Tag: movie reviewer

Sinister

korislaughterLeave a comment

October 12, 2012
Horror/Thriller
R
United States
Director: Scott Derrickson

“Shhh…”

Four family members have bags over their heads and nooses around their necks. An intricate mechanism is set up to have a pole saw cut a branch, and as the branch falls, the family is lifted up into the air, where they hang until they die. This sets the feel for the rest of the movie.

Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is a true crime writer who has set his sights on the subject of his new book: the Stevenson family who were hanged in their backyard and their missing daughter, Stephanie (Victoria Leigh). He hasn’t had a best seller since “Kentucky Blood”, and he’s determined to change that. Unbeknownst to his wife, Tracy (Juliet Rylance), he has moved his own family into the house the Stevenson’s once owned in a small town in Pennsylvania. Their kids, Trevor (Michael Hall D’Addario) and Ashley (Clare Foley), get taken along for the ride.

As Ellison is helping carry boxes into the house, he finds one already in the attic. When he opens it, he sees five home movies and a projector. Since the house was the scene of a gruesome murder, he decides they would be worth watching in case anything is left on them that could give him clues about the killer and the missing girl.

The films include the titles: “Family Hanging Out”, “BBQ”, “Pool Party”, “Sleepy Time”, and Lawn Work” – all with different years. He decides to watch “Family Hanging Out”, and it starts out rather normally: a family enjoying their time together in their yard. What it turns into, however, is the snuff film of the Stevenson family being hanged. This is a shock to Ellison, but he decides to see what other films there are and watches “BBQ”. This one shows a family fishing at a river, but quickly cuts to them tied up in their chained-up car in the garage, which is promptly set on fire. At this point, he contemplates calling the police, and actually does, but when he gets an answer, he remembers the book he wants to write and hangs up.

As the days go on and Ellison does more research into the murders, Trevor begins having night terrors. He’d had them when he was younger, and his parents thought he was over them, but now they’re back and worse than ever. Ellison finds Trevor first in a moving box, then again out in some bushes in the backyard. Tracy, who already struggles with her husband’s work, finds herself becoming short with him and arguing about what their move to that house is doing to their family. Of course, Ellison hasn’t told her whose house they’ve moved into, but she can sense something is wrong.

On top of this, Ellison starts hearing footsteps in the attic. He decides to take a look, and in doing so, finds a snake underneath the lid for the home movie box. Upon closer inspection of the lid, he notices stick-figure-like drawings of all the home movie murders, though they all seem to be drawn by different people. He’s startled out of his thoughts when he hears a bang behind him, signalling that the door to the attic closed. In a panic, he starts back for the door, but falls through the ceiling. The power had gone out, so he was using his phone’s flashlight to see and filming himself at the same time. When he goes back to look at the footage, he notices several small hands pushing him down as he falls. This is naturally unsettling to him, but not as much as what he sees when he delves further into the home movies.

During “Pool Party” where a family is tied to loungers and drowned in their pool, Ellison spots the face of someone (or something) in the water. It looks vaguely like a man, but the features are distorted… or disfigured. He also finds a strange symbol painted on a wall in the house of “Sleepy Time” right before that family gets their throats slit. But there’s one thing he does see in “Sleepy Time” that catches his eye: the family lived in St. Louis.

The local deputy (James Ransone) is a fan of Ellison, much to the chagrin of the sheriff (Fred Thompson), and becomes a useful part to Ellison’s personal investigation. The deputy (who comes to be known as Deputy So and So) delves into the murders in St. Louis, as well as the family who burned to death in their car. What he finds is that the Stevenson’s used to live in the house in St. Louis after that family had their throats cut. Something else that’s found out is that in each family murder, there is one child that goes missing.

Ellison struggles more and more with the growing knowledge, as well as Trevor’s night terrors and the sounds he keeps hearing through the house. On top of this, he’s woken up on several occasions by the sound of the projector turning on by itself, where the “Family Hanging Out” film is always playing. To further set him on edge, other things happen, like a dog showing up in his backyard and scaring him.

To help further the investigation along, the deputy suggests to Ellison that he should contact a professor who specializes in ancient lore. What Professor Jonas (Vincent D’Onofrio) finds out is that the symbol Ellison found is a worship of an obscure Pagan deity; specifically Bughuul. This particular deity is an eater of children’s souls and he tricks kids away from the real world into a “nether world” where he can consume their souls over time.

The sounds around the house are getting worse, and as Ellison checks around one night, he doesn’t see the ghosts of the missing kids running around and watching him. Little Ashley does, though. Ashley wants to grow up to be an artist, and she’s allowed to paint on her bedroom walls. Mostly, she paints horses, but she gets in trouble when Tracy finds a painting of a young girl on a tire swing in the hallway. When asked why she did it, Ashley explains that Stephanie told her that she didn’t want her painting in the room anymore, because that used to be her brother’s room. That’s when Tracy finds out what house they’re living in. You can imagine how well that conversation goes, though Ellison and Tracy believe it’s the overactive imagination of a little girl who heard the stories about the Stevenson’s rather than a ghost child talking to their daughter. Still, Tracy begs Ellison to stop, even through his refusals.

That all changes, though, when Ellison once more hears the projector turn on. He goes into his office, but when he sees the projector isn’t there, he follows the sound into the attic, where he sees it set up and playing with the ghost children sitting around it. He immediately takes the box with the movies and the projector and burns them, and when Tracy goes to see what he’s doing, he tells her to pack up some stuff and get the kids. They’re leaving.

