HEY YOU MOVIE MAKING GUYS! HERE'S A TIP AND PLEASE KNOW THAT I WILL COME AFTER YOU WITH THE BILL IF I HAVE TO BUY NEW SPEAKERS: LOUD NOISES DO NOT EQUAL SCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARES!!!






Alien Abduction aka The Morris Family Abduction (2014)

Yes my lovelies, we have a lame movie that not only is a found footage hand held piece of crap, but it's about an alien abduction. In fact, we get to see the end of the movie AT the beginning. AND if I was smart (and I'm not) I would have said 'good' and passed on this horrible, obvious, THEY'RE COMING TO GET US! type of alien bull spit and found something better. Somewhere. Somehow. But for now this ripoff of every found footage movie since the beginning of time can be found streaming on Netflix. BUT my children I MUST give this movie snaps for not pasting 'Based On Actual Events' on their movie poster, given that the phenomenon of strange lights being seen on Brown Mountain is real.


And to make this movie even more special for the audience, they make sure and let you know that the footage is taken by a boy with autism (played by Riley Polanski). What the hell does that have to do with anything? I'll tell you what though, he's a better cameraman than most idiots using hand held cameras in these types of movies. And all the actors real first names are used as their movie names. Isn't that clever?

I'm gonna be short with the movie part anyway 'cause there just ain't a whole lot going on in this movie that couldn't have been told in ten minutes or less. A family goes camping. They fight, complain, spend a night on Brown Mountain in North Carolina, and they all get abducted.

Since the movie is such a nothing movie, here's your small bit of education for today.


Brown Mountain DOES exist in North Carolina. In fact, lights that cannot be explained have been seen in the sky there for over a hundred years. Now the movie 'interviews' so-called experts as well as witnesses but here's the real thing:



The Brown Mountain Lights are a series of ghost lights reported near Brown Mountain in North Carolina. The lights can be seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway and from the Brown Mountain Overlook, Table Rock, and Wisemans View. There are other vantage points also that can be seen in North Carolina. And yes, they do want visitors - the best time to see them is reportedly September through early November.

Of course, the 'ghost lights' have their detractors. One interesting (and extremely stupid in my opinion) supposed 'reason' people are seeing these lights is called Nature Deficit Disorder. This disease flavor-of-the-month refers to a hypothesis by Richard Louv that human beings, especially children, are spending less time outdoors resulting in a wide range of behavioral problems. 

So that would mean the boy taking the footage has autism because he's never outdoors although he's outdoors taking footage despite his autism being caused by his never being outdoors which he is in now with a camera despite his autism... ick, now I'm dizzy.

Louv claims that causes for the phenomenon include parental fears, restricted access to natural areas, and the lure of the screen. Recent research has drawn a further contrast between the declining number of National Park visits in the United States and increasing consumption of electronic media by children.

Oh really? So over a hundred years ago kids that were into their electronic games started seeing weird... oh, wait a minute - there wasn't even TELEVISION over a hundred years ago. So telling us we're stupid enough to see strange lights because we're imbeciles who were raised on electronic gadgets doesn't quite cut it.

Okay, movie. Family camps. Autistic boy with camera gets footage of three lights in the sky moving strangely. The next day, following the GPS instead of a good ole' map, the family gets lost (the movie suggests the GPS was guided by something other than a satellite, if you know what I mean and I think you do - sorry Joe Bob).

Next day family fights over running out of gas. Trying to get to town, they find a tunnel full of cars that must have the best batteries in the world because all of their lights are still on, in some the engines are still running, but everybody is gone. All the seatbelts have been ripped out of the cars.

And then the noise begins in earnest. You know what? Having soft dialogue and then SCREEEECHING a super-loud supposedly alien noise at top volume is not a substitution for scares. It's annoying, it woke up my husband in the other room, AND it's bad for my speakers. The father of the family is taken, the rest run for it and drive off without him.

Suddenly, it starts raining fake birds (don't worry - the guy who wrote the movie loved Hitchcock - he didn't hurt any birds). After it stops, so does their van and they have to travel on foot.

They remember that there was ONE mailbox on the road and they race toward it hoping to find someone with a phone because since they are in a horror movie (say it with me people) there is no signal on any of their phones. They can blame that on aliens if they want, but it's also a horror movie rule on my horror movie worksheet (patent pending) so you choose the reason.

