Despite seeing all the other movies in the franchise multiple times, I had never seen the Friday the 13th: A New Beginning of the Halloween series, Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Sure, I could deny that is because Michael Myers is absent in this installment but that would not be exactly accurate. Yet, over the years I have heard time and time again that this film would have a much better reputation if it did not have Halloween in the title. That may in fact be true. But it is still a shitty movie.

I cannot fault the filmmakers for jettisoning the lone silent, stalking killer after Halloween II. For starters, that was not really a great film to begin with and the Michael Myers story had come to a pretty conclusive ending. Even taking the Halloween title and shifting it to other stories of the season would have been a neat idea if the first attempt did not turn out as poor as this one did. Perhaps producer John Carpenter was trying his hand at crafting lackluster films that he would perfect a decade or so later. Or maybe Carpenter just slapped his name onto this as a quick money grab. Either way, the real culprit here is not Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy), a man who wants to destroy the wholesome fun of Halloween but writer and director Tommy Lee Wallace.

The start of the story is actually decent beginning with Harry Grimbridge desperately running from silent and well-dressed killers while clutching a pumpkin mask. After a close call or two, Grimbridge escapes and winds up in a hospital under the care of Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins). One of the well-dressed men enters the hospital and kills Grimbridge before fleeing from Challis and setting himself ablaze in his car. Challis is approached by Grimbridge’s daughter Ellie (Stacey Nelkin) who has suspicions about her father’s murder (you think?) and the two head off to Santa Mira, home of the Silver Shamrock novelty company headed by Cochran. The fantastical plot elements start withering away at my enjoyment as Challis and Ellie poke around the town, encounter some colorful locals, even more colorful visitors and the Old Man himself before he made his way up at OCP.

As I said, I had hopes for this towards the beginning in spite of the distinct lack of a notable modern monster. There were enough chase scenes and creepy encounters and music stings as the suited men dramatically enter the frame to keep me engaged for a bit. Yet, I can fully appreciate and agree with the #halloween3sucks hashtag that PBF used while watching this last year. I trust you all know of the magical way that we buy into movies, even ridiculous movies through our “suspension of disbelief.” I’m not sure what the opposite of that would be called but whatever it is, this movie has it in spades.

I could not get over just how ridiculous everything after the half-hour point or so was. Challis (a doctor, not a cop) has a strange encounter with a dead patient and a “flamer,” meets up with some chick and all of the sudden they are on the road to investigate. And then they’re shagging in the hotel room. And then they’re just staying in the hotel room instead of … well, investigating. And they don’t really seem to question the strange and almost abandoned town, the curfew, or the fact that a woman with her face blasted off is taken to a toy factory, not a hospital or even a damn veterinarian. Even though Atkins has more charisma than I do in my entire existence, these dumb-as-rocks characters only exist to provide me something to do while watching this film such as shaking my head in disbelief or gawking at the absurdity of it all.

Even worse though is the character of Cochran. He gives a fairly detailed explanation to a restrained and masked Atkins why he wishes to turn the heads of little trick-r-treaters into worms and snakes but … to be honest I wasn’t really paying attention. But what kind of business model does this man have? He spends his entire life amassing great wealth through novelty items like sticky toilet paper (someone get on this!) or wind-up whatevers for this sole purpose? Or was he really trying to just steal a piece of Stonehenge and that just happened to come about thereafter? His business practices aside, Cochran is worse than every Bond villain combined as he guides a leisurely stroll through the bowels of his factory to Challis saying things like “You’ll figure it out soon enough” before explaining every damn thing?

I really cannot imagine the purpose of this film. Is it a form of social commentary on evil businessmen and how they will do anything to get a buck? Or is it to speak on the silliness of kids dressing up and getting candy on a day traditionally tied to the slaughter of livestock for winter survival? Or is it simply to churn out something, anything, with the Halloween name on it to cash in on unsuspecting theater patrons? I don’t know and I really could care less. Even with PBF’s disdain for this film, I was hoping it would at least continue the series’ result of entertaining me. While admittedly this film did, it was assuredly for the wrong reasons.

