Thursday, October 15, 2015

Fun Sized Movie Treats (Part 10)



"Ooo! Piece of candy!".
-James Woods.

Four to go....


The rest of the Warren-verse.



Still doing this, and almost done.

Annabelle (2014) 
Prequel to "The Conjuring".
The real story involved a Raggedy Anne doll, and it didn't do a kajillionth of what it does in this movie.
There's a scene at an antique shop where you see the Raggedy Anne doll in the background as the only wink toward the real case.
Anyway, as for the flick, it's basically Chucky and Exorcist mashed together, right down to the defenestration sacrifice ending of the latter. Except it's Alfre Woodard, because racism and misogyny, because Catholics.

The Conjuring (2013)
This is essentially "Ed and Lorraine Warren The Movie".
This movie shows them as friggin' superheroes.
They're played by Nite Owl, and Norma Bates, and the versions of them in this universe are likable and cool. I hate their RL guts, and even I felt myself pulled to root for them.
They aren't just likable, they get put through rough and tumble jeopardy like Indiana Jones.
They're everything you'd want them to be when you hear the IDEA of a husband and wife ghostbusting team.
I'll admit, husband and wife ghostbusters is a cool IDEA in your head.
The fantasy it elicits is romantic and fun. This movie chases right after that and shows it to you.
BUT, these fictional characters are based on real people, and this shit didn't happen in the real story, and you can pop their names into Youtube, and see them on old talk shows, and see what assholes they really were.
Like the characters all you want, but don't get sucked in, is what I'm saying.

BUT, William Shatner is an asshole, but Captain Kirk isn't.
I can separate things.
Was this a good movie?

*Wavey hand* it recycles every haunted house and exorcism trope you've ever seen, and just like the last batch, it pushes the Catholic shit.
Oh, and you'll see every single theme of the Warren-verse play out here.
It's almost like continuity nods.
Catholicism out the ass, goody-two-shoes family, ghosts that look like the black smoke from "The Haunting", objects vanish and come back, voices are heard from family members that they didn't say, one of the parents goes unhinged from the pressure, etc, etc. All goes back to "Amityville".

Independent of me hating the Warrens, and being a skeptic, I'm sick to death of possession shit.
Only found footage pisses me off more.

I don't think its anything I'd watch again, but unlike everything since Amityville 1,  it was competently made for what it was.

Anyhoo, relatively, this was probably the second best of these I saw in this batch.
Like I said, I was fascinated by the fictional versions of these characters.
If they were made up whole cloth, like Ash, or Peter Venkman, I could enjoy them more.
I could almost recommend this, but you've got a hard choice to make if you want the real Lorraine getting a dime of your dollar.
Personally, I wouldn't chance it.
If you do see this, and like it, and care, Nite Owl and Norma Bates are coming back for "The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist ".


The Haunting In Connecticut (2009)
Oh, holy fucking shit, this was horrible.
It was abject misery sitting through this piece of shit.
Avoid this like nuclear waste.

Not only is this not a good movie, not only is it boring as hell, it morally offended me.
I've seen fucking "A Serbian Film", and this offended me worse.

Here's the deal, this is about a real kid, and he had fucking brain cancer.
A real life cancer patient, and they're exploiting him to spin a fairy tale for thumb sucking death-deniers.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
This is the line-stepping behavior that makes me not give any quarter to this shit.

Worse still, here's the connection to the Warrens.
A different dude wrote the book it's based on, but Ed advised him, and his advice was, and I quote "you've got some of the story — just use what works and make the rest up… Just make it up and make it scary".

Don't you just wanna kick him in the balls with a rocket boot?
It would take a time machine, cuz the fucker's dead, but still.

Anyhoo, much like the kid from "The Demon Murder Case", the guy that wrote the book exposed this fact, and washed his hands and feet of it.
Good for him.


Deliver Us From Evil (2014)
This was probably the best of the four.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't LIKE any of them, but there were good PARTS sprinkled in two of 'em.
This, and "The Conjuring".

This one is based on the accounts of a Boston cop, and the link to the Warrens is, he read one of their books, and was inspired, and made himself their apprentice, sorta.
Also, the title of the flick is the title of their first book.

I half liked the characters in this.
They were macho strutting meat-heads, and you can see the bullshit onscreen of how the cop and his partner's adventures were obviously magnified like a big fish story.
"Yeah, there were four of the assholes, and we kicked their asses, and we were like 'you ain't gonna hit women anymore, you muthafucka!!'".

Like *eyeroll* yeah, yeah, cut it out.

BUT, they swore, and razzed each other, and acted like humans, warts and all, and that made them realer than anything in the regular Warren-verse, where everyone's a phony glassy-eyed Jesus-droid.

So, that made this the best in the lot for me.
It felt like a story, and not a Jesus infomercial for a change.
Even though it was a bullshit story like the rest.

Anyway, the hard-boiled cop stuff gives way to the squillionth "Exorcist", knock-off at the end, and it goes off the rails.
The fun goes away, and we're back in Jesus-town.

But, the first couple acts are watchable,and better than the other three just by the characters alone.


Overall, I wouldn't recommend any of this shit.
Ghostbusters remake is coming out next year, go see that instead.

And, yet again, same answers to the baloney detection kit apply.

Aaand DONE!
Now I can go back to having fun.

But first...

Next up, compilation.

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