They move back into their old house and everyone seems content, even with the deputy continuously trying to call and Ellison always ignoring him. He sets up his laptop in his office and opens his emails to see one from Jonas. He clicks on the file to see pictures of strange engravings. Pictures he’s seen before. Pictures almost exactly like the home movie murders. He video calls Jonas, where the professor explains to him that children who see these particular images are more vulnerable to Bughuul’s influence. Ellison doesn’t think much of it at first, but then the deputy calls again. This time, Ellison answers, and what the deputy has to tell him makes his blood run cold.

The deputy did some more digging through the other murders and found out that each of the families that were killed had previously lived in the house where a murder took place. Meaning, Ellison and his family moving put him directly into the pattern of the serial ritualistic killer.

And that’s not all. While Ellison was moving some boxes into the attic, he sees another one that’s very familiar: one that has home movies. Out of fear and frustration, he shakes the contents out of the box and finds something new. This time, there is a package with “extended cut endings” written on it. With his curiosity getting the better of him, he plays them, where he finds that the “missing” kids are the ones who committed the murders of their families.

Now he’s feeling sick, but not just from the discovery. He finds traces of a glowing, green drug in his coffee cup and passes out. When he wakes up, he has duct tape over his mouth and he’s tied up. He can see Tracy, who is also tied up. Ashley comes forward dragging an axe, and tells her father that she’ll “make him famous again”. Then she lifts up a camera and begins filming.

The end shows Ashley drawing on the box lid of her own home movie, which has been given the name, “House Painting”. In the film, we see blood spattered across the walls, with pictures including a horse and dog. Then Bughuul (Nicholas King) picks her up and carries her into the projection screen.

There’s a lot to this movie, I realize, but I wanted to give you a good feel of it. It tops as one of my favorite horror films, because it has so much to it. The ghosts, the ancient gods, the murder, the mystery. I do wish that it had ended without it showing Bughuul carrying Ashley into the projection screen, because I feel like it takes away from the atrocity of what she’s done. Still, it is a great movie with it’s constant creepy vibe and fair share of jump scares, and I highly recommend it.

If you have a movie you would like me to review, leave a comment or send an email to spoileralertblog@outlook.com with “movie review” in the subject line.

The King and I

korislaughterLeave a comment

thekingandi

June 29, 1956
Biography/Drama/Musical
G
United States
Director: Walter Lang

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” – Abraham Lincoln

This story takes place in Siam (presently known as Thailand) 1862. A schoolteacher from England, Anna Leonowens (Deborah Kerr), travels to Siam for work after she is widowed with her son Louis (Rex Thompson). She has been hired by King Mongkut (Yul Brynner) to teach his children English and scientific method.

It’s made clear from the beginning that Anna is a strong woman who will not bow in fear to anyone, not even the king. Mongkut is pleased by this, for it shows a strong mind, but throughout the movie, he gets increasingly more annoyed with her. At the same time, however, he appears to prefer her company above all others. Not only is she stubborn with him, but her kind nature never wavers, and he’s as drawn to her as he is confused by her. There is at one point where the English government is threatening to take over Siam because they see Mongkut as a “barbarian”. His first reaction is to fight fire with fire, but Anna cleverly talks him into providing them with a banquet and theatrical entertainment. And by “cleverly”, I mean she turns the words around to make it sound like it’s his idea. The result is the English government seeing how civilized and respectable the Siamese people are.

Anna does teach the children, as is her job, but she also teaches Mongkut. Not just with kindness toward other countries, but also to his subjects. He was raised that a man should take as many women as wives as he can, but a woman needs to be loyal to that one man. One of his many wives, Tuptim (Rita Moreno), is unhappy with the arrangement and runs away to meet with her true love, Lun Tha (Carlos Rivas). She’s captured, and the punishment for betrayal is being beaten with a whip. Mongkut is ready to do it himself and has his guards hold Tuptim on the floor, but Anna intervenes. She basically yells at him, telling him that she can’t believe he would do this and has no heart. He becomes frustrated, tosses the whip away, and storms out. The last we see of Tuptim is her being dragged away by the guards and overhearing that Lun Tha has been found in the river, dead.

Anna is infuriated with how the king and his staff behave – how they are so willing to destroy a life – that she’s determined to take her son and leave. However, Mongkut’s head wife, Lady Thiang (Terry Saunders), informs Anna that Mongkut is dying. Ever since Anna degraded him for being ready to beat Tuptim, he locked himself in his room and refused to eat or sleep. He spends three weeks like that, and Anna goes to see him on his deathbed. She had fallen in love with the people of Siam, and more specifically, the children she’s teaching. They beg her not to go, and it’s interesting to see that they care more about her staying than they do about their father dying. Anna had accused Mongkut of never loving anyone, and in that moment, it sort of shows. He had tried to be a good king and father, but he was doing what he had been taught. During the film, Anna shows him how different life is when one doesn’t treat those around him like slaves.

The end of the movie is Anna deciding to stay in Siam for the children, and the crowned prince, Chulalongkorn (Patrick Adiarte), begins to make proclamations as the new king, starting with celebrating the new year with fireworks and boat races, as well as subjects no longer bowing to the king, but instructing them better ways to show respect that doesn’t create fatigue on the body. As Chulalongkorn is doing this, Mongkut dies with Anna by his side.

