What an awful movie (spoiler alert).

[Bob]

The ending could have been fixed if she had just said three little words to her boyfriend


you keep it

Well, I wondered, now he is the owner, right? So won't the Lamia come after him?

He is holding it, not the owner, according to the rules.

Man, I am discussing a Sam Raimai movie..... time to watch the Star Trek riff now

[Russell]

Well, I wondered, now he is the owner, right? So won't the Lamia come after him?

Lamia? That is in one word my review of the film.

[D.B. Barnes]

Final Destination as I recall ended with one of the three survivors in France, thinking they were out of the woods, getting crushed by a neon sign. 

Not true. He was still alive when the film ended. And comics have taught me that if I don't see a body he's not really dead.

That's true: I've seen a lot of stand-ups and regardless how bad their jokes are, that's been the case.

Nice! 

[D.B. Barnes]

The ending could have been fixed if she had just said three little words to her boyfriend


you keep it

Well, I wondered, now he is the owner, right? So won't the Lamia come after him?

He is holding it, not the owner, according to the rules.

Man, I am discussing a Sam Raimai movie..... time to watch the Star Trek riff now

"Yeah. Well, fuck that, then. Let's get going on the sequel!!"

[ShadowDog]

Okay, I admit it, the talking goat was pretty fucking funny.  So the movie wasn't completely useless!

[Piobman]

So I watched this movie un-riffed tonight. I definitely didn't feel it was the thrill ride some did. I'm a huge evil dead fan and was looking forward to Sam Raimi getting back into his old form. I've heard tons of hype and I'm one of those folks who has probably seen more horror movies than any person would probably admit to. I would not say its awful... in fact it is well made (from a technical standpoint). Good filmography, good actors (other than justin long), and a creepy looking old lady. The basics of a horror movie are all there. 

A few major flaws in the movie: One was the use of CGI. On Blu-ray these things stuck out like a sore thumb. Rather than being repulsed or shocked... it just ended up looking really silly. The first few scenes I thought were really quite good... but the fake goo spewing out of her mouth and eyeballs popping out looked like something coming out of a looney toons cartoon. Which kinda kills any mood it was trying to do.  Oh.. and since when did a handkerchief become scary in a movie? I guess if you amp up the volume as loud as possible and make it appear suddenly... it will scare you. Lame.

The other problem is that it really breaks no new ground in the horror genre. The storyline pretty much feels like I've seen the movie a million times before (which I have). And the ending was the usual expected ho-hum horror ending (if this was a twist to you, then you probably haven't seen many horror movies). I would have thought they could have come up with something more creative than the usual "twist" ending which could be seen a mile away. And I'm all for un-happy endings if done well.

Another flaw in the movie is the fact that as the movie progressed we slowly begin to not care for the main character. Rather than rooting for her in her struggle... you end up feeling she deserves it. All tension is lost when your heroin gives up the morals she stood by in the beginning of the movie. By the end of the movie I was indifferent to what her outcome would be. I won't give anything away... but the execution on this part was poor. They spent half the movie creating a persona for this character and completely abandoned it for the rest of the movie! Her actions whether they were good or bad were irrelevant to the story.

With all that said. I enjoyed it... but its a movie I probably won't remember a year from now. I'm bummed! I think I need to go revisit my old Argento horror collection again.

[Thrifty]

The other problem is that it really breaks no new ground in the horror genre. The storyline pretty much feels like I've seen the movie a million times before (which I have). And the ending was the usual expected ho-hum horror ending (if this was a twist to you, then you probably haven't seen many horror movies). I would have thought they could have come up with something more creative than the usual "twist" ending which could be seen a mile away. And I'm all for un-happy endings if done well.

This sums up what enraged me so much about the movie, really.  The director was trying to go for "shocking twist OMG!" with that ending, but it was so obvious that only an idiot wouldn't have seen it coming.  The "shocking twist" was just another cliche.

[D.B. Barnes]

The other problem is that it really breaks no new ground in the horror genre. The storyline pretty much feels like I've seen the movie a million times before (which I have). And the ending was the usual expected ho-hum horror ending (if this was a twist to you, then you probably haven't seen many horror movies). I would have thought they could have come up with something more creative than the usual "twist" ending which could be seen a mile away. And I'm all for un-happy endings if done well.

The director was trying to go for "shocking twist OMG!" with that ending, but it was so obvious that only an idiot wouldn't have seen it coming.  The "shocking twist" was just another cliche.

