Corn Rigs & Coconuts

Because Neil LaBute is a laughable misogynist who directs films with the spiritual energy of an angry teenage boy lashing out on the internet after being rejected by his crush because he had Cheetos stuck in his teeth, it's safe to say we've experienced the worst possible remake of The Wicker Man that can ever be humanely possibly. So go ahead, Death of Me! Do your worst.

Quick Plot: Americans Christine and Neil wake up with a massive hangover on their last day on a remote island off Thailand's mainland. With barely any memory from the heavy partying the night before, they rush their way to their boat only to discover their passports are missing. 

Looks like they're stuck in tropical paradise, right in time for a massive typhoon. The locals laugh off the weather reports because, as the brochures proudly proclaim, there hasn't been a storm in over 200 years. The couple decides to dig into their phones and cameras to help piece together their missing memories only to discover a haunting video that puts a whole new perspective on their lost evening.

Not surprisingly, Neil and Christine drank HARD, and not just fruity mai tais. Video shows them accepting a uniquely strong drink from a flirty waitress, who followed up the shots with a mysterious necklace for Christine. After, they stumbled home to their airbnb and had aggressive sex, which ended when Neil choked Christine to death and buried her in a shallow grave.

What a great concept, right?! It's haunting and fresh, and yet, for reasons I don't understand, Death of Me decides to stop it in its tracks and proceed to just follow every step of the much better The Wicker Man. Don't worry, it is most certainly aware of what it's doing, so much so that Neil stops to say, "hey, what happened in The Wicker Man?" 

I can't decide if I should commend Death of Me for saluting the elephant in the room or chide it for reminding the audience how much better a movie we could be watching.

Directed by the inconsistent but genre-loving Darren Lynn Bousman, Death of Me is an extremely frustrating, possibly racist, occasionally neat, and ultimately unsatisfying tale. From the beautiful Thai setting and unusual setup to its decent cast and score, It's positively dripping in potential. This film should work!

It does not.

Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth are adequate, though the screenplay (credited to three writers: Ari Margolis, James Morley III, and David Tish) never offers a single detail about their lives to make them interesting and not, you know, just very attractive. The magical island is described as being small, yet Bousman makes no effort to give us any sense of its geography. Also, it's not necessarily my place to say it, but the more I think about Death of Me's depiction of its villains, the more horrifically problematic it seems. Thailand is known as the land of smiles, and Bousman's camera turns that into something sinister in a way that just doesn't feel right (especially coming from what seems like a fairly American, Caucasian creative team). 

The thrust of Death of Me's story is that human sacrifice staves off tsunamis. The very idea is cringe-worthy, and the film never really seems to know whose side it's ultimately on. It wants us to see the islanders as monsters, but half of that comes from the simple fact that they're speaking a language most of the intended audience doesn't understand. Are we supposed to be afraid of a shot like this?

Yes, The Wicker Man's morals and faith are also muddy, but turning Gaelic culture into folk horror feels a bit less icky in 2021 than making Thai customs into something of terror. It also doesn't help that I watch Death of Me thinking about a much better outsiders-in-Southeast-Asia film (Fabrice Du Weiz's Vinyan) and how that was effectively used:

Made for more money than your average under-the-radar horror film (you can tell that just be seeing this streaming on Netflix as opposed to Amazon Prime), Death of Me is not a waste of time. It has ideas, and it's pretty enough to look at. But if you're the type of genre fan who can't let some very bad choices go, it will frustrate you to no end.

Still: nice beach. 

High Points

I'll never complain about seeing Starry Eyes' Alex Essoe show up in a genre film, and while I wish she had more to do here, she still helps lend a great sense of distrust to the film as the airbnb host with secrets

Low Points

You know how on America's Next Top Model, Tyra Banks would often chide a beautiful young woman who didn't know how to work in front of the camera with the line, "the camera loves you, but you don't love the camera?" Well, that's somewhat true of how this film uses Thailand. Death of Me is infinitely more interesting because of its location, but I don't know that Bousman or his team pull anything exciting out of it

Lessons Learned

The Wicker Man might have had a different ending had Howie had a cell phone, but considering how poor service is anytime a genre movie is set away from a character's home, I'd say we'd have the same movie...only with a few scenes of "no bars!"

