THOSE WHO MAKE CERAMIC DOLLS SHOULDN'T THROW STONES... ISN'T THAT HOW THE EXPRESSION GOES? NO? OH, WELL THEN, THROW ALL THE FREAKING STONES YOU WANT BECAUSE THIS MOVIE DOESN'T EVEN DESERVE A REVIEW...

Annabelle (2014)

Okay, you knew this was coming, didn't you? I mean hey, the Amityville Horror is once again being considered 'factual' even though there are very little facts (and very little still-living witnesses) about what was claimed, written about, and eventually filmed.

This is (as of February 14, 2015) the highest grossing horror film of all time. What the hell is wrong with you people? Yeah, a lot of you thought the movie sucked, but you ain't gonna get your money back, are you? The doll they used has got to be the most freaking ugly thing I've ever seen. Can you imagine buying this monstrosity, much less putting it in a nursery with your newborn child? That's an express ticket to raising a psycho serial killer. But that's not my point and no, I refuse to review this piece of shit.


Interesting how during the Amity craze the Warrens were the best thing since... well, nothing. Then, as time went by, what a shock to find that MOST (they are willing to say that at least) of the happenings in the book about the house in Amity and in the movie WERE EXAGGERATED OR JUST PLAIN MADE UP. The priest never was 'chased' out of the house, the Lutzs themselves later backtracked on a lot of what they claimed, and also contradicted themselves on numerous occasions.

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/amityville.asp

But the idiots ruling Hollywood, bereft of original ideas and going for the easy sell, decided to use the fact that time has passed and people have forgotten for the most part the fact that the Warrens were discredited by 'experts' on numerous occasions. The Warren's findings were suspect, and, if they claimed they made no money off of the whole mess, well that was a huge freaking lie too.

But.

Wait... that ain't no doll... what movie is this?

The Warrens, who always claimed to be so-called 'demonologists' have this room in their house full of objects with particularly evil demonics in them. Okay people, demonic is a adjective, not a noun, kay? Everybody on the same page? A demon is, as I've said countless times, merely an angel that has disobeyed God, therefore, why the ever loving shit would they think that such a powerful being could be 'trapped' in anything? 

In The Conjuring, Mr. Warren explains that they keep these objects in one room and a Catholic Priest blesses it (some sources say once a month, some say twice) to prevent any escapes, I guess. That would indicate that all demons are afraid of Catholics, which makes the rest of the world fair game, I suppose. Of course they don't bother to LOCK the door even though they have a child who is very curious as a child would be about a room full of objects that she is never supposed to touch.


ALSO in The Conjuring, Mr. Warren tells the two nurses who have the doll that there never WAS an Annabelle. This little tidbit true or false had to be changed or this movie would contradict itself. Although it already does. And it's stupid. And the people involved are mentally challenged. Or, since everything is fiction anyway and nothing has any solid foundation in fact, they can pretty much change the stories around as they see fit and as they see dollar signs. Tell you what? Wanna see a REALLY scary movie with dolls? Got one for ya - Dead Silence (2007). That one still gives me the creeps, even if Donnie Wahlberg plays an annoying cop who has to follow the dude through the movie (but he dies so that's okay).

Quick overview: Two hippies, a guy and a girl from the 60's go on a slashing spree (To imitate Manson? They don't say). They first murder the neighbors then go after the couple expecting their first child. The woman says 'I like your doll' before slashing her own throat for Hollywood reasons. A drop of blood hits the doll in the face and sucks into her eye. The name of the female slasher? Annabelle. Suck on that you stupid Hollywood idiots!

Now in The Conjuring we had a music box. For Annabelle, we had a doll (although it was nothing like the real one). Have you seen pictures of this so-called room of 'demonics'? Hollywood is going to be making millions for as many years as people can put up with the weak tales of the Warrens and their little toys. 

Demons are fallen angels. How the... ugh. How could they be 'stuck' anywhere? A glass case is supposed to hold this particular 'demonic' as they call it, in a doll? Wow, demons are real weaklings then - why should ANYONE be afraid of them?

If you've ever seen the Warren's "official" website (and I wouldn't bother - the only reason I did was to see what it was for and it's mainly to sell tickets for tours), you'll get a taste of how intelligent these people really are (yes I know Mr. Warren is deceased, but I'm sure there's a whole group hanging on Mrs. Warren's every word). This sentence appears on the face page:

Bare witness to a Raggedy-Ann doll which is responsible for a death of a young man

So. What this sentence is telling me is that they don't know how to spell, they don't know proper grammar, and they apparently don't believe in punctuation either. 

