Tag: Liveblog

My Own Personal Hell-oween: Day Two (Wolf)

On By troubledproductionsIn My Own Personal Hell-oweenLeave a comment

Back in the day, I listed this as one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It’s kind of become shorthand for “terrible film” in these blogs. I had hoped to have never had this darken my brain again, but needs must. But maybe I exaggerated how bad it was, maybe it’s not actually too awful and now I’m watching it with low expectations I will enjoy it, maybe even really love it. After all, I hated Supalonely back when I first heard it and now I love it more than I love myself (admittedly that’s not hard).

  • I am really hoping this film is better than I remember it being. There is a small chance that is the case.
  • “History is the truth they want you to remember. Legends are the truths they pushed too far. Myths are the truth they want you to forget”. Yup, the best way to make sure people forget something is to turn it into a myth so that everybody talks about it all the time.
  • “There is truth in all things” I KNEW my therapist was right and that everything is my fault.
  • I have never seen a person look so uncomfortable playing fetch with a dog.
  • Oh, the dog is called “boy”. Evidently the budget for this film didn’t extend to “dog namer”.
  • Come on Lee, don’t be negative, the film might still be good.
  • Oh fuck off. They cut mid-scene while a kid was about to stand up. Why? That’s an incredibly unnatural place to cut unless you’re REALLY good, and these guys aren’t good. They didn’t even check the colours are the same, it goes from a dark brown to smoked out colour. I’m not even joking, I’ll post two shots here, they happen practically next to each other.
  • That, that is unforgivable. There is no excuse. No editor who gets paid should put those two shots together and think that’s acceptable. A first year student film wouldn’t get away with that.
  • First death of the movie, the child (going by how this film named the dog, he’s probably called Child) gets killed off-screen. That was when the film lost me when I originally saw it. It seemed too obvious that it was done for lack of budget and because they lacked decent CGI.
  • Although considering how badly they fucked up a “person stands up” scene I hate to think what they’d do with CGI.
  • It’s fine though, they used sound to convey the death. Well I say death, it sounds like when my dad eats KFC.
  • Our first introduction to the main characters, one with his face mostly covered, both walking away from camera.
  • Well, they walk away from camera until they need to talk, when they need to talk they stand still because this film couldn’t do tracking shots. I remember that being an issue throughout this film, the static camera during dialogue scenes.
  • Oh, we have slight camera movement. Slight. Still not slight enough to not realise how unsteady it is though.
  • A standard dialogue scene, this should be impossible to be bad. It’s just people talking while standing still, how can that be messed up?
  • Oh, that’s how. These are characters we haven’t met yet, and yet when they start talking, the camera is never on them. It always cuts to them halfway through their line. It’s like they were filming it live and the guy on the board had slow reactions. They also randomly cut to other people for about a second.
  • “it feels strange being this far away from the wall” The one that Mexico will pay for?
  • Why does that guy look like he has spunk on the front of his armour?
  • “keep your eyes open” oh thanks for that, I was just going to walk around carrying this big spear not looking where I’m going.
  • Lens flare keeps appearing and disappearing mid-shot. JJ Abrams would have an anger wank.
  • “We’ll rest here”. Erm, you’ve been standing still, sitting down and eating in that spot for the last 5 minutes. Is that not resting?
  • “we don’t want the gods to curse us with snow” As someone who is currently watching this film, I know all about curses.
  • “it’s not the fighting I fear, it’s the unexpected” how about unexpected fighting?
  • I don’t remember any of these characters names so I’m just going to refer to who they look like poundland versions of: Zack Gibson, Generic bald man, Michael Douglas, Karen Taylor, Nick Helm.
  • They get attacked by the natives. Oh no, the invading army is being attacked by the people they are there to kill, this is such a horrible thing to happen.
  • Phew, the invaders one, massacring the people who call this country home. Yay?
  • Drone shot. That’s almost film-making there.
  • Oh, and now we have bad ADR.
  • “I am Germanic, not Pict” “you seem to know a lot about Picts for someone who’s not one”. Because nothing is a better sign of guilt than “knowing something”.
  • “footprints of animals, wolves, men” Manbearwolf!
  • “you can’t trust a Germanic”. Just say German. You’re speaking in modern English, you don’t care that much about anachronisms.
  • Also, that’s racist.
  • “when you look at me, what do you see?” Well I can’t get past that eye make-up to be honest.
  • “but when we draw swords” You’re supposed to be soldiers, why are you sitting around drawing pretty pictures with crayons? This is why the Roman empire failed.
  • A shaky cam shot of the fucking moon. Could you not get a tripod for that? Seriously.
  • “why would it tear them apart like that?” YOU’RE TEARING ME APART LISA!
  • “looks like the claws of a wolf” “what wolf walks on two legs?” Wolf from Gladiators?
  • “it was so fast and horrible” title of my sex tape.
  • “we take this down for the glory of Rome, for our glory”. Oh honey, you ain’t got no glory if you’re in this film.
  • Battle-trained soldiers there standing in that well-known formation of “all facing in the same direction, with the shields being held to the side, leaving your stomach exposed”.
  • This is such an exciting scene, people standing around, doing nothing.
