Month: October 2020

The Final Word: Day 4 (The Final Destination)

On By troubledproductionsIn The Final WordLeave a comment
  • Oh boy, this one is in 3D, which is always a good sign for a horror franchise. Really? “The Final Destination?” Not Final Destination 4? I guess we’re just blowing off conventional naming mechanisms? Fine, why don’t I just blow off speaking English too if that’s how we’re going?
  • Blom gu garh kan sha yuv bew lok
  • “also known as” oh thank God a normal title “Final Destination 3D” no! That’s not helpful.
  • Fine, I’ll stop talking about the title and start focusing on the actual film.
  • Still a stupid title though.
  • So after covering the horror-inducing situations of a plane explosion, a traffic crash, and a roller coaster breaking, this film starts somewhere even scarier: NASCAR.
  • For those who don’t know what NASCAR is: I envy you, you sweet summer child. It’s essentially driving in a circle, for 200 laps. We actually have them in England too, they’re near supermarkets and called roundabouts. At least with ours after you complete it you can pick up a Cornish pasty.
  • Straight in, no opening credits to speak of yet. I like when horror films do that sometimes, because it annoys people who don’t turn up on time as “I don’t want to watch the trailers”. Watch the trailers! It’s how you find new movies.
  • “tell me why we chose this instead of seeing a movie?” Weird choice for an opening line in a movie.
  • “if they lose focus for even a millisecond they will have to be scraped off the fence with a shovel, a shovel!” A lot of the fences here are chain-link so I don’t think that will help. Best to maybe pressure-wash them.
  • “No I came to see them compete, of course I want them to crash”.
  • “you’re sick hunt” I agree he is a disgusting, oh, you said “Hunt”
  • “Time to lay off the funyuns” nooooo, those funyuns have a family they’re supporting, they need the work.
  • The characters (Nick, Lori, Hunt, and Janet) are at the roundabout driving event, having snuck alcohol in in fake binoculars, because they like the local events, but they hate making sure that the people who put on these events make any money. And if they go out of business thats their own fault.
  • People move and get in the way, stopping characters from being able to see the vroom vroom go fast.
  • A woman puts tampons in her kids ears, unused. I hope. Because that’s something people do.
  • The most unrealistic part of this movie is this is a NASCAR event and there’s only one obvious racist (Carter).
  • One of the characters (the forgettable-looking white male, oh wait, that doesn’t narrow it down) points out they’re safe as there’s a fence between them and the track. At this point the fence starts coming loose when the wind starts unscrewing things. Because wind does that. It’s why I don’t actually have a screwdriver in my house, I just blow everything and my problems are solved.
  • A piece of paper memorialising drivers who have died blows onto the floor near Nick. If you have enough recent deaths that it fills a sheet of A4, maybe stop doing that event.
  • A guy sitting in front of him has “life’s a bitch, and then you die. Any questions?” oh his shirt. I have two actually: 1) slogans should go on the front of a t-shirt, not the back, why would you do that? 2) Who told you you could pull off that colour?
  • A mechanic leaves a metal thingymajig (teechnical term) in the back of a vehicle, not the back seat, wedged into the actual back of the car. The car drives off, and the crew for some reason don’t radio him to tell him to pull the fuck over. Maybe they don’t have radios in the car, because that’s not a thing drivers ever have is it? What kind of amateur bullshit is this?
  • Oh it’s fine, it’s fallen off now and is laying in the middle of the track. Panic over, it’s all good.
  • Oh no! A car hit it, what a surprise!
  • The car flips, and the audio is…..strange. It sounds like cheers are happening, but canned cheers. There’s no crescendo it just starts and ends at the same level.
  • A tire decapitates someone, which is the first death of the movie by the way, and it’s thoroughly underwhelming. It happens so fast you don’t get a proper look at it, the audio feels muted so it doesn’t feel painful, and it just doesn’t feel real.
  • A car flies over the fence and lands on someone, I think, it happened quickly so it might have just landed on an empty seat. The driver’s dead though. Previous films would have shown him burning in agony, not this one though, in this one you never get a look at any of the drivers, it’s almost like they don’t exist or matter. It’s weird as it’s such a simple thing but it would have improved it so much if we got a look inside the cars at any point.
  • Two racists (well, one racist and his wife, but if she’s with him and doesn’t call him out on his shit, she’s racist by proxy) get split in half like a divorced couples belongings by a flying piece of metal. Again, it happens so quickly and is so CGI that it seems fake and has no impact.
  • A woman (Samantha) is trampled by people running away. Sadly she doesn’t die then, but is too injured to move when an engine flies out and strikes her in the stomach. I really wish she died earlier. The engine scene isn’t good enough to justify it, and her dying not from the accident but at the direct hand of the audience is a much more chilling death. Okay this is just a premonition so it doesn’t actually happen but still. It would have been much better.
  • Andy (the boyfriend of Nadia, the woman decapitated by the tire) runs away, slipping and landing on a piece of wood that’s sticking up in one of the worst effects so far in this franchise. It’s basically a cartoon.
  • The building starts collapsing, killing lots more people as the exits are blocked. Why does this look so bad? Actually it’s for the same reason as the third one, they used similar techniques to the second one (using practical effects then tidying it up with CGI) but waaaaay overdid it so it all looks fake, essentially a video game.
  • An explosion knocks Nick into a piece of metal that kills him. Everybody is dead.
  • But not really we’re back in reality. Nick, showing actual brains, describes things that will happen before they do. Making it much easier to get everybody on his side.
  • “we gotta go, there’s gonna be a crash” a guy in front turns around and bitches at him “hey! that ain’t funny”. This would be about 40 seconds after someone else said “Of course I hope they crash”, which the guy was fine for some reason.
  • He, and a group of other people run outside the stadium, and keeping in tradition for this franchise, the crash happens WAY too fucking early, with chaos happening about 10 seconds after they leave instead of 5 minutes.
  • Carter (the racist dickbag) is stopped from going back into the stadium by security guard. I’d have let him, he’s a racist so…..
  • Nadia, who got decapitated by a tire in the original crash, is outside the arena now, where she still gets decapitated by a tire. She must have really pissed off a sentient tire.
  • Opening credits! These are probably my favourite opening credits so far, x-ray style retellings of previous deaths in the franchise. Really cool, VERY unique, and a great way of rewarding fans of the franchise.
  • The original four friends are sat in a coffee shop emotionally recovering. I think this is the first time in the franchise that none of the original friend group die in the mass death scene. Very cool, and allows us to get a better look at how their group dynamic works.
  • “But why are we still alive?” Because you weren’t in the place where the crash happened, it’s not complicated.
  • “we’re alive because we deserve it” and the people who died died because they deserved? Bit cruel, you dick.
  • “A memorial will be held tomorrow at McKinley Speedway” aren’t they still cleaning it up? Fuck man, you’re contaminating a crime scene.
  • Andy is devastated at the loss of his wife. Carter has also lost his wife, and decides to resort to using the n-word to fix things. Because he’s a racist, and racists don’t have feelings except hate.
  • Nick wakes up after having CGI visions of another death, this time involving a hook-crane (Yes I know there’s probably a technical word, I do not know the technical word).
  • “I just had a really bad nightmare, it seemed real” lol, it didn’t though. It seemed super fake and made by computer, and not even a modern one, but a mid 90s adventure game.
  • Carter somehow found out where the black security guard who stopped him going back into the arena lives. He parks his tow truck (with company name, smart) outside the guys house, and sets up a cross to burn to burn on his lawn. The film shows a part of cross burning that’s never shown on film usually; him digging a hole to put the cross in. They always mention the hate, never the landscaping.
