81. The Missing Juror (1944) - A supposed dead man sent to death row apparently comes back from the dead and starts killing the jurors who wrongly convicted him. Now it's up to the wise cracking, fast talking newspaper reporter to save the day. Not a very original movie from the good old days but still worth watching.
82. The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) - Boris Karloff plays a supposed dead man sent to death row who appears to have come back from the dead and starts killing the jurors who wrongly convicted him. Now it's up to the wise cracking, fast talking newspaper reporter to save the day. Yeah....really. Way better than the first one though. Mostly thanks to Karloff's performance which was amazing. He delivers a monologue in this movie that is as good as anything I've ever seen. This man not having an Oscar in his casket is a shame. The plot was cool too. Karloff's mad scientist character traps all the jurors in a booby trapped house and then tells them exactly what time they will die. He also warns them when something they're fixing to do will kill them but their human nature gets the best of them and leads them to their doom. It's a lot like a 1939 version of a Saw movie only way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way better than a Saw movie.
83. Before I Hang (1940) - Boris Karloff plays a mad scientist who is wrongly convicted of murder and sent to death row and.......ok...look... I never said every movie back then was original. Karloff made like 20 movies a year, they can't all be new and original. But they ARE all awesome.
84. The Butterfly Effect (2004) - That dude from Dude, Where's My Car plays a kid who experiences black outs growing up. He starts keeping journals trying to help remember things that happened during his blackouts. As an adult he discovers that he has the ability to read his journals and then go back in time and take over his body during those black outs and use the time to try to fix things that went wrong in his future. Of course, in true Twilight Zone fashion, every time he goes back and changes something, something else goes wrong and his future life gets worse and worse. I love this movie. No complaints whatsoever. Writing, directing, acting all worked, it keeps you guessing all the way through and demands multiple viewings to catch everything. It really is the Debbie Downer of movies though. It got more and more depressing until you need Calgon to take you away after it's finished. This movie came out when it was very fashionable to hate Ashton Kutcher. Now that that has died down people should give it a second chance.
85. The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006) - Why is there a Butterfly Effect 2? I have no idea. The first one kinda told the whole story and wrapped it up with a nice little bow on it. It wasn't a giant hit that demanded a sequel. Well, it got one anyway. Part 2 tries nothing new or different. It simply retells an inferior version of the original story without the good director, writer or cast. Gone is the entire set up about the black outs as a kid and all that. This dude just has something bad happen to him so he looks at a picture and travels through time without any of the explanation as to how or why. The only thing it has going for it is Erica Durance who plays the best screen version of Lois Lane ever on Smallville. Why see isn't one of the most famous women in the world I'll never know.
86. The Butterfly Effect 3 (2009) - Yep, a third one. Who saw this coming? Even The Butterfly Effect gets beat into the ground?! At least they tried something different this time around. This time they use the whole time travel thing as something of a super power. The guy in this one uses it to go back in time to solve crimes....until half way through the movie all that stops and it goes back to trying to re-create the story from the first one again. Boo.
87. The Dead Pit (1989) - We used to go rent movies in my early teen years at a store called The Video Place in good old Madison Square. It was the greatest place on Earth. I still remember the overwhelming smell of old VHS tapes in that place. I still have a picture of the day I met "Batman" there after his movie came out in 1989. It was the store where I got to rent the Faces of Death movies for the first time. I remember I got a bigfoot movie there called Night of the Hunter. The first scene shows a biker stop on the side of the road to take a leak in the woods. Bigfoot reaches out from some bushes, grabs the guy's thingie and rips it off. I ejected the tape and was scarred for life. I never watched it again until a couple of years ago. It was an awesome place with the coolest horror section you could ever see, which just happened to be right next to the door that hid the adult section. "Daddy, why are you into that room when all the cool movies are right here??"
