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Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)
The real draw for the first Paranormal Activity was that it was a word-of-mouth secret that became a sensation. You just had to see what all the fuss was about. It was the super cheap little indie that could and took the nation by storm. Of course, with any product that makes money a sequel must come. But it’s hard to repeat a phenomenon, just ask the makers behind Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (an odd, fascinating failure). Paranormal Activity 2 is a decent slow burn horror movie but it can’t escape the long shadow of its predecessor. There isn’t enough new or interesting to justify this redundant exercise in standard low-wattage terror.
The first film involved the haunted bedroom of a couple, Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Strout). They filmed their nightly haunted shenanigans and it all didn’t end so well. Now we have Katie’s sister and her husband. They’re welcoming home a brand-new baby boy, Hunter, when they find their home has been trashed. Rooms have been upended but no valuables are missing. The family gets a home security system installed with multiple surveillance videos to spy for intruders. Of course these cameras also begin catching strange occurrences in the house. It seems a sinister presence is after the baby. Apparently demons love children, did you know this? Hell has a really fantastic T-ball team.
Like most other gimmick movies, duplicating the same effect leads to diminishing returns. Part of what made the first film work was its relative freshness and creative ingenuity. For a measly $11,000, director Oren Peli was able to fashion and sustain a mood of mounting dread that also stayed within the confines of the “found footage” concept. He built up suspense gradually and lead to some terrific “boo” moments. I’m still amazed how Peli was able to pull off some of his tricks sight unseen with such a minuscule budget. Part of the appreciation of Paranormal Activity was the level of skill for the craft. Now along comes a sequel with a $3 million budget, which is still chump change by Hollywood’s standards. However, it’s a large enough figure that I never once questioned how they were ale to pull anything off. I expected more from the sequel given the budget and the general nature of sequels to inevitably up the ante. You’ll still be scanning the frame of those surveillance camera angles, looking for any sign of something amiss or strange. The whole process can be maddening in both a good and bad way. Much of whatever tension does build is in these moments of uncertainty waiting with baited breath. It can seem like an interactive group game of Where’s Waldo. You’re sort of relieved when something actually does happen to break the nothingness.
As a whole, Paranormal Activity 2 doesn’t work as well when it comes to the construction of their scares. The first film primarily took place in one location, the bedroom, the sanctity of the modern man’s domicile. Whenever we got to beddy time we knew what waited. A visual vocabulary had been built to get the audience sweating as soon as the characters sleep. And isn’t disrupting our sleep the ultimate home invasion? With the sequel, there are multiple cameras to work through, always opening with the same shot of the pool cleaner busy at work. We start with pool cam, then after a while we add one more, kitchen came, then stair cam, etc., but we always cycle back to the original before moving forward. It can become an especially tiring pattern, especially when early camera angles prove to have nothing going on within. The pool-cleaning robot emerges as the breakout star of the film (evidently the first sign of a haunting is a dirty pool). There are some effective scares but it’s all in the jump scare/gotcha variety. The film toys with the possibility of a night vision mode for the ever-present camcorder tossed around the home. This possibility is woefully underutilized and only saved for a mad dash through the house at the conclusion.
Repeating the same haunting elements may work in a narrative sense but it also mitigates the impact. You know what to expect. Hearing loud noises or watching doors slam shut does not offer the same jolt the second time around, especially on a larger budget. It’s unavoidable that Paranormal Activity 2 will become a victim of the first film’s success. Unless it raises the stakes, the movie is just going through the same paces with different faces. This time there’s a baby that’s being sought after by a malicious spirit. If all you’re doing is raising the “innocent quotient” of the victims then the film might as well be set in a impoverished Bangladesh orphanage where the kids all have terminal diseases as well. Paranormal Activity 2 tries to repeat the same tricks to mixed results. The scares are too few and far between and none have the same power as in the first film. The climax is lazily similar as well.
Unlike the first film, much of the movie feels like it’s just filling time to space out its scares. You won’t feel any true sense of attachment to these people nor will you get excited when they parcel out morsels of back-story (the first mom died and… what?). Instead of a young couple we now have a young couple… with a baby! And a teen daughter too but really it’s all about the baby. The family members sit and talk at length rationalizing the weird phenomenon. They even perform research on the Internet and make sure to record themselves with a camera they set down. Who does that? Who records simple conversations? The family’s main dilemma is that dad is unreasonably skeptical despite strong video evidence. Why do these people still let the baby sleep alone? Why haven’t they brought the baby’s crib into their own bedroom? The family pet, a trusted German shepherd, is good protection. The dog growls and barks because animals, just like Hispanic housekeepers the film asserts, innately know when evil spirits are afoot. Why do Hispanic women all have fine-tuned demon radar in the movies? Is this a feature that a Caucasian male can upgrade to? Apparently, the best protection you can afford your home is multiple dogs and multiple Hispanic housekeepers to stand guard.
Paranormal Activity 2 attempts to deepen the mythology of the franchise. It takes place both before and after the events of the first movie, providing some explanation as to what the demon is really after and how it came to terrorize Katie. It’s nice to watch how the two movies fold on top of each other and guess what areas will next connect. Katie makes numerous appearances and ironically offers the sage advice to her sister to just ignore those bumps in the night. When Micah makes an appearance he is accompanied by onscreen text that informs us that this is 3 weeks before his dead body is found. Why? We already know thanks to Katie’s early presence that the film is a prequel, so we already know the doomed fate of Katie and Micah. What does spelling it out have to offer the audience?
