A Film that Dares to Call Itself "The Thing" (2011) (spoilers because fuck this movie)

Fuck this fucking movie.

My gut knew it wasn't going to be pretty.  Especially when I found out the screenwriter was the same person that wrote (get ready) the Nightmare on Elm Street remake.  But did I know how ugly?  Did I have the slightest conception of the depths that it was going to slobber and fuck over my memories of the Carpenter version?  No.  I was like those Lovecraft protagonists (minus an authorial transference of casual racism), realizing something was wrong but that the breadth was far beyond my grasp, so at the end all I can do is laugh like Sam Neill at the end of In the Mouth of Madness.

Part of the problem can be traced to the whole boneheaded idea of trying to remake The Thing by doing a prequel of it.  In doing so, you've stepped into crazy murky waters, as you're ostensibly creating a new plot while having to sort of hug onto the original plot for protection, like a baby bear with worms.  Not at all surprising in retrospect, My Least Favorite Screenwriter in History handled this the same way he did with the Nightmare remake: Clumsily patch favorite scenes from the original to a shoddy original plot, then go completely off the rails with a wretched ending with enough plot holes to hide a universe destroying morphing race spaceship in.

I'll say one thing and one thing only, as it's the only reason this film got anything resembling positive reviews: it's competently made and acted in.  But hey so was the Nightmare remake, and honestly if you're giving any credence to horror films because of the quality of their effects then go the fuck away.  I guess I can also say that the only thing God I am Going to Punch You Screenwriter-San does right is that he also manages to avoid any romantic subplot, so kudos laced with rat poison for that.  Unfortunately, this leaves the plot.  The opening thirty minutes function exactly how you'd expect, for better or worse.  Spaceship found, alien excavated, science does some retarded shit, alien breaks out and ohhhh nooooo.  Since this was strictly paint by numbers plot wise, I was just sort of bored here.

Then we have the first major divergence from the original.  As you may or may not recall from Carpenter's version, the time period between when the crew first sees the alien in action to when they realize its full capabilities was relatively short.  Here, there's a 30 minute period of Dr. Ramona Flowers going "oh no guys something wrong" and all the dudes going "haw haw we're males."  It makes sense logically, but it's still boring as hell, as that time period is people just shuffling around grumbling at each other.  Then eventually the alien reappears and get ready for a descent into total incompetency.

Some of you are probably anticipating me bitching about the alien being quick.  Honestly, I don't fucking care if it's fast or not, especially as it was the same sort of awkward shambler that we saw in the Carpenter film, there probably would have been not a single moment of tension in the film.  What I do sort of care about is that the alien looks pretty fucking shitty.  The remake Things are generally a simpleton's version of what they remember the Thing from Carpenter's version to be mixed in with nixed Silent Hill designs: full of giant teeth and weird arms going everywhere and decidedly not really scary.  Everything is just clean looking and stupid, missing any of the nightmare unfamiliar murkiness of the original.

So we find out that the alien can mimic, and we settle back.  Finally, some of dat sweet paranoia that made Carpenter's version so goddamned good.  All the characters are in the room, and...wait, they already developed the test?  Okay.  And some guys just escaped, all right, lots of opportunity for potential infections to be developed and questioned later and wait they already revealed the Thing and now it's just an extended chase sequence and what the fuck is going on

Of the many things that pissed me off about this remake, it's this.  I think even Hawk's version had more time devoted to the quidessential feeling that nobody could trust each other, the isolation exemplified within Antarctica.  Instead, one gets the feeling that Holy Shit I'm So Goddamned Worthless at Everything Guy watched the Carpenter version and thought "boy, look at all these people talking, this is so boring, I'm gonna cut this stuff down to like fifteen minutes so I can get to what people really care about, why that ax was in the wall!"  You think I'm joking, right?

