One thing that I hate is when I read user reviews of horror movies where people try to defend a movie by saying, “It’s so bad that it’s good,” or, “You just didn’t get it!” Most of these movies are just terrible and bland and have absolutely nothing redeeming about them, and people just try to come across as being so well-versed in horror films that they claim that it’s ironically bad. Are you fucking kidding me? There are so many shitty fucking awful movies out there that I am not trying to impress people by saying “LOL Boogeyman wuz so bad it was kewl LOL” like some other people say. I can admit that yes, there are some movies that are so laughably bad that there can be entertainment found in mocking it, but that’s not an excuse to try to say EVERY awful movie is “fun to watch”, because it takes a certain something to push a movie from generically bland and tepid to so ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh. Lucky for us all, this movie, which is also known as The Beacon, is so terrible that Rampaige and I had to rewind multiple parts to see how ridiculous it was.

I figured I’d give you guys one shot of the stars of the movie before shit talking everything.

A couple moves into an apartment building while dealing with the disappearance of their child. The mother Bryn, played by Teri Polo, feels the most guilty about the loss since she was the one watching their son when he disappeared. The father Paul, played by David Rees Snell, knows how deeply it affected Bryn and tries to help her cope. Shortly after moving in, Bryn has visions and captures photos of the ghost of a child, and upon further investigation, learns that there was a boy who used to live there who died after falling off the building’s elevator. While trying to track down the rest of the family, she finds that they have killed themselves because they couldn’t cope with the loss of their son. With some help from one of Paul’s fellow professors, it is determined that the ghost is on some sort of loop, replaying the incident over and over, and if the cycle is interrupted, the ghost will be at peace. After even FURTHER investigation, it is learned that this hotel was built on a burial ground where suicide victims were sent, and that everyone who lives in the hotel is actually a ghost, including all of the tenants. All of these ghosts have been trying to convince Bryn and Paul to kill themselves so that they will join them, and Paul ends up falling out of a window and dying, and Bryn kills herself as a result. Looks like The Beacon has a few new residents!

THE MYTHICAL CHAIN HEAD!

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? I didn’t think it sounded too bad either, and considering that Teri Polo was in those Meet the Parents movies and that Michael Ironside was in it, I figured it might have some credibility to it, but this movie was GODDAMNED RIDICULOUS. One character I left out was Bryn’s sister Christina, who you might also know as a character named Christine. Wait, what did I just say? OH THAT’S RIGHT, SHE IS CALLED CHRISTINE, CHRISTINA, AND CHRISSY AT DIFFERENT POINTS OF THE MOVIE. I understand that Chrissy can be a nickname for either Christine or Christina, but since when are those two names interchangeable? I should probably also mention that within 30 seconds of screen time, Christina establishes herself as THE BIGGEST COCKTEASE IN THE HISTORY OF WHORES. While she’s helping her sister move in, she notices that two moving guys are kind of sort of smiling at her because she overhears them say she’s hot, she drops what she’s doing to TAKE OUT HER TITS AND SHOW THEM. Then has a playful “Will you guys get back to work now?” comment like it’s some fucking normal thing to whip out your knockers for strangers because they smile at you. A neighbor walks by and sees this and gets a boner on his face, so she goes over to apologize. She says, “My sister moves in, but maybe I’ll be dropping by more often…,” in the beginning of the conversation, and I shouted at my TV for how easy she was making it for this guy to rape her. He mentions that his last name is Tyler and that his nickname is “Ty…as in, Ty one on!” because he gets belligerent and drunk all the time. She responds with “Oh, I thought it could mean Ty me down…” because she is ASKING TO GET FUCKING RAPED BY THIS STRANGER. Sure, she didn’t drop to her knees to start blowing dudes in the first 30 seconds, but she came pretty fucking close.

“Hmmm…these complete strangers seem to be distracted by my boobs. I have a feeling that if I flash these gentlemen, they will get a nice glimpse of my bra, and will have had their curiosity satiated. Sounds foolproof! TIME TO WHIP OUT MY TITS!”

