'The Skeleton Key' is full of badly used cliches

The Skeleton Key (2005)
Starring Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands, Peter Sarsgaard, and John Hurt
Director: Iain Softley
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Caroline (Hudson), a hospice nurse with personal issues, is hired to help an elderly woman (Rowlands) with her dying, paralyzed husband (Hurt). They live in a creepy old Southern mansion, deep in the bayou, and surrounded by even creepier villages. Caroline soon discovers that there is more going on in the creepy house than meets the eye and that the man she is tending to is more likely the victim of a magical curse than a stroke. Soon, this young non-believer is drawn into a world of folk-magic, curses, and southern discomfort!

"The Skeleton Key" does a nice job of drawing the viewers into the strange environment into which Caroline enters, and it does a fine job at pacing the story, but when it comes to staying involved with the story, viewers have to be willing to accept the fact that everything Caroline does is dictated by plot concerns and horror movie "stupid character" cliches. If viewers don't mind a character who lives her life by "Things Every Horror Movie Character Must Do in Order to Live Up to Bad Writing Principles," the suspense in "The Skeleton Key" never lets up.

When it comes down to it, "The Skeleton Key" is yet another paint-by-numbers supernatural thriller that brings nothing new to the table. It could almost have been a neat film like "Cursed," except that it uses too many of the cliched elements badly. Caroline's behavior and actions is the most glaring of these. The "twist ending" is also so well-worn that I can't comment on it without spoiling the entire movie... but I could have done without it.

'Eye See You' isn't worth looking at

Eye See You (aka "D-Tox") (2002)
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Charles Dutton, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Berenger, Polly Walker, Robert Patrick, and Christopher Fulford
Director: Jim Gillespie
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When his girlfriend is murdered by a serial killer who has targeted him and other cops, FBI Agent Jake Malloy (Stallone) falls apart. After a suicide attempt, he checks himself into an isolated rehab center that specializes in helping police officers. The killer vowed to stay after Malloy, however, and as a blizzard cuts the facility off from the rest of the world, it appears that he may have be making good on his promise.


"Eye See You" is a charmless spin on the "Ten Little Indians"-type mystery--a group of strangers in an isolated setting, one among them is a killer who is bumping off the rest--with a heapin' helpin' of slasher-film style violence added.; Unfortunately, most of the characters never evolve beyond annoying stereotypes and there are a couple of really glaring plotholes that should have been fixed before this movie went anywhere near the public. To make matters worse, the acting is nothing special, except in a negative sense where Stallone is conccerned. He is so awful in this film that if I hadn't just seen "The Expendables", I would be wondering.. the guy could act at one time, right? I'm not misrembering, am I?).

Oh... and the ending is one of those infuriating ones where the hero ends up devolving almost to the level of the bad guy and lowers himself to a status of little more than a murderer himself.

There's nothing new or even particuarly good here. Don't bother seeing "Eye See You."

Be careful they don't slip into the tub...

Slither (2006)
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, Elizabeth Banks, Gregg Henry, and Tania Saulnier
Director: James Gunn
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

An alien life-form lands on Earth and turns the citizens of a small town into parts of his hivemind. Unless Chief of Police Bill Pardy (Fillion) and an ever-dwindling group of survivors can stop the menace now, the entire world will be consumed.


"Slither" is a movie fans of monster films and B-horror flicks have been waiting their whole lives to see: It's a B-movie style monster film with a decent budget, a great script, and a cast of fabulously talented actors. It is, quite possibly, the greatest monster movie so far this decade, and it takes a well-deserved place among the best of Universal Picture's horror flicks.

Skin-crawlingly creepy, expertly filmed, rich in snappy dialogue and dark comedy, and full of unexpected character twists, this film delivers everything horror movie fans could ask for. Even gorehounds will feel satisfied as the end credits begin to roll.

Although this movie bombed at the box office, it is one recent horror movie that deserved more attention than it got.