“It’s a really fascinating way to construct a story because we're doing it by autopsy, by examining very, very closely everything we know about the Norwegian camp and about the events that happened there from photos and video footage that’s recovered, from a visit to the base, the director, producer and I have gone through it countless times marking, you know, there’s a fire axe in the door, we have to account for that…we're having to reverse engineer it, so those details all matter to us ‘cause it all has to make sense.”

— Eric Heisserer describing the process of creating a script that is consistent with the first film.^[17]

HOLY SHIT WHO FUCKING CARES.  THANK GOD MY IMAGINATION ISN'T ALLOWED TO CONCEPTUALIZE ANYTHING ANYMORE, WHOO 2011 SPRING BREAK HAND ME THAT GRENADE IT'S TIME FOR THE TRUE JAGERBOMB.  

So the remaining 30 minutes of the movie are literally just a space monster slasher.  It's not even a good slasher, but people running in rooms as a giant Thing monster also runs around in rooms and occasionally kills people and less occasionally recreates the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park.  Near the end, one of the monsters takes an ATV to get back to the mothership, and it says alot about the success of this movie that I was fully expecting a Space Mutiny style chase sequence to close things out.  But don't worry, instead we have an Alien ripoff where the lady is menaced by the Nilhilanth from Half-Life but then she shoots him in the weak point.  Then she walks out of the spaceship with her Not-MacReady while he is holding the flamethrower and then he puts the flamethrower in the truck and then the lady kills him because he is ACTUALLY THE THING AND IF HE IS THE THING WHY DID HE NOT KILL HER WHILE HE HAD THE FLAMETHROWER AND WAIT ARE THOSE CREDITS WHAT THE FLYING FUCK

oh

oh wait

so here's a helicopter guy and he's seeing the thing 

and there's the dog from wait wasn't that infected like at the start of the film why is it running out now and I guess that's the most FUCKING INEPT WAY YOU COULD DO A REACHAROUND TO THE ORIGINAL FILM GOOD JOB MR SCREENWRITER

In conclusion, this is what really galls me.  You have a screenwriter going "hurp durp gonna tie up all these loose ends," to aspects of the Carpenter version I don't really care about, while at the same time just creating obvious, ridiculous plot holes to tie other stuff together that I also don't really care about, all while leaving the quidessential themes of the previous films out to die in the Antarctic wilderness.  The Thing is a triumph of autism and boring fanboyism over imagination and creativity, so really just fuck this movie.

...One other thing.  For all the hubbub about how the screenwriter, director, and producer watched the film a million times, they seemed to miss something that would have allowed an ending that would be both creepy and an actually creative twist on something.  Re-watch the opening of the Carpenter version.  Do you notice something about one of the two Norwegians on the plane?  One of them is completely covered in clothes and never says anything, so the gender is indeterminate.  It would have been entirely possible to have Winstead return to camp, completely devoid of emotion, then get shot at by the last Norwegian, then see the dog, have them get into some convenient helicopter and as they pull out, she pulls the clothes around her.*

It's so goddamned obvious that I can't think of why you wouldn't do it and instead leave her for some indeterminate fate.

Unless.

No.  That's not possible.  It can't be.

No.  

No. 

"I, Eric Heisserer, Screenwriter Extraordinary, can see it now! Ramona Flowers and MacReady, the ultimate duo and...maybe something more ;)"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


*Edit: On watching the opening again, it's less clear whether the person on the left shows their face or not.  It's more likely that the one on the left was the one that was shot by the Americans, but with the constant film cuts, one could conceivably argue that the two switched positions, so that the "uncovered" face on the right seat threw the grenade and ran (with gun now in hand? WHATEVER) while the uncovered searched for it and was blown up.  It's awkward, but certainly makes more goddamned sense than anything in the remake.

Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

The Nightmare on Elm Street remake was really goddamned bad.  This isn't surprising for anyone.  Perhaps due to that lack of surprise. I didn't really see any critics expend too much thought on the badness.  After all, it's a horror remake produced by Michael Bay's company, Platinum Dunes, which brought out flaccid remakes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th.  Literally no one is going to be swayed by anything said about a movie like this, a husk floating on an ocean of stupid teenage buying decisions.  And yet, there's some interesting kernals to glean from this film, which is a shining example of the present trend of modern, studio-backed horror films bringing absolutely nothing lasting to horror canon.

After finishing the movie, I took some time to watch various scenes from the original Nightmare on Elm Street. What's interesting about Craven's version is, for the most part, the scares are telegraphed fairly well in advance.  By this, I mean that while something scary might happen, generally it comes out of some sort of lead-up.  For example, take the death scene of Nancy's blonde friend from the start of the movie.  The earliest sense something is really wrong is when you see the garbage can lid roll from the fence and hit the ground.  There's a good two seconds of the lid rolling before it hits the ground.  Only then do we see Freddy, and not in some quick-cut closeup, but in the distance, a shadowy vision.  Of course, there are sudden jump scares (such as when Nancy runs into the Freddy hall-monitor), but for the most part, scares are delivered by the impact of the images, not simply by impact.

Guess what I'm trying to say about the remake!  Every single goddamned scare in the remake is some sort of lameass "ooooo things are sort of creepy when is the spooking happening huh huh huh NOWWWW BOOOOOOO VOLUME SO LOUD GONNA PISS OFF YOUR NEIGHBORS."  If you're the kind of idiot that freaks out during "scary" video games (truth Amnesia is fucking garbage) and want some more of dat fear factor, then by all means rent this movie because there is not a single five-minutes scene without something like Freddy jumping out of a pipe or a little girl getting a monster face happening.  For gentle viewers that need something more than loud sounds to scare them, prepare to, at best, be gently amused as the movie does its best to imitate your high school's haunted house.  Nothing, of course, is going to stick with you.  I'm not even 24 hours from when I finished the film, and already all the scenes are sort of awkwardly merging and fading together, one after the other, with nothing valuable to remember a week from now aside from "god how do you manage to not include one affecting scene even 976-EVIL II managed that."

The plot is sort of the worst of both worlds as far as remakes are concerned, somehow both mechanically reproducing scenes from the original and adding unnecessary, stupid as fuck complications to the plot.  The first two-thirds of the film are basically the same as the original, save for the previously mentioned jump scares being fucking everywhere, and that Nancy's boyfriend is now a fat ugly Robert Patterson.  It was about at this point I said, "god, can they not do anything original in this movie aside from adding dream scares going no where?"

My girlfriend murmured, still watching the movie, "so you wish for them to alter the plot?"

"Sure, I mean it can't be any worse than what I'm already seeing."

"GRANTED"

"FUCK YOU WISHMASTER"

The film suddenly swerves into new territory at the last third of the film, and boy is it a total mess.  It is now revealed (spoilers I guess) that the remake wasn't happy with Freddy pre-demon biography being "creepy dude who did bad stuff to children."  No, in keeping with the Bay philosophy of leaving nothing to the imagination aside from the full extent of your slackjawed stupidity, it is agonizingly demonstrated that Freddy was in fact a total baby rapist.  The remake tries to trick you by implying at first that hey maybe Freddy was just an innocent victim of childhood overimagination but I can't imagine someone thinking there was a possibility of gray morality in a shitty horror remake, so that's given up like fifteen minutes after.

Of course after the interminable backstory parade the film can't come up with a cleverer way of dispatching Freddy than the "okay I will bring him out of the dream with the power of HUGZ" idea (which was by far the weakest concept in the entire original film), except now Fat Ugly James Patterson remains alive instead of being eaten by his bed.  I don't even know why they kept him alive because he is awful, except probably they couldn't figure out a way to make a blood puking mattress into a cheap scare.  Then ending jump scare because fuck this pissy earth.

Ultimately, I just want to talk about what happened with Freddy.