This movie is one I’d heard about, but never really entertained the idea of watching. Not really for any particular reason; it just didn’t draw my interest. Why I watched it now is by the request of my dad. So, what do I think about it? Comedy is not in the list of genres this movie has, but I found Yul Brynner to be very amusing. I quite literally laughed out loud at most of the stuff he did with his performance. I was very much enjoying the film up until the end. It had a certain air about it: fun and charismatic. By the end of the movie, however, it just seemed to lose all that. I mean, it’s understandable given the fact that the king is dying, but I was sort of hoping for the fun to last throughout.

Having said that, this movie has an enormous amount of lessons that I think gives it more heart than a lot of films. One is the anti-slavery stance it takes. Anna is very outspoken in her views of how wrong slavery is, of which Tuptim finds most relatable, given her circumstance. Then there’s the pro-feminism aspect, which is apparent from the beginning, especially with Tuptim and how she’s a “gift” for the king, as if she were some object. They make mention a few times throughout about women being viewed as less than men; how their purpose is to please men. Anna comments on how absurd the notion is. Finally, there’s Mongkut’s death itself. While he dies with no one really mourning him, yet celebrating Anna’s decision to stay, it shows how important it is to not treat people as they’re any less significant than you, no matter your stance. Even a king.

I actually really do recommend this movie. The slavery and feminist issues that are brought up rather surprised me, what with it coming out in the fifties. Then again, it’s also based off of the book, “Anna and the King of Siam”, which came out in 1944 by Margaret Landon, which, in turn, is from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens in the 1860’s. Still, no matter how you look at it, The King and I is a very enjoyable film to watch and has a lot that can be taken away from it. I urge you to watch it.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

If you have a movie you would like me to review, leave a comment or send an email to spoileralertblog@outlook.com with “movie review” in the subject line.

The Game

korislaughter2 Comments

thegame

September 12, 1997
Drama/Mystery/Thriller
R
United States
Director: David Fincher

“I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see.” – John Newton

The amusing aspect of this movie is that the spoiler is in the name itself. The whole plot is about an elaborate game surrounding the life of Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) in a psychological twister of a ride.

Nicholas grew up in a very wealthy family. For all intents and purposes, they seemed very content with their lives. The beginning of the film shows home movies with Nicholas, his parents, and his new baby brother. We see later in a flashback that Nicholas unfortunately witnessed the suicide of his father when he jumped off of the roof of their rather large house. It appears that this event set in motion how both Nicholas and his brother turned out later in life.

Nicholas is an investment banker in Sacramento, California. He has a lot of money, lives in the family home, and is someone who demands respect the second he steps into a room. He’s typically polite, saying “please” and “thank you”, but is obviously a cold and calculated man. He values his work more than anything in his life, which is made clear by the separation of his wife, Elizabeth (Anna Katarina). His brother, Conrad (Sean Penn), is the polar opposite: a meth addict who needs medication for his mental problems, as well as therapy.

It’s Nicholas’ forty-eighth birthday, and Conrad gives him a card that reads “Consumer Recreation Services”, or CRS. He explains that it’s a company who constructs a game for the participants, that he himself has done it, and it changed his life to the point where he no longer needs to take anything or see anyone for his mental health.

Nicholas goes to the local office of CRS and meets with Jim Feingold (James Rebhorn), who has him fill out several surveys. While he’s there, Nicholas also has to go through a physical: hearing tests, visual associations, heart rate tests, and some others. He ends up spending his whole day there, which he’s annoyed by. By the end, Jim tells him that one day soon, The Game would start. When Nicholas asks what The Game is, and all Jim tells him is that it’s different for everyone.

The next day when Nicholas goes home after work, he finds an adult-sized dummy clown in his driveway, in the spot where his father landed when he killed himself. This understandably unnerves Nicholas, but brings the dummy inside, where he finds a key in the clown’s mouth. Also in the clown is a camera, which Nicholas finds out when his TV begins speaking to him, telling him about the steps of The Game, and that the key would be to something he needed, he just needs to keep an eye out for it.

I can’t go into the full details without making this a three-hour-long read, but what I can say is this: in the following days, Nicholas is suspicious of everyone and everything he sees. He even thinks the key is for his briefcase, which he mysteriously can’t open. The Game truly starts at a restaurant he regularly frequents when a waitress named Christine (Deborah Kara Unger) spills a tray of beverages all over him. She apologizes profusely, he rejects it, she calls him an asshole, and promptly gets fired. Nicholas is moved to a different table where a “waiter” drops off a note that tells him to not let Christine get away.

Nicholas catches up with her outside, where she brushes him off, but then a man crossing the street collapses. Christine performs CPR on him while Nicholas hails down a police car. An ambulance shows up, Christine and Nicholas are made to ride in it to the hospital, and when they get there, all the lights in the garage turn off and everyone runs away. Christine is naturally suspicious of this, but Nicholas explains that it’s part of The Game. As they walk through the garage, an elevator door opens , so they get in and push the button for the lobby. When nothing happens, Nicholas takes out the key, turns it in a slot, and the elevator starts to move.

But then it stops, so the two climb through the ceiling and get to the closest floor. Nicholas realizes he forgot his briefcase in the elevator, but the doors have shut, and there’s nothing he can do. They start to head toward a door when Nicholas recognizes the building they’re in: it’s the CRS local headquarters. They trip a laser alarm, which leads to a chase with security, complete with a dog. Ultimately, they get away and go to Nicholas’ office, where he (for some reason) has a shower. Since they got incredibly dirty during the chase, Christine asks if she can wash up while Nicholas calls for a cab.

