Category: Reviews

Movie Review: The Hunger Games (2012)

The Hunger Games is most startlingly successful in its opening thirty minutes, when surveying District 12 of Panem, a coal-mining center where dirty people do dirty labor to keep the lights on in the Capitol, a post-apocalyptic paradise built upon a crater lake. The denizens of District 12 are slightly cleaner than the men and women of Winter’s Bone, and compared to the Capitol’s visiting Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), their situations are quite dire. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), for example, has taken control of her household in the aftermath of a mining accident that killed her father, leaving her caring for both her mother and her younger sister. Jobs are scarce, so she’s been forced to take up hunting. She’s quite good at it, but big game, like deer, have become increasingly scarce in an environment that’s been scorched by war.

War is very much in the fabric of The Hunger Games. Not only did it give rise to Panem, the massive, quizzically structured supercountry that arises sometime after the end of the United States, but a civil war between the districts and the Capitol were responsible for the creation of the games, which pit twenty-four young men and women, one of each gender from all twelve districts, in bloody, to-the-death conflict with each other. These twenty-four children, “Tributes,” as they’re called, serve two purposes. First and foremost, they’re a reminder to the twelve districts that supreme power lies with the Capitol, who participate in the Hunger Games by dressing-up and placing wagers. Secondly, the winner of the Hunger Games will bring fame and fortune to their district.

It’s a broken system, but one can appreciate the “I Am the 99%” ishness of the film’s opening moments, wherein Effie stands before a crowd of slackjawed, horrified, poorly-fed children and, with the aplomb of Mitt Romney saying he has plenty of friends who own NASCAR teams, tells the group she looks forward to seeing them die; all in the spirit of competition, of course. When Katniss’ sister Primrose (Willow Shields) is chosen from the hat, Katniss volunteers for her and is thrown on a bullet train (funny how we get one of those in the post-apocalyptic future) with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), a baker’s son who, according to his own mother, is as good as dead.

Once Katniss and Peeta are on the train, The Hunger Games becomes significantly less interesting. The two are scrubbed down, becoming two more pretty people in a parade of pretty people, most of whom give little to go on in terms of character. We learn a little about some of the other districts—one and two have been churning out Hunger Games champions for most of their duration—and are introduced to a cast of characters who, depending on their allegiance to Katniss, are flamboyant and one-note, or somewhat nuanced. The people running the games include hosts Caesar (Stanley Tucci) and Claudius (Toby Jones), producer Seneca Cane (Wes Bentley), and President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland), who is exactly the sort of generic evil capable of manipulating things from the shadows across a franchise. Joining Effie in aiding Katness are Cinna (Lenny Kravitz)–a one man support group/fashion label—and Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), a former Hunger Games winner who acts as District 12’s mentor. Of the characters here who aren’t Katness, Harrelson’s is the most well-drawn, a jaded man who finds no pleasure in the Hunger Games, but who nevertheless comes to like his charge.

The Hunger Games themselves are effectively a long, drawn-out battle sequence, where most of the people involved end up slaughtered off-screen. Katniss has been advised to survive on her wits rather than join the mad rush for a weapon at the start of the games, and that’s exactly what she does, taking off for the woods with a backpack and a rope. She’s been cautioned that exposure and the lack of water and food are just as likely to kill her as the other children, but the weather’s temperate, water is plentiful, and nobody participating looks to be starving. The threats she faces in there are two-fold: The large hunting party that’s formed specifically in an effort to kill her (she’s the strongest one in the group), and the CGI machinations of Seneca Cane, who artificially generates a fire and sics mutated beasts on Katniss to keep the show rolling.

Despite this, the Hunger Games portion of The Hunger Games feels momentum-less, hampered at turns by Katniss’ alliance with Rue (Amandia Stenberg), a little girl (seven or so) whose death sparks a riot in District 11, and a love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), who is forced to watch the events play out on TV. Rue’s death, obviously, is meant to be a huge moment in the film, but beyond her looking practically angelic pre- and post-martyrdom, she simply isn’t developed well enough within the parameters of the movie. It’s sad to see her die like it’d be sad to see any child get a spear stuck through them. The love triangle seems, at best, a concession to those who find Edward/Bella/Jacob the enduring romance of our time. It is built upon quick pecks on the cheek by Katniss and Peeta—who may be playing the folks in TV land for donations of soup and salve—and distressed looks from Gale, who is stuck in District 12 watching Katniss’ family.

