It’s certainly been a long time coming, hasn’t it? The last episode I released was over a month ago! What the fuck have I been doing with my time!? Nothing really, I guess. What an awful story. Anyways, I finally got around to recording it and had JD in on this one. As always, this epsiode can be downloaded from the iTunes page or also the direct page. Make sure to rank/review/rate/share. Enjoy!
Episode 6
After a long hiatus, the Wolfman is back and has brought a friend along with him! This time he sits down with frequent commenter JD to discuss, well, LOTS OF DIFFERENT SHIT. Wes Anderson, Ti West, movie trailers, ghosts, shitty movies, good movies, , a veritable potpurri of topics! That’s why this episode is over an hour long! Jam-packed with fun stuff, including a spoiler of what happens at the end of Liam Neeson’s newest film “The Grey”. WOLVES > LIAM NEESON.
It’s hard to keep a frame of reference for when something is “popular” and “anticipated”, or when it’s “forced down your throat”. For example, I constantly saw ads and promotions for this movie coming out on home video, and it gave the impression that this was a movie people were actually interested in seeing. Clearly I had the good people of the world in mind when I determined I would get this movie and review, so the masses could finally see my thoughts on such an anticipated movie. Well, when the movie showed up and I started to watch it, I realized it was distributed by Bloody Disgusting, which just so happens to be a website that I regularly check for horror movie news. Apparently there really weren’t that many people talking about it throughout the world of the internet, but all the times I saw it promoted on BD made me think it was everyone in the world. Sorry, guys! Here’s another movie review that maybe some of you guys have possibly heard of.
So this is what passes for teenagers these days? I’m pretending to hear a Spanish language version of Skid Row’s “Youth Gone Wild” right now.
A group of teens or young adults or something, I can’t really tell how old they are, have a show in which they investigate urban legends/paranormal events. This leads them to a house in their family where there is supposedly a woman who disappeared from the woods and comes back to steal people out of those woods. The investigators try to get video coverage of lots of areas of the house, but there’s only so much they can do or investigate, and things start getting serious when their dog is found killed in the woods. There’s some further investigation that result in unseen forces physically assaulting some of the members of the group, leaving them so shocked that they can barely explain what has happened to them. Oh shit, have I mentioned that the opening of the film tells us that these characters are dead by the end and this is just found footage? Well, we already know that, but the further these violent assaults happen, the more the tension builds. Eventually it’s the mom of the investigators, I think, who ends up killing them? Maybe? I don’t know, it got kind of confusing and the mom wasn’t a memorable enough character to immediately recognize her as the killer. I don’t know, they were speaking in Spanish the whole time!
You looked better when in night-vision and not being terrorized.
I guess to say they were speaking in Spanish the whole time might not have been entirely accurate, because I watched it with the English dubbing because I don’t know how to read. It’s hard to say how much that dubbing effected my judgement of the acting, because I didn’t think anyone in it was all that good of an actor. I guess cutting out their voices would make me judge things quite differently. This movie had quite a low production value, as I’ve come to expect with all films that Bloody Disgusting distributes, but the goal is to take an independent movie and get it out there for more people to see. Despite the poor production value, what this movie did have going for it was the story. We’ve seen countless found footage movies, and yes, this is another one, but the urban legend of a possible ghost, resulting in these people being assaulted by an actual physical force was a nice twist. Maybe I could have paid closer attention to what was going on, but there was a good 20-25 minutes in the middle where I was really bored before things started to pick up. If a movie is barely over an hour long, and you have 20 boring minutes, that’s just about half the movie where I don’t care about what’s going on. So again, another Bloody Disgusting movie that had the best of intentions at its core, and some promising elements, but ultimately didn’t stand out. Maybe we can have an English language remake coming our way soon!
I have absolutely no qualms about really enjoying the first film, and really can’t remember much of what happened in its sequel. I do remember not liking the sequel, and was considering not going to see this because the trailers weren’t that exciting. Correction, the first trailer, singular, was kind of lame and I didn’t enjoy the direction that the franchise was headed. I told myself I wouldn’t watch any further trailers and then would wait to hear some reviews, but then when I went to see Drive, they played a trailer for this that looked like it gave away EVERY FUCKING SCARE IN THE MOVIE. I was pretty pissed, and confirmed I wouldn’t see this movie. Luckily, it was revealed that basically all footage in the trailers was there just to throw people off, which redeemed my faith in the possibility that this could be entertaining, and luckily, I was right. Oh yeah, and there’s going to be spoilers all over the place, so if that’s not your thing, you might not want to go further.
