Exeter (2015)

The month of October is over, and we're all hungover from horror films. So what to do now? I mean, I don't even want to see a horror movie right now. I need a fucking break. My head is spinning from all the gore and suspense and terror. Luckily, this movie, Exeter, has absolutely nothing scary or cool in it, so this shouldn't be too hard to sit through.

Oh who am I kidding, of course it will be.

Director: Marcus Nispel

Starring: Kelly Blatz, Brittany Curran

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This movie starts out with something nice and considerate – a depiction of exactly the state you need to be in to enjoy the movie:

That's right, you have to be a member of the cast of Requiem for a Dream.

How nice of it; a sort of tutorial. What a thoughtful movie.

Then we get a black and white exposition dump told in the way of an old documentary. Apparently there was a mental hospital years ago that burned kids alive, or something like that. Snooooooooore.

Then we get our main characters, a bunch of douchey high school morons who want to have a party at the place years later. Our main character is Patrick, or I think that's his name; a wimp who sucks at everything. I say that because he is working with a church to refurbish the place and on the first day of doing that, he decided to invite every kid in a hundred miles to come destroy the place for a party. I mostly find it highly dubious that he managed to get that many fucking people to come. I very, very highly doubt he's that popular or likable, movie.

He's friends with a couple of douchenozzles who talk about nothing but having sex with random chicks. They see one of them from behind and talk about how hot she is and how Patrick should go talk to her. I just find it depressing that they introduced the main girl in the movie by showing her ass first, without even showing us her face yet, and the main characters ogling her. What a piece of shit this is.

Unless she's going to talk with her ass Ace Ventura style, I don't think this is a viable way of introducing a character.

So the party drags on all night and well into the morning, and I guess none of these bungholes has anything else to do. Patrick and the girl go outside and have a ridiculously poor talk about their personal lives, where we learn they have broken families and yadda yadda. Who gives a fuck? This movie trying to emote is like a crack whore trying to relate to you.

"Blahblahblahblabla."
"Hurr durr derr."
-Pretty accurate for this scene...

If you think that last bit is harsh, well, I'm sorry if I can't get into the “touching” scenes when the next scene you see is them performing fake exorcisms just for shits and giggles. Something tells me these characters are the types of people who stick their tongues into electrical sockets to see what happens.

Anyway, yeah, so the little brother character, Rory, somehow ends up possessed from their fake exorcism game thing. Which the main characters are surprisingly cool with and don't need to think about at all before realizing that. Patrick just instantly knows, and doesn't question it even a little, and the girl says they don't need a hospital, they need a priest! Somebody put these detectives on the case. Nothing gets past them!

"This really reaffirms my suspicions that demonic possession is real!"

The group spends a lot of time just wandering around arguing about what to do. One guy says over and over that there's no such thing as possession, but then immediately reverts that position when he sees Rory. What a pussy. I love the scenes where he's raving about how Christianity is fake and possession is a lie, but then like, ten minutes later he's hugging a big cross like a baby. Fuck that guy.

They all try to figure out how to beat the demon, and the best they can come up with is watching a Youtube video about how to perform an exorcism. I would make fun of this, but honestly, the brain mash required to come up with this sequence is so bizarrely specific and odd that I think the movie's writers should be studied as lab experiment guinea pigs.

Well, they SAY it's Youtube, but really it's just a shitty looking website from 2002 because they didn't have money to use Youtube's likeness. Or maybe they did, but Youtube didn't want to be associated with this movie. In fact, I'm betting it's the latter.

It was around this point that both Michelle and myself began to think this was actually intended as a comedy, but I think that's just because the writers had no idea what they were doing. It comes off like one writer wanted to do a “serious” possession horror movie, but the other wanted to write a jokey horror comedy, so they instead combined into a two-headed, disagreeing chimera, a horrific abomination, and thus the movie was spawned.

At any rate, Michelle did think some of this was funny – so you might, too, ya never know. Your mileage may vary. There's a scene where they use a Ouija board and find out that the demon's name is Devon – that sounds like the name of a member of One Direction or something. This demon really got the short end of the stick when it came to badass demon names.

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all this, a priest named Father Conway arrives to help them with the exorcism, and then the jock kid of the group, like a moron, hits him with the car and nearly kills him. They go back inside the building, and somehow get locked inside, because even though they're all corporeal humans and should be able to figure out doors, a ghost gets the better of them on locking a fucking door. Yeah, they're real brain trusts. Keep endearing us to them, movie!

This movie sure likes to abuse priests, which I think indicates a deep seated psychological trouble that the movie needs to see a therapist for.