'A Perfect Getaway' is not a perfect thriller

A Perfect Getaway (2009)
Starring: Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez
Director: David Twohy
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A honeymooning couple (Jovovich and Zahn) on a multi-day nature hike in Hawaii discover that brutal killers targeting tourists may have taken refuge in the same area. Can their new friends (Olyphant and Sanchez) be the murderers?


"A Perfect Getaway" is a weakly written thriller that is elevated by good performances by its stars and nice cinematography. While it pulls off its Big Reveal with some skill and "plays fair" for the most part--allowing the viewers to try to solve the mystery of who the murderers are before the filmmakers do--the writer/director's assumption that the viewer will buy into the fact that someone is ex-military or used to work as a butcher makes them spooky and creepy and viable murder suspects is moronic and probably an notion that only someone born and bred in Los Angeles and Hollywood would buy into. Other red herrings presented as the film unfolds are even weaker, leading the film be rather dull and boring.

Unless, of course, you think military people and outdoorsy types are somehow inherently spooky and scary. If you do, then you'll probably find the film to be all sorts of kinds of exciting and thrilling.

That sensation may dissapate, however, when you realize that the murderers are rather idiotic, in that they box themselves in on a dead-end trail and then call attention to their location by notifying the authorities and putting an innocent couple in a really flimsy frame that would break at the slightest scrutiny. (I'm aware that the driving force behind the killers is the psychotic goal one of them has to "live 100 lives" but they can't have been doing it for as long as the story implies if they've been as stupid as they are shown to be here).

It's too bad the good performances here are wasted on such a weak script. All the stars come across as perfectly normal and likeable people (assuming Southerners and military men don't scare you out of hand) and it's especially nice to see Jovovich in a role unlike those she usually plays. And it's surprising that the writer/director who brought us such fun B-movie romps as "Warlock" and "Pitch Black" would blow it so badly when making a more "respectable" thriller. But then that may have been the problem. He was going for "realism," but instead ended up putting Hollywood biases on display?

'The Fourth Kind' is kind of a waste of time

The Fourth Kind (2009)
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas and Will Patton
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

After the strange death of her husband, Nome-based psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (Jovovich) vows to carry on his work, investigating sleep disorders. She discovers that the root cause is alien abductions, only to be targeted by the aliens herself. Or is she being targeted?


"The Fourth Kind" is a different sort of hoax movie than "The Blair Witch Project" or "Paranormal Activity." While it lays claim to being just as real, it takes a "America's Most Wanted" or "Unsolved Mysteries" approach, mixing re-actments with supposedly real video footage and audio tapes. They also decide to use a split-screen approach in many cases, trying to bolster their claim of reality by placing the reenactments side-by-side and even merged with the "documentary footage and recordings."

Of course, it's all a bunch of hooey. Just like no student filmmakers vanished in the forest and there is no demon-possessed Katie wandering the streets of San Diego, there is no Abigail Tyler and the people of Nome aren't disappearing because of alien abductions; they're disappearing because drunkenness and harsh winters don't mix (or so says the FBI).

But that doesn't mean the notion of space aliens preying on Alaskans isn't a good idea for a hoax movie. If it is, though, it didn't translate into this film. Writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi spends too much time showing off his cleverness with split-screens and sharing his apparent love with areal shots of Alaska and overlong establishing shots to make the movie scary or even interesting. It moves too slowly to ever be truly exciting, and the characters are too drab for it to be scary, because we never really get invested in them. The one truly scary moment in the film is a BOO-Gatcha! moment that doesn't come close to making up for the boring build-up. Not even the secret surrounding the death of Tyler's husband turns out to be all that interesting. (Although it does make you wonder why stronger action wasn't taken against Tyler sooner.)

Ultimately, this is a forgettable film that is badly put together. The most remarkable thing about it is Jovovich's greener-than-green eyes.

The real mystery is how this movie turned out so bad

The Black Dahlia (2005) Stars: Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Mia Kirshner and Hilary Swank Director: Brian De Palma Rating: Three of Ten Stars A publicity-hungry police detective (Eckhart) arranges to have himself and his younger partner (Hartnett) assigned to the grisly murder of a would-be actress (Kirshner). As one detective starts to mysteriously come unglued, the other uncovers not only dark secrets relating to the dead actress, but to his partner as well.

