The Call (2013)

I’m getting really tired of serial killers. Since the classics like Dirty Harry through modern-day marvels like The Pledge or Zodiac, the genre has spawned some amazing films. But it happens with every fad. From slasher horror movies in the 80s to ghost stories in the 90s to exorcism stories in the 2000s and finally to the vampires and zombies currently polluting our airwaves, movie theaters and bookshelves, it happens – a genre gets oversaturated, like a fat kid whose parents didn’t teach him when to stop eating cake. At some point, you reach the bottom of the barrel.

The Call is the bottom of the fucking barrel.

Director: Brad Anderson

Starring: Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin

IMDb

No, wait – it’s not. It’s not just the bottom; it’s right through the barrel and into another barrel. It’s just so amazing that this movie got past the censors at all without someone running screaming into the bathroom, clawing out his eyes and screaming profanities in tongues he never knew he could. Maybe that happened after the premiere. I dunno.

Either way it’s a marvel – a film that, admittedly, has a somewhat decent premise: an emergency call operator has to coach a kidnapping victim through her ordeal and try to save her from a killer. But the film apparently used up its entire two and a half brain cells coming up with that. So the execution of that plot is … how shall I put it in the most eloquent of terms? Oh yeah. Completely fucking mongoloid retarded.

We start off with a bunch of disembodied voices calling 911 for various emergencies. As the film’s central character is a 911 operator, I guess it kinda makes sense. To tell the truth this is an interesting enough concept for an opening, and sets a certain mood … if the acting weren’t so bad I’d rather watch a bunch of Kindergarteners try and perform King Lear in another language.

We then get some girl being chased by a killer. She hides under the bed and calls 911. When the killer can’t find her, he starts to just leave – I guess he must be the ‘easily discouraged’ kind of killer. If he can’t find someone to kill within a few minutes, he just goes home and watches Friends reruns. But once he hears the 911 operator on the phone, he comes back and grabs her from under the bed. When the operator, played by Halle Berry, threatens the killer that the police are on their way, he takes it well and stabs the girl to death right there in the room.

Don't put the camera that close to her face, you'll kill her!

So of course, after that, he’s caught and spends the rest of the movie on trial. Oh, wait, no. He gets away and somehow doesn’t leave a trace that could lead the police to him. Yup – that’s right. He somehow gets away with that, escapes before the cops arrive and they don’t find anything. Yeah, all that blood and gore all over the place, no DNA on the body, no fingerprints all over the house where he was walking around – it’s just too difficult.

Amazingly enough, the movie that can’t even master the basic tenets of reality actually tries to introduce a second plot line into the mix. And not only that, but one about teenage girls. Gee, it won’t have anything shallow or cliché like having them talk about nothing but boys and sex, will it? Of course it will. Exactly that.

I just don't think movies without even the basic sense of realism can tackle something as complex and nuanced as teenage relationships - why even try? You'll fail. You fuckin' know you will. Unless you have real teenagers writing the script, you'll fail.

So they exchange some bland dialogue that sets up the main girl going off alone to the parking garage where she’s almost hit by some guy. It turns out to be the killer though, as he grabs her from behind in broad daylight and stuffs her in a trunk. Amazing – he must be the luckiest man in the world for nobody to notice him doing this in the middle of a parking lot at a public mall in the middle of the day. Truly astounding. And if you can believe it, the movie only gets worse from here in terms of the killer’s bizarre lucky contrivances.

Like the very next scene which shows her in the trunk of the guy's car. He doesn’t bother to tie her up or gag her or even take away her cell phone. Are you fucking kidding me? The killer from I Know Who Killed Me would be laughing at you right now! How the hell has this guy been doing this for so long? Like you’d expect, the girl calls 911 and immediately gets them on her trail. So she talks to Halle Berry a bit, making chit chat, and also being counterproductive by babbling and crying like an insane person the entire time.

If you're kidnapped and you call 911, wouldn't it make sense to shut up and listen to what the operator has to say? I mean, wouldn't that be actually helpful? Isn't that like going to a fast food restaurant and standing in line, endlessly deliberating on your choice of food whilst talking to the cashier about your love life? Nobody wins there.