Next we get a long, mushy trudge through soggy horror cliché. Every character basically acts the way you expect – there's a stoner guy in the movie who walks around the entire time in his underwear with two Cheetoes stuck to his back and the phrase 'I Love Fat Cock' drawn on his back in marker. That's so bad that I can't imagine who would write it and think it was funny.

Please stop showing this, movie. Please.

Oh, and you know what this was missing the whole time? Exposition. Looooooots more exposition! So the movie does right by itself, and adds in an over-long scene of the two leads finding convenient videotapes explaining that there was a patient named Devon (like the demon's name earlier! A-ha!) there at the hospital who got mistreated and that's why all of this is happening now, or some shit like that. I do have to say this answered some questions – but not the main one I had, which was: How are they using the Internet and watching things on TV? Who is paying the fucking electric bill in this place? Wasn't it deserted for like 20 years?

Maybe the GHOST paid the electric bills! OooooOOOOooohhh!

Then there's the random guy who comes in and threatens to call the cops on them for being there. The next second, he's sticking a gun in their faces and propositioning (what's supposed to be) a teenage girl for sex. I'm pretty sure the cops wouldn't like that. Isn't that like calling the cops on a guy for breaking into your house, only to immediately order the assassination of the burglar's entire family before the cops get there? Bit of a mixed message.

Anyway, he gets the typical death characters in these movies often have – the demon breaks his neck, then he walks outside with his head twisted 180 degrees backwards, and accidentally shoots himself in the face.

Ho hum. Booooooorrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnnggggg.

Oh and there's a really random scene where the demon pretends to be the normal kid, Rory, again, only to fake them out and then immediately try to attack them again. It makes no sense because we never see the demon try to do this again. But hey, fuck logic! We have super cool possession effects to show!

As the movie slogs on, like a drunk rhino, most of the scenes take place in the middle of the day. Which is the worst idea, because now we can more clearly see how shitty and run down the building they're in looks. They somehow get the demon out of the kid again, for real this time, and then the hot blonde chick of the group who is near 30 but playing a high schooler gets it next. She's the obvious choice because the movie had her take off her bra in an earlier scene and now she's able to run around so her boobs jiggle a lot, and if anyone ever watched this, that would be an obvious pandering reason to do so. Oh, and I guess she kills a lot of people or something.

The next 40 minutes of the movie is basically just disposable – endless scenes of these morons wandering around in the dark with flashlights. The possessed girl kills the stoner guy and stabs the fat kid of the group in the gut, but he doesn't die yet. They all end up splitting up. Patrick and the lead girl find the possessed demon chick in an upstairs freezer room, but they kill her by stabbing her eyes out.

So this is basically the equivalent of a wet T-shirt mud fight between these girls. Glad the movie's not pandering!

You know what, this isn't even funny anymore. The least you could have done was add cartoon sound effects!

It turns out Father Conway is still alive, and actually killing some of the kids himself for no real reason. He even manages to kill the lead girl by sticking a lead pipe through her torso, which was training I never knew they gave priests in the sacristy. Eh, you learn new things every day.

Then Patrick shows up, cries over the fact that this girl he's known for six hours died, and burns Father Conway alive with a lighter. I do think every horror movie should end this way, so I guess that's a point in the movie's favor:

If there weren't already a bunch of heavy metal songs written about this, it might be more shocking.

After Father Conway kills the lead girl, it's revealed that the girl's name was Devon and she was the one sent to the asylum! And also the drug addict woman who shot herself in the opening scene was her mother! Shock and awe! What a twist! So Patrick goes from mourning over her to mutilating her with a fan blade, cutting her arms off and then shoving her into an incinerator in like, ten minutes. His mind is like Silly Putty; he never sticks to just one idea for long!

Also note the complete dead-eyed lack of empathy at the horrific violence he just committed. Maybe the movie is trying to make a point about how we're all so desensitized now. Or maybe it's just total shit, either way.

So that's Exeter. It sucks. It's poorly paced, poorly acted and poorly characterized, and the scares are as good as any you would find in your local Kindergarten class. The plot makes no sense, with a bunch of random threads never connected, like the world's worst-made Christmas sweater, coming unraveled at the seams. Like, yeah, a story about a random possessing demon with no rules or logic to how it works, and the magical priest who can survive being hit by a car and then becomes an stone badass killer for no reason. Sign me the fuck up for that.

But at least it's not a total loss. There are a few redeeming factors. Like, uh, well...actually, nevermind.

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

Well, it's the first review of a new year! Time to do another bland possession exorcism movie again!

