THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3 (FINAL SEQUENCE) (Netherlands - 2015) Written and directed by Tom Six. Cast: Dieter Laser, Laurence R. Harvey, Eric Roberts, Robert LaSardo, Tommy "Tiny" Lister, Clayton Rohner, Bree Olson, Tom Six, Jay Tavare, Akihiro Kitamura, Bill Hutchens, Carlos Ramirez, Peter Blankenstein. (Unrated, 103 mins)
When it was released in 2010, Tom Six's "100% Medically Accurate" THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE became a legitimate pop culture phenomenon. The saga of a mad doctor (Dieter Laser, still one of the greatest names ever) surgically connecting three unfortunate victims mouth-to-anus to form a "human centipede" with one shared digestive tract was original, to say the least. Late night talk show hosts cracked jokes about it and it didn't even take long for it to be brilliantly parodied on SOUTH PARK. Taken on its own terms, it's a ridiculous yet reasonably effective film that's significantly less graphic than you think, with a genuinely creepy performance by Laser, who does go over the top on occasion, but deservedly enjoyed a very brief run as a horror icon. Six quickly followed it up with 2011's dismal THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (FULL SEQUENCE), a grimy, ugly sequel, shot in black and white, where a socially inept, British HUMAN CENTIPEDE superfan (Laurence R. Harvey) kidnaps a dozen people to form a crude, surgically unskilled 12-person human centipede which includes one of the first film's stars, Ashlyn Yennie, playing herself, coerced into showing up in London after Harvey pretends to be Quentin Tarantino calling her to set up an audition. The sequel was Six's response to the first film's naysayers, many of whom condemned the film without even seeing it, based just on its concept and what they figured it depicted. With the sequel, Six went completely overboard, wallowing in the scatological and showing all of the shit, piss, puke, phlegm, and other bodily functions (plus the squashing of a baby's head) that were missing from the comparatively tactful first entry. Whatever sense of class Six brought to THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE was thoroughly obliterated by FULL SEQUENCE, which was essentially a feature-length tantrum. It's so bad that it retroactively worsens its predecessor.
So what then, does one make of THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3 (FINAL SEQUENCE), the conclusion of Six's coprophilic trilogy? By the time the repugnant FULL SEQUENCE ended, the only thing that seemed to be left for Six to do was go door-to-door to shit in your mouth. There's nowhere for him to go except to crank up the shock and outrage factor, so now he's the equivalent of an online troll, throwing one offense after another at the audience to get a reaction from a film that boasts "100% Politically Incorrect." Set at the George H.W. Bush State Prison in Texas, FINAL SEQUENCE has sadistic warden Bill Boss (a chrome-domed Laser) and his hapless sidekick Dwight (Harvey with a Hitler mustache) under fire by the Governor (Academy Award nominee Eric Roberts) over the out-of-control prison population, the rampant violence, and the exorbitant costs as they run way over the state budget. Dwight, a fan of both HUMAN CENTIPEDE films, repeatedly fails to convince Boss that a "human-prison centipede" made out of the 500 inmates is the answer. Instead, Boss prefers going medieval, whether it's force-feeding raw pork to Jewish and Muslim inmates, waterboarding one with boiling water, breaking the limbs of another (Tommy "Tiny" Lister) or castrating yet another (Robert LaSardo) in loving close-up before having the testicles prepared medium-rare and brought to his office for lunch. Boss, who snacks on imported deep-fried African clitorises ("Thank God for Africa! Thank God for female circumcision!" he exclaims), forces his secretary/"cock socket" Daisy (former porn star Bree Olson) to sexually service him ("Tits, I need my ballsack emptied before lunch!"), and never holds back when it comes to the racism, finally agrees to the human-prison centipede after Dwight arranges a meeting with Six, appearing as himself. In this massive undertaking, with the forced help of the prison's unlicensed, unemployable doctor (Clayton Rohner), Boss sees his new grand design of inmate suffering via forced shit-eating: "A Jew behind a Muslim, a Muslim behind a Jew, a Crip behind a Blood, a Republican behind a Mexican..."
There are a couple of genuinely funny moments here, and they're at the expense of Six: he seems to know it's patently absurd that he'd be given the fawning celebrity treatment that he gets here, and prior to his arrival, much is made of his "poop fetish." In the film's only really legitimately good joke, Six vomits and flees the prison in horror when he sees the human-prison centipede surgical procedure in progress ("What a pussy," Boss says). But everywhere else is just one missed opportunity after another. Six seems to have the right idea when it comes satirizing himself, but otherwise, he drops the ball. Why have Roberts (who was just in INHERENT VICE a few months ago and looks embarrassed to be in this) play the Governor as basically "Eric Roberts"? Why not have him (or someone else who will do anything for money) play it as a riff on George W. Bush or Rick Perry or someone topical? Six could've made some political jokes here but all the casting of Roberts says is "Eric Roberts said yes, and we could afford him." But without question, the biggest mistake Six makes is doing nothing to reign in Laser, who's been gifted with zero boundaries, engaging in a level of eye-popping, vein-bursting overacting that, with his thick German accent, brings to mind what might've happened if Robin Williams ever went on a talk show and decided to act like Klaus Kinski. Some of Laser's outrageously offensive dialogue might've even played a bit better if he wasn't screaming himself purple in every scene. As a result, his schtick gets old quickly, and the constant racial slurs, degradation of Daisy ("Swallow it, office slut!" he shouts after ejaculating in her mouth), and his endless screaming (often into a megaphone, as if he wasn't already loud enough) have absolutely no entertainment value. Among the many Bill Boss zingers, we have:
"Circumcised Jewish goat-fuckers!"
"Mother-fisting, baby-raping Mexican lowlifes!"
"Pubic-hair-bearded Islamic halal pigs!"
"Beaten-up women make me so horny!" (after Daisy is beaten during a prison riot)
"Even in a coma, I'll make you squirt!" (said as he has sex with a comatose, post-riot Daisy)
And that's not counting the copious N-words (or "monkey" in Boss' more reflective moments) or other puerile shock tactics, whether it's Boss ripping off one inmate's colostomy bag and shooting him in the colon only to cause an eruption of blood and liquid shit, or a nightmare sequence where LaSardo's furious inmate gets revenge for his castration by slicing open Boss' side and raping him in the kidney. Scenes like this go on and on, with Laser's acting abandoning all illusions of characterization and instead coming off as an all-consuming seizure. It's obvious Six fancies himself some provocateur, but he's really just a grosser, ass-to-mouth-fixated Uwe Boll, offering nothing satirical, with his attempts at going meta very sporadically amusing but mostly failing to live up to their potential. So what we're left with is a thoroughly pointless endeavor anchored by one of the most unbearable, headache-inducing lead performances in the history of cinema.
