A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions

REVIEW: Freaky (live action movie)

2023-10-15T14:48:00.001-05:00

Freaky is a slasher horror comedy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

A group of teens is killed by the Blissfield Butcher, putting the town in a panic and potentially leading to the cancellation of the homecoming dance (because all of the legends about the Blissfield Butcher indicate that he focuses on homecoming). However, unbeknownst to everyone, things are a little different this time around. When the Butcher attacked Millie, a local teen, he stabbed her with a magical dagger that caused them to switch bodies. Millie is horrified to learn that, if she can't switch them back before 24 hours have passed, the change will be permanent.

Horror comedies are my favorite kind of horror - I need something to take the edge off the scares and gore. That said, this was one of the weaker horror comedies I've seen in a while. It had a good deal of gore, true, but it wasn't particularly scary. It also wasn't really all that funny. "Vince Vaughn acting like a teenage girl" was the primary draw, and it could only carry the movie for so long.

I was kind of surprised that the Butcher didn't seem all that interested in getting his own body back - I'd have figured he'd have been even more on board with switching after he learned just how much weaker Millie's body was than his own.

The Butcher managed to kill quite a few people while in Millie's body, but pretty much everyone who died was kind of terrible - there was the group of three would-be rapists, for one thing, plus the one really awful teacher who seemed to delight in being mean. It wasn't the most recommended or moral way of dealing with her problems, but you could say that the Butcher took care of a lot of the issues in Millie's life.

It was certainly fitting, watching this on Friday the 13th, but I doubt this will be a movie I'll ever want to rewatch.

Extras:

Several featurettes, deleted scenes, and a commentary track (which I didn't listen to). I was a little surprised at the way the writer/director (who was gay himself) talked about the movie's one gay character, as though he was in some way groundbreaking or original. An openly gay character with a tendency of making off-color "sassy" comments isn't exactly new.

REVIEW: Mr. Malcolm's List (live action movie)

2023-10-15T14:23:00.000-05:00

Mr. Malcolm's List is a historical romantic comedy based on a book of the same title by Suzanne Allain. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Mr. Jeremy Malcolm is the most eligible bachelor of the season - even though he doesn't have a title, he's handsome and has inherited a fortune. In an effort to find a suitable bride, he's been spending a little time with pretty much every eligible young lady, the latest being Julia Thistlewaite. However, Mr. Malcolm has very specific ideas about what he's looking for in a wife, and Julia isn't it - she flutters her eyelashes too much in an attempt to flirt with him, and she knows nothing about current politics.

They only went to the opera once, so Mr. Malcolm doesn't think anything of not calling on Julia again. However, Julia is completely humiliated, especially when an embarrassing caricature of her and Mr. Malcolm starts making the rounds. Bent on revenge, she invites her impoverished friend, Selina Dalton, to stay with her for a while and then convinces her to help her with a scheme. She plans to introduce Selina and Mr. Malcolm, make Selina seem like Mr. Malcolm's perfect wife, and then have Selina humiliate Mr. Malcolm in return by telling him that he doesn't measure up to her list of qualifications.

It's not exactly a solid plan to begin with, and Julia certainly doesn't expect that Selina and Mr. Malcolm would actually fall for each other.

I read the book this was based on because the movie trailers made this look fun. The book, however, was mediocre at best, so I dragged my feet about watching the movie. Well, I finally got around to it, and I'm happy to report that this is one of those instances where the movie is better than the book.

The cast was delightful - I particularly enjoyed Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Lord Cassidy, Julia's long-suffering cousin. His amusement at the signs that Selina and Mr. Malcolm were actually well-suited and truly falling for each other was great.

Thankfully, the movie replaced the book's conservatory scene with a scene in which Mr. Malcolm and Selina were both invited to a tour of the gardens - it wasn't particularly memorable, but it was certainly better than the ridiculousness of the original scene. The movie also put a little more effort into establishing Julia and Captain Ossory as a believable couple, and I wasn't left feeling like the characters ended up with the wrong people.

This probably wouldn't be the best period romance for someone interested in historical accuracy - I'm not very knowledgeable about this time period myself, but the way certain characters acted struck me as being inaccurate. Still, it stuck to the right level of "historical-ish" for me, and I enjoyed the occasional unlikely moments, such as the scene in which Selina said that the government should put money into services for the poor and one of the servants whispered to another "Or they could pay us more."

All in all, this was a nice light romantic comedy movie, definitely better than the material it was based on.

Extras:

A featurette, some deleted scenes (the one extra I didn't watch), and a blooper reel.

REVIEW: Doom (live action movie)

2023-10-15T13:51:00.001-05:00

Doom is a sci-fi action movie based (loosely, I'm guessing) on the Doom game franchise. I checked my copy out from the library.

Review:

In the movie's past, a portal was discovered in the Nevada desert that led to an ancient city on Mars. Yes, you read that right. Anyway, in the movie's present, researchers are still investigating this ancient city and send out a distress signal when they're suddenly attacked by monsters of some sort. A squad of eight marines, led by "Sarge" (played by Dwayne Johnson), is sent to retrieve research data, kill the attackers, and rescue any survivors, pretty much in that order.

One member of the squad, called "Reaper," turns out to be the twin brother of one of the researchers, Dr. Samantha Grimm. As the team investigates the facility, they gradually realize what really happened to all the other researchers and what might now be threatening Earth.

My only familiarity with the Doom franchise is the original game, which I watched my dad play a lot when I was younger. I have no idea what sort of lore has since been built around the franchise, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this movie was only loosely based on any of it. I knew that this movie had a fairly bad reputation, but since I don't have any real attachment to the game franchise, I thought I'd probably be in the best position to enjoy the movie for what it was.

Unfortunately, "what it was" happened to be pretty mediocre. It certainly didn't help that one of the characters was so unpleasant that I found myself wishing one of his teammates would take mercy on all of us and just shoot him.

There was really only one monster in the whole movie that I thought showed any sort of creativity. For the most part, the action scenes weren't particularly memorable, and the primary links to the Doom franchise seemed to be some of the weapons and a scene filmed like a live-action first person shooter sequence that went on way longer than it should have. The most unique aspect of the movie was that there was no attempt at romance and the main male and female characters were siblings.

Extras:

There were several, and I watched none of them.

REVIEW: The Meg (live action movie)

2023-09-11T21:56:00.000-05:00

The Meg is a sci-fi action movie. I bought my copy new.