I don't really mind the new design.  After all, the iconic Freddy is substantially different from the original film's version, which was almost never seen in full light (presumably because the make up was bad, or Craven's reaction to not being able to make Krueger into a skull monster as he originally planned.  The voice, while hokey in its modulated deepness compared to Robert Englund, isn't bad.  The problem is that the remake apparently couldn't decide between the original, dread-filled Krueger and the later sequel's wacky, joking spouting Krueger, and thus decided that what was needed was a jerk Freddy who talks as much as the later iterations, but doesn't make jokes but just acts all weird and rapey.  In other words, they decided the best version of Freddy was the Nightmare on Elm Street 2 version.

Oh yes, the rapey.  So, from a strict perspective, I guess this isn't that surprising.  After all, Freddy has always been more lascivious than most other horror icons, "I'm your boyfriend now" and all that.  And yeah, Craven apparently wanted to make Freddy a child molester before cooler, more intelligent heads prevailed.  That doesn't change the fact that, like pretty much anything else in this movie, making Freddy into a rapist ruins everything good about the film series.  It also doesn't help that the only real ramifications of this change is now we have to have a scene where the main character sees pictures of herself being abused and then get changed into a weird fetish dress (which afterwards I realized was the same one used in Freddy's Dead so I don't even know anymore).  It's just some sort of rat dropping on top that in this hokey, ineptly filmed disaster we also have to get the feeling that the director thought he could even broach real life serious topics.

were it not that I have bad horror...

hey I wonder how xkcd took steve job's death

PHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHBBBBBBBBBBBBBBT

976-EVIL II (1991)

I'm always torn how to review mediocre horror that is fully, gleefully aware of how mediocre it is.  I know how to deal with terrible that overplays its terrible; you call it shit that doesn't get any better because hurr hurr tongue in cheek.  But how do you deal with something that seems to have been developed solely with the intent of entertaining shut-ins who love them some USA "Up All Night" and Monstervision?  I'm not saying that the people that produced Terrorvision or Slugs or basically anything from Full Moon Productions weren't aware that they were developing stupid, cinematically unimportant movies, but there isn't the same overt pandering to my scene as there was in 976-EVIL 2.  I mean, look at this:

yeah, that's a reference to Corman and Monstervision's Joe Bob Briggs.  I don't even

And while it bugs me, truth be told, I sort of liked this movie.

The original 976-EVIL was notable for two things:

• It was directed by Robert Englund
• It had one of the lamer plot frameworks for what amounted to "evil demon terrorizes people" 

I barely remember the first one, honestly.  All I really recall was its surreal mish-mash of various horror aesthetics, with it completely unclear what kind of horror it wanted to be, trying to push heartstrings with the central conflict between the tough softy biker and his nerdy cousin with some weird revenge fantasy and it's just an enormous goddamned mess.

The sequel, to its quasi-credit, has no problems with this.  It very clearly a Nightmare on Elm Street rip-off awkwardly melded with the distinguishing feature of the first film, an "evil" pay phone service that tells your HORRORSCOPE while slowly turning you evil.

So here's the terrifying title shot.

I can't really stress enough how clumsily shoehorned the whole "evil phone service" concept is.  As in here, every so often when something spooky happens, there is a ringing phone but it rings kind of evil like?  Whatever.

Because this is generic late 80's/early 90's horror, we open with a lady getting naked.  I guess the twist here is that after the initial spook, instead of getting dressed to the boos and jeers of a suitably drunk audience, she instead puts on a slightly trashier version of what Sigourney Weaver wore at the end of Alien.  I should note that despite this really trashy fanservice at the beginning, there's literally nothing in else in the way of nudity for the rest of the film.  So if this film is your only hope on those lonely Friday nights, you better finish quickly unless you've got a fetish for horribad early 90's fashion.