Imagine what the characters in found-footage horror movies could accomplish if they just had both hands free. Late in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES, a guy is frantically running around a house, trying to find an exit, and he comes across a boarded-up window. He half-heartedly tries to pull the board down with his left hand and it budges just a very little bit. Here's a thought: put the camera down and use both hands. Pitched as a Latino-targeted "cousin" to the PA franchise, THE MARKED ONES actually ties in pretty directly to the increasingly ludicrous spirit-world shenanigans. Oren Peli's effective, out-of-nowhere 2009 original has become a distant memory as the franchise has morphed into the brainchild of DISTURBIA screenwriter Christopher Landon (son of legendary TV icon Michael), despite the guys from CATFISH getting all the attention when they were hired to directed PA3 and PA4. Landon has scripted every entry since the first sequel (except for the 2010 Japan-only spinoff PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: TOKYO NIGHT, still unreleased in the US) and gets promoted to director here. PA3 grossed $104 million, while PA4 had a massive drop-off, bringing in only $53 million. Still not bad considering how cheap these are to produce, but the fact that THE MARKED ONES topped out at $32 million, didn't open at #1 like its predecessors, and that other similar films are suffering from diminished grosses are major red flags that fans are experiencing some found-footage fatigue. A 70% domestic drop between two installments seems like cause for alarm, but since THE MARKED ONES only cost $5 million, it still made a big enough profit that these things will just continue until they stop breaking even. Perhaps audiences are growing tired with the way the PA films are progressing as there appears be no plot twist too ridiculous for Landon to pull out of his ass in a desperate attempt to keep this franchise gasping for one more run. PA4 revealed that a witches' coven has been orchestrating all the paranormal mayhem, and now THE MARKED ONES introduces wormholes and time-travel. No, really.
Set in Oxnard in 2012, the film follows Jesse (Andrew Jacobs), after he buys a video camera with his high school graduation money. He and goofball buddy Hector (Jorge Diaz) start off by filming JACKASS-style pranks but soon get involved in a mystery when Jesse's neighbor is killed by valedictorian Oscar (Carlos Pratts), who then vanishes. After breaking into the victim's apartment, Jesse awakens the next day with a strange mark and begins acting possessed and displaying bizarre powers (for a good chunk of its running time, this seems more like a knockoff of the overrated CHRONICLE) and is eventually abducted by some mysterious women as Hector and their friend Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh) recruit Oscar's gang-leader brother (Richard Cabral, memorable as the drug mule "The Green Hornet" in THE COUNSELOR) to track down Jesse. Of course, other characters from the franchise make token appearances (Molly Ephraim from PA2, and series mainstays Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat), but the direction in which THE MARKED ONES steers things is a pretty clear sign that Landon is just trying to belatedly explain away the inconsistencies and contradictions that have been popping up in all of the sequels. There's no "master plan" here: he's making it up as he goes along. The only interesting element Landon brings to the table--think the camera on the oscilatting fan in PA3--is having Jesse communicate with the spirit via an old Simon. But time travel portals? Enough. (R, 84 mins) NURSE (US - 2014)
Another pre-fab cult film lovingly embraced by horror hipsters before it was even released, the long-delayed (shot in 2011) NURSE thinks it's being edgy and outrageous, but it's just tired and boring. Loaded with numbing CGI splatter, NURSE centers on Abby Russell (Paz de la Huerta), the titular psycho, who spends her off-hours picking up and slaughtering adulterous men with their "cheating cocks." She's fixated on bright-eyed new nurse Danni (Katrina Bowden of 30 ROCK), who she quickly roofies and seduces in a series of selfies that she presumably plans to send to Danni's paramedic boyfriend Steve (Corbin Bleu of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL). When the bodies--including Danni's lecherous, asshole stepdad (Martin Donovan)--start piling up, Danni can't convince irate detective Rogan (Boris Kodjoe) that she's being framed and that Abby's a serial killer. With it being shot in 3D with copious amounts of digital gore and de la Huerta nudity, and no shortage of ironic stunt casting (there's Bleu, Judd Nelson as a sexually-harrassing doc, Niecy Nash as a sassy nurse, and Kathleen Turner as the head nurse), NURSE is one of those fakesploitation films that flaunts the Alexandre Aja/PIRANHA-remake mentality of assuming that it's already a cult movie, blithely and smugly unaware that such status is earned. Director/co-writer Doug Aarniokoski (HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME) tries to go for some John Waters outrageousness (why else would he trot SERIAL MOM's Turner out for one scene?) with some occasional giallo lighting and music cues that echo those of Ennio Morricone in his minimalist percussive phase, but it's not amusing, and it's not scary, and how exploitative can it be when you have a star in Bowden who obviously refused to do nudity? Arms always strategically covering her breasts and two scenes where she's showering in her underwear? No offense, Ms. Bowden, but you know what kind of movie you're in. If you're not gonna play, then don't take the gig. I'm no Corbin Bleu fan, but at least he had the sack to lay his Disney rep on the line and show his thrusting ass in a sex scene with you.
The script (co-written by David Loughery, a regular Joseph Ruben collaborator) requires its characters to be complete idiots. Witness the scene where a bloodied Abby gets away when someone turns their back for two seconds. The guy turns around to see she's gone but has left a trail of bloody footprints down a long hallway. How far could she get in two seconds? And does he go after her? Of course not. More sloppy craftsmanship: it's revealed that Abby's real name is Sarah and that the reasoning behind her actions is that, as a child, she walked in on her doctor father having sex with a nurse and killed him; she ultimately changed her name from "Sarah" and moves from hospital to hospital, changing identities and splitting town when things get out of control, and her current alias is "Abby." OK, fine. Then why, in the flashback to her childhood, is her mother calling her "Abby"? The grating de la Huerta plays Abby in her typical talking-too-slow fashion with a look on her face that's perpetually stuck somewhere between "I'm confused" and "Who farted?" and her voiceover narration is obviously the work of another actress, always a sign of post-production Band-Aiding (as terrible as de la Huerta is, she's at least game for Aarniokoski's hard-R intentions, unlike Bowden). The only real high point of NURSE is provided by Melanie Scrofano as an impossibly, annoyingly chipper HR exec. In just a few scenes, Scrofano nails the out-of-touch idiocy of corporate higher-ups who have no idea what it's like in the trenches. Imagine what she could've done with the Abby role instead of the dazed and dull de la Huerta. Other than Scrofano's performance, NURSE is a complete waste of time. (R, 84 mins)
IN THE NAME OF THE KING: THE LAST MISSION (Canada/Germany/Pakistan - 2014)
When the hit series PRISON BREAK ended its run in 2009, co-star Dominic Purcell dove straight into movies and seemed to have what it takes to become a tough, chiseled big screen action guy. The problem is that all of his starring vehicles are terrible. He can be alright in supporting roles (the not-as-bad-as-everyone-says STRAW DOGS remake, KILLER ELITE, and the recent THE BAG MAN), but when he's left to carry a film, he seems to be going for the "man of few words" thing, but something in his line delivery and his body language makes him come off like a lumbering oaf. Regardless, the guy's phone apparently never stops ringing and he hasn't stopped working since PRISON BREAK wrapped up. He starred in five films--almost all DTV--in 2013 and has already been in four this year, with another on the way. I suppose it was inevitable that Purcell would get sucked into the orbit of Uwe Boll. The director's latest, the in-name-only DTV sequel IN THE NAME OF THE KING: THE LAST MISSION ("Too intense for theaters!" the packaging boasts), the third entry in this improbable franchise (Purcell follows the first film's Jason Statham, and the second's Dolph Lundgren, neither of whom got along with Boll at all), is also the third pairing of Boll with his current favorite actor, after the deck-stacking histrionics of ASSAULT ON WALL STREET and the pointless remake of the Presidential assassination thriller SUDDENLY. It's a partnership that's yielded nothing worthwhile, and while they may get along just fine, it likely exists simply because Purcell works cheap, and cheap is where Boll's at as he still adjusts to his post-German tax loophole world.