Paranormal Activity 2 runs into problems when it imitates what worked previously but doesn’t add any new flavor, escalation, or variety. The freshness of the concept is quickly turning stale. What was new and exciting is now being written into rote rules for the franchise. I can only surmise that the Paranormal Activity franchise will follow the same downward slide as befell the Final Destination franchise once the audience became hip to all the rules. Surprise goes out the window when films are made to meet genre expectations. You’re still relying overall on your imagination for much of the scares in Paranormal Activity 2, which will vary depending upon the individual. I just think it’s harder to trick you the second time around. My brain kept saying, “I’ve already seen this movie. Been there, done that.” I had no actual rebuttal for my brain, so I ate some popcorn and scanned the screen looking for more weird stuff.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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When in Rome (2010)
When in Rome, do not do as this banal movie does. Know what kind of movie you’re in for? There’s an audio record scratch/slowdown effect twice in the first ten minutes. Kirsten Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) is an unlucky in love workaholic who, when in Rome, pilfers coins from the Fountain of Love. This makes the subjects who tossed the coins (Jon Heder, Dax Shepard, Danny DeVito, Will Arnett) magically fall in love with Bell. They chase her back to New York and act like obsessive stalkers. Essentially, this is a rip-off of Love Potion Number Nine, except this rom-com is neither romantic nor comedic. The comedy is mostly brain-dead slapstick and the payoffs never materialize. In one scene, Bell and a date go out for a “night dinner” where they eat completely in the dark. There’s plenty of potential there but it’s like a minute until her posse of stalkers interrupt and the date’s over. There’s stuff like people running into trees, people squeezing into a tiny Italian car, a vase that’s supposed to break as a wedding celebration and refuses to break, and Bell and her lead, Josh Duhamel, have zero chemistry and like a three feet height differential. The movie is so joyless and bereft of energy. The scripts seems to be missing many scenes that fill in details about the various characters, or at least help give setup and context. The movie exists squarely in the absurd realm of romantic comedies and it’s thoroughly mediocre. I would expect nothing less from the writers of Old Dogs. I enjoy Bell but it’s not hard to resist the spell of this junk.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Eclipse (2010)
This may be an obvious statement but I will never be a teenage girl. Shocking news to anybody who never knew of the existence of my Y chromosome. Regardless, it’s hard for me to empathize with the madness that surrounds the cultural juggernaut that is the Twilight series. I cannot work myself into a frenzy. I cannot get madly passionate about the merits of Team Jacob vs. Team Edward (though full disclosure: I lean more toward Jacob). I cannot even understand the appeal of the main character and why she’s worth every human, vampire, and werewolf fighting over her. I just can’t walk in the same shoes of the Twilight faithful and their devotion to author Stephenie Meyer’s series. I get the appeal because its adolescent wish fulfillment with the flashes of danger muted by the overall security of traditional values (the vampire wants to wait until marriage before they have sex). I fully acknowledge my divorce from this conjured reality of the Twilight series. But that doesn’t mean I can’t judge the films on their merits. The first film worked for what it was, the second one was resoundingly bad, and now the third film, Eclipse, manages to reheat the same love triangle squabbles and call it something fresh.
Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is about to graduate high school and, presumably, graduate from the human race. Her vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), has pledged to grant her wish and make her a vampire so they can truly be together forever. Bella’s friend/werewolf/ab model Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is vehemently against this plan. He wants Bella to be with him instead. He’s the safer choice and she doesn’t have to become dead for a happily ever after. Bella is torn between her two romantic options, again. However, Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) is out their plotting vengeance against Bella and the Cullen clan of “vegetarian” vampires. She’s creating an army of newborn vampires in Seattle. The army is so powerful that the Cullens reach out to the werewolves for an alliance. Mortal enemies comes together, including feuding paramours Edward and Jacob, to protect Bella and vanquish Victoria once and for all.
For starters, stuff actually happens in the third Twilight movie. I know that’s a fairly damning comment in itself that one must wait until the third movie for action. But here’s the thing: the plot fails to advance more than an inch. At the end of New Moon, Bella pretty much made her choice when she decided to whisk to the other side of the earth at the very utterance of Edward’s name, leaving poor Jacob high and dry. In Eclipse, she solidifies her choice. In New Moon, Bella implores Edward to turn her into a vampire, which he agrees to do after she graduates from high school (what a bizarre academic motivation strategy). In Eclipse, Bella further implores Edward to turn her into a vampire, which he is reluctant to do, but eventually he agrees. In New Moon, the werewolves and vampires don’t like each other. In Eclipse, that’s about the same, but they form an uneasy alliance to protect Bella, the most important girl in the whole wide world. The third film feels like a student’s paper revision; characters now add supporting evidence to explain their decision-making. Bella now gets to expound in further detail why she should be turned into a vampire (hint: she doesn’t feel like she fits in), Jacob adds to a budding Master’s thesis on why he is the better romantic option for Bella, and Edward gets plenty of opportunity to be the wet blanket, whether he’s turning down a horny Bella (no action there) or warning her about the dire lifestyle of today’s modern vampiric American. Much of Eclipse is people sitting around and chatting about their decision-making, verbalizing stuff that Meyer has no ability to place as subtext. By the end of the movie, at least you feel satisfied that everybody has weighed their options, even if they keep making the same dumb mistakes.