The guy they run into at a small cabin, whom the movie portrays as one step above a caveman, tries to scare them off with a rifle, but when the aliens show up he lets them all inside. He's been waiting for his brother who went out and never came back. The movie screeches to a slow halt as nothing much was happening anyway, but now... nada. For a loooooong time. Instead of a picture, just imagine three people spending an hour in the basement. If you're still awake, keep reading...

The older brother is taken, the backwoods guy drives off presumably for help, and we get more non-action as the three remaining family members run through the dark woods for no good reason, for a long time. They find a barn and hide in it. For a long time. I'm now rooting for the screeching idiot aliens to show up quickly. They finally do. The mother gets bent backwards and off she goes. So does the backwoods guy, who had come back after finding his brother's empty truck. They scream as they're taken. Uh, no. Break someone like that, they're not going to be making ANY noise much less still be alive.

The sister and Riley spend an interminable time (again) running through dark woods. Let me say that again. INTERMINABLE. 


They make it back to the road the next day, meeting a cop who conveniently chose that exact moment to drive up. Unfortunately, he's about as handy as tits on a boar as he's immediately sucked up, then the sister, then the autistic boy is grabbed, then sucked up into... something. 

'Leaked footage' from the Air Force shows that his camera took blurry images of... stuff (Inside the spacecraft?), we hear screams, then the camera is flung from what appears to be an alien garbage shute and it makes its way back to Earth. 

It falls from outer space to Earth WITHOUT exploding into flame and spins and falls clear to the ground, again WITHOUT exploding into a billion pieces with exquisite precision onto Brown Mountain. AND it still works, as we see an Air Force dude in a hazmat suit pick it up and turn it on. 

Then we see credits, which is a cheat 'cause they have more. One year later (according to the movie) the father is found after walking out of the woods, naked and out of his mind. Roll the rest of the credits folks because I am done.

                        

IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM... BUT APPARENTLY THEY CAN HEAR YOU CHITTERING...

Apollo 18 (2011) US/Canada

What's worse than a freaking space movie that's supposed to leave you all claustrophobic and scared? One that bores you to freaking death, that's what. Now my left arm does NOT work so this will be short and sweet but I had to do this review for the hundreds of voices in my head that screamed at me that I wasted a portion of my life with this movie I might as well do something with it.



'But', I argued, 'My arm, my health, my...'

SHUT UP. YOU ARE FREAKING PITIFUL. YOU WRITE A COLUMN ON HELLO KITTY? IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED WHEN YOU STARTED THIS COLUMN?


So, head hung low (I think, I dunno, I may be hallucinating) I decided to report the basics on this non-horror non-science fiction movie.

Here's some dates to really bore you... umm I mean educate you:

On 7/20/69 there was Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong was the first man to moonwalk... err... walk on the moon.

Despite that stellar performance secretly faked by Stanley Kubrick (HAH! Got You!), in 1970 the missions for Apollo 18, 19, 20 were canceled - no money left for Kubrick... umm I mean NASA.

BUT in 12/7/72 they managed to have Apollo 17 make one final lunar mission.

BUT WAS IT??? Yes dummy, of course it was. This is their movie:

In 2011, 84 hours of classified footage is uploaded to www.lunartruth.com (don't bother, the website is just a promo page for the movie). This film was edited from that footage. Pffft, I can't even put that up with a straight face.


The first thing I noticed was the voice of one of the three doomed idiots of this supposed secret mission - SECRET? How the hell could Florida launch a space rocket and no one notice? This was super duper paranoia times remember. And the US manages not only... ah, never mind.

Oh yeah, the voice. One of the three doomed idiots played a lycanthrope on a show on SyFy called Sanctuary - which I really liked until I realized that every episode had a checklist, no exceptions, no substitutions - except for maybe a "special episode" or two. No, I won't put it here, my arm doesn't work, remember? The dude's name is Ryan Robbins and thankfully he has other work on his resume' 'cause this movie wasn't going to help his career any.

So like I said we had three idi... brave men to go on one last mission. See, the government wanted cameras on the moon so we could keep an eye on the Soviets. Hey, if the Soviets couldn't tell that the US just launched a freaking rocket... but I digest. Dammit dictation software, I said digress!