Purcell, knowing he's in another Boll joint and not trying any harder than he needs to, grunts his way through this ARMY OF DARKNESS/GAME OF THRONES ripoff as Hazen Kaine, a present-day American hitman working in Sofia for Bulgarian crime boss Avaylo (Marian Valev, who looks like Bulgarian Sean Bean). Avaylo orders Kaine to kidnap the two daughters of the heir to the Bulgarian throne, and Kaine finds one of them possesses a strange medallion. The medallion matches one of Kaine's tats. Yep...he's The Chosen One. Cue the wormhole portal sucking Kaine back to medieval times as he aids two sisters, Arabella (Ralitsa Paskaleva) and Emeline (Daria Simeonova), and their uncle Tybalt (Nikolai Sotirov) in their battle against the tyrant Tervin (Valev, again) and his giant, flying, fire-breathing dragon. Boredom ensues (watch Boll pad the running time by having Purcell make an espresso and drink it in real time!), both in terms of story and Purcell's performance, but the batshit Boll of old shines through in the last 15 minutes, when Kaine and the dragon get sucked back into the wormhole and dropped in present-day Sofia. The dragon is chasing Kaine through the streets of Sofia as Kaine carjacks some Bulgarian guy, as if the dragon can't follow a car by flying over it ("Take a right!" Kaine tells the hapless driver. "Lose it!" IT'S A FLYING DRAGON! IT CAN STILL SEE YOU!). Realizing the error of his ways, Kaine, who's somehow eluded the dragon, releases the two kidnapped girls he's kept in a shipping container, while the dragon, now apparently a good guy, shows up and carries away one of Avaylo's flunkies. Kaine kills Avaylo and takes the girls back to their father, who's OK with the fact that, even though Kaine returned them unharmed, they wouldn't have been missing in the first place had Kaine not abducted them, and lets him go ("Thanks...appreciate it," Purcell mumbles). As Kaine ambles away, the dragon can be seen taking a leisurely flight through the skies over Sofia. Nope, no worries. Everything's fine. Nobody's taking cover. There's no police or emergency personnel anywhere. Everyone's just back to their business, disregarding that a fire-breathing dragon just appeared out of nowhere and destroyed half the city and is now apparently a permanent resident of Sofia, but hey, just let it fly around and do its thing, it won't bother anyone. (R, 86 mins)
VIKINGDOM: THE BLOOD ECLIPSE (Malaysia/US - 2013)
Purcell also stars in this "300 Meets THOR in Middle-Earth" would-be epic that was shot in 3D by Malaysia's KRU Studios, founded by three Halim brothers who, since 1992, also comprise that country's leading chart-topping pop group KRU when they aren't being movie moguls. Boasting embarrassingly primitive CGI and the same quality of greenscreen backdrops usually favored by local TV meteorologists, VIKINGDOM: THE BLOOD ECLIPSE was supposed to be KRU's big splash in the US (CLASH OF EMPIRES went straight to DVD in 2011), but it only made it to a few screens and VOD, and even that's a stretch considering how shoddy it looks. The visual effects, including some tame CGI splatter, aren't even on the level of a typical Asylum title, though in a few scenes, the sets have that cheap-but-charming quality that brings to mind early '80s Roger Corman productions like THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS or DEATHSTALKER. But still, that's probably not what director/set designer/visual effects supervisor Yusry A. Halim (or, "Yusry KRU" in his teen idol years) was going for with a budget equaling $15 million US. Sure, that's not big bucks by today's standards, but for that amount, one should be able to say something more positive than "some of the sets come close to looking like a 30-year-old Roger Corman production." The incoherent plot has Viking leader Eirick (Purcell) killed in battle and resurrected by the ghost of his dead betrothed Freya (Tegan Moss) in order to take on an evil Thor (Conan Stevens), who's plotting some scheme to gather ancient relics for the apocalyptic "Blood Eclipse." Eirick assembles a crew of warriors, including Sven (Craig Fairbrass) and Brynna (Natassia Linn Malthe), as well as martial arts expert Yang (Jon Foo, from the ill-fated TEKKEN movie) to battle the forces of Thor, which includes a papier-mache dragon that looks like a rejected prop from a high school drama club production of THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG.
The action scenes try to copy both the speed-ramping of 300 and the choreography of wuxia, but Halim doesn't quite pull it off, and while he might be going for that graphic novel artifice in the visuals, it ends up looking like a laughably cheap, dated ripoff. If this film and IN THE NAME OF THE KING: THE LAST MISSION show us anything, it's that Dominic Purcell doesn't get your movie into theaters--he gets it a spot on a Wal-Mart DVD department planogram. Halim should've known he wasn't going to find success in the US market when his lead is Uwe Boll's go-to guy (Malthe and Fairbrass have also logged time with Dr. Boll), but even Boll's movies look better than this. VIKINGDOM's cheapness--the wigs look like mop heads, and Thor's hammer appears to be a block of silver-spray-painted packing styrofoam stuck on a broom handle-- might've had some B-movie charm if Purcell wasn't once again sleepwalking his way through the whole thing. This is easily the narcoleptic thespian's worst performance yet. He speaks in a monotone that doesn't even mask his utter boredom with the project, and with his often halting and hesitant moves in the battle scenes, he looks like someone who's nursing a recent back injury. He frequently looks confused and irritable, not even hiding that he's just in this for the free Kuala Lumpur vacation. VIKINGDOM does little other than establish Halim as the Uwe Boll of Southeast Asia, getting stilted performances from his cast of C-listers, and his staging of the action scenes is awful: it's obvious he's got about 25 extras that he unsuccessfully tries to make look like an army. Old-school directors back in the day knew how to pull that off. (Unrated, 115 mins)
Directed by Adam McKay. Written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Cast: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Dylan Baker, Meagan Good, Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear, Josh Lawson, Judah Nelson, Fred Willard, Chris Parnell, June Diane Raphael. (PG-13, 120 mins)
Back in 2004, the $25 million ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY made more than triple its budget but never topped the box office and dropped out of the top five after two weeks. The film became a modern comedy classic on DVD and cable, where it amassed a devoted cult following when people discovered how consistently hilarious and quotable it is. Star/co-writer Will Ferrell left SNL two years earlier and had the hits OLD SCHOOL and ELF, but it was ANCHORMAN that would become the defining work of his big-screen career and his partnership with director/co-writer Adam McKay, though I contend that 2010's THE OTHER GUYS is their masterpiece. It's nearly a decade later, and after what must be the longest, most aggressive, and all-encompassing marketing campaigns in cinema history, ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES arrives just before Ferrell resorted to going door-to-door across America in his Ron Burgundy wardrobe. With double the budget, probably to accommodate the increased star power and salary requirements of Ferrell and Steve Carell, it's obviously a bigger movie. And a louder movie. It's also bombastically self-indulgent as Ferrell and McKay seem to be making it up as they go along. Nine years ago, they had enough outtakes and abandoned subplots from the first film to assemble the straight-to-DVD spinoff film WAKE UP, RON BURGUNDY. There's no such restraint here. Running nearly 30 minutes longer than the first film, Ferrell and McKay gather up seemingly every discarded comedy idea they concocted since the first entry and throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. Its rapid fire assault of gags might sound ambitious but it comes off as sloppy and desperate, almost like they could be working on a higher level than we're expecting but more likely they're just punking us with an almost Sandlerian level of audience contempt. There's no doubt the coming weeks will find passionate defenses of the film and you'll see terms like "anarchic," "absurdist," "subversive," "Dadaist", and maybe even, and I can't believe I'm writing this, "Bunuel-ian" tossed about with wild, pretentious abandon as if there's some deeper shit going on, but even as a fan of Ferrell, the first film, and absurdist humor, I found ANCHORMAN 2 to be jaw-droppingly unfunny and a dumpster fire of a movie, the kind of catastrophically awful train wreck where it's not hyperbolic to suggest that it's Ferrell and McKay's GIGLI or THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH.