Anyway.  She's menaced not very well by this guy:

This is Rene Assa. I kept thinking I had seen him before, but as far as IMDB was concerned, he was just a bit character actor who had this movie as one of his primary roles.  I'm not really sure what to make of his performance, as while he's not a terrible Freddy Krueger stand-in (to the point that they literally have his face start melting towards the end), there's something forced and kind of sad about forcing a 50-year-old man to fart out endless corny one-lines like "let's put...the pedal to the metal, as they saaaaaay."  Sometimes he seems to be having fun and other times he's just embarrassed to be there.

At any rate, Assa kills the woman via college drama club stalactite (no, really, but it's not as cool as you think), but is arrested.  We find out he's been calling the 976-EVIL hotline, and has the hots for his student assistant, who is also the police commissioner's daughter.  We don't know if these two character traits are connected, as this movie (wisely, as far as I'm concerned) skips the original film's plot about being driven evil by the hotline, so we never know if Assa was just a prick, or if he was corrupted by insane phone fees.  The script doesn't help, as there are a few scenes where Assa is all tender and friendly to his assistant, and other times he's all "gonna eat ur soul lol."

Assa quickly gains REAL ULTIMATE POWER, being able to astral project himself, which in this film means really awkward scene within a scene effects.  One curious part of 976-EVIL II is that really virtually every special effect that isn't an exploding car is something from one frame going into another.  Or whatever you call it.  I'm not Tom Savini.

They really should have called the movie We Bought This Greenscreen, We're Going to Use It Goddamnit.

Unfortunately, there's not alot of kill scenes in this movie.  We have:

1.  Assa killing the drunk janitor who witnessed the murder by holding him in front of a semi (with a fairly satisfying gib explosion)
2. A prosecutor, Monique Gabrielle (that chick that got naked in Bachelor Party and Deathstalker II, but not here, hmmmmmmm) having her car possessed and exploding after a really long sequence of her running into other cars.
3. Some dead policemen.

There's actually one more scene, but god help me, it's probably one of the most creative I've seen in a long time.  Don't worry, no explanation is needed here.

Some notes here (AFTER YOU WATCHED IT DON'T PEEK):

1. The decision to hide the awkward effects via black and white is pretty clever. 
2. The subsequent scene was creepy enough that I didn't even mind that the movie was totally wrong when it had the girl say that the end of the movie had the zombies breaking into the farmhouse and eating everyone.
3. I especially didn't mind when they even included the driving gloves from Barbara's brother on one of the zombies reaching from the door.

I'm bewildered by this scene.  In a movie with almost no competence whatsoever, you get an honest to god clever tribute to a horror classic with almost nothing to complain about.  Unfortunately, it's probably the only thing five minutes in this film worth anyone's time.

Aside from Assa, everyone is just bad.  Main girl is bad.  They actually got the biker dude, Spike, from the first film, but I don't know if he was this awful before or what but it's a damned good thing he basically does nothing useful for ninety minutes aside from wearing alot of leather and sharing a scene with Brigitte Nielsen as an occult specialist, which goes about as you'd expect it to when the actors are wearing stuff like this:

The real kicker is the ending.  Everything culminates with the girl trying to kill Assa while Spike's motorcycle fights Assa's astral projection's semi-truck (with more predictable results).  Both fail, and Assa chases the girl to some rocky seacoast and then Spike's Astral projection appears and knocks Assa over the cliff but then they kiss and Spike turns into space dust.

Dumb, but all right.  All we want is a good twist ending.  You ready?  The police come, and ask the girl who killed Assa.  She says Spike, but her dad says Spike died an hour ago.  Then she's arrested for killing Assa.  As she's loaded onto the ambulance, handcuffed, camera pans right to show a phone booth.  RING RING FUCK YOU AUDIENCE THE END.

I'd probably be alot meaner towards this movie if not for that death scene.  I'm not sure I would have hated it per se even then, since it's not like it's trying to be anything more than horror movie junk, but at the same time, it's trying so hard to be that junk I'm not sure what to think.  Reverse ambition?  Maybe I just need to call a helpline or something.