  • “hunting is our speciality” mine’s risotto. Some may argue it’s less useful, but out of me and every Roman soldier, I’m the one with a high score on Pac-Man.
  • Wooo we get to see The Orb. Or in technical terms “stand in a circle”, via flashback. I mean, there was a battle scene earlier that you could have demonstrated it in. And it would have been much more natural than “remember when we used The Orb before and it saved us?” like some lame clip show episode.
  • They’ve been standing in the dark now for at least 10 minutes. It’s a sub-90 minute film. I’ll leave it up to you to ascertain whether I thought that was a good use of time.
  • The “werewolves” move too fast to be seen, only made clear by camera swooshes that are too quick for any of those trained soldiers to see them. Except for when we actually see them, when they’re just running back and forth like drunk students.
  • There is no way they are fast enough to drag someone away without you being able to slice at them.
  • Phew, they’ve stopped standing around in the dark. They’re now walking in the dark.
  • “A little bit of snow and that thing is still out there”. Wouldn’t snow on the ground make it easier to track something?
  • It’s now daylight, they’re still standing around. Have they been like that all night?
  • Her make-up is doing a stunning job of staying streak-free during all this.
  • “there was more than one, I swear it”. Well, yeah. We saw three of them at the same time. Was there any doubt there was more than one?
  • “That’s not the Roman way, we offer peace first, war second”. By peace they mean “allow yourself to be ruled by us”. So it’s not really peace, just a decision on how to accept invasion. If I went up to someone and said “Give me your money or I’ll shoot you in the face”, the fact they handed over their money and I didn’t shoot them does not make it a peaceful transaction.
  • “I thought I saw something in the trees”, yeah they’re called leaves mate.
  • “if we can train them to fight for us, or unleash them on our enemy” I’d argue those two things are very similar.
  • “that thing took us all on and we barely survived” and you think you could train it? Are you an idiot?
  • “I’d say the gods are angry”. Why, have they been watching this film too?
  • Apparently being sent to Britain was basically a punishment as it was such an awful and desolate place. Thus proving that the Romans made it to Rochester.
  • “who would live here?” SPONGE BOB SQUARE PANTS
  • “He knows something” *five seconds pause” “I do”. Well that was worth the wait.
  • One of the women strip off and we have one of the few things worth watching this film for. No, not those, you perverts. The make up. She has scratches on her back and they look magnificently brutal and real.
  • “there is an evil in the black forest” That’s just what they tell you to keep you away from the gateau.
  • “More ramblings from the old man, should have killed him”. And how does that tie into the “we offer peace” thing?
  • “then why did you choose to be here?” “I didn’t, the council chose for me”. Bloody council, did they catch you putting the bins out on the wrong day again?
  • “this is insane” he says crying, then immediately is back to normal.
  • “What kind of a man are you?” A twat.
  • “these things move so fast” they don’t though, we’ve seen them.
  • Oh good, more standing around. This time with added spittle on beard.
  • No idea what frame rate they were using but some of these shots are jerkier than Jamaican chicken.
  • I think not-Michael Douglas died. He got separated from the group. Because that’s something a highly trained group does when they are walking slowly, lose people.
  • “he was hurt by the thing when we were in the orb” that was ages ago though wasn’t it?
  • Oh good, bourne-style shaky cam of someone standing still. Exciting!
  • “You don’t want to do this?” what’s that, watch this film? I’m well aware of that thank you.
  • That snow cleared up fucking quickly by the way. Almost fully green scenery now.
  • Wth is that accent? That could be said at almost any point during this film by the way.
  • “you have always been the better soldier” if only we saw some evidence of that. Like start in Rome, with him getting a commendation or something, then land at the English shore after hearing reports of violent attacks on the soldiers stationed there. Despite being the invading army, it nearly always feels like they’re on home turf in this film. Probably because they all have English accents.
  • They’re not werewolves, they’re just naked people. Not even hairy.
  • “they want us to turn” It’s normally bears that do that (or otters, or cubs), and usually only with consent.
  • Oh no, thingy died. He was stabbed by what’s his name.
  • Thankfully it’s near the end so I should mention the other things that have been prevalent throughout: bad performances, different background audio between two shots set in the same scene, heavy breathing.
  • The surviving Romans are all banging. Not in a sexy way.
  • We finally get our first clear shot of a werewolf. It’s a normal person, only with dirt, and bad fake teeth. And they’ve gone from “we’ve stabbed them but we can’t harm them” to three of them being killed in quick succession really easily.
  • And the bald guy is now dead. That’s all the men dead now.
  • Ohhhhh I remember how this film ends now. It turns out women can’t become werewolves so if they survive the bites they’re fine. Neat idea, never explained.
  • “we do not fight with wolves”, smart, using swords is a much smarter idea.
  • Yup I was right, the women don’t turn. This is explained off camera, because the camera is far more focused on seeing people have this explained to them than have us see the person speaking it.
  • And this ends with a knife in the head. Sadly not in mine, so I will still remember it exists.
  • The cast for this film included the director and the editor, explains a lot. Helps contribute to the “student film” feel of it, only this was not student, this was a professional film. And it fucking sucked.