Review:

The billionaire funding a fancy underwater research facility visits in order to watch the first mission to explore whether the Mariana Trench is actually deeper than previously believed. It is, in fact, deeper, but celebrations are cut short as the mission submersible is attacked by a large unidentified creature, putting the lives of everyone on board at risk.

In order to save the people in the mission submersible, the team enlists the help of former rescue diver Jonas Taylor. Jonas, too, once encountered something like the creature that attacked the mission submersible, although no one believed him at the time. Unfortunately for Jonas and the research team, this rescue mission is only the beginning of their encounters with the "Meg" (megalodon, a prehistoric species of shark believed to be extinct until these characters find it).

I didn't read the box very closely and somehow confused this movie with Deep Blue Sea, so I wasn't expecting Jason Statham to be in it. All in all, this is a by-the-numbers "enormous creature previously believed to be extinct" movie, complete with the jerk billionaire who manages to squeeze out some crocodile tears before abandoning everyone and then predictably dying. There is one muscular male main character and one beautiful female main character, and so of course there is predictable romantic interest as well, along with a well-spoken eight-year-old who does her best to act as matchmaker.

It's not a terrible movie, but it's also not what I'd call good or particularly memorable. The most unusual thing about it is that its "beach goers being attacked" scene takes place on a Chinese beach rather than a US one.

Extras:

There was a "making of" featurette, but I didn't bother to watch it.

REVIEW: Beau Is Afraid (live action movie)

2023-09-11T21:20:00.000-05:00

Beau Is Afraid is a weird dark comedy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Beau is a paranoid and anxiety-riddled man who is going to visit is mother tomorrow. Unfortunately, this will involve a plane trip, and there are many, many things that can and do go wrong before he even makes it out the door. Which makes this sound like a relatively normal story, but believe me when I say it isn't. Beau has valid reasons for being afraid, and yet even he could not possibly imagine just how weirdly horrible his situation will become.

I was hesitant to watch this because it's an Ari Aster film, and everything I've heard about Hereditary and Midsommar have put them on my "do not watch, ever" list. There's only so much realistic gore and characters in immense pain and terror that I can take. However, reviews seemed to indicate that, in terms of gore at least, Beau Is Afraid would be different.

Man, this was a weird movie - never what I'd call pleasant or fun, but strangely compelling all the same. Initially, I thought all of Beau's fears and paranoia would be in his own head - present and possible, but never as bad in real life as his terrified brain always expected it would be. That was not the case. The people in Beau's world were messed up and terrifying, and, even if Beau's brain was exaggerating things, there were no normal explanations for some of the stuff that happened.

Although there was no real on-screen gore, there were a few moments that were, for various reasons, hard to watch, such as a scene in which one of the characters commits suicide by drinking paint, as well as the one sex scene and its aftermath. By the time you get to the sex scene, though, things are so bizarre that it's tough to know how much of what you're seeing could in any way be connected to reality. Beau definitely goes through some stuff.

Joaquin Phoenix was fabulous as Beau - even if Beau's situations were bizarre, his emotional reactions always felt real, and after a while I really wanted the universe to go a bit easier on him. But no, even when he was with "nice" people, there was something off about them and/or their situation, and Beau was a guy who was either constantly steamrolled by the world or defeated by his own inability to make decisions and stick up for himself.

During most of the movie, viewers gradually learn bits and pieces about Beau and his relationship with his mother, a powerful and overbearing woman who spent Beau's entire life molding him into learned helplessness. Was a good ending ever possible for Beau? Considering everything that happened, it doesn't seem like it.

I don't regret watching this, although I'm not entirely sure what I was supposed to get out of it in the end. At any rate, I'm grateful that my anxious fears aren't nearly as justified and all-encompassing as Beau's.

Extras:

A "making of " featurette.

REVIEW: Misery (live action movie)

2023-07-09T09:45:00.000-05:00

Misery is a horror movie adaptation of Stephen King's book of the same title.

Review:

Paul Sheldon is tired of writing his massively popular Misery Chastain books. He'd like to start writing the kinds of things that win awards, so he kills Misery off in his latest book and then starts working on something fresh and new. He's just finished that book and is on his way from a hotel in Colorado to deliver the manuscript in New York when he crashes during a snow storm and is rescued by Annie Wilkes, a nurse who proclaims herself his #1 fan.

Paul has injured both legs, and Annie tells him that the phones will be down for a while due to the storm. In a show of thanks, Paul lets Annie read his newest manuscript, and she's outraged by its profanity, which she thinks is beneath Paul. Things only get worse when she reads his final Misery book and learns that he's killed off her favorite character. Annie forces Paul, trapped in her home by the snow and his injuries, to write a new Misery book that brings her back to life.

It's been ages since I last read the book, and although I'm pretty sure I'd seen this movie before, it had to have been equally as long ago, because I barely remembered anything about it other than that James Caan and Kathy Bates were amazing in it.

One major thing I'd forgotten: how much humor was worked in via the scenes involving the sheriff and his wife/deputy. Rather than feeling out of place, the humor lulled me into a false sense of security that made the last half hour or so of the movie hit a lot harder than I expected.

Kathy Bates was perfect as Annie, a deceptively cheerful and prudish "Christian" woman who was hiding a deep well of murderous craziness behind her smile. Paul got a few initial glimpses of what was hiding below the surface - her out-of-proportion rage as she ranted about Paul's use of profanity, her reaction to his request for a different kind of paper, etc. - but there wasn't really a lot of gore or violence until much later. From a modern horror standpoint, even that wasn't as bad as it could have been. Only a little of the hobbling scene was on-screen, and the gore was limited to blood (and possibly some eye stuff that I couldn't watch because I can't deal with eye stuff).

The tension was still top-notch, though, and even though I remembered enough of the story to know how things would turn out, I was still incredibly anxious for Paul during the few times he ventured outside his room while Annie was out.

This is a classic "unhealthy side of fandoms" story that still holds up.

REVIEW: Jujutsu Kaisen 0: Feature Film (anime movie)

2023-03-26T22:59:00.000-05:00

Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is a movie prequel to the Jujutsu Kaisen anime TV series. I bought my copy brand new.

Review:

Several years ago, an accident took the life of Yuta's childhood friend, a girl named Rika. Since then, he's been followed around by her cursed spirit, which comes out at unpredictable times to destroy anyone and anything that means Yuta harm, whether he wishes it or not. An incident with a group of bullies brings Yuta to the attention of the world of jujutsu sorcerers. Gojo takes Yuta on as one of his students, alongside Maki, Toge, and Panda.