Opening in 1980 to the sounds of Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind," the first of countless soft-rock tunes used where simply hearing them is supposed to be the joke, ANCHORMAN 2 finds news anchor Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) and wife/co-anchor Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) relocated to NYC from San Diego, with their six-year-old son Walter (Judah Nelson). When Veronica is called up to the network by boss Mack Harken (Harrison Ford), who subsequently fires Ron, their marriage falls apart. After a botched suicide attempt, Ron is contacted by Freddie Shapp (Dylan Baker), who's scouting for news personalities for Global News Network, a new 24-hour cable news network bankrolled by Australian billionaire Kench Allenby (Josh Lawson). Lured by the promise of stardom and seeing it as another chance to do what he was born to do, Ron decides to reassemble his news team: reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), weatherman Brick Tamland (Carell), and sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner). Saddled with the 2:00-5:00 am graveyard slot, Ron finds a rival in prime-time anchor Jack Lime (James Marsden), and comes up with an idea to give the audience the news they want instead of the news they need. With his focus on vacuous entertainment stories, cute animals, high-speed chases, debates devolving into shouting matches, and smoking crack on-air, Ron becomes the country's biggest news star and inadvertently brings about the downfall of television news standards.
Those digs at today's cable news--which are obvious and don't really threaten to erase memories of Paddy Chayefsky and NETWORK--are about as thoughtful as ANCHORMAN 2 gets. Aside from the use of early '80s radio staples, the film constantly utilizes future debacles and scandals as a source of easy, lazy humor ("Sponsored by BP: Nature's Best Friend," and Brian cites O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector, and Robert Blake as his posse who call themselves "The Ladykillers"), and it's funny once or twice, but by the 20th time, it's a little stale. There's a certain expectation of callbacks and references when you're dealing with a comedy as revered as ANCHORMAN, and that film's first invocations of "Great Odin's Raven!" or "By the beard of Zeus!" were hilarious. Not so much here, when Ferrell is bellowing nonsense like "By the hymen of Olivia Newton-John!" What? And I haven't even gotten into an extended subplot where Ron goes blind after a head injury and spends his days in seclusion at a lighthouse and bottle-feeding a shark before freeing it into the open water. Ron Burgundy was always a pompous chauvinist, but here's he's just a bleating, tone-deaf asshole. Sometimes, it's as if he's not even playing the same Ron Burgundy from the first film, but rather, an even more cartoonish parody of Ron Burgundy. Indeed, ANCHORMAN 2 is so scattershot, random, and over-the-top that it makes the comparatively sophisticated ANCHORMAN look like BROADCAST NEWS. When Ron gets involved with African-American, female boss Linda Jackson (Meagan Good)--this is after he first meets her and can't stop the Tourette's-styled barking of "Black!" at her--he has dinner with her family, where he steers the conversation to the level of her "stank" during sex and throwing out a "Say what?" to her mother. Has Ferrell even seen the first ANCHORMAN recently? Does he remember making it?
But that's nothing compared to what's happened to Carell's Brick Tamland. Carell wasn't a star back in 2004 and was primarily known as a DAILY SHOW correspondent. In the ensuing decade, he's had considerable success with THE OFFICE and several movies. Brick was a minor character with some funny bits in ANCHORMAN, but now that Carell is arguably as big a star as Ferrell, they probably had to give Brick stuff to do to entice Carell back. What transpires is nightmarish. Carell plays Brick not as a low-IQ, amiably naive man-child, but instead like a thousand-yard-staring psychopath prone to shrieking and screaming for no reason. He gets an endurance test of a subplot where he falls in love with an eccentric, incompetent GNN secretary named Chani (Kristen Wiig), and their endless, laughless scenes play out like bad improv or an exceptionally awful 12:55 am SNL skit where you can almost hear crickets chirping in Studio 8H. No one's having a good day here--it doesn't help that Rudd and Koechner have almost nothing to do, so they at least emerge from the wreckage largely unscathed--but there's simply too much of this reconceived Brick Tamland in this and Carell turns in what may very well be the worst performance you'll see in a major movie in 2013.
Even by the standards of a Judd Apatow production, there's too much of everything here--except comedy. I get the "anarchic" spirit the filmmakers might be going for, but when I hear that term, I think of the action in BLAZING SADDLES crashing over into Buddy Bizarre's musical at the end. Every rambling, overlong sequence in ANCHORMAN 2 plays like something that only the actors think is funny. You can actually see Carell and Wiig almost breaking during some of their conversations, and I'm sure there's plenty of bloopers with the two of them losing it. But what's onscreen is just not funny. It's not even "weird" or "offbeat" funny. Joke after joke after joke lands with a dead thud. Did anyone at Paramount actually watch this, or did they just figure they'll get the $50 million back before the toxic word-of-mouth spreads? Even the expected rival news crews Battle Royale--one of the original film's best scenes--is restaged here with a ridiculous amount of cameos and other out-of-nowhere additions (Brick hoisting a sci-fi ray gun?), but that's it. Once you see the famous faces and all of Ferrell's buddies who showed up to hang out, there's not really anything else there. So why not have John C. Reilly play the soul-sucking ghost of Stonewall Jackson or Harrison Ford sprouting fur and turning into a "were-hyena" for no reason? Sure, it's insane but is it funny? Ranking somewhere between CADDYSHACK II and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3 on the comedy sequel scale, ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES is an excruciating Will Ferrell home movie where the legend of Ron Burgundy has gone to die.