Imagine how shocked I was <sarcasm bubbling to the floor>.

And that's all I have to say about that and any other ridiculous Warren movies they make about these freaking so-called demonic toys.

UNTIL.... DUH DUH DUMMMMMMMM!!!!! Sources are saying that the next piece of shit from Mrs. Warren (and her accountants) will be The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Haunting. It's about two chicks in England who are supposedly possessed. Lorraine personally herself, CROSS HER HEART AND HOPE TO THE GOD WHO'S GOING TO BE INCREDIBLY PISSED IF SHE DOESN'T KNOCK THE SHIT OFF, witnessed them levitate.

No of course I didn't just jump off my bed, I'm floatin'...

The movie will be in 2016 so if you're insisting on watching more crap, better start cashing in your 401K's because this is only the beginning folks...

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU COMBINE AN AUTHOR WHO DEFINITELY USED DADDY'S REPUTATION TO GET HIS BOOK PRINTED AS WELL AS MADE INTO A MOVIE, HAVE AS YOUR MAIN STAR A MAN WHO'S SPENT MOST OF HIS YOUNG LIFE IN FRONT OF A CAMERA, AND THE STUPIDEST STORY YOU'VE EVER HEARD THAT CAN'T EVEN TELL WHETHER DEMONS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE EVIL OR NOT?

Horns (2013) Canada/USA

You'll have to excuse me for the excess of sarcasm I feel coming on reviewing this TWO HOUR movie. I do NOT claim to be someone who knows everything about the Bible, but I DO know enough that there are no such things as humans being turned into GOOD demons that go around solving murder mysteries (Maybe we can call them 'The Horned Scooby Doo Mysteries').

The movie is set in Seattle Washington but as a resident of the Pacific Northwest, I knew in ten seconds we were looking at Canada. In fact, I was so confident, I swore I would eat gravel if I was wrong. I am happy to say that my Miso soup was quite good this morning.

It wasn't much of a secret...

THEN I find out that this is from a novel, also called Horns, written by Joe Hill. Pffft... Joe Hillstrom King is more accurate. As in Stephen King's son? As in he held a golden ticket to print any piece of crap he decided to pound out on his laptop in Starbucks?

So. Our movie. Ig (short for Ignacious, one of a freaking ton of religious themes in this pile) Perrish (Parish?), played by Daniel Radcliffe is, as he is in every freaking movie he's in, a nice guy. He's in love with a nice girl named Merrin (dumb Exorcist reference and played mostly in flashbacks by Juno Temple) - they've been together since they were kids. He's prepared to propose to her but for some reason, she instead cries and runs off. He proceeds to get totally wasted, passes out, and finds out the next morning she's been raped and killed and Ig is the prime suspect.

Okay, what's the forensic evidence say? Nothing - because someone burned down the... uh... forensic evidence building? What, was it some sort of hidden cabin in the woods that no cops ever attend to?

This is the kind of crap this movie is full of. Oh, and if you're Catholic - umm, well, I think people of every religion would think this movie was full of shit.

Ignacious is now starting to grow demon's horns. Let's start with the definition of a demon. A demon is an angel that has been rejected by God for disobedience. Thus, a demon is an angel, just not a good one. So where the ever-lovin' hell did they come up with horns, hooves, pitchforks, etc.? What does the third sentence of this paragraph say?

If Merrin's father had just pulled the
trigger we'd have saved a hell of a lot of time...

Is Ignacious an angel that fell to earth because he's evil? No, he's absolutely a pure human with a ton of bad luck. But he's now a demon. A nice demon. A demon that would give you a ride when it's raining and NOT try to hit on you. 'Kay.

No no no that's NOT okay. This movie assumes we're total morons and treats us as such for TWO FREAKING HOURS! Oh, did I already mention that? Also, I think Mr. Hill should look up the word gratuitous. Gratuitous means uncalled for, lacking good reason, unwarranted. A whole lot of the sexual content, language and violence fits this definition perfectly.

Oh, except when he tells the press that
whoever beats the shit out of everyone
else can have an exclusive interview with him.

So. Ignacious is a GOOD demon. And he wants to find out who killed the love of his life. He decides to use his new found demon powers... ugh, I feel dirty just typing that... by influencing people to tell him the truth. Oh and do a ton of sick stuff and tell him even more sick stuff. 'Cause he's a good guy. Right? Right?

To say that cutting the gratuitous crap out would at least reduced this movie to 90 minutes (45 if we were lucky) is just pure wishing - and it ain't gonna happen. If Ignacious was such a GOOD demon, wouldn't he be at least upset that people are turning into horrific perverts because of him?