Unfortunately for Yuta, he has also attracted the attention of Geto, a man whose goal is to create a society of only jujutsu sorcerers. Geto plans to take Rika from Yuta and use her massive power to get his way.

I can remember the last movie I saw in theaters right at/before the start of the pandemic: Parasite. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is the only movie I've seen in theaters since the pandemic began. I enjoyed it so much I decided to buy it when it finally came out on Blu-ray/DVD, and I'm happy to report that it was just as good the second (and third) time around as it was the first.

I'm iffy about the Jujutsu Kaisen series itself. The flow is weird and sometimes it skips large gaps of time that I'd have preferred to see on-screen. I wasn't sure how I'd like this movie, but the fact that it starred a completely different character, one who was only briefly mentioned in the TV series, was encouraging. Maybe I'd be able to enjoy it even though I only got through half of the TV series.

One thing I look for in anime movies connected to anime TV series I've watched is how they make me feel. TV shows can be cool and fun, but there should be something about a movie release that fills me with excitement. This movie definitely managed it. The visuals were amazing, the story was good and stood on its own surprisingly well, and many of the characters I enjoyed in the TV series made appearances in the movie, even if only for brief moments during the final big battle.

My one regret is that I shelled out a few extra dollars for the "lenticular cover edition," which featured absolutely nothing that the cheaper edition didn't already have except different cover artwork and a cardboard slip with plastic on it designed to make the artwork look like it had a bit more depth. I'd have saved a few bucks and been just as happy with the regular edition.

REVIEW: Werewolves Within (live action movie)

2023-03-26T22:28:00.003-05:00

Werewolves Within is a blend of mystery, horror, and comedy based on the video game of the same name. I bought my copy of this movie new.

Review:

Forest ranger Finn Wheeler is newly assigned to the small town of Beaverfield, which is currently divied over a proposal to build a pipeline. Some of the residents welcome the pipeline because they'll be well-paid for it, while others feel that it would mar the area's natural beauty.

As a severe snowstorm blocks the way out and something busts up all of the town's generators, the town is suddenly faced with a killer in its midst. Chachi, a small dog owned by one of the residents, gets taken, and a local man everyone had thought had left with his mistress is discovered dead, partially eaten, and stuffed under his house. As the town devolves into paranoia, the new ranger tries to figure out what's going on.

I haven't played the game this is based on, but I got the impression that the folks who made this movie decided to take a page out of the Clue book when it came to adapting the game. This had a weird, quirky, and entertaining energy that reminded me a lot of the Clue movie.

The movie started with a Mr. Rogers quote, which was fitting since he was basically Finn's patron saint. All Finn wanted was for everyone to get along and support each other like a proper small community. Instead, folks were more inclined to look after themselves and their loved ones and leave everyone else to whatever fate awaited them.

In addition to its newest resident, Beaverfield had a sarcastic postal lady, a rich gay couple, a couple of hicks, a scary loner, grabby Mr. Anderton, and his Trumpish wife Trish. It was like the cast of the cozy mystery dialed up to maximum. Finn, a wet washcloth of a man who spent his trip to Beaverfield listening to a motivational recording in an effort to grow a spine, rounded things out. My favorite of the bunch was probably the environmentalist who didn't do emotions - hurray for stiff, weird scientist lady!

Overall, this was funny, not terribly gory, and entertaining. I'd rank it up there with Clue in terms of movie adaptations of games, despite the fact that it lacks Tim Curry.

REVIEW: One Cut of the Dead (live action movie)

2023-03-26T21:28:00.002-05:00

One Cut of the Dead is...well, let's just call it a zombie comedy. It's not quite accurate, but I can't really explain without spoilers.

Review:

A director is filming a zombie movie that gets crashed by actual zombies. The actors and production staff are horrified. The director, meanwhile, is thrilled - he's finally getting the realistic performances he wanted from his actors.

There's a lot more to this than that, but saying too much would be spoiling things. Just trust me, as long as you're okay with occasional mild bodily fluid humor (there are a couple on-screen moments when someone gets vomited on, and one person spends time battling diarrhea but doesn't actually do anything on-screen), this is a surprisingly good movie.

I admit to being disappointed at first. The first 40 or so minutes looked like a badly-done zombie movie, with only occasional moments of slight humor as the director shoved a zombie at his actors in order to film their reactions or appeared out of nowhere to catch their screams of terror. People didn't always behave in ways that made sense, and one character completely lost it much earlier in the story than I would have expected.

The start of the second half of the movie was confusing as heck, and it took me a while to get my bearings, but the final half-hour or so was comedy gold, while at the same time coming across as surprisingly believable.

Give this one a chance - it's much better than it initially appears to be.

Extras:

Outtakes, photo gallery, and POM! instructional video.

REVIEW: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (live action movie)

2023-03-26T20:58:00.000-05:00

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a comedy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Nicholas Cage stars as Nick Cage, a depressed (or just unstable?) and unfulfilled workaholic actor who's so willing to take whatever role he can get that it's ruining what's left of his relationship with his daughter, Addy. He reluctantly agrees to be paid to go to a millionaire's birthday party and ends up roped into an effort by the CIA to spy on Javi, a supposed arms dealer who has kidnapped a young woman in order to fix a presidential election.

I decided to watch this because I occasionally like watching weird/quirky stuff, and this looked like my kind of weird. I found it to be confusing and full of huge holes/unexplained bits at the end. That said, I somehow still enjoyed it, largely due to the likeability of Pedro Pascal (Javi) and the developing friendship between him and Nick.

Javi was an enormous and embarrassing Nicholas Cage fanboy. Watching him try not to be creepy while simultaneously trying to spend as much time with Nick as possible was hilarious, especially as Nick tried to figure out whether any of what he was doing was potentially threatening or a sign that he'd figured out Nick was spying on him. I don't know whether I've ever seen Pedro Pascal in anything else but this made me want to (no, unfortunately I don't have streaming services that would give me the ability to watch either The Mandalorian or The Last of Us).

I wouldn't say I'm a Nicholas Cage fan - in fact, there are movies I've passed by specifically because he starred in them. There are probably a ton of jokes and movie references I missed because of this. I'm fine with that. The first movie that comes to mind when I think of him is Face/Off, and the only recent movie of his that I've been tempted by is Willy's Wonderland (it's the Five Nights at Freddy's appeal of it).