The next morning, Nicholas wakes up to the sound of his phone. It’s his assistant who’s wondering where he is. He tells her he’ll be there soon, and she lists off calls he’s gotten so far, including from a hotel that has his credit card. He calls the hotel, and they inform him that the flowers have been sent to his room. He goes to the hotel, finds out he somehow already has a key card, and when he gets to his room, there’s an abundance of drugs, porn, and photographs of him and a faceless woman wearing nothing but a red bra, which are surrounding – and in- his briefcase. He does his best to clean up and takes the photographs with him.

After this, he goes back home where he finds the place has been broken into, and there’s graffiti in every room he steps in. At one point, he finds a piece of paper that reads, “Like my father before me, I choose eternal sleep,” and a photo of his father’s suicide. This is what really sends him off the rails. He starts to call the police, but before he can complete it, Conrad shows up in a panic.

They go for a drive and Conrad is on edge, talking about how he screwed up with CRS, that they keep messing with his life, and that he’s even tried to pay them more to make them stop. The car gets a flat tire, and Nicholas moves to get the jack out of the trunk and tells Conrad to get something out of the glove box. When Conrad opens it, dozens of keys labeled “CRS” come falling out, and he accuses Nicholas of being in on the whole thing before running off.

Nicholas finds out where Christine lives by looking up the address where the cab dropped her off. When he goes to her house, she lets him in and says that they can talk. She had been sleeping when he showed up, so says she’ll get dressed. While she’s gone, Nicholas notices that one of her lamps has smoke rising from it. When he looks inside the shade, he sees a sales tag still attached and smoldering from the bulb. He removes it, but burns himself in the process, so goes to the sink to run water over it. However, the water won’t turn on. He gets the feeling of suspicion and looks in the refrigerator, only to find it empty. The books on the shelves are props. The photos in frames are cutouts from magazines. When she returns and he asks her about it, she whispers to him that there’s a camera in the fire alarm. He gets angry, breaks it, and all hell breaks loose.

People from CRS show up in full SWAT gear and begin shooting up the house. Christine and Nicholas escape, and as they drive away, she tells him that she’s an employee for CRS, but is scared of them, and that Nicholas has been conned.

He drives them to a cabin, one that his family clearly owns based on the family photos inside, and Christine makes them tea. He drinks it while Christine explains how CRS is able to scam people by draining their accounts, and Nicholas calls up one of the banks himself to check, but finds that it’s been emptied. He then calls his lawyer, Sam Sutherland (Peter Donat), who has also checked the accounts and assures him that everything is fine. Christine tells Nicholas that Sam is in on it, so Nicholas hangs up. But when he does, his vision starts to blur, and he realizes that Christine has drugged him through the tea.

He wakes up in a coffin-like box in some sort of tunnel. When he breaks out, he finds himself in a cemetery in Mexico. He has no money on him, no passport, and no ID, so he smuggles himself back into America and hitchhikes to Sacramento. When he gets there, he goes to his house and sees that it’s been foreclosed and almost completely emptied. However, there’s one thing that had been left: a book titled “To Kill A Mockingbird”. He takes it and goes to Elizabeth’s house.

Though divorced, Elizabeth never stopped caring about Nicholas, so when he says that he needs to borrow her car, she lets him. There’s a TV playing and a commercial comes on where he recognizes the face of Jim. It’s at this point he figures out that Jim is an actor, so has him tracked down. Inside the book is actually a gun, and he uses it to get Jim to take him to CRS. When they arrive, almost every person Nicholas had come into contact with is there, including the police. Christine is also there, and he tells her to go with him. As he guides her to a door, the SWAT look-a-likes burst in and start firing, shooting Jim as they aim for Nicholas, who’s running outside.

When he gets Christine out and locks the door, he has the gun on her. She asks him where he got it, and when he says it’s his, she tells him that they searched his house. When he says they obviously missed it, she panics and gets on a radio to call for help. All the while, she’s telling him that it’s all part of The Game: that Jim isn’t really dead, all the bullets are blanks, and that Conrad is on the other side of the door with a bottle of champagne to celebrate Nicholas’ birthday. Nicholas isn’t buying any of it, and when the door opens, Christine screams out to them to stop because of the gun, but they come through, and Nicholas fires. The bullet shatters the champagne bottle and hits Conrad in the middle of his chest.

Christine rushes over, where Jim is already trying to help, and Nicholas is trying to wrap his mind around everything. When Jim tells him that Conrad is dead, Nicholas goes over to the side and jumps off. He crashes through two ceilings of glass and lands on a large, inflatable mat. A few men from CRS explain that he needs to be careful: the glass was breakaway, but he could still get cut. Then they help him up and he sees the room full of people in his life: Ilsa, Elizabeth, Sam, and more. Then Conrad comes up to him to tell him “happy birthday” and gives him a shirt that reads, “I was drugged and left for dead in Mexico – and all I got was this stupid t-shirt”.

When Nicholas sees that everything, even Conrad’s “death”, was all part of The Game, he breaks down and hugs his brother. The lesson he learned was that there was more to life than his job, his money, and his father’s suicide. Now, I don’t know how I would feel about being psychologically tortured like that, but it worked for him.

This movie is gripping from beginning to end. Nicholas’ mind is toyed with to the point where he loses sight of what’s real, and believes that The Game is actually a scam to take him for everything he’s worth. As a result, the viewer believes it, too. What we find out is what Nicholas finds out: that The Game is planned down to the very last detail. Jim even tells Nicholas that he was glad Nicholas jumped, because if he hadn’t, Jim was supposed to throw him off the building.