Survival of the Dead (2010) and Mother of Tears (2010)

So, let's review.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: A pretty damn good movie, basically having a major hand in transitioning horror from something typically enjoyed only by moms and kids with airbrushed t-shirts of bela lugosi to something that only weird sheltered nerds really care about.

DAWN OF THE DEAD: Best zombie horror film, possible best horror film.  No other comments apply.

DAY OF THE DEAD:  Some people say critically underrated film satirizing the government and the stupidity of man, others say the first signs that Romero is cracking as a director.  Don't see why I can't be both!

LAND OF THE DEAD: A movie that will remembered by my generation as one of the greatest disappointments, a film that we all tried so hard to convince ourselves to enjoy (LOOK DENNIS HOPPER, A FAT SAMOAN NAMED PILLSBURY, UHHH YUHHH), but eventually we all had to admit was just eye-rollingly bad.  Anyone that disputes this probably needs to go back and watch the ending.  I know it's scary, but we all have to face our fears and trucks shooting out fireworks after making peace with the zombies and jesus christ remember when we thought bub was going to be the limit of trying to make the undead sympathetic.

DIARY OF THE DEAD: Just watch, REC, jesus.

Seriously, why do I keep watching these movies?  Romero ran out of creative steam years ago, and now apparently sits on some cursed throne that gives counterfeit issues of Hollywood Reporter with headlines reading "WHERE ARE MOVIES TELLING US MAN IS THE REAL MONSTER?"  Carpenter at least has the decency to try new things, even if they are all uniformly awful.  Oh wait Romero did Bruiser, that counts for something no it doesn't.

So here comes Survival of the Dead, or in a world of perfect honesty, So You Assholes Don't Consider Day of the Dead a Good Movie Huh Well Here's How It Would Have Looked If I Smeared Shit Over Every Aspect Of That Film.  At least with Diary, there was something interesting about seeing Romero try to one up the new generation's love for all that first person nonsense.  It failed miserably, but at least you could argue that Romero was trying there.  Survival, by comparison, is possibly one of the laziest horror movies ever put out in semi-widespread release.

As noted above, the plot essentially is what would happen if you stuck Day in a Ziploc bag, added a cup of clam chowder, and shook for a full minute.  Okay so see the army guys aren't the bad guys sort of but there's an island of warring family clans and one wants to kill all the zombie and one wants to make the zombies eat pigs because that will solve the whole problem???  The plot is dumb as hell, but far more importantly, it's boring as shit.  It feels like Romero had an idea for some awesome setpieces and wacky character exchanges, with the rest of the film being thrown out to the four winds with the hopes that some acceptable zombie fanservice will blow in.

Oh the fanservice.  I'm sure there is a fair share of people who will continue to watch Romero's awful films because oh boy look at all these cool zombie deaths.  Whoa, that zombie got shot in the chest with a flare and now its head is on fire this movies rules!  Wait what's this copy of Dead Rising 2 coming out of my couch noooooooo.  Hey assholes, remember all the cool gimmick deaths in Dawn of the Dead?  There was that wicked helicopter scene AND THAT WAS FUCKING ALL.  I hate to sound like some potbellied asshat who winces when a well-meaning friend dares to get a movie with fast zombies, but a single low-tech gunshot kill in Dawn had more verve and poise than all the wacky "achievement unlocked" deaths in Survival.

So everyone hated Survival of the Dead.  But alot of people really liked Mother of Tears, which was only slightly less dumb than Survival.  What gives?

I think the initially positive critical wave is the same sort of reaction we all had with Land of the Dead, wanting to believe that as a great horror director finally finishes what most consider to be his most important series after an extremely, there is no way it can be bad.  But there has to be something else, since while Land of the Dead was bad, you could at least squint and sort of see the same directing style that Romero had with his earlier zombie movies.  With Mother of Tears, there is literally no way you could argue that this is the same direction we saw with Suspiria and Inferno.  Gone is anything resembling atmosphere or creepiness, and instead we just get lots of murders and spooky chases.  Alot of horror reviewers made much about the film's balls to the walls action, but they neglect to mention that any scene that doesn't involve someone getting stabbed is unrelentingly boring.  Not a creepy boring, but a "shot of walking from train to bookstore for five minutes" sort of way.  My girlfriend fell asleep during the movie, and I don't blame her, as anyone that isn't as invested in Argento's filmopgraphy and/or feels compelled to kowtow to a horror great probably didn't give a shit about this movie anyway.