Director: Adam Robitel

Starring: Jill Larson, Anne Ramsay

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

You know, I genuinely feel sorry for the people making these piece of shit movies in a way. Well, not too much. But I know that, deep down somewhere, there was some kind of glimmer of artistic intention in a movie like this. Some poor sap going 'hey, I have a really original and good idea for a horror movie. I'll do it found-footage style, so it feels like you're right there in the action. Nobody has done that before. Then I'll carefully craft a story about a possession, but I'll tie in a story about a disease like Alzheimer's to make it more grounded in reality! Yeah!'

How depressingly optimistic. I almost don't even want to be mean to it...oh who am I kidding, yes I do.

We start this off with some lame text on a black screen announcing that the movie we're about to see is composed of outtakes, security camera footage and all kinds of other bullshit that has the unique distinction of being everything but a fucking movie. Seriously, who gives a shit? Show us a goddamn movie.

We get a sort of half-told story, paradoxically forced and hamstrung to felt realistic through “whispered” lines “secretly” filmed. It kind of, sort of establishes that this woman needs money to help her Alzheimer's-ailing mother, Deborah Logan, so she lets some film crew make a documentary about Alzheimer's featuring her mother.

I don't know why the film crew is doing this, though; couldn't you just go to a hospital ward and film normal Alzheimer's patients instead of crazy old ladies living out in houses in the woods? Wouldn't that be more economically sound, easier to shoot and just plain better in every way? Oh, I forgot, a house in the woods isolated from society is just more convenient for stock horror storytelling tropes...my bad.

Anyway, we get some fairly middling scenes of Deb stumbling around and doing Alzheimer-y things that could have been interesting in a movie that cared about depicting the disease accurately. But then you realize you're just watching another dime-a-dozen ghost horror possession movie, and then you go 'oh, right,' and promptly smoke a bowl. My favorite scene is when they actually, no joke, throw in a little 'informative' bit about what Alzheimer's is, complete with totally random CGI graphics.

"This is the part of your brain that dies when watching The Taking of Deborah Logan."

No, your Netflix didn't just glitch up and jettison you over to a kids' science class instructional video – you just saw that.

So to demonstrate exactly their knowledge of how Alzheimer's works, the movie then shows us the true meaning of the disease – when you have it, you sometimes stand in dark rooms and stare ominously at nothing, like you're in a shitty horror movie:

I guess every character in one of these kinds of movies has Alzheimer's then!

And when that doesn't sound appealing, well, there's always the old 'tear off your own neck skin' trick. A classic Alzheimer's staple.

Man, I'm going to hell for this review.

After she gets released from the hospital, I'll be fair and admit that even the movie starts to admit that Deb's condition isn't actually Alzheimer's. Really? What tipped you off about that? Was it the scene where they find her naked in the attic intoning in French about snakes and burying people in the river and all kinds of other nonsense? I guess that one was a close call. I mean, it's easy to see how you'd fucking mistake that shit for Alzheimer's. I guess you needed to consult with all the top doctors and get second opinions.

One of those priceless family moments...

And because the writers of this thing apparently grew up in a vacuum and were never aware that this is a trope in horror movies older than time itself, we get a bunch of scenes after this where they go online and research why she was saying all that shit. Nothing that can't be solved by showing characters clicking around on a computer, right? Because they couldn't figure out a clever way to shoehorn the plot in without a big stinky info-dump...that's exactly what we get next. A big stinky info-dump, clogging up the movie and stopping everything in its tracks.

"Just photoshop whatever you need to on that computer screen, it's easier than writing compelling scenes!"

So, if you care, the story is that there's some serial killer from the past who used to take kids and drown them, or something like that. He mysteriously disappeared years ago, and now apparently is possessing Deb and making her do all this crazy stuff, as she spoke to him once before years ago at her job as a telephone operator. I don't know. It's all pretty obviously made up on the spot, as there was no clues to this storyline before these last few scenes, and we're halfway through the movie.

Really all we need now is the reveal that the demon is actually Toby, the demon from the Paranormal Activity series. Piggybacking off an established franchise would at least bring in some of that money the family needs to pay their bills and stuff. So there would be that advantage!

So with the reveal that this is definitely not Alzheimer's, you'd think the camera crew would move on. After all, their job was to make a movie about Alzheimer's, and clearly what we have here is a demonic possession. So they're done, right? Right?! No...actually they keep on filming shit anyway, just for the hell of it I guess. Or maybe their producers just thought it was a better story than 'hey, let's exploit an old lady with Alzheimer's!' That seems more likely.