Many reviews of Neil Jordan's vampire film BYZANTIUM said it felt like the director was taking a second pass at his 1994 big-screen version of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. Considering the film's past/present structure, that's a valid statement but it doesn't really represent the whole film. BYZANTIUM, scripted by Moira Buffini and based on her play, is frequently derivative in the way it feels like it belongs in the same Anne Rice universe but also in its similarities to the Swedish vampire hit LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008). It manages to become its own beast, so to speak, and despite the occasionally slow pacing, the overlength, and the sometimes confusing structure, it overcomes its obstacles and ends up an interesting if inconsistent work. Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) are a mother-daughter vampire pair passing themselves off as sisters in present-day London. Clara works as a stripper, procuring her own victims among the drunk and belligerent men for whom she provides lap dances and, if the money's right, sexual services. Where Clara is ruthless and does what she needs to do for nourishment and money, the sympathetic Eleanor is quiet and withdrawn, feeding on humans but only those who are already about to die and who ask her to end their pain. When a mystery man from their past turns up asking questions, Clara decapitates him and the two flee to a downtrodden seaside resort town that Eleanor senses they've visited before. There, Clara latches on to lonely, schlubby Noel (Daniel Mays), who recently inherited a rundown hotel from his late mother. She turns the hotel into a brothel called Byzantium as local men gradually start to vanish. Fed up with her mother's lifestyle, Eleanor goes off to school and tries to live as normal a life as possible, befriending sickly Frank (the perpetually sickly-looking Caleb Landry Jones of ANTIVIRAL) and writing down her story for him. Frank gives the memoir to their creative writing teacher (Tom Hollander) and soon, more men from Clara's past are on the scene. In Eleanor's story, we learn that she and her mother are over 200 years old and that Clara was a prostitute servicing some Napoleonic-era soldiers who were part of a vampire order called the Pointed Nails of Justice. Clara tricked her way into joining this He-Man Woman-Haters Club, and they've been after her and her daughter since.
BYZANTIUM has a great opening half hour, but then meanders a bit when it gets bogged down in the 200 years ago backstory and even more when one of the soldiers (Jonny Lee Miller) tells his own story within the flashback. It picks up again in the home stretch, but the final scene between Clara and Eleanor feels rushed considering the emotional buildup to it, as one interpretation of the film could be as a metaphor for a concerned mother (it's not often you see vampires being concerned about money and keeping a roof over their head) learning to let go of her child. Even with its problems (sorry, but "Pointed Nails of Justice" just sounds too goofy for a serious film), it's just nice to see a vampire film for adults that isn't populated with brooding hotties headed straight for the Teen Choice Awards. A terrific Arterton has the showier role, attacking it with sometimes feverish gusto while avoiding the easy pitfall taking it over-the-top, but it's Ronan's Eleanor who's at the heart of BYZANTIUM, effectively conveying the human side of vampirism, showing no malice or desire to harm anyone and struggling with the anguished burden of eternal life. With one foot in the arthouse and the other in the multiplex, BYZANTIUM sometimes takes on too much and becomes too unwieldy for its own good, but it's an interesting take on the vampire genre that will certainly find a cult following rather quickly. (R, 118 mins)
FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD (US - 2013)
Ostensibly a sequel to FRIGHT NIGHT (2011), which was a remake of FRIGHT NIGHT (1985), FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD has nothing to do with FRIGHT NIGHT (2011) and is actually another remake of FRIGHT NIGHT (1985), with elements of that film's sequel FRIGHT NIGHT PART 2 (1989). Does that make sense? Just by breaking that down, I put more thought into FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD than the filmmakers did. Directed by Eduardo Rodriguez (STASH HOUSE) and written by Matt Venne, whose screenplays for WHITE NOISE 2 and MIRRORS 2 have apparently made him the go-to guy for in-name-only DTV sequels, this "sequel" has hero Charley Brewster (Will Payne) pining for his ex Amy (Sacha Parkinson) while they, and his buddy Evil Ed (Chris Waller) are on some group exchange student sojourn to Romania, where production services can be cheaply procured by budget-conscious Hollywood studios unwilling to spend any more coin on a Will "Who?" Payne-headlined movie than is absolutely necessary. They're attending a seminar on European art history taught by the sexy Prof. Gerri Dandridge (Jaime Murray of HUSTLE and DEFIANCE), who, of course, is a vampire but Charley can't prove it to anyone.
This mostly follows the template of Tom Holland's 1985 classic, with the twist of turning Jerry Dandridge (previously played by Chris Sarandon in 1985 and Colin Farrell in 2011) into "Gerri" Dandridge and utilizing both the legend of Elizabeth Bathory and riffing on Julie Carmen's "Regine Dandridge" (Jerry's vengeful vampire sister) from FRIGHT NIGHT PART 2 (1989). It's all a rather slipshod affair with a mostly uninteresting cast (only British TV vet Murray seems above the material), and thoroughly unlikable characters. Waller plays Evil Ed as a smirking douchebag until the plot requires him to be a horror geek, and Peter Vincent, so brilliantly played by Roddy McDowall as a has-been TV horror host in the 1985 film (in a performance that, believe it or not, briefly generated some Supporting Actor Oscar buzz) and acceptably by David Tennant as a Vegas magician in 2011, is here a cynical, hard-drinking, asshole reality-TV monster hunter played by Sean Power. It's hard to imagine McDowall's Peter Vincent telling a vampirized Evil Ed to "Kiss the cross, bitch!" which is pretty much the level of this loud, stupid, and boring film. The only real surprise FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD offers is Evil Ed telling the Bathory story and having it play out onscreen in animated graphic novel form. It doesn't really serve a purpose, but it's something, I guess. Bland actors, dull performances (in their defense, they're all British or Irish and with the exception of Murray, using American accents), and the mandatory shitty CGI splatter. What a forgettable, pointless waste of time. (Unrated, 99 mins)
Directed by James Wan. Written by Leigh Whannell. Cast: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey, Lin Shaye, Steve Coulter, Ty Simpkins, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Jocelin Donahue, Andrew Astor, Michael Beach, Tom Fitzpatrick, Danielle Bisutti. (PG-13, 105 mins)
Two months after the very effective, old-school fright flick THE CONJURING, director James Wan (SAW) has a sequel to his 2011 hit INSIDIOUS in theaters. INSIDIOUS was 2/3 of a terrific horror film that collapsed in the last third, and this follow-up is dead in the water from the start. Everything Wan did right in INSIDIOUS and THE CONJURING goes wrong here as he and screenwriter/co-star Leigh Whannell really stretch to expand a story that ran out of gas before the first film was even finished. Weaving a complicated backstory into the first film--and pulling a page from the SAW sequels' playbook as some events here take place at the same time as the first INSIDIOUS--while relying on the same scares that were once fresh but now seem played out (look around the periphery of several scenes and you expect to find a ghostly figure lurking somewhere), everything about CHAPTER 2 feels repetitive, uninspired, and at times, downright desperate.
Picking up right where the first film left off, medium Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) is dead, with Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson, also in THE CONJURING) under suspicion after venturing into the purgatorial ghost world known as The Further to rescue his son Dalton (Ty Simpkins), who was abducted by spirits that have followed Josh since he was a child. Moving in with Josh's mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey), Josh and wife Renai (Rose Byrne) soon find themselves under siege once more by malevolent spirits. This time, Josh really doesn't seem like Josh, and it doesn't take long for Renai to realize that another spirit is lurking inside him. Enter Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), Elise's wacky ghostbusting sidekicks, who team up with Carl (Steve Coulter), an old associate of Elise's, and figure out that Josh is possessed by the ghost of Parker Crane (Tom Fitzpatrick), who was a serial killer known as the Bride in Black, driven to kill by the memories of childhood abuse at the hands of his wicked mother (Danielle Bisutti).