What I like most about these scenes is the way director Gary Ross has decided to shoot them, in a style that straddles the line between old-school action cinematography and the currently in-vogue shaky-cam. The resulting scenes of violence are appropriately chaotic while remaining easy to follow. His pacing is off—at two hours and twenty minutes, parts of the film feel decidedly overstuffed while leaving other areas critically, frustratingly underdeveloped—but one gets the idea that many of The Hunger Games‘ decisions were made in an effort to appease the book’s massive fanbase. That’s not to say that the film is accessible only to fans of the novel. Unlike the Twilight series, which requires a person who hasn’t read the books to have either an almanac or a very knowledgeable friend, The Hunger Games is quite inclusive. It’s easy to see how some characters, particularly Rue, may benefit from the written word, but the film very consciously reaches out to new fans and does so successfully.

Frustratingly, The Hunger Games isn’t tremendously ambitious in scope, despite playing in the same sandbox as movies like Blade Runner and Metropolis. While the comparison may not be fair, most dystopian films use their future regimes and the inherent divide between squalor and excess to examine a problem eating away at our society. Those concerns are at the fringes of The Hunger Games, its kill-or-be-killed ethos hardly a breath of fresh air. The film squanders every chance it has of being challenging material, not even stopping to ask what Katniss would do if her and Rue were the last two left standing, and the dynamics of Panem society—one infers a kind of loose caste system, based on district—are left wholly untouched. Even if future sequels delve into that subject and give Katniss some tough decisions, I suspect the franchise will still leave me with two questions: 1) Nuclear holocaust be damned, at what point in the future do we begin naming people after American Gladiators? 2) Where have all the ugly people gone? Starvation, after all, isn’t pretty.

Rating:

The Hunger Games. Directed by Gary Ross. With Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss Everdeen), Josh Hutcherson (Peeta Mellark), Woody Harrelson (Haymitch Abernathy), Elizabeth Banks (Effie Trinket), Stanley Tucci (Caesar), Toby Jones (Claudius), and Donald Sutherland (President Coriolanus Snow). Released March 23, 2012, by Lionsgate.

March 27, 2012
Movie Review: The Grey (2012)

Perhaps it’s just the pattern Liam Neeson‘s established with his last few action thrillers—films like Unknown and Taken, where he’s a middle-aged man driven by revenge and/or the urge to save his family in killing as many gun-toting men as possible in ninety minutes—but if there’s something I didn’t expect from The Grey, which promised Neeson going through a Predator-like plot where he and his compatriots are assailed and picked off by creatures beyond their comprehension, it was a theological discussion about the absence of God, or at least a God who cares.

Neeson plays John Ottway, a troubled man whose job is to protect the men hired to do work on arctic pipelines from the wolves who stalk the land. It’s obvious looking at him among these rough men, who drink and brawl and whore, that Ottway carries a massive guilt, an incredible grief. It’s clear that, when he leaves the bar, rifle slung across his back, he’s doing so to end his life. Ottway kneels down in the snow, buts the rifle’s barrel into his mouth, but can’t bring himself to shoot. The next day he’s on the plane with the unsavory crew hired to work in the arctic. The plane goes down, and Ottway is one of a small band of survivors left in the middle of an empty, threatening snowscape.

Immediately, Ottway becomes a survivalist. This is good for the group, because left to their own devices, men like Diaz (Frank Grillo) and Talget (Dermot Mulroney) wouldn’t stand a chance, divided by background and personality. Not that they think Ottway is the best man for the job, but at least he knows about wolves, and at least he’s interested in surviving. So they trudge across the snow hoping to find shelter, to at least get far away enough from the wolf den that they’re no longer an issue. Infighting and exposure are also a source of problems for the group, who dwindle in number not knowing if they’re closer to their goal, not knowing how many things lurk beyond their vision, poised to attack.

Thankfully, the wolves don’t act as a kind of convenient metaphor, they’re no signpost, no means to the film’s message. They’re a force of nature, doing what they do because, hey, that’s how they are. Because The Grey has no villain, the film avoids the pratfall where the group rises above evil, instead becoming a show of how desperate or crazed or lonely human beings can find themselves. Diaz, for example, sees the moment where he cuts off a slain wolf’s head to chuck it back into the forest as revenge for the men who’ve died. The other men, who see the killing as a fact of their continued survival, look on as though Diaz were deranged. Maybe he is. Or maybe he’s just working out his frustrations. All of the men stranded out there have issues to deal with. The wolves just put things in perspective real quick.

