Because college kids always drink responsibly from red plastic cups.

Horror? Buh-bye.

Don’t say it. Don’t think it. Say what? THE BYE BYE MAN.

D’oh!

The more you think about him, the closer he gets. You see things that aren’t there. You don’t see things that are there. He makes you kill people. Or kill yourself. Or something else might kill you. So, basically, just whatever then…

“And you die in the end.” Uh, all of us die in the end, booby. So, basically, whatever then…

He’s a kind of hooded specter slash reaper slash goth dude, this Bye Bye Man, from some urban legend that doesn’t want to commit to any clear mythology. And there’s this funny skinless dog or something that accompanies him, eating the dead people.

Three college kids move into a rambling old house and are haunted by the furniture scrawled with “Don’t say it. Don’t think it.” Of course, the guy who scrawled the warning couldn’t have tried too hard not to say or think it, as he has also scrawled THE BYE BYE MAN in big letters right next to the warning. Which our hero says out loud, because that’s how you read things to yourself in real life.

First of all, how can they afford to even rent this gigantic mansion? But then, a one-bedroom apartment rarely makes for good cinematic horror; you can’t have those scenes of running down long corridors chased by a person with a hammer.

Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas), and their ripped black sensual threat to their relationship John (Lucien Laviscount) all fall victim to the Bye Bye Man’s hallucinogenic mind-games, and chase people down corridors with hammers. (Once again, a teen movie featuring a jaw-dropping perfect rendition of Woman in Cressida Bonas! Where do these chicks come from? Some Perfect-Woman farm?)

“I heard something, so I thought I’d unbutton my shirt and check it out.”

Elliot’s older brother Virgil (Michael Trucco) arrives. Know how I figured Virgil is Elliot’s older brother? Because Virgil tactfully says, “Hey, little brother!” just like we all do in real life when greeting a sibling. If that wasn’t enough to clue you in, Virgil’s little daughter yells, “Hi Uncle Elliot!” to which Elliott replies, just like in real life, “Hi, niece Alice!” Oh, for hell’s sake! (The last greeting by Elliot was in a kind of mock obviousness, as if the movie wanted to wink to the audience that even Elliot is feeling dirty over this dialogue.) If we actually examine this clunky imbecilic exchange, we can pinpoint immediately that the only dialogue necessary to establish everyone’s relationship is “Hi, Uncle Elliot.” But screenwriter Jonathan Penner thinks this movie is only going to be seen by dumbasses. If he keeps writing dialogue like that, he’s probably right.

THE BYE BYE MAN is based on The Bridge to Body Island (by Robert Damon Schneck, 2005), a collection of urban legends, the title story featuring The Bye Bye Man, reportedly a more fleshed-out and compelling tale than the half-baked idea committed to film. A prosaic result of the movie’s existence is that Schneck’s book of “Strange-but-True” tales has been renamed The Bye Bye Man in successive editions, instead of retaining its more intriguing original title.

There has to be a séance, right? Goth psychic Kim (Jenna Kanell) alerts the three friends to “something coming.”

Admittedly, there are eerie happenings in the first act – involving coins, shadows, scraping noises, seeing maggots in a lover’s hair, the flirtations between Sasha and John becoming its own intrusive subplot – but the film can’t sustain this pitch.

There are flashbacks to the 1950s, featuring Leigh Whannell gunning down a family, wailing, “What did you say? Who did you tell?” And Faye Dunaway cameos as a wrinkled widow of that man. The Bye Bye Man himself is played by the inimitable master of monster makeup, Doug Jones.

When Kim is run over by a train (caused by the Bye Bye Man’s proximity and, I guess, his magic manipulation of objects in the real world), the movie shocks us – because at last, when a train runs over someone, it actually stops, rather than keeps on driving, as it does in all Hollywood movies, with no repercussions. But here, director Stacy Title (wife of screenwriter Penner) puts in that realistic trope of a police yellow tape zone with cops milling about and Kim’s body on a stretcher put into an ambulance. Then it gets ridiculous almost immediately, with the introduction of detective Carrie Anne Moss. Probably the worst movie detective ever, as she accuses Elliot of killing Kim’s roommate with a hammer and chasing Kim into the path of the train with the same hammer – yet doesn’t arrest or detain him for questioning, just lets him wander about the site unmolested, until he runs off to go hallucinate somewhere else. Later, another detective would accuse Moss of having Elliot in her grasp and letting him go. What clued you in, detective – the limp dialogue or the insipid plot?

To stop the Bye Bye Man’s influence, Elliot’s quest – like Leigh’s in 1950 – becomes to wipe out everyone he may have spoken the name to.