Fright Night (2011)

So how long has it been since I said I unequivocally enjoyed something????  The Fright Night remake is a good horror movie.  Not great, but not that far from it.

Much credit for this goes to the writing.  Much of the dialogue and sight gags manage to toe that line between being attractive to teenage moviegoers while also throwing bones to dedicated horror fanatics like myself.  That is to say, everything is very "fun" in this movie.  For example, there is the inevitable Twilight joke, but the reference is cleverly handled and quickly removed, while a lesser film would have not stopped going BOY THESE VAMPIRES SURE AREN'T LIKE THOSE SPARKLEPIRES HUH HURR HUR HURR.  Some things slowly fall apart by the end of the film (as in 50% of everything out of David Tennant's mouth, but more about that later), but by then you're impressed with the actually scary parts and everything sort of works out.

Most of the actors and actresses are terribad, but who cares?  I couldn't remember what almost anyone looked like in the original until I rewatched the trailer, but I certainly remember Jerry.  In both Fright Nights, it's a basic truth that while you maybe don't want to see the mortals die, you're way more interested in what this suave and very dangerous Nosferatu is all about.  And by gum, Colin Farrell pulls things off, wisely avoiding aping Chris Sarandon's portrayal and instead shooting for a sort of insular suburbia demon, feeding on people in between viewings of Jersey Shore.*  In some respects, it was probably a conscious decision to fill the movie with relative no-names (OH WAIT THAT GUY WAS CHEKHOV WOOPS), as then the audience will then rapturously await the next scene with Farrell, which are expertly spaced out so we aren't overloaded on his character.  The editor was also brilliant enough to severely limit McLovin's scenes.  I think I speak for everyone intelligent when I was initially timid about the film based on the trailer showing that dude all over the place, but really he's there for like 20 minutes so it's all cool.  Also, fun fact, when you try to make that dude look scary, he just sort of turns into Zoolander.

Unfortunately, no great writing nor editing can save us from perhaps the most unnecessary 3D additions ever conceived.  I'm echoing the choir, but why in fuck's sake would you do a 3D film where every important scene in in the dark?  I don't feel that the 3D effects really harm the film, as both me and my girlfriend ultimately had a grand time laughing at the movie's desperate attempts to justify the use (FREE TSHIRTS FLING), but it still seems weird, and probably says alot about the slow waning of this current horror age that the studio executives felt this movie wouldn't get enough box office sales without such a gimmick.  Shames, shames.  On the other hand, this probably means less torture horror, so hooray!

Really, my only complaint is about Tennant, and I realize it's kind of stupid.  KIDS THESE DAYS wouldn't understand or care about the concept of late-night horror shows, so I get that they had to change the role of the older vampire hunter helper.  But couldn't you have gotten someone better than a vague Criss Angel parody?  I can't think of anything better, but that's why I'm writing shitty blogs like this.  What I could suggest would maybe be a little less Han Solo bitchery.  Did Roddy McDowell complain this much in the original?  Probably not, but even if he did, I'm pretty sure he was less of a ponce about it.

Fright Night is a pretty good movie.  It occupies that same place as the Dawn of the Dead remake, not necessary in any sense of the word, but still fun and scary to watch and certainly heaps better than anything featuring girls crying into cameras as needles are pushed into their knees or whatever.  And it's certainly a more necessary remake than GODDAMNED STRAW DOGS WHY WOULD YOU REMAKE THAT WHY FUCK YOU AMERICA

...excuse me.