Even though the title of the movie gives away what it’s about, it’s one of those that has the audience guessing right up until the very end. We don’t know what’s actually going on until Nicholas finds out, and it’s a rather unique take on how twists are done. I first saw this movie years ago, but haven’t watched it since, and I have to say, I’m not sure why. It really is a fantastic film, and for anyone who likes thriller dramas, I very much recommend this.

If you have a movie you would like me to review, leave a comment or send an email to spoileralertblog@outlook.com with “movie review” in the subject line.

Us

korislaughterLeave a comment

Lupita Nyong’o stars in Jordan Peele’s Us.

March 22, 2019
Horror/Mystery/Thriller
R
United States
Director: Jordan Peele

“Therefore, this is what the Lord says: ‘I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them.'” Jeremiah 11:11

This movie starts out in 1986 in Santa Cruz. Young Adelaide Thomas (Madison Curry) is celebrating her birthday with her parents at the Boardwalk and her father, Russel (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), wins her a Michael Jackson Thriller t-shirt at a carnival game. As Adelaide and her parents continue throughout the park, Russel sees a Whack-A-Mole game and insists on playing it. Adelaide’s mother, Rayne (Anna Diop), needs to use the restroom and tells her daughter to go with her. When Adelaide says she doesn’t need to, Rayne tells Russel to keep an eye on the young girl. He insists he will, but naturally, doesn’t.

Adelaide wanders off and sees a young man holding a cardboard sign that reads, “Jeremiah 11:11”. Initially ignoring it, she continues on to the beach where she sees a small building called “Vision Quest: Find Yourself”. She enters and sees that she’s in one of those mirror funhouses. She walks around for a little bit when the power goes out, which scares her. Looking for a way out, Adelaide moves on and begins whistling to calm her nerves. She’s suddenly stopped, however, when she hears someone else in the funhouse whistling. She looks around for the source of the sound and backs, keeping her gaze on the majority of the room. However, when she turns around, she faces the back of her own head. There’s a closeup of her face, her eyes go wide, and the screen cuts to black.

Present day, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is now married to Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke) and has two children: Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). Zora, being the oldest, is your typical preteen girl: addicted to her phone and plenty of attitude, though seems to be very active on her track team at school. Jason is also your average kid, taking a fondness of magic tricks and pranks, particularly against his sister.

The family goes to their summer home in Santa Cruz, intending to enjoy a nice vacation. However, Adelaide is not thrilled about being there. There are a few flashback scenes that show young Adelaide’s parents taking her to see a child psychologist named Dr. Foster (Napiera Groves). The doctor tells Russel and Rayne that Adelaide is suffering from PTSD. Russel insists she was only missing for fifteen minutes, but Rayne makes the point that they don’t know what happened to her during that time. Adelaide refuses to talk and Rayne says that she just wants her little girl back.

Gabe knows nothing of what happened to Adelaide when she was a child, so she does her best to put on a happy face for the family’s sake. It’s not until Gabe mentions going to the Boardwalk that Adelaide’s mood starts to change. She insists that she doesn’t want to go, but Gabe guilts her into it, telling her that their friends Josh Tyler (Tim Heidecker) and his wife Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) would be disappointed if they didn’t go. Gabe goes so far as to buy a boat, determined to make the vacation a good one. Adelaide gives in.

As the Wilson’s near the Boardwalk, police are guiding traffic to one side of the road as there’s an ambulance parked and a man being taken out on a stretcher. As the police wave them to go ahead around the ambulance, Adelaide looks at the older gentleman and there’s a piece of cardboard on him that reads, “Jeremiah 11:11”.

At the beach, the families meet, complete with Josh and Kitty’s twin teenage daughters, Becca (Cali Sheldon) and Lindsey (Noelle Sheldon). It’s sort of clear from the beginning that the Tyler’s care little about their family life and more about the money they have, but Josh and Kitty are more than happy to see their friends. Gabe and Josh talk about Gabe’s new boat (which is really a piece of junk, with the motor always going out), and Kitty tries to engage Adelaide in conversation, but Adelaide doesn’t seem much in the mood. When Kitty questions her about it, Adelaide says she just has trouble talking sometimes.

Jason leaves the beach to go to the bathroom, and as he nears the “Port-O-Shells”, he sees the funhouse, now called, “Merlin’s Forest: Find Yourself”.  When he exits, he sees the back of a man standing with his arms stretched out to his sides and blood dripping from his right hand.

It’s at this point Adelaide looks over to where she knows Jason was playing, but doesn’t see him. Already given her experience with the area, she begins to panic. She runs around and calls out for him, but soon sees him approaching her. When he explains where he was, she’s relieved, but still visibly shaken.

It’s late that night when Adelaide makes sure her kids are in bed. She says goodnight to Zora first, then goes into Jason’s room. They talk about why Adelaide was so worried (him maybe getting lost or taken), when Jason looks over at the clock on his dresser. He tells his mom to look, and when she does, it says, “11:11”.

Gabe gets ready for bed, but Adelaide is standing at the window with her back to him. She tells him they need to go, that she can’t be there, and finally opens up to him about what happened to her as a kid, and that she feels like the girl she saw – the mirror image of herself – was coming back for her. Gabe is trying to be supportive, but isn’t the most serious man in the world, so makes a bad joke about how he could beat Adelaide up, so if the woman who looks like her comes around, he could do the same to her.