I stand by my original review

The Final Word: Day 5 (Final Destination 5)

On By troubledproductionsIn The Final WordLeave a comment

This is the most expensive blog I have ever done. Time to delve into my personal life for a second here, I’m currently getting kitchen refitted, and during the course of doing this my electrics got shorted, this ended up frying my Xbox, which I use as dvd player. Now I had actually prepared for this blog by putting the dvd in there ready. So I had to buy a new xbox (well, second hand), and then get a paper clip to get the old dvd out. But then the new old Xbox didn’t work, so I had to get another one delivered. Hence, this being later than usual. Also, I know I’ve made some typos in some of the previous posts, and no, I don’t spell-check these. The point of these are that the comments and opinions are off-the-cuff. I watch the film with the IMDB trivia page open, and make comments as I go along, referencing the trivia page if I find something interesting. If I started going over what I’d done I’d start deleting EVERYTHING for not being perfect. Anyway, with that over, let’s do this.

  • I love these opening credits. The music is suitably creepy, it’s the first time it’s seemed like the music has been made for a horror movie rather than just generic rock music. The visuals show things smashing through windows and exploding, so gives you an idea of what to expect, without spoiling everything.
  • It’s a sales retreat for a company named Presage. I don’t need to tell you why that’s significant as I’m sure you’re already aware what that means. But in case you need help explaining it to your stupider relatives, it means “A sign or warning that something, typically something bad, will happen, an omen or portent.”.
  • We meet who I assume are the core group of the film. Peter, the manager of Presage, played by not-Dave Franco actor Miles Fisher. Seriously, google Miles Fisher and then Dave Franco.
  • Sam, played by Nicholas D’Agosto, Peter’s friend/employee.
  • Molly, Sam’s ex, very recent ex, she dumped him like 5 seconds ago. A note about that scene, the backgrounds seem weirdly disconnected, like they used a green screen for some reason.
  • Peters girlfriend Candice, who works as an intern for Peter’s company. Bit weird.
  • Olivia, who wears glasses and is introduced having slept with someone in a band, she then strips to her underwear because this franchise cannot write female characters.
  • Isaac, who creepily hits on Molly in a way that he can conceivably deny when HR pulls him up on it.
  • Dennis, played by David Koechner, who is introduced bitching at Sam for correcting him when he got Sams name wrong.
  • Nathan, who gets pulled away from his job for this retreat, which annoys people he works with for some reason.
  • Sam has been offered a job in Paris. Trips to Paris ALWAYS work out great in this franchise.
  • He’s creeped out by a sign on the bus saying “Watch your step”. Why? Why is that creepy? That’s standard.
  • On that note, anybody else remember when bus’s made you climb like a foot of stairs before getting on the bus? They just really hated disabled people didn’t they?
  • They get on the bus, in a scene which really should have been the opening. Having them waiting for the bus gave nothing. Could have had it start here and talk there, have them drive past more foreboding stuff.
  • Hey, a log truck. Those things are super scary now.
  • Now we’re shown the only thing scarier in this franchise than log trucks: wind!
  • The wind causes the bridge to collapse, somehow. Once it starts collapsing, everybody stands there watching it, instead of, you know, running away.
  • Candice falls off the bridge and lands on the mast of a boat sailing underneath. I don’t think it was safe for that boat to be sailing in that weather, but what do I know?
  • Isaac dies next, he stayed in the bus as he was in the bathroom phoning a “lady friend”.
  • Olivia loses her glasses, didn’t see that coming.
  • She dies, in a way that her losing her glasses didn’t effect at all, a car fell on her.
  • Nathan gets whacked off, and not in a sexy way.
  • The support bars start coming off the bridge, snapping off elastically.
  • Dennis dies next, being covered in hot oil. Again, not in a sexy way. It’s actually pretty horrific to see.
  • Peter dies next, a pole impaling his face in a really bad special effect.
  • And then Sam dies, obviously. Handy thing about this film is that he was in a position to actually see all the deaths so know which order they took place in.
  • But not really as that was a vision, shocking!
  • He immediately gets everybody off the bus, well, all the named characters anyway. What a crazy coincidence.
  • “How did you know? You said you saw it happen, that sounds premeditated to me”. You think he controls the wind? How does he look guilty at all considering it was clearly wind?
  • “Tell me about the break-up, was he upset?” He got dumped that morning, a few minutes before getting on the bus. You think he was able to somehow organise a bridge collapse in four minutes and without actually going to the bridge?
  • 86 people died in the bridge, the news calling it an accident caused by high winds exacerbated by construction work weakening the structure. If that’s the case, then the construction company and whoever approved the construction are at fault, surely? They should have closed the bridge whilst construction was going on.
  • Weird how this is a prequel (oh, this is a prequel btw, but you never find out until the end), and yet this disaster was never mentioned again in the series. Almost like they were making it up as they went along.
  • A mass funeral for the employees, oh that’s grim.
  • Hey, it’s Tony Todd again, being creepy and foreboding. That dude gets everywhere.
  • We now find out why Molly dumped Sam. He got offered a job placement in Paris and didn’t take it as it would mean leaving Molly, she thinks he should have taken the job as it would be better for him. So yeah, we have actual character motivations in this film.
  • Oh damn this death is early. It’s the death of Candice, and is probably the best known death from this film. She’s doing flippy-shit style gymnastic stuff, but it’s not in the Tokyo Dome so won’t earn 5 stars.
  • Lots of fake-outs, and they’re actually well done as we’re not certain about how she’s going to die so you don’t already know to ignore everything irrelevant. There’s a loose nail on a balance beam which is anxiety inducing to see someone work on it. An electric cable laying water looking dodgy.
  • She gets off the balance beam, without stepping on the nail. Is just about to get electrocuted but she stops that by putting a towel on the water running towards her. She didn’t think to notify anybody about the water-logged electrics causing sparks.
  • But nope she dies on the bars when someone else steps on the nail (why she didn’t check and clear the beam off before is lost on me), falls off and knocks that weird white chalk that gymnasts use into Candice’s face, causing her to fly off the bars and land on her neck, her body almost bent over itself. It’s gross, it’s impactful, and I love it (title of my sex tape).