The confusing storyline doesn't make much sense, especially when Josh, trapped in The Further by Crane's spirit, starts interacting with himself and Renai in events from the first film. He also travels back to 1986 to converse with himself as a child. These "Further" rules and abilities seem arbitrary and made up as they go along, and do nothing to enhance the experience of the first film, which, while not following through all the way to the end, still functioned nicely on its own. No, everything here seems like a cash-in. Most sequels are unnecessary anyway, but this one feels especially so and is doubly disappointing considering how good THE CONJURING was. Unlike its predecessor, INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 is boring and illogical, the jump-scares no longer work, and the "possessed by a serial killer" angle feels stale and seems to exist only to give Wilson a chance to act like Jack Nicholson in THE SHINING. It's a huge step back for Wan, who really impressed with THE CONJURING, and of course, the door is left open for a third INSIDIOUS, which has already been announced. I think I've seen enough.
Directed by John Moore. Written by Skip Woods. Cast: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Rasha Bukvic, Cole Hauser, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Yulia Snigir, Amaury Nolasco, Sergey Kolesnikov. (R, 97 mins)
At one point in A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, the latest and by far the least of the 25-year-old action franchise, someone asks the villain "So this is about money?" to which Bruce Willis' John McClane interrupts "It's always about the money."
That pretty much sums up Willis' level of commitment to this dreary and uninspired time-waster that feels the need to justify itself by mentioning in the closing credits just how many people the project employed and how many hours they put in. Indeed, this wasn't a scripted film with characters in a narrative. It was put together in a strictly mechanical, assembly-line fashion with the actors being the least relevant part of the equation. There's nothing wrong with crafting a formulaic action picture with the intention of making money, but it helps if anyone involved can at least pretend that they give a shit.
A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD finds a sleepwalking Willis coasting through as McClane, heading to Moscow upon hearing news that his estranged son Jack (Jai Courtney, whose bland presence here seems to indicate that Hollywood has given up trying to make Sam Worthington happen) has been imprisoned on drug charges. McClane arrives in Moscow and immediately stumbles into a complex plot to get jailed scientist Komarov (Sebastian Koch of THE LIVES OF OTHERS) out of the country--an operation overseen by Jack, who's really a covert CIA agent. Komarov has access to a file that implicates him and big-shot politician Chagarin (Sergey Kolesnikov) as the parties responsible for the Chernobyl disaster. Komarov has owned up to it and wants Chagarin to pay, while Chagarin needs Komarov to disappear in order to attain his ambitious political goals. Jack seems to be pulling off this mission with just one other CIA guy (Cole Hauser), who gets shot in the head almost immediately, putting Komarov in the hands of the bickering McClanes, who spend as much time working out their family issues as they do blowing away cartoonish Russian bad guys, led by Chagarin's top henchman Alik (Rasha Bukvic), whose tap-dancing and carrot-munching are highly ineffective quirks for a villain to demonstrate. This all ends with a showdown at the abandoned Chernobyl facility (after the McClanes are lucky enough to steal a car with a trunk filled with automatic weapons), where the radiation can be neutralized by spraying a fine mist (apparently Febreze's new "Deus Ex Machina" scent), which is screenwriter Skip Woods' (SWORDFISH, THE A-TEAM) way of explaining how McClane Sr. and Jr. can waltz around quipping one-liners to their hearts' content with no protective gear or regard for their safety. Last year's CHERNOBYL DIARIES was more plausible.
But that's the least of A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD's idiocies. If you thought 2007's ill-advised LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD was inane, then wait until you see this. The John McClane of this film bears almost no resemblance to the McClane in the comparitively realistic DIE HARD (1988), a film that had heart, smart writing, and richly-drawn characters amid the action and spectacle. That's why it's considered a classic decades later and why no one will remember A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD two weekends from now, no matter how much money it pulls in at the box office (and in one weekend, it's already grossed more than Schwarzenegger's THE LAST STAND and Stallone's BULLET TO THE HEAD combined, both of which are infinitely better films). Five minutes after getting off the plane, McClane is commandeering a truck through the streets of Moscow and dodging a rocket that's launched at him. He and Jack are not only immune to radiation poisoning, but they're involved in flipover accidents, hurl themselves through plate glass windows, fall through floor after floor of exterior scaffolding, and McClane dangles from a truck that's dangling from a chopper, often emerging from these incidents with little more than some scratches and always with the same "I'm on vacation!" wisecrack (Vacation? Weren't you there to get your kid out of jail?). These action scenes are completely CGI'd and look about as convincing as one of those action/explosion FX iPhone apps. I mean, seriously. Look at this:
Actual shot from the film
Several people in the audience applauded at the conclusion of an utterly incoherent car chase. Some of them emitted audible "Whoa!"s during shots like the one above. What is wrong with these people? Do they really think this a stunt being performed by Bruce Willis or an actual human being? Is there anything in the above shot that's real? What are they "Whoa!"-ing about? It's like saying "Whoa!" when Wile E. Coyote plummets into a canyon. This is what passes for a thrilling, aesthetically-pleasing action sequence these days? I must confess that I wasn't completely disliking this movie in the early stages, but the sillier and more PS3-like this thing got, the more the audience was positively responding to it. That's when I started to actively loathe it. If you're gonna get a shit sandwich like this and sit there with your maw agape asking for seconds while ignoring BULLET TO THE HEAD, then you deserve all the terrible movies you get. And be sure to watch them on your phone while you're at it.
And even though Willis isn't even present for some of the more "spectacular" action scenes, he's as much to blame as any of the behind-the-scenes personnel (I haven't even mentioned director John Moore yet, because, well, why?). Willis' career is in a weird place right now. He's been working relentlessly, doing everything from THE EXPENDABLES 2 to the critically acclaimed MOONRISE KINGDOM and LOOPER to straight-to-DVD 50 Cent productions like SET-UP, CATCH .44, and FIRE WITH FIRE, along with some barely-released duds that nobody sees (THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY and LAY THE FAVORITE). And he's got G.I. JOE 2, RED 2, and SIN CITY 2 coming out in the next several months. He can certainly be forgiven for being tired, but A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD just feels desperate. He's not only tired, but he's also obviously bored. When Schwarzenegger said "I'll be back" in THE EXPENDABLES 2, he did everything short of turn to the camera, wink to the audience, and ask if they were having a good time. It's all in the attitude. When Willis finally lets loose with "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!" here, he does it with all the spirit and enthusiasm of someone reading a DMV eye chart. He spends the entire film looking inconvenienced and like he'd rather be somewhere else. And did you see Willis on THE LATE SHOW with Letterman last week? They showed a CGI-heavy action clip and Willis looked vaguely embarrassed. He's a smart guy. He's made good movies, and he can be a great actor when he wants to be. He knows this is garbage. With all the thousands of man-hours put in by the tech crew (what a strange credit--it almost feels like pre-emptive defense), they should've just saved Willis the time and CGI'd his entire performance.
