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Help, These Movies Are Kinda Bad: Ladda Land, Tape 407 and Bunshinsaba.

January 25, 2014 No Comments

ladda-land-poster

Ladda Land
Oh Ladda Land. A movie with a schizoid personality that never know what it wants to be. A comedy? A drama? A horror film? A thriller? Fuck knows. The movie deals with a pathetic guy and his utterly shitty family. His wife may or may not have been fucking her boss. His mother in law openly hates him and turns his own kids against him. His daughter treats him like shit and actually moves out of the fucking house at one point, with the blessings of her mother. Holy shit dude, just fucking go already. Pack a bag and get the fuck out, these people are literally shit.

They have no value. Just fucking run.

Anyway, some maid lady gets murdered (I don’t think we ever find out who did it) and appears to be haunting a bunch of houses in the neighborhood. There’s subplot about their neighbor who is abusing his son and his wife, one about the guy’s job being a scam and leaving him hanging, the wife’s boss who is implied is fucking her (I’m honestly not sure, he shows up at their house and later the husband notices the bed is unmade, so who knows) and a bunch of other stuff.

The actual horror thing is just an afterthough for most of the movie. The last part tries to ramp up the tension, but ultimately ends up being pretty dumb. Fuck it.

1 out of 5 closet ghosts.

Tape-407

Tape 407

Oh god. I can’t really recommend this movie. It has a bit of a twist so it gets points to that, but it’s the usual found footage shit in every other way. Especially in all the wrong ways, like people perpetually screaming at each other for no reason, repeating the same phrases again and again (”Listen to me! Okay? Listen. Listen to me! No, listen to me! Are you listening!”) in the name of ”realism.”

Look dude, you’re not making a documentary. You’re making a movie. That’s why you should try and avoid things that make me want to throw your DVD out my window like a Frisbee, even if you think they’re ”realistic.” Just make the yelling stop.

Anyway, the movie deals with the survivors of a plane crash that are stranded in the middle of nowhere and proceed to get munched on by creatures unknown. There’s two sisters, who serve as the protagonists, a tough air marshal, some photographer dude, whatever.  Everything is by the book: The asshole guy that everyone hates, people getting eaten one by one, the dumb twist at the end.

I don’t really care enough about this movie to keep talking about it.

0 out of 5 airplane peanuts.

P.S. This movie is so shitty I can’t even find a decent poster of it online.

P.S.S One of the posters has this quote: ”A twist ending to leave you breathless” – Frightfest. Jesus Christ that quote should get someone jail time.

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Ouja Board / Bunshishaba

I’m gonna keep this short because I didn’t actually hate this movie, I just didn’t particularly enjoy it. Bunshishaba is a local legend, kind of a cheapo Bloody Mary thing. Three high school girls call upon her to exact revenge on their bullies. Their plan works exceptionally well as they immediately start dying. Unfortunately, the titular demon has possessed one of them and the dark secrets of the weird ass village they live in are about to be revealed.

IMDB says: ”Yu-jin and her blind mother move to a small village from Seoul. On her first day at the new school, Yu-jin gets picked on by her classmates. Along with other victims of hatred, Yu-jin puts a curse on the four girls tormenting them through a Ouija Board. On her second day at school, one of the spellbound bursts into flames and dies just as she sits down where Yu-jin used the board. The next day, another victim burns to death, and now the school is enclosed by horror.”

It’s nothing mind blowing but at the same time it didn’t make me want to kill myself, so it gets a pass. I can’t say I found anything scary about it, the usual girl with long black hair jumping out here and there, but the back story was interesting enough, if a bit derivative. I’d say it’s worth a look, but definitely middle of the road stuff.

2.5 out of 5 vengeful ghosts.

More Bad Movies: Ghost on Air, Black Rock, Magic Magic

January 9, 2014 No Comments

Ghost-On-Air-Poster

Ghost On Air
I liked the premise of this movie enough to go against my gut feeling and watch it. A popular radio DJ gets moved to the night shift slot and decides to tell ghost stories. Scary shit follows. How could you fail with this premise?