The lack of a specific villain also allows director and co-writer Joe Carnahan to get creative. Instead of relying on the wolves as a jump scare or singular cause of death, the men are faced with decisions that may help or hinder their progress: Do they create a rope bridge to cross a chasm? Do they follow a river? Do they know where they’re going? Do they drink all the alcohol, or do they save some for later? Do any of their decisions matter, or are they merely prolonging the agony? These questions, and the way they’re answered, have a profound impact on Ottway and his crew’s ability to survive.

And then there’s the question about God. Not all of the men on the airplane are as harsh or bitter as it would seem. Some of them, in fact, are pretty spiritual. Talget, for example, wishes to say a prayer for the men who had the good fortune to die in the crash. He believes that the group survived for a reason, that their trek across the wilderness was ordained and purposeful, even if that purpose isn’t clear. Talget has a daughter at home, who he promised to see again. Maybe that’s what this trek is about, making those left alive more appreciative of what they have, despite the three men the film comes to focus on having very little to live for, not like the oil executives who’ll be minorly inconvenienced by the crash. Talget has family. Diaz has freedom.

Ottway, though, appears to have less than even these men. His wife (Anne Openshaw) is dead and he is days removed from trying to end his own life. He does not believe in God, grounds himself in reality. His reality is quite dire, indeed. There’s him, the group, the weather, and the wolves. Benevolent or not, few gods would hurl their creation into such a horrible fray. Few men would survive as long as Ottway, who doesn’t believe in fate but will meet one anyway. The debate is left to be resolved by the viewer, but one has to wonder why he persists when the situation is admittedly so hopeless. Perhaps Ottway carries on hoping for an honorable way to die. Maybe giving up would dishonor his wife. Could be, but the movie draws a pretty distinct line between the wolves and Ottway. They kill because they need to, because that’s their purpose. Ottway survives because he, too, feels need. In the wolves, he finds purpose.

Rating:

The Grey. Directed by Joe Carnahan. With Liam Neeson (Ottway), Frank Grillo (Diaz), Dermot Mulroney (Talget), Dallas Roberts (Hendrick), Joe Anderson (Flannery), and Anne Openshaw (Ottway’s Wife). Released January 27, 2012, by Open Road Films.

March 26, 2012
Movie Review: Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (2012)
Before Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, I would have considered myself a fan of “cult film,” that cloudy-at-best genre distinction that typifies nothing in particular and is inclusive of everything from The Big Lebowski to Troll 2. But, having now seen the aforementioned film, I’ve come to realize that there is no such genre as “cult film,” merely that there are multiple definitions of the term:
- The first, the one that I suppose describes most “cult” movies I’m a fan of, relates to films that went under the radar upon first release for one reason or another and then “made it” as a consequence of midnight showings or home release. Cult films of this nature don’t necessarily have to be bad or good—the gap between The Big Lebowski and Troll 2 is oceanic, after all—but have built a devout following, the likes of which demand merchandise, anniversary DVD releases, documentaries, and so on.
- The second definition, which is what I’m claiming Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie falls under, is that a movie is made for a pre-existing cult; a rabid—if small—fanbase who are already devoted to the movie before it comes out, a group of people perfectly happy with receiving more of the same, but in a longer format.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with movies that fall under the second definition. I was once a big fan of Tom Green (and would still happily argue that his particular brand of comedy was ahead of its time), and am not ashamed to say that I own a copy of Freddy Got Fingered on DVD. The thing about that movie is that if you’re not a member of its cult, you’re left in the cold. Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, if you’re not familiar with Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim‘s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job, behaves in much the same way. Despite providing “helpful” interludes wherein the film’s ridiculous plot is shown to relate to themes like conflict resolution, if you’re not a fan, it’ll probably be difficult to see how a scene where a group of robed children defecate on a man in a bathtub could be funny to anybody, let alone the guys who wrote it.

Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie sees the titular characters—who not only play themselves, but direct—on the run from the evil Schlaaang Corporation—headed by Tommy Schlaaang (Robert Loggia) and Earle Swinton (William Atherton)—after taking a billion dollars and making a three-minute movie starring a Johnny Depp impersonator. Tim and Eric don’t have much time to pay the impatient, cruel Schlaaang off, but luckily there’s a commercial on TV claiming that the two could make a billion dollars by taking command of the S’wallow Valley Mall, a desolate wasteland overrun by wolves and hobos. As soon as they agree to the job, Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell), the mall’s owner, abandons the place, leaving behind stacks of floppy discs and a worn VHS of Top Gun.

This doesn’t faze the duo, who’ve formed a P.R. firm named “Dobis,” an amalgam of the phrase “doing business.” In this capacity, they meet the denizens of the mall, including Taquito (John C. Reilly), a sickly manchild raised by the mall’s wolf, Allen Bishopman (Will Forte), the perpetually pissed-off owner of the mall’s sword store, used toilet paper store owner Reggie (Matt O’Toole), whose son is taken from him by Tim, and Katie (Twink Caplan), a balloon store proprietor who captures Eric’s heart. Tim and Eric slowly set the mall to rights, Schlaaang slowly tortures Tim and Eric’s parents for information, and Tim plots to derail Eric’s budding romance with Katie.

All of this, in being deliberately bad and/or deliberately disturbing, is supposed to be funny somehow, but I missed it. The movie’s jokes and gags that had something going for them—a video advertising an alternative medicine called Schrim, for example—are taken well beyond the point where they were funny and never quite return. But then, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie is very much a film made in the post-modern, everybody is a star ethos, where YouTube (and public access before it) has given everybody a means by which to take their fifteen minutes of fame. Tim and Eric may have more famous friends than the dude doing a seven minute clip show in the hopes that 1,000 people will see it, but here they are in film form, ever the awkward everymen. Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, from its title to its lo-fi aesthetic to its impersonators of Depp and Steven Spielberg, is the duo’s giddy “Fuck you” to the movies. Sadly, I like movies a lot more than I like Tim and Eric.

Rating:

Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie. Directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. With Tim Heidecker (himself), Eric Wareheim (himself), Will Ferrell (Damien Weebs), John C. Reilly (Tacquito), Will Forte (Allen Bishopman), Twink Caplan (Katie), Robert Loggia (Tommy Schlaaang), William Atherton (Earle Swinton), and Zach Galifianakis (Jim Joe Kelly). Released March 2, 2012, by Magnet Releasing.
March 25, 2012
Movie Review: Underworld: Awakening (2012)

In all honesty, Underworld: Awakening is the first movie in the franchise I’ve seen that makes complete, perfect sense. Previous films in the Underworld series relied on an intricate, muddied backstory as a kind of smokescreen, lending significance to three rather insignificant movies where a woman in a leather catsuit blasted away at waves of CGI creatures who resemble the original Wolfman in name only. They were digestible enough, but boy did they have an unwarranted sense of self-importance, going on and on about vampire elders and ancient vamp/werewolf relations as if Kate Beckinsale needed an excuse for the outfit and the guns.

The only past Underworld: Awakening is concerned with is the recent past, where Selene (Beckinsale) and her lover Michael (Scott Speedman, in previous films) attempt to escape underground in the aftermath of the human discovery of vampires and lycans, the human population having turned to mass genocide to rid themselves of both species. They’re both captured, but 12 years later Selene is released from her cryogenic freezing chamber, deep in the bowels of a medical research facility.

In this brave new world, vampires and lycans have been driven deep underground, and, more importantly, Selene has a daughter, Eve (India Eisley), with whom she can telepathically communicate. As a vampire/lycan hybrid, Eve is of particular importance to the werewolves, who wish to use her genetic make-up to do some scientific hooey that’ll make their race unstoppable. The lab guys, led by Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea), also want Eve back, but if that’s due to her being “lab property” or because Lane has other, seedier plans is unknown. Pretty much, this sets up a bunch of shoot outs, chase scenes, and fight sequences where Selena and any number of allies take on the lycan horde and the occasional human interloper.