Given a limited theatrical and VOD release the first weekend of 2012, the Texas-shot indie BENEATH THE DARKNESS is already on DVD/Blu-ray and streaming on Netflix. It's not good, but it's not as bad as that dubious distribution schedule would lead you to believe. It's surprisingly old-fashioned in the sense that there's virtually no gore and no nudity. Remove a few F-bombs, and this could almost be a made-for-TV movie. The other surprise is the participation of a slumming Dennis Quaid as a crazed mortician who keeps his dead wife's preserved body in the house on the edge of town and dances with it by romantic mood lighting for passersby--like, say, troublemaking students Tony Oller, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS' Aimee Teegarden (also one of the producers), and Stephen Lunsford--to see. When Quaid kills one of their friends, the trio can't convince cop Brett Cullen (also a producer) that Quaid, still a hometown hero thanks to his youthful high school football heroics, is a homicidal maniac.
There's certainly an old-school, almost Hitchcockian basis for this fright flick, and it's an admirable quality that isn't given justice by the finished product. As directed by Martin Guigui, BENEATH THE DARKNESS also appears to be the location where much of the film was shot. Everything is so dark that most of the time, it's hard to see what's going on. The teen characters are annoying and one-dimensional and the actors are dull. You won't believe for a second that skinny, sullen Oller can get the edge on the still-cut Quaid, who's still in great shape at 57. I'm not sure why Quaid is in this. He's become quite the B-grade horror regular lately, with roles in forgettable fare like LEGION, HORSEMEN, and PANDORUM. Four years ago, he was getting some minor Oscar buzz for his performance in SMART PEOPLE, and here he is hamming it up and chewing the scenery in a cartoonish horror role. Maybe it was a few days work and he owed someone a favor. Maybe it's because they agreed to put two songs by his band, DQ and the Sharks, in the movie. Maybe he always wanted to play a horror movie villlain, or maybe he wanted to spend a little time acting like his brother Randy. Who knows? Quaid seems to be having fun (I'm sure the electronic cigarette prop was his idea) and he's easily the best thing about BENEATH THE DARKNESS. It really drags when he's offscreen, but even he gets hard to take by the end. I guess it's worth a look for Quaid completists, but it's pretty inessential otherwise. Quaid had roles in SOUL SURFER and the FOOTLOOSE remake, but he needs to ditch these B-movies and get on a good TV show. He may be pushing 60, but he's still got that gleam in his eye and I'm sure he can summon that rascally charm from the days of THE BIG EASY. He's always been a likable, dependable actor, one that would no doubt get a career boost from a solid weekly police procedural if BENEATH THE DARKNESS is any indication of where the "and Dennis Quaid" phase of his big-screen career is headed. (R, 96 mins)
IN TIME (US - 2011)
Andrew Niccol arrived on the scene as a major new talent in the late '90s when he wrote and directed the often brilliant GATTACA (1997) and got an Oscar nomination for writing THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998). Since then, he made the unjustly-maligned S1M0NE (2002) and the ambitious LORD OF WAR (2005). IN TIME is Niccol's first film in six years, and it's also his worst, a half-baked, heavy-handed look at a future (with de rigeur retro iconography) where time is the currency and people are genetically engineered to stop aging at 25 and they die at 26...unless they keep earning time. Society is divided into the rich, forever young, and virtually immortal (everyone looks 25), while the working class grinds it out, working jobs that pay little time while dealing with the increasing cost of living (four hours for a cup of coffee). With the harsh economy and class warfare talk of late, there was probably an insightful, powerful, prescient film that could've been made of the story of a working-class guy (Justin Timberlake) who's given 100 years by a suicidal 105-year-old (Matt Bomer) who's grown tired of living. The police, er...timekeepers, led by dogged Cillian Murphy, pursue Timberlake not because they think he killed Bomer, but because he's upset the balance of society by having so much time. In this world, time zones separate the haves from the have-nots, and as Bomer points out, "everyone can't live forever...the cost of living keeps rising to make sure people keep dying." Timberlake ends up on the run with Amanda Seyfried, the spoiled daughter of influential, powerful time magnate Vincent Kartheiser. They fall in love and begin robbing her father's time banks, and giving the "loot" (time) to the poor. So, what starts as a potentially thought-provoking sci-fi allegory of our tough economic times and an ever-widening class divide becomes little more than a predictably-plotted, watered-down, pun-filled (a panhandler asks "Got a minute?"), dystopian remake of WISDOM. What a missed opportunity. (PG-13, 109 mins)
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 (US - 2011)
The PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise seems to have supplanted the temporarily dormant SAW series as the annual fall cinematic comfort food for horror fans, as each entry outgrosses the previous one while everyone bitches about how much they suck. I thought the first film was entertaining and sufficently suspenseful, but as the "found footage" subgenre continues to get beat to death, the makers of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise have had to find new and increasingly ludicrous ways to keep it going. For about an hour, PA3 is an improvement over the dismal PA2. At the very least, it explains some of the inconsistencies between the PA1 and PA2, which was a prequel. The problem is that the explanation, while filling in some blanks, takes the series to a level of improbable silliness the likes of which we haven't seen since HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS. PA3 goes back to 1988, when sisters Katie and Kristi first started experiencing the title phenomenon. Luckily, their mom's (Lauren Bittner) boyfriend (Chris Smith) videotapes weddings and has access to all sorts of cameras and tapes. And it's largely the same as the previous two: camcorders record various ghostly occurrences and it is effectively done, especially a brilliant bit involving the attachment of a camcorder to the oscillating mechanism of a fan, which allows for some nicely-staged, slow-panning jolts. But the film falls apart as soon as the family leaves the house and goes to stay with Bittner's mother (shouldn't famed Broadway actress Hallie Foote have better things to do?), which leads to an abrupt change in direction that will no doubt be explored in the inevitable PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4, due out later this year. Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the same guys responsible for the fascinating-but-probably-bullshit documentary CATFISH, do a good job maintaining the tension for a good chunk of the film, but when Christopher Landon's (son of Michael) script goes off the rails in the last third, it all just becomes a big stroke-off that feels like a half-assed attempt to drag it out for another movie. The first PA is a solid, standalone scare machine. But this is just getting stupid now. (Note: DVD version reviewed; Blu-ray version is unrated and runs 11 minutes longer and contains added and extended scenes that, from my research, wouldn't make the finale any less idiotic). (R, 84 mins)
HOSTEL PART III
(US - 2011) Directed by Scott Spiegel. Written by Michael Weiss. Cast: Kip Pardue, Brian Hallisay, Thomas Kretschmann, John Hensley, Chris Coy, Zulay Henao, Sarah Habel, Kelly Thiebaud, Skyler Stone. 88 mins. Unrated.