Speaking of which, I’ve been saying Bye Bye Man quite a lot right here and– yup, there he is all right, standing all black and menacing in the corne—-

END

What keys does Aquaman have on his key-chain? WHY does he have a key-chain?
Can he not leave his keys on his turtle when he goes on these missions?

Will make you wet.

AQUAMAN graduates to jewel of the DC Comics universe, as it finds a perfect mix of action, humor, sex and surf.

An American screenwriter’s dream come true, for its fishy foreshadowing and porpoiseful payoffs (couldn’t resist!); an origin story and a high sea adventure, an undersea war and a touching family redemption. It’s got everything, from skydiving to laser-beaming, from politics to swordfights, from monsters to montages, and Pretty Orange Explosions That Interrupt Important Dialogue Scenes.

And Jason Momoa. [Hold for standing ovation from all the women.] Okay, don’t get your knickers in a frenzy. (Is that a saying? That’s a saying, right? Yeh, that’s a saying!) With his badboy tatts, V-shaped torso, leonine mane, low-slung package, velvet basso, and smoldering Medusa eyes, this ain’t your daddy’s green and gold sea-man.

Momoa is Arthur Curry aka “the Aquaman,” born of a human man (Temuera Morrison) and a Queen of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman), on a quest to reclaim his rightful undersea throne from his half-brother King Orm (Patrick Wilson).

Writers David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall have a hard time making Orm a compelling villain, as his main goal is to rid the sea of all the land-dwellers’ discarded trash and return it back to the land from whence it came. So if Arthur wins the throne from Orm, will his first job as King be to, uh, keep the trash in the sea?…

Orm also seeks to unite all the undersea kingdoms under his mighty rule so that he will be declared – “Ocean Master”! … Uh, doesn’t so much sound like a regal appellation as a brutal top specializing in bondage urolagnia.

Willem Dafoe crosses over from Marvel to DC.
Are there no more fucken actors?

Willem Dafoe is Vulko, Orm’s grand vizier (who surreptitiously trains Arthur to be a warrior – probably because he wanted Arthur’s hot sea-mom), and Dolph Lundgren burbles his way through political wetwork as an undersea king of Atlantis Adjacent. Or someplace. One undersea kingdom includes a race of Sea Monkeys (remember that SOUTH PARK episode?) and there are even Craaab People Craaab People (they were on SOUTH PARK too! – Hell, even Aquaman was on SOUTH PARK – known by his man-love name of Semen—I mean, Seaman!).

Arthur is joined in his quest by Mera (Amber Heard in her tight green costume that unfortunately reveals absolutely nothing), the daughter of King Dolph.

There is a glaring power anomaly that AQUAMAN suffers from its first scene. The Aquaman is introduced lifting a submarine to the surface from the deep. Then he boards the sub and beats people up blah blah. But did you get that first bit? He lifted a submarine – not just above his head on land, which would be a pretty monumental feat – but through atmospheres of ocean water! Practically flew with it perched on his shoulders, up through the deep and into the air, letting it crash to the surface of the water! That means: every single act of strength Arthur performs after this submarine lift should be measured against that astounding act of strength. So when he hits a bad guy, that guy’s chin should shatter like eggshell, or his skull should separate from his spine and fly through the back wall. And when a bad guy hits Arthur, it should be like hitting the side of a submarine. But nope – Arthur engages in fisticuffs with bad guys like a regular Rocky verses Clubber, and they hit him and he falls down, then he hits them, and they fall down – and get back up again to attack him as if this wasn’t the guy who just lifted A FUCKING SUBMARINE.

And when Arthur battles his brother using his trusty quindent (the one he used in JUSTICE LEAGUE – which, apparently, is not the talisman it’s cracked up to be, as his quest involves finding his ghost father’s trident, which is eleventy times more magic), Orm is evenly matched with Arthur. Does this mean that everyone from Atlantis is super? But Arthur – if anything – should be less super, because he has land-man genes. (And by the way, can a land-man and fish-person even mate? Are their gametes even compatible? So they somehow sired a child – but why is he super?). Even Mera is super – demonstrated when she dives out an aeroplane with no chute using only her D-cups to break the fall. What are the rules? I dunno, I’m losing myself in Aquaman’s smoldering eyes—I mean, in the coruscating world of Atlantis, a CGI boobyscape of basilosaurian eye-strain.

Modern blockbusters can never quite get “outdoors” right, can they?
I got an idea: SHOOT OUTDOORS!