I typically see a lot of movies with my kids that I don’t review here. That’s not entirely out of laziness but more due to being uncomfortable critiquing something that was not necessarily designed for me. At some point for everyone though, you must step out of your comfort zone and do the right thing. For me, that point was taking my 4-year-old to see The Smurfs and hating it so badly that I must ward off any reasonable human being from seeing it. I’m not quite sure what irritates me the most: that I paid $15 for the two of us to see it, that it literally felt like the longest 90 minutes ever, or that I just indirectly contributed to the already announced sequel.

Much like a good chunk of our readership (at least I assume), The Smurfs were one of those childhood staples that were always around, whether on TV, on the racks of the video store, or on the shelves at the local Toys’R'us. Truth be told though, I could’ve cared less about a Smurfs movie because it was going to happen anyway and I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over “ruining” something I can barely remember from twenty years ago. Yet, those responsible for this pile of cinematic detritus created a farce so abysmally bad that I would crap on it regardless if it was a remake, a reboot, or an entirely original idea (if those exist anymore).

Things start fine with the blue-skinned, white pants-wearing Smurfs doing whatever their individual job entails whether that is fixing things, angrily commenting, or being uncoordinated. After Clumsy leads Gargamel to the village, the smurfs run for the hills while a few including Papa Smurf and Smurfette instead get consumed by a wormhole which transports them to New York City. Gargamel and Azrael follow so that Gargamel can extract the Smurf magic but is thwarted by the little blue things and Neil Patrick Harris. God, it hurts to recall these scant details.

Even though it has been out a few weeks, the showing my daughter and I attended was fairly full with families and kids. Yet, other than the movie, the only discernible noise from the audience was the creaking reclining chairs and the few who shuffled out of the theater early and did not return. I hope they snuck into a better movie. For a kid, this film will do just fine even though it lacks anything at all remarkable. I bet if you ask a patron under the age of 5 what their favorite part was, they’d merely say “the whole thing!” as there is little here to bother recalling after the credits roll.

As an adult, this was one of the most painful movies I’ve watched recently. Neil Patrick Harris has a few somewhat entertaining moments, Jayma Mays as his wife is dull and inconsequential, and the human-side of the story about Harris’ character worrying about his job and accepting his future as a father-to-be is overwrought and just simply boring. I feel I cannot lay too much blame on director Raja Gosnell as this was likely designed as a soulless cash grab from day one regardless of who was writing or directing it. Rather than plunking out an ungodly amount of money to see this movie, buy your kids some marbles or socks instead. They will thank you in the long run.

Wow. That last film was exciting, wasn’t it? We got to see Crispin Glover dance. We met the Jarvis family, who live in Crystal Lake. I guess the Jarvis family is like the really old couple from disaster films that refuse to leave their town no matter what danger might threaten them. We met Rob, the hunk that breezed into town to avenge his sister’s death. Most importantly, we saw twelve-year-old Tommy Jarvis give himself an incredibly bad haircut and then hack Jason up with a machete. At the end of the film, as he embraces his sister, he looks at the camera and give us a look that may imply that he is now mentally disturbed, and may possibly hack someone else up. Although I don’t think Tommy would snap that quickly after the events of the film, I did like the cliffhanger implication that Tommy might kill as well. Also, Jason must be dead. He has to be. I mean, Tommy was like Vince with that Slap-Chop, minus that headset. I think I did hear Tommy say, “You’re gonna love my nuts,” while killing Jason, though.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning opens with Tommy, who is apparently now 15 (which would make it now 1987), having a dream about Jason. The dream startles him awake and we find him in the back of a van. He is taken to Pinehurst which quite possibly is the best mental health facility/halfway house on the planet. For you see, it is in the woods (an excuse to be in familiar scenery without being in Crystal Lake) and operates on the honor system. There are no locked doors, no staff of people to prevent you from leaving or acting out. There is only Pam, the assistant director, Dr. Matthew Letter who runs the joint, and a cook. All the “patients” help out by doing work like laundry and chopping wood. This is the precise setting you would want a troubled boy who killed someone in self defense to be taken to heal. It is unclear why any of the other residents are there. It is also unclear where exactly this place is. Right away, one of the residents kills another with an axe which does not do much for Tommy’s problems. He is haunted by dreams and both aural and visual hallucinations of Jason. After this murder, the townspeople start getting murdered, also. Eventually, the unknown assailant makes his way to Pinehurst and begins taking care of business there. Who is this mysterious murder? Jason? Tommy? Some other dickhead? How long must we be in the dark?!

