2012 horror comedy
Rating: 12/20
Plot: A pair of slackers get involved with a drug called "soy sauce" which causes them to drift between two dimensions. They have to save their world from something named Korrok.
What a mess! It's almost a delightful mess, but it's unfortunately just a little too much. I applaud its creative spirit and unique vision. The story and director Don Coscarelli take chances, but the budget's neither tiny enough or large enough to make it work and this desire to be 21st Century and hip gets old after the first, mostly fresh, twenty minutes or so. A lot of me wants to just appreciate the craziness of all this--animated meat that seem straight from Jan Svankmajer, a dog driving a truck, insects that would make Cronenberg giggle, exploding Robert Marleys, a creepster who'd be right at home in a David Lynch movie putting some giant insect thing down a guy's shirt, a punk song about a "Camel Holocaust," bare-breasted people from another dimension, and Paul Giamatti. The movie seems to get more coherent as it goes, but when you really think about it, it's just a movie that is pretending to be coherent and not doing a very good job at it. It also gets more and more frustrating as it goes, building to something that is so poorly realized with computer effects that you end up caring about what happens less than you care about the characters. And you didn't really care about any of that unlikable lot anyway with the exception of a dog. There's enough here to probably make this a cult classic, but I can't think of any reason why I would watch it again. Cool poster though.
I rated this one a little higher, just because I was a rabid fan of Army of Darkness and Evil Dead 2 when I was a teenager, and it pleased me to think they were still making movies in the same spirit. I would've loved this thing as a kid, I'm sure. These days I'm more of a Phantasm guy - holy shit that movie is awesome. I watched both movies with a large, inebriated posse of like-minded people and I'm pretty sure that's how Coscarelli's work is meant to be viewed.
ReplyDeleteI can see the similarities with this and Evil Dead 2 (a personal favorite of mine), but Evil Dead 2 is simple enough for a dumb guy like me to understand. This is overly-ambitious, and I thought that weakened it and made it less enjoyable.
ReplyDeletePhantasm is on the blog somewhere. I like that one.
I watched 'John' with nobody although my 11 year old (or however old 6th graders are) came in, saw a few gross things, and decided she didn't like the movie. I may have liked this more if I were watching it with my brother and we were 14 or 15.
Right. Saying this movie made me nostalgic for another movie and therefore I hoped that someone else might like it... is kind of faint praise.
ReplyDeleteYour review of Phantasm is bang-on (though in retrospect the comparison to Stanley Kubrick might be a tad generous).
Heh. I don't remember why I typed that. I think I'll have to watch Phantasm again and then watch the sequels. I imagine they're not very good, but I'm not exactly scared of bad movies.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it got sillier as it went on, I actually kind of liked this quirky film. Like "Evil Dead" without as much blood, it has a dry, tongue-in-cheek humor, and the leads play it straight, perfectly. A 13.
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