A tourist should never be confused for a celebrated guest

Maybe don't shoot the mystery gasoline-flavored alcohol that locals won't drink? JUST A THOUGHT

Rent/Bury/Buy

As with Abattoir, I appreciate Bousman's commitment to putting new spins on horror. And as with Abattoir, I find myself wildly disappointed in the end result. 

I Don't Want to Be Unborn!

In the small but fierce subgenre that is anti-choice horror, emotions tend to run high...and quality often low.

Quick Plot: Journalist Trai and his teacher wife Phim grow concerned as their young daughter, Yaimai, begins an unhealthy relationship with an imaginary friend she refers to as “Little One.” Little One seems ominous, luring Yaimai into dangerous situations centered around a mysterious temple and its outdoor mortuary lockers.

Nearby, the temple’s caretaker has his own dark secret: he subsidizes his low wages with a cash bonus he gets for regularly disposing of an illegal abortionist’s trash. Somewhere in the pile of 2002 fetuses, an angry spirit has been born, and it won’t stop until it punishes anyone responsible for its lonely fate.

Directed by Poj Amon and “based on a true story” (presumably about the chain-smoking abortionist, and not the haunted toy that signals a ghost fetus), The Unborn Child is a blatantly pro-life bit of propaganda disguised (for a while) as a horror movie. Honestly, this pro-choice blogger isn't offended by the film's ridiculous politics. The problem with The Unborn Child is that it's boring.

Granted, it's hard to even come close to being nearly as memorable as the tentpole for terrible anti-choice horror, 2011's Unborn Sins. I'm still somewhat convinced that those 80 minutes were nothing more than a fever dream induced by me topping a quesadilla with expired sour cream.

Anyway, The Unborn Child does not involve nearly as much dancing or a line as special as "the spirit of my child turned into a midget freak with homicidal tendencies" (actual dialog from Unborn Sins), but yes, it's technically a better-made movie than aforementioned dairy fantasy. At the same time, if I had to live in a world with only one bad-to-mediocre horror movie about a vengeful fetus ghost, the choice is obvious.

High Points
While the payoff is disappointing, there are certainly strong individual moments of tension and buildup that show Amon to have some strong instincts with the genre

Low Points
There are a LOT of things I can complain about in The Unborn Child so picking one isn't easy, but let's land on the fact that a big, boggling reveal towards the end regarding a main character's real persona demonstrates just how little character development this movie tried to have

Lessons Learned
Much like Hallmark Christmas movie heroines, Thai women go to bed in full makeup and beautifully flattering nightwear

If you're trying to send a fervent anti-abortion message with your movie, maybe don't end it with a soundtrack that incorporates obnoxiously screaming babies

Rent/Bury/Buy
The Unborn Child isn't a terrible movie, but it's messy and dull, and its preaching politics certainly don't help. Still curious? It's on Netflix, which is easier to access than the depths of my fantasies that dreamed up Unborn Sins.

Just Skip the Hospital & Hit the Morgue

No intro today. Just nurses. That are sick. And Thai. And in a lot of trouble.

Quick Plot: This won't be easy. Somewhere in Thailand, the worst run hospital in Asia hosts an underground corpse trading business, where a handsome and horny young doctor enlists the aid of seven sexy nurses to help sell some bodies. Within the very first scene of the film, we learn that Dr. Taa has been cheating on his marriage-obsessed fiancée Tawan with her little sister. She's mad as hell and won't take it anymore, especially after her sister nurses body slam her onto the operating table as the next item of dead sale.

What follows is a sort of grownup 20something form of Hausu, as Tawan's evil angry spirit hunts her murderesses one night in the, as horror movie tradition dictates, complete empty hospital. Tossed in is a truly shocking twist that doesn't *quite* make sense, but is sure fun to see. Especially since it’s followed by an even campier one.

