Category: Tutorials and Reviews

I’m so tired of bad films. I used to watch everything that came out, good or bad, I’d go to the cinema at least once a week, sometimes alone sometimes with a gang of friends. Nowadays a trip to the cinema is a bi-annual event so if I waste one of my goes on drivel then I’m mightily peeved. This year I’ve already been a few times but I’m not counting last week’s trip because it was so awful, so gut-twistingly nasty and wrong, that Matt and I stood up and walked out before it was even half-way through.

I’ve not walked out of many movies in my lifetime. Something about wanting to give the film a chance and not feeling like I could properly judge it if I’d not seen it to the bitter end. In fact, the only other film I can remember walking out of is “Threesome” and that was just because the friend I was with wanted to leave.

These days I have so few to watch that I don’t want to waste my time on the bad ones. So, from now on I will be choosing my movies with care. If a trailer contains a sentence beginning with “This summer…” (As in “This summer, the coast is toast!” or “This summer, justice is blonde.”) then that film moves right to the bottom of the list. If it is a remake of an older film that was dreadful the first time around then I won’t be buying tickets. If it’s a remake of an older film that was perfectly fine the first time around then, again, I won’t be calling the credit card line and forking over my 8 Euros. If the story boils down to: girl and guy meet and hate eachother plus guy is hiding something from girl but then they have a montage scene where they come to realise girl isn’t uptight because she can play poker and the guy is not truly a chauvanist pig because he cares for his blind mother so they fall in love but then the girl finds out the guy’s secret and storms out and is going to leave town but at the last moment the guy’s nerdy friend tells him he’s being a fool so he steals a bike from a passing kid and a fun chase to the airport ensues where guy stands in front of a crowd and proclaims his love for the girl then everyone stands and does the slow clap thing and they kiss…the end **Deep breath** …well, I’ve seen that one a few times too many already.

So what was the film we walked out of last week? First, let me say that I’m no wuss when it comes to horror films…at least I didn’t used to be. I’ve never enjoyed gore for gore’s sake, I’ve always preferred intelligent scary films that don’t show you very much but suggest things to you and build the tension that way. That doesn’t mean I didn’t watch those standard slash films; to me, all that blood was just ketchup on the screen and nothing worth getting upset about. That said, since having a child of my own, it’s added a whole new dimension to how I watch any movies or television. If there’s a child in trouble or distress I can’t bear to watch, it’s just too close and I can’t remain detached from it.

Ok, ok, the film…it was “The Hills Have Eyes,” a remake of a 1977 Wes Craven film of the same name. It was pointless and disgusting and I’d summarise the plot but there was none. I knew it was going to be rubbish but I figured I’d just ride it out and perhaps laugh at the stupidity of it. That was until a couple of scenes into it when we are introduced to the hapless victims and one of the characters is a young mother with a baby on her hip. From that moment I could no longer laugh at the ketchup and consider this film from a distance. My eyes kept looking for that baby and a sick feeling crept into my stomach that this director wasn’t going to hold back and was going to have something happen to the child. As the violence started and the members of the family were being picked off in ever more gruesome ways, Matt and I stood up and walked out. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t entertaining, it wasn’t even scary…it was just disturbing and I’ve made that deal with myself. No more money or time wasted on bad movies.

I have been a fan of Stephen King since I was about 13 years old and picked up a copy of “Misery” at my local secondhand bookstore. I remember reading it curled up in the corner of my top bunk that summer and completely losing track of my days and nights until it was finished. Many other books have had that effect on me since then but really “Misery” was the first so it’s kind of special. My favourite of his novels has to be “The Shining” simply because I love horror, I love to be scared and the part where the kid is crawling through the tunnel in the snowy playground all alone and something grabs his ankle is the only time I’ve ever jumped while reading a book.

Now, I know he’s not posh literature, he has no allusions to that, and I know many people wouldn’t even pick up one of his novels for that reason. I don’t mind though, I will read anything with a story and a set of characters that grabs my imagination and transports me somewhere else. Whether it’s Jane Austen or Karin Slaughter, I’m not fussed, as long as they entertain me.

Sadly I’ve been disappointed with King of late. Not always, sometimes a gem will come through, mostly with the non-horror stuff like “The Green Mile”. He just hasn’t scared me lately which is a pity since horror isn’t around much in fiction writing these days. Then last year he claimed he was retiring but I didn’t believe he’d be able to.

Well, he has a new book out in the States…it’s not out here for another few weeks but it’s about the one thing that always terrifies me and that’s zombies. Something about the fact that they’re rotting and they’re coming and you can’t stop them has always freaked me out. It does sound like these zombies are the new and trendy rabid kind we’ve seen in movies like “28 days.” As far as I’m concerned if they’re not dragging a mouldy leg behind them they’re not zombies, but I will reserve judgment.

This is from King’s website:

On October 1, God is in His heaven , the stock market stands at 10,140, most of the planes are on time, and Clayton Riddell, an artist from Maine, is almost bouncing up Boylston Street in Boston. He’s just landed a comic book deal that might finally enable him to support his family by making art instead of teaching it. He’s already picked up a small (but inexpensive!) gift for his long-suffering wife, and he knows just what he’ll get for his boy Johnny. Why not a little treat for himself? Clay’s feeling good about the future.

That changes in a hurry. The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone. Everyone’s cell phone. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization’s darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature…and then begins to evolve.

Writer/creative-type protagonist stuck in a job he hates…check. Strained relationship with wife…check. Young son…check. Hmm, sounds like all of his hallmarks are in place. Also sounds a bit like “The Stand” but that’s no bad thing. Oh, and is it just me or are American book covers much cheesier than the ones over here?

If you are just dying to see this film and don’t want to read any spoilers then you might not want to read on. However, since this film is summed up by its tagline I wouldn’t imagine there are many who can’t guess the story. In a nutshell it is the supposedly based-on-true-events tale of three young people; two English girls and an Australian guy (Teabag from Neighbours) who buy a beat-up car and set off on a roadtrip through the Australian outback. Along the way they stop at Wolf Creek meteor site but never get any further as their car breaks down and the man who comes to help them is actually a psycho with plans to torture and kill them.