And now the HOSTEL franchise gets demoted to the world of straight-to-DVD, several years after the torture porn subgenre has faded to little more than a horror footnote. I didn't mind the first HOSTEL, but I have to give it up for HOSTEL PART II, with its affectionate homages to 1970s Eurocult classics like TORSO and NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS, and cameos by the likes of Ruggero Deodato, Luc Merenda, and Edwige Fenech. PART II had a lot more going on than one might've thought, and it works just fine as a standalone feature. Eli Roth makes it very easy to find Eli Roth annoying, especially now that he's firmly ensconced in the Quentin Tarantino posse, and much like his hero, feels the need to be a terrible actor. But Roth brought his A-game to HOSTEL PART II, and if he has a masterpiece, that's it.
As expected, Roth has nothing to do with HOSTEL PART III other than a cursory "Based on characters created by..." credit. Directing chores have been farmed out to HOSTEL co-producer and longtime cult-movie fixture Scott Spiegel, who gets a lifetime pass for co-writing EVIL DEAD II, but really hasn't had much success otherwise. He wrote and directed 1989's maniac-loose-in-a-grocery-store cult classic INTRUDER, co-wrote the much-maligned 1990 Clint Eastwood-Charlie Sheen vehicle THE ROOKIE, and later directed the straight-to-video FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: TEXAS BLOOD MONEY (1999), while getting bit parts in most of his buddy Sam Raimi's movies and moderating assorted DVD commentary tracks. Spiegel and writer Michael Weiss (himself no stranger to DTV sequels, having written US SEALS 2, I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, and THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT 2 among others) have fashioned HOSTEL PART III as essentially a torture porn version of THE HANGOVER. Groom-to-be Scott (Brian Hallisay) is taken to Vegas by best man Carter (Kip Pardue), who used to go out with Scott's fiancee (Kelly Thiebaud). In Vegas, they meet up with two other buddies--sensitive, disabled Justin (John Hensley), and the obnoxious, loathsome Mike (Skyler Stone), who never stops bitching that his wife has put on 30 lbs since they got married. It isn't long before Mike disappears with an escort and Scott is drugged, and the next morning, no one knows what happened or where Mike is. Any chance that all roads lead to a secret Elite Hunting facility where filthy rich gamblers place bets on how much torture an unwilling subject can withstand?
Of course, there's a twist which you'll see coming long before the other characters do, and the gore is plentiful (though not as over-the-top as you might imagine). But it's all just so tired and stale. Spiegel is a competent enough director, and might've been able to fashion something if the writing had been a little better. Weiss' lazy script basically has characters yelling "What the fuck?!" and "You sick fuck!" over and over, and it takes less than ten minutes for someone to say "What happens in Vegas..." Come on!
The Vegas exteriors look to be second-unit work, as most of the film was shot in Detroit, of all places (Spiegel, like his friends Raimi and Bruce Campbell, comes from the Detroit area). The Elite Hunting headquarters is played by the imposing Michigan Central Station, a decrepit, vacant landmark visible from I-75 that looks as if the intro to Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" should be played in its vicinity 24/7. In this shot from the climax of HOSTEL PART III (I could post a spoiler warning, but do you really care?), the famed structure is engulfed in what appear to be extremely unconvincing CGI flames of an almost Sega Genesis-level quality.
As for the rest of the cast, there's no one of note other than Thomas Kretschmann as the sinister head of Elite's Vegas operation. Kretschmann, one of those journeyman actors who has the ability to bounce from serious, important films like THE PIANIST and DOWNFALL to drek like SUPERBABIES: BABY GENIUSES 2 and KARATE DOG, often in the same year, has little to do in a role that Julian Sands could've played in his sleep.
I imagine the HOSTEL franchise will go the way of HELLRAISER, and we'll get a series of unrelated, increasingly poor sequels that do nothing but cash in on a brand name and give a slumming name actor a fast paycheck. In that case, I can only hope that the inevitable HOSTEL PART IV gives us guest villain Val Kilmer. Otherwise, count me out.
IN THE NAME OF THE KING: TWO WORLDS
(Canada - 2011) Directed by Uwe Boll. Written by Michael Nachoff. Cast: Dolph Lundgren, Natassia Malthe, Lochlyn Munro, Aleks Paunovic, Heather Doerksen, Natalya Gustislaya, Christina Jastrzembka, Michael Adamthwaite. 96 mins. R.
Uwe Boll's straight-to-DVD sequel to his 2008 box office bomb has a drastically reduced budget thanks to the extinction of all those great German tax loopholes that the filmmaker and part-time boxing enthusiast took advantage of in the past. As has been the case over Boll's last several films, he no longer has the cash to corral the big names he once did. So, where the first ITNOTK had Jason Statham supported by the likes of Burt Reynolds as a noble king and Ray Liotta as an evil and improbably leather-jacketed sorcerer, this has Dolph Lundgren with Boll regular Natassia Malthe (BLOODRAYNE sequels) and DTV mainstay Lochlyn Munro. ITNOTK was pretty terrible, but it was a fun terrible. The sequel is just boring, and really tough to get through without a bizarre cast of slumming and/or intoxicated big name actors to keep it interesting. With a sleepwalking Lundgren and some really subpar visual effects, ITNOTK: TWO WORLDS looks and plays like it should be debuting on a Saturday night on SyFy.
In present day Vancouver, ex-military officer and karate instructor Granger (Lundgren) is attacked in his home by a bunch of medieval ninjas in Darth Maul makeup, and transported to a world centuries past. Elianna (Natalya Gustislaya), sorceress to the King (Munro) has brought Granger back in time because he is The Chosen One, revealed by a prophecy to be the warrior from the future to help them fight the Holy Mother (Christina Jastrzembska) and her army of Dark Ones. An unimpressed Granger tells the king "You can take that prophecy and shove it up your ass." But it turns out the Holy Mother and the Dark Ones have spread a plague across the land, which killed the previous King (the character played by Statham). Now suddenly convinced of the prophecy, Granger has a change of heart: "Tell me where to find this crazy bitch."
As has happened in the past (1968 TUNNEL RATS, his version of a late '80s Vietnam movie; and THE FINAL STORM, a religious-themed thriller that came about a decade after the LEFT BEHIND/OMEGA CODE craze), Boll seems to be ripping off a film years past its sell-by date, in this case the nearly 20-year-old ARMY OF DARKNESS. There's a lot of story elements pilfered from Sam Raimi's 1993 cult classic, but there's no energy or momentum, and everyone seems catatonic. Lundgren is clearly bored, Munro starts using an Irish accent late in the film for no apparent reason, and Malthe, as a nursemaid who accompanies Granger on his quest, is simply awful. There's a plot twist 2/3 of the way through, and a badly CGI'd fire-breathing dragon makes a guest appearance, but there's virtually nothing to recommend about IN THE NAME OF THE KING: TWO WORLDS. Boll has shown occasional flashes of decency in some of his more recent films (1968 TUNNEL RATS and ATTACK ON DARFUR weren't bad; POSTAL had some genuinely hilarious moments; and the harrowing prison drama STOIC was actually good), but without name actors like Statham, Reynolds, Liotta, or Ron Perlman, or, say, BLOODRAYNE's Ben Kingsley (yes, Ben Kingsley was once in an Uwe Boll film) to raise the MST3K factor, there's little reason to watch something like IN THE NAME OF THE KING: TWO WORLDS, a cheap, shoddy piece of work that even the most die-hard Dolph Lundgren fans should avoid.