Hmm? Oh this is just an example of
 how you might look trying to follow this movie...

Let's talk about even stupider things. Each character's car had Washington plates (Supposed to be in Seattle, right?), but to be 'clever' (sarcasm heavily inserted here), each car has what is obviously a Bible verse which has something to do with that character. Sigh. Okay - the plates ARE Washington plates (Evergreen State ones) but they are NOT real. The letter and number configurations are incorrect for ANY kind of plate unless you get specialized plates (and I don't think you could with that many characters). So.

Ignacious (they call him Ig) doesn't have much support from anyone except his best friend from childhood. His brother (puzzlingly played by Joe Anderson) who is a trumpet player, (maybe), and his mom and dad aren't really sure whether he is innocent or not, but they are fast to come up with sick things to say when he's around - it seems the only ones to be 'immune' are those wearing crosses... ugh this movie is seriously making me ill.

Ig, the GOOD demon, is determined to give everyone 'what they deserve'. This includes making his junkie brother take every drug he's got stashed and land him in the hospital. What a good, good brother.

After lots of gratuitous... everything... we finally come down to the nitty gritty - and how 'bout that, it's Ig's best friend from childhood who killed his girlfriend. Didn't see that one coming, didja?

So you have sat through this disgusting display of everything. You've heard songs that you wish you hadn't (living in one of those houses nobody owns anywhere, Ig has this collection of vinyl that covers a whole wall of shelves) like the Pixies, David Bowie, and Marilyn Manson for some reason. And boom, the killer turns out to be the only other young male shown in town, Ig's best friend. Pfffft...

Oh we're not done by a long shot kiddies, 'cause then we get this:

What kind of symbolistic mumbo jumbo crap is THIS supposed to be?

In case you can't see what's happening, Ig has Merrin's cross on his neck. He rips it off, THEN grows wings and flops around THEN falls to the ground on fire and becomes a demon. And don't scratch your head, it only stirs up the flees...


So the burning (tee hee) question: Why did Merrin run instead of marrying Ig and preventing this horrid movie? Get out your tissues: Merrin's mother died of a form of cancer that 'runs in families'. She didn't want Ig to suffer as her father had suffered when her mom died. 


Umm dear, sorry to break this to you, but a LOT of types of cancers run through families - and you don't even HAVE to have a family history of cancer to get it yourself. Breathing your boyfriend's second-hand smoke could've wasted you before your mother's genes got a hold of you.

Hmm? Did Ig turn back into a human? HE WAS HUMAN - HAVEN'T YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION? DEMONS ARE FALLEN ANGELS (WHO LOOK JUST LIKE ANGELS, THEY'RE JUST REJECTS) - IG WAS NEVER A DEMON IN THE FIRST PLACE, 'KAY?

So dear readers, save two hours and read a good book - just make sure the last name of the author isn't 'Hill'.

YOU JUST MISQUOTED THE SHIT OUT OF THAT!








The Appearing (2014)

This movie was absolutely terrible. This is yet another possession movie that they claim takes different ideas and twists and turns on itself. What they mean is they don't really have a clear story idea. The director, Daric Gates (who also wrote, produced and edited this garbage), just threw a bunch of stuff together and hoped it stuck. It was apparently an indie film and while I couldn't find out how much this turkey cost, it couldn't have been much - about the only special effect were the really awful contact lenses.

It claims to be based on true events - which basically means it was filmed on the planet Earth and it's true that it just ate at least $20 out of your wallet.


There are so many inconsistencies, movie conveniences, outright no-way-in-hell-could-that-ever-have-happened, garbage that it just makes a horrible, horrible progression of a story. I did look around at other reviews before I started this one because I'm learning that if I check around to see what other people think of a particular movie, I can usually separate those that have actually seen the movie, those who probably worked on the movie, and those who plain just don't know what the hell they're talking about. 

In this instance I would say the 'you don't know what the hell you're talking about' person was one who had some Christian agenda (and I have nothing against Christians, I'm one myself) and made inane comments like, "I love it when the movie starts with a Scripture." What the hell? Whether a movie starts with a Scripture has absolutely nothing to do with whether it's going to be good or not. Believe me. I've seen A LOT of them.

This one particular person said he also liked that they introduced religious elements into the story. Trouble is, most of what they "introduce" were obscure passages from the book of Enoch, which is not part of the Bible. The rest was a demon mangling Bible verses by picking a phrase or two and mashing them together. Is that 'religious'?