Ryan Robbins' character gets to float in the Freedom command module while the other two go to the big rock - again. We then get a seen-in-almost-every-freaking-movie-since-1999 montage of them setting up the equipment (PSD5 cameras - sounds like a disease to me). Until they find <gasp> a Soviet lander. Oh, I see - they got away with launching a rocket without the world knowing 'cause the Soviets did too. 

No, wait, I don't see - WTH did everybody just go deaf and blind in the '70's? And since they never came back, where was this 'found footage' (because yup, this movie is just that much garbage folks) discovered if it was on the freaking moon and nobody has ever gone back? Huh? Huh? Huh?


Woof, man I'm getting paranoid now - half of that paragraph the dictating software did by itself. I think. How much alcohol is in a bottle of Nyquil anyway?



So off and on the two dummies on the moon hear chittering. And stuff happens like their flag disappears (I cried during that part - I WANT MY MTV! What do you mean that wasn't the flag, I watched it on TV for years!) and yes, we have a rover roll over <chuckles like a mad woman> that's freaking funny if you think about it. Things crash on the moon? Really?

Okay, after finding the dead Soviet cosmonaut who looks... very dead (apparently in space, no one gets preserved even though there's no atmosphere there to aid decay), the two realize that they've pretty much been duped into a mission to keep an eye on the chittering creepy crawlies and it pisses them off a bit. Plus their space 'rocks' keep moving around - WTH?


Finally one gets cut and a rock is found under his skin. Yeah, I can identify with that - 'cause my arm is... never mind. It gets infected and spreads through his bloodstream until he insists that he's not going back but the other guy has to.

After about an hour of arguing and chittering, the dude gets the Soviet lander working (SOMETHING wrecked the systems in their lander - pfffft) and takes off, but he takes his samples with him. The last time he sees his partner the chittering rocks (yes you read that right) have become spider-like CGI crap and are swarming inside his helmet. Yuck.


As he approaches the command module, DOD (Department of Duh... sorry I guess it's Defense) tells them, 'Sorry kids, we pretty much knew this would happen and you're not coming home Major Tom. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.'


But he wants to go home and so keeps approaching the module - until the creepy crawlies that of course infected him too cause him to speed up and collide with the command module and the film cuts out. And we get more 'information' because a printed line on a screen is a lot cheaper than using a real story or plot.

According to all official reports, Apollo 17 was the final lunar mission.

Lt. Colonel John Grey (Ryan Robbins) was killed in a crash during a training mission over Tallahassee, FL. His body was never recovered.

Cmdr. Nathan Walker's (Lloyd Owen) F-14 crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Kadena Air Force Base. His body was never recovered.

Cpt. Benjamin Anderson (Warren Christie) was killed during a mid-air evacuation over the East China Sea. His body was never recovered.

Apollo Missions brought 840 pounds of lunar rock samples back to earth. Hundreds were given away to dignitaries of foreign countries. Many of those "gifts" were stolen or are now missing.

Theirs is the spirit that built America.

And this movie is what is tearing it apart. Thanks for the help Canada.



                        

WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN 'HELLO KITTY' IS NOT A CAT? SHE'S GOT POINTY EARS, SHE'S GOT WHISKERS, HER FREAKING NAME IS 'KITTY'! WHAT KIND OF MIND SCREW IS THIS?





Are You Distracted Yet?

Okay, confession. Yesterday I was working on a review of a very non-movie called Apollo 18. I hate movies that make me feel claustrophobic - this one just made me very, very sleepy. Anywho, despite the temperature rising and falling in and out of triple digits and the fact that I haven't been very prolific as of late, I was determined to get this review out and running. I'm taking notes - just short ones 'cause, like I said, this is a non-movie and I didn't think I needed to drag out my dictation software for that.

This was a familiar pain too...

Then a familiar pain began. You are probably more than familiar with my whining when I had an infection in my right arm that rendered the whole thing pretty much useless. Well, just for fun, this time it appears that my left arm is now going to be out of commission for a while. AND I'm left handed so... what?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'HELLO KITTY' IS NOT A KITTY!!!

