HOPE I DIE BEFORE I GET OLD






The Taking aka The Taking Of Deborah Logan (2014) 

Yeah, yeah, I know it's way too late for me (and even later for The Who) but I'm not too old to remember how I felt when I was a young whippersnapper like you. I was never going to be 21, then I was never going to be 30, then 35... and so on. I was going to party like it was 1999 because surely there wasn't going to be any years past that, right? But age is a bitch and so am I. The endless whining I do about the many ways my body and mind are conspiring against me should give you an idea of how old I feel. But it's inevitable, and so is disease.

I don't usually do this, but this found-footage movie actually has a few nuggets in it that, although the story is predictable and my Horror Movie Worksheet (patent pending) was mostly filled about 20 minutes in, there's still some interesting twists and a freaking sweet scene toward the end. Thus I'm suggesting if you want to check this out, it is currently streaming on Netflix (Who has it marked as a 2015 film so hey, you'll be time travelling too!) so to avoid spoilers, you know what to do.


Usually movies (unless they're Catholic possession movies of course) try to inform you that most who act possessed may have a type of mental illness. This movie takes a bit of a different direction. In this case, it's Alzheimer's. Here's the official short synopsis: Mia Medina (Michelle Ang) has finally found the perfect subject for her PhD thesis film on Alzheimer’s Disease. For the next several months, cameras will record the everyday life of mother Deborah Logan (Jill Larson, who would get a bloody Academy Award for her performance if the stupid voters didn't ignore horror films) and her daughter Sarah (Anne Ramsay). 

But as the days progress, strange things begin to happen around Deborah that are not consistent with any findings about Alzheimer’s. It becomes apparent that there’s something besides Alzheimer’s that has taken control of Deborah’s life. It’s an evil that is far worse than the debilitating disease with which she was first diagnosed.

Alzheimer patients really ARE possessed, they just don't remember it <rim shot>. That was the hubby's so don't throw popcorn at me, please. 

Just from the brief synopsis I bet you could write most of the movie down too. And you'd be right - up to a point. This movie, vastly superior to much-hyped movies like The Devil Inside seems to try harder to make a good story instead of just a bunch of camera shots bouncing around to give you a headache and try to make a couple of scares.

Sarah has allowed a team from Roanoke University (a real place in Virginia) to document the decline of her mother who lives in Exuma, VA (a fake town - the film was actually made in North Carolina) who had been diagnosed with Stage One Alzheimer's. There's Mia and two men for her crew. Sarah has allowed this because the bills are piling up and the University has promised money to the family if they allow the cameras in their house.

The movie starts by saying that this film includes a partly edited medical documentary, outtakes, and surveillance footage from the scenes of the crime. Starts 10/12/13.

They meet with daughter and mother, who is resistant although she had agreed - we then get a summary of the disease and the posit that it destroys whole families and not just the person.

Our first inkling that something is up when one of the guys shooting 'B' roll footage catches Deborah playing with snakes. During the inevitable camera setup montage Deborah become agitated and slams doors - but he can't find where she went. At night one camera shows her in the kitchen - one second she's standing on the floor, the next second on a counter, no break in time signature.

She freaks out over a missing garden tool - after attacking the men and running around the house they find her upstairs, clawing at her own throat and drawing blood. Examination at the hospital shows that she is now in stage two and is degrading fast.

This is more than enough for one of the guys, who's Catholic. He hangs a cross on the window in his room, only to turn and see Deborah staring at him - and the window flies open, the cross disappearing. She talks to herself in the mirror and stares out the window at night in an empty, dark room, convinced someone is trying to get in. They mic Deborah and try to interview her and there's another freakout and another visit to the hospital. She now has a red, scaly infection all over her back. During a hospital test, she rips the skin off of her own arm.

But this movie tried a bit harder than the typical is-this-woman-suffering-from-illness-or-is-she-possessed kind of movie. There's a mystery involved too which her daughter and the documentary crew soon find out is pretty horrific.