  • A 4 pack of beer (with only 2 drunk, pussy) falls down, causing the truck to go forward. For some reason the door locks as it drives off. Carter gets hoist by his own petard, well, tow truck chain and gets dragged down the street. The metal chain dragging on the floor starts a fire and he slowly burns to death in a manner sort of like a lynching, He dies, finally something good happens in this film. And it happens while the song “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” plays. Funny. I mean, it would be horrible if it happened to a human but it didn’t.
  • The characters find out what happened, one of them finds out while she’s just sitting around in a cute t-shirt and green underwear. Eugh, really movie? You couldn’t not be creepy for one minute?
  • Samantha (the mother who put tampons in her kids ears) turns up at a salon for her 5 o clock appointment. At 5:50, they close at six. “Sorry i’m late”, that’s not really acceptable for being 50 minutes late. She complains about their being nobody who can help her, on account of, you know, her being 50 minutes late, and the place closing in 10 minutes. “I understand, but it’s a girls night out” Doesn’t matter, are you paying the overtime? No? Then fuck off.
  • The company acquiesces, because fuck the staff, right? They don’t have lives or need to do anything.
  • Lots of death fake-outs occur showing a fan nearly falling, water dripping on a radio, body butter on the floor etc. But we already know what her deaths involve due to the vision So…..what’s the point of those?
  • A can of hairspray slowly slides along until it’s near a hair straightener, igniting the can and causing the fan to fall down, hitting nothing.
  • After all those fake-outs we get her actual death; a stone run over by a lawnmower flies through her head. I would love to see mythbusters deal with that. It’s a weirdly low-key death for the second human death in the movie (racists aren’t people, guys, how many times do I have to tell you?).
  • Her death is met with “we lost a really hot MILF”. Wow, do you do eulogies or hallmark cards?
  • They were googling premonitions, and obviously come up with the disasters from the previous movies (again, not from the next one, despite it happening before the others. That will never not annoy me), and none from anything outside of these movies. It’s weird the only allusions to real-life deaths in this franchise were to fucking 9/11. They couldn’t even come up with a fake disaster that we didn’t see? Because at the moment it feels like these films only take place in their own reality, they’re very insular and don’t seem to exist in reality.
  • “would it kill you to be sensitive?” Dunno dude, you’re the one who can see deaths, you tell him.
  • Nick and Lori head to the racetrack, which for some reason doesn’t have anybody there doing forensics and cleaning it up still. Shit, there are still clothes there.
  • Nick flashbacks to the premonition, and again I have to say while we saw the whole thing play out, how did he see it all? He would have been panicking surely? He wouldn’t have been like “okay I’ll just stare at this couple until they die”. So how does he know which order?
  • Wooo a security guard. George, who just happened to be in the vicinity the day of the accident, and only just avoided death. What a crazy random happenstance that he’s the one who catches them.
  • “Three of the people who survived the accident are now dead”. I can’t believe they didn’t fix that mistake in the script. It wasn’t three people, it was two people and Carter.
  • We find out why George is in Alcoholics Anonymous; he killed his wife and kids in a car accident while drunk. Wow, actual character. I’m not used to that in these films.
  • Andy dies when a gas tank pushes him against a chain link fence, killing him in, again, a very cartoon-looking death. After seeing parts of his stomach be pushes through the fence. One of his workmates comes out, looks at him and says “hey, are you okay?” obviously fucking not.
  • Hunt is a cunt. He’s in a very gratuitous sex scene which is just there for boobs. He also looks really fucking dumb.
  • Nick has a premonition that Hunt will die when he drives past a sign saying “Clear Rivers Water”. An obvious reference to Clear from the first two films. This film has not been good but it’s had moments like that which are superb.
  • A kid shoots Hunt with a water pistol. Hunt gets annoyed about getting wet near a swimming pool so swears at the kid, pops his inflatable, pushes him in the pool, then steals the water pistol and throws it behind a fence near a piece of equipment. Nobody who watches this happens stops him or punches him in the dick. Also, he does know that even without the pistol, there are still ways people can get wet when they’re near a swimming pool, right? It turns out he has broken the pool drainage system, which isn’t protected or monitored.
  • Janet could also die in water, her car getting stuck in a car wash and her sunroof magically opening. At least it was set up that the sunroof was dodgy in an earlier scene. Water pours into the car in a moment which would be much better in a better film.
  • Hunt gets hit a golf ball, causing his lucky coin to fall out of his pocket and roll into the pool. They could have just had him flip the coin and drop it. Or had the little kid (who hasn’t been seen again by the way) steal it. Or even have him swim and it fall out of his pocket. If a golf ball hits him like that then the course is way too close to the pool. All those unprotected heads and flying golf balls is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
  • He of course, jumps into the pool, but the increased suction on the broken drainage system causes him to be forced to the bottom of the pool by his anus.
  • While he’s being given a wet sucking in the pool, Janet gets her head stuck in her sunroof and is nearly pummelled to death by car wash tentacles. And not in a sexy way. She gets saved though. Having both characters separated and being unsure which one will die is a great way to get tension, and as such is never done again.
  • Meanwhile back with the worlds most dangerous rimjob, Hunt is clearly near death. The films cuts to above the pool for a few chilling moments where everything is fine and normal, nobody noticing him dying. It’s a haunting moment knowing that he’s dying and can see everybody not noticed. I’d say it’s only ruined by the tense music that plays over the pool shots. I feel if they played relaxed happy music it would be more disturbing as it would almost normalise the ignorance.
  • He dies, bloodily and painfully. So if Janet wasn’t due to die, why did all that weird shit happen at the car wash? Was it just to distract them from Hunt? It’s weird how death fucked with them like that and never does it again in the franchise.
  • George and Andy meet near a hospital where another survivor is. He was unknown to the group (and as such, to us) and is next on deaths list. So this will be satisfying, a death of a character we know nothing about. It’s quite a drawn out death too. Involving an overflowing bathtub, another racist, and him being injured enough that he can’t move.
  • Meanwhile Janet is at the mall, with a heavy object ominously looming overhead because, again, this is America, and health and safety laws are communism.
  • Before any of this can come to fruition, George gets hit by an ambulance. Is that their way of getting more business? Oh wait, he’s dead, they went too far.
  • Janet and Lori (I think, I can’t remember who anybody is in this movie) are at the cinema when it blows up and everybody dies. But they don’t because it’s another vision, all of that was a vision. So it doesn’t matter. We could have guessed that since EVERYBODY died after only an hour of film. If they limited it and left a few survivors then it would have been more believable. I’m not going to spend too long on this, as it was a complete waste of time. I will say it’s weird how the fire started with barrels labeled “spontaneously combustable”, how does that work? That would just be combustable, sure? Spontaneously combustable implies it will just randomly set itself on fire.
  • Nick stops the cinema deaths despite being shot with a nail gun (this franchise loves those nail guns) and saves the day. Yay. So does this mean everybody else from that cinema is now on deaths list? We don’t know, we will never know. What a totally satisfying thing to happen in a movie.
  • Later on he and the girls are sitting in a coffee shop. He starts getting worried when he see’s ominous signs, like an advert for a swimming pool, or NASCAR on TV. I agree that showing NASCAR on television is in bad taste. Not because of the accident, but because it’s shit.
  • They die after the end of the film, being hit by a truck and their deaths being in same manner as the opening credits, being shown in x-ray. That’s pretty cool, much better than the rest of the film.