Is this a scene from the movie? No, it’s just that scene from the trailer. I’ll try again next time.
Each previous movie focused on one of two sisters (Katie Featherstone and Sprague Grayden), and this installment starts with the realization that these sisters were filmed as children, but all of the VHS tapes of them went missing during the course of events in the second film. PA3 shows us what was contained on that footage. We see the sisters Katie and Kristi, played by Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown, growing up with their mom and her boyfriend who makes a living videotaping weddings. Kristi is constantly talking about her imaginary friend named Toby who lives in the crawl space of her and Katie’s room. For some reason, which isn’t really made clear, weird things start happening, so the boyfriend begins videotaping the weird sounds that are happening in the house. From lightbulbs shattering to seeing objects move, things are getting weirder and weirder. The occurrences become so powerful that babysitters are being physically assaulted, large items are being moved great distances or destroyed, even Katie is lifted into the air by her ponytail, and the whole time Kristi is blaming this stuff on “Tony”. The boyfriend does research on demons and witches and shit, and sees a photo of some coven of witches wearing necklaces with a strange symbol. When this symbol is seen in the crawl space of the girls’ room, the family goes to stay at the grandmother’s house. That night, the two girls and their mom disappear into the house, and the boyfriend tries to find them. We can see him being followed by strange silhouettes, and when paintings are moved to the ground, we see strange symbols on the walls. Exploring the garage, the boyfriend sees a group of women in black robes and wearing the same strange necklaces as from the photo he found. The girls’ mom is then thrown at him from the top of the stairs, his body is contorted and broken by an unseen presence, Katie’s face flashes to that of what we saw at the end of the first movie, and the grandmother takes the children by the hand, while Kristi makes sure to invite Toby to come with them.
Is this a scene from the movie? Nope, guess again!
I really wanted to dislike this movie, probably because of how disappointed I was in the previous installment. The first film didn’t need any sort of background of mythology whatsoever, that I was annoyed with how the built upon that in the second. Something about a curse and a demon taking the firstborn male in the family or something? Yeah, no thanks. However, now that we can see how this “curse” started (kind of) and learned that the victims of the previous movies were subjected to this torture because their grandmother was a witch? Actually pretty cool. Before I say too much stuff that’s good, let’s say some things I didn’t like. The first big “scares” of the movie were scares involving people, where they built tension thinking a ghost or something would do something crazy, only to have a human jump out. Sure, it was fun to do once, but repeatedly? No thanks. The acting wasn’t all that strong, but that isn’t too big of a surprise when keeping the previous movies in mind, but the more characters brought in, the more you noticed it. The boyfriend takes a camera and attached it to an oscillating fan, and even though it was a clever idea, it was too predictable that ANY time you saw that shot, you knew something creepy was going to happen. Same goes for when Katie plays “Bloody Mary” with the person watching her, so it was just making it way too obvious when to expect things to happen. Oh yeah, and there was a “sex scene” which seemed really arbitrary and pointless. Not necessarily complaining about what I saw, just seemed like an executive said, “Hey guys, sex it up a little bit!”
Look at how dramatic THIS is! This clearly must be in the film! BZZZT. WRONG.
What I really like about all of the movies in this franchise is the fact that you never, EVER see a “ghost”. You see objects, figures, and shapes, but they never resort to showing what the source of everything is, which is something most other films are all too quick to do. Nothing is as creepy as what we imagine “Toby” to look like, and I’m glad this franchise is keeping it that way. Whenever there was about to be something creepy happen, there was always a subtle, high-pitched sound that was made, implying the entity was causing that to happen. We’ve heard the ominous rumbling sounds, but I don’t think this effect was used in this waY in the previous films. And although there were plenty of moments where there was obvious CGI, the practical effects that they did were pretty cool. I won’t get into detail about EVERY little twist and turn that happens in the movie, but if you know these movies, you can just imagine some things that they do. They way they can make objects appear, disappear, and the way Toby manifests himself are all pretty cool camera tricks.
