With Open Eyes

There seems to be a new subgenre of horror popping up rather frequently on the Instant Watch services. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but let's say something along the lines of "time shifty, dimensional portal-y" thrillers. Think Coherence, Mine Games, even Forget Me Not. In a few of those cases, the filmmakers have taken a basic slasher pattern and given it just enough shifts to feel new.

For lack of a better definition than "time shifty, dimensional portal-y," we'll just say Don't Blink is yet another "lots of attractive young people go to a secluded location and weird shit happens" kind of flick.

Quick Plot: Lots of attractive young people go to a secluded location and weird shit happens.

I mean, it DOES.

By lots, I really do mean about a full baker's dozen or so. A bunch of loosely connected "friends" (I guess?) are driving up to a winter cabin. Among them are Jack (David Silver himself, Brian Austin Green) and his secretly-but-not-so-secretly pregnant girlfriend Tracy (Mena Suvari), Jack's younger brother, another car filled with the hot-headed Zack Ward, and, well, a bunch of other not particularly defined or interesting fodder for...something.

That something turns out to be the random disappearances of individuals. One moment, you're all sitting around discussing dinner until you realize in the blink of an eye, one of you has simply vanished leaving no trace behind. We've already established quickly and clinically that there's no cell service/characters forgot phones/characters don't have cell phones (thus covering all demographics) so we know there is no help on its way. One trigger-happy drama king in the group with a gun means we'll get plenty of "who are the REAL monsters?" overheated drama. The question is, will we as an audience care?

Sort of, maybe. Don't Blink has a nice and intriguing premise, but it's simply not good enough to do anything that special with it. We start with so many characters that it takes too long to realize which ones we'll have the longest. As a result, one of the final survivors(?) has to give an overly long and dull expositional speech about how this is affecting her life because clearly, the film didn't have its timing right to SHOW that. Our other final character gets a last minute affair that comes out of nowhere and is treated with no weight whatsoever. It's weird.

I didn't hate Don't Blink, but the fact that, while watching it, I found myself thinking about the rather mediocre but MUCH more entertaining Mine Games certainly says a lot about the experience. 

High Points

The rapture-y premise is promising...just not delivered

Low Points

Is it weird to want to be able to see a movie when your'e watching it?

Minor spoiler: the film does not explain what actually happened. This can work if you've given me a film that's interesting with or without a reveal, but since Don't Blink has so little substance, it ultimately left me even more frustrated with the entire viewing experience

Lessons Learned

It's not okay to turn off John Denver

(for obvious reasons)

Things white girls from Iowa can make: bologna sandwiches, babies, potatoes, and sex with their pregnant friends' boyfriends. Things white girls form Iowa can't make: sushi, reasons for having sex with their pregnant friends' boyfriends

The outdoors is actually really quiet

You have to have a phone if you have your own internet site

In times of stressful mystery, one can go from irreligious punk to Bible-quoting scholar in mere minutes

Rent/Bury/Buy

As a stream, Don't Blink isn't terrible, but it's far blander than a whole lot of other options that explore similar territory. At the risk of issuing a rather ridiculous pun-filled ruling, you can blink and miss this one.

I'll be here all week. Don't eat the veal, it's made from cruelty.

I Will Remember You

Sometimes I’m really grateful to have been a fat child.

Though I was never bullied (this despite being chubby, a nerd, in band, theater, AND the badminton team) there were also a lot of factors that thankfully excluded me from the A-crowd. 

Shocking, I know

If horror movies about popular kids tormenting the uncool have taught me anything, it’s that the uncool will eventually be reincarnated as an evil and incredibly powerful spirit bent on delivering horrible horrible vengeance to all that took part or witnessed said acts of torment.

Yeah, it’s good to be a geek.

Quick Plot: Sandy is the pretty and popular high school president happily celebrating her graduation with valedictorian brother Eli, quarterback boyfriend Jake, and a small bunch of generically attractive young actors whose names I couldn’t possibly be asked to remember.

I’m guessing something like Parker, Hunter, Tyler, Buffy, Oober, and Eyefoan.

Anyway, Sandy + the Holograms decide to celebrate their newfound adulthood the way you do, by playing their version of drunken freeze tag in a creepy cemetery. No one thinks it too odd when a random generically attractive young woman shows up (in the middle of a creepy cemetery) to join in the fun. Things change when the game ends and the creepy random generically attractive young woman hanging out in a cemetery asks Sandy if she remembers her. Sandy doesn’t, so CRGAYW gives a gentle smile and leaps away into what should be certain death, providing you’re not in a horror movie.

There’s no sign of a body, so the kids continue their fun the next day with a trip to the beach. Well, some do. Before you can figure out how to use a selfie stick (or whatever kids these days do with their free time), they start getting knocked off by an angry ghost bearing a more than a slight resemblance to the CRGAYW.

Been there, done that, most horror fans would say at this point. Forget Me Not, however, has a few little tricks up its sleeve. As Sandy’s friends die, their entire existence seems to disappear to everyone except Sandy. Naturally, this leads everyone to question the once-perfect blond’s sanity, as she begins to piece together the cause.

Cue the expected flashback to Sandy & Co. making a fool out of a young epileptic orphan named Angela. This being a horror movie, the prank leads to a coma, which leads to a ghosting, which leads to a whole lot of creative killing and frantic Ten Little Indians-esque countdowns.