The final scene with Addy came across as incredibly contrived, and the moment when the movie switched was bizarre (although, I'm sure, intentionally so). I still have no idea how Javi got from the last moment he was at to the point where the movie ended.

I don't know that this movie as a whole is worth watching, but a good chunk of the scenes involving Javi and Nick are.

Extras:

Deleted scenes, audio commentary I didn't listen to, and SXSW Film Festival Q&A that I didn't watch.

REVIEW: The Menu (live action movie)

2023-03-26T20:20:00.001-05:00

The Menu is a horror comedy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

A group of wealthy people pay somewhere between one and two grand for a dining experience at the Hawthorn, an exclusive island restaurant. For the duration of the meal, the guests can't leave the island - it's meant to be an experience in which they tour the grounds where the food is grown, caught, and prepared, before getting to eat each exquisitely crafted course.

As the evening goes on and the group is served increasingly odd courses, things take a very, very dark turn.

Ooh, this was good. It starts off mildly funny, as the group (except for Margo) tries to appreciate and enjoy things like the fancy bread plate that doesn't include bread (also known as the "unaccompanied accompaniments"). Only Margo, Tyler's dinner date, seems willing to say aloud that the chef is clearly insulting the diners with his various courses.

Then things get mildly uncomfortable before becoming downright horrific. It's at this point, though, that the humor also becomes even better - it's very, very dark, but made enjoyable by the fact that it all pokes fun at the powerful, the people who can afford to pay a couple grand for a single meal that barely consists of anything edible.

It's intense, riveting, and slick. The one problem, for some viewers, may be its believability. You somehow have to accept that an entire restaurant full of staff and diners would allow things to reach the point at which the movie ends. It worked for me overall, but I'm not entirely sure why. I suppose there was something hypnotic about the setup, Chef Slowik's magnetic control over the restaurant, and even his loud clap at the beginning of every course. There was something cult-like about it. Just about every potential way out was just another part of the show.

The ending manages to be equal parts horrific and ridiculous. The one thing I had an issue with: it's marshmallow, chocolate, graham cracker, not chocolate, marshmallow, graham cracker. You'd think a chef would know better, but then again maybe it was just another sign of Chef Slowik's disconnect from his humble origins.

All in all, I enjoyed this and expect that I'll be rewatching it at some point.

REVIEW: See For Me (live action movie)

2023-03-26T19:38:00.001-05:00

See For Me is a home invasion thriller. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Sophie Scott had plans to be an Olympic skier until she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that causes blindness. She now spends her time house/pet-sitting for the wealthy - and stealing and selling their wine for extra cash on top of her sitting fees. Unfortunately, her latest job goes bad and she finds herself in a home invasion situation. Although she's able to call the cops, the house is fairly isolated and it will take a while for them to get there. She somehow has to stay hidden until then, or escape the house. All she has on her side is the See For Me app, which connects blind users with sighted volunteers.

I like the tension and creative use of space that a lot of home invasion stories have, but this is one I might have passed by simply because of its blind main character. The thing that convinced me to give it a shot: the person who plays Sophie, Skyler Davenport, is visually impaired in real life. I hoped that meant Sophie's blindness wouldn't come across as pitiful or gimmicky.

This wasn't quite what I expected it to be. Sophie was not a likeable person for a large chunk of this - at one point, she made a decision that could best be described as "scummy" (and also "stupid"). On the plus side, she knew she wasn't likeable and even admitted one of the more horrible things she'd done to Kelly, the volunteer helping her on the app. That doesn't mean audience members will be inclined to forgive her and fully root for her, though.

The movie's home invasion aspects weren't as good as I'd expected they'd be, and they were also a much smaller portion of the movie than I expected. It didn't help that the last few scenes were really hard to follow, simply because they were lit so badly. Still, this was okay to watch at least once, and even if I had issues with Sophie, it was at least easy to root for Kelly and her efforts to help Sophie.

REVIEW: The Men Who Stare at Goats (live action movie)

2023-03-26T19:06:00.000-05:00

The Men Who Stare at Goats is inspired by the book by Jon Ronson and is a black comedy war movie. I bought my copy used.

Review:

Bob is an investigative journalist who goes to Iraq in an effort to prove something to both himself and his ex-wife, who left him for his editor. While there, he meets Lyn Cassady, a man who he realizes is connected to a guy he thought was a crackpot, who'd claimed to have once been part of a secret military project devoted to psychic abilities. Figuring that a huge story has potentially just fallen into his lap, Bob decides to join Cassady on his mission and learn more about the secret military program he was part of.

I remembered the commercials for this being pretty good when the movie first came out, but I never got around to seeing it. Unfortunately, the commercials were the best bits. My sense of humor and this movie's comedy did not mesh. I found this to be more weird than funny, and honestly kind of boring.

I had a tough time caring about the characters and what they were doing, and the flashbacks to the creation and downfall of the New Earth Army were only vaguely interesting.

All in all, not really worth the time and effort it took to watch it.

Extras:

Featurettes, audio commentaries I didn't listen to, character bios (which I think were used as trailers for the movie), and deleted scenes.

REVIEW: Nope (live action movie)

2023-03-26T18:09:00.002-05:00

Nope is a sci-fi horror film. I bought my copy new.

Review:

The Haywood family trains and handles horses for television and film productions. There's been less and less demand for their horses and expertise, and after Otis Haywood Sr. is killed by a freak accident involving falling objects from a plane, things are looking even more bleak. His son OJ has resorted to selling several of the family's horses to Jupiter's Claim, a nearby theme park, although he hopes to one day buy them back.

OJ's sister, Em, sees an opportunity for the family to get fame and recognition when she and her brother realize that there's something weird hanging out in the skies near their ranch. They figure it's some kind of UFO, and if they can just get good video footage of it before anyone else finds out about it, they'll be set for life. However, it's not quite that easy, and there's a bit more to the situation than they initially realize.

Of the three movies Jordan Peele has directed, this one is, in my opinion, the weakest. It meandered for what felt like ages before finally including a few jaw-dropping "Jean Jacket" scenes and then just...ending. There were a few really good moments, but overall I felt like I wasted 2 hours.

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to get out of any of this, other than a few "Whoa, that's amazing" moments and the general "animals are not people" message. It had several chillingly moments, but those moments didn't come together into an effective whole. Like, the Gordy flashbacks were horrific, but it was harder than it should have been to see how they fit into the broader story.

In general, it took way too long for this movie to get to the point.

Extras:

Gag reel, deleted scenes, featurettes.

