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The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)
The most terrifying part of The Strangers: Chapter 1 is during its closing seconds, as text appears to inform all of us woeful viewers: “To be continued.” Oh no. Chapter 1 is intended to be the first in a new trilogy bringing back the essential concept of the 2008 home invasion thriller, that the masked attackers have no agenda, no motivation, and are being sadistic silent tormentors just because. The explanation, “Because you were home,” was a key revelation to the original, and here this famous line gets re-worked and has the same clumsy impact as Madame Web trying to reword that Spider-Man oath (“When you take on the responsibility, great power will come“). Not that the dialogue is the strong point of this thriller, with clunky expositional lines as nakedly transparent like, “Today is the third day of our three-day road trip around the country,” followed by, “Or our five-year anniversary.” It’s in the annoying, “Yeah I work here too” kind of lazy exposition. But you’re here for the scares, of which Chapter 1 has precious few because I think these are the most unimpressive and lackadaisical home invaders I’ve ever seen. I think the Wet Bandits might give these goons a run for their money (I’d watch Kevin take on The Strangers). Much of the movie is spent waiting, or checking places around the cabin, sometimes while one intruder plays the piano for ambience. One could make an argument they’re toying with their prey, but I would counter that I just don’t think they’re good at their whole enterprise. It doesn’t help that the main couple are so boring and undeveloped and I found it hard to fear for their well-being. As far as memorable scares or set-pieces or ingenious obstacles or overcoming said obstacles, it’s a big miss on all counts. A home invasion scenario can be exciting and terrifying, and it can be delicious fun to turn the tables on the attackers. This movie has so little that even the core ideas feel stretched beyond their breaking point. It’s hard to even feel much reverence for the original here, as The Strangers: Chapter 1 feels more like the steady, unrelenting squeezing of all IP for any possible drops of renewed audience interest. If this is what Chapter 1 has to offer, please spare us the rest. Fun fact: if you want to know what director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger) has been doing lately, well here’s your underwhelming answer.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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The Legend of Hercules (2014)
It’s as if director Renny Harlin watched Gladiator and said, “Yeah, I can do that, but much worse.” The plot is almost exactly a ripoff of the 2000-Best Picture winner, having the godly Hercules besmirched and thrown into the arena, where he must build a name for himself in gladiatorial combat and work the support of the crowd in order to gain his vengeance against a jealous tyrant with daddy issues. If that wasn’t enough, the visual aesthetic is very much a CGI-heavy melange of 300, with the super stylized slow-mo action standing in the way for plot. A sword-and-sandals epic should not be on the verge of putting you to sleep, but Hercules goes there. Kellan Lutz (Twilight) might have the right build to fill out the character but he’s too limited as an actor to do much beyond the fight choreography. The only reason to see this movie is if you’re trapped on an airplane and it happens to be on. Who would have thought that the flawed Brett Ratner-directed Hercules movie would look even better?
Nate’s Grade: D
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12 Rounds (2009)
This action flick bankrolled by World Wrestling Entertainment is an empty and aggravating movie. Let me list the ways this lamebrain action movie fails and flounders. And to be charitable, I’ll do it in only six rounds of concise action.
Round 1: John Cena is not an actor, like at all. The famous pro wrestler has a face that looks to be chiseled from granite.
Round 2: The movie strains credibility even for an action movie. The villain reappears with no explanation and begins a series of clever traps that must have involved massive man-hours to conceive and put into order, especially with every last variable taken into account like bus schedules.
Round 3: The villain is totally non-threatening in every capacity. He acts like an impish teenager instead of a devilish rogue. At one point, I kid you not, he’s rolling around on a bed while he taunts Cena over the phone, like he’s gabbing to a girlfriend. The fact that this dude is a criminal mastermind makes everybody dumber.
Round 4: The villainous M.O. is a shameless rip-off of Die Hard with a Vengeance. I repeat: a rip-off of the third freaking Die Hard movie, which isn’t terrific anyway. Every little game, every little round, is a puzzle that leads to the next puzzle, and Cena must figure it all out before his time runs out. And it’s all an elaborate ruse to distract the police so that our bad guy can pose as a Federal Reserve moneyman and steal from a bank, more or less just like Die Hard with a Vengeance.
Round 5: The director is Renny Harlin, whose last watch-able movie involved super intelligent psycho killer sharks. His action choreography relies all too heavily on ridiculously tired action tropes, like having Cena leap hundreds of feet from a helicopter to land safely in a rooftop pool. The erratic camerawork does no favors, aping the visual style of better movies. Even Harlin himself has done everything here before and better.
Round 6: The bad guy blames Cena for his girlfriend’s death and thus puts him through this day from hell. He blames Cena instead of blaming the driver of the car that plowed into her, his girlfriend for choosing to run right into the path of an oncoming vehicle and for being complicit in a murderous jewelry heist, or even himself for putting everybody in danger in the first place. His motivation is fairly faulty. He might as well blame the manufacturer of the automobile for lackluster brakes.
I’ll cut it off from there to be merciful. 12 Rounds is a classic example of a cookie-cutter, brainless, preposterous, and un-inventive action movie that typifies the Hollywood assembly line. It’s ludicrous from start to finish and your eyes will glaze over from watching such stolid action scenes without a hint of creative impulse.
Nate’s Grade: D
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Deep Blue Sea (1999)
So what if the movie is crammed with one-note cardboard characters that double as stereotypes and other reliable characters in the action world? So what if the script was most likely written on the back of a bar napkin in between showings of Jaws on TNT? So what if the movie is helmed by Mr. ex-Geena Davis with a track record of box office losses always following him? So what? And so what if the best acting in the movie is from animatronic sharks? Because despite all these things the movie is pure fun.
The movie actually offers some genuine thrills and suspense. It’s easy to just pigeonhole the movie as another Jaws rip-off, but it’s more of a sweet homage than any blatant rip-off. Deep Blue Sea never seems to take itself seriously and actually seems to revel in the cheese it wallows in.
Despite the fact that the sharks still look like they were created out of Jim Henson’s Muppet workshop, they do come off as believable. The story isn’t even worth printing because it’s all one giant excuse to somehow pose dangerous situations to our crew. It’s all purely corny but it’s just too much fun.
Deep Blue Sea shouldn’t be thought heavily upon because all the movie is at it’s heart is big dumb fun. Don’t try and analyze it above the thrills you get in your seat, you might hurt yourself. At least there’s one movie that’s out that you can just sit and have fun with.
Nate’s Grade: B
nathanzoebl 
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