I laughed my butt off when one reviewer assumed that Michael was Rachel's dad... that's EXACTLY what I thought for the first 20 minutes or so of the film until she yells at him that he hasn't touched her since....  I still chuckle 'cause I mean... look at him. Now look at her. Now look at him again. Now you have my permission to go get a drink.

You've gotta love the IMDb movie database. For The Appearing (and this is also on top of their Facebook page with just a few word differences), it says: "A woman once possessed by a mysterious entity uncovers a shocking secret about her past and must face the demon that dwells inside of her."

Now, my first thought was geez, that sounds like the beginning of the Incredible Hulk TV show. My second thought was wow, they just gave away the whole movie. The information it gives you're not supposed to learn until the last, oh, say 20 minutes of the movie. Miss Mayhem looked at it, shook her head, and decided to pass. Coward. Just kidding, dear.


It apparently was filmed at Hollywood Studios - that would explain why most of the sets look like concrete block storage units – and I'll explain that later. 

I don't mind people saying they like a religious type of theme to their supernatural movies. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. But throughout this movie, I was reminded of a line from Supernatural Activity, which was used more than once in that movie, and use constantly by me in this movie. Basically: You just misquoted the shit out of that right now.

Now I've pretty much told you the movie already, but I don't feel bad because this isn't a movie you're gonna wanna see anyway. I watched it for you. In front of an old, supposedly cursed house called Granville Manor, teenagers scare each other with talk about someone called Martha May, and how something bad happened there in the 1980s. So, of course, one girl wants to check it out. 

Her very sexually frustrated boyfriend follows her into the house. Apparently, her so-called friends forget all about the two of them because they all go home without caring that those two never came out of the house.

Now we have a sad sack couple who has just moved into what they call Glenwood Bay. Michael is the husband, Rachel is the wife. Their backstory is brief: They have just lost their young daughter who apparently drowned in a swimming pool. So quite by random (that's sarcastic - you'll see why later) they choose this small town to start over. 

Michael becomes a deputy. The Sheriff is named Hendricks. He is played by Don Swayze, the younger brother of Patrick Swayze. The resemblance to the late Patrick is eerie. Even his voice sounds just like him. Sheriff Hendricks puts the couple up in a motel until they can find house.


Right off the bat, Michael is put to work. His first case; the missing teenager who had gone into the so-called cursed house. During his investigation, he finds out that the boyfriend who followed her also was missing. His wife, Rachel is on medication due to, I'm guessing, depression because of the death of their child. She is seeing a psychiatrist at what looks to be a mental asylum because every town in America has a mental asylum, whether used or abandon, except for mine. 


This asylum is run by a doctor played by the always ineffective Dean Cain. I got a pleasant surprise, though, when Rachel left her appointment. Inexplicably, and throughout the whole movie, there are these cages made of concrete and faced with chain link fencing. Everywhere. Anyway, when Rachel walks by one of the interesting looking cages, a wild man starts screaming at her, jumping up and down and spouting gibberish. It's Joe Estevez! I'd know that voice anywhere. Here in this movie he is known simply as (and is credited as) Mental Man. Funny!

Back to Michael. Apparently someone informed him that the boyfriend of the missing girl could be found at this mental asylum. When he gets there, Dr. Shaw (Cain) informs him that the boy was found and is speaking but in, according to them anyway, a dead language. (Did you know that psychiatrists were experts in dead languages? Me neither.)

Rachel sees a small girl running through the woods, and I guess she's going to chase this little girl around for the rest of the movie. And of course the first place they go is to the 'cursed' house where Rachel conveniently finds a necklace of the little girl on the steps. But then the movie shoots off in another direction and we have no idea what happened with the two of them. Get used to it.

Suddenly Rachel is back at the motel, busy being freaked out. We've got the beginning of every PA movie. In other words, doors opening, cabinets opening, things moving, and an unplugged radio that looks like it's from the freaking 20s or 30s is playing even though it's unplugged. Oh, and her nose starts to bleed so we know she's doomed one way or the other because that is a horror movie rule.

Swayze and his super-macho fleur-de-lis

Since Rachel apparently doesn't have anything better to do, she decides that this spooky stuff has to do with the house. She goes back. She goes in. Now this house has been abandoned for God knows how long. But apparently the town has kept the electricity on all those years.

And the non-action grinds on. Swayze has a tattoo on his forearm and he says it shows him to be, and this is not an exact quote, since he likes to quote random fractions of scripture, some sort of warrior for the Lord. It's a fleur-de-lis. Now, since these movies are so bad, and we've wasted (or, actually, I've wasted) time watching the damn thing, we might as well learn a little something. A fleur-de-lis is a stylized Lily that is used as a design or symbol. It can be religious, political, dynastic, artistic, emblematic, and symbolic. So using a fleur-de-lis as a symbol of being a warrior for the Lord is pretty weak sauce. Leave the design for the curtains, son.

