Monthly Archives: September 2009
9 – Movie Review
I had the fun of watching a new movie called “9”… Or as I call it, “The Adventures Of Stitchface”
Now although the film may be targetted for children or families, I found it hard to believe that the horror basis of this would be suitable for young children.
Don’t get me wrong, there were some moments that were endearing to say the least, like when Stitchface (AKA: 9) finds out he is not alone in a post apocalyptic world, and when he finds a “someone” romance with another doll (yes we all saw her button eyes shine at him)… But the plot seemed weak at best.
Some well pointed out flaws:
1. At the start of the movie the brain is off, so who switched it off?
2. If the scientist did, why give 9 the key to destroy it, which is also the on switch!!! I know because we then wouldn’t have a film, but come on thats a big plot hole that makes writers look really bad.
3. When did the brain get a chance to build the cat-beast? And when and how did it ever know about the nine? They came after it was built and up and running, and were all in place, except 9, when it was shut down.
4. If the scientist gave the brain his intellect, how come he still had the brains to build 1 to 9?
5. Why did none of the other raggies seem to know about the scientist at the beginning?
It all seems a little odd, and while able to entertain younglings for 90 minutes, I did find the flow of the movie rather outdated, like yesteryear’s raggety ann dolls 🙂
If you want to entertain the kids for a night out, then go see “Stitchface”.. Opps, sorry, I mean “9”… Otherwise, better save the overprice ticket and go to Blockbuster and rent out Spongebob Squarepants for the week 🙂
The Synopsis of the movie:
9 takes place in a world parallel to our own, in which the very legacy of humanity is threatened. A group of sapient rag dolls, living a post-apocalyptic existence find one of their own, 9 (Elijah Wood), who displays leadership qualities that may help them to survive. The conflicted, but resilient group includes 1 (Christopher Plummer), a domineering war veteran; 2 (Martin Landau), an aged inventor; 5 (John C. Reilly), a stalwart mechanic; 6 (Crispin Glover), a visionary and artist; and 7 (Jennifer Connelly), a brave warrior. There are at least several malevolent creatures up against this group; namely, the cat-skulled creature from the short film, a split-headed flying being that resembles both a bat and a manta ray in wing shape, and an insectoid creature with jointed legs and a pod-like body
******
When 9 first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world where all humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they’ll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them.
Death is at it again….. The Final Destination
Death is up to his old tricks, this time in the fourth installment of TFD series.
This time around, Death is on the hunt of a group of people who managed to survive the disaster at the local speedway.
The synopsis of the movie goes like this:
After a teen’s premonition of a deadly race-car crash helps saves the lives of his peers, Death sets out to collect those who evaded their end.
Much like the previous installments of the TFD movies, one has to wonder just how much time Death has on his hands 🙂
I found this movie interesting to a point, but like most other “Teens Get Splattered” movies, I did find it predictable to say the least, with the typical, “People escape a disaster, Death goes on a rampage to kill them off” scenario. It does leave nothing to the imagination. Especially when it is apparent that Death seems to have nothing better to do with his time than hunt down a group of people who escaped him the first time.
And since Death is supposed to be everywhere, the logicalness of it biding it’s time to massacre someone seems deluded at best. In a sense it does come across that Death is a sadist, especially in some of the ways it decides to kill of it’s victims. Hmmm… Maybe Death got a degree in Torture and Sadism Methodology 101, or at best, from its’ local S&M club where it came up with such colorful ideas from his Dominatrix 🙂
The thing I dont like about such movies is the predictability. We all know that if it involves a group of teens, they are all going to be massacred. It is that simple. Teens and Massacre fit into one box which I call Predictability.
Okay, sure, the movie had the thrill scenes, and enough to give someone the squirms. But come on, the Predictability factor was apparent as watching any of the previous movies.
I wonder just how far one would go with the boundries of creativity, with dealing with the Supernatural. Certainly there are forces out there that we know little or nothing about, and Superstition is always a driving force for a good story or film.