This movie is a piece of crap. First of all, no. No. A facility like this cannot, nay, must not exist. Secondly, this movie feels weirdly detached from the entire rest of the franchise thus far. Which is funny because all the same elements are there; in the woods, cars that die, rain, naked teenagers. But even with all that and the inclusion of Tommy, it is just not the same as the rest.

I gripe about this film all the time, but honestly I do like some things. I like the attempt to keep the series going, but with Tommy, even though it wasn’t the way I though it would go after the end of part 4. That was a bold decision to make, and a challenge. I just think it was too ambitious for the filmmakers assigned to the task.

This film also did an interesting thing where we would meet certain characters and we were sort of led to believe that they may have a motive to be the killer. However at some point, this was abandoned. All those people just became the same as anyone else; we barely get to know much about them and they are killed off before we ever give a shit about them.

Possibly the most hilarious thing in this film are the deaths toward the end of the film. As per usual, we are walked through a number violent deaths. As the film draws to a close, the bodies of the rest of the characters are either hurled on screen or found at random spots as the surviving characters are trying to escape. It’s sort of like, “Oh by the way, for continuity or body count sake, here are all these other cadavers. Please take note.”

So, yes, it gets the crap category. It cannot be helped. The film is a giant fail and lacks any tension, decent acting, horror and even at some points writing that even makes sense. Favorite kill: decapitation while riding a motorcycle. Partly because of the awesomeness and partly because of the death of a fucking annoying character.

Do you want to know why Adam Sandler saw fit to bring the world Grown Ups? I wish I knew for sure but I have an idea. Sandler, coming off of a career high, eh … fifteen years ago, needed a major hit to elevate his Hollywood status. In the midst of co-writing and producing this farce of a motion picture, he saw so many of his former SNL pals out of work so he shoved them into the script but paying close attention to strip out any and all elements of humor from the otherwise moderately talented cast. Do you want to know why I actually watched this piece of shit? So do I.

Honestly, I have never seen a movie so consistently unfunny and inept as Grown Ups. Well, not since seeing Stan Helsing that is. At least Helsing had the daintiest of plots. There is no plot here, merely an excuse for Sandler, Kevin James, Rob Schneider, David Spade, and Chris Rock to get together, tell unfunny jokes, and laugh at each other. Watching the film, you can tell that the cast members had fun while making the movie. Why is it then that absolutely none of that came through on screen?

I really can’t fathom how hard it is to screw up a comedic movie this bad but somewhat competent director Dennis Dugan managed to do just that. Granted, I’m not a big fan of anyone in this movie but these characters are possibly the most offensively unfunny onscreen portrayals I’ve seen before. I might be a bit biased. But for a movie that runs in excess of an hour and a half, it produced not a single laugh, snicker, or chortle from me throughout its runtime. I have another theory for why this is. I imagine that a week before the release date, the final (and funnier) cut was on its way for distribution when a freak train derailment, tornado, or other act of God destroyed the only copy they had. Having to meet a deadline, the producers pieced together all of the detritus left on the cutting room floor to assemble the movie we have now. That is the only logical explanation I can come up with.

Far too much of the possible humor in the movie is ruined by the actors constantly laughing at each other. It’s like watching a group of improv actors bust into hysterics at something that wasn’t really that funny and unable to continue. This happens throughout the film. Also equally annoying is the reliance on a single joke and repeatedly bashing it on screen until it becomes pathetic. James’ wife, played by Maria Bello, is breastfeeding … wait for it … a 48 month old. That means he’s four! And way too old to still be breastfeeding! And Rob Schneider, a pretty horrific looking man here, has two incredibly attractive daughters who both make entrances to that damn Pina Colada song!

Sandler is basically playing himself and his kids are bratty and he’s married to the incredibly hot Salma Hayek! And he has a nanny and he doesn’t want anyone to know! Rock is normally a tough-talking wise-ass. Now he’s a stay-at-home, girl-scout-leading, Rachel-Ray-watching drama queen. James is married to Maria Bello even though he’s fat and unemployed! Schneider and Spade are just fucking annoying! The hysterics! And it isn’t even as though these characters are perpetually stuck in childhood like the title might suggest. They aren’t immature, they are just really fucking stupid.