Rachel is convinced that she has seen the little girl being murdered by another little girl inside the house. So she gets her husband and the Sheriff and the three of them go to investigate. Now, did I mention that the house has electricity? They go down to the basement, I guess, where we have yet another concrete enclosure with a wire door. What. The. Hell. It is also brightly lit, so much so that, even though the Sheriff and deputy insist on using their flashlights, we cannot even see a beam from either one. Massive, massive duh quantity here. They find nothing.

Hold tight kiddies, were going to get into serious stupid territory here. Rachel is now wandering around in her nightgown and guess where she goes? Say it with me… Saaaaaay iiiiiit... the house. This time she sees supposedly written in blood a message on the wall. It's way too thick to be blood. If they are trying to say this is a dead language, why is it using English letters? I don't expect you to answer that, it was just rhetorical.


Now we get to hear a phrase that's going to be repeated ad nauseam for the rest of the movie: the sad mouse lives in this house. We. Hear. It. Constantly. It is spoken, written, painted, carved, just displayed freaking everywhere. And now people are using Scriptures, except not really because they don't know their Bibles, so what they do is they take a little of this, a little of that, a little of the other thing, and then smush it together and misapply it. Which makes me yell at the screen (my hubby hates that) you just misquoted the shit out of that right now!

So what happened to the original teenage girl? Rachel can find her without even trying. She's sitting there in the woods when she sees something strange. It's the partially covered body of the teenager. But the real giggle, actually the only giggle of the whole movie besides Joe Estevez, is when the blonde is in the morgue. Somebody should have warned this dead body that she was going to be touched. 

The coroner uncovers her head and starts her speech about what the cause of death is, running her hand over the girl's forehead. This causes the dead girl to flinch, her eyebrows raising up about half an inch. And you know how some so-called corpses can't seem to hold their breath long enough during a scene? 


Well, this woman shows the corpse's abdomen which for some reason has a long sewn slit across it. That's not a usual autopsy scar - I have no idea what that was for. All I know is, this corpse was very ticklish, because when the coroner touches her above the scar, the abdomen shakes. It would be funny if this were the end of the movie.

Back to the perils of Pauline. Whoops, I mean Rachel. Rachel, who obviously didn't have all her marbles when she got there, is obviously losing it big time. She walks outside her hotel room where she spends all her time when she's not finding dead bodies, and sees a bloody knife on the porch. So, being a deputy's wife, she does the only logical thing – she picks the damn thing up. So much for evidence. 

She runs out into the woods because that's all there is in this town, a mental asylum, a Sheriff's office, a motel, a cursed house, and the woods. Once out in the woods she does a bit of yoga – by that I mean, she bends backwards till her head touches her feet and apparently that is Hollywood's version of being possessed. Oh, that and bad contact lenses. 

Now that she's possessed, almost everything she says is some sort of misapplied Scripture because the moviemakers know almost nothing about the Bible, but apparently they assume that demons know the Bible much better than most people do. Sadly, that is actually true. After all, they were there when it was written.

There are those that truly try to read and apply Bible truth, but those people are a small part of the population and none of them are in this movie.


Okay, I've tortured you with this movie long enough. Now let's get down to the absolutely incredible coincidences and contrivances. Michael finds out that Rachel used to live in this totally random small town they just moved into. Everybody knew it. Nobody told him. Rachel is the older sister of the little girl she's been chasing through this whole damn movie. And, apparently while in this cursed house, she stabbed her to death. She then put her in a convenient garbage bag that she carried around with her and buried her sister in the woods. 

She was found and put in this mental asylum, which apparently is pretty busy for a small town. How does he find this out, you ask? Yes, I know you didn't ask. Doctor Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell says that she was brought in when he was an intern there. What. The. Hell. Oh, the Sheriff knew it too. You see, his wife was Martha May, who was thought to be possessed in the cursed house, so an exorcism was performed which went terribly wrong, and she died.


But. Now the Sheriff is trying to tell Michael that his wife was a slut. He had found her with her lover and had concluded that she was possessed. So for whatever reason they're in that cursed house down in that weird basement that was completely lit up with a Catholic priest to exorcise her. Was she really possessed? The movie starts to wobble like an old tire whose lug nuts are about to fall off. Apparently during this supposed exorcism, Maggie May – whoops, sorry I meant Martha May – comes on to the priest and tries to seduce him. This enrages the Sheriff and he stabs her to death. So she was not exorcised, she was murdered.