Besides the cool way Arthur handles his celebrity with the starstruck village-folk (there’s even a joke about Arthur being an “Aquaboy” – “That’s Aqua-MAN!” – wink wink, remember Aqualad?), and his loving relationship with his father, the film gives us many surprisingly poignant moments, as when Arthur stands before Orm about to do battle, and laments how he always wanted to meet his brother, to find him, to know him, because he was the only family Arthur has left (Queen mother Kidman was thought to be put to death by the King for playing patticake with a land-man) – and just before the dialogue tips into lachrymose, Arthur adds, “But I didn’t know you’d be such a dick!” It makes us wonder how the one-note villain Orm isn’t taken in by the street charm of his surface half-brother!

One thing we presume Arthur did inherit from his human father was the ability to talk to fish—wha?? Yes, not one Atlantean that actually lives underwater can communicate with sea creatures telepathically. But Arthur can mind-meld with them, represented in a very cool effect, as Concentric Circles of Communication (CCC) – just like the old cartoons! (I’m gonna put an unnecessary scientific spin on this, and conjecture that his parents’ slightly incompatible genes caused a mutation and created this evolutionary benefit.)

There’s even a secondary villain: big-headed Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) with his red bug-eyes and laser-beams that can actually kill Aquaman – if only he didn’t have Bad Guy Aim. Manta is merely a blip in the storyline for dumb action sequences and Pretty Orange Explosions That Interrupt Important Dialogue Scenes.

Pointy beard versus pointy chin in a battle to the cleft.

“You do your best thinking when you’re not thinking at all!” Not sure why Mera thinks she can treat Arthur like a big boob. Because he’s not. (This is one of those WOKE moments that doesn’t belong in this movie; a woman-empowering dig that requires the woman to put down the man in order for all women to feel empowered. Thanks, SJWs!) Arthur Curry is educated – he knows the names and legends of all the statues of great men overlooking the bay, he knows several languages, and he’s conversant with the cultures of both the sea- and land-people. It’s not Mera’s fault: she’s just written that way. Another example of stupid screenwriting: Arthur alludes to Pinocchio when they hide from pursuers in the mouth of a whale. Mera later shows him the book, and Arthur says, “It’s a book? I saw the movie.” If he saw the movie, then as educated as he is, he should know it came from a book. You filmmakers can’t have it both ways! (I hate this dumbing-down in American movies. ONLY in American movies, where they want the (obviously dumb) audience to relate to the hero. That’s why we hate you, Hollywood system! That’s why European movies have a greater cache with intellectuals – because those movies don’t talk down to their audiences.)

An action sequence is melded with a touching aside when Arthur finds the Trident Of Big Balls. Or Something. Guarded by a Kraken. Or somesuch. Instead of roaring right into the Predictable Final Fight With Giant Monster Effects, Arthur makes our eyes wet first. All through the movie, he has been claiming he is not a hero, he is not a king, and here, when the Kraken (voice of Julie Andrews!) asks who he is: “…for only the true king can take the Trident!…” we expect him to go Aragorn and claim his rightful throne – but this hulking super guy who can lift a submarine shows his place amongst the greater fishy world as he kneels and gropes for humility, “I am nobody. I am no king. I am no leader. I came because I had no choice. I came to save the people that I love.” Our tears lost in the undertow…

But of course, no other seeker of the trident has ever been able to “talk to fish,” and Arthur hits the Kraken with his CCC, and the Kraken is so confused that a sea-man can communicate with it, that it rises up to battle Orm’s giant army of sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.

Austin Powers would be proud!

“Permission to come aboard?” Arthur coyly peeks over his shoulder to ask this question of two badguys on the submarine he just lifted, who must be getting massive paychecks from Villains, Inc. to attack this guy who just lifted their submarine…

But is Arthur really talking to US? To the whole cinematic universe, to accept this grander, bolder, sexier version of the underwater DC hero into our bosoms? Director James Wan (THE CONJURING) goes on a world-building spree where the CGI is surprisingly bearable for its ubiquity (not inflaming our nystagma like the overwrought visuals in BLACK PANTHER or at the conclusion of WONDER WOMAN) – and the underwater floating hair effects are flawless! Yet Wan balances his eye-bulging visuals with some very touching family affairs; and eventually – amazingly – even gets this street-cred Aquaman with the jeans and tatts into his characteristic comicbook green-and-gold gayboy gear (cough–battle armor!). Of course, it helps that the fish-man in the “armor” is the mighty Jason Momoa. If sex could be represented as a human, Jason Momoa is the walking penis to every woman’s howling vagina. So much so that even the upper-number sexiness of Amber Heard and Nicole Kidman is muted beside the pheromonic spasms of pleasure issuing like CCC from Momoa’s Atlantean chest and ruby thighs.

