tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784846369945401487.post1235994736169099127..comments2024-02-29T09:17:47.380-08:00Comments on Movies: The VisitShanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15033662507699896530noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784846369945401487.post-11117375082852796682016-04-01T11:05:58.035-07:002016-04-01T11:05:58.035-07:00Well, I can definitely understand your frustration...Well, I can definitely understand your frustration. I think you watched the movie with the wrong frame of mind though! <br /><br />First, how do you know that you laughed when you weren't supposed to? I mean, I sort of wonder the same thing, wondering if M. Night is as tongue-in-cheek with this thing as I think he is. But the Yahtzee stuff? That had to be intentionally funny, right? That whole scene had me cracking up. <br /><br />That rap song at the end. That was almost the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I'd put it right between hurting my foot and nearly dying and my parents' divorce. <br /><br />I don't understand two of your loopholes. The biggest question I had was about how it seemed like the grandmother had superhuman speed in the scene where they were under the porch. What the fuck was going on there? <br /><br />I liked the acting of both old people. I'm not sure I needed to see her ass though to be honest. <br /><br />I don't remember sound problems, but I probably just excused them because of the found footage format. And the camera positioning was good because the teenage girl was a film-making prodigy. Did you miss how smart she was? You always have to watch these found footage or pseudo-documentary things with a suspension of disbelief. I didn't think there was anything that got in the way though. <br /><br />I'm not saying this is a great movie or anything (12/20 isn't even good), but I didn't think it was The Happening either. Of course, I'm still not 100% convinced that M. Night wasn't dicking around and making a comedy disguised as a sci-fi drama there. <br /><br />Yahtzee! Shanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15033662507699896530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784846369945401487.post-74565463907935058042016-03-31T10:20:03.187-07:002016-03-31T10:20:03.187-07:00Wow, just finished this one and I feel like I got ...Wow, just finished this one and I feel like I got a shitty diaper in my face. This is almost registers as a so-bad-it's-good kind of movie for me. I know I was supposed to laugh, but what about the times I laughed and wasn't supposed to? Or the times I was supposed to laugh and didn't? Awkward...<br /><br />So, here were my thoughts as I watched:<br /><br />The "found footage" was conveniently shot. At times, I was thinking, "Where the hell is the camera supposed to be? Was is purposely placed in such a cinematic place? This is like Les Stroud's "Survivorman" on Discovery Channel..." (He sets out into the wild with a backpack FULL of camera equipment and has to shoot his own survival, so he sets up tripod-camera angles and walks past them just to have something to edit later.)<br /><br />The children's dialogue is so unnatural it's starting to piss me off. The girl uses words like "misogyny and proclivities and organic." The white boy rapping just rapped "I'm not a sensitive bloke." The mom's acting was the best, but the old folks did what they were told to do, and I guess they did it well enough.<br /><br />There were just too many distractions -- mainly in the dialogue. Fucking Ryan Seacrest was mentioned with "Housekeepers of Houston". That's probably the worst thing to happen to Ryan Seacrest since he became what we know as Ryan Seacrest. The Yahtzee game scene was just a dialogue disaster: <br /><br />"You're not a Yahtezz master. That takes 10 years."<br /><br />"This game is made by Hasbro, PopPop."<br />"That's a lie!"<br /><br />Other distractions were just plain script-oriented -- The old lady showed her naked ass a little too much. The POV, camera holding became unrealistic. For example, "When struggling to keep my Nana from strangling herself with a scarf, I always keep the camera up and focused." ...(I think I'll use that compound sentence as a bell ringer next week)... CRAZY NANA POV!!<br /><br />The pacing was off. It wasn't a matter of life and death until the very, very end. It really wasn't a "horror" movie until way too late in the story. The old folks came off as crazy, not scary. That would make this a "comedy/crazy" genre, and that doesn't really work.<br /><br />LOOPHOLES: <br />1. These "grandparents" are famous all over the internet, and the kids never saw a picture of them?<br />2. One nut-kick to PopPop would have taken him down for sure.<br />3. Running away?<br /><br />The way the tension was created was bad. When Pop Pop shat his pants at the Yahtzee table, Nana crammed cookies in her face and yelled YAHTZEE! right into the camera, hiding under the bed, and a whole lot of Nana being a little too physical (and naked) for her age. <br /><br />RANDOM: The sound editing was poor. The dialogue was muffled, slurred. Did the director have a cameo as the guy getting a beat-down by Pop Pop?<br /><br />The character development for these kids was way too thin. The girl had daddy issues and avoidance to the mirror (suggesting image issues?). The boy had a football story about "freezing" that came in at the end when being tortured by Pop Pop. I mean, how did these supposedly important character beats pay off? The girl kills Nana with a mirror, I guess. The boy got shit thrown in his face metaphorically during a football game, and then literally later in life? I will say, one good payoff was with the mother saying "don't hold on to anger," which subsequently has the girl add in images of her father. Good ending.<br /><br />Not so fast...then there's this stupid-ass rap at the end where the boy says "Shit doesn't taste like chicken..." Goddamn it, M.Night. Just when I was going to give you some valuable credit. What the fuck?<br /><br />5/20Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13056895439416156683noreply@blogger.com