I feel like I’m not really giving much detail to why this movie sucks so bad but trust me, this is a good thing. This is a film that plays things safe, even if safe condemns it to being really awful. All the characters act in exactly the way you would think them to from seeing the poster art. All of the lame jokes can be seen coming a mile away. There is a heartfelt moment at the end when everyone confesses some dark secret to their friends (it really is a nanny, shh!) followed by a triumphant basketball game to teach all of the characters a lesson in life.

Even more irritating though is the fact that this has a somewhat decent rating on IMDb and even Roger Ebert gave it faint praise in his review. Granted, this is the man that also gave Fight Club two stars but I’d be willing to forgive that oversight more than this. All told, I cannot in good conscience recommend Grown Ups to pregnant mothers, children under the age of 10, or anyone with even a modicum of humor in their body.

Before I even get started, let me set a few things straight about this film. The movie Yonggary has kind of a twisted past.   Although billed as a remake of the 1967 South Korean monster movie Yongary, the title and country of origin are really the only things the original film shares with its 1999 counterpart.  In an attempt to help the movie appeal to a broader international market, the film was produced with an English-speaking American cast.  The film was initially released in South Korea and internationally in 1999 but a second version of the film, with additional scenes and “improved” special effects, was released in 2001.  This remastered version, retitled Reptilian or Reptile 2001 in the United States, is currently available on DVD, and is the version that I am reviewing.

Now, with all that out of the way, this movie opens with a team of archaeologists exploring a cave and some of the most horrific line deliveries in recorded history. Throughout this picture the acting ranges in quality from stiff and unnatural to hammy and laughable, but what we get inside the first five minutes of screen time is absolutely terrifying.  Thankfully, the acting never gets any worse than this and most of these guys in the cave get torched after one of the diggers hits a glowing rock with a hatchet. A couple of years later, one of the surviving archaeologists from earlier, Dr. Campbell, (Richard B. Livingston) is heading an excavation to unearth a massive dinosaur skeleton. A photojournalist is dispatched to the sight who’s name escapes me because he serves no purpose to the plot other than to introduce the audience to other, more important characters. He meets Campbell’s sometimes British assistant Holly, (Donna Philipson) and Campbell’s old and seemingly insane associate Dr. Hughes. (Harrison Young) Hughes has come to warn everyone that the skeleton they are uncovering, which he calls Yonggary, will destroy mankind. He apparently learned this from some unexplained prophecy written in hieroglyphics in that cave from the opening scene. Of course no one buys this prophecy crap, not even I do and I watched the whole movie, and Dr. Hughes is escorted out of the camp. It turns out that there have been a lot of ominous and plot convenient fatal accidents happening around the dig site, but Dr. Campbell acts like a monomaniacal ass hole the entire time and tries to play them off as run-of-the-mill industrial accidents and threatens people to keep quiet about them.

At the same time the military, represented here by the very fictional United National Defense Agency, is having trouble with some missing satellites. Turns out there’s a big, badly rendered alien spaceship special effect orbiting the Earth, and the hand puppet aliens inside, that also speak English, are here to wipe out humanity and conquer the planet. For what reason, we don’t know, but they intend to do this thing by reanimating the giant fossilized skeleton. The evil insectoid aliens, because there are no good insectoid aliens, fire a massive energy beam down to Earth that resurrects Yonggary and puts muscle and skin back on him. In typical monster movie fashion, Yonggary, who is being controlled by the aliens via a diamond shaped device on his forehead, is set loose to destroy humanity. Let me just recap that. The aliens came to Earth two hundred million years ago, found a giant monster (apparently the only one of its kind) fitted it with a brain control device, then let it die and waited for hundreds of millions of year to come back to Earth, which they knew would eventually be controlled by the human race, and then bring a fossilized monster, which has just recently been conveniently unearthed, back to life to kill all humans. That is their master plan. Why not just return to Earth while humans are still living in caves and conquer the Earth then? How about invade Earth with more than one battleship and wipe out civilization yourselves? But it’s this flimsy premise that finally gets us to the giant monster wrecking stuff portion of the film. Anyway, after the fake army throws helicopters and jets at the monster to no avail, they turn to a newer, more high-tech option to take the monster down. That option is to send in guys wearing jet-packs and fly around Yonggary like tiny, foul mouthed gnats and shoot at him with assault rifles. The strike vehicles with missiles and large caliber guns didn’t work, so they send in smaller, less well armored troops with smaller guns to finish the job. How does this make any logical sense? Needless to say, there are a lot of holes in this plot. It’s just to bad that the giant monster they’re shooting at is so bland, unoriginal, and badly made. If I was director Shim Hyung-rae and I saw these lifeless, rubbery, completely unnatural looking creature effects during production, I would have scrapped those scenes and re-shot them with a man in a foam-rubber Yonggary costume. This computer generated abomination actually looks worse than the worst guy-in-a-rubber-suit effect.