All through the movie we are told Arthur Curry is the real King of Atlantis, and in the film’s grandest payoff, when Mera shouts, “Hail to King Arthur!” that apocryphal historic epithet hits us square in the face. Like his pheromones. Ha! Why didn’t I see that coming?

Movie ends with Arthur’s affirmation, “I am – Aquaman!” and a posedown wetter than Wolverine roaring from the adamantium bath.

It will get your knickers in a frenzy.

END

“I guess the joke’s on me. I tried breaking my legs to get out of this production,
but they just wrote it into the script!”

Back to the Further.

I saw a man that was choking there,
I guess he couldn’t breathe…
— Alice Cooper, “The Ballad Of Dwight Fry.”

Old lady wanders around in darkness. Gets startled by people trying to kill her. Is this INSIDIOUS CHAPTER 3 or a visit to Granny’s?

Quinn (Stefanie Scott) is a sweet, smooth teen whose mother has just died, and Quinn would like to speak to her again. (Uh, someone should really explain “death” to this chick.) She visits retired old psychic Elise (Lin Shaye), who proclaims she doesn’t visit “the other side” anymore because it’s too dangerous. Whereupon she visits the other side, wanders around in darkness, is attacked, and comes back saying she’s never going to do that again.

Dermot Mulroney is Cool Dad, Quinn’s widower father, who becomes alarmed for Quinn when oily footprints start attacking her in the night. They seek out Elise again, who says she doesn’t visit “the other side” because it’s too dangerous. Whereupon she visits the other side, wanders around in darkness, is attacked, and comes back saying she’s never going to do that again. Am I sensing a pattern here?

She reports that waiting on the other side is a Man Who Can’t Breathe (Michael Reid MacKay, dandied up in mummy attire with a breath mask), who Vaders around in the fifth dimension and tries to drag salubrious Quinn in with him, being all insidious about it. Finding a crack in the dimension when Quinn called out to her dead mother, he’s trying to force his presence into Quinn so he can breathe again. That’s not so wrong, is it? Although, even with his current incorporeal ectoplasmic insubstantiation, he’s still doing a bangup job of leaving oily footprints, grabbing people, possessing people and ruining Dermot Mulroney’s serious drama career.

Hooray! Clothes have souls too. And so do scarves!

Also, there’s a bride in black trying to kill Elise. Reason? I wasn’t listening.

INSIDIOUS CHAPTER 3 retains none of the ominous creep of the film that started the series in 2011. This one is a “prequel” (and we know what that means, n.b. refer to THE PHANTOM MENACE) and subsequently busies itself with inserting all those sign posts that will lead us to INSIDIOUS (i.e. the bride in black, the meeting of Elise and the two comic relief paranormal investigators, etc.)

Leigh Whannell, writer of the first two INSIDIOUS chapters, now takes on writing, directing and acting. A triple threat, who does a good job on this stock horror movie that is not so much frightening as silly. Alongside his stockier buddy Tucker (Angus Sampson), he is called in as the Plan B paranormal team when Elise visits the other side for the third time, wanders around in darkness, is attacked, and comes back saying she’s never going to do that again. Whannell is the Gilligan to Tucker’s Skipper – for all the comic relief we don’t really need in this film struggling to find a tone, although he does manage to eke out a story which is a cut above CHAPTER 2.

Besides the crazy old neighbors, the boy who has a crush on Quinn and a small silent cameo for Ele Keats as Mom, there is also a love interest for wrinkled old Elise – a dead husband – whom she will encounter in the dark places she keeps wandering like a granny with dementia. Elise calls the dark dimension “The Further,” which is apparently a name she makes up off the top of her head. And we thought granny was getting better…

CHAPTER 3 suffers greatly from the absence of Rose Byrne and Ty Simpkins. Not so much Patrick Wilson, who “indicated” his way through CHAPTER 2 like a novice… And every time they say The Man Who Can’t Breathe, all I think about is Alice Cooper in a straitjacket.

After a relatively serious tone, movie ends with silly jocularity that folds it neatly into the first INSIDIOUS movie, as Elise jovially tells her two new paranormal pals that they should go into business together, and to start wearing ties, and walks off with them arm in arm. Just like the oily footprints on the hardwood floors, it leaves us feeling dirty, after visiting the other side, wandering around in darkness, being attacked, and coming back saying we’re never going to do that again.

END

In-Silly-ous.

Taking for granted the world has seen INSIDIOUS, writer Leigh Whannell and co-writer/director James Wan drop us into INSIDIOUS CHAPTER 2 like step-children being dropped off in the woods to fend for ourselves or die.

If you haven’t seen INSIDIOUS, you’re in for a treat of characters you don’t know appearing in places you never saw doing things you don’t care about.

The main cast return to pee their pants: Patrick Wilson as dad Josh (who gets to stare sinisterly from under his brow a lot), Rose Byrne as mom Renai (who screams a lot), Ty Simpkins as son Dalton, with The Gift (whatever that is, we’ll just have to find out the hard way), and Barbara Hershey as Josh’s MILF mom.

The family has moved into Mom’s place while “their house is being fixed” (again, for reasons we’ll never know – unless we watched INSIDIOUS). Thankfully, Mom lives in an upper class sprawling old chateau with lots of upstairs, downstairs, basement and attic for ghosts to skulk in and people to get chased around, instead of in a trailer park or a two-bedroom apartment where the neighbors just wouldn’t stand for all that hijinks.

The two investigators from the last film (Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson) return for comic relief. And a new paranormal investigator joins the cast to make things more confusing, Steve Coulter as Carl, whose forte is throwing lettered dice to make the ghosts spell out their messages. Better than twitter.

INSIDIOUS CHAPTER 2 is well written and produced, with a few eerie passages, yet is not a stand-alone film and feels disjointed and incomplete; the unestablished characters are a big part of that discomfiture, as they walk around looking through ajar doors into dark rooms and cellars. Amidst the loud noises, peripheral visions and jump scares, the plot involves the police investigating whether Josh killed the psychic old bat from the last movie (Lin Shaye as Elise). So the focus has shifted off the boy Dalton (who was possessed in the last film), and cast onto the father Josh. Yet they try to retain that youth angle, as we see Josh as a boy in flashbacks, being terrorized by an unknown entity.

There are also more physical “ghosts” here: instead of being eerie, this many apparitions walking around in whiteface and Avril Lavigne mascara just reminds us there’s a makeup trailer out the back somewhere. When a woman specter appears to Renai and slaps her, screaming, “Don’t you dare!”, the intent is to create mystery with the ghost’s enigmatic line – but when it is so obvious the ghost is just a woman in ghoulish makeup, we just shake our heads and call Avril Lavigne.

There’s a backstory of a boy’s mistreatment which made him kill people for his mother (–cough–PSYCHO). And that psychic old bat Elise is now a ghost in the spirit world! At last – logic! Of course in a world where ghosts exist, if one of the living characters dies, they should also become a ghost. So they contact Elise with a séance and Carl’s rolling dice.

Carl raises a lantern in the other dimension and ominously states, “Into the Further we go!” Another example of disjointed screenwriting. Elise called the ghost world The Further in the previous movie, but in this movie, we never hear that term until now. Which I’m sure prompted many confused viewers to exclaim, “What the Further?” Ghost Elise proclaims, “I’ve seen the Better Place but came back because I heard you calling.” Royt… That Better Place couldn’t have been that much “better.” Thankfully, the wrinkly old charlatan is wearing her ghost clothes! (I constantly question that same ignorant, incomprehensible concept in every single ghost movie: Why are ghosts dressed? Isn’t the ghost the supposed “soul” of the human? Isn’t the soul an incorporeal wraith? And if the soul does choose to manifest itself comprehensibly, what does it draw on to put clothes onto its ethereal form? Or do clothes have ghosts too? And the ghosts of the clothes just automatically appear with their owner?)

As they did with their SAW franchise, Whannell and Wan make a decision to link this movie inextricably with its predecessor. They reshoot some of the inexplicable apparition scenes from the last film from the point of view of the inexplicable apparitions. Thusly, though these scenes display real storytelling adroitness, inexplicable terror, once explained, becomes not terror. INSIDIOUS CHAPTER 2 becomes more of a thriller than a horror story. And all Avril Lavigne breaks loose.

END

“Do we have to do this in the dark? The spirit dimension knows we have electricity, right?”

Not Normally this Para.

Uh-oh. I need to turn on the lights…

INSIDIOUS is one of the few modern horror films that is truly scary. Not many movies can hold your nerves hostage like THE EXORCIST or THE OMEN, but INSIDIOUS comes close, with atmospheric direction, blood-chilling sequences and lots of screeching violins.

A family with three kids moves into a rambling house in Middle America – the type with hardwood floors, high ceilings and a dark attic that practically screams, “Hey, look at me! I’m haunted!”

Patrick Wilson (WATCHMEN) is father Josh, Rose Byrne is mother Renai (sans her baby fat as Brad’s plaything in TROY, 2004). Their little boy Dalton (Ty Simpkins) has an accident in the attic and goes into a coma that doctors can’t explain. Months pass. When Renai tucks in Dalton’s little brother, he whimpers to her one night about comatose Dalton in the next room, “I don’t like it when he walks around at night.”

