Well, it took a decade, but I've finally found a horror movie with a worse climatic breakdown than American Werewolf in London!
Okay, let's back up. As I've noted waaaaaay before, I have a love for movies about the evil children, so I've been looking forward to Grace for some time. The trailer was creepy as shit, there was tons of buzz at the festivals, and look at that fucking poster! I had waited to watch this movie with my mom, as she's a OB/RN and breastfeeding consultant, so I also got the inside scoop on what this movie got right. (fun fact: despite what is said near the end of the film, olden time breastpumps made out of brass and glass do not work as well as a modern Medela electric!)
(minor spoilers ahead in this paragraph) Grace involves a pregnant, vegan lady who decides to get a delivery via weird New Age midwife (who is, unusually, also a doctor from Columbia). Unfortunately, things rapidly go wrong, as she and her husband are in an accident that kills the latter. It seems clear that the baby is also dead, but the wife decides to continue waiting a few weeks for a delivery to occur, and glory be, the babby is alive. Except not really. Oh yeah, and it also doesn't really like milk. Can you, intelligent reader, determine what is going to happen? Hint: there's also a subplot about the dead husband's mother and her doctor meddling around.
There's alot that works really well. Jordan Ladd nails the weird mix of grief, postpartum depression, and blinding exhilaration over the miracle birth. Most of the artsy shots aren't too awful, especially the gradual degeneration of the marital home and flypaper surrounding the crib, though by the third shot of the mother doing something while the television played some slaughterhouse documentary, I felt a little ridiculous. Up until the final sequence of events, the movie manages to juggle the various subplots, all basically dealing with how crazy bitches are, fairly well. I was also pleased that (minor spoilers I guess) the aforementioned "Grace" isn't some evil demon baby, but instead the movie draws its horror from the extremes of the parent/child relationship.
And there's the effects. One gets the impression that the director saw Dead Ringers about a gazillion times, as while the gore is gross, it's gross neither in the lurid cartoony 80's slasher way nor the emotionally manipulative torture horror way, but in the "oh god this is boring right into the lizard center of my brain" way. All is very unsettling and uncanny as the best domestic horror pictures seem to do, and right to the end I was pretty much pumping my fist at the movie as it slowly rounded the track, never letting up until holy shit what the fuck happened.
Grace was originally a short film, and it really explains the utter abortion (hurr) of the ending. Everything about the movie, in retrospect, shows a great idea that could only be sustained until it came time to close the whole thing up. Then, the movie suddenly warps from a creepy study of motherly instincts to a tone of wackiness more at home in a classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel. I get the unfortunate feeling that the filmmaker recognized the dissonance of tone, and inserted in there as some easy attempt to broadcast a message about something, but FUCK THAT.
Indie films love to portray poor white people. They allow us, the privileged audience, to get equal parts pity and superiority at those people who would smoke meth and still make jokes about the Wii into 2011. Generally, the strokes are broad and stereotypcal, a pastiche of the butt-raping mutants from Deliverance with maybe some idiot god character like the guy from Sling Blade. It's easy to write, and you don't have to worry about offending actual hicks, since even they can laugh at the gross parody of their lives, and even if there's some uncomfortable truth, they're used to/levelheaded enough not to worry about how a movie that no one important is going to watch represents them.
Gasland, a documentary about the effects of natural gas mining in rural America, and Winter's Bone, a sort of film noir set in the backwoods Ozarks, present two diversions from the usual portrayal. Gasland does its damnedest to show its subjects as JUST ORDINARY PEOPLE and fails pretty miserably, but Winter's Bone, in being willing to show the actual ugliness of those people were know crouch in rural lands, but don't like to think about, humanizes them incredibly well.