"Isn't this a little too personal and sensitive to stand there filming? Doesn't it kind of make us complete assholes?"

So we get an astounding little text blurb under some scenes listing the number of days the project has been going on – first we see 41 days and then over 60 the next time. Jesus, what is their time frame on this? When do they plan on stopping? It seems like they're really just winging it and hanging out to film whatever at this point, as there's no clear narrative being formed and they're really just reacting to things now. They're at the mercy of the elements. There's no story or plan here anymore. Might as well just admit you have no clue what you're doing, guys.

There's a baffling scene where this old guy from next door comes over to their property shooting a gun like a madman. He hits the camera crew's car a few times and is then arrested. It's never exactly explained why he was shooting – maybe he has Alzheimer's too. See? I can be insensitive too.

Then the next day, one of their guys quits because of all the crazy shit going on like the old lady's bizarre possessed actions and the bullets that destroyed his windows last night. I guess we're supposed to feel really bad and scared for the others, but all I feel is relief for the guy who left. I mean, he's clearly the only one with any sense of career goals, anyway.

He's got plenty of other hack found footage horror scenarios do appear in.

I really wanted, later on in the movie, to have a sidebar chronicling his normal and healthy career path juxtaposed with the other main characters' continued descent into idiocy – just to drive the whole ridiculous thing home.

What's going on with the titular character Deborah Logan, you might ask? Ha ha, just kidding; nobody is asking that. But I'll tell you anyway. Apparently after doing silly things like throwing up worms, she was admitted to the hospital.

Not this month's approved dieting fad, but we all need to get worms out of our system at some point.

My favorite scene in this sequence is when one of the doctors offers up the brain-shattering conclusion his years of schooling have brought him to: she threw up the worms because she might have eaten worms when out digging in the garden in her dementia state. Yes. You read that right. Isn't this man the genius we've all been waiting for? I think he is.

Seriously, though, dude – answering complete indescribable insanity like throwing up worms with retarded levels of unrealistic “isn't it so simple?” acceptance probably isn't your best course of action here.

Apparently he isn't the hospital's only problem, though, as we see their security is so lax that even a skinny old woman like Deborah Logan can break out...somehow. It isn't really explained how, and somehow she also even kidnaps some little girl out of a cancer ward. I'm guessing the reason the movie doesn't show us the scenes of them escaping is because even the writers had no idea how it happened.

The story here, supposedly, is that the serial killer possessing Deborah wants to kill cancer girl. Why? Because he's crazy and a serial killer, so no other motivations are needed. He's just kooky.

I guess we then get a long, long, annoyingly, painfully long action sequence where the cops team up with the camera crew and Deborah's daughter to go find the girl. Somewhere in the blitzkrieg of nonsense before this, it was established that the sheriff and the daughter are old friends, so I guess that means it's okay to take her and a random camera crew of people you don't know on a hunt for a kidnapper. Cops of the century, ohhhhhhh yeah!

"You go ahead of me. It's just for safety."

Seriously. This is established police protocol? Just invite the cancer girl's entire 3rd Grade class along too. Why the fuck not? Invite the goddamn Nambian church choir jazz ensemble, too. Maybe throw your AA buddies in, too. Surely someone will be able to find that girl!

Turns out it's the camera crew who ends up finding the girl. Convenience to the point of contrivance? What big words!

But yeah. Just take a look at this:

You can insert your own caption this time. I'm sure you'll come up with brilliant ones.

Because you know, cancer patients make the best food for serial killers. Which is a sentence I never thought I'd say.

They shoot Deborah Logan and save the girl, and it's all a happy ending except for the fact that somehow the serial killer guy body-jumped into the little girl now.

Presumably she is incarcerated for life into a mental asylum when she starts talking about drowning people in the river.

How did he do that? I'm sure there was some unfinished line of dialogue in this half-assed mess of a movie that explained it, but fuck it if I'm going to waste my time with finding it. I'm just going to assume the moral of this movie is that Alzheimer's means demonic possession and cancer patients are good nutrients for serial killers. Happy New Years.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Ghost Rig (2003)

Most of the time, rigs don't have ghosts in them - it's just not something that people would commonly associate with rigs. It is for this reason that Ghost Rig is a subversive and terrifying experience. I mean, having a ghost is one thing. Having a rig is another. But having them both together in the same movie is just a stroke of genius! Ghost Rig. What a fresh combination. If that wasn't enough, this movie also features characters walking around in the dark and being afraid of things. Isn't that awesome?

Oh, if only we could all maintain such blissful ignorance.