Wait a second….HOLY SHIT, THIS REALLY IS FROM THE MOVIE! THIS IS A PICTURE OF THE MOVIE! FOR REAL!
Quite a few more good things than bad things, huh? So why am isn’t this getting a better rating? Well, I know this movie stands on its own, especially considering it’s a prequel, and that it shouldn’t rely too heavily on the two previous films. That might be all well and good, but do you remember how pointless Paranormal Activity 2 is? Let’s think about it; the first film didn’t really establish any mythology at all, other than Katie has had issues with “ghosts” before, which resulted in her house burning down. Does anyone care? No. They liked seeing doors open and close and footsteps. The second film reveals that there is some sort of blood curse, but this curse is pursuing a different family member who viewers don’t really care about. It gave a little bit more information, but not that much. Now that we’re on our third film, the one that establishes curses and witches and demons, and maybe it’s because I have a soft spot for all of that stuff, I really liked where it went. The franchise changed from being afraid of this demon to instead being afraid of the witches who summoned this demon, and whether it be Rosemary’s Baby or The Last Exorcism, I will always be more creeped out by the calm individuals who are unassuming, but summon demons in their free time. I think that maybe had this film been delayed a little bit and Paranormal Activity 2 never existed, you’d have a very solid franchise on your hands, with just enough information being given and just enough mysteries for the viewers. Instead, we’ll probably get a fourth installment that won’t make any sense because we already know how the original victims got involved in these terrible things in the first place. I was really hoping this one would end in a giant fire like the one they talk about in the two previous movies, but they’re probably saving that for part 5 or something. Oh yeah, and that movie Catfish was probably fake. Dammit.
Did I give a shit about this movie when it came out? NOPE. Did I read this book or give a shit about that? NOPE. Why did I watch this movie, that didn’t really have any financial or critical success, years after it was released? Well, once again, it all comes back to Ryan Gosling. While discussing the works of Ryan Gosling with a coworker, they had mentioned that he was the original choice to be in this movie in Mark Wahlberg’s role. Unfortunately for Gosling, he got too fat and beardy and was no longer allowed to be in the movie, and was replaced by Wahlberg who had recently finished filming “The Happening”. HAHAHA, remember that movie? That sucked. Anyways, considering I am a fan of Peter Jackson and I knew this had something to do with ghosts or something I figured I’d give it a shot. Plus, ya gotta love that Stanley Tucci! Remember when he was in “The Core”? Yeah, I do, he was awesome.
Don’t take that hat off! You’ll turn blonde and then Eric Bana will turn you into an elite killer!
In the opening moments of the movie, we know that Susie Salmon, played by Saoirse Ronan, is killed in this movie. We also quickly learn that Stanley Tucci’s character is the reason she is dead, because he is a creepy pervert weirdo who invited her into some playhouse dungeon thing. Susie doesn’t quite realize that she’s dead, because she seems to be tripping her balls off in some fantasy land with another girl her age. We see the Salmon family dealing with the fact that she has disappeared and that there aren’t any suspects. Mark Wahlberg, who plays the father, continues to push and push and push the police into finding suspects, which drives his wife, played by Rachel Weisz, to leave him. Susie seems to come to terms with and realize that she is dead and that she won’t remember to the people she loves, but builds some sort of connection to them. Throughout her family’s day, they get weird feelings and experiences that seem to lead towards the realization that the neighbor, Stanley Tucci, is the one responsible. When enough evidence is collected towards Tucci, he realizes he needs to destroy the evidence, so he ditches Susie’s body, which has been in a safe in his basement whole time. He destroys the evidence and skips town and is never brought to justice by the police. In the wake of Susie’s death and her father’s acceptance of her death, his wife and the rest of the Salmon family build a stronger relationship together, so Susie has some monologue about her death built “lovely bones” that connected her family. Oh yeah, then Stanley Tucci falls off of a cliff.
Too much hair vs. not enough hair. WHO SHALL BE DECLARED WINNER! Probably not enough hair wins, because his daughter wasn’t killed.