To be fair, I think people should watch Gasland. I have trouble believing the full extent of the film's thesis that natural gas drilling is probably about to kill America, but the truth is probably far closer to that end of the spectrum than the gas company's bordering on parody advertisements implying that natural gas is SO FUCKING GOOD LOOK AT THE JOBS AND HELPING ENVIRONMENT. Having the family home on the Fayetteville Shale means we've been assaulted by print and television ads by Chesapeake Energy for years, and it's pretty depressing how most neighbors literally had no trouble believing that gas drilling would have no ramifications. I'd be lying if I wasn't amused by the fact that the same racist WHITE MAN IS THE SMARTEST GENETIC KING subsection of people are basically modern Indians staring gap-mouthed at shiny baubles courtesy of our energy kings.
While I enjoyed the message of Gasland, especially since it's so far the only film actually looking at what's a fairly important environmental problem (while at the same time we're probably at our twentieth documentary about Wal-Mart good job there you stupid fucks), there are some significant problems, and they can all be traced to this guy:
Meet Josh Fox, the writer/director/host of the film. The initial problem is right at the start of the film, where he tries to portray himself as some sort of man of the country, giving a backstory about being born to hippie parents who built some magical house in the New York/Pennsylvania countryside. The impetus for the film, he claims, is that the gas companies offered Josh a huge amount for leasing the mineral rights on this home (for those unversed in gas, essentially the rights to drill in your land). Although the film never says he lives in the house, there's enough shots of him walking through the HALLOWED HALLS to imply this is the case. Of course, a quick google reveals that Josh actually lives in NYC as the manager of some theater
Of course, there's nothing really wrong with that. I'm smart enough to know that documentaries manipulate the audience's emotion through subtle background changes as much as any film. What is the problem is that this discrepancy is merely the start of Josh Fox doing his fucking best to convince us that he has some sort of connection to the rural instead of being some PoMo, Franzen reading dickurbanite. Josh, on the behalf of someone who has lived in rural Arkansas for almost all of his life, let me state that while you may fool your fellow cityfolk, you are not fooling anyone who regularly passes by overgrown yards with five or more broken down cars in front. In addition to being at one with the Earth and guys unironically wearing cowboy hats, he also does a fair share of wacky documentary filmmaking shots designed to tickle critics' bellies. You could probably have a drinking game/suicide pact based on taking a shot every time Fox shows some scene of environmental devastation mixed in with some calming, incongruous music track.
What bothered me more about the film is that general lack of interest in studying the science of things, and more in sensationalizing the problem. Literally the first two-third of the film are just Fox traveling to different people's houses, where they show him wellwater that is killing livestock or tap water that can be set on fire. It's striking stuff, but it goes on far longer than it needs to and doesn't really explain the at-large problems of gas drilling. And while this is the first large-scale film about the problem, it's not like there haven't been studies done about gas drilling, but the interviews Fox has with professionals rarely seem to disseminate any useful information. I guess we didn't really need you to continue that interview with the college scientist from San Antonio about how emissions from natural gas are worse than automobile emissions in the same area, Mr. Fox. I understand things had to be cut so you could show a scene where you play a banjo in front of a holding tank while wearing a gas mask. Priorities.
The movie really hits bottom when he tries to deal with people aligned with the gas interests. He's literally ignored by the actual companies. In one interview, the person eventually shrugs and leaves when Fox tries to push his luck and get to the tough questions. When he actually does get to spar with someone (the head of some western state's environment agency), Fox seems utterly blindsided by the interviewee's doublespeak. Every question leaves giant holes that the politician gleefully flies through. Eventually, in a pretty facile attempt to imitate Moore, Fox holds out a bottle of contaminated well water and goes WILL YOU DRINK THIS THE GAS COMPANIES SAID IT WAS SAFE TO DRINK, to which the interviewee metaphorically pats Fox on the head and sends him back to his seat. Shortly after this the movie ends with some New York state politicians asking genuinely tough and difficult questions to gas interests, which makes me wonder if Fox actually thought his own interview went well enough that he could compare it to the ending.