Director: Julian Kean

Starring: Noel Fitzpatrick, Body Jumping Demon

IMDb

We start off this movie with a bunch of environmental activist people going to look at this rig and stop the maintenance workers from toppling the rig into the ocean as a "natural reef." As long as there’s no Ron Perlman or ghost caribou in this movie, I’m okay with that. The leader of their group talks to a guy I think was probably the actual cameraman of the movie, giving him all the exposition about why they're all there:

I guess these scenes are just the standard exposition ones – not terrible, but really not very imaginative. I have to say I don’t like this lady shouting in my face this whole scene though – unappealing.

How generic are the rest of these characters? They’re every tired, boring cliché ever. You got a bunch of masculine meatheads with no personalities whatsoever, mostly there to just bark extremities at one another. There’s the hot blonde chick who of course serves as the nurse of the group. And of course, not one, but TWO “strong” women who are trying their damndest to be Michelle Rodriguez – and failing hard.

These characters are basically every ragtag pseudo-tough group of “adventurers” in every single horror movie like this – they aren’t interesting at all, and they don’t have personalities you’ll remember, but they can scowl for the camera pretty well!

The movie progresses much like a person runs on a treadmill: time passes, but not a lot of actual progress is made, and at the end you’re just sweaty and aching to go drink yourself silly because of it. The characters meander around for what seems like ages looking for people on this rig who can answer their questions. Apparently it’s big, so I get that it takes a while to search through all of it.

But c’mon – you’re telling me that if there were actually PEOPLE on this RIG, they wouldn’t have just ambushed you when they heard your lady screaming her head off about why you guys were there? I really doubt they’re just hiding away in the walls. Idiots.

I wouldn’t harp on that so much if they weren’t doing it literally half of the fuckin’ movie – yeah; they’re really still harping about whether or not there are people on the rig for most of the movie. It’s not brain science, you morons. Send everyone out separately to cover ground and make sure, and give them walkie talkies to communicate so nobody gets lost or hurt. But apparently I’m just not a professional oil rig environmental crusader. I don’t know the ropes. It’s probably totally professional for these people to talk about having sex in the abandoned rig:

I love the girl's line: "Is that all you can think about?" Lady - you don't know the half of it.

To play stupid kids’ games like jumping out and scaring their team members for a laugh:

"I'M GOING TO KEEP SHOUTING TO SHOW HOW TOUGH I AM! GIRL POWER!"

And most importantly, cowering and crying in the corner like a pussy:

Seriously. Aside from the fact that you've been there maybe an hour or something, why would you agree to come on this rig if you were afraid of the dark? At least the rest of the guys just seem content with playing Alien, wandering around in the dark and waiting for the camera to get a good creepy angle to focus on. It’s not that bad or anything, but you’ve seen all of these camera shots before and the atmosphere isn’t that arresting. At least they’re trying though.

So I guess the movie just kind of plods along. There’s nothing about it that’s really all that awful or anything – more than I can say for some of the stuff I review. But it’s just so dull. We finally get a kill scene when one of the guys is strangled with some plastic wrap:

A cross between the classic Black Christmas opening kill and the cover of a 1990s Goth Rock album.

And what's this; a SECOND body, this time found in a bathroom stall? Two deaths for the price of one - a bargain for sure.

Man, the Ring tape got a wider distribution than I thought.

Other than that, the most exciting thing that happens is when they find out one of the guys was actually trying to betray them and sell their secrets to a rival organization – or some shit like that, anyway. I’d say the guy is a fucking moron for just sitting around and talking about that shit where anyone can overhear him, but really, he’s actually a genius. Why? Because apparently, according to the other characters, he’s been with them SIX MONTHS.

Fuckin’ seriously, he was doing this for six months and nobody noticed? I could see if he was real covert about it, but no – this guy just sits around in open areas and makes obviously suspect phone calls about the information he’s learning. At least wait until everyone else is asleep or you're off the isolated area you're all trapped in together! He’s about as good of a spy as Ronald McDonald would be if you threw him into a group of mimes and asked him to blend in! C’mon. You guys deserve whatever crap you get.

"WE'RE BEATING YOU UP TO HIDE OUR OWN SHAME!"

We go through every cliché in these scenes – they bitch and moan about everything, try to escape, but oh, of course – the radio is broken! How convenient. Are you going to pull the whole “no cell phones” thing too? We even find out that the leader of the group "neglected" to tell them about a quarantine down in the rig that could have been life threatening, since it was just a rumor that there was some kind of quarantine. I guess the "quarantine" ends up being the demon possession stuff they find out about soon after.