When Deborah was a young mother, her husband died unexpectedly. To support her and her child, she ran a professional switchboard in her home to take messages for people for a fee. Don't laugh, we had one in my home town too... I SAID QUIT LAUGHING! Back to the present - one night she leaves her bed and they find her naked trying to work a number on the board - and it's ringing very loudly. They figure this must have something to do with her behavior. This comes up because she kept logs of every call for every client - but one is missing. 

Trying to calm her down, she instead growls and pants like a dog and is totally out of it. This time the doctor has to come to the house (who does that?). They figure out that what she's been repeating over and over is something about a 'fifth' in French. She doesn't speak French.

The number she keeps trying, 337 belongs to a pediatrician named Desjardins, who killed four young teenagers, ate part of the bodies, carved snakes in their foreheads, and had venom injected in their blood. He was never found.

Another documentary (on him this time) says he did this because he was performing a  Monacan blood ritual for a simple reason - he was dying. But he needed five victims and never got the fifth - so he's dead right? Nobody knows. When they ask Deborah about this, she mumbles that he was murdered - then proceeds to throw up dirt while they scramble for yet another ambulance.

Movie rendition - I  couldn't find a source...

Okay, a brief break from the action. There is a Monacan Tribe in Va. The Monacan tribe is one of several Native American tribes recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The Monacan Tribe has not been recognized as an Indian tribe by the federal government. They are located primarily in Amherst County, Virginia near Lynchburg, Virginia.

I did a fair bit of digging and found no data on either blood or snake rituals pertaining to this tribe. This includes their official website as well as wiki and a couple of, uh, unsavory places. The only blood rituals I could find were: The blood rituals in Shi’ite Muslim festival of Ashura; The Aztecs blood offering to the Sun God; And the practice of some in India where the people donate blood as a way to remember politicians who have died. Now how about snakes?


In America some of the Native American tribes give reverence to the rattlesnake as grandfather and king of snakes who is able to give fair winds or cause tempest. Among the Hopi of Arizona the serpent figures largely in one of the dances. The rattlesnake was worshipped in the Natchez temple of the sun and the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl was a feathered serpent-god. In many MesoAmerican cultures, the serpent was regarded as a portal between two worlds. That's... about it for Native Americans.

Back to our poor Deborah. To further piss off whatever they've pissed off, they put a camera in her hospital room and declare she has split personality disorder. Her neighbor Harris, who's been very clingy, has to be dragged out of her room.

That night while the crew argue about what to do, Harris shows up with a shotgun and starts shooting up their cars. When the cops show up, he either is or just acts drunk. That's enough for the Catholic boy - he bails.

Back at the hospital Deborah wanders out of bed, goes to the pediatric wing, grabs a girl and takes her to an abandoned part of the hospital. Okay, they're supposed to be in Exuma, pop. 0 because there IS no Exuma - except in the Bahamas, a street in NC (where this was actually filmed) and MO. Cripes. But they're still presenting it as a super small town and THEY have an abandoned hospital, at least in part? Geez.

They find her and the kid staring at a wall, take the kid and strap the Deborah down (which they should have done in the first place). Deborah is now in full 'possession' mode with screaming, drooling, etc.

Now we're at day 60? Really? They're still filming. Now Harris sneaks into her room and lets her loose. They obviously have had some sort of relationship. She asks him to kill her which horrifies him. He grabs a pillow, and puts it over her face. The whole room shakes, the camera fuzzes (of course) and the TV comes off the wall and smashes Harris in the head. Cute. But he's still alive and tells Sarah that Deborah killed Dejardins with the spade she kept freaking out over 'cause Sarah was supposed to be the fifth victim. He helped bury the SOB alive.


The 'expert' on rituals says that fire is cleansing so off they all go into the woods at night and start to dig but they only find that freaking spade. In horror they realize that Deborah dug the body up first and has hidden it in the house. This house has almost more attics than rooms, I swear. They see a man-shaped wet spot in the ceiling and go up into it.