The Black Dahlia is almost completely devoid of focus. The script moves randomly from plot to subplot to barely relevant stuff, with the Black Dahlia murder being relegated to just above a minor tangent among a whole tangle of plots and subplots. The style of the film also swings widely between filming styles--at some points, it's heavy-handedly apeing the filming styles of the 1930s and 40s (complete with obligatory soft focus on the leading ladies), at others he goes for an almost documentary style detachment, and then there's the incredibly annoying sequence when the camera suddenly takes the POV of what Hartnett's character is seeing, thus putting the audience in his shoes. Not only is this a pointless break in style, it is very badly done. 

And then there's the editing. There isn't a single shot in the film that lasts more than ten seconds and all quick edits and jumping around with the camera angles gets tiresome very fast. 

To make this already weak film as bad as possible, it is further burdened by an ending that is is completely and totally botched, with the solution to the Black Dahlia killing being completely nonsensical and the other Big Revelations not quite fitting with the rest of the story either.
It's a shame this movie is such a mess, because many of the actors give some great performances that are in step with the film noir/crime drama movies of the 1930s and 1940s. 

 
Aaron Eckhart turns in a great performance as a crooked cop (I'm not spoiling anything here... the Eckhart character is a standard for the kind of movie being emulated) whose life has come to orbit around the one decent thing he's done in his life... the rescue of a young woman from a life prostitution (Johansson). It's a shame his performance and character are undermined by the awful script that introduces a late-movie twist that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 

And then there's the hero of the tale, Hartnett's good-hearted, honest cop who is irrevokably tainted by the evil he encounters in the course of this film. His character is in genre, except that he spends too much time crying; it's okay for him to be sensitive, caring, and concerned with justice, but he shouldn't be getting weepy all the time. His character is, unfortunately, also undermined by the botched ending in the film and a particularly stupid scene where he shoots up the home of Swank's character. 

Someone couldn’t make up their mind what they were doing with this movie. Whatever potential it may have had is ruined by an inconsistent visual tone and a script that is messy, unfocused and internally inconsistent. It's a film that deserved to bomb and it's one that isn't worth the 2+ hours it's going to suck away from your life. It's one of those incompetently made films that falls in a zone of mediocrity that leaves it with no worthwhile aspect. 

In fact, the only Brian De Palma film worse than this one is his 2006 follow-up, Redacted. It's even more halfbaked than this one. 

'The Kingdom' was better than expected

The Kingdom (2007)
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Ashraf Barhom, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, and Ali Suliman
Director: Peter Berg
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Four FBI agents (Foxx, Cooper, Bateman, and Garner) travel to Saudi Arabia where they team with two Saudi police officers (Barhom and Suliman) to stop a deadly terrorist and his followers.


I went to see "The Kingdom" fully expecting to hate it. The Hollywood establishment seems obsessed with justifying or even excusing terrorists, and I expected this film to be a reflection of that. However, I was pleasently surprised. This movie shows terrorists exactly for the evil, psychopathic cowardly scum that that they are. It has none of the "one man's terrorist is another man's hero" crap that so many American "intellectuals" are so fond peddling.

The film also shows that the 75 years of Saudi Arabian and American governments have allowed the conditions that gave rise to the likes of the movie's "Abu Hamza" and the real-world Osama bin Ladens through their inaction and unwillingness to behave in anything but fashions that are self-serving and self-aggrandizing. In fact, the film has the rather accurate message that the American and Saudi governments are their own worst enemies--the American government being fawning toadies to the Saudis, and the Saudi government behaving like barbaric bullies.

My very favorite aspect of the film was the way the FBI agents and the Saudi state poilice officers ended up working together once politics and distrust was set aside, showing that good cop are good cop, no matter where in the world they are.