Don’t get me wrong, I get it – she’s scared. But she never shuts up. How is Berry supposed to help this chick when she’s non-stop blubbering and screaming over everything Berry says? Isn’t that counterproductive? Fortunately, Berry finally gets her to shut the fuck up for two seconds, and lo and behold that’s when they actually get stuff done. For a while, it actually looks like the girl is gonna escape – she kicks out the taillight and actually gets people to notice her in the car.

It's just one of those weird Japanese models. The car with an arm sticking out of it - truly an avant garde make and model.

But the killer catches on because of a serious thorn in the side of every serial killer movie victim – the good Samaritan. Some lady calling 911 tries to get a look at him to describe him to the police, and that tips him off, so he pulls off the highway and into a wide open parking lot just off the highway. He opens up the trunk right there and threatens her – you’d think that would prompt someone to notice this, but nope, apparently open spaces with no cover in the middle of a sunny day in a big city are a blind spot for most people. He threatens her a bit, but doesn’t bother to take away her phone or restrain her at all even after she’s caused him trouble now.

"I'm gonna keep threatening you and stuff, but gagging you or making sure you can't make noise? Nah, that would be stupid."

Dude, seriously, what the FUCK is your deal? I know I’m becoming a broken record here, but HOW DOES NOBODY NOTICE THIS SHIT?!? How does this guy NOT see that leaving her untied and able to thwart his schemes is a bad idea for him? Maybe the other victims just went quietly and didn’t mind being kidnapped and the guy got used to that? I hate to break it to you, genius, but most people don’t like being stuffed in a trunk and kidnapped. Most people are going to fight you if you do that!

Oh, who the hell cares – get caught for all I care, you moron. Why don’t you just murder someone brutally in broad daylight and then put him and the girl in the trunk of a different car? I’m sure nobody will notice, in this magic fairytale land the movie takes place in.

And yes that’s exactly what happens next.

Fortunately we transported to the Twilight Zone where we're the only people in the world, and that's why nobody can see us doing this even though we're clearly right next to a freeway!

How many other ways can I possibly keep saying the same thing? I just can’t comprehend how anyone thought this plot would work. It’s so stupid it’s impossible to even really joke about it. I mean it’s just so far removed from any conceivable reality. What other jokes can I even make? The film just keeps constantly doing the same horrible, nonsensical mistakes over and over again! Hell, it doesn't stop there - it turns out he didn't even kill the guy, and so he throws him in the trunk with the girl. Then when the guy starts amazingly and unexpectedly making noise, as the killer didn't restrain him either, he goes back there and stabs the guy a bunch of times:

But that's not the stupid part. That isn't the part that will absolutely kill you: after killing that guy, the killer takes his phone away! So it isn't just like he doesn't know that cell phones exist or something. He could have apparently very easily taken away the girl's phone too, and prevented her from doing anything harmful to him like calling 911. But that wouldn't fit the movie's ludicrous plot, so that couldn't happen! Ha ha ... I'm losing my mind.

Sigh. Oh, and here’s a great tip: if you’re a serial killer, and you plan to have a kidnapped victim locked in your car unrestrained and not gagged at all, make sure NOT to fucking go fill up your car with gas beforehand. And when some poor sap inevitably notices that you have a kidnapped girl in your car, douse him with gasoline and light him on fire right there in the gas station! Isn’t that brilliant?!

No.

The stupidity continues like a bad hangover. So I guess there’s some plot about the cops finding the killer’s wife and kids … so, yeah, he has a wife and kids and somehow still finds time to go out all the time and execute ridiculously complex kidnapping schemes. Which will seem even stupider in just a few scenes. But mostly during these scenes you won't be wondering about any of that; you'll be thinking, "why does that killer have such a stupid looking mugshot?"

Yeah, amazing, isn't it? It looks like he's doing a purposefully goofy jackass face in a joke picture; you know the ones. Like after you take a few serious photos you go "Okay, now it's time for the silly one! Make the most ridiculous face possible!" That's what this is.

