Showing posts with label Maika Monroe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maika Monroe. Show all posts

Friday, January 20, 2017

The Guest


It's been said that if you can produce a horror film that scares 60% of the people who watch it, you've already made a classic. We all have things that scare us, and things that don't. The Guest places me firmly in the 40%. I've heard people rave, but I just didn't enjoy it. If a horror movie is going to have an invisible villain he should be a monster of some kind, like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers. Occasionally you can get by with a character so fascinating that you don't care about his Mary Sue status, like Hannibal Lector. Unfortunately, this movie has neither.

This film has some obvious similarities to The Hitcher. Both have a murderous drifter, whose completely unstoppable except when the plot says otherwise, and who seems determined to inflict suffering on those around them. Furthermore, both are famed as truly scary movies, which I find downright silly.

The movie actually has a fairly solid premise: A family is mourning the loss of their son Caleb in Afghanistan, and are unexpectedly visited by a member of his unit named David (Dan Stevens). David ingratiates himself with the family, playing each of them like a fiddle, while we gradually realize that he's an extremely dangerous sociopath. The elements are there, especially if they were properly used to examine whether David is an inherently terrible person, or damaged by his experiences in the war. Instead, however, he turns out to be the result of a government experiment to create super-soldiers, who killed the researchers and escaped. This plot line is just silly. As with The Hitcher his intended victims are more effective in combating him than the people trained to deal with someone like him (in that film the police, in this the military).

One thing I have to draw particular attention is Leland Orser as Spencer Peterson, the patriarch of the family. He's performance is just laughable. He seems to be going for a version of Ned Flanders that lost God and found alcohol. His alcoholism is telegraphed from a mile away, but never commented upon directly, and plays no part in the story. Most of the other actors do what they can with what they're given, but he just seems to be living in another movie.

Out of this entire film there was exactly one scene that actually left me truly entertained, and that was pure comedy. After the family son Luke (Brendan Meyer) punches a classmate in the face for calling him a “faggot,” David is brought in with mother Laura (Sheila Kelley) to talk to the principle. David promptly explains to the principle that being called a “faggot” makes Luke the victim of a Hate Crime, and that the Peterson family will be suing the school for allowing such harassment against their son. The scene begins with the Principal stating the school has no choice but to expel Luke, and ends with the Principal begging David to accept a month of after school detention.

Yet another strike against the movie: A major subplot is David's obsession with Anna (Maika Monroe), the Peterson daughter. The truth is, these two actors are both good, but they have no chemistry. It seems incredibly strange to complain that a would-be sexual predator has no chemistry with his intended victim, but in this movie it's true. For most of the film I forgot that David cared about Anna in any way, except when the film was telegraphing it.

We're told in the final act that David has “neurological conditioning” to kill anyone who becomes aware of the experiment that created him. This twist is both nonsensical, and counterproductive to the story. Firstly, the people David initially kills under this “conditioning” know nothing about the experiment, only that he's being hunted by the military. Secondly, the entire idea removes David as a compelling villain, now he's just a puppet. It's as if the filmmakers wanted to make sure we weren't, accidentally, left with a compelling plot line.

The ultimate problem with the movie, however, is that it fails to utilize the one obvious shock it has: Over the course of the movie it's established that there was a “David Collins” resembling the one we're shown in Caleb's unit, but we also find out that this “David” has undergone plastic surgery and is not the real “David Collins.” The obvious twist is that the man is actually Caleb, returned to torment his own family, and sexually assault his own sister. Sadly, the movie is too stupid to do the obvious, which would have at least given us something.

I'm quite disappointed that this is what Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett created as their follow up to You're Next. It's as if they decided to suck all the self-awareness of You're Next out of the film, and leave us only with the un-ironic cliches of 80s films, up to and including the villain dying while giving a big thumbs-up to the heroes, and then turning up alive in the final shot of the film just in case there's money available for a sequel.

Are there worse films? Certainly. There are films for which I feel contempt. For this film I feel only indifference. Perhaps I feel a slight annoyance that I stayed up late on a night when I had to work the next day to get my second viewing of the film in. But that's all I feel. Nothing more, nothing less.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Wednesday Review: Independence Day Resurgence


I decided to review this movie because the scenario of an Alien Invasion does fall, broadly speaking, under “horror.” Indeed, the original Independence Day had some truly intense scenes. That said, however, this film never really gives us that intensity, instead acting more as a pure action film.

As for the quality of the film, however, I’d say it’s probably worth a rental. In understanding what Roland Emmerich was doing I thought of two things. Firstly, Moviebob’sreview of the original film, where he explains how it acted as a call for Global Unity. Secondly, I thought of Francis Ford Coppola’s comments that The Godfather: Part 3 should be seen as the coda of The Godfather series, rather than it’s conclusion. Both of these are important in understanding what Emmerich created with this film.

The thing I noticed most about this movie was just how standard much of the plot was. Most of the creativity seemed to go into showing us Roland Emmerich’s idealized world, in which humanity had united and become a stronger people as a result. Notably, where the original film shows humans overcoming petty differences to unite, in Resurgence all the tactical mistakes the humans make are made for the best possible reasons, with everyone determined to protect their world at all cost.

This makes me suspect that Emmerich’s goal was simply to give Independence Day a coda. He wanted to show us the world that the first film called for, and threw in another alien invasion, because how else could he get us to see it? We’re not going to sit through a mockumentary on 20 years post-Independence Day (...okay, I probably would, but most people wouldn’t).

The single most interesting character in this movie is an African “warlord” who has spent ten years fighting a war against surviving aliens. Firstly, I find him fascinating as a parallel to President Whitmore. While his territory is apparently not recognized internationally as a country, the film shows him being treated with roughly the respect afforded a World Leader, and like Whitmore in the first film he acts as a leader who takes a direct hand in the fighting, not seeing himself as above the battles.

More significantly, though, it’s mentioned that this “warlord” replaced his more brutal father...and as far as we can see he’s just as focused on the good of humanity as anyone else. I think that ties into the theme of the “better world.” Twenty years later the last remnants of the bad world have died away, and in the new world the closest thing that even exists to a barbarian is a somewhat gruff and grumpy man with a heart of gold.

And yes, there’s a sequel hook. I don’t think there will be a sequel based on the box office, but if there is I expect it will be another coda. They seem to be setting us up to show us even more unity and an even better world. I’ll probably see it, though, if it happens.

So, as I said at the beginning of this review, I like this movie enough to recommend renting it. If you have fond memories of the original, this will likely be a nice trip down memory lane. But, it isn’t creative enough with it’s alien invasion, nor does it try to be. So, I can’t in good conscience tell anyone to see it in theatres...also, yeah, not horror...