Luckily that answer came in the form of a free screener pass, so I didn't actually have to concern myself with the price-gouging ticket for a 3D movie. The screening was held Thursday night at the AMC in Dallas, Texas, partially sponsored by Off the Bone Barbecue.
While I appreciate a free movie as much as everyone else, I didn't appreciate having a local business literally preach to their captive audience for an hour about why we should all eat at their rib joint. They had several bags of Rogue-issued swag to give out and decided to give it to people who could answer questions about soul food rather than anyone actually a fan of the horror genre. So that was great.
Once the movie began though, I couldn't care less about winning a t-shirt from the film; it wasn't a film I'd want a t-shirt of, for one thing.
The film centers around a man called the Riverton Ripper, a schizophrenic man who believes that multiple souls are in his body fighting for dominance. He slaughters his very-pregnant wife and several other townspeople before a police officer shoots him; his wife has an emergency c-section and gives birth to a little boy named Adam. His older daughter Leia survives, and the two are adopted. A nurse at the hospital remarks that seven babies have all been born that night, one of them blind, and how strange it is.
The film opens sixteen years later, when the seven children born that night (who call themselves the Riverton Seven) are gathered on their birthday to commemorate the slain Ripper. They hold a candlelight vigil and pray for another year of their safety. We meet the seven; Jerome is the blind boy, Penelope a beautiful Christian zealot, Brittany a shallow blonde, Brandon the stereotypical violent over-steroided asshole jock, Jay the sassy Asian, and Alex the nerdy picked-on geek. The seventh is Adam, who now goes as 'Bug' and who is a strangely naive boy who is very shy and quiet and insecure and has schizophrenic tendencies and several unsettling interests and habits.
The movie follows Bug and Alex primarily as they go through high school life; we learn that Leia has grown up to be an absolutely gorgeous high schooler who goes by the name of 'Fang' and runs a sort of mob operation out of the school, selling test cheat sheets and beating up kids who cross her path. Bug has a crush on Brittany, who thinks he's cute but could never date him because of the social heirarchy. Alex has an abusive drunken stepfather and a shitty home life in general. Penelope spouts a lot of absolutely cliche religious lines--- did she really just say "when things get too hot, turn on the prayer conditioning"?
On his walk home, Jay is attacked by the Ripper; the man is dressed in a costume somewhat similar to the Pig-headed figure from the Saw films with a flowing black cloak, ratty long hair, and a mostly-hidden white face. The Ripper slays him and throws him off the edge of the bridge, which of course Bug sees in a dream but doesn't take seriously. Throughout the day, each kid is slaughtered by the Ripper in a series of completely uninspired and utterly unscary sequences; everything is a flat-rate stabbing, with very little gore actually shown and the suspense laughable. The set-up for each kill consists in a ton of quick cut-away shots and flash shots of the Ripper, who despite his appearance inspires nothing beyond thoughts of Freddy Krueger; his voice is so snarly and low that you genuinely believe Craven has paid Englund to do ADR work off the books--- how else do you explain the character uttering lines like "Now where'd I leave your bitch?" to the dying jock while using a gutteral sarcastic voice? There's even a scene where Penelope is in the school pool, then hears weird metallic sounds in the filter room; she walks in to find it's transformed into a hellish red-lit boiler room where a hand wraps around the pipe and scrapes, making a metal rasp. HMMMM, we've never seen Craven use that gimmick before, particularly not the boiler room bit. Or how the character says a sardonic little one-liner when he kills her. Nope.
The film feels much longer than it is, simply because it feels like there's very little point to it. The audience is supposed to be confused; is the Ripper real, or is it one of the kids in disguise? Is Bug actually a killer, or just schizophrenic? Are the seven interlinked because of the poignancy of when they were born, or are they just reading too much into the town's superstitions? However, you don't actually care about the answers to any of these questions by midway through the film; you just sort of want it to be over. And when it reaches its unsurprising, completely trite ending, complete with a neat little voiceover monologue at the end to wrap everything, you just feel cheated and bummed that Craven dropped the ball on what could've been a promising movie.
Worst of all is the '3D' aspect. There are NO 3D effects in this film. Even the kill scenes are done with extremely minimal 3D utilization, and since the film wasn't available in a 2D format, I believe this was done entirely to garner more money in ticket sales. The average 3D movie ticket in Dallas costs $13.50; trust me, if I had paid that for this film I'd be livid. The 3D does nothing to enhance the film whatsoever, it just makes everything dark and blurry. At one point I took my glasses off to watch part of the film and aside from a slight blurriness, I could see no difference except for the film looking much brighter and more colorful.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment