Devil: 1. God: 0. Again.

A charlatan spirit medium discovers her daughter can actually contact spirits through a Ouija board. And all, uh, hell breaks loose.

OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL is a prequel to 2014’s OUIJA; set in the late ‘60s, we meet the young family that would become the ghosts of the 2014 film, and we experience their harrowing haunting that caused the ghost daughter Doris in the 2014 film to have her mouth sewn shut. It’s the usual fare of jumpscares, indistinct whispering, ominous visuals and unnecessary uplighting under faces; it’s even got the blankets-being-pulled-off-your-sleeping-body gag! This movie has everything for the discerning nine-year-old!

Regardless of its trope-laden content, ORIGIN is better written and scarier than its predecessor, with a filmic look like it was shot in the 1960s (Kodachrome-type sheen, period cars and attire, and even cue marks on the filmstock – those oval-shaped blips in the top right-hand corner, to let the projectionist know when to change reels! Like I said, this movie has everything!)

Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser), a widowed mother, makes ends meet for her two daughters (teen Lina (Annalise Basso) who just wants to party with her friends, and young Doris (Lulu Wilson) who misses her dead daddy) by enlisting them to aid her fake seances. Her clients’ gratitude in “contacting” their loved ones make Alice feel she is not scamming them, but giving them closure.

Alice introduces a Ouija board into her tool set, setting it up with magnets to enable her to manipulate the planchette with her knees. She soon discovers Doris communicating effortlessly with the actual spirit world, joyfully watching the planchette fly across the board by itself, spelling out messages. Alice revels in using Doris’s newfound power with clients (“We can actually do what we’ve been pretending to do!”) – they all think it’s dad helping from beyond… until Elliott from E.T. tells them it’s NOT dad…

Henry Thomas (forever Elliott to me!) is the local priest, who tricks the demon possessing Doris into revealing itself. Not long before HE is possessed as well, because God is powerless against ACTUAL evil. Just ask any exorcist. Parker Mack is Lina’s new boyfriend, if he can avoid getting killed by Doris first. At one point, Doris describes to him what it’s like to be strangled. (In this film, it’s quite creepy, although someone must have learned that from someone actually going through the steps of strangulation! That’s even creepier.)

The team that brought you those atmospheric thrillers GERALD’S GAME, OCULUS and BEFORE I WAKE (writer-director Mike Flanagan and longtime writing partner Jeff Howard) have crafted ORIGIN along the same lines, although in trying to make it connect to the inferior source material, it does track into illogical:

For example, the demon inside Doris possesses her to have “a voice” (we presume that’s also why the demon likes to gape her mouth wider than humanly possible, reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, a visage made popular by Wes Craven’s homage film SCREAM). And that’s why Lina ends up stitching Doris’ mouth shut (in a scene reminiscent of a Hitchcock sequence, where we focus on the upraised hand with the needle in it over and over again), but why not try to exorcise the demon first, rather than stitching the poor girl’s mouth shut?!

And across the two movies, if you pay attention – character inconsistencies: y’see, everyone is redeemed in this movie’s climax (with mother Alice dying and seeing dad-ghost and Doris-ghost waiting for her in white clothes — oh, so this movie is a CATHOLIC grooming! Also, good thing CLOTHES have souls too, otherwise they’d be naked), yet in OUIJA, Doris is evil when they dig up her body. Lina is shown sewing up poor Doris’s mouth, yet when she calls on Doris in the final scene, Doris is prancing around upside-down on the ceiling like the demon has possessed her again… Explain yourself, Mr. Writer-Director.

The funniest thing about any possession movie is that in a storyline where the devil exists, God exists as well, as the counterpoint to evil, yet no man of God can ever stand up to the almighty evil of the low-rent demons possessing the antagonists. I mean, it’s never even major demons like Lucifer or Beelzebub; most of the time they are just nameless spirits, and the vessels that the Big Man Himself has called to represent him on Earth (i.e., priests) are always weak-principled impotent pawns that the evil spirit invariably has their way with. Now is that a commentary on God or the child-raping priests that represent him?

Ooooh, and that’s where we get the subtitle of the film: Priests – the Origin of Evil.

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

Sam Jackson calls a phone-sex operator and chokes his snake.

Reptile Dysfunction.

A young motocross rider witnesses a mob murder in Hawaii and is scooped up by the FBI to testify in Los Angeles. On the plane journey to the mainland, the mobster releases hundreds of SNAKES ON A PLANE to wipe out the witness. If this method seems a little hit-or-miss, expensive, inefficient and downright stupid, you’re absolutely right.

SNAKES ON A PLANE is as much a waste of time as you imagine it to be. It gained internet notoriety during its production and therefore has an aura of unwarranted fame/quality surrounding it. (It was the SHARKNADO of its day!) Thankfully, it was recognized as the piece of shit it is upon its release, and lost money. From its opening scenes that reek of TV movie production levels, to its execrable acting and idiotic storyline, to its CGI snakes and attempted humor, it is one hot reptilian mess.

Australian Nathan Phillips is witness Sean, on the run from mob boss Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson, whose acting is as stiff as his six-pack), and saved by FBI agent Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson, who inexplicably agreed to do this movie not despite its title, but because of it!).

The stupidest part of this stupid movie is the framing of the opening murder scene and how Sean witnesses it. After Eddie Kim, surrounded by his henchmen, beats a lawyer to death with a baseball bat, they hear a scuffle in the bushes and see: the tail-end of a bike disappearing out of frame. On this millisecond sighting of Sean (wearing a helmet and full gear, and not seeing his license plate, and not able to distinguish the bike model as 95% of it is out of frame by the time they see it), they track Sean to his apartment (which, by the way, looks like a hotel) and try to whack him.

But Flynn is there first, to save Sean and shoot the henchmen who can’t aim. But consider: If the above non-sighting applies to Kim and his henchies, then the same applies to the FBI. How did the FBI ever track down Sean? Okay, so one of the FBI guys shows Sean a Red Bull can in a baggie – the same one he was drinking at the murder site (this assumes they discovered the lawyer’s body – how? when?) – and also assumes they are frickin’ magicians for lifting Sean’s fingerprints from the condensed liquid on the can’s surface! This also assumes they’ve got his fingerprints on file to verify his address; also discovering that Eddie Kim has put a hit out on him, thus sending a macho agent to scoop him up rather than a routine donut gobbler. If this Hawaiian FBI branch is this good, why couldn’t they track down that lawyer before Eddie Kim beat him to death? And why can’t they find Obama’s birth certificate?!

So Eddie discovers which plane Flynn and Sean are taking back to Los Angeles and plants hundreds of dormant snakes in the cargo hold, with a time-release chemical that would drive them wild enough to escape the hold and bite everyone to death after the plane takes off. Remember, human beings with brains are writing this shit.

The filmmakers are too cute by half by actually introducing a crapload of characters that we’re meant to care about. Which we don’t. Julianna Margulies is the head stewardess, Kenan Thompson is bodyguard to a rapper (Flex Alexander), David Koechner is the pilot; watch for Taylor Kitsch as a mile-high banger with his big-titted bitch in the bathroom (that one we care about).

Once the CGI snakes are loose and start attacking all the passengers, and are dispatched in various ways by Flynn and the desperate victims, you can safely fall asleep and won’t miss anything interesting.

SNAKES ON A PLANE is R-rated, simply so Jackson can do his Jules Winfield and say, “I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” Hey, that’s how we ALL feel, you mushroom-cloud-layin’ motherfucker…

END

Isn’t there something better that five hot teens can be doing, that rhymes with “porgy”?

Ouija: the bored game.

Five teens try to contact their dead friend through a ouija board. And guess what? They do.

OUIJA is needless jumpscares, hot teens and a mindless horror story. Hell, boys, we got ourselves some funding!

Olivia Cooke is Laine, whose best friend Debbie (Shelley Hennig) hangs herself one night in a fit of uncharacteristic blondeness. Having flirted with a ouija board as kids, Olivia somehow arrives at the notion that using the ouija to contact dead Debbie will allow dead Debbie to identify her real killer. Uh, royt…

Cooke’s acting actually sells this plot point, the least intrusive stupidity in this movie rife with it. (Cooke is the new Rose Byrne, that underpinning of gravitas, overlaid with an inconspicuous hotness that creeps up on you rather than slams you backwards.) At least when characters here walk into dark rooms without turning the lights on, they’re using their meager cellphone flashlight to light the way into jumpscare. Cellphones that never get any signal when they need to call for help the most. (Obviously Sprint). But if we think there’s an underlying “reality” to this modern Young Adult panderer, just wait till people are being pulled screaming into black passageways and the reaction of the remaining teens is akin to browsing facebook.

Lin Shaye, from INSIDIOUS, is back from The Further and wheelchair-bound in a mental home. She’s that person with The Ghost Backstory that ruins every horror movie; this one about a mother ghost sewing her daughter ghost’s mouth shut, because they needed the jumpscare.

Gathering her teen squad of boyfriends and chicks too smooth for their own good (Daren Kagasoff, Douglas Smith, Ana Coto and Bianca Santos), Laine organizes a séance with the ouija and uncovers secret passageways, dead bodies, angry ghosts and other tropes that used to scare us when we were nine. Seriously, there’s even an old female Mexican housekeeper that warns Laine, “Don’t go seeking answers from the dead!” Oh no, they d’int!

When Laine uncovers the dead daughter’s body in an attic (by now we’ve forgotten about the blond chick who hanged herself), she cuts the threads sewing the daughter’s mouth shut– wait, don’t you sew through a person’s SKIN? When the skin deteriorates in death (firstly, no one has smelled these corpses up here?) wouldn’t the threads deteriorate also? Apparently not, as Laine is instructed by Lin Shaye Ghost Whisperer to cut through threads seemingly sewed through the skull of this poor girl. Threads cut, at which point the little girl ghost starts screaming, which drives the insane mother ghost away and–

–is anyone taking OUIJA seriously at this point?…

END

Bending new boundaries with classic old tropes.

Two young computer hackers discover a third hacker is sending them enigmatic messages. Chasing down the origin of THE SIGNAL will shatter their reality; will shatter even the concept of what reality is.

THE SIGNAL is a dynamite sleeper; a spellbinding tale of extra-terrestrial communication in this modern age. There had to eventually come an update to the meme that aliens abduct people to anal-probe them. THE SIGNAL is brimming with original ideas, the likes of which used to emanate from the greatest science fiction novelists of the 60s and 70s (like Asimov, Heinlein, Ellison, et al). Director and co-writer William Eubank, and writers Carlyle Eubank and David Frigerio, are in the best of company…

Nic (Aussie Brenton Thwaites, who can’t stop reminding me of Robert Sean Leonard) and pal Jonah (Beau Knapp) encounter a computer “signal,” a communication that intrigues them into running down its origin. On a road trip to deposit Nic’s girlfriend Haley (Olivia Cooke) in California, the two boys plan a detour to the signal’s origin point, which they triangulated through the power of nerd. Nic’s recent muscular dystrophy affliction in his legs, forcing him to use two crutches to walk, makes him distant toward Haley, and gives them both desertion paranoia, each thinking they are going to leave the other when Haley reaches California, land of sun, surf, Muscle Beach and One Night Stands.

In a fit of BLAIR WITCH-ian cinematography, the signal’s origin turns out to be a dark trailer in the woods. And things get pear-shaped…

Nic wakes alone in a medical facility, his legs wrapped, unable to walk, wheelchaired into a room to be questioned in a most disturbing way by a Hazmat-suited Dr. Damon (Laurence Fishburne). To his annoyance, Damon won’t tell Nic how or why he is there, except to deflect his questions clinically.

Eerie soundtrack by Nima Fakhara underscores the inspired storytelling, as we discover, piece by piece, like Nic, that he is being used as an experiment; that his legs have been replaced by segmented metal bionics (visualized in gleaming Colossus-like armor-plating), and that he can actually use them… like a… superhero…

One of the best true science fiction movies of the decade, THE SIGNAL is not a superhero movie (at least, not in the sense we know superhero movies), yet we brush up against this phenomenon here that reeks of imminent reality. Might this not be a method by which humans can actually become “super”? IRON MAN is all about a human who augments his flesh and bone with mechanics, turning himself into a being that can challenge a god. And how do we discover the limitations, the potentials of that melding of human flesh and steel without experimentation?

Even Jonah has been tampered with, and both he and Nic use their newfound “powers” to escape the facility with Haley (who is, as yet, untampered with), finding themselves in a Middle American desert populated by idiots, i.e. Middle America. Lin Shaye and Robert Longstreet make intriguing cameos that add to the overall disorientation of this tale. But there is a chilling truth awaiting them on the other side of the endless desert. There IS no other side…

The physical exigencies of the plot are nothing compared to the manner in which the movie is purveyed. There is a constant nausea of disturbia permeating the air; an uneasiness that lies somewhere in what Dr. Damon has not told Nic. Consider how we unthinkingly pluck animals from their habitats to experiment on them in the most gruesome fashion. And that creeping, hubristic horror is the true beauty of this movie and the shrapnel in the shock of its conclusion.

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

God of Blunder.

“If you’re down in the dumps – and you need sumpin that’ll bring ya uuuuup… sumpin that’ll bring ya uuuuup?… There’s only one thing that’s gonna do it faw ya…” No, not this movie – go dig out your record player and spin Rock And Roll Over.

Named after a classic KISS song (the marauding opener from 1976’s Destroyer), DETROIT ROCK CITY follows four shiftless teens in 1978 on their quest across the American heartland to beg, borrow or steal their way into a KISS concert in Detroit. Appealing to the lowest of brows, the greatest of unwashed, the saltiest of the Earth, movie is a quaint enough road trip Psycho Circus with a few good gags, poorly executed – yet the whole exercise is about two decades too late.

Edward Furlong, Sam Huntington, James DeBello and Giuseppe Andrews are KISS Army members (in a KISS tribute band called Mystery), who are unconvincing as KISS fans let alone as rockers, Huntington and Furlong the only ones casually nearing the condition of “acting.” They have four tickets that Huntington’s Jesus freak mother burns, leaving them desperate, yet intent on making the concert.

If you had Great Expectations for the film (co-produced by Gene Simmons and “authorized by KISS” – meaning authorized by Simmons and Paul Stanley), then Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em. Director Adam Rifkin seems able to construct good visual sequences, but doesn’t go All The Way, opting for prosaic slapstick in place of comedy. Sounds like a case of… “rock and roll pneumonia! We’re gonna have to call out… Doctor Love!”

The opening sequence is promising, as Rifkin gives us a montage of ’70’s iconography that places KISS in perspective with the times. It’s powerful, it’s heady, it’s nostalgic – and ultimately the best part of the movie, which then goes downhill like a Baby Driver.

The first KISS song we hear is the first cut of 1977’s Love Gun, the frenetic I Stole Your Love, a few moments later, the first song on Side 2, the title track, over the montage.

How do I know all this? Full disclosure: didn’t go near Google for this info; a deep, abiding knowledge of all things KISS ever since their posters decorated my walls and ceiling. But I never did scrounge up the incentive to send away for the membership paraphernalia because, as Gene’s own philosophy about marriage sagely advises, if I really loved them, I didn’t need a piece of paper or a jacket back-patch to Shout It Out Loud that I did.

But enough about my laundry.

Oh my God! The evil KISS robots take the stage while the Real KISS aren’t looking!

Soundtrack is righteous ’70’s rock – UFO, Nugent, T-Rex, KISS, AC/DC, Bowie, Sweet, Ramones – which gives a false impression of the film’s quality, because though you feel that surge of bounteous rock stardom when you hear Lizzy’s Jail Break or Cheap Trick’s Surrender, you’re still watching THIS film.

Paul Stanley: “To call it a KISS movie does it a disservice, because it does a disservice to the KISS fans, which is what it’s really about.” Uh, Paul, it’s doing a disservice to KISS fans, to KISS, to generations born and dying into the future until the Sun runs out of hydrogen.

KISS don’t appear in the film until the final few minutes – and then in an annoying composite of the renowned KISS stage antics (blood, smoking guitars, fire-breathing) within one song performance, Detroit Rock City – apparently the one and only song they’re going to perform tonight, as they do their closing shtick after this song – drums rise, guitars smash, etc.

The most bemusing factor of this 1999 incarnation of the band is that (except for Frehley) they look exactly like their 1978 Hooligan selves. And they’ve dressed the stage show in classic ’77 Love Gun lighted-stairs period, which gives us a nostalgic twitch. That’s The Kind Of Sugar Papa Likes (there’s a deep cut for you, fans!). You’d think that filming KISS in their glory would be Easy As It Seems, but Rifkin’s got no Magic Touch and his amateur handling of the concert footage is Sweet Pain.

I can’t quite figure who this movie is aimed at. Actual fans would be turned off by the wholly unconvincing performances and naïveté of the filmmakers (film hits Rock Bottom when one of the guys sneaks in backstage by carrying a kick drum with a KISS logo amongst a group of roadies – I can’t even begin to deconstruct the stupidity of this scene). Fence-sitting fans are not shown enough KISS to be convinced, just pummeled with the fanaticism of the fans (who all seem to be rednecks). On YouTube, it seems this movie’s fan base are those who profess to be “not into KISS, but like the movie anyway.”

There are chicks named Beth and Christine, which would mean something to even the most peripheral were-kisser. And Shannon Tweed (Playmate of the Year 1982, and Gene’s squeeze) makes a cameo as a MILF hot for guys who’ve been pursued by Terminators and brought their pets back to life.

“Well, aw yeah! We’re gonna have to call out… the Firehouse!”

END