything new, the characters weren’t fully realized, and it was predictable to the point hat I was able to guess what was going to happen right down to the dialogue. The special effects were cool looking, but not to the point that it’s worth buying a ticket. The one thing it has going for it is that the seismology expert they have going as a B story mentions you aren’t supposed to hide in a doorway during an earthquake but take cover under things, which is actually true. So kudos to you, movie, for getting that one right.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been watching this month. What are you up to?