Yeah. If you didn't see that one coming a mile away, you probably shouldn't cross the street unassisted.

[ShadowDog]

All tension is lost when your heroin gives up

I know what you mean!  Especially when I don't have any more on hand!

Sorry, sorry.  Typo jokes are usually beneath me but that one was too good to pass up.

[Piobman]

All tension is lost when your heroin gives up

I know what you mean!  Especially when I don't have any more on hand!

Sorry, sorry.  Typo jokes are usually beneath me but that one was too good to pass up.

Don't worry, bob has a field day on me usually. You just beat him to the punch.

[ShadowDog]

That aside, it was a great review that hit on most of the problems I had with the movie.

Here's one thing that really threw me out of the movie.  The car fight.  Okay, I can put aside the whole "I don't see you sitting in the back of my car as I walk up because I'm fucking blind" thing because everybody does that in movies.  That's retarded, but whatever.  But the way the whole fight started and progressed was so bizarre and dreamlike that I just assumed it was a dream and kept assuming it was a dream for minutes after the fight was over and kept expecting her to wake up in her bed screaming ... and that just never happened.  So for a good ten minute period there I first write it off as a dream and then expect her to wake up so I really fell behind the movie.  It's like walking with someone and you suddenly stop and they keep walking.  Pretty soon you have to haul ass just to catch up with them.  I mean, I know it's a movie so you suspend disbelief and it's a horror movie to boot so you suspend more disbelief, but nothing in that car fight remotely resembled reality.  Which would be fine if it was Satan or magic or whatever, but at that point in the movie it's just the old woman herself.  So the rubber band of movie reality snapped for me there and I never got it back.  And this is a problem for horror because the best horror, the horror that scares you, is grounded in reality.  If you lose even the faintest grip on reality then you're never really going to scare the audience beyond jumping out of the shadows and yelling "boo!"

If not for this major tone blunder on the Director's part, it would have been a perfectly serviceable horror movie.

[Edward J Grug III]

So because you made a wrong assumption the movie doesn't work?

I know I never made that assumption.

Maybe the problem was with you and not the director?

[LucasM]

Actually there was little in the entire movie that was 'believable'.  The car fight was certainly one of the most egregious, and took me out of the film (further) to the point where I had contempt for the film rather than just being annoyed by it.  I don't recall if I believed it was a dream, (and by that point I'd already long since left the film's suspension of disbelief so it didn't really matter) but I do know that it certainly crossed my mind that the car fight being a dream would be the only way it would be a tolerable event in the film.

You can't put one massive 'What the Fuck?' moment after another into your film and expect to have a large percentage of people stay in your movie except as anything but 'shoddily-done camp' where they are laughing at your film, not with your film.

It sure as shit wasn't 'scary'.  'Stupid' is never scary (except possibly in our last President).

[Thrifty]

So because you made a wrong assumption the movie doesn't work?

I know I never made that assumption.

Maybe the problem was with you and not the director?

The car fight scene was barely grounded in reality, which might have been acceptable if it was presented as having a supernatural backdrop.  As it was though, the scene was so outlandish that it could only have made sense as a dream sequence, or supernaturally powered sequence, but it was presented as neither.

[Piobman]

One other thing that seemed like a plot device is how our villian died at the beginning. She has a knock down drag out fight with seemingly superhuman strength and then dies 10 seconds later of I'm guessing old age or excessive phlegm build up. The idea just seems pretty forced.

Also, did anyone feel how it was strange how one moment the main character hacks up an animal with a butcher knife and then gets scared when a goat is brought into the room for possibly the same reason? And for that matter why the hell didn't she just go buy a rat and sacrafice it instead of going after her own pet? She turned on animals about as quick as Luke did going to the dark side. The character was completely inconsistent in her actions.

I thought the movie would have been much better if they just ditched the old lady half-way through the movie and focused on the demons tormenting her. I was kinda hoping to see some evil hooved-demons wreaking havoc instead of a corpse being her biggest foe by constantly grabbing her hair and floating around on a possessed handkerchief.

One last thing. I thought it was really lame that they did the whole summoning of the spirits thing... Only to have the guy tell the girl she couldn't have defeated the demon no matter what because the fortune teller lady wasn't strong enough. WTF? Why even have the scene... and why would he bother joining in on this thing by risking his own life on trying to do something he knew could not be done. The scene served absolutely no purpose in the story. You know... nothing in this movie makes logical sense.