OH! And weird and bizarre death scenes. LOTS of them. See, all the beautiful nurses are terribly flawed human beings, and most--much like Hausu--have that one character trait (be it bulimia or materialism) that makes them both easy to remember and fun to kill. And yes, such quirks can lead to great death scenes that involve, well, bulimia and materialism.

Sick Nurses is a strange film and all the better for it. It never asks us to invest anything in its shallow characters, a move that could easily turn off some filmgoers who like to, you know, LIKE the people they watch onscreen. Our default heroine is a woman who stole her older sister’s fiancée. Her fellow victims are easy on the eyes but empty in the brain. You know the type: the kind of girl who will squirt shampoo in her hand and not notice that instead of Pantene, she’s now massaging her scalp with a handful of killer hair.

Yes, killer hair. This movie has killer hair. And yes, you should be quite pleased about that.

As Tawan plays with her pretty victims, we get treated to odd, almost Silent Hill-ish transformations of freakery. The chatty lesbian becomes something of Cellphone Face, the clothing obsessed twit, Fancy Pocketbook Head. It’s good stuff.

I was more than surprised by how much I enjoyed Sick Nurses. It’s visually inventive, taking a typical J-horroresque ghostess and giving her plenty of spins. Most importantly, the movie seems to have quite a bit of fun with itself. From the twisty weirdness of the plot to the cheeky death scenes, the viewer gets the feeling that Piraphan Laoyont and Thodsapol Siriwiwat enjoyed the process of making the film. Now THAT’s a refreshing dose of medicine.

High Notes

Initially, I was slightly annoyed by the film’s insistence on rushing past its basic character development and plot to get straight to the killing. You do lose that emotional connection that was never built with its stars, but ultimately, it makes Sick Nurses surprisingly spry. We’re never REALLY going to like any of these people, so the odd setup (plot! Kill kill kill side plot kill kill kill REVELATION kill) actually works weirdly well.

Low Notes

It’s a Doll’s House rule: any film that shows feline abuse must be marked. While the kitten tosser does indeed suffer a gruesome fate, it’s still infuriating

Lessons Learned

In Thailand, it is traditional to not remove any clothing when taking a shower

Virgos shouldn’t work in hospitals 

Pregnancy tests in movies are 5x faster than real life ones

The Most Unsettling Image Ever

Ew ew ew I say! As the bulimic brushes her teeth, she stuffs a Homer Simpson style pink donut into her throat, then brushes over it. I don’t consider myself squeamish, but this sight prompted me to wash out my eyes.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Fans of the bizarre will probably really dig Sick Nurses. It starts quickly and continuously delivers plenty of strange horror and amusing black comedy. The film WAS streaming on Instant Watch, but seems to have expired for the time being. I can't speak to the DVD quality, but it's certainly a film worth keeping on your radar for a breezy yet disturbing watch. 

Blood Monkey, That Funky Monkey

Ever go to a party where no one had fun but the host? The food is exotically inedible. The music, a demo CD of someone’s boyfriend’s struggling band. A guest falls asleep or starts a vomitfest in the bathroom just when that weak drink has reached your urinary tract. There’s no place to sit and no one to have an intelligent conversation with regarding the controversial finale of America’s Next Top Model and just when you’ve summoned the strength to hasten an exit, you discover someone has mistakenly grabbed your winter coat, leaving you with an ill-fitting loaner that your still sickenly energetic host has kindly dug up from the basement to put over your shoulders.

If Blood Monkey is that party, then bless dear old Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham for having a ridiculously good time hosting it, even if it’s at the expense of the rest of the cast, crew, and more importantly, the baffled audience who really just want more blood monkeys.

Quick Plot: Abraham plays Professor Hamilton, the typical Col. Kurtz-esque genius living deep in the jungles of Thailand with his badass female bodyguard Chenne. The pair are soon joined by a jeep-ful of attractive and annoying anthropology graduate students taking a semester to study with one of the preeminent minds in the field.

Also, to be eaten by blood monkeys.