  • Sam comforts Peter about the death of his girlfriend. “I came as soon as I heard”, you have gross fetishes, dude.
  • Olivia’s response to Candice’s death “We should have seen it coming. You’ve seen the crazy shit they do, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.” So kind and thoughtful.
  • Isaac is going through a woman’s desk at work and stealing her shit, and being creepy. He goes through someone elses desk and steals a gift certificate for a spa.
  • Peter brings alcohol to work “if I drink it alone, that would just be sad”. Wait, you guys don’t do that?
  • Isaac tries to use his gift certificate at a massage parlour. Asking for a happy ending and refusing to back down when he’s told that’s not happening.
  • His response to an Asian masseuse walking past him? “Yum yum dim sum”. Well that’s racist.
  • He makes comments about the staff at the building, I know this film is set in the early 2000’s but even then that shit wasn’t okay was it?
  • Who am I kidding, if businesses refused a customer just because they were sexually harassing staff members then bars would have no male customers.
  • “I’m sorry, do you come with subtitles?” Super fucking racist.
  • “What happened to the younger version of you?” Only semi racist, an improvement.
  • He essentially gets beaten up by an elderly chinese lady, in possibly the only thing he doesn’t find erotic.
  • Back with the main group still at the office, Peter is moping, as is his right. “Peter, there wasn’t anything you could have done”, I dunno, he could have cleared the nail off the beam.
  • Dennis calls the cop from earlier, explaining that he just saw Peter throw a glass at a wall. I’m fairly certain this scene only exists so we can show the cop at the site of Candice’s death. After hanging up, the cop is somehow freaked out by dripping water and a fan, I don’t know why.
  • And back with the sex pest, boooooo. Getting elbowed in the crotch, yaaaay. He’s about to get acupuncture needles jabbed in him, refuses, and then changes his mind, saying “two billion people can’t be Wong”. He then explains the joke. I highly recommend annoying someone who is about to stick needles inside you. Always works well.
  • Smash cut to him with more needles in, looking like a low-budget pinhead.
  • “now go to sleep for 30 minutes and you’ll feel fine”. It takes me longer than that just to fall asleep.
  • He falls off the table, then has a statue lands on his head. Killing him, ah well. I feel we should have had a shot of the staff there reacting to his death, would have made it feel more real. At the moment we only focus on the main characters so it never really feels real.
  • The group finds out about his death. “who dies during a massage?” Well I experienced le petite mort after one once.
  • That’s a very good joke by the way, you may not get it, but rest assured it’s fucking brilliant.
  • Tony Todd shows up, explaining that this has happened before, people survive a disaster then slowly die one by one. We assume he’s talking about the previous films, because we don’t know this is a prequel yet. But he’s not, so that’s ANOTHER disaster that is never referenced in this series. Damnit, are we going to have to have a prequel of the very first time this happened and find out it took place in Ancient Rome or some shit?
  • He explains you can cheat death by murdering someone, then their life gets added to yours. Wouldn’t that make you a shingami?
  • Interesting plot point though,
  • Olivia goes to get laser eye surgery, throwing her glasses away before the procedure. A little presumptuous don’t you think?
  • They show her being prepped for the procedure, her eyes being forced open, and they do not spare the details, it’s super intense and disturbing.
  • The eye-surgeon person (would it be doctor or optician?) leaves the room, because that’s professional. Whilst he’s out, the machine overheats, and she accidentally turns it on (I’ve had that happen to me before too), the superpowered laser starts burning her eye, and causees severe burns on her hand when she tries to protect it. Why does that laser go that powerful? Do eye-surgeons regularly need lasers they can use as weapons?
  • She struggles off the chair and slips on a teddy bear eye that she tore off earlier, then falls through the window and lands on a car (as opposed to her original death, where a car landed on her). In a nice touch, a car runs over he detached eye. Well, I say “nice”.
  • Nathan accidentally kills someone he works with in an argument, pushing him into the way of a hook that falls through the floor and through his neck. So he should be safe for a while, Nathan, not the dead guy.
  • Peter goes to see Dennis, Peter is going crazy talking about “kill or be killed”. Personally I don’t think this works for his character, it would have made more sense for Dennis to be the character that does that.
  • Dennis turns up in the warehouse, and asks “who wants to be the first to tell me what happened?” to the group of people that don’t work in the warehouse and where most of them weren’t there. Would have made more sense for him to go up to the people that worked in the warehouse, but what do I know?
  • He dies, gets hit in the face by a wrench, killing him, and showing why he will never be a champion dodgeball player.
  • Sam goes back to work, seeing potential death everywhere. I know someone who works in McDonalds and she sees the same things.
  • Seriously though, this kitchen lacks basic health and safety protocols. People walk around with sharp objects facing out.
  • Peter arrives and tells a story about how he almost killed a stranger to get their life, but then realised he couldn’t. So instead he is going to kill Molly.
  • He says he’s not going to kill Sam as he’s about to die soon anyway so he wouldn’t gain anything. Typical selfish person, only killing for his own benefit, what happened to killing for the art?
  • He shoots the cop who has been chasing them throughout, and has added nothing. But then gets stabbed by Sam, giving a nice happy ending to this film.
  • We then get the twist, and it’s a fucking good one. It’s the characters from the first film being dragged off the flight. Yup, we’re on the plane crash. We’ve already seen this but it’s worse now we know more about these characters. It’s fucking heartbreaking to see them get thrown off, and knowing what will happen to these characters, it just fucking breaks you man. It also breaks the franchise as nobody ever mentions “these characters cheated death, and then died in mysterious ways” from this film.
  • Back with Nathan in a bar, where he finds out the guy he accidentally killed was due to die soon anyway, at which point the plane engine crashes through the roof and kills him. I get why they did this, but I feel the deaths of Sam and Molly were so heartbreaking that adding a death after that kind of cheapens it.
  • We then get a montage of deaths from the franchise, set to AC/DC’s “If You Want Blood”. Look, I love that song, but that’s not how you end this film. That’s a “fuck yeah!” song, and everybody in this film is dead, that’s not a fuck yeah moment. It should have ended with Sam and Molly dying, then a slow fade to black and credits over near silence. It would have allowed actual emotion into this franchise.