But, there is one twist I would add to the scenario, and the catch line would go like this:
In the spirit world, Fear stalks the dead and the damned; Killing the spirits that have plagued the world for millenia. In this world, Death has a list and you are on it. But in their world, Death has been marked.
Okay, a rough idea from the top of my head, but you get the idea. And would be interesting to see the outcome of such an adventure. Death being stalked for a change. There is a line from a movie which goes, “The Hunter has become the hunted.” Nice cliche if I do say so myself 🙂
TFD movie has been dubbed “the final one in the series“. So does that mean that Death is now retired and living it up in Florida?
Hmmm… Somehow the thought of Death sitting on a beach, wearing sunhat and jandals, drinking a margarita, and taking time out to play beach volleyball with the “gang” does not create images of insanity for this writer 🙂 More like a parody of Family Guy 🙂
If anything, since Death is out of a job (maybe he asked the studio for too much money LMAO), he could always become a hit-man for the mafia or go work at McDonalds 🙂
Imagine the hilarity of those two scenes for a minute…. If you are thinking what I am thinking, you can bet that sooner or later someone is going to do a parody of that on Atom Films 🙂
Okay, without trying to give too much away, the full synopsis of The Final Destination goes like this: (Taken from IMDB).. Enjoy!
At McKinley Speedway, race fans are gathered in the stands to watch as cars speed around the track. Some are even hoping for a crash. Nick O’Bannon (Bobby Campo) joins his friends, Hunt Wynorski (Nick Zano), Janet Cunningham (Haley Webb), and his girlfriend, Lori Milligan (Shantel VanSanten), with hot dogs and drinks in his hands. They are sitting in section 180. As he sits down, the bench almost snaps in half. Hunt offers the group a drink from his binoculars, which is just a cleverly-shaped canister. Lori asks him if that’s straight-up Jack, but Hunt says it his buddy, Jim. Down a couple of rows, Bobby sees Samantha (Krista Allen), a wife and mother of two, tell her boys to put tampons in their ears to block out the noise. A cowboy (Jackson Walker) sits down in front of Nick and Lori, blocking their view. They ask him to move down. A mechanic, Charlie Kewzer (Andrew Fiscella), and his girlfriend, Nadia (Stephanie Honore), are sitting together a few rows down. Nadia says she can’t see because of two people standing up. Charlie yells, “Down in front, a**hole!” A racist, Carson (Justin Welborn) and his wife (Lara Grice) see a black security guard named George (Mykelti Williamson) and Carson starts whistling Dixieland. George asks Carson to put his feet down. At the pit stop, wind knocks over a canister of motor oil and that spills down in the front of the tires of one of the cars. As the car speeds off, it dangerously slips on the motor oil, but regains control. Soon, a silver car pulls up and as the crew is filling it up, one guy leaves a sharp tool in a hole in the back of the car. One of the crew yells ,”Go! Go!” when everybody else isn’t done, but the car speeds off. The tool in the back of the car drops onto the track shortly after. After a lap, a black car with flames printed on the sides runs over the tool, bursting one of the tires. The car soon starts doing cartwheels, sending two of the tires flying. Everyone in the stands jumps to their feet in eagerness as one the tires flies and hits Nadia in the head, decapitating her. Everyone sees this and runs to the exit in panic. Carson and his wife watch as one of the cars skids out of control, and they turn to run. The car explodes, sending the hood into the stands, slicing Carson and his wife in half. Stephanie and her husband and her kids try to get out. The husband takes the boys outside to safety, but Stephanie is left behind. She trips on the stairs leading to the exit, and people step and trip on her as she is on the ground. She turns over on the stairs with teeth missing and her mouth full of blood. Suddenly, an engine flies and slams her in the stomach, killing her. As people step on the bench Nick and his friends were sitting on, it breaks in many places. A piece of wood from the bench sticks up as people step on it, with a sharp point sticking straight up in the air. Charlie is staring at the headless body of Nadia when he sees an explosion. He decides to get out of there when he trips backwards and falls on the sharp point of the bench sticking up, as it impales him in the back