They find a sack and look in it - yup, there's a body. When they go to burn it, the sack is suddenly filled with snakes. They try to burn it anyway... As it starts to burn the camera frizzes again and a blast shoves them across the room, putting out the fire.

Meanwhile Deborah breaks out of her restraints and leaves the hospital with the same girl (there for cancer) she took the first time, ripping out a security guard's neck with her teeth to get free. So now everybody's going to Monacan Mountain, where the dead guy (now Deborah) is supposedly going to complete the ritual to live forever. Two police officers drive them up as far as they can get.

They catch up to them as the child keeps chanting over and over "Don't hurt him. He's a nice man. He's going to wash me in the river." Deborah says nothing - until they try to cuff her. Then she spits venom on them all and the camera fuzzes again. One cop's face is burned and he has to be taken back down the mountain while the others go after the crazed woman and sick child. 

They find a building up there - it's now down to Sara, Mia, and the female cop. The cop is quickly killed. As the two woman search in the caves, we go to night vision for our final showdown. They follow the sound of the little girl's screams.

Eat your freaking heart out Freddy Kruger!
Oh, if you can't tell, this is Deborah
consuming the little girl whole...

And we get the following: Fight, light, scream, dark, blood, fight, look, gun, dark, scream, fuzz, light, crying, fight, and then THE COOLEST SICKEST SCENE I HAVE WITNESSED ALL YEAR!!! I don't care if this was a prosthetic or CGI, it was just sooo freaking sweet!

She could fit two Big Macs in that thing...

But the ending has to be drawn out a bit more so Sarah pleads with Deborah, then shoots her (That's kind of contradictory, isn't it?), and tries desperately to get the kid away from her. As the mother's head continues to do... IMPOSSIBLE things, Sarah manages to drug her enough to subdue her and all is well... the girl is saved, the mother not deemed to be fit for trial (two deaths, several wounding/poisonings, kidnapping) and is obviously not going to live much longer anyway.

It's okay, she's a ginger so she
didn't have a soul anyway... <rim shot>

Our movie ends at the happy birthday of the girl with cancer, who miraculously has made a complete recovery against all odds. When asked by a news reporter (because the whole world came to a halt and absolutely nothing else was happening that day) what she planned to do with her life she slyly says, "It's a secret." She then looks at the camera. Okay, so it's a flawed ending, 'cause there still wasn't a fifth (unless they're counting Deborah but she's not dead yet and she wasn't sacrificed like the other girls) but hey, they tried.



                        

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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PEOPLE WHO CLAIM WHATEVER THEY WANT AND PEOPLE BELIEVE THEM WITHOUT QUESTION BECAUSE IF THEY DO THEY CAN MAKE WHATEVER MOVIE THEY WANT

The Conjuring (2013)

As you can tell, I'm not a fan of people claiming they can solve peoples 'problems with the spirit world' like they have super powers or something and know more than the Bible or God about the subject - while making a bunch of cash doing it. And if the Warrens, the couple responsible for the whole Amityville debacle (they claimed the problem was the house was built on an Indian burial ground - hell, AMERICA is built on an Indian burial ground) think they can make more cash by bringing up more of the 'legitimate' problems they supposedly solved (Although no real evidence supports ANYTHING they've ever done - but that doesn't stop movie makers, right?).

The 'We know all your secrets' Warrens

So why am I reviewing it? 'Cause if you haven't seen it, don't bother. I know the creepies and the crawlies are the 'in' thing and since the slasher flick is kind of in a slump, the paranormal has crept in to take up the slack. EVERYTHING is paranormal now. Their claims are so out there that you can pretty much fill out your own worksheet of every paranormal movie and get most if not all of it right. I'm sure the demons are loving it - the humans are doing all the work for them.