And with that short distraction comes a statement from the company that created her asserting that she was NEVER a kitty but 'a happy little girl with a heart of gold'. HELLO KITTY IS A HOOKER???

Woof. Either the pain meds are kicking in or I need some serious therapy. Probably both. In either case (or both), I'm not going to be doing my review until I am in a little less pain and my dictating equipment is going to get some heavy use for the next, oh, let's say a couple of months. Dammit.

Enjoy whatever life has to offer you 'cause it's a bitch and will bite you in the ass when you're not looking. Yup, the pain pills are definitely... umm... they're.... <mumbles, shuffles off to bed>...



                        

WHAT THE HELL? I'VE SEEN A MOVIE JUST LIKE THIS NOT TOO LONG AGO (EXCEPT IT WAS BETTER THAN THIS GARBAGE) LET'S JUST LOOK THIS PUPPY UP NOW... DAMMIT!!! DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY MOVIES ARE ALMOST EXACTLY LIKE WHAT I'VE JUST SEEN... FOR THE SECOND TIME?

The Tortured (2010)

Not too terribly long ago I saw a strange movie - horror with a small bit of humor. It was about a very pedestrian couple with a teenage girl. The girl is kidnapped but returned to her family. The couple wanted the ultimate justice for the crime and the courts didn't deliver. They then found out where the bastard lived, went there, and spent the movie torturing him in every way they could think of (for being total amateurs). The movie ends when the kidnapper dies and they leave... after a short period of time the guy's brother comes home and freaks - see, HE was the kidnapper. The couple had just tortured and killed an innocent man.

Hell, they don't even bother changing
the titles on these things...

So I'm watching this flick and thinking 'Okay, this is familar.' Same tune, different dance. This time the mother is working and the father is in charge of watching their six-year-old boy. He goes inside for under a minute to get him some sunscreen. He didn't know that the boy had been scoped and targeted by a deranged maniac, who rushes in and swoops the boy up. The father doesn't even have time to get in his car - he runs helplessly down the road as the psycho gets away.




Loooong story very VERY short, the psycho is found, the boy has died, and the nastiness will now begin. After finding out that a deal was cut so the killer will only get 25 to life, the grieved parents hijack the prison van and crash it in movie-duh style.

The rest of the movie? You can pretty much guess - they torture him, he finally dies, it's revealed at the end that they had the wrong guy - they killed a tax evader while the killer went free. DUH on such a massive scale it wasn't even interesting.

So I thought okay, I've wasted my time, better get a review out of it. I'll take the two and contrast and compare.

TWO?

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY 'THEY TOOK MY (FILL IN THE BLANK HERE) SO THEY ARE GONNA PAY' MOVIES ARE OUT THERE? 

We're talking only a few years, not the history of film making. Needless to say, I can't find it. Even if (especially if) I look under 'revenge movies'. Yikes.


So if you're watching this type of movie and you're kinda pissed at me for giving away the plot and the ending - I really didn't. This scenario apparently has played itself out in a bunch of movies.

Hollywood, you truly are a worn-out bitch with no ideas, no integrity, and no good movies.



                        

THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN - AT LEAST ACCORDING TO GEORGE ROMERO - AND THAT MAKES FOR ONE LOOOOOONG MOVIE

The Dark Half (1993)

I'd both read this book and watched the movie back in the day and so decided to take another look at it. The first thing I noticed was who directed it. In fact the first thing you see is A FILM BY GEORGE ROMERO. Huh. George Romero does Stephen King. On a book that really didn't lend itself to a movie - at least not a horror movie. Then they picked an unlikely cast (Michael Rooker included which was actually nice), and did their best to try to make this psychological thriller something that horror buffs would want to watch. It wasn't, by and large. The movie actually lost about a million dollars in theaters although I'm sure since then DVD sales have narrowed that down quite a bit.

If I may stick my neck out a little and pretend to be somebody with a working brain - I believe that this story worked much better as a book than a movie because it was more about philosophy and beliefs than about visual scares and gore - in other words, you'd have to add a lot or change a lot to make the story visual.