So that’s that over. Probably the worst film so far, and a lot of that is down the visuals. It’s weird as it’s directed by same guy as the second one, and that really, well, I wouldn’t say “improved” on the first one, but it did continue it in a logical and respectable manner. This one? Just no. As I mentioned, the characters range from awful to forgettable to George (who is actually well written). Also, it doesn’t make me scared of anything. The first one makes you scared of planes, the second makes you scared you logs on trucks, the third one makes you scared of tanning beds. They’re all things that have slightly seeped into pop culture and you see references to them on the internet. Nothing from this makes you feel the same way. It leaves no imprint on you and the only thing it makes you scared off is shitty CGI.

The Final Word: Day 3 (Final Destination 3)

On By troubledproductionsIn The Final WordLeave a comment

Day 3, the third film, you know the drill by now. This would have been posted yesterday but got delayed due to health reasons, by which I mean I’m sick of myself. Oh, and I’m aware of the DVD having an interactive “choose your own” fate thing on it, but lol I’m not adding that stuff in here because obviously I’m not. I might do it later as a bonus blog though.

  • The opening credits take place over a series of shots at a theme park.
  • Cool, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is in this, (as Wendy) I love her.
  • The credits are effective, but like most things in this franchise, incredibly unsubtle.
  • Wendy is standing by watching everybody else have fun (a bit like me at an orgy), just standing there taking pictures (again, like me) when she gets freaked out by something she see’s (again…well you get the joke).
  • Wendy is freaked out by her camera changing the words “high dive” to “high die”, which I think is the idiots way of describing an overdose, it’s certainly how I do it.
  • She’s joined by her boyfriend Jason, her friend Carrie, and Carrie’s boyfriend Kevin. They’re at the theme park as a graduation celebration for the local high school. “yay, we survived until May without being notable failures, let’s spend a lot of money to celebrate that fact”. There was no need for that to be the case here, they could have just been friends hanging out.
  • “it won’t kill us to get a deep fried snickers” are you sure? Because that sounds like it might kill you.
  • “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” or gives you PTSD.
  • Ewwww Kevin is creepy and takes a photo of a girl’s crotch so he can lust over the cameltoe. Bit weird. Jason too, very creepy, pointing out two girls bending over. Dude, your girlfriend is right there, and she’s Mary Elizabeth Fucking Winstead, you can’t do better, few people can.
  • Why does her camera make the flash-bulb noise when the flash is turned on? It’s a digital camera
  • A Tony Todd-voiced devil makes creepy comments that scares Wendy. Sadly that’s his only appearance in this films.
  • “when else are you going to see a dick that big?” Wait until my cloud gets hacked.
  • “odds of dying in a roller coaster are 250million to one, you’re more likely to die driving there”, I wrote a very similar line in a school shooting script, my character was less of a dick though. This guy is Ian and his girlfriend Erin. Erin does almost nothing in this film. Ian is a dick, who looks uncomfortably like a fat robot Dennis Reynolds from It’s Always Sunny.
  • There’s a dude called Frankie Cheeks showing of his necklace which is a naked woman posing. Why are so many of the male characters in this franchise creepy?
  • “We’ll settle this like real men!” Then proceeds to do a coin flip. Because that’s how MEN deal with problems! You looking at my girl? Coin flip! The original draft of John Wick was just Keanu Reeves flipping coins everywhere. Harder now as it’s all card.
  • “dare you to flash me those sweet titties when we go through the loop” ugh I hate Frankie, but the fact he’s getting this much attention means I know he’s not going to die in this accident. Shame.
  • We also have Lewis, a jock, and that’s all the characterisation he gets so far.
  • A ride attendant tells Wendy to put away her camera, didn’t say anything to Frankie though.
  • And we’re off! They cheer the start of the rollercoaster, they’re going to be so excited when they find out it does more than just drive very slowly out of a station.
  • Frankie has his camera out on the ride, because of course he does.
  • Everyone has their hands in the air like they just don’t care. And that’s the problem with society, nobody cares about anything. Except cheese. Everybody cares about cheese. And Betty White.
  • Things start to go wrong and the coaster breaks over the course of a few minutes. The people working there obviously think “this is fine” and never hit the brakes, even after a wheel falls off.
  • The front car comes off the track, killing everyone in that. Then some of the overhead seatbelt restraints come loose, which is surprising because I’ve usually found the opposite happening. When (I think it was) Alton Towers had a rollercoaster get stuck a the top of a loop whilst upside down a few years ago, nobody fell out because they work on their own system separate from the brakes etc.
  • Everybody dies in probably the least exciting accident of the series. It doesn’t have the same effect as the others have because of how restrained it feels, it doesn’t have the same slow-burn as most of the others. It’s the most similar to the first one, due to how almost everybody died of the same thing. But after the road accident in the second film being a combination of causes, to go back to the one feels a little bit like a step backwards. It’s weird as they obviously put a lot of effort into filming this, using a good mix of digital and practical
  • Again, this series doesn’t know how timing works. Making the accident happen 20 seconds after it starts instead of a few minutes like it played out in the dream. That’s a serious issue with this franchise and I hope the next to sort it out. Although from what I remember about the fourth film, it seems to make everything worse, in 3D.
  • We saw two things cause the accident: Lewis’s restraints being forced down (kinky) and Fuckhead Frankie dropping his camera and causing it to wrap around the track (somehow) then get run over. Both of them got off the coaster, so what caused the crash?
  • Kevin tries to cheer Wendy up by talking about the events of the first film and how someone had a vision that the plane was going to explode He then mentions how everybody died. Because that’s helpful.
  • Also, again, they’re ignoring the prequel. I know that film hasn’t happened yet, but knowing it exists REALLY fucks up moments like this.
  • Two blonde girls who’s names I can’t remember and entire personality boils down to “hot students” go to a tanning salon, armed with drinks which are lubriciously sized.
  • They strip off, because you need the audience to be sexually excited about these two girls you know are about to die. Okay when you phrase it like that it’s a bit weird.
  • The machines start breaking because they changed the temperature of the room. So at least they caused their own deaths so there’s a karmic nature to the deaths, my favourite deaths in horror movies are like that.
  • “it’s way too warm in here” might be because you turned the heating up in a room which had tanning beds in, and then got in the tanning beds.
  • A coat rack falls and ends up trapping the two girls inside. The tannings beds don’t have a switch inside to turn them off because that would be sensible.
  • The machines turn up the heat and burn them to death, shattering glass over them as they catch on fire. Probably the definitive kills of this film. Graphic, horrific, and completely changes how you see tanning beds. Although if they were in tanning beds that often anyway and regularly ignored safety instructions they could have ended up with skin cancer anyway, so at least this way is quick. But yeah a truly devastating and painful death, and you felt every moment of it. But at least you got to see boobs, right? That’s it, hide the fact you have an erection still when it gets to the deaths. Man horror movies are fucking weird.
  • Brilliant editing as it cuts from the two burning beds to their coffins. *applause*
  • Ian and are at the funeral. Where Ian heckles the guy doing the eulogy. Bit weird, and makes it harder to like them.
  • Frankie blames himself for their deaths, as do I. He blames himself because he thinks they pressured themselves to look good to impress him. I blame him because he’s the worst and I blame him for everything.
  • Lewis at the funeral too, couldn’t even be bothered to iron his shirt.
  • Wendy and Kevin are there too. Wendy has researched about death being foreshadowed. She does this by showing a photo Lincoln with a line through his head, foreshadowing his assassination (I still say he deserved that, he was wearing a hat in the theatre). Bit weird to pull real life deaths into this schlocky franchise, but it was long enough ago that it’s not really an issue. Then they do this:
  • Wtf movie? That’s a 9/11 reference FOR NO REASON in a film made less than 5 years after. They hadn’t even paid compensation to the workers who helped clear it by that point (oh, and fuck Droopy Dog Mitch for fighting against that).
  • “spongebob lives under the sea” “it’s so sad you know that”. Is it? Or is it common knowledge?
  • FINALLY Frankie dies when a car engine goes through his head. A convoluted death that wouldn’t have happened if multiple people weren’t dicks. The truck driver who blocked Wendy’s door so she couldn’t get out and warn people. The people in the car behind Wendy and Kevin who insisted they drive forward because they needed burgers immediately even though being closer together in the queue only makes it shorter in length, not in time, which is the more annoying thing about queues. Would you rather be in a 2 person queue that takes ages? Or a 20 person queue that’s over in a minute? Exactly. Also, Frankie is a dick for flipping them off when they tried to warn him, and for being a dick.
  • They work out Lewis is going to die through either something to do with swords, or a weight from a weight machine on his head. It feels like those are pretty simple deaths to avoid. I don’t want to jinx it but I know for a fact I’m not going to die through sword or a weight machine.
  • He dies through both, the swords cutting the machine thingys (I’m not an expert on weight machines) until the weights swing down and crush his head. Important point: the swords swung down and cut the things, he saw them, stopped, then continued. Didn’t think to stand up and check if they cut anything important. This is a weird death as they made a fake head that they crushed and it looked great, but then they covered it up with CGI. Such a waste
  • Back to Ian and Erin. Ian is shooting pigeons with a nail gun.
  • Lots of things got knocked from shelves due to lack of health and safety and nobody having peripheral vision. This causes even more things to fall down, and Erin being shot in the back of the head multiple times by a nail gun (which is definitely faulty). I don’t even know enough about her character to feel comfortable about making a joke about nailing her from behind.
  • Kevin and Wendy (and yes I do have to keep checking I got their names right because of how badly defined the characters are) go to a fair to safe her sister Julie. Julie nearly gets run over by a horse and somehow a rope attached to the horse goes around her neck and drags her around. Something which is only possible because not one person around them went “holy shit there’s a fucking horse running through a crowd of people, move”. It also only happens because Julie is unnecessarily rude to Kevin, not entirely sure why except for plot reasons. The horse stops and everyone is calm, Julie keeps the noose tied around her neck (sex reasons?) and of course the horse runs off again, nearly killing her for a second time in a minute. It does look good though, it really looks like Julie is being dragged whilst having a rope round her neck. They achieved this effect by tying something around his neck and dragging her. It had a harness so it was safe, but props to her for doing that.
  • The police try to calm the horse down but it gets spooked by fireworks, which is why you shouldn’t have horses at a mass effect where there is going to be a lot of fireworks, dumbass.
  • Julie’s friend isn’t so lucky, getting impaled by an airborne flagpole that flew through the air because the horse getting tied to it was spooked. Obviously. A really weak death.
  • Kevin gets burned to death nearly, but doesn’t, in a scene that lasts about 3 seconds and with zero tension.
  • Not-Dennis turns up and Wendy is scared that he’s the cause of her death. He’s not though, he dies after fireworks malfunction and shoot past him, causing a cherry picker to collapse on him. My pet goldfish died the same way.
  • Like a lot of deaths, this is a “nearly dies, then stands completely still and gloats, then dies”. Nobody in this film has a sense of “move away from the danger” once they survive it once.
  • Then everyone dies in a train crash. Yup, that’s how it ends. After another vision, this time one she can’t stop because trains don’t have emergency brakes on the inside or anything. It’s kind of a bummer ending and you get used to it with this franchise, but that doesn’t make it any better. For once can we have a win?

