Evil Dead

An addict’s brother and friend’s journey to a cabin deep in the woods to help her get clean, but when one of them finds and reads from a book made from sewn skin, they evoke a curse that could kill them all.

My Thoughts:

I wasn’t too impressed with this flick, so I’m just going to bullet point the thoughts…

·                     There was too much gore. I wasn’t scared so much as reacting with an empathetic pain response. I don’t mind gore… but this was splatterpunk to the extreme.

·                     The meeting of the requirement for the 5^th soul was confusing. Who was it? Why didn’t burying his sister work? It didn’t hold together well enough for me to know what was going on.

·                     Serious brutalization of the girls. Why do the guys hold up better/longer? Why weren’t they as brutalized? I’m never impressed when a movie falls into this sort of a trope.

·                     What was with the Jerad Leto and Zoe Saldana rip-offs? I mean, I knew they weren’t those two actors, but it almost felt like they were trying to make you think that’s who they’d cast.

·                     Bruce Campbell cameo at the very end was amusing. But it only served to highlight the fact that the original movie(s) were undoubtedly better.

·                     Not, imo, appropriate for 8-year old little girls. One of the other 9 people in the theater with us could not have been over the age of 8, sitting with her (dad?).

Silent Hill Revelations (3D)

This is another one of those movies that I didn’t particularly enjoy – in fact, I didn’t even get through the whole thing, I went and worked on other things while Earl finished it – so I’m going to bullet point my thoughts again.



+ Sean Bean doesn’t die (not really). I always hate when Sean Bean’s character dies in a movie…. I feel like its old hat and just, well, boring now.

- Dialog. Oh my lord, the dialog. I really hoped that the dialogue issues would resolve once we got out of the dream…. and I gave it a chance, and there were a few lines that weren’t painfully stilted. But in truth, this is the reason I stopped watching.

-Sharon honestly thought about leaving Vincent in the room with the nurses… and at the end – within that same day – they’re “together.” Maybe that’s just my interpretation based on the fact that I was half listening and maybe I’m reading that wrong… but it really felt like a contrived bit of “happy” for the ending.

+ One thing I am happy about is that they did stick to and pay homage to the game – at least in part.

Cabin In the Woods

Cabin in the Woods



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Why I saw it: Honestly, the main reason I saw this one was because the BF loves anything even hinting at the realm of horror. And I was willing to go because I figured Joss Whedon wouldn’t do me wrong.

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What I thought: I was pleasantly not freaked out at any point in the movie… though I’m not sure that’s what they were going for. I’m not the sort who has a super high tolerance for horror. Certain movies (not to be named here) have had me with a vice grip on the BF’s arm that resulted in bruising – he deserved it – I don’t think I flinched once. But to be fair it seemed more like a dissection and homage to horror than anything else. The twist at the end was something that even I (a serial plot ruiner) didn’t see coming.

Run Time: 95 minutes

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Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

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Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil is a comedy of errors with horrific consequences.

Overall:

This movie takes the horror formula and provides an incredibly hilarious take on what’s actually going on. It’s still gory, but there’s something incredibly endearing about the aftermath of each death.

What it had going for it:

This movie managed to not take itself too seriously… and at the same time it didn’t devolve into blatant stupidity.

It took a relatively tired genre, and managed to integrate a humorous tone that made a rather over-done story line far from boring.

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Tucker and Dale themselves are well developed characters who make being a “hillbilly” not seem so bad. They’re still two best friends trying to have a weekend to themselves that goes terribly awry.

The problems:

Allison, the female lead is a college student getting her bachelor’s in psychology. And at a pivotal point in the story, she tries to use the knowledge she’s gained through her schooling to defuse the situation. It doesn’t work, and not necessarily because of her influence, but I think that anyone would agree, she’d better be in her first term… otherwise, she needs to pick a different major, or transfer to a different school, because she doesn’t know jack about counseling. Basically, what I’m getting at, is that this aspect of the character could have been better fleshed out.

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The other college kids aren’t fleshed out more than their archetypical skeletons.

The film starts out with the revelation of the “killer” through “found footage” (sort of) and then flashes back to “3 days earlier” and continues on until you meet up. I felt that this could easily have been left out and not been detrimental. As it was, I knew who the “killer was” immediately upon seeing him after that cut. Which may not be a big deal for other people, but it was a bit of a buzz kill for me.

Run Time: 89 minutes

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