Directed by newcomer Tyler Oliver (with a script credited to Oliver and Jamieson Stern), Forget Me Not calls to mind the recent Mine Games in combining the expected tenets of a pretty-people-in-peril slasher with some new twists. It works well, if not spectacularly. There are a few too many generically attractive characters at the start so that as they start dying off and only Sandy could recall their names, I identified more with her blank friends in wondering who the heck TJ and JT and Samsung Galaxy actually were. My first note at the start of the film was “five minutes in and I already hate everyone.” That’s never good.

Thankfully, the setup of Forget Me Not eventually brought me into Sandy’s sad loop so that as the numbers dwindled, I genuinely did feel sad at the thought of her losing not just her friends’ lies, but their very existence. There really is a tragedy in that, and Forget Me Not makes the most of it in showing how each life’s erasing would have such a deep impact on Sandy. It takes a little too long to find its heart, but when Forget Me Not does, it finds the right weight to be a little more than a typical dead teenager flick.

High Points

A CGI ghost is a CGI ghost, but Forget Me Not manages to give them some new twists with a pretty cool design and some eerie jerking movements

Low Points

So which one was Ashley and which one was Mary Kate and which one was Pantene?

Lessons Learned

You know you’re watching a movie starring millenials when the opening credits include the following first names: Courteny, Bella, Chloe, Brittany, and Brie. No offense to anyone who bears such a moniker, but I have a hard time imagining any of these names proceeded by ‘grandma’

As everyone probably already knows, duct tape is the most handy material in this world, but what they probably don’t know is that it’s equally useful in the ghost dimension

With every impossibly empty horror movie hospital comes the impossibly unlocked hospital rooftop

Sex with a stranger is worth a lot of margarita mix and Wonder Bread

Rent/Bury/Buy

Forget Me Not isn’t anything overly special, but it’s a well-made little supernatural slasher that manages to bring some new energy to the genre. Those looking for a breezy Instant Watch horror filled with pretty faces and some rather brutal violence shouldn’t be too disappointed.

I'm Going Out of My Mine

The Pretty Young People Go Into the Woods And Die Horribly subgenre is not a small field, especially on Netflix Instant. Like most of its peers, Mine Games sports an attractive cast, 90 minute runtime, and uninspiring poster. Thankfully, it also has a little more storyline (review spoiler alert: perhaps too much storyline) and an admirable sense of ambition. 

It’s almost adorable.

Quick Plot: A group of attractive recent college graduates embark on a road trip to spend a few days at their friend's secluded cabin mansion in the woods. Attractive young people include the following:

Lyla, the sensible brunette played by Step Up and a whole lot of horror movies' Brianna Evigan

(No, this isn't from Mine Games, but don't you wish it was?)

Mike, her schizophrenic boyfriend who doesn't like to talk about being a schizophrenic boyfriend

TJ, the jock

Lex, his British and obnoxious cousin

Claire, the blonde

Rose, the medium (every group of attractive friends has one)

and Guy, the other guy

En route, driver Mike swerves to not kill a man flagging them down for help but drives on without helping said flagger. Shortly after, the car breaks down just a few miles from the group's destination. They walk on (passing mysterious Northern Lights along the way)  to find their pal's house empty but welcoming, with a note and plenty of cocktail glasses of all sizes and shapes to ensure a good party no matter what your drink of choice might be.

The next day, TJ discovers an abandoned mine that obviously equals THE best place to take psychedelic mushrooms. Rose senses some evil presence is afoot, especially after something seemingly evil grabs her foot. 

See what I did there?

Things get progressively weirder from that point on. It's interesting because with its pretty cast and out-in-the-woods premise, it would have been fairly simple to keep Mine Games (also known  under the cheesier title The Evil Within) in the realms of the easy slasher. Director Richard Gray, working with a whole lot of writers (probably too many writers), instead makes a rather complicated little horror film that leans more towards Triangle than The Evil Dead.

It's a mixed blessing.

Mine Games ultimately has far more ambition than air-tight quality, but that's not to say it isn't an enjoyable watch. The script gets quite tricky once its third act revs up, and while it's admirably suspenseful and occasionally disturbing, I don't think it actually comes together fully. In some ways, that's absolutely fine. I don't mind a film that keeps me guessing. I just usually like to know that I might eventually stumble upon the right answer.

High Points

It doesn’t all work, but come on: I’ll take a horror movie that goes for a complicated plot twist involving worm holes over yet another found footage slasher any day

Low Points

I can't imagine anyone in the mental health field is happy about how horror films have taken to blaming schizophrenia for all the horrors of the world

I might be in the minority here, but is it crazy to want to be able to see a movie? I get that we're in a mine and overhead lighting doesn't come for free, but you know...cinema is a fairly visual medium and stuff.

Lessons Learned

Splitting up is the number one way to get pack raped

In the words of George Bluth Sr., THAT'S WHY YOU LEAVE A NOTE.

In the amended lesson from this film, THAT'S WHY YOU SIGN YOUR NOTE.

Rent/Bury/Buy

For a straight to Instant Watch horror film, Mine Games is better, or at least more interesting than average. Like a lot of time travel-based films, it falls apart with too much analysis. If you can suspend logic, Mine Games makes for a pretty fun, surprising, and even occasionally scary little viewing. One could do far worse with original horror in the 21st century.