So yeah, that’s it. This was a lot better than than the previous one, the tone was perfect for it and it was much more of a horror movie than the last few. I’m kind of sad this franchise is over, I think a new one was in development before the plague hit, so I’m hoping they continue it. It’s a unique franchise that feels unfinished, we still have questions we need answers to that aren’t just theories and guesswork. But until that happens, we’ll have to end it with this one.

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.

See-Saw Day Eight (Jigsaw)

On By troubledproductionsIn See-SawLeave a comment

Director: The Spierig Brothers

Budget: $10million

Box Office: $103million

  • And here we are. The final one. Described by the company as a “return to form” which is their way of admitting the last few were shit.
  • Open on a really weird shot of a police light taken through a rolled-up set of those spikes police put down to stop cars. Unique shot and I kind of dig it.
  • A guy has a bomb in his hand which will go off unless a detective Halloran is there.
  • Halloran turns up, the guy ends up getting shot in the stomach and kill shim, which starts off a new game. We know this because the character says “the game is starting”. Why are people who are dying in films so unhelpful and vague?
  • People wake up with buckets on their head chained to a wall. Chains pull them towards a spinning blade. The game here is; if they cut themselves on the blade, no matter how little, the blade will stop. They all do it except for one guy who is passed out, but I’m sure he’ll never be referenced again.
  • “i hope for our sake this is a game, because games can be won”. Tell that to Battletoads on the SNES.
  • A woman jogs under a bridge, turns around and realises there’s a body hanging from the bridge.
  • “Think it’s Kramer?” “hope not, he’s been dead for 10 years”. Two things: I know Jigsaws real name was John Kramer. But you can’t say Kramer and not expect me to think of this:

Kramers-Concern-seinfeld-23155294-500-376.png

  • Secondly: what’s the timeline for these movies? Because it’s been about 10 years since the film where Jigsaw died was released, but I thought all the other films happened pretty soon after that one?
  • Logan, the morgue guy knows the guy investigating it, who tells him “sorry about Christine”. So this guys wife is dead? That will definitely come back later.
  • Wait, Logan was attacked by the Taliban in Fallujah? That’s racist. Oh you need me to explain? Ok, here goes: Fallujah is in Iraq, the Taliban don’t operate there, they operate in Afghanistan. This would be like saying a gang from California are operating in South Dakota.
  • Well whoever the new Jigsaw is, he has finally upgraded to digital, leaving an SD card in the body this time.
  • The people with the chains round their neck all have to admit their sins. The chains have stopped being attached to the wall and are now attached to the ceiling. I wonder how this will end up.
  • This is aimed at a specific person, someone who stole a purse from someone who then died because the purse contained medication which led to the person dying. There’s three needles in the room, one has an antidote to poison, one has saline solution, and one has acid, one needs to be injected into her or they all die by strangulation from the chains rising up the ceiling. What would have happened if she died in the first room? This game would be unwinnable.
  • All three end up injected in her neck, so she dies from the acid, but at least she’s not poisoned.
  • Ryan, (for some reason I thought he was called Mitch, and Mitch was called Ryan) tried to go through a door labelled “no exit”. This ends badly and his feet go through the floor, ending up entangled in razor wire that starts tightening.
  • The other two (Mitch and Anna) go into a silo, the door locks, and grain starts filling the silo. This on its own I would like, it’s slow, methodical, but unique. But then it kind of ruins it by dropping blades down into them as well. Yes, that’s more gruesome, but it’s not unique to me. For them to escape, Ryan has to pull a handle, severing his own leg.
  • The woman doing the autopsies (Eleanor) turns out to be a massive fan of Jigsaw. I thought this would go somewhere but nah.
  • Now we find out why Mitch is there, he sold someone a motorbike with faulty brakes which led to them dying. The tape there is specifically for him, so again I have to ask; what would have happened if he died in the first room? Or in the silo? This film only works because the characters act in the way they need to for the script to develop. If any of the characters do anything else other than what the script tells them to, this plan would fall apart. I mean, what if Mitch got his leg chopped off and died?
  • The kid who died on the bike; Jigsaws nephew. He ends up being lowered into a thing I can’t really describe; it’s like a spiral blade that gets thinner towards the end. He needs to reach through the middle of it as it’s spinning and stop the brake.
  • “Stop it, I don’t wanna die” I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.
  • He dies. But Bohemian Rhapsody is a great song.
  • Okay now Eleanor being a fan is making sense. The cops are suspecting her and Logan are murdering people.
  • Logan said that Halloran is framing him. He proves this by taking the bullet out of the guy who got shot earlier, saying the bullet is one that only Halloran uses. To me, this means it’s definitely not Halloran. As this film series doesn’t plant clues like that, it doesn’t like doing things which are simple. It likes the twist ending which means you can’t trust anything you see, which means you have a real trust issue as you assume no “clues” are actually worthwhile. That’s the issue with these, they try so hard to be intricate and clever they end up being kind of stupid.
  • Jigsaw unveils himself (not like that) in front of Anna. Thereby proving that this film (or at least the main test section) takes place in the past, because we know he’s DEFINITELY dead and a twin brother hasn’t even been hinted at.
  • More proof “what are you doing John?”, Anna says, not “Holy fuck it’s a zombie”.
  • We now find out why Ryan is being tested. He was being a drunken dickhead, which caused his friends car to crash, killing three people.
  • Anna saying “I didn’t do anything, you know me” which is a stupid thing to say. She knows what she did, so the fact he knows her means he knows what she did. It turns out Anna’s husband didn’t suffocate their baby by rolling onto it. Instead she suffocated it with a pillow to stop it crying. He got arrested, went mad, and committed suicide.
  • The final trap; a shotgun which John describes as their “key to freedom”. Anna grabs it and tries to shoot Ryan, but it fires backwards and kills her. And turns out Jigsaw meant it literally, there were keys to their chains in the gun, which are now ruined due to the gunshot.
  • Halloran and Logan have woken up with laser cutters around their necks, buttons on the desk in front of them start up the lasers and they have to confess. Halloran presses the one on Logans side, setting Logan’s trap off, because he’s a dick. Logan confesses he was the one who messed up Jigsaws diagnosis which mean his cancer wasn’t diagnosed in time. Logan “dies”. Halloran now, he admits he’s locked innocent people away and taken bribes so guilty people stay safe. Halloran notices the roof above him was destroyed by lasers, but the one above Logan wasn’t. Surprise surprise Logan rises and turns out to have been faking it. Who isn’t surprised?
  • Turns out Logan was the first guy, the one who passed out in the first room. The barn game took place 10 years ago. Halloran is responsible for Logan’s wife dying. He put people in identical tests this year to recreate the one from 10 years ago (and we didn’t see this one, because why would we want to see new things when we can see old things?)
  • This “explaining the film we just saw” (hah, “saw”) thing has taken far far too long, and still doesn’t explain some characters motives.
  • Wait, that’s it? Okay that’s odd. It has made zero references to the previous films really. On the plus side that means it stands alone. On the downside it means you’re kind of punished for watching the previous ones as it was a waste of time as none of it meant anything. Dr. Gordon isn’t mentioned despite being a very important character apparently. None of the cops come back. This film series has a toxic relationship with continuity. It’s either burying it underground or fucking it.