One of my fondest memories of those days was just standing in that massive horror section and looking at the boxes. Every single box looked terrifying. I used to dream about the day where I finally got every single movie from their horror section watched. Then the store closed and crushed my dream. So now 15 or so years later, every time I see a movie box that I remember seeing at The Video Place I have to get it and watch it. The Dead Pit was one of those movies. Now after seeing The Dead Pit I can genuinely say that I am happy that The Video Place is gone.
88. Re-Cycle (2006) - Another Asian horror movie. Yawn. At least for the first half. It started off as just another ghostly curse thing about an author with writer's block getting haunted by some spooks. But then she got sucked into this magic land where all the bad ideas live. Every story and character people have written but thrown away, live in this crazy place. When she first gets there it is really wild and wacky with brilliant visuals. But then they move away from that and it gets boring again. So if you want to be bored for an hour and ten minutes, but really entertained for twenty minutes, pick up Re-Cycle.
89. The Twonky (1953) - A Professor's TV is possessed by a robot from the future. The TV shoots lasers and mind controls people. Possibly the dumbest movie I've ever seen.
90. Antichrist (2009) - Lars von Trier's latest movie was given an "anti-award" at the Cannes film festival for being "the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world". Reviews have called it the most offensive movie ever made. I don't agree with that at all. (My pick for most offensive movie ever goes to Gutterballs.) Yes, there are a few highly disturbing and graphic scenes but at least the scenes are being filmed by a great director and they serve a purpose to the movie so they don't just come off as cheap exploitation. But ya know, maybe when those scenes happened I was still so shocked at the talking fox that was eating his own intestines that I didn't pay enough attention. People act like the movie is nothing but a confusing mess of insane imagery, but.....it's Lars von Trier. When has he ever made anything easy? I've seen most of his work and I personally think that this is one of his most mainstream and easiest movies to understand since The Kingdom. I used to be way too into the European artsy fartsy movie thing. I've gotten out of it in the past few years, but this one may have brought me back. It's not for everybody, it's a love it or hate it type of movie, but I enjoyed it way more than I expected I would. Note....enjoy is probably the wrong word for it but you know what I mean.
91. The Man with Nine Lives (1940) - A doctor invents a way to freeze patients so that he can operate on them for days or weeks and then revive them to full health. What kind of awesome procedure did he use to do this? He placed bags of ice on their chests to freeze them. To wake them up he removed the bags of ice, put a funnel in their mouth and poured hot coffee in. I'm no doctor but I kinda think that would drown them. I started to think about how in the movies things like this are WAY cooler and more fantastic than they are in real life. How bad was medicine in 1940 that this was the Hollywood version? Oh, yeah....Boris Karloff played another mad scientist in this one.
92. My Super Psycho Sweet 16 (2009) - When I saw MTV was airing a horror movie based on their awful Sweet 16 show I thought I would never watch it in a million years. When I saw it was directed by one of the directors of The Signal I thought dang, now I gotta watch it. I watched The Signal last year and thought it was brilliant and original. Why on Earth would the guy who did that make a MTV movie? It gave me a slight hope that it would be worth seeing. And it was VERY much worth seeing. Just goes to show that even a horrible idea can be salvaged by somebody with real talent. I say this is the best slasher movie I've seen in years. Had THIS been the remake of Prom Night I would have no complaints about it. It really felt like a true 80s slasher movie. It nailed the tone. It wouldn't be one of the big all time classics from that era, but I would say it would fit in very well with the B team of 80s slasher movies like Prom Night, Sleepaway Camp, My Bloody Valentine, etc. Plus the killer looked a lot like the Burger King guy from the commercials. That was quite scary. I give it two thumbs up!
93. Grave of the Vampire (1974) - I probably should've hated this movie but I didn't. I expected to, but the first scene changed my mind. A young couple are hanging in a graveyard but suddenly a vampire comes out of his grave and attacks them. It reminded me a lot of Night of the Living Dead but with a vampire instead of a zombie. The vampire ends up raping the girl and she gets pregnant with a half vampire baby. I know I said before that evil babies aren't scary, but watching this woman give a baby a bottle filled with blood was kinda creepy.