Considering this was based on a book, I don’t really know who to blame for what the fuck was going on in this movie. I’m sure it was intended to be two linked concepts, with the investigative end being one plot and Susie’s strange time in whatever kind of purgatory place she was in, but I couldn’t really connect with either story being told. I could get more interested in the investigative side of Wahlberg finding clues and leads that would bring the killer to justice, but considering we knew it was Stanley Tucci the whole time, it wasn’t too fulfilling. The other shit that was going on wasn’t at all interesting to me, about a teenage girl accepting death and reflecting on her life or something? I guess that Peter Jackson’s involvement made me assume that the fantasy end of things would be a lot more unique or at least visually stimulating, but nothing really happened in that “world” of note. I can see how in the book, if the investigation aspect was dragged out for longer, you would get more invested in wanting the killer to be found and how that desire would tear the family apart, and how that would make the ending feel a little bit better, but I have no clue if that’s what the book did. If you liked the book, you can probably skip this, and if you like ghost stories, then DEFINITELY skip this, and instead just write some erotic Ryan Gosling fan fiction.
Holy shit, this movie came out ten years ago? I can’t really remember why I was excited to see this movie or why it was getting a publicity, maybe it was just because Tom Cruise produced it and his then-wife was in it. Also maybe because it was some guy from Spain directing an actress from Australia who was pretending to be British? Or maybe just the fact that The Sixth Sense was so popular just two years earlier that people had more faith in haunted house movies. I saw this in New York with my brother and I think my mind was blown over the fact that the movie started after 10PM, which wasn’t really something that happened in Massachusetts. Life in the big city, huh?!
The beginning stages of when Nicole Kidman cut her face off, then attached it back to her face, and every month would tighten it more and more.
Nicole Kidman plays the mother of two children in 1940′s England in a giant mansion. Her husband is away in the war, but luckily the beginning of the film shows three individuals being hired to take care of the house. The small catch is that these kids have a rare disease that doesn’t allow them to be exposed to sunlight. It’s a giant empty house, filled with groans and creaks, but it’s hard to tell what’s normal and what’s supernatural. The children tell tales of seeing other people in the house, but their mom just thinks it’s children playing tricks. It isn’t until she experiences things firsthand, such as doors forcefully opening or closing, music from the piano, running footsteps, and even her daughter appearing as an old woman, she starts to believe them. When the frustrations get to be too much, Kidman tries to travel to a neighboring house, only to be met by a dense, impenetrable fog, and also her husband, back from the war. The strange activities seem to stop for while the husband comes back, but things still seem off. The husband disappears, and then shit starts “popping off”, as the kids would say. With the discovery of grave markers on the property and questioning why the caretakers are at the house, we learn that the caretakers are ghosts! No! As the kids and their mom take refuge in the house, the activity seems to culminate in seeing multiple apparitions who are conducting a séance. We then learn that it is in fact Nicole Kidman and her family that are ghosts, and the people all the activity that they thought to be “ghosts” were people trying to contact their spirits! The film ends with the family refusing to acknowledge they are ghosts and vowing to stick together and stay in their house….FOREVER!!!!!
KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!
I really only remember there being two or three good scares in this movie, with one towards the end of the movie being pants-shittingly scary. After watching this movie again, there are definitely five or six segments that could creep you out, but there’s an emphasis on “could”. Unfortunately, with all of my haunted house movie viewings, they all seem to lose their creepiness the more you see it. Knowing when all of these surprises and scares are coming makes them seem cheesy, but I really have no one to blame for that except myself. The isolation of the family in their home adds to the creepy ambiance of the whole movie, and the twist at the end definitely surprised me the first time I saw it. Because the story isn’t really too original or unique, the twist is what makes this move stand out from most other contemporary haunted house movies. You can also believe that Nicole Kidman could be driven insane with the amount of care she is paying to her children’s disease because she is a raging bitch throughout most of the movie. In fact, you kind of wish that her kids were the ones to kill her so that she’d shut the fuck up. Did I mention that the fog got thicker because she was attempting to leave the home she was haunting? Well that was why, but since I fell asleep while writing this review, I’m not even sure I’m making sense right now. If you’ve never seen this movie before and like haunted house movies, I recommend checking this out, but if you’ve seen it before, do yourself a favor and hold off on repeat viewings as much as possible so that it doesn’t lose anything with repetition.