Meanwhile at random underground lair, we learn the secrets to kidnapping: like, when you want to wash someone’s hair, it’s imperative that you cut their shirt off. Never mind the excuse to show teenage girl boobs! IT MAKES SENSE!

I checked to see if maybe I was overreacting and the girl was already above 18. But nope, she was around 17 when making this, so yeah ... the film is just a big pedophile.

As the cops have figured out who the killer is, the boss at the emergency dispatch place tells Halle Berry to go on home. But she can’t go home! She has to save the day! So, yeah, she actually goes out to try and find the killer and the girl on her own.

I … I just got nothin’. I don’t know what to say anymore. The 911 operator goes to save a kidnapped girl. Is this just some kind of ridiculous fantasy? Maybe the writers just thought Berry was still playing Storm or Catwoman and just got the scripts mixed up with the ones from those movies. I dunno. Either way it’s awfully written, and makes me ashamed to speak the same language. If aliens ever come to Earth and ask who’s responsible for making The Call, infuriated and ready to destroy our planet as I know they will be, I will pretend I don’t speak a word of English.

So through some of the most boring scenes put on film in 2013, we get the killer’s backstory. Are you ready for this? It’s a gem: basically, his sister had cancer and died, so now he kidnaps girls who look like her, scalp them and then throw their scalps into a fridge with a bunch of other scalps.

"NOBODY WILL UNDERSTAND UNLESS WE SHOW PICTURES OF THE KILLER WITH A GIRL WITH CANCER! PEOPLE CAN'T GRASP THE COMPLEXITIES OF THIS STORY!" Ugh ... seriously, movie, just fuck off. The human mind isn't just some simple little crossword puzzle you can connect the dots with. It's not that linear. 

Okay, fuckin' seriously; this is the bottom of the barrel, the absolute nadir. This is where serial killer movies have finally come to. Scalped heads of hair in a fridge. My god. I have no words. Why don't we just start making reality TV shows about serial killers, glorifying them and making them movie stars? I mean, since we're clearly not interested in portraying them in any meaningful way.

THAT MAKES NO SENSE. Movie, you go bash your head against a slab of raw cow meat until you come up with something else. Because I guarantee you it would be better than THIS.

Seriously; what the hell is this? This is what serial killer movies have come to? You couldn’t come up with anything more interesting or realistic than THAT? Christ. Scooby Doo episodes have been more plausible. It’s just so ridiculous because, aside from being goofy as fuck, serial killers don’t act like this. Yes, they probably have some psychological issues that lead to their trauma – I’m betting most of them do. But just simplifying it like this, going from point A (‘My sister died from cancer’) to point B (‘I want to scalp young girls so they look like her’) is just so insulting.

It’s not interesting! There is absolutely nothing positive or enlightening to be gained from a story like this, or indeed, like many recent serial killer films. It is downright insulting to take the human condition and turn it into something this grotesque, goofy and parodic. It is insulting to both the real life study of these killers and to good storytelling. Basically, fuck this shit.

Sigh, so what? They end up outsmarting the killer by smacking him a few times and then locking him down in that cellar forever? Snore. I love the line the killer says when he sees Berry. He looks up at her with just a spark of knowing in his eye, and goes “oh, you’re the 911 lady.” Fuckin’ seriously? I love how he says he “thought she would be taller.” Oh yeah, because a serial killer totally has time to ponder about what the lady on the phone with 911 would look like in person, right? I guess with the minimal amount of thought he put into his killing schemes though, IT MAKES SENSE THAT HE WOULD THINK ABOUT THAT.

This movie was just horrendous. It was dumb scene after dumb scene. The first half is admittedly kind of enjoyable just for how ludicrous it is. But like a child repeating its own dumb mistakes well into adulthood – after a while it just gets old. The second half of this is grueling, unpleasant and nasty as hell, without anything good about it.

The whole idea is just ridiculous, like I said; how am I supposed to get invested in a stupid-ass story about some dingbat crybaby serial killer who doesn’t even possess the common sense to know that just throwing a conscious person, unrestrained, into your trunk might not make them very happy?