94. The Fatal Hour (1940) and
95. Doomed to Die (1940) - A back to back and a belly to belly of classic 1940s racism as Boris Karloff plays Asian detective James Lee Wong. Would be way more believable had Karloff made any effort whatsoever to attempt a Chinese accent. Just a little? Sorry, Boris, I'll stick with Charlie Chan movies for my racist 1940s movies with white guys playing Asian guys.
96. Saw 5 (2008) - I can now honestly say I completely hate the Saw series. It is without a doubt the worst horror franchise ever. It is beyond tired and worn out. How long will they beat this dead horse? I loved the first movie. It was a very cool little, SIMPLE movie about two guys in a room with a saw. That's it. Easy to follow. Great concept. It left a few open question but they were questions better left NOT answered. Some mysteries should NEVER be solved. But the studio smelled money so they had to make another one, then another one, then another one. The simple little movie that could has now become the most convoluted plot in the history of cinema. There doesn't seem to be any plan from the writers of these movies. They have no idea where they're going, they just make it up as they go and then try in vain in the last 5 minutes to figure out what the hell they just wrote. The plot is so confusing and there is now so many characters that it is impossible to keep straight. Every movie bounces around in time enough to make you dizzy. Present time, flash back, present time, flash forward, present time, flash back, flash forward, flash back, present time, flash back, flash back in a flash back, flash forward, flash back, present time, flash back......it's mind boggling. The series seems like somebody put several jigsaw puzzles into one box and shook it up so now none of the pieces go together anymore. I am absolutely thrilled that Saw 6 was walloped by Paranormal Activity. Hopefully this means the end is near. The sad thing is even when it starts to become less profitable to put them in theaters, they'll just start doing even cheaper direct to DVD Saws. The first Saw movie came out in 2004. By 2009 we already have 6 of them. Just stop.
97. The Vampire Lovers (1970) - At first glance this seems to be just another Peter Cushing vampire flick from Hammer Studios, but it is WAY more than that. 4 words: Ingrid. Pitt. Lesbian. Vampire. Wawaweewa! Sexy time very niiice! I swear I believe that Hammer had some sort of perfect woman making machine. Every single woman in every single movie is insane. How did we get to where we are today? Somebody should sit down today's skin and bone actresses and make them watch this crap. Bring back curves and get rid of the angles! Scarlett Johansson seemed like she was bringing the Hammer look back but then Hollywood forced her to lose weight for Iron Man 2 and now she looks like a 12 year old boy. Thanks a lot, Jon Favreau!
98. Stan Helsing (2009) - Yet another movie from "a producer" of Scary Movie. Is a movie a comedy if it never makes you laugh? I know the movie had jokes, but they weren't funny, so does that count? This movie seemed to be stuck in a time warp. The opening scene had jokes about Titanic and Blair Witch. What year is this? The villains of the movie were some of the lamest things I've ever seen. They had a Pinhead character but his face was painted like a dart board so instead of pins in his head it was darts. HA HA HA HA GET IT??? They had a Jason character but he wore an entire hockey outfit instead of just the mask. HA HA HA HA GET IT??? They had a Michael Myers but his mask had a permanent smile on it. HA HA HA HA GET IT??? They had a Freddy character who looked like Freddy, except that he had a big Flava Flav clock around his neck! HA HA HA HA GET IT??? They had a Leatherface but instead of a human skin mask, he wore a leather purse on his head. HA HA HA HA GET IT??? Yeah, I didn't understand any of it either.
99. Predator: The Quietus (1988) - I finally did it. I broke the internet. I actually watched a movie that is NOT on IMDB at all. I searched every name in the credits and it's nowhere to be found under any name. It doesn't deserve to be on IMDB either.
