Popcorn Lobotomy

Is there anything WRONG with a McDonalds hamburger?

1. It tastes ok.
2. Comes in a pretty package
3. Is pleasing to the senses

If you asked a fourteen year old kid he’d probably answer through a mouth of nuggets that there was nothing wrong with it – McDonald’s burgers fucking rock!

But do they? If you peeled back the sugary bun, took away the shavings of lettuce and fatty sauce – and let’s not forget the pickle – you’re left with the meat of the product. And when all the fluff is gone… it’s a pretty sad looking piece of meat.

Yeah, but it's got the sugary bun, and the tasty sauce… and the pickle! What about that stuff?

I admit it, when you first bite into a Big Mac or a Chicken burger or even the humble Cheeseburger – things aren’t that bad.

But half an hour later… you’re left wanting more.

And that’s exactly how I felt with District 9.

I really, really, really wanted this movie to rock. If you’ve seen Neill Blomkamp’s short movie Alive in Jo-Berg you’ll sympathise with me when I say I had high expectations. It’s a great premise – instead of First Contact with shiny, celestial beings with oversize heads and penchants for organ music, we get 20 years after this. The aliens are more like giant cockroaches and are stranded on earth, forced to live in ghettos by our goverment, while we figure out what to do with them. They resort to crime to survive - selling their own weapons and tech for food - particularly catfood (mm-mm!) and are generally not being treated very nicely. The parallels with Apartheid are obvious and it was this angle of something different, something challenging - as well as the film being shot in a semi-documentary style manner - that had me really me salivating.

The movie starts off well – it's gritty and edgy and has an energy and inevitability to it that was engaging. The government is trying to move the million odd aliens out of the District 9 ghetto into a large concentration type facility 100 miles out of the city. A team of social workers from ‘Alien Affairs’ is sent in to evict them led by Wikus Van De Merwe - a dick of the highest order. Tensions are high, the aliens are unpredictable, desperate and you just know all shit is going to (or at least should) break loose. And it kind of does… but not in the way I was expecting.

Anyway, not too long into the story the plight of the Alien population takes a back step to the story of Wikus, who after inadvertently spraying himself with some toxic alien goop starts to change into an Alien.

Yeah, I’ll just let that one sink in.

…

He changes into an alien. Or at least his arm does.

Anyway, this is great news to the government because for years they’ve been trying to get the alien weapons to work. The weapons recognize Alien DNA so are inoperable by humans. But now that poor old Wikus is half alien, once he gets his half alien paws/claws/pincers on them, they fire up and do all sorts of damage. They test him and beat him and I think even spit on him… anyway, he’s not too happy suddenly on the receiving end of the stick he was brandishing only days before.

From here Wikus flees back into District 9 where he teams up with Chistopher Johnson, an alien, who turns out to be the captain or ship engineer or someone important. Christopher needs the goo that Wikus sprayed himself with to power the mothership that hovers above the city and so he and Wikus work together to steal back the goo, powerup the mothership and beam back to Christopher’s home planet.

That’s obviously the short version, but...

But what!? Come on man, what about the fucking kick ass alien weaponry splatterfest?

I watched The Last House on the Left with an unsuspecting female companion, and, by the end of it, I'm pretty sure I'd convinced her I was a complete nutter. Honestly, I would have been more comfortable watching a porno with my grandmother.

Several times, my lady-friend glanced at me with an unmistakeable why-did-you-want-to-show-me-this? expression on her face, and I must admit I wholeheartedly agree with her suspicions.

Because Last House on the Left made me want to shit into my own eyeballs.

The Remake

The original Last House on the Left was released in 1972, and was budding director Wes Craven's first big hit, forming the beginning of his rise to the horror auteur we know him as today. I have not seen it, which is rare for since it's considered such a horror classic.

From what I understand, it was a shlock horror that redefined, or at least reinvigorated an entire genre. But hey, it was made before I was born, so I assume it is shit.

However, no matter how shit it may be, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the 2009 re-make was a gigantic kick in the sack for poor Wes. Here is a film that offers up glossy shock violence and nothing much more, and that, my friends, does not a good horror film make.

Just so you don't think I'm criticising without being constructive: how about a bit of atmosphere, tension, or just some plain old cheap scares?


The Story

Well, who gives a flying hoot, but essentially the story involves a group of pranksters who go around killing and raping without much rhyme or reason. There is a father and son, a girl who can't seem to keep her shirt on, and some other guy who looks creepy all the time and is a riduculous over-actor.