On top of all the acting, writing, and special effects problems, this movie is so full of cliches and scenes that seem almost completely ripped off from other films that I had to watch it twice just to find them all. It follows all of the giant monster movie tropes that have been cultivated over three decades of kaiju cinema. Aliens start out in control the creature to use as a super weapon to crush humanity. The monster runs a muck in a major city. All of the major human characters are either scientists, in the military, or in the news media. And, after Yonggary is freed from his alien overlords, those aliens bring in another monster so the two beasts can slug it out in a major metropolitan area. However, the film seems to take more inspiration from certain Roland Emmerich movies than it does from classic monster films. The aliens bare a striking resemblance to the invaders from Independence Day, and there are several scenes involving fighter pilots firing missiles and spouting jargon that sounds like it was lifted right out of that film. The director also makes the mistake of trying to recreate several scenes from the 1998 American Godzilla, including Yonggary dueling with a squadron of helicopters and many instances of missiles failing to lock on to the creature and striking nearby buildings instead. I’m sure one could make a wonderful drinking game out of this movie. Every time the old crazy guy mentions something about the supposed prophecy that no body cares about, take a shot. Every time you see a bad composite image, take a shot. Every time Holly forgets to talk with her British accent, take a shot. Every time there’s a scene where the stupid aliens talk about something that we just saw happen on screen thirty seconds ago, take a shot. Come to think of it, where is my bourbon? I need to drink the pain away.

This piece of shit is the most insulting installment in the Chainsaw franchise. Without question. And if you disagree, you are wrong. I really hate Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.

Honestly, the specifics of the plot do not matter. It’s the same basic shit. A group of kids get lost in the backwoods of Texas for whatever reason and they run across random strangers that all end up members of the same murderous cannibalistic family with a different last name, depending on what sequel we’re in. This time the family’s last name is Slaughter. W.E. (mentioned as the only apprehended family member to stand trial in part III’s narration ) is in this one, which takes place in 1994, which contradicts ONLY THE ENTIRE PREVIOUS TIMELINE. I fucking swear to God, did no one see how sloppily this franchise was put together? Also, yet again, Leatherface is here, but with a completely different family. Also, once again, there is narration referring to the events of the first film, which I have come to the conclusion only serves to piss off the viewer. So, more death, more chasing with a chainsaw.

This really is a horrible film. The writing is terrible. The acting is really not all that bad considering what they had to work with. Leatherface is now a cross-dressing, screaming retard. The most unbelievably fucked up part of this film is that after we are subjected to the most shitty, sacrilegious (in comparison to the original) pile of trash we have ever seen thus far, we are handed some bizarre storyline where the family is part of some international alien government program and is assigned to kill and/or torture people. In fact, this is but one of many families across the world that do the same. I would rather this film just showed a title card that read “fuck you” for the entire runtime, than have me watch the events of this film.

All of the above makes it almost impossible to tell the story coherently which it most certainly was not. Especially with the outer space storyline explained in the 2nd half of the film. It was like two pieces of shit from different farm animals sewn together into one giant, smelly, differently textured dung log.

I should mention that Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey are in it. Not that it matters.

There is not one thing in this film that is enjoyable. It also serves no purpose in the entire series. This could, and should utterly not exist and it would make no difference. It is the antithesis of the original. I cannot swear enough to describe how much I hate it.