The power cuts out, scaring Adelaide, but Gabe brushes it off and says he’ll fix it. He turns to the doorway where Jason is standing, which scares both his parents. When Gabe asks what he’s doing, Jason says that there’s a family in their driveway. Gabe responds with a denial, but they look out the window, and sure enough, there’s a family of four standing side-by-side in the driveway – all dressed in red jumpsuits and all carrying very sharp scissors. Adelaide immediately freaks out and tells Zora, who has just joined the rest in the living room, to give her her phone so she can call the police. Gabe finds this incredibly ridiculous and says that he’ll take care of it.

Gabe goes outside, and is polite, asking if he can do anything for them. No response. He tells them that they need to get off of his property. No response. He goes back into the house and tells Adelaide to call the police, and she tells him she already did, but they’re going to be awhile. He decides to grab a baseball bat, then returns to face the other family so he can threaten them. When the older female makes a sound, the two younger take off in different directions and the older start for Gabe. He again goes back inside and the Wilson’s are in a panic to figure out what to do. It doesn’t take long for the other family to break in after the Wilson’s hear whistling similar to what Adelaide heard as a child.

They make Gabe, Adelaide, Zora, and Jason sit on the sofa, and Jason is the first one to realize who it is and says, “It’s us.” The family who have taken the Wilson’s hostage are doppelgangers of themselves. They look the same, but there’s something a little off with each of them. The only one who can talk is Red, Adelaide’s “twin”, but when she does, it’s like she’s struggling to speak. Red tells them a story, basically explaining who they are. She calls them the Shadows of the people living on earth. She goes through Adelaide’s life, explaining that each time she did something, Red would do the same thing – only worse – because they’re tethered together. For example, Adelaide fell in love with Gabe and married him, forcing Red to marry Abraham, who is Gabe’s “twin”. When Adelaide gave birth to Zora, Red gave birth to Umbrae. When Adelaide had a c-section with Jason, Red had to do the same with Pluto, but by herself. When Adelaide ate food, Red had to eat raw rabbit.

It’s clear what the Shadows want: the Wilson’s dead. Abraham chases Gabe out of the house to the boat. Red tells Zora to run and Umbrae chases her. Red gestures to Pluto to take Jason somewhere to “play” but not to burn the house down. Red has Adelaide handcuff herself to the coffee table. While each member of the family is dealing with their Shadows, Adelaide continues to talk to Red, presumably to stall. She asks Red what they want, and Red responds with, “We want to take our time.”

Gabe ends up killing Abraham on the boat, Zora outruns Umbrae, Jason locks Pluto in a closet, and while Red is going to get her son, Adelaide grabs a fire poker and breaks the coffee table to free herself. Adelaide, Zora, and Jason hear the honking of the boat and run out to get in so Gabe can take them to Josh and Kitty’s house.

Before they can get there, though, Kitty hears something outside and demands that Josh check it out. He doesn’t see anything, but soon their own Shadows get into the house and kill the whole family. When the Wilson’s show up and realize what’s going on, they switch from flight to fight. The women’s Shadows – Dahlia, Io, and Nix – grab Adelaide and handcuff her to a bed upstairs. Gabe leads Josh’s Shadow, Tex, down to Josh’s boat. Zora and Jason make their way inside, where Zora takes a golf club for protection and Jason grabs a large, heavy geode. Zora kills Dahlia, one of the twins, and goes for the other, but is attacked and Jason ends up knocking her out. They free their mother and go back downstairs to meet Gabe, who has killed Tex. They turn on the news to find that they’re not the only one with Shadows, but it appears that everyone has one. It’s then that Adelaide decides that they need to get as far away from their Shadows as possible.

Taking the Tyler’s car, they start to head out with Zora at the wheel. (Gabe is very injured and Adelaide is still in handcuffs.) It’s then that they see Umbrae a few yards in front of them, so Zora slams on the gas pedal and goes to hit Umbrae. She fails to do this when Umbrae begins to break through the sunroof and windshield with her scissors. So, Zora speeds up really fast, then hits the breaks, causing Umbrae to fly off into the woods. Adelaide gets out to check to see if Umbrae is dead, and finds her hanging from a tree with her back clearly broken. Umbrae is still trying to get to Adelaide, but dies.

With Adelaide now driving, they go to the Boardwalk where they see everyone there dead. They also see their car, which is completely engulfed in flames, and Jason says the one who’s responsible is the one who looks like him. Adelaide backs up and Pluto stands so they can see him. For reasons I can’t figure out, Adelaide gets out of the car and tries to get Pluto to go with them. Back in the car, Jason realizes something is wrong and tells everyone to get out. It’s then that Adelaide sees that Pluto cut something under the car to cause a flammable leak. Jason begins walking backwards, forcing Pluto to do the same, until Pluto is in the middle of the fire, where he perishes. Red is watching all this, and as soon as Pluto falls to the ground, she comes out of her hiding spot, snatches up Jason, and runs off.

Adelaide gives chase until she finds her way down to some very clean-looking tunnels filled with rabbits. She tracks Red to what looks like a classroom, and that’s when Red tells the rest of the story. The government had made copies of everyone who was born in America to try and control them in some way, but it failed, as they were unable to duplicate the souls. So, they trapped all the Shadows down in those tunnels. Every time someone did something, the Shadows copied. For example, when Russel gave young Adelaide the shirt he had won her, his Shadow, Weyland, gave a similar one to young Red, though it wasn’t Michael Jackson.

Red then says God brought her and Adelaide together that night in the funhouse. When Adelaide had wandered off, so had Red, where they met face-to-face. Red says that she saw God that day and she knew what she had to do. The rest of the Shadows took her lead, and they spent years planning their move. Red says that it wasn’t enough to kill Adelaide, but to make a statement. That’s when the fight between them starts.