They come across a couple of girls, and because they are in trouble with the police, they decide they can't leave them alive, so, naturally, take them out to the forrest to torture and rape them. I must presume at this point that their rather round about methodology is solely for the audience's erotic primal pleasure - I mean, sure a bullet in the back of the head makes more sense, but what fun would that be?

Once they get the two girls into submissive positions, the father tries to get his boy to lose his raping cherry, but the boy refuses, so Dad steps in to show him how a real man acts. After the incredibly long, offensively sexuallised raping, one girl is stabbed multiple times and bleeds out, while the other is shot in the back while trying to swim away.

As an aside, I actually found this bit quite funny. The girl is established early as a champion swimmer, so her escape into water is accompanied by triumphant music because, you know, she is going to MAKE IT!!

Until her shoulder blade explodes in a chunky red spray and she rolls over limply, ensuring we get one last glimpse of her underage nipples under her wet tshirt (because obviously we find her sexually attractive at this point, after watching her get raped seductively for the previous 15 minutes) before she evidently succumbs to her wounds.

Meanwhile, Mum and Dad return to the house, unaware of what just happened to their daughter. The gang of nonsensial bad guys turn up at the house (I'm assuming at this point, that they live in the Last House on the Left, but it's never really established, and I'm sure I saw a shot which made it appear to be on the right side of the street, but whatever), also unaware of the hilarious family connections yet to be revealed.

The boy, let's call him by his Indian name, Pacowan Kiwandie Tuntungitt, which translates to "Refuses to Rape", eventually sees a photo of the girl - apparently the only photo they have of her anywhere in the house - and works out that they are mom and pop's house. He leaves a clue for them, they find it, and the hijinx ensues.

Just in case you were worried they were running out of people to injure and torture, the original girl who was shot in the back turns up at the house, after having swum for about 2 hours only to collapse on the porch clutching at the doorhandle.

What remains is basically Home Alone on acid, where the home owners fight viciously against the bad guys and essentially pick them off one by one.

The Shock

Was I shocked? Well, yes, a little, but not as shocked as I was at the end to realise I'd managed to sit through the entire thing. To be honest, most of the movie was pretty boring, and the only parts I liked were unintentionally funny.

For instance, take the scene where the mother first realises that the overacting bad guy is, in fact, her daughter's killer. She first flirts with him for 10 minutes and offers him some wine, as you would, because in no way would you be upset or outraged enough to lose control at that point.

Of course the crazy bad guy is totally taken in by her charms, despite her long awkward pauses, darting eyes, and panicky effort to stop him from going to the fridge, where the one little photograph of her daughter resides.

After wasting a bunch of everyone's time, she finally pounces. While there are clearly plenty of sharp, effective weapons in the kitchen, she manages to grab blunt object after blunt object to beat him with. She even tries to drown him in dishwater, but the crafty little kitten pulls the plug out of the sink. This gives her the opportunity to shove his hand down the garbage disposal and turn it on, which would have definitely killed him if only he'd have quit attacking her for 3 or 4 hours and focus on bleeding.

After a while, the father joins him, pelts him with a few more blunt objects before finally working out two important things: that the back of a hammer is sharper than the front, and that the head is one of the more vulnerable parts of the human body. He combines facts for an inevitable, but long overdue conclusion to the bad guy's suffering. You almost feel sorry for him by the end.

But yes, as I mentioned, there is a very offensive rape scene that just seems to go on and on. I haven't been on the internet message boards to reseach it, but I'm willing to lay down cash that there are people complaining about it all over the place.

In an extremely out-of-place scene at the end, you get to see the main bad guy wake up with his head in a microwave oven. The father turns it on and we all get to watch the bad guy's face burn off before his head completely explodes.

Yeah, because that's what a roast chicken does in a microwave, too, dumbass.

The Verdict

If there is a bigger waste of time, I have yet to find it. After The Last House on the Left was over, I found myself wishing I'd instead spent 2 hours spitting off the roofs of tall buildings and then measuring the size of the splatter below. Actually, that does appeal to me a bit, so I'll let you come up with a better example of a complete waste of time.

-1 stars, for the overt sexuallisation of the rape of a minor, which offended even this hardened old-school horror fan. And I've seen "I Spit On Your Grave"!