Let me repeat: you should watch Gasland. Even if you already know that fracking is a dangerous game, it's still worth watching just to see the interplay between the hipster and the rural man. The rural people featured plainly recognize Fox's origins, and play the same game with him as any group of economically challenged people do when dealing with a wealthy or influential stranger who believe that he/she is the only one that's able to help them. That's not to imply that any of the people in the film are exactly lying about their problems, but as someone who's spent alot of time in legal aid work, the worst attitude to give to disadvantaged people, and the one John Fox portrays, is the guileless "I'm helping these simple people because no one else can save them from their plight." It insults them in the presupposition that they're helpless, and there is no group more manipulative than those you presume to be powerless. You can almost hear the snickering when mystery families call Fox on his walkie talkies for super sekrit midnight meetings. Fox portrays his subjects as just good country people, and in reducing them to two-dimensional martyrs, ironically damages the power of his film.
Compare this to Winter's Bone, which is essentially Ozark Noir. Winter's Bone tells the story of a 17-year-old girl who is in charge of two younger siblings, a helplessly addled mother, and a living situation rapidly turning towards destitute. The girl finds that her father has skipped on his bail for meth production, and that what was used to pay off the bail was the family's property. What follows, like any other good noir, is a gradual journey of partial, though not total, discovery and an assorted cast of disreputable characters.
Like most of my positive reviews, it's hard to say much stuff about it, especially as it has been reviewed on the same positive points by much better critics. There were some negative reviews on rottentomatoes, largely focused on the dual tones that it was somehow exploitative against poor rural people (I'm assuming these are the same people that got huge boners for when Fox went to shots of some rancher staring into the distance of his sad natural gas habitat), and that it was just grim for grimness's sake. This is kind of a surprising accusation, since considering the subject matter, the movie is actually fairly restrained in how it handles the various aspects of backwoods ugliness.
If I have any real problems with the movie, it's that the movie slightly bungles the method to which it handles the increasing revelations. Without spoiling anything, the second half of the movies features just one too many scenes where the heroine learns things by people just visiting her and showing her what's going on. While noirs are supposed to have an aspect of events being beyond the protagonist's controls, it's a little off-putting when the reveals are literally just a series of facts placed in our lap. Granted, the heroine investigated in the first half in the movie, and there's a decent explanation for the change of tone, but it's still slightly annoying. To spoil from The Third Man, it would be as if the hero just spent the second half of the film sitting at a police station and at the end was told "oh hey we found Cotton in a sewer and shot him you can go now" CREDITS.
But don't let my stupid complaint stop you. Winter's Bone is seriously fucking excellent, and as noted above, really seems to understand the mindset of its subjects and the desolately beautiful setting that everyone is trapped in. I tried watching The Road with my mom a few days later, and just gave up halfway through to catch the last movie in Lifetime's Perfect Sunday Marathon (a literal series of movies about crazy clingy bitches going after perfect males) as all the ridiculous overt emotional manipulation that that film attempted was just worsened by remembering how genuinely affected I was by the end of Winter's Bone, and how that movie didn't have to show people crying or STARIN' HARD every five minutes to remind me I'm a human being.
(seriously, I'm not going to review The Road because I couldn't finish it, but I'm not sure if I hated it because I didn't like the book but I thought I didn't like the book because of the stupid writing style not the subject matter but now I just don't know because the biggest emotion I felt during the film was worry that this was directed by the Coen Brothers but whew it was just a crappy rip-off of their style)
Remember Blood Monkey? Probably not, since none of you people apparently ever read it. ;_; Well, for a refresher course, it was a terrible movie about a bunch of grad students getting killed by a group of hyper-intelligent chimps so terrifying to behold that the movie didn't show you them until literally the second-to-last minute of the film. It was the first film in the MANEATER series, a depressingly long list of films about X monster (ranging, according to the wiki, from earthworms to yetis to wryvens) killing people with as little a budget as possible except for having a washed-up celebrity in a supporting (but never starring) role. So, now we have THE HIVE, about a bunch of ants killing people with as little a budget as possible. Blood Monkey had F. Murray Abraham for its marquee star, and for this, we have Tom Wopat. You know, Luke Duke.