of his head and out of his mouth. As Nick and Lori try to get out of the crowded exit, George calls to them and says that there is an exit on the other side as well. Nick and Lori run over to George and call for Hunt and Janet. As Hunt and Janet try to run over to the others, pieces of the stands above them start falling. One of the stands above collapse on Hunt and Janet. Nick and Lori see this, and run to the other exit with George. The cowboy is separated from everybody else when a flaming car is sent flying into the stands and flies into him, taking out a support beam. Nick, Lori and George get separated and Nick is one side of the exit and Lori and George is on the other, with a crowd of people trying to squeeze into the exit. A collapse takes out the people trying to get out. Lori looks at Nick helplessly as the car on the stands explodes, with the flames engulfing George and Lori. The blast sends Nick backwards into a piece of rebar, impaling him in the heart. Nick emerges from his premonition as he squeezes Lori’s thigh in a tight grip. She asks what’s wrong. Hunt offers the group his canister. Lori asks if that’s straight up Jack. Nick says it’s his buddy, Jim. He points out that a cowboy sits in front of him, as the cowboy comes to sit down. Nick tells them that Stephanie is going to make her boys put tampons in their ears. He struggles to remember what Charlie had said to the people in front. He mumbles “Down in front, a**hole.” as Charlie yells the same sentence. He hears Carson whistle Dixieland and George tells him to put his feet down. Nick panics and says they have to get out of there, and starts to struggle. He falls on Charlie and Charlie takes off his jacket to fight him. Stephanie’s sons get scared and run off and she and her husband follow. George pulls Nick up and Nick accidentally knocks Carson’s beer all over his shirt. Carson runs after the group and tells his wife to stay in the stands. Nick, Lori, Janet, Hunt, George, Charlie, Nadia, Carson are all gathered outside the exit. Stephanie ran off after her kids with her husband. Nick says there is going to be a crash. Suddenly, the cars crash and everyone starts to run out of the exits. Carson tries to go back inside for his wife, but George won’t let him. Nadia screams at everyone as a tire flies over the speedway and slams into her, decapitating her. Later at a coffee shop called Death By Caffeine, Nick, Hunt, Lori, and Janet are all sitting around a table inside. They see on the news that there will be a memorial held the following night for the victims. Nick and Lori decide to go. The next night at the memorial, Stephanie and her husband meet with Nick and Lori and thank them. George introduces himself to them and as they talk, Carson accuses George of killing his wife since he didn’t let him go in after her. He then calls George the “N” word and tells him that his time is coming. Later that night, Nick has a nightmare of a red door, a hook, a cross, a horseshoe, and flames. George is at home, reading an Alcoholics Anonymous book when his mom calls. Carson pulls his tow truck up to George’s house. He’s drunk and is listening to hard rock on the radio. There is a metal horseshoe hanging off of his rear view mirror. He sees the lights go out in George’s house and turns his radio off, but keeps the car on. He goes to the back of the truck and pulls out a huge cross and a shovel. As he does so, he accidentally lowers the hook on the back till it reaches the ground. A can of gasoline gets knocked over and spills on the hook’s chain. As Carson goes over to George’s lawn to start shoveling, the wind knocks the horseshoe off of the mirror and as it falls, it hits the radio, turning it on, and lands on the gas pedal, pushing the truck forward. The song “Why can’t We Be Friends” starts blasting inside Carson’s truck, and as he runs over to it, the doors lock. He runs to the back of the truck as it’s still moving. The hook gets caught on the bottom of his pants and starts to drag him on the street. The chain dragging on the street causes the sparks to ignite the gasoline, setting Carson on fire. As he is being dragged, George comes out of his house and sees the tow truck dragging Carson. The truck explodes, and Carson’s head lands at George’s feet. The next morning, Janet calls Lori and tells her to turn on the news. Lori sees that Carson is dead and tells Nick. Nick has another vision of scissors, an eye, a straightener, and a ceiling fan. He says he doesn’t know who’s going to die next. Stephanie