100. Twins of Evil (1971) - Another Hammer vampire movie with this plot: Peter Cushing must figure out which twin sister has become a vampire. Couldn't this be wrapped up in less than 20 minutes? How about bake some garlic toast? The one who refuses to eat it MIGHT be a vampire. Hold up a mirror, the one who you can't see MIGHT be a vampire. Hold up a cross, the one that goes hiiiisssssss MIGHT be a vampire. Throw some holy water on them, the one that says ouch MIGHT be a vampire. Throw them both in some sticker bushes, the one can't get out MIGHT be a vampire. Raise the blinds during the day, the one that melts MIGHT be a vampire. Take them to a creek, the one who can't cross MIGHT be a vampire. Just some suggestions.
101. Circus of Horrors (1960) - A plastic surgeon performs plastic surgery on people with messed up faces and in return forces them to work in his circus. Do what now? Isn't that kind of backwards? I'd rather go to a circus full of messed up looking people.
102. The Devil Commands (1941) - Boris Karloff plays a mad scientist and does some stuff and some people die and things go bad and he loves his daughter and his wife is dead and wow.....Karloff made a lot of movies.
103. Panga (1991) - Some dumb American broad in Africa stops a witchdoctor from killing a goat and ends up getting cursed by some African tribesman hoojoo. It really goes off the deep end in the last 10 minutes when some guy shows up in a Godzilla suit. Turns out this movie's more popular title is The Curse 3. So I actually think I watched some of it before way back in the day because I liked The Curse movies. This has nothing at all to do with The Curse or The Curse 2 of course. The real sad news is that while watching this I discovered that MGM HD has started showing commercials during their movies. Sure it's only one break per movie but it sure does bring up bad memories of the day AMC started showing commercials. AMC used to be the greatest channel ever and now I can't skip it in the guide fast enough. I just realized Sunday that this is the first year of my life that I didn't even check AMC's Halloween schedule. AMC's MonsterFest used to be the bomb. Now all they do is ChoppedUpFullScreenMoviesFille
104. Nightmare (2000) - Is it racist to say that all Asian horror movies are really starting to look the same?
105. The Old Dark House (1963) - William Castle was tired of critics claiming that people only watched his movie for the gimmicks he used to use. He decided to prove them wrong by doing a gimmickless movie and somehow ended up remaking a classic James Whale/Boris Karloff Universal classic into an awful slapstick comedy starring Tom Poston. He did not prove the critics wrong.
106. My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009) - I first watched this a while back and hated it. I gave the movie a break and said that maybe the annoying and distracting 3D was the reason I didn't like it. So I watched the 2D version.. Nope, it's just really bad.
Fun Fact: The original My Bloody Valentine was the first movie to scare me. When I was a littler feller my Aunt went out of town and asked my Mommy to check on her house. They had more money than we did and had a big fancy VCR that we could only dream of having. We ended up going over there a bunch and watching movies. We decided to watch My Bloody Valentine one night and it didn't take long before I ended up sitting out on the porch while she finished it.
107. Scream Queen Hot Tub Party (1991) - I had heard about this movie for years and looked for it everywhere. It always sounded like a fun movie where all the famous horror scream queens get together in one movie and hijinks ensue. I wish I had never found it because it's not like that at all and the movie in my head is way better. There is one....count it....ONE name brand scream queen in Brinke Stevens. The rest of the cast are just a bunch of girls who had appeared in shower scenes in one or two bad direct to video movies. And it's not a movie, it's not even an hour long. It's got a very, very, very bare bones plot that leads all these girls to meet up and get in a hot tub and then introduce clips of their shower scenes from their bad direct to video movies. I don't even want to see the movies these clips are from, much less the clips, but.....
108. Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988) - Unfortunately I did watch this one. The clips were better because they were shorter.