At first, The Hive was looking like basically another ugly, vile deathfest like Blood Monkey. The opening sequence features a mother and infant in some isolated jungle hut being devoured by army ants. No, they don't show the baby being eaten, but we see an ant getting ready to sink its mandibles into the crying eye of the baby, before a quick cut and a painful scream. At this point, every indication is that it's gonna be just the same shit as Blood Monkey full of painful deaths of characters we're not necessarily supposed to hate, with a total bummer ending.
WRONG.
I'm not sure if the Syfy network sat on the studio behind the Maneater series to do something less dark and morbid, but to my boredom, they managed to make The Hive into Every Syfy Original in the Past Three Years (tm). You know the pattern, because whether the subject matter is about killer ants, an evil global warming computer, or zombies, your Syfy Original is going to have certain aspects immutable traits:
1) Some sort of cool science organization. Think back to all those Originals you watched. Far more often than not, there is some sort of private organization made up of cool guys that do cool science stuff. It makes sense, as since every Syfy series is basically the same concept of a bunch of nerds doing cool adventures. Here, the group is THORAX INDUSTRIES, which seems to be what happens is you mix Terminix with Xe. They're called down to deal with the ensuing flood of army ants taking over an Philippine island, aided by actual Filipinos who don't actually know language, because the only other explanation for their diction is that the director told the actors to "sound how a racist southerner would imagine you talk." They also have embarrassing cool science guns that remove the photoshop filters that pass for the encrouching ant armies, and you will see them fire over and over and over again.
if you can imagine, the actual video looks even worse than this.
2) Teeth-gratingly terrible romance. Here, our romance is between the head of Thorax and some university professor who believes that ants should be studied, not killed! The screenwriter can't even get this wacky rivalry to work romantically, so after a few scenes of awkward bickering you just get shit like the woman slow-motion walking out of an airport and the guy giving her some cool info and then like "WELL I THINK THE PRICE OF THIS INTEL SHOULD BE A KISS ON THE MOUTH." Mock Hallmark films all you like, at least the ones I've seen weren't written by robots or 13-year-old boys (functionally the same thing).
3) A total lack of sadistic/gory kills. Aside from the opening scene, this movie is about as vanilla as a modern horror about killer ants could be. While I'm glad that there wasn't alot of weird emotional suffering, I was less glad that like four people actually die in this movie, and when they do it's just "ant filter covers person, copy/paste skeleton on top." While I understand this when the movie is about alien artifact tornadoes, but one generally expects that a movie about killer swarms of ants is going to have more than one grisly death scene (especially when the dvd box is of a bloody screaming woman covered in ants). I don't want to sound like some creepy gorehound, but designating yourself as the Maneater series usually means having more than one death in the second half of your film.
(Disclaimer: No white women are actually killed in this movie.)
(Also, sure there's lots of good reason they couldn't call this "The Colony," since that's what a group of ants is called you fucking buffoons)
3) Stupid Shoehorned Development versus Misunderstanding Government Dweebs. Granted, this is more of a hallmark of bad scifi in general, but I've never seen a Syfy original that didn't follow the whole "small incident -> bigger incident attracting notice -> realization of a completely bizarre reason for incidents -> government stooges refusing to believe reason until it is (almost) too late. Here, we discover that the ants are being controlled by an extraterrestrial intelligence resulting in a BINARY ANT COMPUTER which is basically a bunch of interlocking ant cubes with electricity coming through it, and CGI ant fists. Eventually, the heroes discover that the ants want the island, but the Filipino governor doesn't want to give in because doing that would ruin the island. So, his solution is to...nuke the island. Okay?