Turns out, pretty easily. The plot was a tad confusing at places, mostly because it featured a bunch of unrelated ghost stories with similar elements. One of them is about a girl who has an abortion and is haunted by her dead kid. The girl’s mom finds her hanging. Then there’s a different young girl haunting a store and it becomes really hard to tell which old lady is the mom from the first story and which one is the shop owner and how, if at all, these two stories are connected (from what I can tell, they’re not, but I’m still confused).

In any case, the DJ’s dead girlfriend was a horror writer who decided to investigate some ghost stories she heard about. It’s unclear even at the end of the movie, if this research was the cause of her death (I’m unsure if we’re ever told how she died, all we get is a scene in a hospital where she’s on a stretcher) or if it was unrelated. The dj finds her notes and after telling the stories on air, decides to also look into these hauntings.

There’s also a subplot about how a young female dj takes the prime-time spot from his, but it’s fairly misogynistic. I was expecting something more interesting to happen, as the woman is always trying to help the protagonist and he always blows her off. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re really supposed to think she’s a horrible monster.

Spoilers follow, including ending.

The movie has a pretty dumb ending. After the DJ ”solves” the hauntings by revealing the truth, he wins an award for best male DJ, gets his old job back and gets to push his rival out of the show. Apparently being a woman and having a job means you’re a whore and you should be punished.

In any case, there’s a scene right after that where the DJ watches on his laptop a video of his girlfriend telling him she’s haunted and asking ”Where are you?” I’m not sure why she’s recording this video or why she’s asking that, it seems like she could have called him or something, but what do I know, I’m not a ghost. Then the ghosts descend upon him and presumably drive him crazy. The end.

All and all, I wouldn’t recommend this movie. It has no good scares, the plot is convoluted for no reason and there just isn’t anything all that interesting here.

2 out of 5 ghost DJs.

BLACK-ROCK

Black Rock (spoilers throughout)

Another utterly dumb movie about how apparently ordinary people will decide to commit felonies for no reason, with no regard for their own safety or best interest.

Three women decide to go on vacation back to their childhood vacation spot, on a tiny island. Once there, they meet three hunters who they kinda-sorta know and invite them to hang out. After one of the women flirts with one of the men and invites him into the woods to presumable have sex, she has a change of heart but the guy won’t take no for an answer and tries to rape her. She cracks his skull open with a rock.

His two buddies are upset and decide to kill the three women because of reasons. I don’t know, not a lot makes sense here.

They play the usual cat and mouse game on the island, including more dumb scenes, like having the women try and make it into the water by crawling towards the beach, but one of them freaks out and starts screaming and gets up to run, immediately getting shot in the face.

I don’t know why. She couldn’t get the pressure of crawling on a beach I suppose. The remaining two women run into the water only to realize they’re freezing to death, so they get back out. This, despite a five minute conversation they had before they put the plan in motion, where one of them absolutely knew she could handle the cold water. I guess she was wrong.

The two women get naked to battle hypothermia. I guess the boobs were unavoidable.

Anyway, the movie ends as expected. It’s really dumb. If you’re really into watching women get victimized for an hour and then maybe get their revenge for two minutes, I guess you could give it a shot.

1 out of 5 hypothermic, naked women.

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Magic Magic (spoilers throughout)

Ah, the dumbest of them all. I admit to being intrigued for the first half hour of this movie, but once I realized the movie has an unreliable narrator, I kinda gave up on the whole thing. I like unreliable narrators, but when you got every other character acting weird as shit and then compound that with a protagonist that appears to be schizophrenic, is there really any point in watching? If there is no basis for reality and the events aren’t even that interesting (oh woo, this guy is mean to her, her friend was rude on the phone, a dog tried to hump her), it’s hard to take it seriously. Couple this with a really dumb ending and you get Magic Magic.

Everyone in this movie is both irritating and stupid. And terrible, like the guy who wants to have sex with his girlfriend who had an abortion the previous day and suggests anal when she says she’s still hurting. What.