I believe what Romero tried to do - without Kubrick-ing the story - was attempt to bring a visceral and horrific vision to King's book. And that effort took Romero two hours worth of film. Although the movie was overlong, I felt the attempt was decent for its day. Here's the movie's version of the story (pared down quite a bit):

Thad Beaumont is a creative little kid in 1968. He likes listening to Elvis and writing stories with his favorite pencil, a number two Black Beauty. Thing is, he gets headaches - a lot. And when he gets them he hears birds, always birds. The doc can't find anything wrong with him and sends him on his way. But when Thad collapses on the front lawn, it's time to open his noggin to find out why. 

After opening his skull in a move that has an operating nurse run screaming from the room they find - a twin, lodged in his brain. No, not a whole one, or even partial. The book says there's part of a nostril, some fingernails, some teeth, and a malformed human eye. In the movie it merely shows the freaky eye (looks like a cow's eye to me but meh) and the doc mentions a couple of teeth - one with a cavity. What? Brains eat away enamel?

Okay, so Thad's mom's pregnancy experienced what is now called Vanishing Twin Syndrome. It used to not even be a THING, much less a BIG THING, until docs started doing ultrasounds earlier in pregnancies. Now the movie (can't remember if the book does) claims that one in ten pregnancies start with twins and one absorbs the other. This in utero cannibalism has been happening forever - but let's update the information.

I'm gonna quote from an article here since I'm too lazy to look this up and present a dissertation myself: Scientists have confirmed that the number of twin conceptions greatly outnumbers the number of actual twin births. Some estimates offer that 1 in 8 people started life as a twin, while in reality only 1 in 70 actually are a twin. 

In the book Having Twins, author Elizabeth Noble claims that 80% of twin pregnancies result in the loss of one or both babies. Other studies predict that Vanishing Twin Syndrome occurs in 21 - 30% of all multiple pregnancies in the United States. It is estimated that Vanishing Twin Syndrome will play a role in 50% of assisted ovulation pregnancies.

In other words yeah, it happens. But does part of the vanished 'twin' live on inside you? Nope. You've got to have a brain for that at the very least. An eye, a couple teeth, and part of a nostril isn't a person - it's a tumor. But Thad's parents apparently wanted their 'deceased' child to be treated like a person and so they interred it in the family plot without telling Thad. All he knew is he had a brain tumor, and that's it.

Now in King's book the pondering was aimed at the thought that we all carry our 'twin' inside ourselves - is that what makes us good or bad? It seems silly but actually is a credible thought. If that 'twin' affects things like our brain chemistry, is it actually the one in control?


Okay, back to the Romero movie: Skipping ahead to Thad (Timothy Hutton) becoming both an adult and a writer. Now he's a teacher and has written some deep books but the projects that really seem to sell are a series of violent and vice-filled novels about a dude named Alexis Machine. His pseudonym is Richard Bachman... whoops, no, that's King's. Thad's writing under the name George Stark.

The books are cheesy but they make money. But Thad doesn't want to just write violent stuff - besides, it affects his behavior. While writing them he drinks too much, smokes too much, and is a general asshole. And they're penned by hand using only No. 2 Black Beauty pencils. He realizes it and decides to 'kill' George Stark. He's been found out anyway by a guy who wants to blackmail him to keep quiet.

So he kills him - by putting an article out that he is Stark. He and his wife, Liz (Amy Madigan) pose for a picture on his family plot over his own empty grave (uh huh) and even have a fake headstone: George Stark 1985 - 1991, Not A Very Nice Guy. Now somehow (because King said so) that makes Thad's twin brother, buried unknown there, to come to life and dig his way out. And the killing will now begin.

What Thad knows about George Stark is only what he wrote while pretending to be him. Stark goes around slicing people up while Thad gets the heat but not arrested because he's nowhere near where Stark is. At least that's the reasoning that Sheriff Alan Pangborn (Michael Rooker) uses when he refuses to put Thad in jail. That and Thad's the father of twin babies and he'd hate to lock up their dad if he doesn't have to.

And Stark keeps killing. Why? He wants Thad to start writing his stuff again of course. Looking just like Thad, he contacts him and demands that the writing begin immediately. He has another reason too: Looking into the mirror, Stark sees that he is slowly 'coming apart' and will be gone if the books don't start again.