Speaking of action, Eclipse greatly benefits from having an external threat throughout the movie. The first two films felt prosaic and self-involved partially due to the fact that an antagonist was never introduced until the final act of each movie. The first two movies were two hours of brooding and making cow-eyes at each other, followed by a requisite climactic fight that felt anything but climactic.
With Eclipse, we have Victoria building her army of newborn vampires, and we see that army form, wreck havoc on the streets of Seattle, and for once the Twilight series feels like it has a real threat. That’s because Victoria has never ever felt like a threat. I don’t know how she’s represented in Meyer’s books, but in three movies, this curly-haired vampire has always come across as woefully unintimidating. She feels like a Kate Hudson romantic comedy character with fangs. It just doesn’t work no matter how fast the filmmakers show she can run through forests. The Cullen clan will occasionally chase after her, that is, when they’re not lining up like they’re making superhero posse poses. Victoria has never cut it as a villain, so it’s a good move for her to amass an army of super vampires that will do her bidding. The audience is repeatedly told, rather than shown, how serious the newborn vampires are because, you see, newborns still have some human blood in them. Never mind that the Twilight movies have never made mention of this power before. What’s puzzling is that Victoria has been building up her base of bloodsuckers for over a year, so why aren’t there like a ton more? The army of newborns consists of like twelve vampires. I understand the logistics of having to feed and house multiple vampires, but if I was planning for a brutal assault I’d want as many of these super vampires as I could sire.
Let me rephrase some of what I just said. New Moon did have an antagonist and her name was Bella Swan. She was sullen, whiny, self-involved, casually hurtful, and she led around Jacob on a leash. The dude is obviously in love with her, and even tells her face-to-face in Eclipse. Bella toyed around with her self-described “best friend” for whatever she needed and then she screwed him over for her sparkly vampire. In Eclipse, she starts to repeat this same pattern of behavior. Every movie makes it emphatically clear that Bella and Edward are destined to be together, and yet every movie has Bella engage in this annoying, wishy-washy “Maybe I’ll be with you, maybe I won’t” dance to make the boys fight over her one more time and thus validate her existence. I’ve seen this type of behavior before; it’s loathsome. She’s less unlikable and callous in Eclipse. Bella is absent any defining characteristic so that the millions of Twilight readers can insert themselves into the story as the girl everybody wants to fight over. Edward practically hounds her at every turn to marry him, which also seems like another case of wish fulfillment. Bella seems defined by whatever man she has at the current time. I’m surprised more of Meyer’s readers don’t find this fact insulting. Well, in Eclipse Bella doesn’t magically sprout a personality so you’re stuck yet again with the Bella bores.
Director David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night) was an interesting choice to handle all this teenage melodrama. The visual aesthetic is much more refined and accomplished, and the pacing is infinitely better. New Moon was 130 minutes but felt eight times that long because of all the repetitious plotting and brooding, not to mention the gratuitous beefcake shots. Eclipse is only six minutes shorter than its predecessor and yet it moves along at a steady jaunt thanks to the immediate external threat. It still has to fit in all those beefcake shots to make the soccer moms swoon, but at least the movie maintains that pulpy teenage synergy from the first Twilight movie. The special effects have greatly improved as well, which makes the wolves vs. vampire fight scenes more entertaining to witness for the right reasons.
The screenplay for Eclipse includes all sorts of extras to round out the Twilight universe, though they are tangential to the plot at best. Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) and Rosalie (Nikki Reed) get their back-stories revealed, which means flashbacks with costumes! While each is momentarily diverting, why am I getting time taken out from the movie to flesh out the lives of what are, essentially, background characters? At least Slade doesn’t just let the actors jaw away with exposition; he shows the audience their pre-vampire lives. Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg has adapted every movie so far and she seems well aware of what her audience expects. Eclipse has the exasperating habit of not leaving anything implied. When Rosalie warns Bella about choosing to become a vampire, Bella promises she’ll never want anything more than Edward. “There’s one thing more you’ll want,” Rosalie says. And then, because the audience is perhaps too thick to pick up that subtlety, she adds, “Blood.”
Our threesome of young actors all seem to have their parts well memorized at this point. One part pouting, one part glowering, and two parts yearning. This is the meatiest film yet for the actors as they all get to assemble heir cases. Jacob argues that he’s best for Bella and tries to convince Edward that if he truly loves her, he won’t let her become a vampire. Edward knows the heartache that comes with transforming into a monster and watching as everybody you love dies while you seem to be standing still. Oh, and there’s that whole insatiable desire to drink blood thing, which is just gross. Bella realizes she’s in love with two guys at the same time. She also realizes that in order for her relationship with Edward to last, she will inevitable have to be turned into a vampire. It’s the fork in the road every “girl who dates vampire” story must ultimately lead.