I wish that there was a warning on Netflix (or should I say Qwikster?) that warned me about movies that were made by SyFy. Based on this movie’s description, I figured it’d be bad, but there’s a certain special kind of sad when it comes to movies made by SyFy. The effects are going to be terrible, the actors are going to had some sort of connection to something popular while still being registered as C or D list celebrities, and it will just be bad. I wish that they’d stick to things like “Shark-o-bot vs. Gator-ade vs. Octo-brainzilla” so we at least know it’s supposed to be terrible. STOP TRICKING ME INTO THINKING YOUR SHITTY SYFY MOVIES ARE JUST REGULAR SHITTY MOVIES GODDAMMIT!
Charisma Carpenter’s fashion decisions reminded me of Kris Williams from Ghost Hunters. Kris Williams forehead reminds me of Olivia Wilde’s forehead. Through the transitive property, Charisma Carpenter’s fashion decisions remind me of Olivia Wilde’s forehead.
A new TV show about hunting ghosts, called “Sinister Sites”, is losing viewers, so the crew decide to investigate some sort of house that is supposedly super-super haunted. In addition to the regular team of investigators, this time they are joined by a psychic, played by Charisma Carpenter. You might kind of remember her for her roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, or Veronica Mars. You don’t remember her for anything else for any reason. This investigation starts uncovering the fact that yes, the house IS haunted, and it appears as though the house is alive. Apparently the man who originally built the house was interested in voodoo and thought he would delay his death by having human remains built into the foundation and walls of the house. Sadly, this resulted in the house being alive, and now it’s attempting to kill the investigators. It is determined that the house needs a caretaker to feed it dead people, and one of the crew members goes crazy and kills everyone else, including Charisma Carpenter. We then get to see the future, where this guy lives in the house and invites people to stay, presumably to be killed and sacrificed to the house. Oh yeah, and that guy from “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” was in it.
YOU TWO WILL NEVER BE STEVE GONSALVES AND DAVE TANGO! And this isn’t a race thing.
Uhhhh, okay. If you say so. Though this movie isn’t quite as awful as Scream of the Banshee or Goblin, this movie still wasn’t good. At all. I would say that the only thing it did that could be considered “good” by any stretch of the imagination was parody Ghost Hunters with their fictional ghost hunting team. From the graphics on their shirts to the fake opening credit sequence, it was quite similar to Ghost Hunters, so I guess that was kind of funny? I did find it strange that they were using Ghost Hunters as their example to parody when they are the ones who show Ghost Hunters. Maybe the reason they were mocking them is because of trademarks or copyrights or whatever allowed them to do so, but I still thought it was weird. Also, and maybe I know nothing about movies, I figure that any movie that stars a C or D list actress would try to take advantage of boners and find at least one scene to put them in their underwear or a bathing suit, but instead, Ms. Carpenter was wearing a sweat suit the whole time and puking/crying blood when things got intense. Guess I’ll never be a major Hollywood player like those folks over at SyFy!
YES I FUCKING FELL ASLEEP FOR TEN MINUTES OF THIS MOVIE. Just wanted to make sure I got that out of the way before I went any further. Despite missing a few minutes of this movie, I feel as though I can give it an accurate review, because if it was a good ten minutes, maybe it would have kept me awake. With yesterday being 9/11 and all, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to sort my shit out on Netflix and I managed to trim things down to under 100 movies, which made me feel quite accomplished. With so few movies, I started Googling things like “haunted house” and “ghost” movies, because those are what generally creep me out. I stumbled across this movie, which I was surprised to see on Netflix Instant, and even more surprised to see had an average of 4 stars. That’s a fucking lot! Especially for a horror movie that I hadn’t heard of. I decided to take a break from watching Breaking Bad to give this a shot.