REVIEW: Pokemon Detective Pikachu (live action/CGI animated movie)

2023-03-26T17:43:00.000-05:00

Pokemon Detective Pikachu is a blend of mystery, fantasy, and comedy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

When Tim Goodman was younger, he wanted to be a Pokemon trainer. However, he left that dream behind after his mother's death and his estrangement from his father, Harry. He viewed his father as being more interested in spending time with Pokemon than with him. After receiving word that his father has died in an accident, Tim goes to his place to find out details and take care of things, only to discover a Pikachu who can talk (but only to him) and who claims to have been his father's partner. The two of them team up to discover what happened to Harry, restore the Pikachu's memories, and stop whoever is distributing R, a drug that makes Pokemon confused and violent.

I previously saw this in theaters and recalled enjoying it, but that was before I had played any Pokemon games. I've since played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, New Pokemon Snap, and Pokemon Shield. The benefit: I could recognize more of the background Pokemon (although many were still a mystery to me).

I really liked Pikachu's design, and several of the background Pokemon were also pretty good. Psyduck was weirdly adorable. That said, they did one of my favorites, Gengar, dirty, and surely there was a way Charizard could have been designed so that it was still clearly a reptile but also cute?

The plot was so-so. Really, this movie's greatest appeals were Ryan Reynolds' voice acting and getting to see Pokemon run around in the real world. I'd have loved more slice-of-life style scenes just featuring people existing in the world with their Pokemon. Lucy and her Psyduck were cute together, despite being somewhat mismatched (she's a risk -taker, Psyduck's psychic powers explode when its anxiety-induced headache becomes too great).

Extras:

A brief featurette in which Justice Smith rolled out his Pokemon cred and plugged the movie as hopefully the start of a live action franchise.

REVIEW: Notting Hill (live action movie)

2023-03-26T17:15:00.001-05:00

Notting Hill is a 1999 romantic comedy. I bought my copy used, I think.

Review:

An ordinary English travel bookshop owner has a chance encounter with famous American actress Anna Scott, which turns into a second chance encounter that ends with a kiss. The two are attracted to each other and Anna seems to like Will's family's awkward friendliness, but it's uncertain whether their budding romance can survive Anna's fame.

I'm slowly rewatching movies I remember enjoying years ago, and this was one of them. Wow, was this a weirder movie than I recalled it being. I completely forgot about the kiss at the end of Will and Anna's second encounter, for one thing, a moment which was made even weirder by the fact that she was the one who initiated it, for no apparent reason. Literally all Will had done up to that point was be awkward around her, give her a free travel book, spill coffee on her, and give her a place to get changed into clothing that wasn't coffee-stained. Why this made him stand out to her, among all the awkward men she must previously have met, I don't know.

One thing I realized while watching this: whether it was intended to be or not, it's basically a romance movie aimed at men. Its weirder aspects suddenly make sense, from that perspective. When I first watched it, I loved its "ordinary person ending up with a famous person" fantasy aspects, but during this rewatch its "romance definitely written by a dude" aspects were impossible for me to ignore.

By the time I got to the end of the movie, I had a hard time believing that Will and Anna would last more than a few weeks - the happy epilogue seemed more like wishful thinking than a believable continuation of their story. That said, this still managed to get by on the likeability of its largely quirky cast of characters. This is the movie that comes to mind when I think of Hugh Grant - it shows him at his most awkward, British, hangdog best (or worst, depending on your perspective). Will's friends and family completed the picture, managing to be simultaneously loving, supportive, weird, and depressing.

I'd argue that the best romantic relationship in this movie wasn't Will and Anna, but rather Max and Bella. The scene near the end in which Max realized Bella was going to stay behind and he stopped everything, forced everyone else to stuff into the backseat of the car so she could ride in the front, and found room for her wheelchair was great. Now that was a couple I could easily believe would manage to last.

All in all, this was okay, but not as good as I recalled it being. The comedy aspect was better than the romance, by a good bit.

Extras:

Deleted scenes, commentary I didn't listen to, music highlights, a Notting Hill travel guide, and Hugh Grant's movie tips. One of the deleted scenes (an alternate ending) made it look like the one character (Martin?) somehow managed to reopen his restaurant after being forced to close it due to lack of customers, and all I could think was "How much money did Anna end up giving Will's friends and family members to make their problems go away?" Because that's certainly what that scene seemed to indicate she must have done.

REVIEW: Violent Night (live action movie)

2023-03-26T16:33:00.000-05:00

Violent Night is an action/dark comedy Christmas movie. I bought my copy new.

Review:

A rich and just plain awful family gets together on Christmas Eve, only to be interrupted by armed robbers who plan to steal millions from war profiteer Grandma's vault. Luckily, Santa is there to save the day (although initially he just wants to get out of this situation as quietly and quickly as possible). Through conversations with Trudy, an adorable child who recently got to watch Home Alone for the first time, Santa gradually morphs from a bitter, lonely, drunken disaster into the murderous Norse warrior he used to be, all in the name of ensuring that good girls like Trudy get the wonderful Christmas memories they deserve.

This managed to have more heartfelt "Christmas movie" moments in it than I expected. David Harbour is going to get himself typecast as "gruff, tough father figure" if he isn't careful - he's really good at it, and the scenes between him and Leah Brady (Trudy) were generally great.

That said, this definitely has lots of over-the-top violence. When Trudy's mom mentioned that Trudy had gotten to see Home Alone, I knew the audience was going to be treated to at least one scene in which Trudy set up Home Alone-style traps that were as lethal as that movie couldn't allow them to be. (I was right. Yeesh, that scene with Gingerbread.)

I had expected Santa to be more violent right from the start, but his reasons for initially attempting to keep his violence to a minimum made sense - he viewed his past Norse warrior self as the sort of person who'd definitely be on the Naughty list. It was Trudy who helped him see how he could use his scary warrior side for good. (Heartwarming...in a dark and bloody sort of way.)

Just about every Chistmas-y/wintery possible way to kill someone was employed in this movie. Candy cane shanks, ice skates as lethal weapons, Christmas lights or garlands used to strangle people, Christmas tree star through the eye, death by chimney, etc. This movie somehow simultaneously balanced its Christmas warm fuzzies and over-the-top bloody violence and made it all work. I'm not entirely sure how, but one of the rules seemed to be that Trudy could only be exposed to a limited amount of violence, and no blood, although this somehow didn't stop her from being responsible for one of the movie's gorier deaths.