Stewart and Pattinson give serviceable performances, though Stewart seems like she’s doing you the favor of acting, like she’d rather be elsewhere. Once again, Lautner, who seems to have the most fun with his role, upstages them. There’s a sequence where the threesome share a tent in the mountains, and Bella is freezing and the ice-cold Edward cannot warm her. A plan is hatched: Jacob will crawl into the sleeping bag with Bella and warm her with his body heat. The ridiculousness of the scene is pierced by Lautner deadpanning, “Well, I am hotter than you” (which left my packed theater screaming in approval). Even though he’s saddled with quasi-stalker dialogue like “You love me, you just don’t know it yet,” Lautner makes the most of his wolf-boy licking his wounds.
Here’s another revelation thanks to Eclipse: vampires are apparently made of porcelain. When a vampire is destroyed in the Twilight world, they literally can have limbs snapped off like it’s nothing. They look like dolls getting ripped apart. Occasionally someone will have their head beaten and the vampire cranium will just shatter into thick pieces, much like a porcelain doll. Weirdest of all, whenever a vampire gets hit they are accompanied by this rattling sound effect, like inside the vampires are filled with rolls of nickels and dimes. It’s bizarre and distracting. I don’t ever remember this happening to vampires in the previous two installments. Why not go the Buffy route and just have dead vampires turn into ash? It doesn’t have to be as violent and nauseating as vampires getting staked on HBO’s superior True Blood, but I expect more than vampires just breaking. These are the creatures of the night. They should not be fragile little porcelain dolls. I know Slade and the producers went this route so that they could ramp up their bloodless action and get away with more onscreen.
The fact that something other than two-hours of lovey-dovey romantic declarations and intense, self-indulgent brooding happens means this is by far the most action-packed film in the Twilight series yet. It’s still not that good but it is a vast improvement over the dour suckfest that was New Moon. In fact, since Eclipse repeats many of the same plot points there really is no reason to ever watch New Moon. Skip it altogether. Once again, little of consequence happens in the film but at least Bella isn’t insufferable and we get some nice supernatural fight scenes out of it. The appeal of the series has failed to be translated on the big screen. It’s all about the swoon, and Eclipse will keep the Twi-hards swooning as they take in their male sex objects brought to visual life. Once again, I will state that the Twilight series comes across like a tedious teenage soap opera scrubbed clean of teenage hormones. Eclipse is probably the most guy-friendly of all the films so far, but even that isn’t enough to keep old material interesting the third time it’s reheated.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Legion (2010)
Just to be upfront, I am a big fan of action movies making use of Christian mythology (sorry if the use of the word “mythology” offends some). You tell me a tale about angels, demons, in a contemporary setting no less, and I’m hooked. You give those two sides weapons and have them fight over the fate of mankind, and I’m already revving my engines. So please know that no matter what the artistic achievements of Legion may be, I was predisposed to enjoying a movie that features the angel Michael (Paul Bettany) on the poster with a sword in one hand and an automatic weapon in the other. The premise of Legion is that God has finally had it with mankind and is making good on his threat to “turn this thing around right now.” He’s sending a host of heavenly angels to … eliminate humanity. Michael rebelled, believing man was still capable of making good on its promise. So he fights alongside a handful of characters shacked up in Dennis Quaid’s greasy spoon diner in the middle of nowhere. The action isn’t really involving but the movies does have some cool moments, like when Michael goes mano-a-seraphim with Gabriel (a marble-mouthed Kevin Durand). Legion deals with an antagonist (God) that is so powerful that there have got to be arbitrary limits placed on that power. So the attacking angels don’t overwhelm the tiny diner with their superior numbers, nor does the Almighty just blink the troublemakers out of existence. The end doesn’t really give much in the way of clarity but I got what I wanted from a movie like Legion. Though, in retrospect, I really didn’t want sizzling acid popping from boils.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Final Destination 4 (2009)
I felt that this franchise was creatively exhausted after the third film in 2006, and I see no reason to change that opinion. The fourth film has the added feature of being in 3-D, which means you get the luxury of having entrails exploding in your face. I watched the movie in the limits of two dimensions, which may be why I wasn’t thrilled having every other visual thrown at the screen. Regardless, the cruelly elaborate deaths are the draw. This is a horror movie built from the inside out, finding the thinnest of tissue to connect all the gory gross-out moments. A documentary set in writer’s room for a Final Destination movie would be more interesting than the finished product. It seems like the producers aren’t even trying any more; the one-note characters exist in a world bereft of adults, cops, media, and anybody with a brain. The film doesn’t waste any time on characters because they’re all just meat for the grinder. The film does, literally, the bare minimum just to move the plot along to the next fiendish death trap (this flick has a franchise record 11 death sequences). At one point, a character says, “Don’t make fun, but we Google-ed ‘premonitions,'” and then they explain the rules of the series like somebody handed them a manual. Later, the teens celebrate because they think they broke death’s chain, and I’m yelling at the screen, “That hasn’t worked for three movies, you stupid kids!” They’re all running through the same worn-out patterns that the audience already knows by heart. The big question is whether the gruesome death sequences deliver the goods. Flaming escalators and killer car washes? Clever or desperate, you be the judge. For me, the fun of this franchise was killed long ago when it gave over to the cynical bloodlust of its target audience. Since Final Destination 4 made the most money out of any of the previous films, expect more entrails in glorious 3-D.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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The Lovely Bones (2009)
The Lovely Bones, based upon Alice Sebold’s 2002 best-selling blockbuster, is about some heavy stuff. It’s told entirely from the point of view of a dead teenage girl. She was raped and murdered by a skeevy neighbor, and now she gets to watch her family get torn apart through grief. For most filmmakers, this material would not be considered a “breather,” but then most filmmakers are not Peter Jackson (to my knowledge, only one is). The man known for epic fantasy adventures and lavish special effects applies his skills to bringing Sebold?s beyond-the-grave drama to life. The Lovely Bones has enough skill and craft to its merit, but Jackson’s rep as a filmmaker cannot save this poor adaptation. Who would have thought that the lord behind those Rings pictures could be felled by a teenage girl?