And speaking of murdered, the boyfriend of the dead blonde (who kept writing that damned 'sad mouse' message too) is found in his cell after he has apparently castrated himself with some small sharp object and explains that his lust got the best of him inside the house and he raped and murdered her. He then dies.

Backing up just slightly, Dean Cain, really, really bad doctor, explains to Michael that when Rachel was in the mental asylum as a child, she wrote that 'sad mouse lives in this house' crap all the time. He explains that sad mouse is an anagram for Amadeus – wait, no, that's not right. 

What's the snake for? Hey, they
didn't tell me so I ain't telling you...

It's Asmodeus. Who? Well, Cain explains, in the book of Enoch… Oh freaking hell. The book of Enoch seems to be used a lot in movies, probably because it has a lot of so-called juicy stuff in it, and the Bible is just sooooo boring. Just so we're clear, the book of Enoch is not part of the Bible. It is not an inspired work as stated in 2 Timothy 3:16 "All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness..."

So why do these movies like to quote from the book of Enoch anyway? Because in this book are stories about demons and angels and all kinds of happenings that are not in the Bible and people who use quotes from it take it as Gospel, pun intended. So, Dean Cain quotes from this book, as one of his nurses takes a copy of it from his bookshelf. Gee, I didn't know that was required reading for doctors. 

Anywho, Cain explains that this demon was one of seven cast down from heaven. Wow, only seven? I could've swore that there were slightly more demons around than that. The other six were Sleepy, Dopey, Doc, Nasty, Impossibility and Hostility. This particular demon was cast down and is in charge of twisting men's desires. That's all? That's all its' got to do? And there's only seven? Oh and I like that he says they were cast down into hell but are on earth. Whaaa? Now we've got hell on earth. Groovy.

Michael grabs the Catholic priest who did the first failed exorcism and the Sheriff, and they all go to Granville Manor to try to save Rachel. Now the movie is trying to say that Asmodeus was in both women, even though one was a slut and one was crazy. Michael keeps telling the Catholic priest that he can now redeem himself by saving Rachel. We have the typical exorcism crap, except he doesn't do the 'the blood of the Christ compels you' stuff he simply screams for the woman to name the demon. Why they think that would work, I have no freaking idea. Finally she says… something. And now she's normal. Well, not normal, now she's just crazy.

So. Michael is now the Sheriff, the ex-Sheriff is in jail for killing his wife, the Catholic priest is inexplicably still in the basement, and Rachel is in the asylum so that she can have meaningful conversations with Joe Estevez. That about sums things up. Well, no, it really doesn't, but there is no summing up this mess.

If this movie's ideas had been coherent, it might have said that evil is where you find it. Are people possessed or just mentally ill? Are people possessed or just sexually promiscuous or prone to other sins? Who really is evil and who is innocent? And why did I just waste 90 minutes of my life watching this waste of film?

OH FREAKING HELL! THIS MOVIE JUST KEEPS GOING AND GOING AND GOING...




Devil's Due (2014)

Well, as usual, I feel horrible. The weather has been very unstable - it's been one day hot, one day cold, one day hot, then cold, cold, cold, I usually can only take my painkillers and go straight to bed. But I decided to man up (even though I am a woman) and do what I thought I wanted to do. Part of this great and wonderful disease is that in the mornings, my mind is massively mush while I have some physical energy, and at night I am just freaking exhausted but my mind is racing a hundred miles an hour, with all those witty things I wanted to write that morning.

No symbol here...

Miss Mayhem wanted to do a column of her own, but I thought she should get used to the idea of trying to find humor in horror first. She asked me what movie she should watch. I handed her my copy of Zombie Ass: The Toilet Of The Dead (no joke, that's a real movie - I reviewed it Tuesday, July 9, 2013). She took one look at the cover - her face went white. Then she flipped it over. I swear I saw her age at least 5 years right in front of me. 

So, for now, I have sent Miss Mayhem into safer waters, and she presently is working her way through the MST3K catalog. I figured that would be a great way to get her used to bad horror as well as the concept of being able to make fun of it at the same time. I hope it works, but I realize not everyone has my twisted sense of humor.

Closer but no cigar...

Can you tell that I'm really trying to put off doing this review? I am. When I first saw the previews for this movie in 2013, I remember saying to myself 'Goddammit they've made another Rosemary's Baby'. I hated Rosemary's Baby. Yeah yeah, it was shot beautifully, it was a classic. It was William Castle's last film, and directed by a pedophile (who then fled the Country), but that's okay because he's famous, right? But it was so incredibly boring! And it was long. Very, very long. Maybe when it was made it was considered a very classy as well as creepy horror movie, considering you had diminutive little Mia Farrow as the tragic damsel in distress, but I was just bored to tears. THIS film was actually made by 20th Century Fox - WTH?