Almost every aspect of the film was very enjoyable, playing like a cross between "CSI: Riyadh" and an action flick, except for the very last minute or so, where we had to have some of the standard issue Hollywood moral equivilency dished out. Fortunately, the dose was not big enough to ruin the film, and it was so ludicrous that no intelligent person could do anything but snicker at it.

But did the spirits get their converter boxes for digital signals?

Universal produced two films where supernatural entities communicate with the living through electronic signals. Although each film has a different idea as to what is communicating from the Great Beyond, I think they will be entertaining to lovers of ghost movies, despite their flawed endings. This goes double if you're a regular listener of late-night syndicated wackiness that is "Coast to Coast AM."


White Noise (2004)
Starring: Michael Keaton and Chandra West
Director: Geoffrey Sax
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton) is a greiving husband who starts receiving messages from his dead wife through the electronic white noise of untuned televisions and radios. He soon discovers that she is alerting him to unfolding tragedies that he can prevent... but, unfortunately for Jonathan, there are also more sinister entities reaching out to him.


Although a bit slow moving, this isn't a bad little ghost movie. It would have been better if the filmmakers had bothered to provide a few possibilities/theories about what the evil entities in the film were. Whatever they are, they are clearly able to influence things in the real world... so why can't they stop other spirits from communicating with the living? Or are the other spirits merely illusions created the evil entities to lure unsuspecting people into traps and/or to do their bidding?

As it is, there isn't even a hint of a theory anywhere in the film. As such, the ending is somewhat disatisfying, and it's made even worse by an idiotic, tacked-on "gotcha" ending. The movie was over when the SUV goes over the hill from the cemetary, and the filmmakers should have rolled credits at that point. (And you will be left with a far better vieweing experience if you stop the DVD when the car crests the hill.)



White Noise 2: The Light (2007)
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Katee Sackhoff, and Adrian Holmes
Director: Patrick Lussier

After a Near Death Experience, Abe (Fillion) gains the ability not only to see ghosts, but to see a "light" around those who are about to die. When he uses this ability to save those who are fated to die, he discovers that there is a high price to for interfering with the Divine Plan.


"White Noise 2: The Light" is an atmospheric horror film that for much of its running time plays like the sort of stories you hear on George Noori's "Coast to Coast" broadcast, what with its main character causing electrical lights to flicker when he walks down the street, with dead spirits communicating with the living through televisions and radios, and pre-destiny clashing with free will.

For most of its running time, the film does an admirable job of casting a pall of dread across all the proceedings. Even when things seem to be going in Abe's favor, there is enough foreshadowing and creepy ghost-vision stuff going on that the viewer knows things are going to end badly and this knowledge keeps the tension high. Nice camerawork and sound design, tight editing, and a solid script peformed by some very talented actors all add up to an entertaining experience.

Well, at least until the film actually reaches its final act. Then things start falling apart a bit, as the movie starts to go over the top with effects and gets outright silly with a sequence of an ambulance barreling toward a bus load of people stopped near a fuel tanker. It's "Final Destiny" level of silliness but with a fairly sensible (if you buy into the film's underlying view of life, death, and the hereafter.) The end of the film is almost completely flubbed.

Despite falling apart at the end, "White Noise 2: The Light" is better than its direct-to-DVD release implies, and it's worth checking out if you like atmospheric horror films... and if you're a regular consumer of the sort of information that "Coast to Coast AM" promulgates.

'Dead Silence' fails because it tries to hard

Dead Silence (2007)
Starring: Ryan Kwanten, Donnie Wahlberg, Michael Fairman, Amber Valletta, Judith Roberts, and Bob Gunton
Director: James Wan
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Jamie's wife is murdered in their locked apartment shortly after they recieve a package in the mail containing an antique ventriloquist dummy and a traveling case. When the investigating detective (Wahlberg) zeroes in Jamie (Kwanten) as the only possible suspect, Jamie returns to his hometown of Raven's Fair to bury his wife and to look for clues for who may have murdered his wife. He finds a town that's literally being killed off by the vengeful ghost of ventriloquist Mary Shaw (Roberts)... a ghost that he must stop, before he comes its final victim.