Blood chills. Hairs rise. Cities fall.

Written by Leigh Whannell and directed by James Wan (the twisted Australian duo who brought us SAW), INSIDIOUS kicks us in the ribs with classic horror iconography: loud noises, doors opening by themselves, apparitions, whispers on a baby monitor… some beautiful scares – like the unclear vision of the Dickensian boy through the window dancing to Tiptoe Through the Tulips. Only thing scarier is Tiny Tim.

INSIDIOUS channels POLTERGEIST fiercely – and though we might call that movie a classic today, even POLTERGIEST did get a little kooky in its third act. Remember all the Hollywood commotion in the final scenes, skeletons popping up in the pool, the house disappearing in some kind of vortex, and the elf woman with the voice that sounded like she was sucking helium?… So too INSIDIOUS cannot live up to its razor-burning first half, although it does retain enough ectoplasm for a wild ride to a satisfying surprise conclusion.

Like most horror films, INSIDIOUS does not survive its “explanation” phase. As per Horror Protocol, a suitably wizened old woman psychic (or medium, or charlatan, or whatever they’re called) provides the prosaic explanation behind Dalton’s coma: as the POLTERGEIST Helium Elf called the other dimension “The Light,” the INSIDIOUS psychic (Lin Shaye) calls it “The Further” and explains that Dalton is actually astral traveling there, while demons are trying to use his inert body as a vessel to squeeze their bad selves into our dimension…

Royt…

Which brings up all those usual questions I have for psychics, mediums, charlatans, whatever: Why don’t the demons just come through and be done with it, instead of poking around half-heartedly by leaving bloodied handprints on sheets and speaking through baby monitors? Are they trying to possess Dalton? Is he going to turn into a maniac axe-murderer inbred hillbilly? Why murder people if they only wind up in heaven? Isn’t that undermining your whole demonic task of bringing them to hell? Why bother “scaring” them at all? Wouldn’t demons from another dimensional plane consider simple Earthbound scares below their dignity? And in the noisy climactic scenes, ghosts try to cross into this world by busting out of a closet – and a man obstructs their paranormal entrance into our dimension by holding the closet door closed! Really? That’s all it takes? I thought ghosts could go through things… Can we get a Demonic Infiltration Rulebook up in this haunted hizzouse?

“Are you people nuts? Go take your Republican Convention somewhere else!”

And then – the perennial séance. Why in the dark? Does the absence of light really affect inter-dimensional contact? Human eyes can only pick up a miniscule section of the electromagnetic spectrum – between 4000 to 7000 angstroms – that we call “visible light,” so how could it possibly affect entities that can obviously communicate along a much wider bandwidth (and who are from a dimension where everything is supposedly so frickin’ bright)? I’ll tell you “why in the dark?” Because all those unsophisticates who handed down ghost stories from yore figured it would be scarier. How I love scientific explanations…

Writer Leigh Whannell plays one of two paranormal investigator dorks, whose funny appearance in the film is at a point where some levity is welcomed after heart-skipping scares – but his presence also presages the wizened woman and the unneeded “explanations.”

From the outset, the main drawback of INSIDIOUS is its PG-13 rating (we know they’re allowed to say “fuck” but once and are only allowed concepts that won’t overwhelm your average Lindsay Lohan fan), so with that hobbling, we realize what a good job the filmmakers did to make those hairs rise on your mammalian body. Point the finger at Joseph Bishara‘s eerie, evocative music.

Funniest (or most ignorant) by-product of movies like INSIDIOUS is that the slapstick mongoloids who call themselves “ghost hunters” notice all the made-up “paranormal” detection devices onscreen and believe that they can actually construct this bogus equipment – at the very least, name some glorified toaster the same name as that apparatus in the movie and presto! Instant Ghost Detection Device! Which says more about the pants-wetter who is using it than the device itself.

The first half of the movie gives you The Fear – that notion of the inexplicable; half-seen visions with no point other than an abiding alienness; the second half is for ghost hunters with weak bladders (that would be all of them, no?).

If I, a nullifidian cucumber far above the superstitious beliefs of afterlife, angels and demons, needed to sleep with the lights on after this effective movie, I shudder to think how hellish this movie must be on those pants-wetters. Look behind you, ghost hunter. It’s waiting for you in the dark.

END

Owling at the Moon.

LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE is epic and poignant and majestic and cute in all the right owly ways.