In an effort to shy away from the mainstays of Christmas movies for this marathon, I turned to Netflix to deliver a nice package of obscure holiday fun. What it delivered was quite possible the most painful movie I have ever experienced. Fuck you movie!

Elf Bowling is apparently based on a computer video game of the same name that I have never heard of. In the game, Santa is pissed at his unionized, striking elves and apparently uses them as bowling pins. Seeing 82 minutes of that would have been far more entertaining. In a bastardized retcon of the origin of THE jolly old fat man in a red suit, Santa transforms from the captain of the Stinky Toe into ol’ Saint Nick that we know him as after his crew stages a mutiny and pushes Santa and his brother Dingle Kringle overboard into the freezing ocean waters. After thawing, Santa enters into a contractual agreement with the native elves on the North Pole to deliver the toys made by the elves as long as working conditions are happy. Dingle is tired of being upstaged by his brother and concocts a scheme with a couple of penguins to remove Santa from power and relocate the toy-making operation to Fiji.

To be honest, if I wasn’t in a crunch for a Christmas movie today, I would have turned this shit off in the first ten minutes. For a CG-animated movie made just a few years ago, the animation was embarrassingly bad. Being that I had never even heard of this fucker before watching it, I wasn’t expecting Pixar-like animation or story telling. But this literally looks like someone managed to hack a Nintendo 64 to create the visuals that look and move like stop-motion props carved out of wood based on a story that a drunken father tells his children on Christmas Eve. I’m not even sure what demographic is being targeted as there are some jokes that are a bit too overtly lewd for a children’s movie but a story and characters so woefully undeveloped that I fathom kids would be the ones most likely to to tolerate it.

Between the sheer absurdity of the story, the mild, cartoonish physical violence, and the random musical numbers, this was either created by a bunch of guys who’ve either never seen a movie or conversely seen way too many as it is all over the place. And someone should have sent them a message that having a song and dance espousing the virtues of slavery or a dark skinned elf rapping about wrapping probably isn’t the most appropriate in a family film. But then again, no one else is going to seek out this trash other than me so why bother?

As I scrolled through the Jesusflix offerings the other day, I came upon this gem and thought “A Michael Mann movie with Scott Glenn, Ian McKellen, and Jürgen Prochnow? How have I never even heard of this before?” The short answer to that question is that The Keep is truly awful.

Mann must have learned much in between this and Manhunter, such as how to construct a decent story. Taking place in a Romanian village in 1941, the Keep is a mysterious fortress of some sort that some German soldiers decide is a good place to hole up in. Even though they are specifically warned by the caretaker not to molest any of the silver crosses embedded in the walls, two soldiers unearth a passage to the walled-off inside of the structure only to have their faces blown off. Meanwhile, another group of German soldiers lead by Major Kaempffer (Gabriel Byrne), this time wearing the SS armbands which remind me I probably need to pay more attention to history, arrive after the death of many of the first group to take over control from Captain Woermann (Prochnow). Also meanwhile, an old Jewish man and his daughter are called from a Nazi war camp to help unravel the mysterious deaths of the German troops. Still meanwhile, vampire/android/androgynous thing Glaeken Trismegestus (Glenn) is traveling to the Keep to dispatch of the evil that is inside. As you can tell, the story is just a tad fragmented.

Based on a novel by F. Paul Wilson which I can only assume was much more coherent, Mann crafts a story that I can only describe as baffling. What could have been an interesting movie with a brigade of troops being attacked by a supernatural presence is horribly botched here as there are many different stories going on with very little intersection and none of which make much damn sense. The German soldiers are shacked up in the Keep we assume for wartime purposes but they are not really doing anything other than stringing lights and getting killed. Glaeken is, I assume, supposed to be the hero but he does not show up until thirty minutes in, is largely MIA until the finale (save for a random sex scene), and poorly developed to the point that we don’t know (or really care) who he is or why he wants to kill the Keep monster-whatever. The most interesting aspect of the story though was of Dr. Cuza (McKellan) who is so enraged at the German army that he joins forces with the monster to bring them down without stopping to question if he is unleashing more harm than he seeks to destroy.