Special cameo from that bitch from The Ring
This film is a fake documentary, a “mockumentary” if you will, about an incident that happened near Lake Mungo in Australia. A family was spending some time there when their daughter went missing while in the water. There was absolutely no trace of her, other than a few days later (or something), her body is recovered. Despite the body having decomposed and not having concrete proof of it being the daughter, it was assumed to be her. Obviously the family was bummed and tried to move on, but had some difficulty. The mom tried finding solace in talking with a psychic, the dad tried to keep busy, and the son started getting involved in photography. The son started taking pictures of his backyard once a day, every day, as a personal project. He did this until one day he noticed a figure standing in his backyard, and even though it wasn’t crystal clear, looked just like the daughter. It was some blurry glowing light, it looked like a solid figure. Weird, right? After that, there is footage revealed of what a video camera recorded while left on in the house, and we see another solid figure walk from one room to another that looked just like the daughter.
Ghost? Bigfoot? We may never know…
Thinking the daughter might still be alive, the family starts investigating her friends to see if she had reason to just disappear. This led to some cell phone footage of their daughter at a party, at Lake Mungo, where she is seen to be burying something. When digging up what she has buried, the daughter’s cell phone is recovered. Upon investigating the cell phone, there is footage found from that night. We then see footage of the daughter, presumably alone, exploring a figure she saw near the lake. As the gets closer and closer to the figure, we see then that the figure she sees is what her own decomposing corpse looked like, there’s a brief and seemingly terrifying encounter, and then the footage stops. Days later is when the daughter dies. The family decides that they couldn’t explain the answers that this footage has provided them with, and moves out of their house that held all the memories of their daughter. As the movie ends, we are shown more pictures and footage that has already appeared in the film, but this time we zoom in on different parts and see the figure of the daughter, which most viewers probably hadn’t noticed was there the whole time.
Can you see the ghost in this picture? CAN YOU? How creepy is it when you see it? That’s what I liked, is you had to really search for whether or not you could see what you were seeing. (Hint: she’s in the window)
Okay guys, you got me, you know I always get creeped out by that doppelgänger bullshit. I guess the idea of seeing yourself but it not being yourself just scares the shit out of me. Also the idea that this character saw herself and didn’t think to tell anyone about it seems really creepy. Think of that fact that there are almost 7 billion people on the planet and you realize at least one other person is bound to look just like you. I also really liked the fact that this was shot as an actual documentary, rather than the Blair Witch/Paranormal Activity style of handheld cameras. It was presented as a weird event that just happened to a family that was documented after the fact and once all the dust had settled. I also really enjoyed that the figure they were seeing wasn’t something obscured or vaguely resembled a ghost, but it was obvious that it appeared as a solid figure that had actual weight and mass to it. Granted, I did fall asleep, and there were some slow parts, so it’s not getting the best rating it can, but considering how creeped out I got at the idea of encountering your own rotting corpse and how terrifying that would be, I definitely recommend this movie to any other fans of ghost movies.
I only just saw the first White Noise not all that long ago, and despite wanting to like it, it sucked. Even with Michael Keaton being involved, I had to trade it in to get a dollar at a used DVD store. I wouldn’t say that I necessarily sought after this sequel, and in fact, I had no idea it even existed. However, when you’re browsing the Netflix Instant new arrivals, and you see White Noise 2, how do you not watch it? Add to that the fact that Nathan Fillion was in this one and how can anyone stop me?! Well, no one did, and I watched it. And this is what it was about.
It’s almost like the shattered mirror represents your shattered life. ALMOST.
Nathan Fillion plays Abe Dale (I’m laughing at the name alone) who, of course, has a great life, until his wife and child are murdered in front of him. Not thinking he can go on living, he tries to overdose on drugs and ends up having a “Near Death Experience”, that people keep referring to as an NDE. Apparently this NDE has given him special powers, because he can’t walk up and down the street without seeing people glow, only to find out that those people die. He begins to intervene in these deaths, and starts feeling good about himself. Sadly, he realizes that the people he has saved end up going crazy and killing other people three days later. There is a lot of time wasted involving finding the guy who killed his family, trying to get information from him, and using codes and shit like that to figure out that apparently all this shit has to do with the devil. The reason he is figuring this stuff out is because his new girlfriend is someone he saved, and he doesn’t want her to freak out. Supposedly the only way to break the cycle is to kill himself? Which is something he does, and, well, that ends the movie.
