I’m not going to mention the name of the movie we saw last weekend. It was on DVD and the title was intriguing and the picture on the case was an eye-puller. But this thing sucked. It sucked so hard I it pulled off one of my shoes. You have probably seen it. If not, you have seen several like it.
Movies are my family’s thing. We love them. Trolling Blockbuster is a biweekly event at our house. We can all watch a movie for about two bucks, compared to the $76 it costs to go to a theater.
Perhaps you have roamed the outside wall at Blockbuster or surfed the pages of Netflix, both stacked with new releases, and wondered, “When the hell did this movie play in the theaters?” It has stars and accolades from obscure critics and a nice little blurb on the back that seems entertaining. But somehow, the plot drags on, or stumbles over something so unbelievable that you disconnect from the story line.
Horrors movies use the same, tired tricks to scare us. A girl cups her hands to a darkened glass and a ghost’s reflection slams onto the surface with a shriek. It is just setting you up for the real underwear-stainer coming twenty visual effects later after that same girl tries to run but falls at the worst possible moment.
At our house, we call it the stupid moment – that little scene when something happens that even the actors on the screen seem to question, a flashback or a dream sequence or some supernatural intervention into a normal situation. Perhaps criminals have kidnapped a family and, out of left field, vampires show up in a bar. Maybe a line time warp occurs in a perfectly believable situation. The killer just won’t die and grabs the ankle of the star just when you think it is over.
Here is what I know: the black guy always dies first; the dog always dies at the end; and there is always something evil behind the door.
How many times have you seen a character use up all of his bullets and then throw the gun at his opponent? Hundreds? There must also be a law in moviemaking that states: Sh*t happens and it usually happens to actors whose names are not at the top of the poster advertising the movie, at least until the very end, then it may happen to the star as well.
It does not matter what the stupid moment, when it pops up, you start questioning dialog and noticing backgrounds and wardrobe and continuity gaffs – then you’ve lost plausible believability. I will believe a man dresses like a bat and is mentally tortured by another man in makeup if the script is good and the director does his job. When a mutant carrying a chainsaw jumps on a teenage couple making out on a deserted road, that’s when I pick up my Powerbook and write stuff like this.