The unfortunate thing about Cuza’s storyline is that McKellan was quite simply horrible here with a performance that consists mostly of yelling and screaming like a senile old man. He is in good company though as short of Byrne and Prochnow at times, the acting ranged from laughable to depressing to watch. And just like Glaeken, we really know nothing of these characters and most of them are around just for random off-screen kills anyway. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the disposing of one-dimensional characters in a horror movie, these deaths added nothing as there was honestly no tension or suspense throughout the whole movie. I chalk this up to the fact that the monster is specifically targeting the German soldiers, most of whom are douchebags anyway, so we are pretty safe to assume that nothing bad will happen to a character that we may have some attachment to. I also attribute the complete lack of horror elements to the score by Tangerine Dream which swung wildly from somewhat cool to horribly out of place in anything other than a techno-color light show.

Reading around after seeing the movie, there seems to be an underground following of this movie but for reasons I cannot comprehend. I will give Mann credit in that the aesthetics are pretty impressive and I enjoyed the use of widescreen to create spectacular shots in the bowels of the castle. Also the special effects are overall pretty good once you consider the time it was made and lack of money it was likely made with. With a little more focus and a lot more professional acting, this could have turned out to be a decent horror flick awash in 80s cheese instead of a wasted ninety-five minute affair (probably close to 80 had there not been as much slo-mo).

In (possible) fairness to the movie, some of the unanswered questions or characterizations may very well have been there but the transfer and audio on Netflix were horrendous to the point that entire lines of dialog are unintelligible. This could be due to the fact that the film is nowhere to be found on DVD (but on a $200 VHS from Amazon if you’re interested) but honestly, the whole package was shoddy so I would not be surprised if the audio was that bad originally.

Take everything that was good about the first one,  reverse it, and make a new movie. BAM! The Lost Boys: The Tribe. Great music turns in to terrible music. Clever, funny dialogue turns in to weak, lame jokes. You get the idea.

The Tribe is the first sequel to the original Lost Boys film that for some reason a group of people felt they needed to ruin the legacy of. This went straight to video, and it looks like a film that went straight to video. The only connection this film has with the original is that Corey Feldman reprises his role as Edgar Frog. Also, Haim shows up during the credits for about 2 minutes and is now a vampire. That is not a spoiler and the scene is not relevant to the rest of the movie.

Chris and Nicole Emerson have lost their parents and move to California. Chris was a professional surfer that was kicked off the circuit after having snapped. I assume he repaired himself, because he is remarkably low key for someone who has snapped. Chris is looking for a job as a shaper, and is referred to The Frog Brothers shapers. They go to their trailer and no one answers, so Chris leaves their contact information on the door. Chris eventually meets Shane, also a former surfer and a bit mysterious. He invites Chris to a party. Chris and Nicole attend and Shane is quite fond of Nicole. She unknowingly drinks Shane’s blood and turns in to a half vampire. She slowly displays vampiric characteristics, which prompts a visit from Edgar Frog, vampire hunter and surfboard shaper. Very much like the first film, Edgar must convince Chris that his sister is now (half) undead, and that the head vampire must be killed so that she can return to normal. Then this piece of shit movie wanders on for another hour or so, sure to infuriate the viewer.

Cory Feldman is the worst part of the film. He does this, Christian Bale Batman voice the whole time, it’s ridiculous. And he has the worst lines. “Who ordered the steak (stake)?” should never be uttered in a vampire film. Everyone else ranged from marginal to not bad. Kiefer Sutherland’s half brother Angus Sutherland plays Shane, and he is pretty decent. But the cast was not nearly as tight as the first film. It was like a bunch of school kids waiting to spout off their lines autonomous of each other. “The Tribe,” which is just Shane’s vampire gang, is a bunch of idiots. One of them stabs the others because he thinks it’s funny. He doesn’t kill them, he will just stab until an intestine comes out. And they’re all jerks. To each other, to humans, just in general. In the first film, they were a family that was civil to each other. Shane refers to the Tribe as a family, but they act like dicks to each other. It’s like, who wants to be a part of that fucking family?

Another thing that was bothersome was once Nicole was half vampire, that was it. She just hung out with the Tribe the whole time and there really wasn’t any struggle there. She was no longer interested in being a human. In fact, she tried to recruit Chris toward the end of the film. I rather enjoyed the back and forth Michael went through in the first film.