So.

This is what they use... whatever the hell it's supposed to be...

I actually looked at other reviews 'cause I thought I was being too harsh on this movie's, uh, contradictions? I mean this is about a Catholic couple, who have to be true to the church and yet they slept together before being married, they use birth control, they rarely step foot in the church - and so it is said by some that this is a prejudiced film against Catholics. Well, where there are movies about possession or devils or antichrists, there are Catholics. This is a Hollywood thing, not a me thing, so if some of this offends, well, it's just like every other movie and has nothing to do with my personal opinions. Just keep that in mind, 'kay?

First a scripture out of the Bible about antichrists is shown on screen that, of course, is misapplied. A perfect start. The circle with two lines is something I could NOT find anywhere - and I looked at a ton of different demonic and antichrist symbols - which was NOT a thrill. Not. Even. Close.

We start with a bloody man in a police station. He is apparently going to narrate this turkey. Oh goody. And here's his story (and get ready for a massive headache 'cause this is 'Rosemary's Baby' on a handheld camera): Zach and Samantha are a day from being married. Everything will be on a handheld camera 'cause Zach wants to start a 'family history'. Samantha likes this idea, since she has no family. She says her childhood is 'a blank'. Apparently she lost everyone in a car crash and yet-to-be-born Samantha was cut out of her mother. THAT is a VERY OBVIOUS CLUE by the way, keep it in mind. So they get married.



They go to what is described as the Dominican Republic for their honeymoon. I guess saying they went to the Caribbean is out of style or something. Either that or no one Country wanted to be named in this film for which I can't really blame them. Anywho, these two idiots, because of course to get this stupid script to work they have to be idiots, get stinking drunk in a city during a celebration of some sort. 

Then in the natural course of stupidity, the new wife wants to see a psychic (which Catholics are not supposed to do). The woman grabs her arm, telling her she's born 'from death' and they're waiting for her. She won't let go. After finally pulling away from her, they quickly leave.

They decide to go back to their hotel room. A cab drives up to them, and the man inside offers them a ride. Now – when you're in a strange country, cabs aren't necessarily cabs. I've never been out of the States, but even I know that. But these two idiots get right in as the cab driver promises to take them to a great party.

This stupid prank in New York was the
only good part of the movie - and it wasn't in the movie...

After winding through dark dirty streets they get to an even darker, dirtier building. And these two stupid people go inside and yes, there is a party. They do shots and get even drunker - and apparently drugged. And their handheld camera does NOT have night vision so not only is it wobbly, but it's so dark you can't see the DUH in the room at all. That means you get blurry, shaky shots of these two idiots and also that means we are going to see stuff recorded to tapes that they're not even going to bother to look at until the plot tells them to.

Sure enough, things get weird. The camera picks up distorted images, cuts out, and we get a brief and confusing look at some kind of ritual. You know, we get the chanting, the torches, flashes of bright lights, Samantha is probably getting raped (we don't get to really see that - so calm down) and nothing that makes any sense. The next scene is of our two stupid people waking up in their hotel room, having no idea of how they got there. Do they look at their camera? No. MASSIVE DUH ALERT...

They go home and we skip ahead a few weeks when they discover that Samantha is pregnant. Massive duh again. Yup, we're knee-deep in Rosemary's Baby. Samantha is a bit upset about this, she is nowhere near ready to have a child. This is one of those 'but we used contraceptives religiously' type of pregnancies. If because they're Catholic you're getting mad at me, look at the paragraph above - or maybe just skip the movie and/or review all together. Now if you look at the wiki, which I do to keep my facts straight, comparing them to my notes, the wiki says she's overjoyed. My notes say that she was pissed off.

But she plays happy mommy for a while, even though strange physical things are happening to her. She's having nosebleeds, weird bruising, and other physical symptoms that aren't usual with pregnancy. And she wants to eat meat. Yes, our two idiots are vegetarian. In fact, we get a very prolonged, very unnecessarily slow scene of Samantha in a grocery store in the meat aisle looking at different packages. We see this through the stores security camera since everything is handheld or security or CCTV. Which brings up another massive duh moment. This movie is comprised of footage from many cameras in several different places - who put them all together?



She moves very, very slowly. She picks up a package, very, very slowly. She opens the package, very, very slowly. She finally start eating the raw meat. By this time I was practically biting off my fingernails. Not because I was frightened or grossed out, but because more than anything I just wanted this moment to end.