“I was fourteen years old when I was murdered,” Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) informs the audience. In 1973, young Susie Salmon (like the fish, we will be told many times) is walking home from school one night. Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci) approaches her and asks her to be the first kid in the neighborhood to see his underground clubhouse he built. She follows inside and will never make it back out alive. The police discover Susie’s knit hat and massive amounts of blood in the earth but no body. Susie’s family is a wreck. Jack Salmon (Mark Wahlberg) consumes himself with the mission of finding his daughter’s killer, alienating his wife, Abigail (Rachel Weisz). Mr. Harvey watches the stalled police investigation with growing pleasure, knowing he has gotten away with yet another child murder. As the years pass, he sets his sights on Susie’s younger sister, Lindsey (Rose McIver). But Susie is not completely absent during this period of time. She awakens in a magical, CGI-attuned spiritual realm known as the “in-between.” It is here that she spies on her family and her murderer and tries to pass time.
Since most of this story is told after her death, and because Susie died when she was a blossoming teenager, apparently she’s doomed to live the rest of her quasi-afterlife in that awkward visage. Imagine being a 14-year-old for eternity, and the only clothes you have to wear are ugly mustard-colored corduroy pants? That sounds more like hell than heaven. So Susie gets to interact in an afterlife built upon the mind of a teenager, which means that the afterlife involves pretending to be on magazine covers and dancing to disco music (again, heaven or hell?). I know that Jackson was asking for trouble by even attempting to interpret the ethereal, but his candy-colored version of Susie’s afterlife comes across like a bright, shiny doctor’s waiting room (“God will be with you in just a few minutes. Please enjoy our magazine selection in the meantime.”). It’s like you have to find peace before going through them pearly gates. Heaven doesn’t want your negativity so you are forced to chill in a screensaver.
There’s going to be some natural disconnect in trying to showcase a realm beyond human comprehension. I accept that, but why does Susie even bother staying in this “in-between” world? She spies on her family in grief through the years but she has no power to change things; that is, until she does for some inexplicable reason. And what does she do with that inter-dimensional power? She inhabits some girl’s body so she can snag her first kiss that her murder denied her. She passed up heaven and chose not to tell people about her body being disposed of. That doesn’t sound like she really reached any sense of enlightenment. But I digress. Why would Susie stay in this “in-between” when it only makes her sad? She’s fairly powerless and, honestly, does anybody really want to delay entering into heaven? Why does Susie get to pal around with all the other Mr. Harvey murder victims like some celestial support group? None of this can be explained because we’re dealing with a topic that defies rationale explanations. However, this “in-between” spiritual land feels like a visual leftover from the 1998 film, What Dreams May Come. That was another movie where I could never explain why anything happened.
Actually, the entire movie lacks any cause-effect continuity. The Lovely Bones feels bereft of any connective tissue. Characters will make huge decisions or be granted epiphanies because the plot demands it. I have no idea why Jack suddenly figures out that Mr. Harvey responsible for his daughter’s death. He thinks back to a memory and then all of a sudden everything makes sense, but only for his character. For me, none of it made sense. The entire investigation of Mr. Harvey doesn’t really hold up upon reflection. Jack personally looks into every shifty person in town but somehow overlooks the creepy loner across the street that builds meticulous dollhouses for fun? Mr. Harvey also likes to sketch out his murder pits, but just stop and think about Susie’s deathly hobbit hole. The man digs an entire underground lair in a cornfield. Wouldn’t it take hours if not days to refill the whole thing to cover his tracks? For a prolific serial killer, Mr. Harvey seems to be somewhat careless about leaving behind evidence (a safe filled with your victim’s remains?). I guess this is why Susie has to tell us at the onset that people were ignorant to all this unpleasantness in 1973 (I guess that means common sense was acquired in 1974). Why does Abigail all of a sudden desert her family? She can’t take the grief, so she ditches her two other younger children to live the life of a migrant worker. And why does she come back? How can two brown-eyed, brown-haired parents have three blue-eyed, blonde-haired kids? The entire movie lacks vital coherency and context.
From a tonal standpoint, The Lovely Bones never quite settles down and figures out what film it?s going to be. It veers from sentimental melodrama, to thriller, to headache-inducing camp (Sarandon’s boozy grandmother is terrible at housework — hilarious!). Jackson and crew jettison large amounts of Sebold’s text, leaving behind a New Age-y heaven and a fairly lame murder mystery where we already know the guilty party. The drama then pretty much boils down to whether or not Mr. Harvey will get caught.