"Dead Silence" is a movie I really wanted to like. First, because when it appeared in theaters it had been a while since I've seen a good horror flick on the big screen. As it turned out, I would have to wait even longer.

Acting-wise, everyone does a pretty good job. The performances are cheery and light in the film's first minutes, and appropriately somber and subdued when the action moves to the dying, American Gothic village of Raven's Fair. (Wahlberg is a little bit of an odd man out, but when his hardboiled detective character bursts into the proceedings in the almost dreamlike atmosphere that's settling over the film as Jamie starts his quest for answers, he adds life and color that heighten the strange air surrounding everyone else in the film.)

The soundtrack music is also appropriately spooky, and the design of the film's mostly cool, washed-out color scheme--with Wahlberg and Jamie's red car being the only exceptions--also lend tremendously to the atmosphere of dread that could build to intense levels in "Dead Silence".

Yes. I said "could." Despite good performances by the actors, despite a good story, despite a really cool and potentially impactful "tell-tale" whenever the movie's monster is about to strike, despite some solid production design, the film simply can't measure up to other truly good horror movies.

Unfortunately, the film tries too hard to be scary for its own good at many times, crossing the line from suspenseful and dread-inspiring to eye-rollingly heavyhanded and unintetionally funny time and again. In fact, it's not any one big thing that ends up making this a below average fright-fest... it's a myriad of little things that ultimately drag the movie down.

In some ways, the modus operandi of the film's murderous ghost becomes the movie;s weakest element, because the filmmakers treat the audience like morons and goes at it with absolutely no subtlety. Or maybe the filmmakers didn't think the audience were morons... perhaps the director and foley artists simply didn't have the talent to pull off the concept. (Why assume malice where incompetence can explain something?)

Whenever the ghost of Mary Shaw is lurking about hoping for an excuse to rip someone's tongue out, sound first seems to slow, then vanishes completely, except for whatever sound the intended victim makes. In some instances, this is very creepy, but in others it's overdone. The sequence with Mary under the funeral home is completely ruined due to an excess of creaking and groaning wood. If my house made that much noise, I'd get the hell out, because it's about to collapse.

More than once, the filmmakers also goes over the top visually. The filmmakers work very hard at portraying Raven's Fair like the ultimate spooky town that oozes gothic vibes and mystery from every creeper-vine covered brick in every creepy-looking house. But, for example, the melodramatic images of an arriving hearse are so overblown that they inspire mirth rather than sorrow or dread. The film repeatedly feels more like it's parodying a horror movie than being a horror movie--and such moments are definately due to incompetence, because they are definately not intentional.

The film also overuses a particular fade technique, and they use it particularly badly when Jamie first returns to Raven's Fair; it's not spooky or creepy or useful to have the town sign animated for several seconds before fading into Jamie's red car cruising across the bridge... it's bewildering, destracting, and ultimately bad filmmaking. (A similar dissolve is used more effectively later when a map of the area surrouding Raven's Fair dissolves into an aerial shot of Jamie driving down the actual road on the map.)

There are some things that work very well in the film, which is why it manages to hang in there on the low side of average. Just about everything that happens in Jamie's ancestral home (where he meets with his estranged father (Gunton) and his new stepmother (Valletta)--a woman barely older than he is) and everything that unfolds in and around the Guignol Theatre on Lost Lake is also expertly done.

The scenes and action at these locations provide all the pieces that play into the film's unfolding mystery of Mary Shaw and the supernatural curse hanging over Raven's Fair. They also provide all the clues that allow the attentive viewer to guess the fillm's Big Reveal before the filmmakers get there. I figured out where they were going fairly early on (with one minor wrong assumption... ask in a reponse to this message if you care to know what that was, because I will be giving a spoiler if I say what that assumption was), but it didn't ruin the movie for me.