See-Saw Day Seven (Saw 3D)

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Director: Kevin Greutert

Budget: $20million

Box Office: $136.1million

  • Oh boy, this film is also in 3D, that’s a sure sign of quality when it comes to horror films and is not at all a desperate attempt at dragging people to see it by promoting a gimmick.
  • This film was also known as “Saw: The Final Chapter”. Like almost every single film with that title, however, it’s not the last one.
  • We’re starting with flashbacks to the first one? Jesus HG Wells
  • Although the fact they’re doing this shows that the one-legged doctor is back. Let’s face it; they wouldn’t focus on that scene unless something important from it was coming back. It can’t be Jigsaw, we saw his autopsy, it can’t be Adam, we saw him die in the third one too, so that leaves only Dr. Gordon.
  • Yup, we see a one-legged person crawling.
  • And now I have Linkin Park in my head.
  • Ah man he looks rough, love the make-up they do on him, makes him look awful, in a good way.
  • Fun fact; this film was once shown accidentally at the cinema instead of Megamind.
  • Now onto a trap, two people are chained to a table with buzzsaws on it. In a shop window. How on earth did this get set up? And why have people only just noticed? I mean, we see people stop and stare, but we also see people who are walking away from it so obviously walked past it before the film started. Would it have been too much to ask for a curtain to be involved? Not exactly a complex problem.
  • All these people are standing there, none of them try to break down the glass.
  • Now a curtain comes down, a woman is tied to the ceiling, in basically her underwear.
  • Now the reason; she’s been cheating one on with the other, getting them to steal stuff for her. They have to either push the saw into the other one, or kill her.
  • She goads one to kill the other, then quickly switches her allegiance when the other person starts to look like they’re winning. This works as well as can be expected for her, they decide she dies, with the fakest fake stuff that’s ever looked fake. I mean, I get they can’t actually kill people for movies (damn human rights laws) but they can make it look better than this.
  • Gee this film sure likes its flashbacks, going back to the end of the last movie now, where Hoffman escaped his bear trap.
  • Jill is at the police station but will only speak to certain people, specifically Internal Affairs, who describe her as “crazier than a sack full of cats”, is that a thing people say?
  • “You’ve got to give before you receive in this house Jill” that sounds sexual.
  • Guy called Bobby Dagan is on television talking about how he survived a Jigsaw trap and published a self-book about it. He later turns out to have been bullshitting. He tells a story about how he had to dig two hooks into his pectoral muscles and use them hoist himself up. Weird that nobody asked to see the scars to prove that. Or asked the doctors who definitely would have treated him about his rehabilitation.
  • “I found a strength I didn’t know I had, I just pulled myself up, and yanked the hooks out of my chest” and then I totally had sex with a really hot cheerleader, she’s from Canada you don’t know her.
  • Jill has a nightmare that she gets killed by being run over by a train/spike. Weirdly her dreams are in 3rd person view.
  • Dream sequences are another surefire way that you’re doing a great job with a horror movie btw.
  • I mean, I’ll allow it for Nightmare On Elm Street.
  • Chester Bennington from Linkin Park wakes up in a car-based trap. And now I’m reminded of his death and I have a sad.
  • Okay, it turns out he’s a nazi skinhead, and Jigsaw abhors racism. So to sum up; Jigsaw hates: privatized healthcare, nazi’s infidelity, and extortionate money lenders. #JeSuisJigsaw
  • Quite a complicated trap, he’s glued to a car and in 30 seconds the car he’s in will drop down, crushing one of his friends, then drive off, tearing off the arms of someone else, and will end up crashing into someone on the other side.
  • Jigsaws message btw was played on an in-car tapedeck.
  • Luckily (not for him) the glue is a bit stronger than the glue I’m used to. Otherwise he’d have been lose before he even woke up.
  • “damn you Evan, you got us into this”. Typical Nazi’s, always blaming each other for their mistakes. It’s usually the Jews though.
  • Wow, some of the stuff in this looks REALLY fake. The skin peeling off his back looks plastic, the head being crushed is really hard to look at and NOT know it’s fake, you can OBVIOUSLY tell the person who got his limbs taken off is a mannequin. It’s like they just didn’t care, there’s no dedication to their craft in this and it means they end up looking laughable.
  • A Jigsaw survivors group. I like this as an idea, it makes it seem real. You know what I don’t like? The marketing for this film. The poster showed a statue of Jigsaw being made, suggesting a cult-like following for him or that a lot of people were starting to agree with his methods and make their own piss-poor versions of his traps. THAT would have been a great film, would be like Death Note mixed with The Dark Knight and would have been AMAZING!
  • This survivor was in a trap with her abusive husband. They were both left hanging above a series of blades and had to kick the other one down into them. Yes, it’s a lovely story about how an abusive husband got his just desserts, but what if he won? He’d have learned that violence is the answer to escape things and got more abusive towards people.
  • “this is my lovely wife Joyce”. I like when people say that as it seems like they’re about to follow it with “and this is my awful wife”.
  • Dr. Gordon is definitely still alive, he’s in the group being sarcastic to Bobby. “We appreciate being part of your promotional DVD”
  • “who’s the creepy guy with the cane? Anyone should be worried about?” Erm, surely you’d know him as being one of the main suspects?
  • The tape from the car crash still works, kinda. Enough to piece together what it says, and amazingly he rewound it back to the start of the message.
  • Bobby has been kidnapped and is now in a trap. He must be so happy that his story is finally true.
  • He’s in a cage that’s being dragged around a house, and the only reason this wouldn’t be a theme park ride in the future is if it already is one.
  • He finds his publicist, she’s tied to a chair, a fish hook is down her throat, with a key attached to the end of it. He has a minute to get it out or spikes will drive into her, killing her. The spikes will also advance if she makes a noise. So for spreading lies, she now has to stay silent. This is what the series should do, more poetic traps.
  • He gets the key out just in time but doesn’t manage to unlock the trap because he’s a character in a Saw movie so has no idea how keys work.
  • Flashback to Jigsaw meeting Bobby, because he takes this kind of thing personally.
  • The next room has his lawyer. Her eyes will be pierced unless he holds heavy weights up for a minute, but when he lifts them up blades stab into his sides. He doesn’t even lift, bro, and she dies, on her final second before escaping. Because he drops the weights and can’t be bothered to pick them up again. There were lockers etc in there, I’m sure he could have wedged one of them under.
  • His friend is in the next room. Blindfolded with a noose around his neck, above a hole in the floor with random planks of wood over it. Again, it’s a timed challenge, and again, he doesn’t move until the tape stops playing. Because that wouldn’t be fair play?
  • Bobby gets the key and tries to throw it to his blindfolded friend, this goes about as well as can be expected.
  • Flashback again, this time to a time that Hoffman saved the IA guys life, by getting a homeless guy to drop his weapon, and then shooting him in the back when he’s unarmed. Hoffman got reported for brutality and ended up getting promoted.
  • Next room; his wife is in another room and to get to her he has to unlock the door between them. The code for the door is etched on his teeth, FINALLY utilising the motif from the second or third poster. Only 4 or 5 films too late.
  • He manages it, although it’s a bit weird the numbers were etched on his roots, as that wouldn’t be possible without either removing the teeth or cutting through the gums.
  • Now he’s in the trap that he lied about being in. So he has to dig hooks into his pectoral muscles and hoist himself up. He could, of course, just put the hooks in his clothes. and the hooks are big enough for him to put his feet into so he could rest his feet on the dip in the hook. As it is he digs the hook into himself and is surprised to find that it’s actually quite painful.
  • IA guy finds Hoffmans lab, where it turns out he’s been watching them the whole time and has swapped himself for one of the bodies from the earlier test to get himself into the coronors office. And then a machine gun kills them all.
  • Hoffman walks around and massacres everyone at the morgue, as the SWAT team are gassed. Yeah, this is not a GREAT way to cover your mistakes as it now means you’re kind of a terrorist.
  • Hoffman finds Jill and shoots the guard protecting her. But it’s fine as the guard was actually an alien, I mean, the film doesn’t say he is, but his blood is almost pink so do you have another explanation?
  • Bobby nearly reaches the top and unhooks the trap, but his skin rips and he plummets to the floor.
  • As such his wife is locked into a kind of brazen bull device, which is engulfed with flames. Yeah, that’ll teach her not to……..believe her husband when he lies to her. Yet again this films kills people to teach others a lesson. It kills innocent people to teach guilty people the value of life.
  • Oh but it’s okay, he’s super sad about it.
  • Hoffman puts the bear trap on Jills face. And for the first time in this series it actually works. But because it’s this film, it looks fake as shit.
  • Seriously, it’s the same director as the last film, and the budget was twice as big this time. So why the sudden drop in blood quality?
  • Hoffman burns everything and leaves the building. Only to be apprehended by three people in pigs masks. One of which is Dr. Gordon, who after being annoyed that he was accused of being Jigsaw in the first movie, became Jigsaw after it. This reveal that he was in on it the entire time actually makes sense, it explains how all the delicate medical procedures were done. This series can’t be subtle about it though, and decides to show us him performing the surgeries. Because we can’t be trusted to come to any conclusion on our own.
  • That being said this film doesn’t explain who the other two people in pig masks are. It’s explained in the commentary that they were the two people from the trap at the start of this movie. But it’s never explained or even hinted at. So we’re left with the “who are they” unanswered, and the purpose of the first trap isn’t explained either. This film alternates between holding our hands too much, and tying us in a sack, expecting us to be able to swim when we hit the water. It’s incredibly frustrating.
  • So that’s it for now. Tomorrow will be Jigsaw, the least terrible of the sequels I think

See-Saw Day Six (Saw VI)