You can tell that the serial killer segments grabbed Jackson’s interest the most because every sequence with Mr. Harvey feels more predicated and textured, like Jackson is applying more skill to showcase the twisted mind of a sick man. Jackson exerts far more energy into exploring the dark reaches of Mr. Harvey than he does the mourning of the Salmon family. We are denied the complexity of grief and remembrance. As presented, the Salmon family gets to weep and shout but nobody really tackles the issues or moving forward and acceptance of loss. Instead, we watch Mr. Harvey twitch and squirm and plot his next move. Tucci is appropriately scary, aided by an ominous comb-over. The segment when a ghostly Susie stumbles into Mr. Harvey’s bathroom is the best moment of dread. The bright white room is splattered in trails of dirt and streaks of hardened, dark blood, while Mr. Harvey rests in his bath with a washcloth covering his face. It seems like Jackson decided that what fans really wanted from a Lovely Bones movie was more serial killer screen time. If the family drama was going to be this boring, then I say devote the whole movie to the creep.
The acting is another curious detraction. Ronan (Atonement) fits the part but Jackson forces her to speak in this annoying, pseudo-spiritual whisper, like once you?ve attained the knowledge of the afterlife you become very soft-spoken. She shows a decent range of emotions but even she can?t quite figure out her character. Wahlberg seems miscast in his role and pretty limited in his depiction of obsessive grief. Weisz gets to cry her eyes out the most but then her character sits out the second half of the flick. Sarandon is only playing the role she was given, so I’ll be fair in my criticism, but her brassy, alcohol-swilling grandmother is like an unwelcome party crasher. She’s broad and loud and mostly cartoonish. I understand Sarandon was serving as comic relief amidst all the heavy drama, but it doesn’t count as relief when you wince at her presence. Tucci gives the mot layered, nuanced performance. He tries to relive each kill but soon enough the memory fades, and he feels the unstoppable impulse to feed his demons. Tucci is deeply scary, though he kind of talks like the roof of his mouth is stuffed with peanut butter.
Heavenly Creatures showed the world that Jackson could do so much more than campy, splattery gore and crude humor. It beautifully dealt with the scary, bewildering world of fantasy and budding feminine sexuality. Now after four grandiose movies, The Lovely Bones was supposed to be a trip back to that smaller, character-driven territory that Jackson first charted in Heavenly Creatures. Now I wonder if Jackson has the ability to return to smaller scope pictures. He and his screenwriting brain trust, Philipa Boyens and Fran Walsh, have softened the harder elements from the novel, completely eliminating any sexual emphasis. This PG-13 take is heavy on ponderous acid trip visuals and light on coherence, and when you can?t understand why things are happening after a while you stop caring why. After a while, I just stopped caring about Susie Salmon (like the fish).
Nate’s Grade: C
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The Spirit (2008)
This is the last time someone will let Frank Miller direct. Astoundingly bad, The Spirit is borderline camp for every absurd and bizarre second. It careens all over the place, never settling on a tone. So one minute it will be hard-boiled noir and the next it will break down the fourth wall and amp up the goofy slapstick to Looney Tunes levels. The story is threadbare, the characters are half-developed ideas, and each scene almost exists in its own five-minute world before Miller barrels forward. Sure the flick has some appealing visuals, but even those are derivative of the superior Sin City. As a director, Miller doesn’t cut it. He will shoot scenes with nothing but close-ups, giving no point of establishment for the audience, and he’s too prone to random diversions. Miller displays zero ability, or a complete disregard, for directing actors; they are terrible in different ways. Gabriel Macht, as the back-from-the-dead crime fighter The Spirit, sounds like Paul Rudd doing a Harrison Ford impression. Samuel L. Jackson, as the nefarious criminal/mad scientist/also semi-immortal The Octopus, overacts to a degree not even seen by Samuel L. Jackson. Scarlett Johansson, as an evil assistant, can’t even hide her disdain and boredom. This stuff just becomes unchecked lunacy, but it still manages to be boring through and through. The hero is a stiff, all the women are sex objects, and the conflicts are pointless when the combatants can’t be killed. The only thing worth mentioning is that Eva Mendes is still a gorgeous looking woman. Even Miller couldn’t fumble that one.
Nate?s Grade: D
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A Christmas Carol (2009)
I still am at a loss over the appeal of the motion-capture system that director Robert Zemeckis fancies as of late. The creative mind that gave us classics Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? has embraced a technology that straddles the middle between live-action and outright animation. Motion-capture attaches electronic nodes to actors and digitizes their movements and facial features to later be conceptualized by computer wizards. And to this I say… so what? It seems like a whole slew of unnecessary work that adds little else than a vague starting point. Why not let the animators start from scratch? Why hamstrung creative professionals because Cary Elwes was feeling like making a certain gesture as “Portly Gentlemen #1?” I just don’t get it. To me, the motion-capture system is stranded in some artistic netherworld where it isn’t live-action and it isn’t animation. Zemeckis has cranked out his third mo-cap baby this decade, a retelling of Charles Dickens’ famous Christmas Carol. Why Zemeckis thought an old holiday chestnut would work best in this format, I’ll never know.
Cold-hearted Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is set to be visited by three spirits on a very magical Christmas Eve. The old man goes through Christmas past, present, and future to reevaluate his life and the true meaning of “peace on earth and good will toward men.” You know the drill, folks.