So yeah, that’s it. It’s not a bad movie, but it does have bad moments, it indicates the worst parts of the next one; bad CGI and unlikeable characters. It also adds nothing new. The second one had the “backwards to clean up loose ends” gimmick, this one didn’t do anything different to the first one, and it’s disappointing to see it, it’s not so much a sequel, and more like a remake. Shame. Worth watching if you’re a fan of the franchise though,

The Final Word: Day 2 (Final Destination 2)

On By troubledproductionsIn The Final WordLeave a comment

Yup, after doing Final Destination, we’re now doing Final Destination 2. Because we’re crazy and weird like that. This sequel was released 3 years after the original, which looking back on it was probably one of the last horror films to have a plane explode which wasn’t deemed “ooo, too soon” for a long time. In that three years the original had gained quite a cult following so a sequel was not so much hoped for but expected at this point. The franchise is lucky to be honest, as it has no definable villain except the general concept of death, so really it can go on indefinitely. It’s not like Nightmare On Elm Street where they have to defeat Freddy, and then think of a way to bring him back the next film (with varying degrees of believability). This is the only film in the franchise with a returning main character, so the ties to the original are incredibly obvious. Speaking of things which are incredibly obvious, let’s start my jokes.

  • We start off with a recap of the events of the first film, done via news broadcast. I don’t mind that, it’s a clever way to do it, and it’s better than just playing flashbacks.
  • It’s talking about how everyone died soon after the events of the plane crash (well, it took over six months to get two of them, so stretching the definition of soon, also it wasn’t a crash, it was an explosion), speaking of the event as the starting incident in people realising “oh wait, death has a plan”. Now, spoilers, a future movie in the franchise (but I won’t tell you which one) is a prequel to the first one, and ends with the main characters on the plane from the first movie. A really good twist, but why is that situation never mentioned until that film? Nobody speaks about how “these people died in the plane crash also JUST avoided death in a tragic incident a few months before”. THAT should have been the main incident, not the plane crash. In a large event like that, newspapers would have picked up on that, surely?
  • “so I’m surrounded by death?” yeah I feel like that when I go outside at the moment too, you ain’t special.
  • “when Alex took the other survivors off that plane, it screwed up deaths plan”. But deaths plan was already screwed up by having two people on the plane who shouldn’t have been alive in the first place. So who would have died in their place? Damn, that future prequel opens up A LOT of questions.
  • “there were so many weird random things about the way they died, it just didn’t make sense”. Okay, WE know that as an audience, does the world know that? As far as they’re concerned all that happened was: a suicide, a bus accident, a house fire etc. Okay, some of them were creepy, but some were set up to look relatively mundane.
  • Oh, this is all taking place on a TV screen in a room of someone who is asleep and conveniently wakes up just at the correct moment to hear plot-relevant points.
  • “dad, it’s Daytona, not Somalia” Well done movie, you just lost the lucrative Somalia audience.
  • So what song starts off this horror movie? If you said “euro-pop dance” you were correct. Great song though
  • Main character in this is Kimberly, heading on a trip with her friends Shaina, Dano, and Frankie. Dano and Frankie are the kind of guys who call women “honey’s”, so you already hope they die.
  • The car radio plays news about a memorial to the plane crash, then Highway To Hell, the characters find this a bit of a creepy coincidence because they know they’re in a horror movie. Seriously, most of the “creepy” set ups in this franchise only work because the characters know they’re in a horror movie. If you turned on the radio and heard “Highway To Hell” on a road trip, would you find that creepy or symbolic? Nope, just strange.
  • Anyway, they change it, and get the exact same band as they listened to when they started the trip (another great song), I’d find that creepier than AC/DC to be honest.
  • A guy who looks like he’s called “Brad” or another similar dude-bro name drives past them and creepily stares at them, for no other reason than this film needs to make us aware of him for later.
  • She gets a phone call from her dad telling her the car is leaking transmission fluid. She has a car phone, and has driven to pick up two dick-havers, and only NOW is he phoning her? Damn that’s cold.
  • Biker boobs. This series gets much more tit-orientated as it goes on, so beware of that.
  • We’re introduced to the rest of the cast by watching them driving. We get nothing about their personalities or names, but we know they can drive.
  • Cop is driving with coffee near his lap, because the NY police budget doesn’t extend to cupholders. The obvious happens and he spills the coffee.
  • A logging truck chain breaks, forcing a big log (lol) to fall off and bounce through the cop guys window. Reports that Trump called the wood an “Antifa BLM agent” have been made up by me, but are still probably accurate. Great kill though, still lingers with me whenever I’m behind a logging truck.
  • He dead. Which causes a guy on a motorbike to fall off and smash into a piece of wood, before getting crushed by his own bike.
  • A car containing a stoner dick flips over and lands safely. Yay. Before getting hit by a truck. Boo.
  • Cars flip and go boom. I’m really underselling it, this is probably my favourite disaster in the franchise. It looks incredible and I think part of that is because of how much of it is practical. The logs were fake as they didn’t bounce properly, and they used it for things like removing wires and putting an actors face on a dummy. It looks so great, and compared to how fake they look in some (especially the fourth one, spoilers)
  • Someone gets stuck in a car and burns to death in a horrific death, he literally screams as he’s burned alive, its awful and great.
  • Everybody dies.
  • But they don’t. Because Kimberly pulls over. The log truck drives past and we get enough time for Kimberly to say “that’s the truck that’s going to kill everyone, why won’t you listen to me?” before the crash happens. Ignore the fact that the deaths actually took place about 5 minutes later, and much MUCH further down the road, because we can still see the crash from their viewpoint, the timing of these have always been wrong. But still, everyone survives, right? Wrong! Only Kimberly gets out the car, the rest stay in there until they get hit by a truck which didn’t stop for some reason. Also, she parked the car on an on-ramp and blocks it so nobody can gets past. Yet the car was hit by the truck in the middle of the freeway. How did it move there?
  • “I knew something bad was going to happen”, yeah I have that too. It’s called high level anxiety.
  • “it’s like that 180 flight that happened one year ago today”. I’m sorry, are we saying death observes anniversaries?
  • “you must have read about that kid who had a dream about the plane blowing up?” no, but I read about the kid before that who had a dream about another accident and saved people from that, who then died on that plane crash. Seriously, one of the films being a prequel REALLY fucks up this franchise.
  • “A month goes by, everything seems cool”, because nothing is cooler than dead people.
  • “death was stalking them”, well he got one of them in the shower, bit creepy.
  • “did mum ever have any weird feelings about anything?” Well she always had a funny turn when Joan Jett was on TV, but i think that was mainly the leather.
  • “Did she have any premonitions?” are you asking if she was a witch? Because you’re the one who died in a fire but not really.
  • We’re now at the house of blonde douche. A guy called Evan who won the lottery yet still lives in a shitty flat. He used his winnings to buy new computer etc. Which is stupid, if he spent it on house THEN got laptop he’d have less to carry. Also, him winning the lottery has NO effect on the plot except he has voice messages from people trying to hook up with him.
  • A fire starts as he’s got his hand stuck in garbage disposal. Something which wouldn’t have happened if HE MOVED OUT.
  • He tries to escape but all the windows slam shut and seem to lock because magic death powers. The magic death powers aren’t enough to stop him breaking the window and climbing out though.
  • His fire-escape ladder gets stuck and his flat explodes (something which seemingly affects nobody else in the block of flats somehow).
  • He hits the floor then slips on some spaghetti (not joking), the ladder THEN slides down nearly impaling him in the eye but stopping at the last moment. He then lies completely still until it does fall down and kill him. His death would have been stopped if he just rolled to the side like a regular person. It’s not a satisfying death because of how stupid it is. The make-up looks great though.
  • The cop is investigating the plane crashes and looks up reports of the deaths, where we get the worst picture/caption ever.
Tod in bathtub. Caption "a nice shot before the coroner
  • Seriously that is such a staged picture, he’s obviously posing. And who put that caption there? That’s not me, that’s in the film. What the hell?
  • We then find out how Alex died, he got hit by a falling brick. Obviously all the media attention never got him a helmet.
  • “a semi comes” I normally can’t do that until I get a full one.
  • Everyone is watching the news about the crash when a report comes up about the death of Evan. Now, none of the characters ever interacted with Evan, he was specifically shown as not being interviewed at the same time as everyone else, he was watching through a two way mirror. So why are they creeped out by this? They don’t know he nearly died. They would just see it as another death.