It takes some time, because as they’re basically the same person, Red seems to be able to predict every swing Adelaide takes at her with the fire poker. Eventually, though, Adelaide succeeds in killing Red and finds Jason hiding in a locker, though Jason has a look on his face like he’s kind of scared of her.

The end of the movie shows the family driving off in an ambulance that Gabe and Zora found, where we see a twist. Another flashback to Adelaide’s birthday when she sees Red in the funhouse, Red reaches out her hands and chokes Adelaide into unconsciousness before dragging her down into the tunnels. Adelaide wakes up handcuffed to a bed, and when she kind of gets her bearings, she sees Red switch out the t-shirt she was wearing for the Michael Jackson one. The viewer is then knowledgeable that Adelaide was Red the entire time, while the real Adelaide grew up with the Shadows, and the choking was the result of her struggling to speak. It also explains why she’s the only one who can. The rest make unintelligible noises and grunts to communicate.

The ending shot is a pan over the land, where each surviving Shadow is hand-in-hand for miles and miles. How that ends up turning out, we don’t know.

So, how do I feel about this movie? I’m a fan of Jordan Peele, I enjoy his comedy, and was very much looking forward to watching this. The concept is unique, as I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Almost a twist on the zombie thing, but with doppelgangers who kill everyone with scissors. But, I found myself getting rather bored. I heard how scary the movie was, and me being massively huge into horror, I was intrigued. Upon watching it, however, I feel rather underwhelmed. I kept waiting for it to get scary, but it never really happened. There weren’t even any jump scares. There were a couple times when I felt a little creeped out, but one of my biggest problems is that whenever I was starting to get into the horror aspect, the scene would cut to Gabe and a cheesy joke would be made, which completely ruined the mood.

Then there were scenes like when Gabe killed Abraham. They were on the back of the boat, Abraham was behind Gabe and trying to slam his face into the scissors, when suddenly Gabe bent forward, Abraham fell into the water, and there was suddenly blood. I watched it a few times and still can’t figure out what happened. As for how it did profit-wise, opening weekend completely crushed the budget in the box office, but considering it’s a Jordan Peele film, I’m hardly surprised.

Overall, I’d say that this movie isn’t a bad one to watch, but if you’re really into horror like me, don’t get your hopes up, because the scare factor just is not there at all. It’s a little disappointing, and the twist honestly didn’t really shock me (I kind of already figured it out earlier in the film), but it’s not terrible. I’ve definitely seen worse.

If you have a movie you would like me to review, leave a comment or send an email to spoileralertblog@outlook.com with “movie review” in the subject line.

Seven Pounds

Featured korislaughterLeave a comment

sevenpounds

December 19, 2008
Drama/Romance
PG-13
United States
Director: Gabriele Muccino
Recommended by: Christyl Johnson Klott

“In seven days, God created the world, and in seven seconds, I shattered mine.”

The story follows Ben Thomas (Will Smith) who works for the IRS as a tax collector in Los Angeles, California. The opening scene is him calling 911 to report a suicide. When asked who the victim is, he replies, “I am.” This sets the mood for the rest of the film, giving the viewer a sense of tension throughout. Ben carries a weight, and you can see it in his face. When he smiles, it never quite reaches his eyes, and the heaviness he emits is evident even in the way he moves. He lives in a beach house where he sleeps on the sofa. It’s completely trashed, where you can tell that he just doesn’t have any care in him about himself.

There are seven people to note in this movie: Ezra, Emily, George, Holly, Connie, Nicholas, and Tim. There is a very specific reason why Ben chose these people, and we will get into them one by one.

The first is Ezra Turner (Woody Harrelson), who works for a meat delivering company, enjoys playing piano, and is completely blind. Ben calls him to complain about the meat he ordered, mostly on how bad it tastes. During the conversation, Ezra is trying to get information on Ben to review the order, but Ben’s temper keeps increasing. When Ezra finally manages to get Ben’s name, a computerized voice announces that there is no order for a Ben Thomas. Ben can hear it over the phone, and realizes that Ezra is blind. This takes the call in a completely different direction, where Ben insults Ezra’s blindness and just him as a person. He’s trying to get a reaction out of Ezra, but it never comes. Ezra is completely calm throughout the duration, and the most angry he gets is simply hanging up. At first, I thought Ben had an overwhelming anger problem, especially after the call when he breaks a chair. Turns out, there’s a far deeper meaning.

Then there’s Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson), who Ben tries to get in contact with. He finds out that she’s in the hospital, and proceeds to follow her around. Naturally, she notices how much she’s seeing him and confronts him about it in the hospital’s cafeteria. He explains who he is and that he needs to audit her, as she’s several thousands of dollars in debt. Throughout the majority of the movie, we learn why: she had to quit her business as someone who makes wedding invitations, cards, and the like due to a congenital heart disease and her hospital bills keep racking up. She’s given less than two months to live if she doesn’t get a donor, and even has to have a nurse at her home. Now, this is a romantic piece, so obviously, Ben and Emily get closer. He shows up at her house to weed her yard and fix a printing machine that seems to not require so much physical labor to operate. At one point, Emily invites Ben over for dinner, and this scene is the only one where we see him truly smile.

The next is George Ristuccia (Bill Smitrovich). He’s not a big character, and we only see him once, but is an important person. George is in the hospital for a kidney transplant, and the exchange between him and Ben is about how good a person George is. He has paid for some kids to go to college (not his own), and when he asks Ben, “Why me?”, Ben responds with, “Because you’re a good man … Even when you don’t know that people are watching you.”