The music was a bunch of garbage, featuring a horrible rendition of “Cry Little Sister.” The song that played during the credits was so weird and bad, it seemed as if I was imagining it due to the late hour.

Also, the film had numerous scenes that were not needed. The entire opening scene had nothing to do with anything. The police chase scene had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING.

Look, my face hurt from scowling so much at this. Don’t watch it. You will hate it. It is an embarrassment, not only compared to the original, but as a film in general.

As I sat to watch Saw 3D, I was worried that having not seen the last installment, the series’ reliance on retcons and alternate looks at previous events would prove challenging to keep up with. While finishing part six after the fact helped fill in some of the backstory, it had little bearing on my opinion of the allegedly final Saw film which was very disconnected from the previous entries. Even a brand new viewer to the series would have little difficulty understanding the plot yet be baffled by the shoddy quality in this hugely subpar installment in the Jigsaw saga.

Even with the return of director Kevin Greutert and writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, 3D feels more like a straight to DVD, half assed sequel than a legitmate follow up to a major theatrical series. Mostly gone is the intricate weaving of past events into a new narrative featuring Jigsaw’s traps to emphasize the preciousness of life. Of course, there is a B-side story of Bobby, a so-called survivor of one of Jigsaw’s previous games where he must choose between his family and friends who have made truckloads of money off of a fabicrated story. But unlike some of the better films, namely II and III, Bobby’s story has absolutely no bearing on the main events featuring Detective Hoffman and his cat and mouse game with Jigsaw’s ex Jill.

This actually feels more like a standard, cheap slasher film as the main motivation is Hoffman’s rage because Jill tried to kill him and has turned to a horrible caricature of a cop to expose his apprenticeship with Jigsaw. After the last, there really is not much more backstory, or even sidestory, to wring out as Jigsaw (clocking in with barely a few minutes of screentime), Amanda, and Hoffman’s experiences are mostly tapped out in the narrative sense. Thus, we have a movie that features traps like a Saw movie should but with characters that exist only to pad the running time until Hoffman can catch up to Jill to exact his revenge.

What should not be a shock if you follow movie news, Cary Elwes returns from oblivion as Dr. Gordon from the first but if you thought that his role would be more substantial than a quick cameo, you would be correct. While I do not wish to reveal his role, suffice to say you could probably figure it out even without seeing the movie. Even though the reveal technically makes sense, there was no indication or any clues sprinkled in previous films to back it up giving the impression that the writers just wanted to play to the fan favorites here. This also serves as one of the worst endings to a Saw film because it’s predictability seems to fly in the face of everything that has come before it in the series.

This fiasco with Gordon sums up my thoughts on the movie as everything here was not logical or necessary, but done likely because it was cool and something that fans were clamouring for. The opening trap was neat being that it was set outside in the midst of a big crowd of people but the fact that it had nothing to do with the rest of the movie is one thing, Jigsaw has gone from targeting murderers and drug dealers to a love triangle constructed by a deceitful woman who strings men along for affection. As you can see, one of these things is not like the other and I fully suspect this was designated as the last film because the next plot of torturing jaywalkers and customer service phone reps was not as compelling.

Of the cast, Costas Mandylor and Betsy Russell have had a few movies to get comfortable with their characters and turned in fairly decent performances and the faux-vivor Bobby was a sympathetic, if kind of otherwise flat, character played well by Sean Patrick Flannery. The rest of the cast, especially Chad Donella were pretty horrendous. Granted the first was saturated with Cary Elwes-brand overacting (he has barely improved, even with letting some of his natural accent slip through) so the bar was not set very high but it was painfully distracting to see Donella as a “seasoned” IAB detective with the mannerisms of a ten-year-old.

The biggest crime of Saw 3D is that everything was just a poor photocopy of the more decent moments of the series. In one of the villain’s final scenes of rage, he kills four people in a row in the least interesting way possible by a quick jab of a knife into their throats. The 3D was pretty good considering it seems randomly shoehorned into the series as a going-away present and to inflate ticket prices but it really did not serve much purpose. At the very least, it did not make the movie worse like bad 3D can but then again, the dumb random trap fodder characters did not really elevate things on their end either.