  • We see Tim, a 15 year old who survived the crash alongside his mum, and who is weirdly written. He’s 15, yet his mum comes into his room and kisses him goodnight like he’s 5.
  • Kimberly does more research into Flight 180, because what this film needed was more people sitting at computers.
  • I don’t know why she’s worried though, she’s got the Infinity Gems in her damn lamp.
  • See, she’s basically Thanos.
  • Kimberly then goes to the mental institution where Clear is, the next day. Not as though there’s an emergency or anything, take your time.
  • “at the request of the patient you will relinquish [stuff here], pocket knives, poisons”. What kind of place is this that they have to specifically request “no poison”?
  • Wooo Clear is back. In a room designed to keep her safe with lots of pictures on the wall and a TV. She’s risking a tv explosion or multiple paper cuts.
  • “all my friends are dead”, but you mentioned in the previous film that you didn’t know any of them that well, so not as though you were besties. At most it’s “my acquaintances are dead”
  • “don’t worry, once death gets the others it will come back for you” oh okay, that’s reassuring.
  • Kimberly see’s a reflection of pigeons flying and panics thinking they’re near her, despite not feeling them, not being able to see them outside of the reflection, or not hearing them (and it was a lot of pigeons) she still asks “did you see them?” to someone who had his back to the window.
  • Tim goes to the dentist, where pigeons (oh no!) fly into the window and nearly break it. Also a fish tank leaks into an electrical circuit, but we know that won’t do anything as we’ve already established pigeons will cause death.
  • Somehow nobody notices the electric sparks from the plug socket, or the water on the floor (despite a character nearly slipping on it).
  • A fish-mobile above the dentists chair (perfectly normal in a dentist that works on people over the age of 5) breaks and a fish falls into Tim’s mouth, he looks he will nearly die but the dental assistant comes and saves him. Not quite sure that room would be left unattended but movie gonna movie.
  • He survives and comes out the building, no complains about almost dying and runs into a flock of pigeons to scare them, again, he’s 15, not 5. This triggers a crane operator to drop a sheet of glass on him killing him.
  • A brutal death, but another one in which adequate health and safety regulations would have stopped. The crane shouldn’t have been holding a load like that in a public area in case it accidentally goes off. (and trust me, I know something about accidentally letting a large load go).
  • Wooo it’s Bludworth again being creepy and disturbing, seemingly walking out of fire. Clear argues with him saying “death’s design is flawed and can be beaten”, which begs the question if she thinks that then why was she hiding away? Nothing has changed on her end to change her mind.
  • Also, Bludworth uses pliers to pull out a nipple piercing from a body. Bit gross, but could be grosser.
  • Essentially new life can cause deaths plan to be cancelled. So basically if you nearly die, fuck everybody you can in the hope of starting new life. Of course this might mean you now die of an STD.
  • Kimberly gets another vision, this time of a van crashing into a lake. She says she can see it happening and could almost taste the water, but the vision wasn’t from her point of view. Which brings me up to another point: how does she know in which order the deaths were supposed to happen in the crash? We saw them all, but she would have a very limited POV, if she saw them from the same places we were that would have effected how realistic she thought they were, and at some point she would have noticed “oh wait, I seem to be watching things from the angle of someone floating 2 inches in front of a strangers car”. The death in the first film was in a confined space and had an ignition source so Alex could trace it like that. But in this? What would she have actually seen in the vision? She might not have even seen the log fall off.
  • Drug guy who’s name I can’t be bothered finding out goes into a lift with a dodgy door, putting his dog-shit shoe in someone’s face, because he’s a dick.
  • The group is all together, and one of them is nearly killed by a falling canoe indoors.
  • They find out Nora (Tim’s mum, who has had almost zero characterisation) is next to die, and will probably involve a hookhand. Sadly not Candyman, but a random old white guy with prosthetic limbs. Her hair gets caught in one of them which leads to her head being trapped in the lift doors (why she couldn’t stay in the lift and untangle them is a mystery to me). What follows is a brutal death where she’s begging not to die. Unsuccessfully as she gets decapitated, her head ending up in the lift, her body on the outside.
  • Now we get the weirdly brilliant part of this story; we find out how all these people nearly died earlier on, but were saved by incidents in the first film. Eugene was a teacher who had to replace Ms. Lewton after she died in the first film. His replacement was stabbed. I question that one because if she died in the plane explosion, wouldn’t she still need to have been replaced? And at pretty much the same time too. So either way she would have had a replacement. And there’s no reason to suspect it wouldn’t have been him, that’s on death, not him.
  • The cop nearly died from the train decapitation. He was supposed to go investigate it but someone else did instead, who then died in a shootout. A shootout, at a car crash site. Probably a train employee stopping the police asking questions about why the fuck didn’t the train stop after hitting a car.
  • A woman with lego hair avoided going to a hotel with a gas leak because the bus she was on was the one that ran someone over in first film. I mean, she could have just caught the next bus and still made it.
  • Druggy dickhead survived a theatre fire because he was busy staring at the sign falling down at the end of the first film. He was on LSD so he would have been too distracted by the bright lights anyway.
  • Kimberly survived death because she was busy watching a news report on Tod’s death so she didn’t go outside to meet her mum, who got shot outside waiting for her. “how can you strangle yourself in a bathtub?” Well I often choke a chicken in there.
  • Also, is this film saying that the car crash deaths were caused by people surviving deaths related to flight 180? Because that’s like 26 people who nearly died but didn’t because of the effects of the plane explosion. All of them. All of them were death tying up loose ends. Bullshit.
  • Another car crash. Injures almost everybody in the car. Eugene is severely injured and taken to hospital. Lego hair is stuck in the vehicle, pinned down by another log.
  • A small child (well, teen) is almost hit by a van and is saved by stoner dickhead. Now, he dies later in the film after a bbq explodes and it turns out he was supposed to die at this moment. But how? Like what was the original plan? The accident here wouldn’t have happened if the original car crash was survived, and that wouldn’t have happened if the plane explosion wasn’t survived. How many damn loose ends is there in this film?
  • Lego hair dies when her airbag deploys, forcing her head against a pipe which goes through her head. Great make-up effects here and a shocking death. This causes her to drop her cigarette, which ignites a trail of gas, causing an explosion which causes wire fencing to be shot over to stoner dick, trifurcating him in a great death, albeit one that is just a bit stupid if you think about it.
  • Kimberly has another vision about being choked by a nurse, I’ve often had dreams about that happening to me. *wistful sigh*
  • Kimberly, Cop, and Clear rush to the hospital. They are somehow very far behind Eugene who is not only there but has been checked in and hooked up to machines in the 4 minutes headstart he had.
  • Fire happens, and Kimberly realises that she needs to crash a van into a river, die, and come back to life. Oh yeah, Claire have died in an explosion. Very boring deaths, especially considering how important a character Clear was in these movies.
  • She dies, but comes back to life, this resets deaths plan. I think. See, the kid I mentioned earlier dies. So obviously not everybody is safe. So is it just Kimberly that is safe? Or is the cop safe too because it was the same accident? I don’t know! And neither does the film. Good death though.
  • I never do this but the ending credits to this are not great. I don’t know if it’s the transfer to DVD or not but they’re incredibly jerky, every few seconds they go weird. And they’re REALLY blurry. Weird.

So yeah, that’s day two over. Tomorrow is Final Destination 3, because of course it is.

The Final Word: Day 1 (Final Destination)

On By troubledproductionsIn The Final WordLeave a comment

The day’s are shorter, the nights are long, that can only mean one thing: We could fuck in the sun and dance till dawn. Wait, that’s not it, that’s a song. It means the year is doing it’s best impression of a guy eyeing a drunk girl at a bar, creeping ever closer and hoping we won’t notice until it’s too late, but we notice, we see you Craig! So it’s time for our yearly (except the year we didn’t do it) tradition. After choking on Chucky, jacking off Jigsaw, fellating Freddy, and having a nice romantic evening with Ghostface hoping he feels the same way, it’s time for this year’s October obambulation through occult (except not the occult, I just needed another O word. Not that! Pervert). There is still a lot of franchises we have to go through, Halloween (once I find the Rob Zombie films on DVD), The Omen could be interesting, Friday The 13th etc. So what did I chose for this one? Final Destination, as you can obviously tell if you look at the title for this I’m starting with the first one, because I’m not a moron.