Bad news: you’re about to die, dude. Good news: Nathan Fillion is about to save you! Bad news: you’re going to freak out in a few days and crush that lady with a piano.
Really have no goddamned clue as to why this movie was a sequel to White Noise. My best guess is that someone wrote the script and the movie was made under the name of “The Light”, and someone paid enough money to add “White Noise 2″ to the front of it, in hopes of drawing in a larger audience. As if the first one wasn’t disappointing enough with the lack of scary TV images, this one had nothing to do with TVs! I think there were a couple of scenes where you saw TVs, but that’s about it. Despite that, I found this movie to be kind of fun. Sure, somewhere between the middle and the ending they made up a completely ridiculous and arbitrary justification of why these people were dying, but I was willing to put up with it. Not to mention the fact the the main character actually did die, rather than one of those last minutes saves. Just don’t go into this movie expecting Michael Keaton, because he’s nowhere to be found.
If there’s one thing Rampaige loves, it’s supernatural horror movies. Wait, no, if there’s one thing Rampaige loves, it’s Banner. If there’s two things Rampaige loves, it’s Banner and supernatural horror. Wait, that’s not right either. If there’s one thing Rampaige loves, it’s Banner, and if there is one genre of horror films she tolerates over others, it’s supernatural horror. And ya know what? I agree. If there are two movies that I’ve never heard of and one of them is a slasher and the other is a supernatural horror movie, I’ll check out the latter. I guess there are quite a few interpretations and possibilities of how to use supernatural horror to scare someone, that odds are I will enjoy the supernatural more. For example, despite Paranormal Entity being a blatant and admitted ripoff of Paranormal Activity, it was relatively entertaining, considering the simplicity of the content. Oh, another thing that Rampaige loves is getting mad at me for watching shitty horror movies rather than good ones, so rather than make her watch this one, only to have her hate it, I watched it with JD to see if she would like it. Too bad she’ll probably never find out whether or not she would!
Yeah, sure, relax now….DIE LATER! HAHAHA!
Would you believe that a young couple that are characters in a movie called “The Possession of David O’Reilly” would be installing a webcam to capture things that happen at their house while they are away? So weird! Neither of these characters are referred to as David, so we get the feeling that something fishy is going on. A few minutes into the movie, David shows up, and is apparently friends with the couple who has just found out his girlfriend is cheating on him or something. Once the couple goes to sleep, David starts seeing visions of things and freaking out. He admits to the couple that he feels like demons are haunting him and he didn’t think they would follow him to their apartment, but they apparently have. Not sure whether to believe him or to get him psychiatric help, they flip-flop back and forth until these demons start haunting them as well. As the viewer, we are also unsure of the nature of these hauntings and whether or not they are real, until we get to the end of the movie where one of the last shots is seeing the female from the couple dead, and covered in wounds. Despite being unsure whether David caused these wounds or not, it definitely appears that these hauntings were real, and those hauntings were assholes.
Watch out! Behind you! It could be a g-g-g-ghost!
This movie walks that mockumentary line that so many movies have been walking as of late, always teetering on the wrong side of that line. It really seemed as though they never really wanted to choose one way or another what kind of film they were, sometimes using P.O.V. shots for the characters, sometimes the camera itself wandering off on its own, sometimes just watching the characters react. Not sure which style of filmmaking would have been more successful, but it seems as their indecisiveness was one of their downfalls. I understand the need to keep the audience in the dark about things, but boy, these filmmakers weren’t kidding! When all of the hauntings are going on, everything is really dark, and you have a hard time figuring out what the fuck is going on. As I mentioned, I’m sure this was done the try to increase the paranoia of the characters and audience, but it was mostly just disorienting. All of this discombobulation is what led me to not care about the characters nor about what would happen to them, and I was really just waiting for it to be over. Sorry, Rampaige, but this movie wasn’t that good, but now you don’t have to watch it! Hooray!