The one bit of violence that the movie couldn't seem to stick to was the one character whose finger got broken - it rarely seemed to have an effect on that character's later scenes. Even Santa experienced more lasting damage.

The one aspect of this movie that disappointed me slightly: we never got to meet Mrs. Claus. Considering the number of times Santa talked about her, I was sure she'd turn up at some point, possibly in a scene near the end as Santa's backup, but no such luck. Oh well - I suppose she either wouldn't have measured up to my mental image of her, or she would've been so awesome I'd have been disappointed at her overall lack of screen time.

Extras:

Deleted and extended scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes.

REVIEW: Event Horizon (live action movie)

2023-03-26T15:48:00.001-05:00

Event Horizon is a 1997 sci-fi horror movie. I bought my copy used.

Review:

Seven years ago, the Event Horizon starship went on its first voyage and disappeared. It has now (in 2047), mysteriously reappeared, and a rescue crew has been sent to the source of its distress signal. As the rescue crew tries to figure out what happened to the ship and find potential survivors, they gradually begin to see and hear horrible things linked to their darkest thoughts and memories.

This one gets a content warning for: suicide, cannibalism, and mutilation.

I know I watched this before, but I remembered nothing about it except the flood of red near the end. I did recall that Younger Me found it to be very scary, to the point where I probably spent a good chunk of it with my eyes covered. Maybe that's why I didn't remember much.

Anyway, maybe all my recent horror movie-watching has gradually desensitized me, I'm less of a horror wimp now that I used to be, or the special effects and filming techniques just aren't as scary now, because this wasn't as horrifying as I remembered it being. The final stuff just felt...over the top? The entire time, instead of being scared witless I just found myself thinking "The only tension here is when and how horribly everyone will die." Modern torture porn has set the horribleness bar pretty high, which meant that many of the deaths here came across as mercifully quick and simple.

The initial tension was pretty good, and I wish the movie had done a better job working its psychological horror aspects. We had a mom who was experiencing visions of her son with awful injuries, and a captain getting flashbacks of a man he was once forced to leave behind to die - and instead of using those as starting points for their horror stories and building upon them, those things were the horror peak for both of them. The writer/director seemed to think that the gorier bits were the worst they could throw at the audience, but it was the psychological horror that could have had the most lasting effect.

This also had way too many scenes in which people screamed at each other to be calm. Yelling at someone to calm down is never going to calm them down, but that definitely didn't stop these characters from trying.

One of those times when my memories of a movie made it seem much worse than it actually was. One thing it did accomplish: I was left with a deep longing for the "space is creepy" sci-fi horror of the 1990s. The grungy, lived-in rescue ship gave me strong nostalgic feelings. I want more stuff like this movie...but better.

Extras:

Producer and director commentary I didn't listen to.

REVIEW: Happy Death Day 2U (live action movie)

2023-03-26T15:15:00.000-05:00

Happy Death Day 2U is the sequel to Happy Death Day, although it switches up the genre a bit - this time around, it's more of a sci-fi comedy than a horror comedy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This picks up less than 24 hours after the end of the first movie. Ryan, Carter's roommate, is killed by someone in a Baby mask shortly after checking on the experimental quantum reactor he's been working on with a couple other students. He then wakes up and reexperiences the same day all over again - when he tells Carter and Tree about this, they, of course, immediately know what's going on. They had assumed that everything was finished after Tree closed her time loop. Now they discover that Ryan is accidentally responsible for the time loops, and he's stuck in one himself. Just as they figure this out, things go even more wrong, and Tree ends up stuck in her original time loop...but in a parallel dimension. As Tree figures out the differences between her current dimension and her original one and tries to close the time loop for good, she realizes that she's faced with a choice: staying in her new dimension or going back to her original dimension. Both choices require personal sacrifices.

This wasn't as good as the first movie, which blended horror and comedy really nicely, but it was still an enjoyable continuation. In fact, it continued the original story so well that I was surprised to learn, upon watching the extras, that a sequel hadn't originally been planned.

This felt so connected to the original movie, both in terms of scenes and emotional beats, that it at times felt more like an extended bonus feature for the first movie than a new movie in its own right. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I really enjoyed the characters, both the returning ones and the new ones. Danielle (Rachel Matthews) got a bigger part and was somehow even more hilariously horrible. Lori (Ruby Mordine) got some real closure. And we got to skip all of the "Tree is a drunken horrible sorority girl" stuff and skip straight to the "Tree is awesome and funny" stuff, which was nice. Someone in the extras said that Jessica Rothe (Tree) has "great access to her comedic anger" and they were so right about that. Her rage in this movie was fabulous.

Just a warning: instead of repeatedly being murdered, in this particular movie, Tree takes care of her resets herself by killing herself, so there's a suicide montage. It was fun in a weird way, especially the skydiving bit, but it may still be an issue for some folks. Plus, every time she died I couldn't help but think back to the revelation in the first movie that Tree was experiencing lasting damage - this movie still included that detail, but it completely glossed over the fact that she should have still had accumulated damage from the first movie.

If you liked the humor and characters in the first movie, this is definitely worth watching, although I preferred the horror-comedy genre blend of the first movie more.

Extras:

Gag reel, deleted scene, a couple short featurettes, and possibly some other stuff I'm forgetting.

REVIEW: The Voices (live action movie)

2023-03-05T17:50:00.000-06:00

The Voices is a horror movie with dark (very very dark) comedic elements. I think I bought my copy new.

Even my synopsis gets into spoiler territory, but I felt it was necessary in order to get across how dark this becomes.

Review:

Jerry is a cheerful guy who loves his job working at a warehouse in a bathtub factory. He's had some problems in the past, but he's now seeing a court-appointed psychiatrist and is doing great...except that he doesn't have any friends or a girlfriend, just his dog Bosco and cat Mr. Whiskers. But then he falls head over heels for Fiona, one of the office ladies (in Accounting, I think? I can't remember) at his company.

Unfortunately, she isn't nearly as enamored with him as he is with her and stands him up when he invites her to dinner. He sees her later when she's having car trouble and assumes that this is what kept her from joining him for dinner, so he picks her up and starts taking her home. Unfortunately, he hits a deer, which goes through the windshield. He hallucinates the deer begging him to put it out of its misery, which he does, slitting its throat with a knife, much to Fiona's horror. Fiona runs off and Jerry goes after her, accidentally tripping and stabbing her. He then "puts her out of her misery" as well, stabbing her repeatedly while apologizing.