pulls up to a hair salon, and her two sons get out of the car in soccer uniforms. One son bets his brother he can’t hit a sign with a rock so they start throwing stones at the sign. One stone lands in the grass a guy is about to start mowing. When one of them hit the sign, the guy yells at them. Stephanie tells them to go play video games down the street at the arcade and she enters the salon. She convinces the receptionist to give her an appointment with someone else after they close since her hair dresser isn’t there. A hair dresser named Dee Dee (Cecile Monteyne) sets her up and as she raises the chair it falls back down. Stephanie gets startled, but Dee Dee reassures her. As Stephanie is getting her hair cut, the ceiling fan above is dangerously shaking as it spins. The receptionist lays her broom up along a shelf of hair products. It knocks a bottle of shampoo down onto the spout of a bottle of body butter, releasing some body butter onto the floor. The chair is creaking, and it is about to fall down again. Stephanie asks Dee Dee for some water. The receptionist comes to check on her. Stephanie puts her water down on the counter in front of her. The condensation of the cup drips and a bottle of hairspray slowly slips on the water toward the middle of the two hot plates of a hair straightener. The ceiling fan is coming apart as the hairspray is coming closer to the straightener. It slides in between the hot plates and starts to heat up. The bottle of hairspray is starting to turn brown due to the heat. Dee Dee is cutting very close to Stephanie’s eye. Stephanie’s sons run in with slurpees and slip on the body butter. Dee Dee stops and Stephanie asks if they’re okay. Suddenly, the heat from the straightener burns through the can of hairspray and it bursts. Stephanie screams as the hairspray is launched at the ceiling fan and the fan falls right in front of her, nearly hitting her. A few minutes later, she pays the receptionist and when she opens the door, she tells the boys she’s got her eye on them. As she turns to leave, the gardener mows over the stone her son threw and it is launched right into her eye socket. Blood flies through the back of her head and the receptionist and the boys start screaming as she falls dead. Later, Nick shows Lori, Hunt, and Janet that Stephanie died in an article. Nick tells them he knows how the next person is going to die and Lori shows them that they googled similar occurrences and shows them articles of the of 180 disasters. Hunt doesn’t care, but Janet gets freaked out and leaves. Hunt says he’s going to get laid and leaves. That night, Nick and Lori go back to the stands at the racetrack to remember the order of who died in his premonition. George catches them and takes them to the security office. He shows them the videos from the day of the accident and Nick remembers that Charlie dies next, then George, then Lori, then himself. Nick gets another vision of a car, a CO2 canister and other things. The next day, Nick, Lori, and George go to Charlie’s workplace, where he is working on a car. Lori jumps and screams when flames erupt from a motorcycle’s exhaust pipe for a cool effect, and accidentally hits a switch, which causes an angled platform to drop a short bit. Charlie rolls out from underneath the car and asks them why they’re there, but his boss tells him to take them outside. As they go outside, one of the workers places a can filled with tobacco spit on a table and works on a car. As he is working the table shakes from the force, and the can spills on the wires of the metal spool holding Charlie’s car in place with wrapped up cable on the angled platform. Charlie talks to them with a steel grate fence separating them. Charlie tells them he’s trying to get his life back together since Nadia died. George tells him that he has been too since he got into an accident with his wife and daughter in the car when he was drunk. Nick says he’s getting a bad feeling about something, when the wires of the metal spool short and the spool holding the cable is released. The car rolls down of the platform as George yells, “Look out!” The car almost crushes Charlie, but the cable on the spool runs out and stops the car from going further. Charlie comes out from behind the car, safe, and says that it’s not his time to die. Suddenly, the weight of the car put the entire spool out of place and the spool flies and hits the top of a CO2 canister. As George turns to leave, the top of the canister is released and it flies. It hits George and pushes him into the air towards the fence. It forces his torso through the sections of the fence and his body falls apart. Nick and Lori are sitting at a bench nearby the car shop and George joins them. Lori asks Nick who died first, Hunt or Janet. Nick says they died at the same time. They decide to split up; Nick will go after Hunt, and Lori and George will go after Janet. Nick is in his car when he notices an elegant sign next to his car that reads “Clear Rivers Water”. Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) was also the name of a girl who survived the flight 180 crash. When he sees the word water, he gets a vision of a coin falling in the water, some wires shorting, a soapy windshield, and a pipe bursting. He calls Hunt and leaves him a message telling him to stay away from water. At a pool, which is right next to a golf course, Hunt is having sex with a girl inside a cabana. He finishes, but she doesn’t so she gets mad and leaves. He walks around the pool and sees he has 3 new messages on his phone. The moment before he is about to check them, a fat, bratty kid on an inflatable raft in the pool shoots Hunt in the ear with a water gun. Hunt tells him to give him the gun, but the kid refuses. Hunt deflates the kid’s raft with his toothpick and pushes the kid in the water. He takes the gun and stashes behind a fence. He realizes the kid screwed up his phone with the water and it won’t work. The gun behind the fence falls and hits a switch labeled “Drain Pool: On”. The pool starts to drain. Meanwhile, Janet leaves the drycleaners and gives a homeless man some change. As she walks to her car, the homeless man throws a penny she gave him at some birds. As they fly off, one of them poops on her windshield. As she drives to a carwash, her sunroof starts to act up, opening and refusing to close. At the entrance of the car wash, she doesn’t notice a sign reading “Put antenna down” and goes into the car wash after she finally closes her sunroof. As the windshield gets soaped up, the spinning flaps start bending the antenna until it snaps and is sent flying into some wires. The wires get messed up, and Janet’s car stops moving. Her sunroof starts to open again and a pipe bursts from above, filling her car up with water. She screams as she tries breaking her window, but is unsuccessful. At the pool, Hunt is flipping his lucky coin on his knuckles as he sits on a pool chair. A golfer hits a ball which accidentally hits Hunt’s drink out of his hand. He inadvertently drops his coin and it rolls to the pool and falls in. Hunt walks over to the pool and dives in after it. He doesn’t notice the drain underneath him and it suck him to the bottom of the pool. He tries to stand up, but the suction is increasing since he his backing up the drain with his butt. The suction starts getting greater and greater as Nick pulls up to the pool. In the carwash, Janet forces her sunroof open enough to fit her head in and her neck becomes trapped. As she is coming closer and closer to flaps that spinning rapidly out of control, George and Lori enter the carwash through the exit and George pushes Janet’s car back with his own car. Lori gets out and frees Janet’s neck by pushing the sunroof back with her foot. She helps Janet out of the car as a pipe from above falls and breaks the windshield, draining the car. At the pool, Nick looks for Hunt. An enclosure showing the suction pressure with pipes leading to the ground to the pool starts steaming and shaking because of the backed up drain. The pressure is at the maximum when Hunt’s bones suddenly get broken inward and he gets disemboweled. Blood and intestines rush up to the enclosure and explode through the top. Hunt’s lucky coin lands among his bowels. Outside the carwash, George says that he’s next, but he’s made peace with it. He’s ready to join his family. At home, Nick and Lori are safe-proofing their apartment by covering sharp knives and such. Lori doesn’t get why George is ready to die. Nick sits down next to her on the couch to comfort her. Suddenly, a cup of coffee on the coffee table spills all over a newspaper, spelling out the message, “THROUGH ACTION, THEY WERE SAVED”. Nick thinks that maybe they don’t have to die. The two rush over to George’s house and go into his room. They see he is trying to hang himself. They try to save him, but he doesn’t want them to. Suddenly, the rope breaks and he falls. He confesses that he’s been trying to kill himself all day. He took a bunch of painkillers, but he threw them all