Need more reasons why this movie was laughably terrible? Don’t worry, there’s more. Paul tries to encourage Bryn to start photography again because she apparently gave up when she abandoned her son because she was such a shitty mother. While exploring the city with her digital SLR, or digital Single Lens Reflex camera as you might prefer to call it, and proceeds to take the shittiest pictures of everything she can find. From out of focus branches to flowers to elevators, they’re all terrible. She plugs the camera into her computer, because remember how I said it was digital? She looks at the pictures she took digitally with her digital camera, and thinks she sees a child in one of the photos. Wanting to get a closer look at the pictures the next day, we then see Bryn pulling her photos off of a drying line, which is what photographers hang their pictures on after developing their film in a darkroom. Wait, did I just say she was drying film? Weren’t her pictures taken on a digital camera? Isn’t the difference with a digital camera the fact that there’s no film in it? Was she developing a picture off of her computer like it was a darkroom? Don’t we see an actual fucking printer attached to the computer? WHY THE FUCK WAS SHE PULLING PICTURES OFF OF A DRYING LINE WHEN SHE TOOK THEM WITH A DIGITAL FUCKING CAMERA. THERE’S NO GODDAMNED FILM TO DEVELOP, SO YOU WOULD HAVE HAD TO TAKE THOSE DIGITAL IMAGES, TRANSFER THEM ONTO FILM, DEVELOP THEM IN A DARK ROOM AND THEN HANG THEM TO DRY, INSTEAD OF HITTING THE FUCKING PRINT BUTTON ON YOUR STUPID GODDAMNED COMPUTER.

This is the scary ghost. See those scissors? There’s some sort of explanation about it, but it’s really dumb, so let’s forget those scissors are even there.

See, it’s these small things that made no sense that really made you do a double take on the stupidity of this movie. When she was taking pictures, Bryn snapped a picture of another tenant who is supposedly a retired actress who did a bunch of softcore porn. Why is that important? Well, don’t worry, there’s a subplot of Paul cheating on Bryn with this woman who uses her softcore porn seduction powers to fuck him in some weird fucking photography warehouse. When this woman gets angry with Bryn for taking photos, the tenant that wants to rape Christine, or Christina, I already forgot, tries to fight back and defend Bryn. Ty tries to comment that this bitch is old, and she says, “I’m not old, I’m 32,” to which Ty responds with, “Yeah, maybe in DOG years!,” which makes him look at Bryn and smirk and mentally says “THAT WAS A SICK BURN.” Let’s take a step back…first of all, the concept of there being “dog years” isn’t real, because all it means is that humans live seven times longer than a dog, which causes people to think there’s an actual concept of 1 human year being the equivalent of 7 dog years. Even though it’s bullshit, let’s keep this formula in mind with Ty’s retort, because with this logic, being 32 in “dog years” would mean 4.5 human years. Is this making sense to any of you guys? THIS DIPSHIT JUST INSULTED HER BACKWARDS. SHE SAID SHE WAS 32, AND HE TRIED TO THROW IT BACK IN HER FACE BY ARBITRARILY MENTIONING SOMETHING ABOUT DOG YEARS AND UNKNOWINGLY TRIED TO INSULT HER BY SAYING SHE WAS ACTUALLY ONLY 5 YEARS OLD, BECAUSE APPARENTLY NOT ONE SINGLE FUCKING PERSON THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO CHECK THE SCRIPT FOR INDISCREPANCIES OF REALITY. Bryn’s response to this whole scene is to chuckle and then call the lady Spider Legs. I thought there would be some explanation of why that’s an insult, but rather than attempting to use logic to figure out the implications of “Spider Legs”, I’m just going to assume it was a varicose veins joke and leave it alone.

Watch out! That scary ghost might lean forward and spook you!

Hopefully you guys are starting to get the idea of just how terrible this movie is, and the fact that it is somewhat entertaining that someone devoted time to writing this, someone gave that person money, and actors read for the roles and took the time to memorize lines, and I’m sure some thought it would garner them some celebrity. Not to mention the fact that NOTHING ABOUT THIS MOVIE WAS SCARY. The ghost of the little boy’s father kept popping up, and when I say popping up, I mean leaning forward or standing up. That’s right, he would just kind of peek out from behind a corner or from the passenger seat as a means of “scaring” the audience. Also, when Bryn is first exploring the city with her camera, we see her being stalked by some guy who looks like a member of Slipknot with a bag on his head with chains around it. This character pops up a few times, with no explanation, until the very end, which doesn’t justify how comically obvious it was to have a guy wearing a shitty mask with fake chains around. I got excited thinking it might have been a prequel to Chain Letter, but sadly, it wasn’t. Did I mention how terrible to outfits of the police in this movie were? Well, they were awful. Everyone had what appeared to be the TOP FOUR buttons unbuttoned, looking like a bunch of idiots. Fuck. If you want to know how to NOT make a good movie, or I guess if you want to know how to make a really shitty movie, feel free to watch this on Netflix Instant. Maybe if you want to laugh for a good hour, because the last 30 minutes are practically unbearable. How people can like this shit or try to justify it is beyond me, and I hope you all die. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Christina/Christine/Chrissy character gets run over by a street sweeper for wearing a hat like Blossom so they chop her legs off at the hospital. Her boobs are safe though! SAFE I TELL YOU!

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