Whoa! From the people who brought me Saw AND Paranormal Activity?! Those are the greatest creative horror minds of the past decade! How could I NOT see this?! The only thing that could have made me want to see it more would be the involvement of Zack Snyder! Or someone related to something Twilight! It would be the perfect masterpiece of douchebaggery that the planet has ever seen! Who am I kidding, I paid to see this movie, so I guess I’m a douchebag. Shit. I’ve been talking shit on this movie ever since I saw an image from it, despite not really knowing what the plot was. I knew that the name was hard for me to pronounce, and still can’t, and knew it had something to do with ghosts. Someone compared it to Poltergeist, and I figured I’d give it a shot. Plus it was $6 day at the theater.
Although this ghost bitch looked similar to a corpse from the movie “Black Sabbath“, I think it was completely unintentional, because there’s no way anyone who made this movie has seen Black Sabbath.
There’s a relatively long opening credit sequence involving images of an empty house accompanied by a soundtrack that gives you the impression that music will be as important to this movie as the images. We see a family moving into a new house, Dad is a teacher, Mom is a stay at home parent, two young boys, and a baby girl. With the mom staying at home so often, she starts experiencing things that creep her out, from books coming off of shelves to hearing voices and an overall sense of unease. One boy goes to explore the attic, falls down, and goes into an unexplainable coma. Whoops! Doctors don’t know what the fuck is going on, but it seems the mom’s visions are getting worse and worse, to the point of seeing people in her house coming after her. Her husband agrees to move in hopes of their situation improving.
Rose Byrne just looks like a Jennifer Connelly stand-in, but she was in Sunshine, so she rules. That guy in the tie wishes he could be Steve Gonsalves, but never will be. Patrick Wilson is just glad that he didn’t need to have his dick cut off by Ellen Page for this movie.
Once they move, not only do the visions and experiences not go away, but they seem to get more intense. The grandmother explains that she believes all of these things are happening, and that she has also been experiencing things, and recommends people to come investigate. We get Ghost Hunter type investigators coming in who also experience things and so they call in their boss who is apparently some sort of clairvoyant. She determines that the boy is capable of astral projection, the soul leaving the body while asleep, and that the soul has strayed so far from the body that there are now other entities attempting to inhabit the child’s body. There’s a big scene involving a séance type thing where the clairvoyant wears a gas mask connected to headphones (?) to communicate with the boy and the entities. Seeing the power of the entities, it is determined that the only way to save the boy is for his father to use his own astral projection skills that he forgot he had (?) to retrieve him. He goes to retrieve him, all these entities try to kill everyone else while he’s astral projecting, the dad has to fight some demon things, and the boy is safely returned. Once the dad is back, he gets angry with the clairvoyant and strangles her, and we realize that one of the entities is now occupying the father, and the movie ends with him attacking his wife! Scary!
This is the first image I saw from this film, and, well, fucking look at how silly it is. This was taken from the trailer, so I’m not spoiling anything. However, given the context of the film, this image was intended to be one of the BIGGEST scares in the whole film, and it was ruined in the fucking trailer. Even Rampaige wasn’t scared, she said she thought that red guy was just in a rock n’ roll band and that he was “about to jump up to do a drum solo”. Ouch.
Goddammit. I already anticipated not liking this movie that much, but the first 40 minutes really pissed me off. Not because they were bad, but because they were surprisingly entertaining. The reason Paranormal Activity worked so well was because of the subtleties, and this film started off in the same way. It’s more of a “Hollywood” movie, so they weren’t incredibly subtle, but just enough to creep you out. Once the grandmother got involved, and after one “scare” in particular, everything went downhill with the subtlety. The entities and visions themselves were so over-the-top, it was on par with Drag Me To Hell. The difference being that Drag Me To Hell would go back and forth between incredibly obvious to extremely subtle, not really using the middle ground, whereas this movie was just a relatively slow build, up to the point that there were ghosts fighting and punching everyone and demons crawling around on walls for the last 15 minutes of the movie. I also have no idea what the Paranormal Activity involvement in this movie was, because the director was from the first Saw, as was the writer from the first Saw, and that annoying little piece of shit managed to weasel his way in to do a shitty acting job in a supporting role in this one too. Whoever tried to compare this movie to Poltergeist is a cocksucker. What they should have said was this movie would be the result of Saw, Paranormal Activity,Poltergeist, and Drag Me To Hell raping Jennifer Connelly, and then give that baby a violin after playing with its soft spot like it was the Pop-O-Matic from the Trouble board game.