Well let me just say we're lucky Sammy didn't review this one. He would have completely caned it, and if there was a negative 5 stars (which there can be, because this is our site and we can do whatever we want), he would have certainly awarded it.

Luckily for The Final Destination, I can appreciate a film that's supposed to be "so bad it's good", and have been an avid horror fan from childhood. As such, I have an almost unlimited tolerance for the uniqueness and ingenuity of the Final Destination premise.

This one is 3-D, which is lucky, because it really doesn't bring much else new to the table.


The Director

Coming off the back of his experimental Snakes on a Plane -- during which he played with studio money by producing a "so bad it's good" action thriller and marketing it as such -- David R. Ellis must have been a little nervous.

That particular film was a bit of a mess, and, ironically, dissappointed because it wasn't quite bad enough! This one is along similar lines, and perhaps is a little more successful in its tongue-in-cheek tone, but it still walks that fine line between glossy blockbuster and trashy b-grade.

Ellis's background is in stunt choreography, which explains why he's so good at setting up physical gags. He understands movie physics well enough to know what will convince an audience and what will come across as fake-ass.

However, he's certainly no auteur yet, and I can't help wondering what a Final Destination movie might be like with someone with a bit more style and the courage to take the subject matter seriously at the helm.


The Deaths

For the uninitiated, the Final Destination movies centre on the premise that Death has a grand plan, and that once he has selected you for death, he will achieve his goal without exception. However, what happens when someone cheats Death, by, say, receiving a premonition about how it is about to happen? Well, Death refuses to give up, and finds increasingly vicious and creative means to get you dead.

So the fun of the series is really in the creative combination of coincidences that results in the deaths of the major characters. There is always some theorizing about how one may cheat death again, but it is invariably in vain.

This movie certainly delivers on the creative deaths. They are more elaborate, and there are more of them than in the first three films. Characters are routinely decapitated, cut in half, de-limbed and crushed in very elaborate ways, which is really the most important aspect of the film.

The movie was designed for 3-D, so there are more sharp spikes, flying debris and splashing liquids than ever before. I only saw the 2-D version, so most of the gimmicky gags were lost on me.

What were not lost on me were the innovative Rube Goldberg machines that lead to the inevitable deaths of the characters. The broom falls on the jar of lacquer, which pours onto the floor, which makes the boy slip, which makes him fall onto the see-saw, which has a bit of metal on the other end, which flies through the air and stabs the character in the eye. You know, that sort of thing, but multiply my example by 10. They really are very clever, and a pleasure to watch.

Unfortunately the 3-D requirement seems to have degraded the quality of some of the effects, and the compositing was easily detectable in several scenes. This ruins some of the surprises, because the effects shots look so different, you know something is about to happen.


The Story

This one again starts with a premonition, but, this time around, it's a Nascar race accident that's about to pick off pretty much everyone in the entire crowd. A group of people hear the guy freak out about his premonition and leave the race track in the nick of time to get to safety before the whole track blows to shit.

Just in case seeing the entire grizzly vision of the carnage wasn't enough for the viewers, a wheel flies over the fence and decapitates one of the survivors as a natural segue into the main titles.

The rest of the movie involves the characters being targeted and picked off one by one. The deaths are way more drawn out and elaborate than before, and this time the main character continues to get vague premonitions during the course of the film. There is even a premonition within a premonition toward the end.

He never really figures them out, though, and everyone dies anyway.

But amidst all the delightful and lovingly rendered carnage, there is something missing. It seems the film-makers have focussed so much on jamming in horrific death sequences that there was little room for story, originality or pacing. There are plenty of twists and turns, but they are all tired now that we're four movies in, and they seem to come randomly. Perhaps this is a deliberate attempt to surprise the audience, but it just confused and befuddled (yes, I was befuddled, what of it?) this viewer.

The ending is especially bad. It's established tradition to have a sudden surprise death at the end of a Final Destination film, but, to be honest, I was hoping for something different. It's supposed to be the final movie in the series, so I was kinda hoping, not for death to reveal himself with a cape and scythe or anything cheesy, but for something a little more thoughtful given the premise.

Some closure of some kind would have been nice.


The Verdict

I know, I know, this is THE Final Destination. But as always, if this one does well enough at the box office, would anyone be surprised if we were treated to The REAL Final Destination in a year or two... in 4-D!

Let's hope not though, because 4-D doesn't exist, and Final Destination has pretty much explored it's concept to the full.

2 stars, for carnage and Rube-Goldberg-ness.