So, you might be wondering where Tom Wopat is in this. Well, he's the second in command in Thorax, but early in the film an ant crawls into his brain, and starts controlling him like Plankton v. Spongebob. Now, you might think this would lead to some situation where Wopat starts to subtly pave the way for the ants, but instead all the ant seems capable of doing is giving spooky flashbacks to dead bodies and forcing Wopat to mumble in every scene he's in. I honestly felt bad for the the guy, as at least Abraham in Blood Monkey got a role where he got to act all mad scientist like and wave his arms around. Wopat's inspiration seems to have been "pretend mental retardation and mug for the camera when you want to convery pain."
At the end, despite the ant still being in his brain, he somehow is firmly in the anti-ant contingent, actually smuggling in some explosive when he, hero, and heroine go to negotiate with the ants. Then the ants turn into a giant ant (instead of throwing the nuke in the water because they're not that smart after all), heroine throws a pheremone into the ants that termporarily disables them, including the ant in Wopat's brain, though this changes nothing and he explodes. Despite the explosion being weak enough that the other two are fine hiding behind a rock literally ten feet away, this still somehow forces out the super ant intelligence, which is a giant earwig of pure energy, where it goes into the sky and explodes. Also, yes, there is a the twist ending where the ant colony is rebuilding itself five minutes later.
The whole ant brain control thing is literally the only interesting part of this film, so of course the writing completely bungles it. After all, if the ant was controlling his brain, why would it be manipulating him into smuggling the bomb into his own colony? My only guess was that it was to derail the peace negotiations or cover the tracks of the other giant ant colony, that doesn't explain why the ants didn't just have him use the nuke at the human's camp, or why the ants seemed totally freaked out by the bomb. And this is all assuming the subplot was meant to have deep complex connotations, as opposed to it being there for the sake of plot convenience.
Overall, this movie is somehow worse than Blood Monkey. While the latter was a complete mess of mean-spirited ball-hiding garbage, its cruelty was at least something to fixate on. Here, we have a limp-wristed little creature feature with three plots that seem to go nowhere, generic characters that seem to disappear and reappear when the movie demands it, and CGI that, while serviceable, is used so often in the same hackneyed ways that it's the equivalent of those railing deaths from Space Mutiny.
s Why are black-centric horror films generally pretty awful? By black-centric, I mean the modern trend of hollywood equating movies with a black cast to have some sort of an "urban" bent. Generally, this sorts of films are the most generic possible plots with the addition of some terrible THUG LIFE aspect. I rarely see them in video stores, but apparently there's some dark and sinister subsection of BET that's producing them, since they seem to premiere a new take on "VAMPIRE GANGSTER HEIST INSERT WEED JOKE HERE" every month or so.
There are exceptions, of course. Most would probably point to The People Under the Stairs and Candyman, films that used the whole notion of black people being the underclass to more affluent white people and added a horror bent to that. However, I'd also argue that Tales From the Hood should also be considered a classic in this category. If the title doesn't make it obvious, Tales From the Hood is a horror anthology, divided into four stories with an extra "framing story." The latter involves three INNER CITY youths planning a drug deal at a funeral home maintained by a mortician whose face pretty well determines how things are going to end up here:
oh hai guys clarance williams iii here
The mortician, being the one with the drugs, is able to leverage his way to telling the four main stories.
Three of the four stories are pretty generic (though not really bad) social commentaries with a horror twist. The first involves a former black cop who quit the force after seeing his corrupt cop partners beat and murder a black activist. One year later, he lures the cops to the gravesite of the activist for revenge purposes. It's basically the Thin Blue Line version of Creepshow's "Father's Day," even to the point of the zombie activist (whoops spoilers I guess) having telekinetic powers. Still, it gets to the point quickly enough, and there's nothing technically wrong with this story (nor really any of the other stories).
The second story is all about domestic violence, with a kid telling his COOL AND HIP BLACK TEACHER that he's all bruised up because there's a monster beating him up. The monster, of course, is his stepfather who has a tattoo of MONSTER on his arm. Monster, monster, monster. Happy ending due to child apparently having power to kill people by ripping up his drawings of them.
