The Millennials display confusion when trying to speak to a person over 40.

Millennial Belial.

In this road trip chiller, four annoying Millennials visit satanic sites in LA. They’re so preppie and goth and YOLO that we hope they get killed. And Satan answers our prayers.

The premise for SATANIC is not bad: skeptical kids seeking occult excitement because duh find themselves terrorized by unseen forces that drag them one by one into another dimension. There are genuinely chilling sequences of mayhem, and an interesting and horrific time-loop conundrum, but the movie is not much more than a one-note diversion.

Chloe (Sarah Hyland) and her jock boyfriend David (Steven Kreuger), as well as couple Seth (Justin Chon) and goth Elise (Clara Mamet) journey into the heart of Los Angeles, taking a two-day detour on their way to Coachella, to seek out haunted hotel rooms, evil ritual sites and occult shops. At one black-walled establishment, they run afoul of the proprietor (Anthony Carrigan, a Hills-Have-Eyes Junior) and decide to tail him to his home in the deep woods (of course it’s in the deep woods) to enact what we presume would be a Millennial version of revenge on him – maybe re-shuffling his iPod mix or something.

Through a window, they witness what seems to be an occult sacrifice on a young topless girl, and interrupt the ceremony to save her. They offer the girl, Alice (pixie-gorgeous Sophie Dalah, the only person who seems to have conviction she’s a devil worshipper), a room for the night, and she turns out to be as creepy as she is hot, dancing sensually, making out with both the guys and the gals, then drawing a pentagram on the hotel wall and joyously promising her rescuers they would all follow her into Hell, which she describes as “a beautiful confusion.”

Then she slashes her own throat and bleeds out deliriously. Now that’s on fleek.

SATANIC is a low-budget independent, set very obviously around Los Angeles, which makes for some dumb plot points that only Los Angelenos will notice: during their adventures, the kids do Hollywood Boulevard and Downtown, and we see them drive the 4th Street Bridge over the Los Angeles River. Okay. Later, they take refuge in a house in Pacific Palisades (about one hour south, depending on whether you take the 101 to the 405 south and get off on Sunset Boulevard, or take Santa Monica Boulevard all the way west and turn north on the Pacific Coast Highway – thank you, The Californians), and decide to flee home after one night. So when they leave Pacific Palisades, we see them “driving home” across the 4^th Street Bridge – uh, that means they drove back into the heart of Los Angeles for no reason. No matter where you live in America, if you’re driving home from Pacific Palisades, no route on the worst GPS you’ve ever downloaded will take you back through Los Angeles, especially across the 4^th Street Bridge.

I guess Satan made them take the long way home.

Anthony Jaswinski screenplays cliché into a Beelzebub salad, and director Jeffrey Hunt takes time out from his busy schedule directing TV to direct a movie that looks like it was directed for TV. Using practical effects rather than CGI, SATANIC gains points for not degenerating into a slasher flick (although I think that’s more to do with budget than concept).

Just before Chloe is spirited away (meaning that Alice’s mythic realm of “hell” and the pentagram and throat-slashing and the devil are all REAL), her situation turns horrific – the film’s great, impactful moment – yet it is tempered with us pondering on why her fate mirrors a doll she picked up in the occult store, or why the mummified hand from that same store is now resurrected, reaching for her… “So this is where it all comes together,” said the screenwriter in the elevator to the producer, who was only paying attention to his café macchiato latte, and was late for an appointment to frost his hair, so greenlit the movie…

I guess Satan made the café macchiato latte.

END

For Mental Ages 21 & Under.

Hooray for irresponsibility!

21 & OVER perfectly illustrates why America is at the bottom of the intelligence ladder.  But we can still laugh at it. (Like every other country does to America.)

Reprobate loudmouth college dropout Miller (Miles Teller) and mildly responsible nerd Casey (Skylar Astin) drag their college friend Jeff Chang (Justin Chong) out on the town to celebrate his 21st birthday – the night before Jeff Chang’s big medical school interview.