Holly Apelgren (Judyann Elder) is a social services worker who, when we first see her, clearly already has a history with Ben. Again, not a big character, but we find out that Ben had given her half of his liver. As a result, she’s willing to do any favor he needs. What he requests is a name: someone who needs help, but is too proud to ask for it.

This leads us to Connie Tepos (Elpidia Carrillo). This poor woman is in a terribly abusive relationship with her boyfriend and has two children who are stuck in the middle. Holly told Ben that Connie’s boyfriend broke some of her ribs a few months back and even tried to kill her when she attempted to leave a year before. So, Ben goes to Connie’s house and tells her he can help. Unfortunately, most of the dialogue is in Spanish and I couldn’t get the subtitles to work, so I don’t know exactly what they were saying, but was able to get the general impression. When Connie realizes exactly why Ben is there, she becomes angry and kicks him out of her house, but not before he can leave his card with her. A few days later, she calls him from a laundromat, crying, and says that she doesn’t know why she called, but wants to know if Ben really can help. He meets with her, gives her an envelope, and tells her where to go. She drives to his beach house, which has been completely cleaned and furnished, and opens the envelope where she finds a note. He tells her that all she has to do is sign on the dotted line, and the house is hers outright. All he asks is for her to not contact him for any reason and to live life abundantly. She does.

Nicholas (Quintin Kelley) is the one we really know the least about. He’s just a young boy who suffers from what I’m assuming is leukemia. Ben sees him off and on during his trips to the hospital, and decides to donate some of his bone marrow.

The final person we learn about is Tim. Earlier in the film, Emily passes out due to her heart not pumping enough blood to her brain and ends up, once again, in the hospital. She calls Ben and has him tell her a story. He decides on one about a little boy named Tim who wanted to fly. He strapped leaves and branches to his arms, climbed a tree, and jumped off, which led to a broken arm, but an ever-growing passion for flight. When Ben takes Emily home from the hospital, she begins asking questions about his personal life, and he reveals that he went to MIT because he wanted to be an engineer for a space program. I think this is when I started to realize something was off.

The night Emily invites Ben to her home for dinner, his brother shows up. He’s someone we’ve seen here and there, but don’t know too much about until he demands to have his credentials back and keeps calling Ben “Tim”. It’s this moment we see that Ben Thomas is actually the brother, and Will Smith’s real character is Tim, and that he had been impersonating Ben, including working for the IRS.

After the exchange with Ben, Emily and Tim spend the night together, and admit that they’re in love with each other. At this point, she doesn’t know Tim’s true identity. After she falls asleep, Tim runs to the hospital to find out, statistically, how likely Emily has of surviving. When he’s given three to five percent, he makes a decision.

Off and on, we see a man who is a good friend of Tim’s named Dan Morris (Barry Pepper), and during their brief interactions, we know that Dan is aware of what Tim is planning. When Tim leaves the hospital, he calls Dan to tell him that it’s time, then immediately hangs up. It’s very early in the morning, and Dan is just sitting in his bed, crying.

Tim has rented out a motel room, where he’s been living since before giving his beach house to Connie. He returns there and calls up Ezra, where he apologizes for his behavior on the phone weeks before, and that the reason for it was to find out how good of a person Ezra is; if he was quick to anger. He then tells him that a man named Dan would be getting in contact with him and that Ezra could trust him. Then, Tim dials 911, and the opening scene plays again.

Tim told a story about how when he was twelve years old, his father took him and Ben to an aquarium, and that was the first time Tim had ever seen a box jellyfish. His father told him how deadly they are, but Tim thought they were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He ends up owning some and sets up his own small aquarium for them to stay with him at the motel. After calling for an ambulance, Tim turns on the bathtub, fills it with ice, climbs in, and dumps his jellyfish into the water with him. They, of course, sting him, and stop his heart. The hospital tries to revive him, but are unsuccessful.

Why does Tim do all this? We find out from Ben, who is speaking to Emily, that a year before, Tim was involved in a car accident that claimed the lives of seven people, including his fiance, Sarah (Robinne Lee). The reason for the accident was due to Tim looking at his phone while driving. A few months after that, Ben was in need of at least one new lung, so Tim gave him one.

Ezra needed new eyes, Emily needed a new heart, George needed a new kidney, Holly needed a partial liver, Connie needed out of her abusive relationship, Nicholas needed bone marrow, and Ben needed a new lung. Seven lives saved for seven lives taken.

The ending scene is Ezra playing piano for a group of kids singing and Emily shows up. At the end of the show, she gets his attention, and when he turns to her, she gets to see Tim’s eyes. At first, he’s confused on who she is, but then sees the scar on her chest and realizes that it’s Emily. She’s crying, they hug, and the movie ends.

I told the person who recommended this to me for a review that I was surprised it’s not more well-known. It grossed drastically short of the budget on the opening weekend, though did end up doing well world-wide. I had never heard of it until just recently, and I’m a huge Will Smith fan.

So, what do I think of this film? I’m not much for tearjerkers, but I have to say, starting with the opening scene, I was completely enthralled. It’s kind of hard to follow at first, because, at least for me, I had a lot of questions about what was going on, but the end ties everything together rather nicely. If you like romantic dramas, I do think this is one to watch. It’s heartbreaking, but definitely worth seeing.

If you have a movie you would like me to review, leave a comment or send an email to spoileralertblog@outlook.com with “movie review” in the subject line.