For example, one horror page on Facebook (not mine obviously) printed a rather blurry picture that was supposed to be very scary and solid proof of the paranormal. The picture, taken in daytime, was inside a cemetery. What you see is two grave markers, and a stone wall. Whoever had taken the picture had circled a section of the stone wall that supposedly contained a face. If you squint at it, you kind of see (maybe) a distorted shape that could be a face. 

So I looked at it pretty closely. What they DON'T point out for whatever reason, is just to the right of the circle, above the wall and in the bushes, an even clearer shape of a face can be seen. Does that mean they're right about the paranormal? No. Because people, when you WANT to see or believe something, you WILL find the proof - your desire will cause your mind to race to find the answers you want. And any shape can become anything you imagine it to be. That's why kids are afraid of shadows for crying out loud.

Okay, what was this stupid movie about again? Oh yeah, the Warrens. He's a veteran and former police officer and she's some kind of medium. So he decides to cart her around to different people who ASK for them to FIND SOMETHING. I put those in caps because, as I said, if you WANT to find something, you probably will. Don't get me wrong, they are probably sincerely thinking they are being bothered by spirits. But to bring self-proclaimed 'demonologists' into the mess is NOT going to make things better. But apparently it DOES make material for books and movies.

So: In 1971, Roger and Carolyn move into a dilapidated farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island with their five daughters. During the first day, their move goes smoothly, though their dog, Sadie, refuses to enter the house and one of the daughters finds a boarded up entrance to a cellar. Smart dog, dumb people. From there we get the things-moving-very-slowly-to-build-tension-but-really-is-boring-us-to-death happenings from clocks being screwed with, the dog dying, mysterious bruises on the mom, and one of the kids is sleepwalking (which they admit she had done before they lived in this particular house).

Carolyn contacts Ed and Lorraine Warren for help. The Warrens conduct an initial investigation and conclude that the house may require an exorcism, but they needed authorization from the Catholic Church and further evidence before that. Okay, I call BS. Neither Warren is a priest. Although they may be Catholic, they have absolutely no authority to do anything so why wait for 'permission'  for an exorcism? 

Because it slows down the movie and gets the backstory going, that's why. Ed and Lorraine 'discover' that the house once belonged to an accused witch, Bathsheba, who supposedly tried to sacrifice her children to the devil and killed herself in 1863 after cursing all who would take her land. The property was once 200+ acres but has since been divided up into smaller parcels. And of course since witches and curses are like totally real they 'find' reports of numerous murders and suicides in houses that have since been built upon parcels that were once part of the property.

Uh huh. I call BS again. In an interview where Mrs. Warren (Mr. Warren died in 2006) talked about her various experiences, it ended with 'Lorraine Warren and the filmmakers hope you'll make return trips to see the flick.' Oh no, they're not looking for money, they want to teach... uh huh. You want to know the REAL reason I call BS on this whole story? Because the Perron family, despite these supposed things that were torturing them, lived in that house for TEN YEARS. 

What I find particularly vile about this 'story' and the Warrens making money off of it, is that they claim the Perrons brought this 'evil' upon themselves for being 'weak in faith' - since supposedly the only other past resident of the house who never had a problem was a local minister. Oh that is weak sauce. Blame an innocent family on being scared of violent local stories of hangings, murders, rapes and suicides because their 'faith was weak'. For your information movie maker guys? Hangings, murders, rapes and suicides have probably occurred, at some time, ANYWHERE YOU STEP IN THIS COUNTRY. There are particularly violent periods of history associated with the United States, hell with the whole world for crying out loud - you don't blame the family who gets scared by ghost stories for disappointing God. That's just vile.

And that's what this movie is - vile. It's a family who inexplicably stays for ten years in a house they claim (or the Warrens claim anyway) to have tortured them every day with scares and traumas who now have their story put on the big screen in the pursuit of money.

I would say the basis of the Warren's faith is in the almighty dollar, not the Almighty Jehovah God.

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