109. Ghostwatch (1992) - On Halloween Night in 1992 the BBC lost their friggin minds and decided to scare the living crap out of everybody in England and ended up making something now known as one of the most controversial TV moments in British history. The best way to describe it is Paranormal Activity meets Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast. It was a pre-recorded movie presented as a live TV broadcast where a news crew investigates a haunted house. It's very much like Geraldo's famous opening of Al Capone's vault show. The show was divided between two segments. There was an in studio portion featuring a couple of hosts, a ghost hunter type woman and a skeptic. Then there was a crew at the house trying to catch some ghostly stuff on tape. The in studio portion would watch what was going on in the house along with us and comment on it. There was also a phone bank so viewers could call in and discuss what was going on. The thing is, when you called the number you were supposed to get a recording that told you the show was fake, but they got hit with so many phone calls that the thing went down so people didn't hear the message.
It's easy to look back now, 17 years later, and spot all the goofy spots that should've tipped people off that this was fake. Usually I'd call people idiots for buying into something like this, but I have to say, I can understand. This was creepy. It gave me the chills in parts. Just as a normal haunted house movie this thing works. With the BBC not giving any kind of warning disclaimer and this probably being the first time most people were actually exposed to this time of "fake reality" film making...I'm not shocked at the stir it caused. And it's not like they were just showing a haunted house, nope, they were trying to make people think the ghost was using the television equipment to escape and actually haunt the VIEWERS OWN HOMES! Hell, I'm shocked a few old people didn't drop dead watching this. They used tricks like showing one piece of footage several times but using alternate takes to make the viewers think they were seeing stuff the hosts weren't seeing. They also put the ghost into several shots for a split second so he was almost subliminal and of course only the viewers ever noticed any of it. The ghost eventually escapes the house, gets into the studio and possesses the host after it is figured out that by getting so many people to watch this show, they've accidently created the world's biggest séance and given the ghost tremendous power.
In the aftermath of the show one viewer committed suicide, two others were diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and many others had to buy new underwear. The BBC got in all sorts of trouble and placed a ten year ban on re-airing the program. 7 years after that ended, it still hasn't been re-aired and will likely never be, but a documentary about the show is currently in the works. Thankfully you can find anything on the internet if you know where to look.
And I gotta say, it's worth looking for. This is probably the best thing I've watched this year. 1 - Because even as just a normal movie, it's pretty good. 2 - Because the story behind it is so good. The first television show to ever cause somebody to suffer from PTSD?? How can you not love that?
110. The World Gone Mad (1933) - I watched this whole thing and I couldn't even begin to think of anything to say. Did anything happen? I have no idea.
111. Zaat (1969) - Some weird guy who only talks in voice overs discovers a serum that will turn him into a catfish man. After turning into the catfish man he goes out into the woods and starts spraying it with Windex. Then he starts kidnapping women so he can turn them into catfish women so they can mate and create a race of catfish people. While watching this my mind started to wander for some reason. I ended up discovering the secrets of how to make a perpetual motion machine/nuclear fusion generator. But then the catfish man distracted me and I forgot it all.
112. Shocker (1989) - Shocker is a shockingly bad movie from supposed shock master Wes Craven. I don't know what was so shocking about how shockingly bad this movie was though. I would be more shocked if Craven actually made something shockingly good for a change. Seriously, this guy hasn't come up with one good idea since Nightmare on Elm Street and that was in 1984. Why is this guy considered some horror master? The truly shocking thing was that Shocker was a complete and total shockingly bad rip-off of Elm Street.
113. Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008) - This is a movie I watched last year and loved. So I watched it again. I still think it's great. THIS is how you bring classic 80s slashers back. Enough with the stupid generic remakes. Sleepaway Camp features the same writer, director and cast as the original so it easily recaptures everything that was fun about the original movies. I had way more to say last year, I don't feel like repeating myself.
114. A Perfect Getaway (2009) - This one was a OK little thriller. Of course, most of the OK was due to it starring Milla Jovovich. The main issue with it is that it's supposed to be a mystery, yet I successfully deduced exactly who the killers were from the trailer. Then the movie completely gives it away during the opening credits. It would take a real dummy to watch this and actually be shocked at the big reveal.