When he goes home, Bosco, who Jerry hears as the good part of his conscience, tells him to go to the police. However, Mr. Whiskers, his darker side, doesn't think he should feel bad about killing. Although Mr. Whiskers pretty much wins this battle, there's still the issue of Fiona's body, which Jerry eventually collects, dismembers, almost entirely stores in Tupperware containers throughout his home. He keeps her head in his fridge, where it continues to talk to him.

This is, of course, not the end of Jerry's troubles, as various people start worrying about and looking for Fiona, and Jerry begins to fall for Lisa, one of Fiona's coworkers.

Wow, this was dark. So very dark. In a poison-laced candy sort of way. I highly recommend watching, at the very least, the "The Voices: From Fridge to Frame" featurette after seeing this - it's somewhat helpful for decompression purposes and highlights some of the things the movie was trying to get across.

The big thing was that a large portion of this movie depicted the world as seen through Jerry's unmedicated perspective - if I remember right, he admits fairly early on that he's stopped taking his medication. In the story he's trying to tell himself, none of the horrible things that happen are his fault, or even really happening at all. He's just doing what the voices have asked him to do.

It takes a while for Jerry to be faced with reality as it really, truly is, although he occasionally gets glimpses of it. For example, at one point he tries to be good and take his medication. The results are horrible and pretty quick (as far as I know, quite a lot of psychiatric medicine doesn't work this quickly), reminding me of the game Fran Bow - his rose-colored view of the world is gone, leaving only the bleak, rotting, blood-spattered reality behind, and he can't face it.

Once Jerry killed Fiona, it was impossible for there to be anything like a "good" ending, but I had some hope that he would eventually accept what he'd done and allow himself to be treated. Instead, things just kept getting worse and worse. Near the end of the movie, Jerry finally gets a more helpful message: You don't have to do what the voices tell you to do, and you are not alone. But by that point it's way too late to do any good. Taken very simply, this movie seemed to be saying that there's no good reason for very mentally ill people to exist - and that's basically where Jerry ended up.

I went into this expecting a black comedy with talking animals and the possibility of murder, and what I got was crushingly dark and depressing. Truly impressive levels of awful. I cross-post all my reviews in places that ask for ratings (Goodreads and Librarything for books, Librarything only for movies and TV), and I genuinely don't know how to rate this. This made me feel empathy for Jerry (who went through awful things with his mother when he was a kid) and packed an extremely emotional punch, but I don't know that it was the kind of emotional punch I ever wanted or needed.

Additional Comments:

I thought the director's name (Marjane Satrapi) sounded familiar but couldn't immediately place her. Turns out she's the author of the graphic novel Persepolis.

Extras:

Several featurettes about the making of the movie (in general, plus a couple focused on VFX, plus one on Ryan Reynolds voicing Bosco and Mr. Whiskers), deleted scenes, extended scenes, animatics, and a cast & costume sketch gallery.

REVIEW: Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (live action movie)

2023-03-05T16:25:00.001-06:00

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is a found footage South Korean horror movie. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Ha-Joon, the owner of a ghost hunting streaming show, aims to get to a million views by setting up a live broadcast at the abandoned Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital. A team of people (three guys, three girls), each of whom have cameras attached to them, will go in and explore while Ha-Joon holds down the fort at a nearby location, watching the footage and managing the stream.

The show was supposed to be scripted - two (or possibly three? I can't remember) of the guys were in on it, along with Ha-Joon. They planned to genuinely scare the others and use their reactions to increase their show's views and overall popularity. However, it soon becomes apparent that there are things happening in the abandoned facility that are unplanned.

I got this due to several reviews and comments I'd read that said this was a genuinely creepy found footage movie. I hate to say it, but...it really wasn't. There were a few good moments, like the bit where the burner turned on on its own in Ha-Joon's tent, and the part where the girls were desperately trying to leave the facility, but the scares entered "we are not imagining this" territory a bit too quickly and didn't seem to have anything in particular tying them together. Also, I couldn't help but notice that viewers were only ever shown the scariest camera angles, even though there were technically more options available - it ruined the "found footage" immersiveness of it, a bit.

It was decent, I guess, but not something I'm likely to ever want to rewatch, and not even scary enough to be much of a problem for my "horror wimp" self.

REVIEW: The Black Phone (live action movie)

2023-03-05T15:42:00.002-06:00

The Black Phone is a supernatural horror movie. I bought my copy new.

My review includes spoilers.

Review:

This is set in Denver in 1978. A serial killer called "The Grabber" has been abducting and killing kids in the area.

Finney deals with an abusive, alcoholic father at home and bullies at school. The main people he's got in his life to back him up are his sister Gwen, who is unfortunately also one of their father's targets, and his friend Robin, who deals with bullies by publicly beating them up so that they're less likely to attack him or his friends at other times.

The Grabber strikes, takes Finney's friend Robin, and, not long after that, Finney himself. When Finney wakes up after being abducted, he finds himself in a dark room that contains only a toilet, a mattress, and a disconnected black phone. As the days pass, the Grabber comes by several times, bringing Finney food and water, and giving him chances to escape. However, Finney has begun receiving phone calls from the ghosts of the Grabber's previous victims, and he knows from their warnings that if he tries to leave and doesn't succeed, he'll definitely be killed. As he follows their advice and tries to figure out a way to escape, his sister attempts to bring on the psychic dreams she inherited from her mother in order to find her missing brother.

I initially avoided this movie because it looked likely to be too dark and gory for me. Then I happened to find a cheap copy and snatched it up on impulse. It was a good impulse: although this did have some moments that made me very anxious, I don't recall there being much gore. In fact, the "goriest" scene might have been at the beginning, when Robin was beating up a bully.

This movie came across as practically tailor-made for the Stranger Things-loving crowd. Although it took place slightly earlier than that series, its efforts to evoke the time period in which it was set felt similar. Also, it had a similar focus on its younger main characters. Like the kids in Stranger Things, Finney and Gwen didn't initially seem equipped to fight the darkness they found themselves up against, but they somehow managed despite the odds.

Finney's story couldn't have happened the way it did without a bunch of other kids' deaths prior to his abduction, but this didn't come across as a bleak story. Although the hints the Grabber's victims gave Finney didn't always work out, he learned something from everything they told him, and it all came together in a way that both was both thrilling and relieving (as long as you didn't think too hard about the long-term psychological effects of Finney's abduction).