The final story involves a evil gangster who is arrested for his crimes, but takes an offer of freedom by participating in a "rehabilitation program" that is basically the Ludovico Treatment, but with more spinning chairs and nurses in weird latex fetish uniforms. I'm not sure whether it or the Monster story is the worst one of the bunch, as while the final story features some shocking and provoking actual photographs of violence against blacks, the impact is diluted both by the pictures being intercut of footage of guys in bandannas jumping around firing guns, and the program director (who is basically a solemn Whoopi Goldberg) telling the gangster, "Cain was the first murderer, Crazy K. He killed his brother HOW MANY BROTHERS HAVE YOU SLAIN?!?!?!" I understand the message is that black-on-black violence is just furthering the cause of racists, but there has to have been a better way to express it. Eventually, the gangster fails the treatment, and is sent back to the moment he was arrested, except now instead of being arrested, he's killed by the three gangster in the framing story.
Oh yeah, and then when the gangsters are finally revealed the coffins where the drugs are purportedly kept, they instead find their corpses and oh wait the mortician is actually satan.
Ultimately, I just wanted to use this review to talk about the third story, which is easily one of my favorite short horror tales, KKK Comeuppance." When you open with a political ad stating: "You can give it any name you want. The fact is, affirmative action, quotas, reparations, all mean one thing: Another qualified individual won't get a job or an education simply because he's not the right color. I thought that's what we were trying to get away from," dissolving to the picture of the whitest person imaginable, you know whoever wrote this had some fun. The whitest man alive is running for senate, was a former Klansman, and every thing he says is basically what I unironically heard while living in Arkansas. He's also living in a house that was the site of a former slave massacre which resulted in alot of displaced souls until a later owner transferred all of the souls into dolls. There's even a picture hey why is one of the dolls whited out???
this was basically what reading highlights as a kid was like
Like all killer doll stories, we get scenes of the doll inanimate (though still able to trip an Uncle Tom image consultant down the stairs), randomly appearing in spooooooky places. Eventually it reappears on the staircase, prompting KKK Guy to declare that "THERE WILL BE NO REPARATIONS" while throwing a bowl at the doll, and declaring war on a "VOODOO BITCH" while impaling a painting of her with her dolls with an American Flag. Eventually the doll attacks directly, but is quickly subdued, and tied to a dartboard, though KKK guys uses a shotgun in lieu of darts. All looks well as "NOT EVEN SOME VOODOO NEGRESS BITCH SPELL CAN OVERCOME THE POWER OF A DOUBLE BARRELLED SHOTGUN," but the painting now suddenly has roughly six dolls whited out. White supremacy oopsie, as now he's dealing with a whole bunch of "YOU LITTLE...NIGGLINS." Also, the original doll returns, and the double barrelled shotgun isn't so helpful now, so he retreats to the previous room only to well
(seeing this as a 10-year-old really had a profound effect of my attitude towards other races)
In perhaps the most subtle bit of writing ever, KKK Man covers himself with the American flag as the dolls approach and you get the rest. Again, easily the best story of the bunch, in acting, writing, and general horror movie vibe, like a top-tier Tales from the Crypt episode. That's the complement, by the way.
Again, it's not really a must-see horror film, and one could even call it a series of spooky morality tales with the exception of KKK Comeuppance, but it's still probably the most socially challenging horror film about black people (and really in general, unless you count silly WHITE PEOPLE PROBLEMS), which is fairly depressing when you think about it.
I was planning to do a conventional review of Wishmaster IV, but a few days ago an anonymous reader sent me a rather disturbing message and attachment. I've sat on it a few days, as it involves a private communication on October 01, 2001, between who can only assume to be Wishmaster IV's director, Chris Angel under the handle "BIGANGEMON," and the screenwriter, John Benjamin Martin, under the handle "Mbird." I have not edited the conversation in any way except for the sake of clarity.