In the ending, her friends take her to a Mexican witch who tries to exorcise her and ends up chocking her to death by feeding her a frog. This is happening as about ten people watch, none of them saying anything, apparently convinced she’s possessed.

I can’t say enough bad things about this movie. Fuck it.

0 out of 5 humping dogs.

These Movies are Terrible: Home Sweet Home and Insidious 2

January 6, 2014 8 Comments

Home Sweet Home (2013)
What a terrible movie. The home invasion resurgence I’m seeing is bad enough on it’s own, but where other movies might try something a little bit different, this one is happy to be the usual shitty tripe. There is no Wikipedia page and the synopsis on IMDB is one line long, so I’ll have to wing it. A couple is spending a night at home when they realize some dude wearing that mask from Saw has broken into their home and also trapped them inside. That’s really about it and from here on, expect major spoilers.

Of course, the husband immediately gets his, leaving the wife to play the cat and mouse game with the killer. Of course right before that, she thought she’d surprise her husband with some sexy times while wearing a cheerleader uniform, so naturally the killer hunts her around the house with her dressed as a slightly aged cheerleader. She gets captured, escapes, gets captured again and so on.

A lot of dumb shit takes place, she makes choices that make no sense, her husband is completely useless and gets fucked up constantly and then in the end we have the usual fake-out death. The killer then stops messing around and murders the poor woman and then the plot twist hits. Turns out he was a police officer and under the painter’s onesie he’s wearing is a full cop getup. He stages the scene to make it look like he was called to the house and the credits roll.

I’m not sure how he’s going to explain that he got shot with the victim’s gun or where exactly he was earlier and why he’s at their house when no call has been made. Does this guy even have a shift? Or is he more like a freelance cop that works on the weekends? I don’t know. I’m sure you can plug these plot holes with some mental gymnastics, I’m vaguely aware that there was a whole thing where the couple had called the police the previous day about a prowler, but really, it’s too dumb to think about.

There is really nothing interesting about this movie.

1 out of 5 home invaders.

Insidious 2 (2013)

I honestly didn’t love the first insidious and I could never understand why people talk it up. It felt like one of those movies that you’d only think are interesting if you watch maybe a couple of horror movies a year. To me, it had a bunch of ideas I’ve seen before, but at least it was competently made, so I wasn’t completely disappointment. I’m even planning a re-watch.

I went into the sequel/prequel with good intentions, but ultimately, it was pretty bad. Again, Wikipedia fails me for a synopsis.

The movie takes place almost immediately after the end of the first one. The family moves to another house and tries to get things back to normal. But weird shit still happens, this time apparently centering around her husband and the baby.

Spoilers ahead.

The movie serves as both a prequel and a sequel to the original movie. We get a flashback showing how the father of the family also had a run in with the demons/ghosts/whatevers when he was a kid and managed to suppress his astral projecting abilities. Everything that takes place in the flashbacks is really well done and all around interesting. The problem lies with all the shit they add to the current timeline, which ends up coming off like a an episode of Supernatural mixed with American Horror Story season one. They throw in some ghosts, an overbearing, crazy mom, a cross-dressing serial killer that appears both as his innocent child self and his later, murderous incarnation and somehow try and tie all this in to the events of the first movie. It fell flat for me, though your mileage may vary.

I kept waiting for something to happen that would tie it up nicely, but it never came. It really is as disjointed as it looked to be. The bit of mindfuck where the events in the flashback are a reaction to the events of the future (you’ll know it when you see it, the movie makes sure to hit you over the head with it) was really the only interesting part of the movie.

The movie isn’t shy about showing us a bunch of ghosts in broad daylight (always accompanied by the usual piano and string cues), which gets ridiculous pretty fast. There is only a handful of effective scares and none of them are really that original or interesting. It’s a very formulaic offering, overall.

It’s probably not completely terrible, but nowhere near as good as the original, which wasn’t that good to begin with, so eh.

2 out of 5 ghosts.

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