I just love that logic, though. "It was just a rumor, so I used that as an excuse to put you all in grave danger and strand you in a place multiple people have died in at this point!" He gets so defensive about this, too, which is pretty hilarious. I've never seen someone so obviously wrong try to make everyone else out to be the bad guys. With the lack of morals and the disregard for his peoples' safety, this guy would make an awesome CEO for Amazon or Walmart!

Radio broken, people trapped underground arguing all the time, one guy is a traitor AND the leader is hiding something from them? It really is every single late 90s/early 2000s horror stereotype ever. Why not throw in some stale relationship drama? It’s about the only cliché you missed.

We also get some scenes of the body-jumping demon thing, possessing certain people and making them talk kinda like a bad children’s Haunted House narrator. Maybe that's scary if you're on 'shrooms or something.

They even come across a video where some people who were on the rig before talk about a book and something that has to be read to stop the body-jumping demon thing. Of course there HAS to be a video made even though they had no reason to do so – how else can we fit in our contrived and tired exposition without that?

"Let's sit around and play Hot Potato Exposition."
"What's that?"
"It's when we each have boring lines that could have been uttered by anyone, and we toss them back and forth to make sure the audience gets all the facts about this scene."
"Sounds incredibly fucking boring and trite!"
"Hush. We're being paid by the line."
"I don't think we're being paid for this movie at all."

They walk around in the dark some more and find a pentagram on the ground along with that book the guy in the video talked about. I have to admit, any movie that can manage to shoehorn in a Satanic ritual on a water-bound oil rig is at least trying. Though I dock some points for the ridiculous acting from Michelle Rodriguez-lite here after the demon possesses her:

Apparently the demon can heal people it possesses. Why? Well, in the end it turns out that wheelchair man was betraying them as a plot to get his legs back – trying to get the demon to come into him just to heal his legs. I guess the plan is to keep the demon in him forever just so he can walk. It really raises a fascinating moral dilemma – demonic possession or having to live in a wheelchair forever? Let us talk about the implications of this for several hours and…

That about sums it up. This movie is just dull. It’s a shame because I can really tell everyone involved was trying to make something good. It’s a frustrating thing because the story, while generic, isn’t bad – and just being generic doesn’t make something bad by default. You can have perfectly good genre-based stories that don’t do anything original. However, with Ghost Rig, it’s the execution that falters – the characters aren’t that interesting, the scenery is pretty drab and the pacing is an excruciating trudge. Every now and then you get some kinda-decent atmospheric moments, but again, it’s nothing really all that good. At best it’s just OK. At worst, it’s positively sleep-inducing.

So, while I can appreciate the effort that went into this whole thing, it’s not a great film. Although it tried gamely, Ghost Rig did not make me want to vacation on a rig of ghosts. Maybe next time, guys … maybe next time.

Hey, wait a second...

One day we will meet on the field of battle, Ghost Rig 2...one day...

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Insidious Chapter 2 (2013)

The first Insidious was a pretty decent horror film, but it was made more entertaining than it had any right to be because of the production value, the special effects and the general zeal and energy it had when it pulled off even the most generic jump scares. It blended some classic horror style imagery and tropes into the modern style, and overall was a cut above the usual modern horror crap we get most of the time. So how much do you want to bet the sequel is pointless, lame and has no reason to exist?

Director: James Wan

Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne

IMDb

There was no reason to make a sequel to Insidious. It was actually a solid horror film on its own and didn’t need any kind of explanation or elaboration of the story. But, hey, that’s the modern filmmaker’s bible: the audience is stupid. The audience doesn’t understand subtlety and can’t read between the lines. And most importantly, the audience needs every little detail of the story explained to them like a Kindergarten teacher reading Clifford the Big Red Dog – there’s no room for mystery, intrigue and all the other things that make up actual horror! WE NEED EXPLANATIONS!

Basically the directors of movies like Insidious Chapter 2 think the audiences are all like this:

So with that said, anyone else ready to take a plunge knee-deep into some of the lamest modern horror you’ll come across? Yeah me neither. But hey, fuck it, you know?

We start off with a flashback of main character Josh as a kid, showing how he got possessed by spirits when he was a kid and that lady Elise came to help him the first time. They do some kind of weird overly complicated set-up where he shows her where the evil spirits are by communicating via walkie-talkie as she walks around the house. He seems to get the most distressed when she approaches the closet in his bedroom. Probably because he has a porn stash in there.

"Oh my, look at these copies of Bestiality Monthly I found under here! I've been looking for these for ages!"