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Director: Kevin Greutert

Budget: $11million

Box Office: $68million

  • The sixth film in the series. Let’s see what new things this brings to the table.
  • Two people have woken up in a strange room with no idea how they got there. How new, fresh, inspired and never been done before in this series.
  • They’re money lenders, well, loan sharks to be more precise. They lend money then ask for extortionate amounts back. Kind of like Wonga did. Actually I doubt they’re worse than Wonga. That company was literally evil. They would quickly lend you money, but at an almost 6,000% yearly interest rate. Then when people couldn’t pay them back (which considering the nature of their business and their advertising being aimed at people who are out of work or in severe financial hardships, was pretty likely) they would phone them and say that them being in debt could lead to them being fired from their job. They would then send letters from fake law firms to them demanding payment. The (I repeat) FAKE law firm charges were then added onto the debt, increasing it even more. The company executives then would store their profits offshore so they didn’t have to pay tax. So, that company can go fuck themselves with a cactus wrapped in barbed wire. Anyway, back to the film. These two are now in competition; whichever one can cut the most flesh off themselves (in terms of weight, not size etc) gets to live. I have criticised this series a lot, but I do like this trap, mainly because of the poetic nature of it. They’re literally asked to pay their pound of flesh.
  • The fat guy shows his advantage by slicing his fat off his stomach, which considering the other person is a skinny woman, seems like cheating somewhat.
  • She realises this and chops her arm off, she wins, let’s celebrate, come on, give her a hand. Oops, this is awkward.
  • Was there any way to check they weren’t cheating by like throwing their shoe onto the scales instead?
  • We see the end of the last movie. Surprisingly Strahm DIDN’T survive being crushed into a small cube. I know, shocking right?
  • A guy in an office can’t make dinner. And the look the woman sitting opposite him gives definitely makes me think they’re fucking, and on the (presumably) wifes birthday.
  • Oh, it’s possible he’s just a dickhead. He runs a health insurance company which denied healthcare to someone with cancer, because AMERICA! The only country where you’ll get shot at a school, then bankrupted when they take the bullet out.
  • I realise that last comment might seem insensitive considering there was a school shooting today in America. To that I respond with this; if I waited to publish then on a day with no school shootings I might never get a chance. At the moment it seems the most likely way the American government will stop school shootings is by destroying all schools so they don’t have to pay for education.
  • Wow, there’s a group of people in this, their entire job is to find reasons to deny people health coverage. Imagine that being your job. You get money by ensuring sick people don’t get the treatment they need. You couldn’t pay me to do that job.
  • Hoffman is at the crime scene of the dead fat guy.
  • Oh it turns out Perez didn’t die. You know Perez, she was in it very briefly 2 movies ago and didn’t really do much.
  • Hoffman meets the one-armed girl and seems annoyed she doesn’t seem to have learned anything. She doesn’t even give him applause.
  • More Jigsaw. Because despite being dead for a long time, he’s still the most compelling character, and the writers know this.
  • The dickhole character from earlier (William) is walking around his office late at night where he shoots a suspicious character who turns out to be a security guard. He is so fucked, he will lose his job, possibly get executed and his name will be spat on for generations. There’s no coming back from this.
  • Oh wait, the security guard was black. At most he’ll get a $10 dollar fine.
  • You know what the best/worst part about that joke is? It will probably always be topical.
  • He gets kidnapped and wakes up to a Jigsaw tape (how many of these did he make?)
  • He’s locked up with the janitor from his work. Every time one of them breaths, a vice tightens around their chest. The janitor is a smoker so this is deeply unfair to him. Jigsaw openly admits he is punishing that guy because he smokes. That……..does not seem fair. That’s not equal to causing people to die. Like, at all.
  • Flashback to William meeting Jigsaw and openly admitting he developed a formula for deciding who to give healthcare coverage to so he could only give it to people who aren’t likely to need it. Because again….America.
  • The next test he has to kill one of his colleagues. This is kind of weird way to test him, by killing an innocent person. I mean, it is a kind of cool way of showing the choices he is actually making day to day with his business. But it’s punishing people who had nothing to do with it. His colleagues didn’t do anything to deserve this, they’re being killed to punish someone else.
  • We now see Hoffman putting the guy on the rack from the (I think) 4th movie. The fact I don’t know says a lot. These films have no individual identity. They all run together into one mess.
  • Oh wait, Amanda is still alive, it’s the 3rd movie this is from. So to summarise, now we have a scene featuring Jigsaw, Amanda, a guy whose name I can’t remember, and Hoffman, planning a trap for Jeff. So we have a scene with 5 people involved, only one of whom is still alive. How does this advance the narrative in any way? Seriously, at times it feels like these films are mainly comprised of deleted scenes from earlier films.
  • “Did you know that in the far east people pay their doctors when they’re healthy, and don’t pay when they’re ill?” That’s…….actually kind of a better system.
  • There’s the team from earlier; the ones whose job it was to deny sick people healthcare. They’re tied to a merry-go-round and one of them will be randomly killed until all of them are dead, and to “deselect” someone from being shot he has to put a spike through his own hand when the gun is aimed at them.
  • The cops (including perez) work out that Hoffman is actually the killer, so he kills her and the other two people in the room. He then burns the room down, because he really wants to be caught.
  • We find out that it was Hoffman who put the letter that freaked out Amanda at the end of the third movie. It turns out he knew that she was also responsible for Jigsaws wife miscarrying, and unless she killed Lynn then Hoffman would tell him. I’m so glad we have closure on that plot point from THREE MOVIES AGO.
  • William makes it to the last room. Where he’s met with the two people have who have been locked in the cage (Yeah i should have mentioned them earlier, a mother and her teenage child. They haven’t really done anything relevant yet so haven’t mentioned them). Turns out they’re the family of the guy who William denied health coverage to. They have a choice whether to forgive him, or inject him with acid. They chose the second option. Meaning we have lots of flashbacks of things we’ve already seen in the film which help explain the ending for those who are stupid to understand why it’s happened.
  • Oh, Hoffman has been put in a bear trap face-hugging device by Jigsaws wife. He escapes by breaking his own hands to escape being tied down, then jamming the trap in between two REALLY conveniently placed bars in the door. But he still has half his cheek torn out.
  • And that’s how this ends. Again, with not really any closure. If he died, that would be closure. If he got caught by police….closure. This all just feels like another chapter rather than a separate story. It’s admirable how they link together but none of them past the first one stand on their own merits.

See-Saw (Day Four: Saw IV)

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Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