Who are these young brainiacs with charming accents, you might ask? Or you might not, since like virtually any movie made today starring twentysomethings, the twentysomethings are the least interesting things onscreen. There’s a blond who carries the most luggage (cause she’s blond, duh), a nerd identified as such because he wears glasses, a screamy girl with a video camera, a good-looking guy who seems to make the most decisions, his dull love interest who seems smart because she’s a brunette, and in a feat of screenwriting superiority, the guy who introduces himself as such:

“I’m Greg. The good-looking one. And I’m also like a genius in anthropology.”

You gotta love when a script is fully aware that its audience identifies characters by their rating on an Are You Hot scale. Greg—or Craig, I don’t really care—also gets the fun job of sexually harassing every female  in sight in that charming manner that only happens in movies and would be sue-able in real life. I actually found myself pitying poor actor Matt Reeves for having to say some of the Neil LeBute-ish dialogue about that silly but sexy child-bearing gender.

You know who else I pitied? Me. That’s right, when I queue up a film called Blood Monkey, I expect little more than what its title promised. You know what it promised? A blood monkey.

It’s not that Blood Monkey didn’t have blood monkeys. Throughout its 90 minute running time, we see various evidence that blood monkeys—a separate branch of evolution—are well and good in Thailand. And that their point of view is very orange. And that they set the kind of traps you’d find on Endor and that their brains are really big. That’s all fine and dandy but WHERE ARE THE BLOOD MONKEYS?

I asked that question a thirty minutes into the film. I asked again at the hour mark. Do you want to know when director Robert Vampire Circus Young answered? In the very. Last. Shot.

That’s a lot of time to waste when one could be filling it with blood monkeys.

High Points

I joke about F. Murray Abraham’s role here—especially when he opens up a can of whoop tush—but it’s actually nice to see such a celebrated actor having fun in the boonies of SyFyVille. Never does Abraham show the slightest sign of being too good for this material, and his clear enjoyment at such a villainous and physical role is ultimately the only REAL reason to watch this blood monkey-less Blood Monkey movie.

In a similar vein, the only character who comes close to matching Abraham’s enthusiasm is his bodyguard/maybe lady love Chenne, played with such angry violence by Prapimporn Karnchada. Watching her smack nerdy anthropologist students or drop-kick their makeup caboodles is oddly wonderful

Low Points

Is it really THAT HARD to write and direct young people as likable, interesting creatures? As movies like Blood Monkey and Grizzly Park seem to suggest, the answer is yes, yes it really is that hard

Lessons Learned

Chekhov’s rule of handheld video cameras: if the feature ‘night vision’ is referenced, you can bet a barrel of blood monkeys that we’ll be seeing green in the final reel

Most idiots can’t resist taking a ride on the baggage carousel, especially the self-proclaimed good-looking ones

The jungle is not good for the complexion

Rent/Bury/Buy

Blood Monkey wasn’t originally made for the SyFy Channel, but that’s where it ended up and really, that’s where it belongs. The location is gorgeous, the characters dull, action not terrible and script generally more funny than it ever meant to be. What makes it mildly recommendable is the energy and talent of F. Murray Abraham, coupled, of course, with the fact that he’s actually in this movie. So while it might not satisfy your taste for blood monkeys, it will quench your Salieri salivation and hey, I suppose that’s more than King Kong can say.

Horrible Non-Horror! Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li

As a girl who became a woman during the golden era of Sega Genesis, Capcom's Street Fighter game series is something of a landmark in my life. Sure, Ms. Pacman stepped outside the PacKitchen to fight some ghosties beside her hubby, but as a teenager, it was easier to identitfy with and aspire to the grace, strength, and beauty of one Chun Li.

Hence, one could color me quite excited to see a feature film based on my favorite video game character of all time (screw you Princess Daisy). If it had even one tenth the glee of 1994's Street Fighter (perhaps a candidate for a future Why I Love...  post) I'd be happier than a 13 year old boy with an unlimited supply of quarters at an arcade.

But expectation is something of my mortal enemy, and Andrzej Bartkowiak (the much heralded director of another video game turned head scratcher, Doom)‘s Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li is something of...well...the latest entry in Horrible Non-Horror! 