  • New Line Cinema film. Who brought us Nightmare On Elm Street, always a good start.
  • On the other hand they also gave us Wedding Crashers, and if I remember correctly that film had a woman raping a dude as a seduction technique. Oh the dark desolate days of *checks date* the mid 2000’s
  • The opening credits to this are worse than you remember. Basically shadows, rain, and lightning. It’s supposed to be foreboding and menacing, but really just comes off as a music video for a 90’s grunge band.
  • Dolls hanging from ceiling so their shadows look like they’re being lynched, “death of a salesman”, a history book opening on a page about guillotines, this film is not exactly subtle.
  • Also the character building in this sequence is kind of poor. We establish the main characters name, and that he’s going to France. All of which is established in the opening scene of the film anyway.
  • Oh, the final shot of the credits is blood red “this is the end”, again, very subtle.
  • And since this is the end I’ll just turn the film off there. A bit shit to be honest. Nothing happened, and I didn’t see any of the actors mentioned.
  • Still better than Wolf. That film made me want to cyber bully.
  • Know what I said earlier about how all of the character building from the credits is established in the opening scene? I’m not exaggerating. The opening line is “Alex, the bus leaves the high school for the airport around 5”.
  • He insist the luggage tag from the last flight needs to stay on the luggage to stop it crashing. Is that a thing? I have never heard of that.
  • Of course his mum rips it off. So you can say about freak weather conditions, or bad engineering. The real cause of the plane crash was Alex’s mum. Fuck you you bitch.
  • The wind blows model airplane propellers, foreshadowing the characters death, much like a lot of things. But here’s the issue, it’s only foreshadowing it for us, it does dick for the characters. That’s a weak part of these films, a lot of it seems like it’s done for the audience benefit rather than the characters. So you don’t empathise with the characters as much as you don’t feel their fear, you only feel yours.
  • Sean William Scott there wearing a baseball cap backwards, so you know he’s cool.
  • A religious guy hands out a pamphlet saying “death is not the end”. Immediately dating this film as taking place before 9/11.
  • The camera focuses on the airline departure board saying “terminal”. Oh no, spoopy! That means death! Again though, this means nothing to the characters. I would not be freaked out by seeing the word “terminal” at an airport. I’d be more freaked out if I didn’t, wondering if I accidentally wandered into something that wasn’t an airport, but was in fact a whorehouse (just getting my excuses in early).
  • Oooo now there’s a character wearing sunglasses indoors. The people in this film are just too cool.
  • “Hey Alex, come take a shit”. Dudes are weird.
  • The airport plays a John Denver song, a singer who died in a plane crash. This would be a neat little touch if the lead character didn’t say “That’s John Denver, he died in a plane crash”.
  • Alex again gets freaked out by the flight board saying “Terminal”. Again, that’s not spooky, that’s standard thing you will see at an airport, it’s useful information. It’s like being freaked out because you saw rapeseed oil.
  • The teacher isn’t paying much attention to the students going on the plane. Do you want a Home Alone 2: Lost In New York? Because that’s how you get Home Alone 2: Lost In New York? And you know what happened after that? Home Alone 3. And we DON’T TALK ABOUT HOME ALONE 3.
  • “that’s a good sign, younger the better”, Isn’t that the tagline on Giuliani’s tinder profile?
  • Why are they doing the safety announcements while people are still getting on the flight? You’d wait until everyone is seated, surely?
  • Everyone on the plane applauds the flight taking off. I’m no longer sad about any of them dying.
  • Shit starts going wrong and some of the people struggle to put their airbags on. Probably because of the shitty flight safety announcements.
  • The true tragedy is the chocolate rolling along the floor. *cries* such a waste.
  • A horrific plane crash in which everybody dies.
  • But not really. That was just a dream. I don’t think the series ever managed that rug-pull as expertly as it did here. Because, well, you can’t. That became the general concept of the films. It became expected. But can you imagine seeing this for the first time going in blind? Knowing nothing about the film except it’s a horror. You see the entire cast die horrifically in the opening sequence. I can’t begin to imagine how that must have caught the audience off-guard the first time.
  • He panics (as you would) and gets him (and some of his classmates) thrown off the flight, including people who didn’t actually do anything, which is a bit weird.
  • The plane, of course, blows up. Much sooner than it did in the dream. If I’ve got the timing right it would have blown up when everybody started clapping. Makes sense.
  • Have to question how that made the window at the airport shatter.
  • “are there any survivors?” Asks a teacher, about a plane exploding in mid-air. Is she an idiot?
  • “did you take any sedatives before boarding?” Do……..do sleeping pills cause planes to explode? Should I be worried that the doctors gave me pills for my first flight? I knew they were trying to kill me! I’m not paranoid, everyone really is out to get me.
  • “if you didn’t believe it would explode, why did you get off the plane?” Because security threw him off. You’re detectives, and you can’t figure that simple shit out?
  • We then get our main introduction to Clear Rivers, who is the only one of the main characters to appear in more than one film in the franchise. I love her so much in this. I would have so dated her. But sadly I couldn’t see the Clear/Lee romance in my head as I was dating someone called Lorraine. She dumped me though, you’d expect that to have made me sad but actually it made me delighted. I can still remember thinking “Yes! I can see Clear/Lee now Lorraine has gone”
  • “eyewitnesses report seeing the plane explode” Well, obviously. Was that not kind of already known?
  • “air traffic controllers are corroborating eye-witness accounts” I’ll hazard a guess you’ll get nothing useful from that as the explosion happened in the air, and the eyewitnesses were on the ground so didn’t see anything that could have caused it.
  • “don’t talk to me you scare the hell out of me” 1) brilliant thing for a teacher to say to a student going through grief. 2) That’s the usual reaction to my seduction techniques. That and laughter.
  • We’re coming up to the first non-plane death here. Tod (fun fact: that means “death” in German. I know that because I named a character that in a sitcom). You can tell death is coming for him because there’s wind. And everywhere there’s wind, there’s death, especially after I just had a curry.
  • This is a weird death, and is one of two I have a major issue with in this film. So, his toilet leaks, and water looks like it’s following him in the bathroom (seriously, it’s flowing in a really unnatural way, it flows towards one end of the room and once he moves it flows towards him again). There’s quite a few fake-outs which are fun (him having scissors up his nose as the water comes near him, dodgy electrics on the radio etc) but I don’t think they’re is as effective as they could be because this is the first death, so you’re not really looking out for those.
  • Back with Alex, who throws a newspaper at an owl which then then gets caught in a fan and chopped up (the newspaper, not the owl). One question; how useless was that fan cover if that many pages of paper can get through those slits just like that? I’m not saying it’s not possible, but it’s highly unlikely. It only happens because the shredded paper spells out the word “Tod”. Kind of lame logic.
  • And now Tod dies, he slips on the toilet water and the washing line wraps itself around his neck choking him. He can’t stand up because the bath is too slippery, and can’t just swing his leg onto the floor and stand up there because fuck you plot reasons. The bit where the white in his eyes suddenly go red is one of my favourite bits of the film, but it’s followed by one of my least favourite bits, the water going back into the toilet. Erm, how? Why? Is death worried he’s going to be arrested?
  • His death is ruled as suicide because the investigators in this town didn’t see the marks of him struggling to stand up somehow.
  • “Something from that day is still with you” probably trauma.
  • “I know because I can still feel you” Yes please.
  • Clear and Alex break into a morgue to see Tod’s body. I’m not entirely sure what they’re hoping to find, as they know nothing about medical science.
  • Luckily there’s someone who does, Tony mother-fucking Todd as William Bludworth, both the best, and most confusing character in the franchise. His role is to essentially turn up, creepily explain the plot, then leave. How does he know what he knows? Maybe he’s death? It’s never explained and it’s both fantastic and annoying (a bit like me, if you ignore the fantastic part).
  • He points out that Tod has lacerations on his hand from pulling at the wire, indicating it wasn’t a suicide. Somehow this information is not brought up again and his death is still ruled as suicide for the rest of the franchise.
  • Tony Todd is a creepy mother fucker. Being disturbing and (not sure if it’s just me) slightly seductive whilst talking about how you can’t escape death’s design. I mean, it happens in a future film, but that’s besides the point He doesn’t explain this until another film.
  • “what if we cheated the design by getting off the plan? What if it’s still our time. It’s our time. Up there, its our time”. I may have started misremembering the line halfway through.
  • “I do believe that Tod killed himself”. Bitch you were in the mortuary when it was explained how he didn’t.
  • Carter nearly runs Billy over, because he’s a dickhole. You can tell this because he’s playing loud rock music. Nobody comments on the vehicular manslaughter.
  • “you can just drop fucking dead” says, erm, I can’t remember her name, before getting hit by a bus in one of the funniest deaths of the series. I’m still unsure why nobody stopped her. It was obvious where she was going to walk, and nobody stopped her. Just because we didn’t see the bus, doesn’t mean others didn’t. Also, an earlier scene established there was a crane in the way.
  • That death did come out of nowhere and was brilliant. It caught test audiences so off guard that they needed to add a 5 second scene of nothing just to calm audiences down after.
  • Now with Valerie Lewton, the teacher. I get the name is a reference to a producer from the 40’s (well at least I think it is). But considering they’re best known for a technique called “Lewton Bus” why would you make another character be the one who gets hit by a bus?
  • Good as time to mention now how I love the names in this script, almost all the characters are named after famed horror creators:
    • Terry Cheney: Lon Cheney, known for playing multiple horror characters which employed use of his make-up skills
    • Tod Waggner: George Waggner, Director best known for The Wolf Man
    • Alex Browning: Tod Browning, director of Freaks and Dracula.
    • Agent Schreck: Max Schreck (not the green guy), played the lead in Nosferatu
    • Billy Hitchcock: Alfred Hitchcock, if you don’t know what he’s famous for, get out.
  • “looking at my own front yard causes nothing but fear”, same, because there’s people out there! Bastards.
  • The police to Alex: “we know you didn’t cause the explosion, and we were going to just move on from you, but then your friends started dying”. One which YOU ruled suicide, and one got hit by a fucking bus. How does that make him look suspicious? “nobody has control over live and death unless they’re taking lives”, he’d be a terrible doctor. Also, I repeat, she got hit by a bus. Unless he was driving it, or pushed her, it should not reflect badly on him at all and you’re terrible detectives for thinking so.
  • “that kid gives me the creeps” “sometimes you give me the creeps” Yeah? Well I’ve got one response to that:
  • We get Lewton’s death now, and it’s stupid. So stupid. She pours a drink in a mug and then throws the drink onto the floor for some reason when she gets scared of it. She pours cold vodka into the mug, which then causes it to crack. A large crack (hah!) which she doesn’t notice as she walks around the house. This causes the drink to go into her computer and fry the electronics. When the computer starts smoking (and it’s not even 18 so I don’t know how it got served) she moves towards it (because that’s a safe thing to do) and it explodes, shooting glass into her neck. The fire then starts igniting the alcohol, which considering it was both cold and diluted, is unlikely to happen. She falls over then pulls down a tea towel (which earlier she threw onto a set of knives), which then obviously causes the knives to fall on her, one impaling her.
  • Alex turns up, pulls the knife out of her, because reasons, then leaves the house as it explodes (again, that vodka must have been made of pure gasoline to do that shit).
  • The group all gather together to try and figure out a plan. Clear talks about her dead dad etc. I think in the original script she and Alex had sex at this moment. Because nothing gets a guy harder than talking about your dads death.
  • Carter has a moment where he freaks out and almost kills everybody with dangerous driving. It’s a moment which is better in theory than in reality. He seems to cocky to pull this off. It seems to come off as more defiant than nihilistic and freaking out. It’s a shame as it could have been a great scene if done correctly.
  • Carter parks his car on train tracks and everybody except him gets out the car. We have another weird death as when he tries to leave the car doors lock themselves. This could have been much smarter. If you had a character kick the door so it dents it, and that’s why it can’t open etc. Just set this shit up better and don’t just have it as “because Death wants it so”, it’s lazy writing.
  • He gets pulled out the car at the last second just before a train hits it. A train that only runs in Canada, what that’s doing in New York I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been to New York, it’s definitely not Canada, it’s aggressively American.
  • After the train hits the car it keeps going, because that’s what happens, the train wouldn’t stop and investigate the crash at all. There wouldn’t be no paperwork. It would just be “probably just killed someone, we’ll sort it out later”. People complain about “the nanny state” and “health and safety”, but this film needs more of it.
  • Quite a cool death here, Sean William Scott stands by the train tracks talking about how he’s not going to die, he then dies when the train hits a bit of flayed metal (which again, is why the train would have stopped) which then flies up and chops his head off at the mouth. It’s suitably gory and shocking, and one of my favourites from this film. It was set up well (albeit nonsensically) and looked great.
  • Alex shacks up in a death-proof cabin. And then eats food direct from a tin, risking cutting himself when opening it.
  • He then tries to take his mind off it by reading newspaper articles about the plane crash. Couldn’t have something a bit lighter, like 120 Days Of Sodom?
  • Lightning happens (seriously what is it with the weather in this town?) causing a washing line to fly out and nearly impale Clear. A death which would have been freaking awesome, and as such is never done in the franchise. In fact I didn’t even remember that moment until I watched it. She nearly dies from too much electric. So decides to get in her car. This is actually smart as it would effectively mean it creates a Faraday cage (not a sex thing) and the electric charges would go through the outside of the vehicle, keeping people inside safe. Science! So yeah she’s safe.
  • “The cars going to explode” unless that happens.
  • They both survive and the film meets up with them 6 months later. Somehow death killed almost everyone in a week, but then kept these guys alive for 6 months for, I dunno, dramatic effect?
  • Clear stops Alex being hit by the bus which she had a premonition of. Or Alex could have just paid attention to the fucking road and not stepped out in front of a bus. Does nobody in that school know the green cross code? Clear pushes him out of the way and this causes the bus to drive into a lamppost which rube goldbergs’ a sign into falling down, nearly smooshing Alex in the face. This is stopped by Carter pushing him out the way of that (so which one was supposed to kill him? Because it went for him twice). Carter, who was aware enough about the sign to push Alex out of the way, isn’t aware enough to not move out of the way before it hits him, presumably killing him. Credits.
  • We then have a terrible terrible song. Really generic 90’s US rock. Such a weak way to end it.