Young forest owl Soren (voice of Jim Sturgess) is a dreamer, infatuated with mythical tales of the Guardians – ancient owls who defend owly honor throughout the land. His older brother Kludd (Ryan Kwanten) poo-poos Soren wearing makeshift leaf helmets and reenacting Guardian legends (equivalent to us kids tying towels around our necks and fantasizing we are Superman), while Soren’s father Noctus (Hugo Weaving) encourages Soren to dream big. (Weaving’s voice is so distinctive as Agent Smith from THE MATRIX that we’re constantly expecting him to drop an accidental, serpentine “Mr. Anderson.”)

Soren and brother Kludd are kidnapped by mountain owls led by the fearsome Metalbeak (Joel Edgerton). Like every great villain, Metalbeak wants to rule all of owldom for no apparent reason. In the grand tradition of being evil and rebranding yourself as something beneficial (Republicans’ rebranding of the rich as “job-creators” comes to mind), Metalbeak’s villainous owls are called The Pure Ones. (This also conjures the Republican-based Tea Party “tests for purity.”)

At the Pure Ones’ wrought-iron mountain aerie, owlets like Soren are brainwashed by being forced to stare at the Moon, being overcome by a blank stare called “moonblink” and subjected to slave labor, collecting mystical blue pellets hoarded by bats for some buzzing energy source cauldron. Soren and a cute dwarf owl, Gylfie (Emily Barclay) escape the clutches of the Pure Ones, ally with a couple of other owl characters (and a snake!), and must fly across a vast ocean to warn the actual Guardians of Ga’Hoole of Metalbeak’s plot.

This Australian CG cartoon (where all the accents are amusingly DownUnda) is lifted from the series of books by Kathryn Lasky, and directed by Zack Snyder, using the same filmic techniques he used in his poetically violent 300: during battle scenes, the shink of steel augmenting talons, the clash of claw on flesh; fearsome slaughter crashed with sudden slomo and balletic arcs. Let’s face it: if it was all in real time, ‘twould be nought but a flurry of feathers.

The animation is startling, with jaw-dropping attention to detail, especially in the avian faces that boldly display the palette of human emotion. (These blips are literally better actors than Rob Schneider, Will Ferrell, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Keanu Reeves, and anyone in any given George Romero film). We are so used to seeing smooth people and surroundings (PLANET 51, DESPICABLE ME) that GA’HOOLE is a welcome sensory overload of feathers, forest and flying; wings making shadows through smoke in the sunlight; exhilarating flight, transporting us with every camera swoop to the freedom of the skies; striking battle scenes in three dimensions – by that I mean, air battle like dogfighting feathered Spitfires, not putting on 3D glasses. Diametrically opposite to a CG cartoon like CARS, with its clinical steel and sleek sterility, these animals of GA’HOOLE breathe with an organic, fluttering life force.

Another plus is that the story is not preachy. Besides the passé “follow your dreams” trope, there is avarice (Metalbeak), caution (a legendary hero owl hides within the community in plain sight), betrayal (Kludd – like Edmund in Narnia – betrays his brother Soren), and loyalty (Soren fights for his family and baby sister Eglantine). GA’HOOLE doesn’t send any stupid messages to kids via talking animals.

Sam Neill voices the regal Allomere, David Wenham is a frisky little Digger owl, Anthony LaPaglia voices the artiste Twilight (who plays the lute!), Geoffrey Rush is the Guardian Lyze of Kiel, and Helen Mirren is the Pure One headmistress.

The payoffs are mighty, because – as in all these stories of legendary heroes – the legends are REAL, and Our Young Hero stakes a place for himself among the legends with a final battle that makes the feathers rise on your neck and arms. The Zack Snyder battle slomo helps, backlit by raging inferno and orgiastic orchestra – oh, rapturous raptor!

I am just left to wonder: How did the owls create all these beaten iron structures without opposable thumbs?

END

Seen it once, SAW it again…

The opening scene of SAW II is as compelling and horrifying as anything you will ever see as a human being with pain receptors: A man wakes in a dungeon with an open bear trap locked around his neck, lined with nails. It is on a timer to snap shut on his head, but he is told where the key is to unlock it – surgically implanted behind his eye! A scalpel and a mirror are laid out before him… The question is not what HE would do – but what YOU would.

That’s the draw of SAW.

After this grand opening, though, SAW II (co-written by SAW’s writer, Leigh Whannell and the director, Darren Lynn Bousman) is on a tricycle downhill. Not all the way, but definitely not keeping pace with its powerful predecessor.