up. He stuck his hose up his car’s exhaust pipe, but the car kept stalling. They come up with the conclusion that they broke the chain and cheated death. They go downstairs to celebrate with sparkling cider and cookies. Some number of days later, Nick is packing for his and Lori’s trip to Amsterdam. He and Lori are talking on the phone to each other. Lori says that she and Janet are seeing a movie at the mall called “Love Lays Dying”. Nick accidentally knocks the remote over and the TV turns on to the news. They state that there is a survivor from the crash, the cowboy. Nick has another vision of ambulance lights, a faucet, the universal sign for hospitals, and blood splattering. Nick rushes over to the hospital to meet George there. At the hospital, a war veteran is about to be given a bath. The attending turns on the tub on when a nurse enters and says she need him in another room. The attending leaves without turn the faucet off. Water starts to drip everywhere. In the room directly beneath the war veteran and the tub, The cowboy wakes up when he feels water dripping everywhere. He tries to call the nurse, but water seeps into the call button and shocks him. He manages to get on the ground and crawl away from his bed. Nick and George enter and see him on the ground as soon as the tube from above falls through floor and smashes him flat. As they’re leaving, Nick and George walk across the street when a speeding ambulance hits and kills George. He was next after the cowboy. On the ambulance, Nick sees the universal sign for hospitals. He rushes over to the mall. When he stops in front of the mall, he gets a vision fire, screws, spinning belts, and an exploding theater. He rushes inside. Inside, construction workers leave from working in a room on the other side of the theater Janet and Lori is in. A man leaves his glasses on the table. The sun shines through his glasses and onto a nearby pile of sawdust. The wind blows some tarp onto a fan, accidentally turning it on. The fan blows a table with gas, oil, etc. towards barrels that say “Spontaneously Combustible”. One of the bottles falls on a barrel and leaks over to the sawdust. Nick reaches Lori and Janet’s theater just in time. Lori goes with Nick, but Janet refuses. Nick and Lori turn the corner as the fire ignites the barrels the theater blows up killing many people. The go back in the theater and see Janet, with a long piece of debris sticking out of her as she’s coughing up blood. Nick and Lori leave as the explosions get bigger and the mall is falling apart. They’re running down the escalator when a pillar falls and breaks the steps. Nick is hanging onto Lori as the escalator moves closer to the spinning belts down below. Lori’s leg gets caught and snapped backward. She starts coughing up blood as the belts take the rest of her body and her blood gets splattered over Nick’s face. Nick emerges from another premonition as him and George are walking across the street. He yells, “Look Out!”, but it is too late as the ambulance rams George. He rushes over to the mall and goes into the construction room. He sees the fire and grabs an extinguisher and blows out the majority of it. The extinguisher runs out, so as he putting out the sawdust fire, a small piece of hot sawdust floats over to a pile of wood and sawdust and erupt in flames. Nick goes over to it as a table breaks with a nail gun on it. The nail gun points at him and fires a few rounds into his arm, pinning him against the wall. A bottle of oil falls next to the fire and leaks over to more “Spontaneously Combustible” barrels. Nick manages to grab a piece of long wood and wave it around a sprinkler on the ceiling as the oil ignites leading to the barrels, catching them on fire. The sprinkler turn on at the last second. TWO WEEKS LATER Nick is walking down the street when he asks a construction worker if the platform is supposed to be screwed tighter. The worker agrees and says that he’ll get someone right on that. Nick walks across the street to Death By Caffeine to meet with Lori and Janet. They sit down with their drinks and as Janet and Lori are talking, he notices signs. There is a brochure for the pool Hunt died at. On the back of a magazine, there is an ad for Love Lays Dying. On TV, they’re showing a race. He asks Janet and Lori what if the coffee shop was where they were meant to be. Suddenly outside, the construction platform falls, forcing a truck to swerve around it. It crashes into the coffee shop killing Janet, Lori, then Nick.
C.A. Milson 