That, in a nutshell, is Underworld: Awakening. Yes, there are subplots. The vampire underground is as snaky and worthy of mistrust as they were in previous installments, led by an elder vampire who holds Selene and her offspring in disregard. While this was the motivating factor behind other films in the franchise, here, one can’t help but sympathize with them. When the leader points out that most vampires fortunate enough to share a room with Selene end up dead, he is proven correct in short order, as the clan comes under attack from the lycan horde hunting her. Then there is the matter of the werewolf twice the size of any yet seen. The idea of lycan steroids is kind of interesting and barely touched upon, but in the end it plays out as you’d expect: The double werewolf gets the upper-hand for awhile, but he dies just like a normal one would. I presume the movie wants me to imagine a world where there are a ton of giant lycans running around, but the problem there isn’t the ridiculous conceit. Bigger might mean more dangerous, but considering that the wolves are all CGI, an army of giant werewolves standing shoulder to shoulder would probably make them look like normal werewolves.

But complaining about the unnecessary in a movie like Underworld: Awakening is pretty pointless. We’re four movies in on this franchise, and it now appears to have found a comfort zone, like the Resident Evil series, where nothing really makes sense, but things keep happening if only because they must. Heck, the only real difference between the two franchises is a question of superpowers, and considering that Selene and the rest of the vampires in the Underworld quadrology don’t suck much blood and use guns to get their killing done, even that difference is negligible. Resident Evil holds an advantage over Underworld in that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but Underworld has its backstory from which to rip new, blandly efficient vehicles from. It will always have vampires. It will always have werewolves. It, for better or worse, will always be safe.

Unfortunately, “safe” in 2012 means “projected in 3D,” which means muted color schemes of gunmetal and cobalt in every conceivable location. There is little variance from one gunfight to the next and, apart from one or two cringeworthy bits during the fighting, nothing really exciting happens. There’s a pile of dead bodies in this film that reaches to the vanishing point, but they’re all nameless, faceless, without impact, either carrying guns or brandishing claws. This, certainly, is to be expected from most brainless entertainments, but Underworld has long pretended to be something more than that. And yet, beneath the skintight catsuits and the endless gunplay, Underworld: Awakening is heartless, antiseptic. I can’t say I’m surprised by my lack of interest in Selene’s ongoing plight, given all that. One doesn’t stay 15 forever. Eventually, women become real.

Rating:

Underworld: Awakening. Directed by Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein. With Kate Beckinsale (Selene), Stephen Rea (Dr. Jacob Lane), Michael Early (Det. Sebastian), Theo James (David), and India Eisley (Eve). Released January 20, 2012, by Screen Gems.

February 5, 2012
Movie Review: The Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption (2012)

In 2002, my father took me to see The Scorpion King because I loved wrestling and, in 2002, to a wrestling fan, there was no badder man on the face of the planet than The Rock. Had I known that The Scorpion King represented the beginning of the end of the Rock’s tenure in the WWE, I’m sure I would have felt differently, but The Scorpion King wass the sort of dumb, fun action movie I’m still cool with, where the action scenes are comprehensible and the one-liners aren’t too stupid. Believe me, though: replacing the Rock is an impossibility, a task so Herculean that even the mighty Vince McMahon, possessed of untold promotional genius, realized almost immediately the the only way to start down that particularly foolhardy road was to wait until the Rock’s disinterested, Clark Kentian double—Dwayne Johnson—was ready to descend from Witch Mountain, willing to speak about himself in the third person again. Sadly for Universal Pictures, Johnson will probably never return to the movie that made The Tooth Fairy possible, but, like Vince McMahon, they seem to have accepted that, turning the Mummy spin-off into a direct-to-DVD, Redbox-friendly franchise.

The Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption is somewhat successful in that sense, the sort of time-waster determined not to bore, but without the ambition necessary to rise above its station. The one-liners are piled-on, the sidekicks oafish, the villains flamboyant and/or borrowed from a video game franchise, and the ninjas plentiful; if Scorpion King 3 were dinner, it’d be prison meatloaf. Sure, it lacks the refinement of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol or the inventiveness of Attack the Block, but cabbage and ground chuck function perfectly well as a meal, no matter how horrible it ultimately tastes.