It’s contrived as shit. I mean there were a million better ways to do this plot. How about if she was running around in an open area, like the woods, and the killer was hunting her? Maybe she has to keep in touch with 911 so the GPS can track them, but the killer keeps closing in by the sound of her voice. Wouldn’t that be better?

But no, people just eat up anything with a serial killer plot now, all thanks to Dexter and some other movies and shows that got popular – so nobody thinks they have to try anymore. So we get fetid bullshit like this and The Following. I know there’s a lot to be said for opinions, and in a way I can see how people would like it – the fast pace and racy themes are enticing for someone who just wants goofy entertainment. But it’s not good. It’s junk.

Fuck this movie, fuck The Following, fuck all of it. Just go watch Prisoners instead. Now there’s a killer movie!

…. No pun intended.

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REVIEW: Cloud Atlas (2012)

SPOILERS here!

Cloud Atlas is the new film by the artists formerly known as the Wachowski Brothers, now something more like ‘the Wachowski Siblings’…but that’s a story for another day, and today we are here to talk about how bad Cloud Atlas is.

Director: Various

Starring: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent

IMDb

This is purportedly one of those multiple-storyline films like Magnolia or Crash, except much larger in scale, spanning waaaaay out across time, space and location varying from a pirate ship to the far future where there are clones and intergalactic police that wear all black and fire laser guns. The thing about this is that they use the same main actors, including an ensemble all star cast of people like Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving. All of these people are very talented, which makes it so much worse that that talent is being wasted in favor of the makeup artists showing off and the Wachowskis acting like making a movie this preachy makes up for the money spent on it that could have been used for any number of charities. You can’t tell me the money used for this bloated mess couldn’t have been better used to feed some African kids or something.

This is just the biggest, most egregious, pretentious film of the year, and it has to be in the top 5 of the last 10 years, at that. At the start it seems like a really intriguing concept, as the stories are just setting up their themes and characters and you don’t know exactly where they’re going yet. The settings are all very good and the movie is visually gorgeous. There’s a story about a journalist who stumbles onto a conspiracy by the government, one about an old man set up by his brother in a trap, and a third about a gay man in the 1700s or so who is blackmailed by a famous composer into writing for him, among others – I’d go into each one, but really the stories don’t matter, and each one is just window-dressing for the Wachowskis to be all arty. This movie really thinks it’s smart, and even more than that, thinks it’s something really deep and meaningful, which gives the whole thing this slick, overpowering sheen of condescending schmaltz that makes it less endearing than the worst Hallmark cards. I really hate movies that act this smart and can’t back it up.

Every story in this movie is inconsequential because the underlying themes are all the same: each one is basically just a big old ‘one lone rebel standing against the BIG BAD OPPRESSION OF THE GOVERNMENT (or (insert mainstream masses here))’ plot that’s been a hallmark of literature since probably the dawn of civilization, only done so poorly in this due to a lack of any kind of nuance or depth. Every story is about some lone outcast of civilization getting captured or oppressed and, through chase scenes and lots of inner courage and other bullshit, they eventually rebel against their captors or pursuers and PROVE A POINT.  None of these stories has anything going on aside from that broad message. There’s a lot of stuff happening in each one, but very little of anything actually being said. The pacing is just atrocious, as each story is given such a disproportionate amount of screen time at a time that you forget what’s going on in the other stories whenever it switches scenes, which is done with very little warning or logic.

The message is supposed to be that “everything is connected”? That’s a laugh and a half…these stories are all connected only by the virtue of having the same themes and the same actors in every one. It’s easy to say they’re connected when each one has the same basic story…all these idiots needed to do was change a few costumes, rewrite the setting and wallah, NEW STORY! And MY GOD this is pretentious…you have no idea, man. There’s one story set on a pirate ship where some guy befriends a runaway slave, and we’re supposed to be oh-so enchanted even though half the time this story is completely ignored in favor of the other ones, so good luck there…they eventually get back to land and the moral of it all is that the white guy tells his snooty white friends that he can’t help them anymore because they endorse slavery. What results is a tired, dated scene where the good guys all give the stuffy old conservative white bastard the finger and he’s all “you’ll never be welcome here again” and they don’t care because they just need each other…not a bad sentiment, movie, but the way it’s done here is vomitous and vile.