Quick Plot: Young piano prodigy Chun Li lives a charmed life in Hong Kong, practicing Beethoven and tai chi with her loving, well-connected businessman father. Everything changes for the melodramatic when M. Bison--Neal McDonough with a David Boreanz-like occasional Irish brogue--abducts Daddy Dearest to do his bidding. Chun Li, meanwhile, grows into the slightly Asian Kristen Kreuk, a Julliard trained pianist who for no real reason, instantly becomes a superheroine crime fighter in the streets of Bangkok.

I suppose the plotting is a little more sensical, especially as every main story point is narrated ever so specifically and art-ic-ul-ate-ly by the slow-reading Kreuk. In Thailand, Chun Li finds Gen, former partner to Bison and current street fighting sensai. As she trains, our tale gets diverted to most hilariously unbelievable detectives in the history of cinema: Chris "I Hate Fat Chicks" Klein and Moon "My Name Is Really Stupid" Bloodgood.

And here, dear readers, is where Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li becomes a Doll's House classic. Movie fans are hard on Keanu Reeves, which makes the fact that Klein seemed to model his Interpol agent on Ted “Theodore” Logan with a hangover rather fantastic. I dare even the most stoic Spartan warrior to get through this film without bursting into giggles just about every time Klein (call me Nash! Interpol!) opens his mouth, 80% of the time to say "I love this job." He's matched by Bloodgood (seriously)'s Maya, a skanky gangland security official with stripper hair and incredibly tight wardrobe that seems inconvenient when chasing ruthless criminals.

To make life even more interesting/ridiculous, M. Bison is given his own backstory: according to Gen, the Artist Formerly Played By a Dying Campy Raul Julia was an Irish orphan who grew up on the streets of Bangkock as a cruel thief, eventually taking a wife and going all Inside on her pregnant womb so as to transfer his conscience into his baby daughter. Said daughter grows up to be Russian and his one point of weakness. That is that.

Because the gods of bad cinema love me, we also get a few more exciting supporting players. Michael Clarke Duncan slums big time as Balrog, sad in that he really delivers no more punch than Grand L. Bush of the first Street Fighter film. In perhaps an homage to Kylie Minogue's awkward casting as Cammy, the Black Eyed Peas’ Taboo (in all honesty, I didn't know who this was until IMDB gave me the hint) plays the masked and clawed Vega. 

Kreuk is surprisingly passable as Chun Li, believable in her action scenes and offensively Americanized in her not-that-Asianness (then again, even the 14-year-old me knew there was something odd about the Genesis version having strawberry blond hair). Overall, however, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li is  frustratingly snobbish, especially once you hear the stunning levels of importance bestowed upon it in a cast and crew commentary. You get the sense that Bartkowiak decided to avoid any semblance that would remind modern viewers of the goofy charm of Steven de Souza’s 1994 version and as a result, ended up with a silly, slightly pretentious action film that simply isn’t good enough to wow anyone.

High Points

I won't fault some of the fight sequences, which are rather elegantly choreographed (sometimes)

Low Points

Well. You know. The movie.

Draw

Chris Klein is, and I say this with no hesitation whatsoever, a horrid horrid actor. And yet as Nash (! Interpol!), he’s rather fascinating to watch and hear. Just how bad CAN he get? It’s a question that’s enough to keep you watching the movie so I guess, fool’s gold star to him?

Lessons Learned

If your forehead is larger than Tyra Banks' after being stung by a bee, perhaps you should not sport such flat and greasy hair. It does your features no favors, honey

Perhaps nameless actor could learn something here: Living on the streets of Bangkok with no resources will ensure your mane stays gloriously shiny

Always pack a bottle of water when embarking on a stakeout. You might get thirsty

When staging a huge police ambush, bulletproof vests are optional and not encouraged if you think it might make your leatherwear less sexy

Rent/Bury/Buy

For an awful movie, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li is a pretty packed DVD. Several featurettes are quite self-congratulating, and a commentary offers the magnanimous wisdom of the filmmakers in casing Kruek because they were looking for an actress with "an Asian feel." That being said, one shouldn't pay more than the price of an imitation Reeses Peanut Butter Cup to watch it. The movie is awful, but somewhat likably so. Somewhat. Not really. 

Nash. Out!