Some years after the first Scorpion King, Mathayus (Victor Webster) is a broken man. Due to unseen circumstances, his kingdom is smashed and his queen is dead. As the helpful narration has it, Mathayus lives for mercenary gold and a good way to die, which lands him in the employ of Horus (Ron Pearlman), a king whose brother Talus (Billy Zane) hunts for the Book of the Dead and a queen worthy of his libidinous lifestyle. That Pearlman and Zane, dressed respectively like a monarch in a community theatre version of Shakespeare and a Halloween pirate, are as Egyptian as Abraham Lincoln is unimportant, especially considering that the Book of the Dead (“Book of the Dead” often prefaced with “Egyptian”) appears to be under lock and key somewhere in the lush jungles of Asia. If Talus gets the book, he gains the ability to summon three warriors (Dave Bautista, Kimbo Slice, and Selina Lo) of untold power. In stopping them, Mathayus is joined by the Germanic barbarian Olaf (Bostin Christopher) and Silda (Krystal Vee), the object of Talus’ infatuation.

The plot, if you can call it that, is an endless series of double crossings and feigned double crossings. Mathayus and Olaf are working for Horus, then Talus, then they’re in it for themselves, and there’s a chance that the ghost warriors could turn on Talus as soon as they got tired of taking orders from a tacky pirate. None of Mathayus and Olaf’s schemings get beyond Mathayus insulting Olaf’s smell, but, as Adam West once said, criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot, and hearing Olaf’s choice responses to Mathayus (his best: “I smell delicious”) is worth putting off the ultimately underwhelming throwdown between Mathayus and Zane’s scenery-chewing Talus for. Olaf, in fact, does much of the film’s heavy lifting, bashing in heads, hugging dudes, and peeing on enough ninjas’ heads to keep things moving along.

Zane’s relentlessness is also a thing to behold. In a movie where ninjas join forces with a guy who becomes an insanely powerful mummy, his Talus is the only thing popping from the film’s immutable, all-pervasive blandness. He’s got his finger in a lot of dams, too: world domination, artifact hunting, ghost soldier commanding, Mathayus hunting, Silda seducing, and being a doer of acts most villainous. The fun Zane appeared to have making Scorpion King 3 is noticeable, but not quite viral. Victor Webster, wearing a hobo beard and hoping he looks enough like the Rock to pass as him from long distances, plays Mathayus as a bump on a log, and while Krystal Vee reminds him again and again that he’s battling for redemption, it becomes clear that too many people involved in the making of this movie were battling ennui.

And that’s the whole problem with Scorpion King 3, really. This is the third movie in a franchise spun-off to explain the origins of a bit villain from the second movie in another franchise. When The Mummy returned for another installment, it skipped out on Mathayus and the pyramids in favor of China and abominable snowmen. Granted, nobody was going to pick this up expecting something above mediocrity, something consistent and somehow significant to a franchise that’s liked enough, if not universally, but the hollowness of this particular effort really stands out. I went to a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant once, and wandering from table to table was a man who was hired to impersonate Forrest Gump. There was an airshow that day, so the poor guy had to talk a lot about how the planes reminded him of Vietnam, which, of course, is where he got shot in the buttocks. I realized, finishing my meal in the awkward silence between my group and Forrest, that there are few jobs worse than inhabiting a character created for somebody else. The sadness of celebrity impersonation permeates Scorpion King 3, and Billy Zane is powerless to save the film from the scruffy-headed impostor who, unfortunately for him, spends much of his time moping about how he used to be a legend. Victor Webster may be jacked and he may be tan and he may be wearing something similar to what the Rock wore in the original, but put the Rock’s words into his mouth and, as one would expect, the result is schoolyard imitation, not particularly inspired, even by a need for attention.

Rating:

The Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption. Directed by Roel Reiné. With Victor Webster (Mathayus), Billy Zane (Talus), Bostin Christopher (Olaf), David Bautista (Argomael), Kimbo Slice (Zulu Kondo), Krystal Vee (Silda), and Ron Pearlman (Horus). Released January 17, 2012, by Universal Pictures.

January 17, 2012
Movie Review: The Devil Inside (2012)

On a purely fiscal level, I understand why studios acquire movies like The Devil Inside. Shot on digital cameras with a nothing budget, starring nobody, and pre-packaged with the promise that something will eventually happen—something cool and perhaps frightening—they represent the kind of low-risk/high-reward gamble that, after Paranormal Activity, an executive would be foolish to blink at. It’s just that they’re all the same, right? Somebody sets up a bunch of cameras and waits and waits and waits for signs of the supernatural in every day life: an angry ghost or, as the case is here, a squatting demon. The signs are the same, too. Something floats, then someone floats, then things get violent. Yes, these pseudo-documentaries posit, there are things that go bump in the night. At this point, though, they’re bumping very quietly.