So I guess it plays out exactly like we heard at the end of the first film – they beat the demons and save Josh, who goes on to live a perfectly boring life until the events of the first movie. Snore. Why did we need this scene? Because without showing every painstaking detail, nobody would understand the movie’s clear genius.

Anyway, back in the modern day, we see the aftermath of the first movie: Elise is dead and the police don’t investigate very seriously at all the fact that she died in these peoples’ house and nobody knows who killed her. I mean, I guess we get one scene where the wife Renai is being questioned by Sergeant Doakes from Dexter for a second:

But other than that, what the hell? How is their house not swarmed with cops? How are they all not immediately locked up in interrogation rooms questioned for hours by the toughest cops the bureau has? I guess old ladies’ lives rank low on the police’s list of priorities. Anyway, we get some boring scenes where Renai questions Josh about what happened, but because this shitty ass movie needs an excuse to keep existing, these scenes are downplayed. God knows, the movie world would just be at a loss if we didn’t have the ensuing hour of dead-eyed supernatural boredom to wade through.

I mean, think of the possibilities otherwise – character development? An interesting moment? Something that actually furthers the story rather than just chucking more exposition at us? THE HORROR!

There’s also these two asswipes; the comedic duo from the first film who served as a sort of foil to the seriousness of the rest of it – they’re some kind of paranormal investigators or something. Give them credit for not being like the investigators in every other movie, but they’re just as bad in a different way. Here they find a videotape in Elise’s old house and put it into the machine. Oh, good, will we get a shitty horror-comedy anthology with aludicrous “wrap around” segment now?

No? Oh well. I must’ve gotten the wrong terrible sequel in 2013.

I guess what we do get is the revelation that Elise once had this other guy she worked with named Carl, or some shit like that – a flimsy plot device used to bring someone with some kind of credibility into the story, because otherwise no-one would know anything. So this guy is some kind of psychic or something, and he knows almost as much about the whole “Further” concept as Elise did. I guess he rolls some dice and that lets him talk to Elise from beyond the grave almost immediately:

This guy must be really good at Scrabble.

What is this, Dungeons and Dragons? Get a life. I’d find it hilarious if the dice accidentally spelled out something randomly while Elise was still thinking of a response. Like if they were asking “how do we beat these evil spirits?” And then the dice just came up with “Cat” completely at random. Would this become Public Enemy #1?

Man, I don’t even know. Most of the first hour of this is so boring, I have to make up completely ridiculous scenarios to even sit through it. What am I supposed to grasp onto otherwise; scenes of Renai hearing creepy noises at night and jumping? One of those times it’s at a glow-in-the-dark baby stroller:

The epitome of terror.

I can just feel my eyelids growing heavier and my brain getting number. Jesus, this is fucking boring. What happened to the manic energy of the first one? That movie was on fire half the time. In even its most generic moments, it felt big and immediate, not letting the viewer fall asleep or get bored. This one is on Valium. It’s just no comparison.

So what, there’s some scenes where they meander around in this old-ass hospital looking for clues? It doesn’t really matter how they get there; the reasoning is so convoluted you’ll go crazy trying to decipher it … something about how this old man grabbed Josh’s arm as a kid and then died the next day.

His mother saw him in the elevator anyway though, even after he died, and then re-enacted the old cliché “I just saw him in the elevator!” “But he died last night!” thing. Usually it’s a good cliché. Here it’s not … after his mom finds out the guy was dead, she just walks away without questioning anything at all, and nobody stops her. I guess they were just used to her spouting random insanities.

Somehow this leads them to the old mental hospital, where they find an old newspaper clipping about five minutes into their search about the “Black Bride,” a serial killer from years and years ago. Within like, a few scenes, they figure out the truth: the Black Bride was actually some weirdo whose mom made him dress up like a girl, and then forced him to kill people for her. Why? Shits and giggles.

Hell, make these guys heads of the detective department! I’m sure we would all benefit from their mental wizardry. Truly they are the master sleuths of the modern age; figuring out decades-old murder cases without even trying. It’s almost like the movie was completely phoned-in in every aspect imaginable, as this clearly is so far removed from reality that you could just label it a fan-fiction, actually.

Most of these flashback scenes are so badly acted, I can’t even tell you. It’s like watching one of those satirical horror movies where everyone overreacts on purpose, but this is supposed to be 100% played straight. There’s a truly horrible scene sometime later where we see a flashback of the killer as a kid while his mom shouts at him cartoonishly for drawing a picture in school with his real name on it, instead of the “girl” name she gave him.