And Thad is hearing the sparrows again. Stark can't hear them though. This is where they try to get complicated - the movie asserts that sparrows are 'psychopomps' and that's why they came when Thad got headaches, when the 'tumor' was removed, when Stark was 'buried' and now they're getting thicker as Stark gets worse. Does that make sense?

Okay quick info this time 'cause I'm freaking tired: A psychopomp can be basically any animal you want (although birds are popular) and means different things to different people of different cultures. The most basic explanation is that they are supposed to transport souls. Understand? No? 


After a mind-numbing amount of time as we watch more people we don't care about get killed, George Stark getting ickier looking, Thad looking puzzled and bored at the same time, and toddlers being fussy, we finally cut to the chase: Stark has found Thad's family and so if Thad doesn't write, the family dies.


Thad has an idea - make Stark write himself. That kind of backfires though - the more Stark writes himself, the more he heals and it is Thad that begins to fall about. But the sparrows are flying again. Now here's where the IMDb says something really stupid:



"Suddenly, a huge flock of sparrows comes and tears Stark apart, and take him back to hell where he belongs. The sparrows are agents of Satan that come and collect evil souls that were not allowed to live. Thad and Liz are spared and they and Pangborn watch as the sparrows disappear into the night."

This is hell? Really?

Apparently whoever wrote that synopsis didn't bother to look up... you know what? Who cares. Point being that Stark was never really 'alive' in the first place, did not go to 'hell' so how could he 'go back'? He can't. He was never REALLY real. But this movie is REALLY over.

                        

WHY I HATE HOME INVASION MOVIES SO, SO MUCH... BUT I KIND OF LIKED THIS ONE. GO FIGURE.



You're A Dumbass - What, That's Not It? Okay, Okay, Don't Get Testy...

You're Next (2011)

In a word? Stupid. I hate home invasion movies because they're stupid. The setup is stupid, the family is usually stupid, and you have to endure 90 some minutes of stupid people trying to kill more stupid people for stupid reasons. Stupid. Notice I didn't say DUH? That's 'cause home invasion movies are a special kind of stupid that insults the DUH formula. Stupid.

Okay, so maybe I was a little hasty...

Oh, and you film maker people who think you're sooooo clever to use loud and annoying brass sections to promote tension? I HATE TUBAS!!! I don't know anybody who would sit and listen to a concert mostly featuring tubas (or any other large brass instrument for that matter). KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF! That's called irritation, not tension.

C'mon, this is a bed and breakfast, not a house, right?

Buuuuut.... this one had parts that were almost good, gory, and (dare I say it), funny? So I'll be telling you about it but if you want to watch it first, better do it 'cause, you know, spoilers. It is currently streaming on Netflix (who advertised it like it was handed directly down to them from God or something...).

Adam Wingard does a decent job of taking this movie and making it into something a bit different. You've got some good gore, even a bit of comedy with an ending both predictable and yet satisfying. Watch it knowing you're not just going to be seeing a copy of 'The Strangers' or 'The Purge'.

Now let's all hold hands before
we start killing each other...

This is about a family I wanted dead when they first sat down to dinner, and I wanted them dead FAST. And why not? This is a story where the family shows up at a huuuuge house nobody normal owns anywhere ever for their parent's anniversary. The front door is actually open when the parents first show up, although the house has not been used in quite a while. But the movie has to start so the father shrugs and goes in anyway. THEY. WILL. DIE.

I feel like I'm being watched... good
 thing we live in the middle of nowhere...

It's covered in dust and sheets and yet one woman working by herself manages not only to clean this monstrosity, she has a ten-course dinner ready to eat although there are no maids, cooks or other help - and these people are NOT the self-sufficient kind so, yeah, STUPID. They don't even know that the only neighbor they have for miles is dead because... uh... they just don't care I guess.

Okay, we have to wait out here HOW long?

So it was obvious that I wasn't going to get deaths fast - this movie is 94 irritating minutes long. One of the family members has a girlfriend who has an Australian accent. That instantly told me that she's gonna be important in that 'I'm not a stupid American so I'm gonna survive' kind of way. 

Yes folks, we have a winner...

Aaaaand my horror movie worksheet (patent pending) was pretty much finished before 20 minutes of the movie had gone by. All I needed was the order of deaths, and maybe where the gore got good (not great, but there were some good shots). And some humor believe it or not.


