Worth Every Quarter

I need to find some kind of term for the kind of "credits heh?" movie that I find so often on Amazon Prime. You know what I mean: you queue up a film you know little about only to say, "heh" multiple times as names you know well show up. It's a positive turn of speech that comes from the top of your throat, not a full-out "wow", more a shortened form of "hey". In the case of 1993's Arcade, which was released by Full Moon right as I stopped renting those movies every weekend, it's a parade of incredibly important '90s faces (at least to young me).

Rayanne!

Ralphie!

OZ!

And of course, LUCAS

Quick Plot: Teenage Alex has had a rough year. It happens when you're the one to find your mother's dead body from a self-inflicted gunshot. Thankfully, she has a solid group of pals and a loyal boyfriend Greg, all of whom enjoy afterschool hours down at an arcade called Dante's Inferno.

One afternoon, the gang is excited to be part of the test audience for the less than creatively named virtual reality game Arcade. Skeptic Nick goes first and falls in love, but when Greg takes up the controls, he seems to vanish. The teens are a little distracted by the complimentary home versions to notice for a while. 

Alex senses something is wrong, especially when she takes a turn and discovers the games seems to know she's looking for Greg. Nick begrudgingly decides to do some research with her, only for them to discover the rest of their friends have been sucked into Arcade. A trip to the development headquarters yields some disturbing answers: in order to keep upping interest from a bored generation of gaming teens, the company has resorted to using human DNA. It goes as well as you think it would.

Full Moon Entertainment was probably the first film studio I knew by logo. To young video store regular Emily, its presence implied killer dolls. Was there anything better?

Released (kind of?) in 1993, Arcade feels like a far more professional production than some of the Demonic Toys offshoots that would come shortly after. Sure, the actual visuals are as dated as you'd expect, but the general video game theorizing still has relevance a lifetime later. Screenwriter David S. Goyer would go on to a far more glamorous career in the DC and Marvel universe, but as someone who usually groans when I see his name above the title, I can say with surprising confidence that this might be my new favorite of his credits. 

It's not the deepest compliment to ever say that this is top tier Albert Pyun (this is the same prolific B-movie maestro who directed Alien From LA). Still, Arcade IS good! Maybe my expectations were low, but this film had a lot of charm. The early '90s aesthetic goes pretty far, plus we have a genuinely strong young cast easily holding our interest. The ending is satisfyingly pleasant, then even MORE satisfyingly winking if you catch the Amazon Prime 'extended' version. All in all, well worth a few quarters. 

High Points

Megan Ward isn't the most dynamic of final girls, but her Alex is a believably hurting teenager, and by the end, I was fully onboard in rooting for her triumph

Low Points

90 minutes is absolutely the right length for a 1993 low budget horror movie about virtual reality gone wrong, but with a cast this stacked, it's hard not to feel like this film deserved a LITTLE more time with some character interactions and development

Lessons Learned

To sublimate is to mess up

Nothing gets executive attention like the threat of a virgin sacrifice

Any Star Trek: Next Generation fan would know: never buy anything Q is selling, even if it's free

Rent/Bury/Buy

I can acknowledge that I'm a VERY particular demographic. Arcade might not have worked for 11-year-old me, but 31 years later, it's incredibly satisfying in a fairly dumb way. Give it a go via Amazon Prime.

Sister Sister

I keep rooting for Natalie Dormer to find that next big project that serves her talents. In Darkness certainly wasn't it, and while I liked the Picnic At Hanging Rock miniseries more than most, it seemed to have faded from memory. So how about that thing all young attractive actresses do after their first big project? Lead a PG13 studio-produced horror film! SURELY that'll do it?

Quick Plot: Sara feels a disturbance in the force which can only mean one thing: her twin sister Jess is in danger. Without hesitation, Sara flies to Tokyo where Jess was teaching ESL, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend who's seen this pattern before. 

See, Jess has grown up with some demons. When they were eight, the girls' father shot their mother and then himself as they watched a movie with their grandmother in the next room. Jess was the first one to the scene of the crime and saw their bodies, while Sara looked away. Twenty or so years later, the idea that Jess might have ventured into the infamous Aokigahara Forest to die by suicide isn't hard to fathom. 

But Sara is convinced that her sister is still alive, primarily because she knows she would feel it in her body if she was wrong. She catches the eye of travel writer and fellow American Aiden at her hostel bar and convinces him to take her into the woods with his local guide Michi. 

Ignoring the warnings of every single local she's met about the yurei that haunt the woods and disorient travelers with hallucinations, Sara goes deep. When she finds Jess's tent, she insists on spending the night. Aiden reluctantly does the same. 

Things do not go well.

Let's address the biggest criticism about The Forest first: this is one of those films that probably shouldn't exist in its actual form. Aokigahara Forest is a real place that witnesses dozens of deaths by suicides every year. Producer David Goyer (an association that always gives me pause) apparently conceived the story when he learned about this on Wikipedia (and yes: I got that information from Wikipedia) and couldn't believe no one had made a movie about it. Naturally, he assembled a very western team to do so. 

It's one thing to put Americans (or Brits playing Americans) in Asian stories. The  remake of The Grudge does so to smart effect. But The Forest can't seem to resist pointing out cultural differences without feeling, well, racist. We're two decades into the 21st century, yet The Forest needs to make a dumb "sushi is GROSS" joke? 

Putting some of that aside, The Forest isn't a total abuse of time. Director Jason Zarda shows some good instincts with a few surprisingly effective jump scares. He builds tension well, though the film's overuse of dream sequence reveals becomes tiring. By the time horrors are actually happening, it's hard to actually care. 

High Points

Natalie Dormer isn't doing anything overly special here, but she remains an intriguing presence that makes Sara--someone who's actually pretty terrible--still hold our sympathy

Low Points

I know it was 2016, but weren't we already past the point of American J-horror hybrids relying on grainy quick shot CGI ghost faces being utilized as a film's major scare?

Lessons Learned

Water flows down, not up

If you ever have trouble telling identical twins apart, remember this simple rule: the troubled one has black hair

Violence followed by gunshots followed by silence is generally a scene that you should approach with caution and more specifically, not with the presence of sensitive children

Rent/Bury/Buy

Meh. The Forest is a slightly better movie than its dismal critical consensus would have you to believe, but it still feels like it just never gets to be the movie it could have. Also, you know, it's pretty icky. So have at it on Netflix if that sounds appealing!