This scene brought to you from the bowels of Tim Burton's subconscious.

This is, no joke, one of the worst things I’ve seen on film at all in recent years – up there with the Kick-Ass 2 “vomit and diarrhea device” scene. How a well-known director like James Wan put this shit on screen is beyond me. I mean I knew he wasn’t great, but c’mon, I expected something that wasn’t … this!

Ugh, Jesus, so I guess everyone starts to guess that Josh isn’t really Josh, but some kind of spirit possessing his body after the end of the first movie. Carl goes in to try and do something I guess, though really since they already know, it seems like there’d be some kind of better plan … I guess not. He gets stabbed with a knife after an overly long “taunting” scene, and then ends up in purgatory with the real Josh, who fortunately has a lantern to help guide him through his aimless “doing nothing” adventures.

"You mean I can actually do things to further a plot?"

Yeah – that’s right. He’s spent the whole time since the end of the first movie just aimlessly wandering around “trying to get out.” He says some bullshit about how he’s been weaker and weaker ever since, but he seems fine to me, so I dunno. I guess he’s just a complete pussy.

So if you were wondering how much further down the bunker-hole of cliché this movie could possibly burrow, we actually get the inevitable return of Elise in ghost forum. I shit you not, she actually says the following line:

"I've seen that better place, but I came back here because I heard you calling, and I think I can help."

Really. You’ve seen the other side, and you still chose to come back and help these two morons. You could have been sipping wine up there on golden thrones with singing cherubs all around you, and you came back. You could have been fine dining with dead celebrities and artists, and you’re here schmaltzing it up in the name of the whoredom that is modern horror cinema. You goddamned sap. Are you even serious … did you read the script? YOU COULD HAVE BEEN LIVING IT UP WITH THE CREATOR OF MANKIND. 72 VIRGINS. ETERNAL PARADISE. WHATEVER YOU WANT. And you’re doing this.

Jesus. So I guess she tells them to go toward the light – hey, why be original now? I guess we get some boring scenes where they go back in time and try to warn their past selves of the demons, or some shit like that. It comes off like a weak-assed version of the Christmas Carol story. Did we really need Scrooge done up by the Casper ghosts? Because that’s about where you’re at. I mean, Doctor Who's latter-day Christmas specials are more plausible.

Back in the real world, possessed Josh decides to take a different path to parenting than his children have perhaps been used to. I like to call it ‘traumatizing 101.’ He strangles her and what not, and I guess anything’s better at this point than the flashback scenes. Sad my standards’ve gotten so low.

We'll start a journalistic expose: From the Spiritual Other Dimension to the therapy chair.

But then they’re saved by the comedy relief:

Brilliant … just brilliant. We get some stupid scenes that I think James Wan confused with his next foray into mainstream pandering, The 40 Year Old Virgin 2: The 40 Year Old Haunting, Because It’s Been Done for 40 Years Now. What I’m trying to say with that is, having a scene where the goofy comic relief idiot busts through the door attempting to look badass right after the climax is over … is a poor way to try and elicit laughs.

*straightens bow-tie*

This movie sucks. There’s nothing about it that’s in any way interesting, except how humorously awful it can be. While it isn’t the worst out there, the writing is a complete mess of cliché and the story is just pointless. So what, the whole first movie happened because some serial killer’s mom made him wear a dress as a kid? Get fucked, movie. I mean, isn’t it just obvious? Isn’t THAT just so apparent to you while watching the first one? With all its subtle hints? Oh wait, there were no hints because you made all of this up on the spot to get more money. Insidious 2 is just a giant piece of shit.

And what’s this? Another scene after the movie ends where the two comic relief jackasses go to some house and ask about a girl? The girl’s father gets defensive, but the younger daughter asks who the woman is behind them – and lo and behold it’s Ghost Elise, because she has no other purpose in life but to be a supernatural slave to these two bungholes because they can’t tie their own shoes. She goes upstairs, sees something scary that the audience can’t see aaaaaand that’s the end. What did she see? My guess is, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Frankly, I can sum up this movie's attitude towards death with one video clip:

Thank you, Matt and Trey. Insidious 2 is nothing but a commercial cash in and you are part of the fuckin’ problem if you liked this one. I hope anyone who saw this in theaters took it upon themselves to go out, after the film was released to DVD, to their local Targets or Walmarts, took the DVDs and burned them right there in the fucking aisles. Because really, the DVD cover isn’t representative of what this soulless film actually contains. Let me show you what it really is:

That’s more like it.

Images copyright of their original owners. I do not own any of them.