The ending was so well handled, and the clues toward the Big Reveal so well placed that the satisfaction of having guessed correctly was not unlike the sensation of having puzzled out a mystery ahead of a story's conclusion. In fact, the ending could have been flawless (and perhaps even pushed the film back up to the high end of average) if the director hadn't chosen to go over the top with one last bit of overblown "horror" that ends up unintentionally funny. I suspect the filmmakers thought they were giving us one last "gotcha" scary moment, but all they provided was a silly cliche. (The denoument is also somewhat nonsensical, but it's thematically appropiate, so I could have forgiven it.)

In the final analysis, "Dead Silence" emerges as a clumsily made horror film that feels like it was created by a crew that had no faith in themselves or the audience.

'Death Race' is mediocre reincarnation of sci-fi classic

Death Race (2008)
Starring: Jason Statham, Joan Allen, Natalie Martinez, Ian McShane, and Tyrese Gibson
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A disgraced racecar driver (Statham) is framed for muder so a corrupt prison warden (Allen) can force him to take part in the Death Race, a contest where convicted killers drive heavily armed cars to earn freedom or death.



"Death Race" is a humorless remake of Roger Corman's classic "Death Race 2000". It's an okay movie with decent actors--Jason Statham seems to be making a career out of playing hardbitten characters who drive fast cars--and cool effects and exploding cars, but it's all pyrotechnics and postering without any soul... not even the ludicrous soul of the 1975 cheese-fest.

The film is entertaining, and it made me want to break out my old "Car Wars" game--but, alas, I don't even know anyone who I'd ask to play it with me anymore--but that's about it. (Come to think of it, the "Car Wars" games I played were more exciting than this movie, with characters and cars that were just as interesting as what's in this film.)

"Death Race" is a mediocre effort that will not stand the test of time. No one remember this movie in 30 years... or even in three years. Students of classic B-movies may still be talking about the original, though.

'Drag Me to Hell' is a throwback to when horror movies were good!

Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Dileep Rao, Lorna Raver, David Paymer and Reggie Lee
Director: Sam Raimi
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When a loan officer hoping for a promotion at the bank (Lohman) forecloses on an old gypsy woman's house, she is put under a terrible curse: She has three days to find a way to reverse it, or a powerful demon will drag her bodily to Hell.


"Drag Me to Hell" is the sort of horor movie that most filmmakers seem incapable of making these days. It's a got a to-the-point script with a well-constructed story, it's got characters the audience can root for (despite their flaws) and, most importantly, it's got plenty of scares. It's a horror movie the likes of which we haven't seen on the big screen since... well, "Cursed" came close, but it was moreof a classic monster movie than a horror fim. This one is a throwback to a time when horror movies were actually good!

In fact, the film even acknowledges it's a reminder of a lost time for horror fillms by starting with the Universal logo from the 1970s and 1980s. And what follows is a film with the spirit of those days but in a thoroughly modern body. Whether you love the movies from back then--like me--or whether you're a kid who has only been exposed to the garbage and crappy remakes that are being passed off as horror movies today, this is a movie you'll get a kick out of.

With its well-mounted scares and finely crafted script, this is a movie that was made with care from the very beginning. It's enhanced even further by excellent performances by every featured actor, with star Alison Lohman earning every dime she was paid to be in this film.

Fans of Raimi's first big hit, "The Evil Dead", are also well-served by this film. It is, literally, the first time that Raimi returns to a movie of that kind. Like the "The Evil Dead", the film starts as a fairly standard horror flick, but then goes crazily over the top as it reaches its climax. But, with 30 years of experience under his belt, this return to the style of that first outing is far more effective than he's ever done it before. (He sort of did it with "Evil Dead 2", but that was a horror-comedy from the outset and was actually very different from both what he did in the original film and what he does here.)

If you're one of those people who have given up on the modern horror film, or if you habitually turn your nose up at PG-13 horror because it's not intense enough for you, you need to see this film. In the former case, it'll show that all hope is not lost for the genre on the big screen yet, and in the latter case, you need to get over your bad self.

But you need to check out "Drag Me to Hell". You won't regret it.