BIGANGEMON (14:29) MARTIN MAN WE GOT A PROBLEM BIGANGEMON (14:29) MARTIN GET ON HURRY Mbird (14:30) What's the problem, Chris? BIGANGEMON (1431) OH HOLD ON THE NEW EPISODE OF DIGIMON TAMERS IS ON HOLD ON A SECOND HOLY SHIT Mbird (14:31) Okay. BIGANGEMON (15:05) okay sorry man digimon is awesome i wish renamon was real Mbird (15:06) Who is a renamon? BIGANGEMON (15:08) don't worry about that man we got a problem Artisan didn't like the script I offered for Wishmaster IV and now I need a new idea HURRY Mbird (15:08) What didn't they like? BIGANGEMON (15:09) they were like "you just copy pasted new names onto the wishmaster iii script" and i said "well i'm filming it at the same time as that what did you think you hollywood fatcats but whatever I've got john bman martin on my side he'll think of something" BIGANGEMON (15:11) SO THINK OF SOMETHING PLZ MAN Mbird (15:13) Well, actually, it's sort of funny. I just watched this really good sequel to Hellraiser called "Hellraiser: Inferno," which sort of took the basic themes around the Hellraiser movies and created something different but really good with that mythos. Maybe something like that? BIGANGEMON (15:13) wait like a romance Mbird (15:14) No, it was still horror, but it was about the notions of sin and guilt that are in every Hellraiser film, or at least every good one. BIGANGEMON (15:15) I know that fgt i meant like a horror/romance idea omg hold on Mbird (15:15) okay. BIGANGEMON (15:24) So what about a movie where the Jim falls in love with a woman?? Mbird (15:27) You mean a Djinn, right? I don't know exactly what you mean. BIGANGEMON (15:30) yeah djinn whatever so yeah tell me what you think about this BIGANGEMON (15:33) so we can have this hot woman whose with this sexy biker, but then the biker get in some accident and he's crippled and crippled people don't want to have sex right??? Mbird (15:34) I don't think that's right, Chris. BIGANGEMON (15:34) whatever don't want to make those crips mad rite lol BIGANGEMON (15:37) well anyway he doesn't want to have sex and there can be like a lawyer whose working on the case and he has the big ruby for some reason and that wakes the djinn up Mbird (15:38) I'm afraid I don't really understand. Why would he have the stone? BIGANGEMON (15:40) I dunno man ur the writer lol whatever well just have some nude scenes that'll distract the cripples lol
Mbird (15:41) So, I assume the lawyer get possessed and everything by the Djinn. What were you thinking next? BIGANGEMON (15:43) okay first he will get her to wish for the case to be settled and there can be a scene where the djinn calls the other lawyer and makes him sign the contract and then kill himself Mbird (15:43) Wait, the Djinn kills the lawyer he's possessing? BIGANGEMON (15:44) no man lol the other opposing lawyer Mbird (15:46) No offense, but that doesn't make alot of sense. I mean, why would wishing for the case to be settled involve the death of the opposing lawyer you know what nevermind. What's next? BIGANGEMON (15:48) Well then a bunch of scenes where the girl and djinn flirt for like 30 minutes, maybe some kills I guess but really I want this to be all about the romance you know a real beuty and the beast scenario oh yeah and she can have her second wish be the wheelchair guy walking again Mbird (15:49) I can kind of see that, yeah. So wait, does he have the husband walk off a staircase into a fire or something? BIGANGEMON (15:50) No i was just thinking he writhes around on the floor for like ten minutes and then he walks Mbird (15:50) Uh, okay. Mbird (15:51) But wait, if he walks again, wouldn't that ruin the whole lawsuit even if there was a settlement? BIGANGEMON (15:53) rofl who cares BIGANGEMON (15:54) so okay, here's the clincher she and the djinn are about to kiss but she stops and says something liek "I wish I could love you for who you are." Mbird (15:55) ...so the Djinn wins? BIGANGEMON (15:56) Nope cause see for who he really is he'd have to turn into the monster form and that's impossible or something Mbird (15:57) huh? BIGANGEMON (15:58) Well we can have some other djinns appear and they can explain it BIGANGEMON (15:59) oooooh