I like A Christmas Carol. I do. So do plenty of nice people. There’s a reason this oft-told tale still manages to resonate with generation after generation and that?s because it’s a good story. Of course it’s also an extremely familiar story to just about anyone outside of a womb at the moment. I expected Zemeckis and his crew to use their technology to jazz up the old story and give it a fresh new life on the big screen. Despite a handful of excursions flying through ye olde London, the extra slathering of special effects doesn’t enliven this holiday tale. I remember having great fun with Zemeckis’ previous motion-capture movie, 2007’s Beowulf (which does not play nearly as well in 2-D). That movie played around with the 3-D environment to great effect and made you feel apart of the experience. In contrast, A Christmas Carol does shockingly little with its depth of field, rarely placing distance between the foreground and the background. It’s a fairly lackluster 3-D experience. Maybe I wasn’t relaxing my eyes the right way, though I did notice how conscious I was of trying to elevate the 3-D experience myself. My disappointment is magnified by the fact that Zemeckis has been a pioneer for the 3-D playbook that Hollywood has now dubbed as the savior of the theater going experience.
I wonder if Disney execs imposed limitations on the use of the 3-D immersion, not wanting to scare children by making them feel like they’re in the middle of a ghost story (there are some spooky moments already). The whole draw of motion-capture, and animation, is to transport an audience untethered by the limits of traditional practical filmmaking. This newest incarnation of A Christmas Carol fails to justify its existence. Why should I pay to see the most familiar story of modern day if there isn’t any new offering? At least The Muppet Christmas Carol gave me something different. And it had Muppets.
When I was younger in the mid 90s I was a huge fan of Carrey’s rubber-faced antics. I quoted Ace Ventura verbatim with my fellow seventh graders in 1995. So I understand the attraction of having him play multiple parts, but why exactly in a Dickens story? It’s not a comedy unless it’s adapted into one, and Zemeckis hews very close to Dickens and mostly recites the tale word-for-word. Scrooge isn’t funny, the ghosts aren’t funny, so why hire a renowned comedian to portray them all? This is a straight-laced adaptation and as such not the best use for Carrey’s talents. Is the move any better because Carey played all three ghosts? Is the movie any better because Gary Oldman gets to play Bob Cratchett and voice Tiny Tim? Is the movie any better because Elwes is credited for five inconsequential roles? Celebrity vocal casting is rarely effective in animation and so it seems the same in motion-capture.
The technology has improved from the dead-eyed zombie children days of Polar Express, but it still seems like little more than less refined animation to my eyes. The movements are more fluid but the color palate is subdued into amber hues and candlelit locales. It doesn’t exactly use all the technological tools in the toolbox. It’s like a five-star chef toasting a Pop Tart: a waste of potential. I didn’t care for the skewed proportions on people either. Scrooge has a wiry frame with long spidery limbs and a triangular torso, and his character design kept reminding me of Jack Skellington. It’s too otherworldly considering nobody else comes across as a garish caricature in design form. The character designs for the three spirits are also fairly underwhelming. The Ghost of Christmas Past is a wispy flame. The Ghost of Christmas Future is nothing but a shadow. Is there a connection here? Otherwise, a shadow is pretty lame for the one ghost that can get really inventive and scary. Really, a shadow? I can do that myself without the aid of computers. And was it Carrey’s shadow to make it officially motion-capture? Because God forbid no other shadow could do or give the same performance of being draped over shapes.
I actually had to vehemently fight the urge to nap during A Christmas Carol. Maybe it was my poor sleep from the night before, maybe it was the fact that the 3-D glasses make everything darker (they still manage to hurt my eyes after prolonged use), but it was likely due to the fact that Zemeckis added a coat of polish to a holiday classic but declined to find purpose for doing so. Does this story get better with zooms through London, or Scrooge being shrunk and chased by demonic horses? It all seems like folly to me, like somebody’s idea to goose literary classics. Can you imagine Jane Eyre being shrunk and climbing through the walls of her Victorian era home? It all seems like an annoying distraction. Zemeckis? A Christmas Carol is exactly what you’d expect, which means you’d be just as well to flip through the TV channels and find any number of Christmas Carol versions. The Muppet Christmas Carol might even be on. Give that one a try instead. It even has some nice songs. And it’s got Muppets.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Paranormal Activity (2009)
My eyes are bleary. I feel like a walking ghost. My body aches just a tad. I’m over responsive to sudden movement. Not only have I just seen Paranormal Activity, the small indie horror film that has been sweeping the nation, but also I’ve just endured my first post-Paranormal night of sleep. To say it was refreshing would be an outright lie. My then-partner was tossing and turning, routinely grabbing my arm to hold her, also sitting straight up to peer through the darkness of our bedroom, and occasionally she would request that our dog jump on the bed to sit with us for extra support. She and I have seen scary movies before but none have interrupted my sleep patterns like this low-budget sensation. That alone is the best blurb that I could possibly offer to the Paranormal Activity marketing gurus: this movie will make it difficult for you to sleep in your home.