This was another one of those movies that seemed to polarize people's opinions. Critics either thought it was the wittiest, neatest, twistiest home invasion movie around - or they thought it was the dumbest, most predictable, biggest waste of time around. Guess which direction I was leaning? 

Although I got a chuckle or two from some Stooges-worthy funny bits (violent, but funny) and Home Alone material they ripped off, mostly I was heaving sighs at the impossibility yet predictability of the whole thing. Okay first - Mousketeer Roll Call!

Okay, okay, that's enough child labor violations and potential child molesters...

'YOU'RE NEXT' ROLL CALL!!! Here's our list: Erin, the gal with the accent and the surety of living through this movie (Sharni Vinson), her milquetoast boyfriend (look it up) Crispian (A. J. Bowen), his parents Aubrey (Barbara Crampton) and Paul (Rob Moran), his brother, Drake (Joe Swanberg), Drake's wife, Kelly (Margaret Laney), his other brother, Felix (Nicholas Tucci), Felix's girlfriend Zee (Wendy Glenn), and his younger sister Aimee (Amy Seimetz) and her boyfriend, Tariq-don't-get-too-attached-to-him-wink-wink (Ti West).

Would you guys WAIT - I'm getting to you!

This huuuuge house is dad's 'retirement project' since he retired from a defense contractor with an 'insane severance package' and is ridiculously wealthy, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with the house - it's perfect. STUPID.

Rice Crispies... err, I mean Crispian and his girlfriend Erin show up the first night, the rest show up the next day for their parent's 35 year anniversary. Now this is supposed to be the first time they've gathered together in a long time, but on the mantel is a picture that was obviously taken within the past week. STUPID. All sit down for the big dinner that nobody could have made in time and it takes them a good, oh, two or three minutes to start fighting...

What? Do I have something in my teeth?

What a surprise. This family hates each other. THEY. WILL. DIE.

Our first victim: While the others bicker, Tariq inexplicably looks out the window and thinks he sees something (Even though the light inside would make it impossible to see through the darkness outside - try it. Just see your own room, don't cha?) so he walks up to it. He did see something (says the script). A crossbow apparently, because as he turns around, a wooden arrow is penetrating his skull. Hmm, they must have borrowed arrows from Cotton Mouth Joe. "Who?", you ask? Don't. That's in another review.

And let's not dwell on the fact that NOBODY heard the glass break - AND the fact that the window would have shattered, not have a small piece tinkle to the floor from the arrow, or we'll be here forever.

Yeah, let's send the girl out with the killers, good idea!

Another arrow comes through the window and gets Drake in the back - but he lives. Now all are scrambling to get away from the table, because obviously the food pisses somebody off so... yeah. 

All check their cell phones and we get a small change in the normal horror movie rule book - instead of no signal because they're in a horror movie, they guess that somebody has a jammer - illegal but available on the internet (thanks for that information guys).

Erin decides to send a 911 text (You can do that?) and when it doesn't go through, she sets her phone to keep trying (don't ask me if that actually works, I've got a dumb phone).

So they send out Aimee 'cause, you know, anyone named Aimee deserves to die. Just kidding, look at my name - I'm the last to throw any stones. But her efforts are for naught and so is her throat when she hits the wire strung tight across the doorway. That's three.

Erin springs into action to the puzzlement of the others - she seems to know just what to do. I wouldn't mind having her around during the big ZA. While she does that, the grieving mother goes upstairs to take a nap. Bad idea. A waiting intruder in a mask (there's a tiger, a lamb and a fox) is there to stab her with a huge machete. Kind of overkill for an older lady... meh. And he leaves it there. How many did they bring with them anyway?

Home Depot must sell these by the dozen...

Kelly discovers her, panics and runs next door to the (dead) neighbor's house. A killer has followed her however, so she's shoved through the glass door then gets an ax to the head. These guys have really good arm strength - axes and knives in skulls? That's hard to do. Mind you, I'm not speaking from experience...

Crispian discovers their cars are disabled and flees the property on foot to seek help (wink-wink). Erin is attacked but kicks the attacker in the balls (remember ladies, it's balls and eyes - always) and makes sure to kill him A LOT with a meat tenderizer. I guess he's ready to cook. Paul finds that the intruders have been in the house for a while. There are pee bottles (ewww, c'mon, the place had a billion bathrooms, massive DUH), food, sleeping bags... but alas, his time is done.