All in all, I really enjoyed this and am glad I watched it despite my initial "it's probably too scary and gory for me" worries. Ethan Hawke was fabulously creepy as the Grabber. This is one of those movies I might watch again at some point, simply because I could enjoy it more with the knowledge that the possibilities that made me most anxious aren't going to happen.

Extras:

Deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurette, commentary, a short film by director Scott Derrickson ("Shadowprowler"), and more that I'm forgetting. I recall the short film (a home invasion story) starting off promisingly and having some tense scenes, but I can't for the life of me remember how it ends.

REVIEW: Chronicle (live action movie)

2023-03-05T14:03:00.000-06:00

Chronicle is a found footage superhero (or supervillain?) movie. I bought my copy used.

Review:

This movie focuses on three teens: Andrew, Matt, and Steve. Andrew is a loner who's constantly bullied by his peers and abused by his alcoholic father. His beloved mother is slowly and painfully dying of cancer. His way of dealing with all of this is to make a video diary chronicling his life and the things going on around him, which is the source of most of the movie's "found footage."

Matt is Andrew's cousin and the closest thing he has to a friend. Matt takes Andrew to a party in an effort to help him mingle - it goes badly, but Matt and Steve (a popular and charismatic student) have Andrew come with them to film their exploration of a large hole they found in the woods. They discover a glowing crystalline object and, several weeks later, the three teens film themselves displaying amazing new telekinetic abilities.

For a brief while, Matt and Steve help Andrew use his new abilities to make friends and become more popular. Unfortunately, things don't turn out quite the way Andrew hoped, and his behavior rapidly becomes more erratic and violent. Only Steve and Matt have any hope of keeping Andrew from harming others.

If you're looking for a sad and realistic-feeling take on how three teens might react to suddenly getting superpowers, this movie is for you. I wasn't expecting it to be such a gut punch - while, overall, I thought it was good, it's not the kind of movie I'll ever want to watch again.

I don't know whether it was intended to be a statement about toxic masculinity, but it felt like one to me. All three of the boys had fun with their new powers when they first discovered them, but for Andrew they also provided a door to something better. For a short time, he could become the kind of guy who had friends like Matt and was popular like Steve. Unfortunately, when everything fell apart, he defaulted to his alcoholic father's violence, harming everyone around him, including himself.

Things went from bad, to worse, to just plain bleak - instead of music, the closing credits were simply accompanied by background noise. By that point, anything else might have felt like too much.

I thought this was definitely worth watching once, but, again, I don't think I'll ever want to rewatch it. I suppose you could call it a superhero origin story (although I doubt there will ever be a sequel), but it's more sad and draining than triumphant.

Extras:

Pre-viz materials, and camera test.

REVIEW: The Recruit (live action movie)

2023-02-21T21:32:00.000-06:00

The Recruit is a 2003 spy thriller. I checked my copy out from the library.

Review:

James Clayton is a young programmer who's spent years trying to figure out what happened to his father. He's working at a bar one night when a man who indicates he works for the CIA approaches him and hints that he has information about James' father. The man, Walter Burke, is there to recruit James to the CIA.

After initially declining the offer, James reconsiders it due to the possibility that he might learn more about what happened to his father. Then it's off to The Farm to undergo training as a potential CIA operative, where he soon learns that no one, not even his fellow classmates, can truly be trusted. That's just the start, however - James is eventually faced with a world filled with so much deception he can't be sure of anything.

I first saw this in theaters. When it came across my desk at work, I decided a rewatch was in order. Although I'd forgotten quite a bit of the movie, I still remembered the big twist.

My favorite part of the movie was probably the portion at The Farm, minus the brewing attraction between James and Layla. True, it was just building up to the more twisty stuff later on, but I enjoyed seeing what the trainees went through.

The action was decent and the story was nicely twisty, but I'm not surprised I forgot so much of the middle portion of the movie. This was a movie that relied a lot on Al Pacino's charm and overall great performance, as well as Colin Farrell's expressive eyebrows.

Extras:

Deleted scenes, a featurette about CIA training (I either didn't watch this or it wasn't particularly memorable), and commentary by the direct and Colin Farrell (didn't listen to this).

REVIEW: The Final Girls (live action movie)

2022-12-10T16:34:00.003-06:00

The Final Girls is a horror comedy movie. I bought my copy new.

This review includes a slight spoiler.

Review:

Max's mother was a struggling actress best-known for her role as one of the murdered camp counselors in the low-budget 1980s slasher movie Camp Bloodbath. Several years after her mother's death in a car accident, Max reluctantly agrees to attend an anniversary screening of the Camp Bloodbath movies.

When she and several of her friends are trapped in the movie theater by a fire, they attempt to escape via an exit behind the movie screen and accidentally end up in the movie itself. If they want to stand any chance of making it home, they'll have to figure out how to survive until the end of the movie.

This was better and more hilarious than I expected. Yes, this had some meta "deconstructed slasher movie" aspects, but it was also about the relationship between Max and her mother, Max's grief, and, to a certain extent, Max's relationship with her friends.

As someone who has read quite a lot of "reborn as the villainess in my favorite otome game/web novel" books and manga lately, it was especially fun seeing how aspects of that kind of story were handled here. Everything started off faithful to the original movie but soon changed in ways that made it impossible for the story to play out the way it originally did. In the end, the only iron-clad plot points they were left with were "Billy always shows up when female characters start taking off their clothes" and "only a virgin wielding Billy's own machete can beat him."

There were a bunch of moments that made me laugh. Everyone was very upfront about how stupid the Camp Bloodbath characters were - the most over-the-top ones were Kurt (the oversexed jock) and Tina (the equally oversexed dumb blonde). At one point, Tina got oven mitts put on her hands in order to prevent her from casually stripping off her clothes and calling Billy forth too soon. It just got more ridiculous from there.

There were some touching scenes between Max and the character her mother played. I wasn't expecting that there would be a similarly touching scene involving Max and Vicki (the "mean girl"). I don't know that I entirely believed the way Vicki was presented, but I still liked that scene and appreciated that she wasn't an idiot.

All in all, I really enjoyed this and could see myself rewatching it.

Extras:

Cast and crew commentary, writers' commentary, progression of visual effects, previsualization, director's production notes, and deleted and extended scenes with optional director's commentary. They really struggled with the ending, and I'm not sure the insistence on setting it in Camp Bloodbath's sequel was a good idea. That said, if one of those three versions had to be the ending, I'm glad they went with the one they did.