The back-story to this Cinderella tale is that writer/director Oren Peli was hearing unexplained strange noises in his San Diego home. After some research he said, “Why don’t I set up a camera and make a movie about this?” He then hatched a plot involving a young couple, Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat), who hear some bumps in he night while they sleep. Micah sets up a stationary video camera to record the strange happenings as a cool project. It begins with small, subtle noises, then the presence of something unwelcome becomes much more pronounced. Micah taunts the antagonistic spirit, coaxing some kind of response. Katie is terrified because, as they learn from a psychic, this is the same entity that has been following and haunting Katie her whole life; her family home burned down unexplainably when she was a child. It wants Katie. That was the story, though Peli says most of the dialogue was improvised (it shows). The actors doubled as camera operators, the movie was shot over seven days in Peli’s own San Diego home, and the total cost was $11,558, a pittance for a Hollywood movie. So how did this cheap home video haunting take the nation by storm, becoming the indie phenomenon of 2009 and one of the most profitable films in modern history?
Let’s start with the fact that it’s actually scary. That’s likely what audiences have been responding to — competency. The film is presented as “found footage” much like the similar low-budget horror sensation, The Blair Witch Project (can you believe it?s ten years old already?). The story is presented as factual footage, and Peli makes a point of not breaking the terms of reality. Some of the spook stuff is easy to explain, like lights going on and off in the distance, but there are some moments that are more dramatic and give no hint of special effects. I am impressed by the ingenuity of Peli on his super low budget. I went from being startled to admiring the technical craftsmanship. Paranormal Activity isn’t a big scream movie, it’s more unsettling and the majority of its scary moments occur while the camera is on its bedroom tripod (the tripod should receive third billing in the credits, frankly). Sure, a creaking door or lights magically turning on doesn’t sound like surefire moments of blood-curdling terror, but the fact is that stuff is happening while this couple sleeps, a time when we are most vulnerable, is the point and why it’s scary. Peli structures the movie so that it fosters a slow burn of suspense. By making the camera the only viewpoint, we as an audience feel trapped, much like the characters. The idea that something will get us while we sleep isn’t new but it’s certainly creepy.
The actors work well enough not to betray the “found footage” motif as well. Neither gives a spellbinding performance, mind you, but Featherston and Slout are believable for almost every second onscreen. They’re a couple experiencing a home invasion of a different sort. Micah is more interested in his technical toys than the traumatic state of his girlfriend of three years, and Katie even admonishes him after a scare, “Did you actually run and get the camera first?” Featherston exhibits the most fear and trepidation, and her squeals and cries can be alarming. Their interaction and intimacy doesn’t really communicate a couple of three years time. However, this does not detract from the flick because the title isn’t Relationship Drama, now is it?
So at this point I need to ask myself, why was I scared during Paranormal Activity and merely amused by the similar exploits in The Blair Witch Project? Maybe it’s the location. The bedroom is supposed to be your sanctuary, your respite. It’s a bit more universal than getting lost in the woods to make a movie. I also think the concept is responsible for my different reactions. In Blair Witch, they were being haunted by a forest ghost who had a thing for arts and crafts. Waking up to stone piles and stick figures just doesn’t resonate like footage of something happening to you while you sleep unaware. Peli does a fine job of making an audience dread what is to come next. Just as I wrote ten years ago for Blair Witch: “The anticipation of the unknown is far more frightening than being slowly chased by a man in a rain slicker. It’s no typical horror flick, it lets you create the fear in your head and let you drive yourself mad with it.” This is why Paranormal Activity works as well as it does. You can immerse yourself and then grip the armrest in fear and then laugh about it later. I also appreciate that Peli solved my number one problem with haunted house movies. You see, if your house is haunted then — MOVE! Simple, huh? Why try sticking it out to regain the resell value when the walls are dripping blood? At least in Paranormal Activity says that the evil spirit is attached to Katie.
Thanks to weeks spent at the top of the box office, even besting the lingering Saw franchise, it is inevitable that Paranormal Activity will balloon in hype that it cannot compete with. Rather than its budget limitations hindering the final product, Peli and his actors have embraced their low-budget aesthetics and produced something effectively eerie and occasionally ingenious. What these people have done with $11,000 (probably the budget for bagels on the pseudo true story, The Fourth Kind) is worth applauding. Like most horror movies, this one will play better with a full crowd ready to ride the roller coaster wave of screams and giggles. Paranormal Activity is proof that you don’t need stars and major budgets to get audiences scared. Your feelings of terror are the great equalizer, which is why cheap but smart and inventive horror movies can easily outpace their bigger budget brethren. Just be prepared for a few rough nights of sleep afterward.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Sam Raimi returns to his spook roots in this delightfully disgusting horror flick. Drag Me to Hell has such a gleefully playful and perverse personality, alternating between being scary, being gross, being funny, and circling back for more. This is camp of the highest hokey order, and Raimi infuses every moment with inspired schlock. Poor Alison Lohman, the bank loan officer cursed to be dragged to hell in three days time. She gets a lot of fluids sprayed into her face (there’s an oral obsession to this movie; lots of mouth stuff) and she takes it like a trooper. She’s put through a physical wringer here and maintains her dignity and believability among staples to the head, grave digging, and talking goats. The ending seems to be coasting to a predictable finish and then it hits you in the head, upsetting your sensibilities. I loved it. Drag Me to Hell, ultimately, is little more than a glossy, entertaining blow-off, a reminder what an inventive director can do with the horror genre. It doesn’t all have to be nubile teenagers escaping a knife-wielding maniac. If there is one lesson I’ve learned from movies and television, you do not anger the gypsies. They have a monopoly on curses and they are not afraid to use them.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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