Which 'cut' do you want.... what? Why are you groaning?

In front of his son Felix and girlfriend Zee, his throat is cut. Felix is pissed. Because he loves his dad? Nah, because the masked whosawhatsiz killed his dad in front of him and he got blood on his face. See, they wanted the family money now instead of waiting for an inheritance and so maneuvered this little shindig. Massive DUH.

Erin and Drake are attacked by another of the masked whosawhatsiz but Erin stabs him in the shoulder and he jumps out the window. Erin and Zee (pretending to help) set up some traps they learned from watching Home Alone. Just kidding. Erin confides to Zee that her father raised her in the Outback in Australia in a survivalist camp, her mom moving her to the US when she was 15. 

Yeah, just die already!

Felix and Drake go to the basement where Felix stabs Drake to death with many screwdrivers. This was definitely my favorite line in the movie: Felix has stabbed Drake a billion times but Drake just stands there and looks at him so Felix finally says, "Would you just die already? This is hard enough for me." I think I peed a little from laughing.

Erin goes upstairs to find Paul, but discovers his dead body and is attacked by a masked whosawhatsiz. She escapes by jumping out of the window, impaling her leg on glass. She runs anyway, is attacked again, but manages to get back into the house for some reason. I guess she thinks she can save the rest. She finds a place to hide and thus hears the whole movie plot in a convenient sentence or two.

Her hiding place is found out, however, when the text she sent to 911 has now gone through, the return message saying they're on their way making enough noise for the others to hear.

...Wouldn't that guy stink by now?...

She is attacked and kills another masked whosawhatsiz with a screwdriver to the head. Now we have a quick trap-set-up-montage for the other three... or is it four...

Felix and Zee take off with the crossbow - the one masked whosawhatsiz left alive goes into house to get her... he has a machete, in the dark. She has a camera to 'flash' in order to see... but the flash was on 'auto' to draw him to it, so he walks by her and she clobbers him with a log and bashes his head in. She's really good at bashing heads.

Just wait, this isn't the good part...

She's hurt, covered in blood, and Felix gets her with the crossbow - doesn't slow her down a bit. Probably because the idiot missed. Getting back to the kitchen, she grabs Zee who's trying to use the last arrow on her when Felix comes in - she throws a pan of liquid on the stove at him but it wasn't hot - didn't prevent him from slipping though - are we supposed to laugh?

...this is...

Well I did at the next part which wins my 'Most original kill in a dumbass home invasion film' award: She's attacked by Felix yet again and so she grabs the blender and breaks it on his head, plugs it in and turns it upside down...

Pfffft... ahem. Sorry, almost peed a little again. I've got to see a doctor about that. Anywho, with the boyfriend getting scrambled brains, the girlfriend gets yet another of Erin's knives to the top of her head. Then Erin hears Felix' telephone ringing. She answers without speaking...

Yup, it's snap, crackle, and pop. Umm, I mean it's Crispian, asking if all the icky parts are over so he can come back inside. See, he's a pacifist (apparently that means I won't kill you but I'll pay someone else to do it) and can't stand the sight of blood. He wonders why Felix doesn't answer, and sees a very bloody Erin as he comes inside. 

He stammers an excuse about how she was supposed to be totally unharmed, the only witness alive with a 'clean record' (?!?) to tell the police about the 'unknown' intruders killing everybody. He then finishes his explanation with my second most favorite line in the movie:

"How were we supposed to know that you were really good at killing people?"

She responds calmly and properly... by stabbing him in the throat. And gets shot for her troubles - the boys in blue have finally come. 

Right between his beady little eyes...

Uh, scratch that. ONE police officer showed up, looked in a broken window and immediately assumed this was all Erin's fault and shot her - in the shoulder, natch. He then calls for backup (?!?) and starts to come in the front door. Erin yells for him to stop, having booby-trapped it but...

I'm sure John Hughes is revolcarse en la tumba. Whaddya mean who the hell is John Hughes? You're obviously up waaay past your bedtime. Get going and don't forget to BRUSH YOUR TEETH!