So that’s it for the first one. These will be continuing until the end of the month. So you’ve got 4 more days of this.

Downhill (2020)

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I saw a trailer for this somewhere, can’t remember where, and it should have been a warning to me that I couldn’t remember anything from the trailer besides the movie exists. I couldn’t even remember that Will Ferrell was in it. I knew Julia Louis-Dreyfus was in it, so I considered that a good thing as I genuinely love her performances and am always happy to see her in things. It was directed by Jim Rash, who played the Dean in Community, who co-wrote it alongside Jesse Armstrong, famous for Peep Show, Veep, The Thick Of It, Four Lions, and In The Loop, all of which are wonderfully scripted. So while hopes weren’t high, I did hold out hope that this would be a sleeper hit.

It’s not, it’s just asleep. It’s incredibly lazy, some of the jokes are basically just “Europeans are weird” (bit weird that’s the second Will Ferrell film of 2020 that can be said about). It’s a shame as everybody involved is incredibly talented, but none of them show it in this. If I had to guess I’d say it’s a clash of comedic styles. Will Ferrell normally does quite loud and physical comedy which is slightly obvious and manic, whereas Julia Louis-Dreyfus goes for slightly more dialogue-focused and subdued stuff (her most extreme physical stuff probably being a few Elaine moments in Seinfeld). And Armstrong’s strength is usually dialogue and story, the film is a remake so he doesn’t have control of the story, and Will Ferrell is more physical than dialogue based. That creates a very weird mesh of conflicting styles that never seems to settle on what it wants the film to be.

It’s hard to explain why, but this film felt incredibly small, like a TV movie, albeit with a big name cast. Watching it, you can almost sense the advert breaks. It’s not just that, it’s the tone too. Nothing hits home. The emotional beats don’t work, the characters feel incredibly ill defined, I think one of the kids is written to be incredibly nervous, but it’s not showcased effectively enough for it to be something that character can overcome for narrative purposes. A lot of the side characters are pointless too, appearing just to drive the plot forward for a small moment, then disappearing.

It’s a shame as by all logic this should be a fantastic film, as it is, I can’t recommend it, even as a curiosity.