other idea BIGANGEMON (15:59) remember how I had the angel michael in the third movie and that was so great right? Mbird (16:00) You know I was meaning to talk to you about that. BIGANGEMON (16:01) well what if we had another angel called the HUNTER who appears and tries to kill the woman because then you can't have evil djinn take over BIGANGEMON (16:03) and meanwhile djinn tries to figure out how to get the girl to lover her while he's starting to love her back oh man Mbird (16:05) Yeah, like the Djinn can go to the girl's friend and try to figure it out over coffee. BIGANGEMON (16:05) YEAH MAN THAT'S GREAT BIGANGEMON (16:06) WRITING THAT SHIT DOWN IN MY NOTEBOOK RIGHT NOW Mbird (16:08) Good to hear. So, you mentioned a Hunter Angel trying to kill the girl to prevent the Djinn takeover. How does that figure into things? BIGANGEMON (16:08) sword fight with djinn in a park BIGANGEMON (16:08) hunter loses BIGANGEMON (16:09) also thinking of having a 15 minute strip club scene Mbird (16:14) So, how were you thinking of ending this? BIGANGEMON (16:15) uh, like another awesome sex scene between girl and the djinn, but girl still don't want to love, then a bunch of the other djinns appear and make bookcases fall down BIGANGEMON (16:17) then other guy appears, makes wish to have way to kill djinn, so he gets the hunter's sword right but djinn kills him anyway but then she pushes him into the sword while it's still in the other guy and then she walks away I guess BIGANGEMON (16:18) so yeah just put this all together and give it to me in a week and this'll be our big break man MBird (16:20) i wish i was dead BIGANGEMON (16:20) GRANTED LOL BIGANGEMON (16: 27) john? BIGANGEMON (16: 56) u there man? BIGANGEMON (16:58) whatever gonna watch pokemon now
NOTES YOU SHOULDN'T CARE ABOUT:
IF IT'S NOT CLEAR TO BABIES, I am joking about the chat conversation. I mock Angel because I can mock, but this certainly isn't meant to reflect on whatever the guy's actual personality is. And I doubt he's actually into Digimon, as there's not a successful person alive that is also a fan of that show. However, what I put down is actually how the movie went down. Yeah, it's all about the Djinn falling in love, including seeing her best friend for LUV ADVICE (don't worry, it culminated her in wishing for "killer sex," which included some really fucking gross crunching sound effects in a place that wasn't shown to the audience).
This is -easily- the worst Wishmaster film. While there's something to be said for Angel's attempt to do something new to the franchise besides WHOOPS THREE WISHES DEATH, the execution is so goddamned terrible I wish they had done the typical horror sequel deviation and done something like "Wishmaster in the Space Ghetto." Editing is jerky, plotlines go nowhere, and perhaps worst of all for a movie like this, there like 3 or 4 wish kills in the entire film. I mocked the lame characterization in 3, but there's literally no characterization in 4, unless you count everyone's blatant stupidity. I guess if you're 14, the literally ridiculous amounts of nudity (I wasn't joking about the 15-minute strip club scene) sort of make up for this, but to the rest of us it's just going to be like someone dropped a generic Wishmaster film and a generic late-night skin flick into some magical film mixer (for maximum effectiveness, imagine some stereotypical jewish guy panicking around the machine as lights shoot out of it with appropriately wacky music). I couldn't even find any appropriate shots to post, as there's nothing interesting to see in this movie. There's exactly three memorable scenes in the film:
1) Shortly after the Djinn takes over the lawyer's body, he visits the girl and guy, and after small talk, the latter two leave the room. For whatever reason, the Djinn takes an apple from some fruit stand, bites into it, then puts it back on the stand. This is what literally accounts for development in Wishmaster IV.
2) Closing line upon Djinn impaling a bouncer, then throwing him into dumping: "Now, is it Mondays and Wednesdays, or Tuesdays or Thursdays?"
3)
NEXT TIME: I'll try to review a movie I actually enjoy!