115. The Devil's Gift (1984) - A woman buys her boyfriend's son one of them goofy cymbal banging monkey toys that just so happens to be possessed by a DEMON!!!! It causes all kinds of horrible things like plants dying. Yet the most unbelievable aspect of the movie is that somebody would think a kid would want a cymbal banging monkey toy for his birthday. But then....the kid LOVES it. He was also given one of the biggest replicas of an AT-AT Imperial Walker I've ever seen and he still just played with this stupid monkey. The fakest thing I've ever seen!!
116. Heart of Midnight (1988) - For some reason people really think Jennifer Jason Leigh should've won the Oscar for this movie. That she was robbed by Jessica Tandy. I don't get it. I saw nothing special about her performance. I'd also say that if you star in a movie alongside people like Brenda Vaccaro and Frank Stallone, an Oscar nomination is not in your future.
117. The Sweet Scent of Death (1986) - Wow. For the second time I have found a movie that IMDB doesn't have listed. I'm awesome!
118. Awake (2007) - This movie has a really freaky description. "The story focuses on a man who suffers "anesthetic awareness" and finds himself awake and aware, but paralyzed, during heart surgery." The thought of being awake during any surgery, much less heart surgery, is scary. That is REAL horror. I was looking forward to this movie very much. It sounded like something very simple and cringe inducing. The first tip that something wasn't right was when it took about 40 minutes before we actually got to the surgery. It sure seemed like a whole lot of back-story and setup for a movie about some dude being awake during surgery. Once the surgery started, it all became clear, the description is a lie. This isn't about that at all. It's some over the top, insanely convoluted, impossible conspiracy to steal the patient's money.
The doctor has malpractice suits he needs money for so him and his team concoct a plan where they have his nurse change her identity and spend months getting this guy with a bad heart to fall in love and marry her. During this time the doctor is bumping the patient down the donor list so she has plenty of time to woo him. The night they get married, ta da, they find a heart. Then the plan is to put in the new heart, inject something to make the body reject it, the guy dies and his fake wife inherits his fortune. But they didn't count on the patient being awake and paralyzed during the operation! Well, that part only lasts for about 5 minutes. After we see those few minutes, his spirit leaves his body. So the entire second half of this movie is this guy's disembodied spirit wandering around the city searching out clues and discovering the plot against him. His mother dies during all this and so then her spirit meets up with his and they solve the mystery. Being awake during heart surgery would be way more fun than watching this.
119. The Tomb (1986) - This could be the most boring mummy movie ever and that's really saying something. It started off very entertaining though. It opened with a shoot out that concluded with a guy aiming a pistol at an airplane and blowing the whole thing up with ONE shot. Then the movie cuts to some fat black woman dressed like King Tut and singing Tutti Frutti. How it went downhill from there I'll never know.
120. Dance of the Dead (2008) - This is another movie I watched last year and liked so much that I watched it again. It's a combination of a teen comedy with a zombie movie about zombies attacking a high school prom. 10 Things I Hate About You + Return of the Living Dead. I love this movie and hate that it didn't get a theatrical release. To me, this zombie comedy completely buries Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland because it works on both levels. You could take the zombies out and it'd still be a good teen comedy. You could take the comedy out and it could still be a good zombie movie. I actually think it was better the second time around. I don't remember laughing out loud as much the first time but this time I laughed all the way through the damn thing. But the thing that makes me like it so much is that the characters are so much more enjoyable than usual horror fare. Nobody is annoying in this. You don't hate anybody. You don't want to see anybody get killed off. Every single teen movie role is here from the anti-hero to the cheerleader to the bad boy to the geek to the bully to the jock and they're all funny and likeable in their own ways. I wish I had more than two thumbs to give this one.