Let’s See You Do Better: Update 4

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So it’s been a while since the last update. Last time I was still feeling out this story, and now I’ve got it: I’ve done 75 pages, and I’ve got things in my head which will add easily another 10 pages. I’ve got a good sense of the characters (I’ll post more details about that later) with the exception of one. I’ve got one character who I know I’ll have to change. There’s a character called Scott who was a very rich kid (as in, “his parents got him a boat for his birthday” rich) who was pretending to be an abused drug addict as he thought that was more “authentic”. I like the character but I feel it’s not really suited for this so I have to change it, I’m not sure what to do to change it but I’ll think of something.

So I know you’re not that interested in the plotting so far, because then you’ll have to see the whole thing, you want the deaths. So here goes my newest death: Nikki. Background on her character: a wannabe celebrity who has an eating disorder.

nikki-death-1Download

I’ve done a few other deaths but this is the most important one I’ve done because it firmly establishes who Freddy is in this universe. He’s not a serial killer in the “I will stab you” way. He’s a god, he sets up a situation in which a death occurs. He lets the situations play themselves out and sits back and observes.

So I was making progress, and then disaster happened. Quick background on this script: it involves pills that can suppress dreams, some of the adults are on them because they’re aware of Freddy, now obviously they die in the film when those pills get taken away. I was writing one of the parents deaths and came up with this (for clarification, Danny is Taryn’s dad, this is his dream, and Taryn is secretly Freddy trying to find information out):

That one section excites me so much. The idea of a town weaponising Freddy to rid the town of criminals is terrifying. It’s a horror dystopia, and it’s disturbing as hell. But whilst I’m excited, I’m also aware that I now have to go through the whole fucking script and change things to set up this society. I’m going to have to write every adult character as having the knowledge that they are compliant in this. How would that effect the town? Well now I have to write it. Damnit! But also: ooooo fun

The New Mutants (2020)

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I was very intrigued by this when I saw the first trailer. A horror movie set in the X-Men universe? That’s hella original, comic book movies are usually action comedies, so the idea of one stepping away from that to create something truly original is exciting. Plus, it’s got Anya Taylor-Joy, who is suitably creepy and usually gives great performances, and would be perfect for this.

That was back in 2017. It’s 2020 now (in case you hadn’t noticed), and has a film that’s been delayed as long as this one ever come out and been thought of as good? Those kind of delays are usually a bad sign, especially with a release as quiet as this one, I know there’s a pandemic, but I have not seen ANY publicity for this at all lately. Maybe one day a film will break that curse, and all the delays will be worth it, but not this film.

It’s hard to pinpoint why this film is a mess, I was going to blame the reshoots, but they didn’t actually get done. The core film just isn’t that good. I don’t know if it is the case but it feels unfinished, some of the CGI is embarrassing for a film with a budget like this. The script is, well it’s kind of bad. The bit about “you have two bears inside you” I think is meant to be deep and meaningful (and lead into the big bad), but it’s SO unsubtly done (they mention the narrative of it at least 3 times in the film, two of which are voice overs) that it comes off as slightly condescending towards the audience. It might as well have a flashing light saying “This is symbolism. DO YOU GET IT?” That’s not the most frustrating thing though. Now I know for a fact everybody in this film can, and have, given great performances. I know they’re incredibly talented performers. So with that in mind I have to say this: what the hell was up with the accents in this movie? It’s like everybody thought they were still in rehearsal and they were trying to figure out who their characters were.

Some of the characters are just as inconsistent. With their personalities changing from one scene to the next in an incredibly frustrating manner. Anya Taylor-Joy’s character in particular seems like two characters in one, the writers never quite sure how to make her character work, should they make her a sweet teen who has suffered hardship? A badass warrior who cares about her fellow mutants, or a massive racist bully? In the end they can’t decide, so make her all three, depending on what the plot needs.

On the plus side, the central romance REALLY works. You can tell this because there were moments where the two characters are just sitting next to each other, and you can feel the sexual tension between them. It’s hard to explain how, but it’s definitely there. So when it does happen you’re not thinking “oh God, another romance. how trite. Yeah it’s the first openly gay one in an x-men film (to my knowledge) but still dull”. You want it to happen so you’re glad when it does.

So overall, a film that didn’t have reshoots, but probably should have. And you have no idea how frustrating it is that this is probably the last film I’ll see in cinema in 2020. Just about sums the year up. It’s just disappointing, they had a chance to do something different and exciting, instead it’s so pedestrian I want to run it over with my car.

Bill And Ted Face The Music (2020)

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Yeah I love this film series, I love it so much I’ve even read the comics (I didn’t buy them, I’m not mad). I get they’re not the best films in the world, and I will still argue they didn’t deserve a passing grade for their history presentation (they didn’t do anything, they got the historical figures to do all the work). But there’s just something so damn wholesome about the whole thing. The characters are dedicated to each other, and to their partners. Seriously, across three movies they are never tempted to be led astray in their relationships, it’s so comforting.

So does that continue now? In a world where they are trying to make dark and gritty superman movies, is there really space for a Bill And Ted movie? Or will it just seem out of place, a relic of a bygone age that the modern cynical world will just laugh at?

Of course it works. Of course there’s still space for lightness and stupidity, in fact in times like this you could argue it’s essential. We need this movie. We need a movie devoid of cynicism, that we can just watch and enjoy ourselves for the duration of. In my review of Brahms: The Boy 2 (worst title ever btw) I mentioned that it seemed like nobody involved gave a shit, that’s definitely not the case here. I’m not saying this is definitely the case, but it seems like this role is the one that Keanu Reeves has some of the most love for. Despite The Matrix, John Wick, etc, this is the most comfortable you see him, it’s like he’s having the time of his life. Alex Winter, too, is relishing this role. The way the two perform it’s like they’ve lived these characters constantly since the last film. It doesn’t feel like they’re performing, it feels like they are.

The supporting cast is great too. I still can’t tell the difference between Samara Weaving and Margot Robbie, but that’s more my fault than theirs. There are two great surprise performers though.

One, I suspected would be the case from the trailer. Brigette Lundy-Paine, NAILS their part as Ted’s daughter, completely. I don’t know how much research they did into the part, but they got the mannerisms down 100%. You completely buy them as related and I really want to see them do more stuff. One that did surprise me, was Anthony Carrigan as a killer robot sent from the future. I’d only seen him before as Victor Zsasz in the Gotham TV series, so when I saw he was playing a robot assassin in this film I thought I knew what to expect. I won’t spoil his character here, but trust me you have to see it as it provides some of the funniest moments in the film.

Now onto the negatives: it doesn’t do quite as much with the general concept as it could. One of the highlights of the first one was seeing them use time travel to their advantage (when it comes to hiding keys etc). You don’t get any of that smartness in here which is a shame. Also, there’s an extended musician performance which I feel will really date this movie in a few years time.

So in summary, please see this, it’s wonderful and you’ll enjoy it.

Brahms: The Boy II (2020)

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I’ll freely admit I did not see the first film, but I don’t think that matters as I’m not entirely sure the people who made this one did either considering how it seems to completely retcon the ending. Which raises the question: who is this film for? People who enjoyed the first one won’t like the change, and people who didn’t like it aren’t going to see this film as they would have been put off by the first one.

I suppose it would have been okay if the film was a remarkable improvement, but I doubt that’s the case. Like I said, I haven’t seen the first one, but there is no way it can be worse than this. It’s strange for a toy doll to not be the most wooden thing in a film. Nobody gives a good performance in this, and it’s not due to a lack of talent, it’s lack of effort. It’s nobody giving a single shit about this film. It’s directed without flair, how can someone who has directed 5 or 6 feature films before this seem so inexperienced? They’ve all been horror films too so it’s not as though he’s trying a new genre, he should be great at this by now. He should know how to subtly scare the audience and not be dependent on jump scares and babys-first-scares style of horror. This does not seem like it was directed with passion, by somebody who wants to make it the best he can. This seems like it was directed by computer, no emotion, no idea of why certain horror techniques are used, it just uses them because it feels it should.

The script……I watched this film four days ago and I still couldn’t tell you much of the plot. It left nothing on me. Nothing stood out in a positive way, and trust me, considering I’m writing a horror film, I pay attention to horror film scripts, even if only so I can get inspired. For a film to give me NOTHING I can use is almost admirable. Not a single shot, not a single moment, nothing, it gave me zero to work with. That’s incredible for a film that is nearly three hours long.

Wait, what’s that? It’s only 86 minutes long? Then why did it seem like it was taking ages to watch it?

Oh, okay.