What else…I mean, I could spend as much time as the movie runs itself talking about why everything is so godawful in this. One story is about this gay guy who writes a symphony and ends up getting blackmailed into letting some old composer take credit for it. It could have been a pretty touching historical fiction, but the movie just drives it into the dirt and it ends up simply depressing and pointless as he kills himself – which isn’t much of a spoiler as it happens in the first ten minutes and then they flash back to show what happened. Another story is about some clone girl in the future becoming a martyr for her kind, which also goes nowhere because it’s just egregious unpleasant drawn out scene after egregious unpleasant drawn out scene. Doesn’t exactly work when it’s framed by comedic stories like the one about a bunch of old people trying to escape a nursing home, which is literally just in here as a joke, and doesn’t have any serious moments in it. The whole thing is incredibly disjointed, and whatever serious emotions we are supposed to feel for the more somber storylines is hijacked by goofy ones in other storylines. The fact that they’re all jumbled up together just makes everything lose any kind of emotional impact it could have had.

I haven’t even mentioned the final story yet, which is about a futuristic “after the fall” world where everything looks like a big wasteland and where people have been reduced back to tribal warrior days. The whole thing is just confusing as all hell as there are large portions of it left unexplained, like what the motive is of the strange exotic warrior woman helping Tom Hanks, or why Tom Hanks keeps seeing schizophrenic visions of a strange leprechaun-man telling him to kill her – why is this character supposed to be the hero of the story again? He’s passed off as a hero but clearly he’s crazy as shit, and his insanity is never addressed.

It turns out the whole thing is just a framing device for Hanks as an old man to tell a bunch of kids all the various stories you’ve been seeing throughout the movie. Which is the BIGGEST SLAP IN THE FACE. GODDAMN. So what, was he telling it just as the audience saw all the stories; all jumbled up like that? That must have been a fascinatingly headache-inducing trip! “And then the gay guy got blackmailed by the old man into letting the old man steal his life’s work. And after that, in the future world, everyone found out that the clones were being used as a food source! Meanwhile in the 1970s, Journalist Halle Berry uncovered governmental corruption…” Why are these kids so excited about this? Most kids would be scratching their heads and wondering why Mommy and Daddy left them with their crack-addict aunt and uncle again.

And this is THREE HOURS LONG. THREE HOURS OF THIS. I MEAN MY GOD. Look at how much caps lock this movie just made me use! Even though every story is essentially telling the same message and themes, the film takes forever to get there, and you’ll keep sitting there watching it anyway because it’s all so over the top and ridiculous that you just wonder how the hell they’re going to end it, because, hey, you’ve been sitting through the torture for this long anyway! Every story here could have been split into its own movie with how much random shit is crammed into each one and how long the final product is, but then again, as individual films these would just amount to NOTHING because there’s so little substance in them. Nobody would ever care about any of this shit if the Wachowski name wasn’t attached to it. I’ve never read the book or anything, but I can’t imagine it being as vapid as this cinematic drivel…it’s hard to imagine anyone dedicated enough to write a book, a medium without any visual stimulation like a movie would have, with so little intelligence and so little meaning as Cloud Atlas the movie has.

The worst crime this movie commits is hard to peg down, between its length and the gargantuan amount of wasted talent, money and effects on the horrible story, but mostly I’d have to say it’s the implications of these stories, and the expectations the movie sets up. With all the bravado, all the ruckus and all the ridiculous amount of build-up this movie has, for its seven or eight different stories going on at the same time, it’s not a big deal to say that one expects a certain level of payoff for said build-up. One expects to be compensated for the wait with a gestalt of intellectual enlightenment, or at the very least, some kind of message that had a lot of thought put into it. With stories ranging from the 1600s to thousands of years in the future, the Wachowskis had a lot to work with in Cloud Atlas – they had a variety of different settings and characters they could have potentially taken advantage of.