*In between amusing little details like that and the understated theme of the foreclosure crisis helping vampirekind, I confidently state that Fright Night is a hundred times more effective parody than Red State is going to be.

Fifteen Hours In Review: Persona 4

They should really call this game Atlus Shrugged because holy shit is this game a fucking slog.  Fifteen Hours in, and I'm only in the second dungeon, which is apparently the hardest one in the game which also makes me concerned about things.  That isn't to say that I didn't get obliterated when I ran into the guys that cast group attack magic which apparently guarantees an extra turn now, but now that I know they're just like every other non-weak enemy and weak to ailments, it'll be a pushover.

The gameplay is better, sure.  It's nice being able to know that my teammates aren't going to do something hilariously boneheaded that will cost me a boss battle.  A better equip screen, sure.  Not having to choose between experience and gold in after battle card games?  I don't know I kind of liked that man.  Everything changed in Persona 4 seems like a reaction based on perceived issues in Persona 3, but some of those issues were charming in their clunkiness.

Most perplexing to me is the method at which dungeoning is done.  As you go into the MYSTERIOUS TV WORLD in the afternoon, now you have to choose between doing some dungeons or talking to random wanks so your mythical duck warrior will be a little stronger when you fuse him.  This is a direct inversion of Persona 3, where only a few night social links were neglected if you quested nightly.  It's not really a big deal since I'm clearing these supposedly hard dungeons in 2 days, but it's still weird and awkward.  Likewise to the new system of not automatically refilling your magic power when you return to the central hub, but instead forcing you to suddenly remember that Persona has physical attacks and pay a fox whose fees...will lower throughout the game?

As mentioned above, the difficulty curve just perplexes me.  Persona 3 took it pretty easy at first, with the first hard boss arriving after two in-game months of relative ease.  Persona 4 kicked my ass almost immediately, but it wasn't so much due to game difficulty as just not having enough ways to fight back.  So here I am at the first dungeon boss, with a design basically designed to kill you a few times, having to mash the circle button for three minutes each time because of course there is not a skip button during this fucking boss dialogue.  Of course you might counter that the Full Moon bosses of Persona 3 had the same endless dialogue preamble, but WHO DIES TO THE FULL MOON BOSSES.

But all these things would just be nitpicks, mere bitching if I could just get into this game.

The biggest hindrance is probably the plot, or rather how the game handles the plot.  Persona 3 wasn't Shakespeare (or hell, even good by anime terms), but at least it presented a strange mystery quickly and propelled you into it.  Persona 4 seems convinced that you, the player, are not fully understanding of any plot point unless it is repeated a dozen times in VOICE ACTED CUTSCENES.  Even now, I'm getting HM WHY ARE THEY PUTTING PEOPLE IN THE TV AWFULLY STRANGE discussions lasting for ten minutes.  I realize that judging by fanmade creative content the vast majority of people playing this game are 12-year-olds, but I think even they understand things at this point.

Also adding to my malaise is the way the game handles deadlines.  Maybe I'm just some adult baby, but I liked the certainty of the moon system in Persona 3.  Roughly 30 days to clear the new dungeon block, cool.  Now I have no idea how much time I really have to rescue people or even when they're going to be captured unless I push away my dysfunctional uncle's daughter away from her quiz show to look at the weather.  It's like the game is desperate to remove any urgency from my playing, which would be fine if I wasn't playing something billed as an anime murder mystery.

I hate all the characters.  Granted, I hated almost everyone in Persona 3, but at least there I got Koromaru and Elizabeth (also, point of order, the persona fighting game coming out better have one of those two in the roster or I will be so het up).  The closest personality to acceptable is New Junpei, if just that the game writers ratcheted up Old Junpei's closet issues a hundredfold.

So it's really bad news that Nocturne finally went on sale, because holy shit I've only played an hour and I'm already fighting stuff and things aren't being explained to be in excruciating detail.  Fuck this game.