121. House of the Devil (2009) - Another movie I liked last year was The Roost. The movie itself wasn't great due to its low budget and bland actors but I really dug the filmmaking aspect of it. It was made to look like a 70s movie and it really worked. I had no idea the same director did this movie until I started it, once I saw his name pop up I was way more excited about watching it. This time around he has a slightly better budget and a real cast and the movie is way better for it. This time around the movie is made to look like an early 80s horror movie and it is really amazing how good it looks. It looks exactly like an 80s horror movie that has been remastered into high definition. Everything about it looks like it fell out of a time machine. Even the cast looks 80s. The lead character’s best friend seems to be channeling the spirit of PJ Soles. I'm positive that you could play this movie for people, and if they don't know what it is, they'd never say it was made in 2009.
The movie itself will be another love it/hate it type deal. The movie is totally built around suspense, there's no gore or jump scares like most horror movies these days. For much of the movie it's just a girl all alone in a big scary empty house. Nothing happens at all, but that's what was great about it. You know full well that something IS going to happen so watching this girl just wander around this house for a while is constant suspense and tension. It kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. The director, Ti West, has certainly leapt way up to the top of my favorite directors working today. I look forward to the day this guy gets to make a real big budget movie and see what he can do.
(Apparently he was sort of given a chance to make a "real" movie. Lionsgate hired him to direct the direct to DVD Cabin Fever 2. From all accounts he made another really smart movie based in drama, suspense and terror. The studio hated it because they just wanted another gorefest like the first movie. They took the movie from him and completely re-edited it into what they wanted it to be. He's now trying to get his name off the movie and telling everybody that the movie Lionsgate is releasing is no longer his vision. Good job, Hollywood. Ruin somebody else.)
122. Jennifer's Body (2009) - #2 on the list of reasons women should never make horror movies. An indie rock band sacrifices Megan Fox to the devil so they can become rock stars. Instead she comes back to life with demon super powers and starts eating boys. All the while she, and everybody else in the movie, do nothing but spout moronic dialogue filled with idiotic slang words that only a former stripper could write. It took only one movie for Diablo Cody to show what a one hit wonder she is. She'll be back on the pole in no time. Cody's dialogue style worked for Juno because it served the character and the story. Re-using the exact same style for EVERY character in this seems to serve nothing but Diablo's ego.
I probably would've loved this movie had it been a short. If the whole thing was ten minutes long and it was nothing but this rock band killing Megan Fox and she never came back this would be my favorite movie ever. I can't understand, no matter how hard I try, how a movie gets made where Megan Fox is the hot one and Amanda Seyfried is the ugly one. What universe am I in? The sad thing is that as much as I can't stand Megan Fox, she wasn't the problem here. Her wooden, emotionless acting didn't exactly help but even if she channeled Laurence Olivier the movie would still be bad. The cast all did OK, they just had absolutely nothing to work with at all. The story wasn't interesting and the directing was so mediocre that it couldn't elevate the writing. There were a few moments, literally seconds, where the movie would click and I would get my hopes up that we were turning a corner....then nothing.
That was the real kicker. There were so many times where I caught myself thinking, I should like this movie. There were so many chances for it to grab me and make me a fan but it failed at every single one of them. Maybe if the movie had really delivered on it's intended message about the teenage girl's power and sexuality and all that jibber jabber it would've worked, but it failed at even that. There's no message here, just a bunch of blood. A bad movie that can at least deliver a message would at least have some sort of merit. I say skip this non-sense and watch Ginger Snaps instead. It's basically the same exact storyline with a better director, better cast, better writing and it actually delivers its message while still being a fantastic horror movie.