Even though Zach's wife is acting very strangely ever since the honeymoon, he still doesn't bother to look through the footage. Wouldn't you want to look at your honeymoon footage when you got home? Of course you would. You're smart. Finally both notice that they see strange people that are appearing to be watching them from across the street, public places, etc. 

One of those people appears to be none other than the cab driver who took them to that interesting little party in the first place. When it becomes evident that Sam is uncomfortable with having the child and may hurt it (again, if offended... well, you know), someone places tiny hidden cameras in the idiot's home to make sure the two take care of their bundle of hell... uh, I mean joy.

The movie finally picks up a little when Samantha is in her eighth month. Now her baby has been growing large and the first doctor she had has been replaced by a strange doctor who tells her that she cannot see her regular doctor anymore (what did they do, look through Rosemary's Baby's script and just pull out what they wanted to use?). These two idiots have a nice location where they are, complete with a small wooded area where a family of deer live. They made sure we knew that at the beginning of the movie. Why?



Three kids are out wandering through the trails in that wooded area with, say it with me - saaaaaaaaaay itttttttt - a hand held camera. They come upon the gutted carcass of a deer. Being kids, they decide to poke at it and do the disgusting things that kids do. Then they hear a noise. Turning around, they see a woman bent over another deer. Thinking she is trying to help it, they approach her. Of course, we know what's going on and were praying that they just get on with it. It is Samantha, covered in the deer's blood, eating its guts.

The kids (two guys, one girl) attempt to run, and we get our only interesting effects of the whole movie. One (the girl) is thrown high into the air, one is dragged through the brush and the last manages to make it to his car, only to be thrown high above it, and come crashing down through the windshield. This effect was lessened by the fact that you see nothing but his camera POV and when he smashes onto his car, we only see a hand come through the broken windshield.



The two idiots attend holy Communion. While watching the priest, the priest sees Samantha and starts to violently cough up blood, sending people screaming into the streets. Our massively duh father-to-be finally gets the idea that maybe he should be looking at his camera footage for some clues as to what the hell is going on. Then he sees that, yes, the same man who drove them to that strange party has been following them around, even to the church. He then looks further and finds what happened to them during their honeymoon. And he notices a symbol.

The symbol appears all through the movie. And no, it's not an upside down cross. In fact, looking up this particular symbol I couldn't find it anywhere and I found a lot more than I ever wanted to see. It's some sort of voodoo schmoodoo symbol that he sketches and takes to the priest in the hospital. What there's only one priest in this whole freaking city? This one priest's got to be the guy Zach bothers - the person whom his wife made violently ill? Massive duh. That's when he finds that, of course, the symbol is related to the antichrist (at least according to this movie). It can't just be about a little monster – hell, at this point I'd accept Milo, the nasty little intestinal monster. But no.



Now for some reason, I guess just for something for Zach to do, he sees a couple of these people on his street and reasons that they're probably hiding out in an abandoned house. He breaks in, because that's what law-abiding people do, right? Inside of course he finds all of the close captioned video of his house and his wife, and he realizes that they are in deep shit. The people come for him, he escapes, and runs back to his wife.

Too late. After a pack-all-the-action-into-four-minutes type of tantrum where she psychically destroys the house, she throws her husband against the wall. Okay, this whole movie is from placed or held cameras. So how did they get the view from her on the floor to him on the wall - and vice versa? It keeps going back and forth and... there's no freaking way since neither is carrying a camera.



His wife now lays on the floor with a silver knife she received anonymously at her shower. She cuts herself open and there's a blinding flash of light. Now let me define what just happened for you who don't watch horror movies very often. This is the big scene, the payoff, just like in Rosemary's Baby. Now, quick quiz my lovelies: Did anyone ever see the actual baby after it was born in that movie? No, of course they didn't. That would have cost way too much money.

So, since this is basically following the pattern of Rosemary's Baby with a little bit of Paranormal Activity/Blair Witch/Every Freaking Handheld Camera Movie There Is, they don't want to reveal anything here either. They've already spent their budget, haven't they? They don't have anything left to show a big special effect of what an antichrist might look like. We just see Samantha die.

The 'doctor' and the cab driver come and take the baby that we didn't get to see. The police show up immediately afterward and Zach is arrested. While he finishes his story we get our last scene of another young couple, on their honeymoon in Paris, where the same cab driver from the beginning of the movie offers them a lift.

Apparently they're collecting all these babies for.... I don't know..... Antichrists On Ice?

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