Instead of documenting a haunted house, The Devil Inside concerns itself with the familial history of Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade), whose mother (Suzan Crowley) murdered a nun and two priests when Isabella was a young girl. Official reports have it that Maria Rossi just went crazy–and the Hoarders-like house she kept about confirms that diagnosis–but, three days before his death, Isabella’s father tells her the truth: Maria killed those people during an exorcism, which explains why she’s been confined to a mental institute just outside the walls of the Vatican for the past 20 years. Knowing all this, Isabella packs her bags and heads across the ocean with a documentarian to find out the truth about exorcism and her mother. Why she agrees to this is beyond me, but I guess I was raised to know the difference between family business and documentary fodder.

The Devil Inside‘s plot is straightforward enough at first. Isabella, like every pseudo-doc protagonist, has her doubts about the veracity of demonic possession/ghosts/the Blair Witch. If the seeing her mentally ill mother some 20 years after murdering a couple of priests and a nun carries any emotional weight, it sure doesn’t register. Rome for her, like many other cinematic doubters in the ongoing struggle between good and evil, is pretty much a paid vacation. Before seeing the school the Church educates its exorcists in, she tells the camera she hopes it isn’t just some crazy Catholic joke. You know, the kind of joke her mother would murder three people over. Exorcism, of course, is not quite what Isabella expected (not enough pea soup), but that comes later.

The movie is presented as a reel of found footage, put together without the help of the Church, who don’t like releasing film of exorcisms to the public. This set-up allows our other heroes, the priests Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmuth), to rage against the machine a bit. In this new era of lawsuits and YouTube and science, the Church doesn’t exorcise people unless they’re absolutely sure a person is suffering from something more than bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Ben and David, renegade clergy that they are, take on many cases the Church ignores, buries, or otherwise lets slip through the cracks. Using their limited knowledge base and years of experience, they’re not only able to determine if a person is possessed, but they’re capable of expelling the possessive demon. After Isabella meets with her mother, cameras in tow, she shows the footage to them and they agree that Maria is possessed. Until they finally meet her, it really seems like they’re reaching: She’s got inverted crosses cut into her skin. Instead of speaking different languages or even in tongues, she takes on an accent. She likes to swear at priests. Typical stuff.

Once these two strands of plot are joined together, The Devil Inside looks to marry them in a way that is fresh and interesting. It fails for a few reasons. The exorcism scenes aren’t anything close to shocking, relying on contortionists and levitation and the aforementioned curse-hurling as a precursor to the possessed escaping restraints, climbing the walls and attacking everybody in the room. The only people this behavior is new to are those on the screen. Worse, The Devil Inside telegraphs everything that happens mere minutes after introducing the premise. For example, there’s no reason anybody seeing this movie needs to be told by the documentarian himself that cameras will be running in the car at all time. And it’s really convenient that Isabella walks in on exorcism class right at the point when the professor starts talking about Multiple Demonic Possession and the demon’s ability to pass from host to host. There are four leads in this movie. Can you guess how many demon’s Maria Rossi is possessed by?

But enough about the humans in this movie: they’re all very pretty, and if you feel pity for nice looking people trying to make a quick buck off of a mentally incapacitated woman, this film’s for you. Me, I’m curious about the devil inside Mrs. Rossi. Movie demons who their eternities locked eternally in scripted conversations that have the same outcome, every time. Some demons, like Crocell, merely teach liberal arts and sciences when summoned. Some, like Abraxas, become Santana records. The ones we’re most acquainted with inhabit spinsters and teenage girls and wait for the coming of a film crew to let loose with an ever-stagnating routine of blood, spit, and the moderately inexplicable. I wonder: is the demon crippling a woman in a cell somewhere in Rome chosen because he or she is really, really good at telling priests off, or did they merely drew the short straw some millennia ago? It’s an interesting paradox–they seem to enjoy promoting the Devil’s work, but they’re too selfless to issue even a press release. Somebody go document them, for a change.

Rating:

The Devil Inside. Directed by William Brent Bell. With Fernanda Andrade (Isabella Rossi), Simon Quartermain (Ben), Evan Helmuth (David), Inout Grama (Michael), and Suzan Crowley (Maria Rossi) Released January 6, 2012, by Paramount Pictures.

January 7, 2012