123. Behind the Mask (1932) - Did I actually watch this? I don't remember a thing.
124. Twilight (2008) - #1 on the list of reasons women should never make horror movies.
I do my best to not rip movies before seeing them. That kind of behavior is probably the thing I hate most about the internet. Watching movies or TV shows I love get torn to shreds by people who've never even bothered to watch them drives me absolutely nuts. Too many times I've seen movies get announced and the internet nerd community tears it apart before a director is even attached. Then once the movie is actually released people refuse to see it and give it a chane or they watch it with their pre-concieved notions running through their head. No benefit of the doubt is given, they just watch it so they can talk about how much they hate it. And they cheer when something fails instead of just going oh, that's not for me, so I won't ruin it for the people who DO like it.
I try to give everything a chance and with that in mind I decided to finish off Horrorfest by giving Twilight a shot. I've read all the complaints about it. I know that vampires don't die in sunlight, they just sparkle real pretty. I know they don't have fangs. I know that it’s nothing but a complete and total shameful rip off of True Blood. I was prepared for all that stuff so it wouldn't bother me anymore. Honestly, I really had the feeling that this would be a movie I thought I'd expect to hate but end up really enjoying. I truly wish I could be sitting here and writing about how surprised I was by the movie, but...
I did not enjoy Twilight at all. Not for reasons like sparkly vampires with no fangs who have gone through high school a hundred times. I hated this movie because it was just a really BAD movie. Nothing but cornball hackery from start to finish. When Kristen Stewart walks into class and sees that stupid emo vampire kid for the first time, there just happens to be a fan blowing nearby. The movie goes into slow motion so she can stand there and have her hair blow around like she's in a shampoo commercial. Right then I said are you kidding me?? A movie in the year 2008 actually did that?? And it did with no hint of sarcasm?? The movie was filled with moments like that. Just a bunch of cornball moments that you'd expect to see in a 10 year old Backstreet Boys video but not a Hollywood blockbuster.
Even worse is the fact that this movie is somehow 2 hours long yet NOTHING happens the entire movie. There's no story here. No character development. The big romance? What romance? They see each other and fall in love immediately. It was the movie equivalent of a boy passing a girl a note that says "DO U LIKE ME? Y/N" and then they climb trees together. At one point in the movie the person I was watching it with just started huffing and puffing and yelled "Jesus Christ! Is anything ever going to happen?!" My reply was "the movie has only been on a hour and 11 minutes, give it some time!" Luckily the most exciting scene of the movie was coming up only moments later when the vampires all got together and played a game of vampire super powered baseball. Yay!!!
As much as I hate this movie, I have to defend it. The complaints people have about it don't do it justice. It's not fair to hate this movie because it completely stomps all over the accepted vampire mythology or because it's a silly teen romance movie. Ripping it for those reasons isn't giving the terribleness of this movie the credit it deserves. Even if the vampires were the normal kind we all know and love, this movie is still awful. Nothing but a bunch of annoying, hollow characters with no personality and no motivation doing nothing for two hours. And the very, very, very, very tiny thread of plot it does have will drive you to drink if you think about it for longer than 2 seconds. Jeez, a girl movies to a town, the fifth person she meets is a vampire, she immediately falls in love with him and wants him to bite her so they can be together forever. Really? Why? Why would any sane person think that? You would think it would take at least a couple of dinners before you even got to touch the bra but no, bite me and be together forever!! What? I would think she'd want to spend more time with him before deciding that she should be with him for the rest of time. Maybe she finds out he has really bad BO or something? She wants to be stuck with bad BO vampire guy forever? And if I'm the vampire I'd be like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!! I just met this chick 3 days ago and she already wants to be with me for eternity? This seems a bit odd and clingy. I think I'm gonna have to pass on this crazy chick. Luckily this high school in the very tiny town of Forks, Washington doesn't have a single ugly person in it so there's plenty of fish in the sea! And if not, I have the rest of time to find somebody better!
And I'm finally done. Thanks to anybody who actually read to all the way down here and thanks to Brandon and Jeremy for letting me take over the site for a few weeks. Now I have to rest for a couple of months before I start my other annual event of trying to see every single movie that gets nominated for the Oscars. Until then I have a DVR full of TV shows to get caught up on, so goodbye internet.
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