And what do we get? “Governmental corruption/betrayal is bad.” Oh. What a shocking revelation. It doesn’t even matter that there are so many different times and places, because this movie’s message could be summed up in a 30-minute educational video for a middle school history class. One story involves a well-to-do white guy who ends up rebelling against slavery. Another is about a future world where two rebels discover that the government is using clones to recycle for food. And yet a third is about a journalist who uncovers a conspiracy about some kind of bomb they want to set off and kill people…for some unknown reason. Aside from the slavery thing, all of these stories are really vague, too, which is further insulting to my intelligence. Three hours of build-up, seven different stories, all these big name stars, all this ballyhooing and you can’t even be bothered to tell a coherent story? Get the hell out. This is more than just another big-budget flop; this is what I said it was – insulting. This movie is insulting. What does it say that the most entertaining story in this pile of shit is a comedic throwaway about some goofy old people playing James Bond and trying to escape from a nursing home run by villains that make Nurse Ratched look like a patron saint of well-balanced motherhood? That is shit! I mean, what is this, a big joke? Do they really think anyone will actually take this seriously?!

…I’m reaching my breaking point here, guys. I just don’t know anymore. But what I do know is that I can at least try to be the voice of reason with this. This is not an intellectual movie. It is not smart, it is not anything that should make you feel better about yourself after seeing it. Cloud Atlas is pure trash from beginning to end, with a smacking of self-indulgence and an even bigger helping of pointless, poorly written cinema. There is so much wrong with this that I haven’t even come close to covering everything wrong with it. But frankly, I’m done. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. This is a hideous train-wreck of a movie that I am glad I will never have to sit through again, and I would strongly urge you to avoid it at all costs. If even one person doesn’t see it because of all this, I’ve done my job and contributed more to the world than Cloud Atlas did.

Image copyright of its original owner.

Review: Gothika (2003)

Director: Matthieu Kassovitz

Starring: Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., Charles S. Dutton, John Carrol Lynch

Do you ever wonder what happens to horror movie heroines after their ordeals are over? Because I do. In movies like this, about a young woman accused of murdering her husband and her trial to figure out what really happened...don't you just wonder what they do after the credits roll, when their whole lives are destroyed and everything they know has been completely screwed to all hell? Because I'm pretty sure it wouldn't end with a happy alternative rock song like Gothika does.

This movie is just cruel, is what it is. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to gain from this? A normal young woman is married to a guy who secretly made horrific torture porn snuff videos underground in some remote shack in the woods before she was possessed by a ghost and slaughtered her own husband with an ax? Frankly, all this movie really is is a test of the human will. Cruel act after cruel act is pushed onto the poor woman. Imprisoned in a mental hospital, unfairly judged by people she was once esteemed by, repeatedly sedated, locked up and looked down upon, and all because the vengeful ghost of a girl that her husband raped and murdered is trying to get revenge; don't you hate when that happens? And that's not even counting the rising horror when she finally figures out what her husband was really up to on those late nights when he didn't come home from work on time. I mean good god, what's next? Are you going to have her legs amputated and have her be raped by a crazy Vietnam veteran? It doesn't seem that far off, movie. It doesn't seem that far off!

I will say that this movie is not that badly put together on the surface. The colors are nice, the setting is creepy - although so archetypical of this kind of psychological horror that it almost looks like some kind of parody - and the effects are good. But what's the point? It's a sideshow gallery of misery. Yes, I get that there is a "meaning" to what is happening on screen, but it's not like this stuff hasn't been done before. And the whole core of the movie just comes out to being something that I didn't really feel justified in watching at the end. I didn't feel like any modicum of justice or revenge or anything had really been exacted.

Or was the movie supposed to be some kind of atonement because Halle Berry's character "didn't know how to listen" to her patients? Well, that plot just isn't elaborated on enough.

Gothika tries, but falls short of the mark. And let me remind you that it decided to sum up all of its emotional and mental stressors with a happy, soothing alternative rock tune over the end credits. I think this movie needs to see a psychiatrist more than the characters in it; it's so confused. Watch at your own peril, for all you will really get out of this one is a lot of pain and a little confusion.