Budget: $10million

Box Office: $139.3million

  • Fine. Let’s do this.
  • We open with an overly-long autopsy of Jigsaw. I’m going to give this film the benefit of the doubt and say this was done so we know for certain Jigsaw is dead so the audience doesn’t expect him to come back to life. No excuse for it to be quite this long though. And in quite so much detail. It’s odd, they’re playing it like it’s a scene from a horror movie. They’ve got the spooky scary music, dark lighting, and intense close-ups of body parts. But it’s not meant to be scary, it can’t be. How can it be?
  • We get the in-story reason for this now. They find a tape in his stomach. The one that he was shown to have covered in wax in the last one and eaten. They show that scene again in case you couldn’t remember it. This series has a weird approach to how it treats the audience’s memory. It replays A LOT of stuff from previous films, but also has so much where if you weren’t taking notes in previous films you wouldn’t remember who certain people were or why they matter.
  • I’m not lying about this being overly long by the way, it was five minutes long.Five minutes of someone just being cut open.
  • The tape is played, is pretty much what you expect. “my work will go on” etc.
  • Two people wake up in a room, one with his eyes gouged out, one with his mouth sewn shut. They’re chained to a machine that is gradually pulling them closer to a machine that will kill them. Who are these people? Does it even actually matter this point? Does anybody care?
  • Fight scene, and I have to say this isn’t really a fair fight, the guy with his mouth sewn shut is at zero disadvantage, you don’t need your mouth to fight really, whereas the guy with his eyes gouged out is fucked, not literally.
  • The guy with mouth sewn shut wins the fight and gets the key from the back of the other persons head. Because of course he wins. Don’t worry, you won’t see the guy from this scene again for like an hour, by that point you’d have forgotten who he was.
  • The police find Kerry from the last movie. Again, not much reason for this to be in this movie and not the last one. I actually want to see what this series would be like if it was edited into one long chronological story.
  • The police assume Jigsaw has a new accomplice.
  • There’s a book about Jigsaw, titled “John Krama aka Jigsaw. Is he the murderer the police say he his”. That’s not a typo on my end by the way, it genuinely says “he his”. Also, why would lead with his real name, then the fake? Also also, that book got published really damn quickly.
  • Daniel Rigg (who I think has been in previous Saw movies) seems to be the lead of this one. A cop who feels guilty for not being able to save people, particularly Eric Matthews (donnie whalberg from the 2nd one, who is still listed as missing). This film series has to be commended for that though; it’s done the film series equivalent of promoting from within. Most of the main characters for each film have been introduced in previous ones. It’s a great way of doing things and shows forward planning, rewards loyalty, and makes it feel less like a film and more like an actual world that exists.
  • He’s kidnapped, as a lot of people are in these films. Yeah, he’s definitely the lead. As condescending as this sounds it’s great to see a black lead in a horror movie. Especially one where his being black isn’t his main character trait. He’s not the black lead from Saw, he’s just the lead from Saw.
  • Oh, Donnie wahlberg is still alive it turns out. Barely, he’s being kept alive as the test for Daniel, who has 90 minutes to save both him and Detective Hoffman (who was in, erm, the 3rd one I think, I don’t know at this point).
  • His first test: he finds a woman in a pig mask tied to a chair, her hair tied to a machine that slowly pulls her head back. The tape tells him to let her die as it’s not his job to save her. From what I can tell her crime was being a prostitute. That does not seem worthy of death and torture. Or she might have been a pimp. Yeah that’s pretty bad.
  • He can’t find a knife to cut her hair loose so decides to deal with the problem in the most American way possible; he shoots the machine.
  • He gets the combination and saves her, but not before she gets nearly scalped and looses a lot of blood. What would have happened if her hair was fake and mainly made of extensions?
  • She grabs a knife and tries to stab him. In her defence, he was a black man with a gun, in his own house. The police have shot people for similar reason.
  • Oh that’s how she knew where to get the knife from, her tape said she had to kill him as he was going to arrest her for prostitution, so the only way for her to escape jail was to kill a cop. Obviously.
  • Wait, for him to have listened to that tape, she would have had to rewind it after listening to it?
  • Back to Donnie, who is chained to a ceiling suspended above an ice block. We flash back to the third one where he was knocked out by Amanda, because otherwise how else would we remember who he is? And we’re shown him being kept alive through tiny portions of food and an awful disgusting room. If he was on benefits the British government would describe that as “luxury”
  • Daniel goes to a disgusting motel run by an overweight guy in a white vest who owns a dog. He’s almost definitely a pervert/rapist/paedophile.
  • When he gets to the room there’s the picture of the motel owner and instructions to go to his room and do something whilst disguised with a pig mask. He’s still wearing the exact same clothes though and didn’t get the mask until he was in the motel room. So if there’s cameras all over the place as the tape said, then that would be noticed.
  • Yup he’s a rapist. We’re shown video evidence, he recorded it. I mean, I don’t care what happens to this guy, he’s a serial rapist who tried to deny it until the final moment.
  • He’s made to climb into a bed and tie himself up. Then gouge his own eyes out. He succeeds until the final part, and his limbs get torn away. Ah well.
  • Flashback to the time Daniel beat up a guy for abusing his wife and kids. Most the victims are kind of assholes so there is a cathartic quality to the deaths.
  • More flashbacks, this time to when Jigsaw was alive and his wife (oh yeah, she’s been in this movie, but her scenes have been really dull) worked at a health clinic and got robbed by a drug addict who caused her to miscarriage, causing him to become Jigsaw. Nice touch, kind of unnecessary.
  • Daniel now goes to a school where he finds the guy abused his wife and kids. They were being held together with spikes running through both them. To survive she has to pull the spikes out, she’ll live but he will die. This is weird as it’s a test for her. She seems to be being punished for being abused. We don’t need Jigsaw punishing women for being in abusive relationships, the police and courts already do this. He decides to let her save herself by giving her the key and setting off the fire alarm so that people are alerted. I don’t get what Daniel’s lesson in that was.
  • Crime scene technician there seems to be the worst ever and accidentally sets off a harpoon that kills another person at the scene. That’s not Jigsaw that did that, that’s not applying health and safety rules.
  • The cops (one of who i’ve already forgot her name) go into a room where the puppet is. They play the tape round it’s neck, obviously (seriously, why do none of the people in these movies remove the tape from the room and play it somewhere safe where more people can help solve it). The puppet explodes in her face giving her a shrapnel facial. I really wish the make-up team did a better job here, she looks fine just with stuff in her face. It’s not particularly devastating to see.
  • Just realised Donnie and Hoffman trap is being overseen by the guy who had his mouth sewn shut at the start. I haven’t mentioned that much but only because there’s not much happening there. I think Hoffman can die but not sure how. This film has WAY too much going on yet also somehow manages to have nothing happen for a lot of it.
  • Flashback to what was possibly Jigsaws first test. He kidnapped the guy who killed his unborn child and nailed him to a chair.
  • Jigsaw puts a torture device on his head, a series of knives where the drug guy has to push his head into them to unlock it. Jigsaw refers to it as a “tool”, which sounds silly, but that’s how Americans refer to guns.
  • The trap doesn’t work, mainly because the chair breaks. The guy decides that whilst he’s been heavily mutilated and lost a lot of blood, it would be a good idea to attempt to kill the guy who put him there. Jigsaw just moves out the way, causing the guy to fall into barbed wire.
  • Daniel, and another cop (Peter Strahm) end up in the same building the third one took place in. We get more flashbacks to that movie.
  • Wait, this isn’t a flashback, the entire film is. It’s taking place alongside the third one. Clever idea, but not cleverly done enough.
  • Daniel bursts through the door before he should, despite them not being any real warnings against this this is seen as a cardinal sin, it releases ice blocks which finally kill Donnie. He does this after shooting the mouth-sew guy. He shoots him again as he was reaching for his own tape recorder. Weird, a black cop shooting a white guy for reaching for something innocent. That never happens the other way around.
  • The tape tells him that “your impatience killed Donnie, if you did nothing he would have been saved. You failed”. That just seems unfair as he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He was penalised for rules which weren’t really stated. I mean, he was told “don’t rush through a door, ever!” but that was by a cop, a long long time ago as part of a different moment.
  • And now we find that Hoffman is the real accomplice. Oh no, not Hoffman, he was so……he existed.
  • Hoffman locks Strahm in a room and I’ve gone past caring tbh. I don’t care about any of these people. There are too many twists and character turns that make zero sense and add nothing. It’s like watching late 90’s wrestling, just without the actors later killing their wife and child due to brain damage.
  • Oh, that’s the end? So to sum up the ending; one cop is locked in a room, one has been shot, one has had something blow up in their face but is still alive, one has become evil. Does that sound like the end of a movie? Or the end of a second act? NONE of these films stand on their own. I can only imagine how fucking pissed I’d have been if I saw these at cinema, having to wait a year to find out if a character died, but not really caring either way.
  • Wait, I forgot to say. Jeff died too.

Okay this film makes many many mistakes. The big one is it focuses too much on Jigsaw and his teachings. He’s an interesting character but he’s now dead and his disciples are ignoring his teachings, so as a character he is completely irrelevant to the narrative going forward. Yes, it improves the narrative of the previous movies. But Saw IV is not Saw II (despite containing a lot of the same fucking scenes), Saw IV is Saw IV, and as such it needs to focus on the characters in THIS movie instead of developing ones we know have no future development. It’s a huge logical storytelling flaw.