Donnie Wahlberg is emphatic as Matthews, the slightly unethical cop at the center of SAW II, whose son’s (Erik Knudsen) life is at stake. His partner though, Dina Meyer, recently graduated top of her overacting classes and brought her Method Of Smug to this production that just made me want to slap her after brutal spinner sex with her.

We feel Matthews’s pain and desperation as a father, as he watches his son on a monitor trying to escape a house of traps with six other strangers (Franky G, Glenn Plummer, Emmanuelle Vaugier, Beverly Mitchell, Tim Burd, Shawnee Smith); except for Shawnee Smith (reprising her role from SAW), the trapped characters are staples from the Clichéd Character Handbook – the beefy guy, the slut, the businessman, the bum, the token black guy – they got every “type” in there; it’s TWELVE ANGRY MEN meets the bus passengers in SPEED.

Each character is supplied with Nifty Exposition Dialogue, with any gaps in backstory filled in by Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), his Exposition Monologue Handbook open on his wheelchaired lap.

“I want to play a game…”

But the game is not as compelling as that which Jigsaw played in SAW. The people traps are not as insidious or as smart as those in the last movie. Therefore, the gore seems more gratuitous, rather than organic. And someone should probably do a psych evaluation on Australian writer, Leigh Whannell – to say this guy’s imagination is morbid is a nice way of saying he’s a latent maniacal serial killer…

The story itself is loaded with twists and reveals and surprises that keep ramping up the stakes, twisting the barbed wire tighter around your chest, all filmed in that sickly green hue that makes you think you just vomited.

The original SAW had a reveal at the end that rivaled Shyamalan’s THE SIXTH SENSE for ground-shaking impact: We never saw Jigsaw coming. In SAW II, there can be no such surprise quotient any more – even though Jigsaw is menacing and ominous and intellectually superior – so they try hard for a shocking reveal, but it is forced.

Of course, with the SAW series, the title would mean nought if we didn’t get some juicy self-mutilation for the sake of escape, rather than the sake of being a supermodel.

Towards the end, there is a nice little wink to fans of the original SAW. Through an eye with a key surgically implanted behind it…

END

“Mmm, it all looks so good, I don’t know where to start first.”

To Die For.

It’s all about the story, innit?

SAW dives into its second act in its first minute: Two men in a subterranean TRAINSPOTTING bathroom, chained by their ankles to steel pipes at opposite ends of the room. A dead man lies in a pool of blood on the floor; in his hands, a gun and microcassette player. The men find cassettes in their pockets instructing them on how to escape their plight. One of them has to kill the other…

Jigpoff

Old-school indie film-making at its best, from director-writer James Wan and co-writer, Leigh Whannell. Though ever-gorier sequels (SAW II, III, IV, etc.) have turned the SAW franchise into generic gore-fests, the original SAW displays a depth to its cutting edges that raises it miles above the average bear-trap nipple-twister.

Through flashbacks, tape recordings, police investigations, we piece together the story that a psychopath named Jigsaw is forcing victims into impossible escape situations where, even if they survive, they will forever be scarred physically or psychologically. The last seconds of the movie reveal why Jigsaw’s motivation is to give people a new appreciation of life.

The two trapped men are Cary Elwes as Dr. Lawrence Gordon, and Leigh Whannell (the co-writer) as Adam. Lawrence figures out that the hacksaws supplied by Jigsaw are not to cut through their chains…

Amazing first-time direction and writing from Wan and Whannell, solid characters and primal screaming that rattles our ribcages, immerses us in every frustrating, impotent moment with the trapped characters, Elwes and Whannell pulling off some complicated emotions.

“Please, I’m begging you: don’t drop the signal again!”

Ken Leung does a great job with his detective role, but Danny Glover sleepwalks through his role as Leung’s partner. As they trail the killer, they uncover other fiendishly ingenious death traps: a man who must step across broken glass to work out the combination of a safe that contains the antidote to a poison he has ingested; a man who must crawl through razor wire to escape a cage, before the timer on the door locks him in forever; and of course, Shawnee Smith in the infamous reverse-bear-trap jaw-breaker.

The beauty in the simplicity of the story and the complexity of the tortures.

Has anyone told Monica Potter yet that she can’t act? She plays the doctor’s wife – unconvincingly. Luckily, the Story comes to the rescue, making up for the less-than-exemplary performances from Potter and Glover.

Pay very close attention for there are twists aplenty, the filmmakers intending a double-meaning with their title, as in: Doubt what you “saw,” not just the bladed tool to make people toss their plastic popcorn, which is exactly what may happen in the shocking, brutal climax – when Lawrence decides the only way to save his wife who can’t act… is to saw…

If that bone-shattering scene doesn’t wake up Danny Glover, nothing will.

END