It’s a drunken college frat farce, so can we get some nude streaking in there? Check. We’ve also gotta have the strict father who wants his son to become a doctor. Check. And how can we forget the sweet silk-skinned 21-year-old hot hot hotties at every turn? Check. Can we squeeze in the blond jock? Oh yes. Since we’re doing college tropes, can this jock be the boyfriend of the hottest chick on campus? You betcha. And of course, this hottest chick on campus is going to fall for the nerd, right? How’d you guess?! Cops, jail, hospital. Check, check, check. Drinking games? Yo! Dick jokes? Yassa! Puke? Oh god yes!

And every time we say Jeff Chang’s name, let’s say his full name, Jeff Chang. That sounds like the stupidest gag on Earth. Let’s do it.

In this ultimately pointless brainless party journey, there are quite a few pointless brainless laughs. It’s made well, by directors-writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (the writers behind THE HANGOVER and THE CHANGE-UP), with snappy dialogue (“Jeff Chang’s dad is going to honor-kill us if we don’t get him to this interview”) and an underlying story that tests a friendship, reveals a hardship, and flowers a relationship.

Miles Teller provides most of the snappy repartee doing his best Vince Vaughn, while displaying the physique that will eventually land him the role of Mr. Fantastic in 2015’s FANTASTIC FOUR, i.e. his obliques are cut and his dick is elastic (see how low to the ground it stretches in that sock?) And Skylar Astin (whose melodramatic comedy stylings impressed me in HAMLET 2) has even better obliques and a long duk dong. As they walk naked across a schoolyard (relax, ladies!), bottoms red and branded, after being spanked by a sorority EYES WIDE SHUT tribunal of justice. Don’t even ask…

Whereas women suffer from unrealistic body image, filmmakers continually do men a disservice with unrealistic sock image.

Casey meets Nicole (Sarah Wright) a smug-9, who uses her shoulders and blond hair to talk. As Naomi Watts replaced Nicole Kidman, as Olga Kurylenko replaced Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sarah Wright replaces Alice Eve on the world stage. Really? But Alice Eve is only 1 year older than the 30-year-old Wright who is playing 21. Well, that’s what I mean by women’s shelf life being so short! Eve’s breakout role was SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE in 2010. By 2013, she had topped out with STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS. There is nowhere else for her to go except down the pants of some producer. Soon popping up in mom roles with the requisite unflattering hairstyle and fat-thighed jeans, with lines like, “Hi honey, how was your day?” And with this kind of turnover in female “talent,” rest assured Sarah Wright will also be replaced quite soon – probably about the time this movie goes out on DVD. I’ll keep you posted.

Even in this drunken buddy movie, they managed to twist the focus to a boy-girl reconciliation, and even threw in a bonus cliché – the Bride Running Through Streets gag, with Skylar Astin playing the bitch.

21 & OVER sends its share of stupid messages, not least selling the irresponsibility of trashing yourself the night before an important interview. But there’s further insult to injury to the American psyche, as Jeff Chang’s decision to allow himself to be dragged barhopping and inebriated and unconscious around campus like WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S was not just about celebrating his 21st birthday. It was a disavowal of his strict father’s (Francois Chau) plan for his life. His father pulled strings to progress Jeff Chang’s medical career – against Jeff Chang’s wishes. Jeff Chang just wanted to follow his dream of writing songs. But there’s no established career pathway for that. It’s touch and go, hit and miss, it’s who you know and how you know them, it’s The Hang and it’s luck and it’s right place right time — yet whenever a college character faces off against their father who wishes them an upscale career, it is treated as if the “artistic” pursuit is more noble. No, it’s not. They are both equally neutral options. Being a doctor is not a “bad” thing just because you want to write songs. A doctor is a great thing. So is an artist. But one is not better than the other. Yet this movie makes that age-old mistake of making the doctor father look like a militant asshole bad guy, because it’s not the option the lead character chooses.

Hooray for being too lazy and disinclined to pursue medicine! Keep being irresponsible, American college kids! As long as you’re hot.

END