HASBRO, THE MASSIVE WHORE, HAS PRODUCED THE HANDS-DOWN WORST MOVIE OF 2014 AND TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY HAS POINTED THE PLANCHETTE TOWARDS CHILDREN...

Ouija (2014)

I don't know why it is that the stupider the movie is, the harder it is for me to review it. Maybe because I read too much into it when it is what it is - massively stupid.

But this one takes the prize for worst movie of 2014 - hell, let's give it the worst for the decade. Found footage film? Nope. Shaky hand cam? Nope. Green night vision? Nope. The main problem with this movie is not that it's a 90 minute toy commercial (yes I know there have been a lot of those), but that this 'toy' they're trying to sell is dangerous. Not only are they trying to convey that this can be 'harmless fun', but the inevitable deaths of the movie duh teenagers in the movie are pushed as happening 'because they broke the rules'.


Oh Hasbro, you shameless whore. They made this movie and at the end we see "By Hasbro studios based on the Hasbro game of Ouija." NOOOOOO SHIT. You make a PG-13 movie for a game you deem safe for 'children 8 and up'. Nice.

The movie itself is totally predictable, if incredibly dry and... not scary. It's one of those movies that was so easy to map out that my Horror Movie Worksheet (patent pending) was filled out with very little changes before the first death. Oh yeah, people die here - no gore because this is obviously geared toward kids. After all, it's 'just a game', right? Those who die only do so by disobeying the rules, right? That doesn't mean the board is dangerous, right?

Hmm, they're adults and they seem a bit afraid of it. But then they werern't paid by Hasbro either. So.

If the game is so 'harmless', why are many people so very strict with the way the Ouija (they get really pissed if you say wee-gee) is used, list a ton of cautions about the potentially bad spirits that can appear and act incredibly frantic describing all kinds of supposed good juju to use to banish something that comes uninvited?

While we're on THAT subject, why would any parent want their kids to mess with something that could cause, in the best case scenario, several years of them crawling into bed with you or, if they're older, leaving all the lights on? Are you aware of who they may contact? Well...

So. Debbie played with a Ouija board with her friend Elaine when they were kids. She explains the rules very clearly:

• Never play alone
• Never play in a graveyard (cemeteries must be safe then, right?)
• Always say goodbye
• Circle the board once for each player
• Say, "As friends we gather, hearts are true, spirits near we call to you"
• Then say, "If there's a presence here please make yourself known"

Simple, right? These must be Hasbro rules, right? Umm, no. In fact, there are no solid 'rules' for, and I say this with bile rising in my throat, this "game". I found a PDF of an actual Hasbro Ouija box (never say I don't suffer for my readers) and the rules... ah hell, let's just say it's not what the movie said. If you go to different sites that proclaim they know all about these stupid things, they'll all give you different rules. Pfffft...

The point is that the phrases 'it's just a game', 'it's just for fun', 'they sell them at toy stores', and 'stop pushing it -  I'm not, you're pushing it' was repeated so often I cancelled the drinking game I set up for it 'cause even drinking pop instead of alcohol would have made somebody really sick. Or maybe it would be just from watching the movie.

So. Debbie, now a teenager, is playing the Ouija alone in her room. Uh oh, she broke a rule, she's gonna die. In a panic, she runs the board down to the furnace in the basement and burns the Ouija. Uh oh.

When she returns to her room, the Ouija board is innocently sitting, not even scorched, on her bed. That's 'cause Hasbro has thousands of these things they need to sell. She hangs herself, but to keep it festive for the kiddies, they have her hang herself with Christmas lights. Pretty.

But it brings up a question I have (not really, I don't give a shit, I'm just filling space). How come you can't burn a Ouija, but you CAN sell them to the highest bidder on eBay? Check it out - they've got every brand, year, and type imaginable with prices that go up to around $500. That's for a Fuld board - Fuld being the so-called 'inventor' of something that's been around in various forms since Bible times.

I wrote a brief history of these stupid things on my blog of April 29, 2014 so I won't go into great detail of these 'talking boards'. Just that they come in many forms and names to get around Fuld's patent and can be a simple as a glass on a wooden floor, if you're smart:

Okay, so you can be a part of the Idiocracy and still do this stupid and dangerous stunt.

Now Elaine is sad. Very, very sad. But she's not a blonde with big gazongas so nobody cares very much. But they all liked Debbie (a blonde with big gazongas) so they have a wake for her. Now remember, they're making this kid friendly, so you don't see horribly broken people sobbing like crazy, or Debbie lying in her coffin - just a bunch of nicely dressed people politely eating finger foods. How lovely.

Elaine never got to say goodbye. So going up into Debbie's room to pilfer all her expensive stuff... err I mean to sit and reflect on their friendship, she sees the board. Grabbing the board and planchette, she convinces the surviving group of friends to use it to say goodbye to Debbie.

Now there's four in the house - three girls, one guy. A triage ma trois according to the hubby (it was a slip of the tongue but I thought it was pretty funny). No, that doesn't mean anything, don't look it up. But since in stupid horror movies you gotta have five for a proper slaughter, they meet up with another boy who was kind of introduced during the wake scene but we don't really know any of these people except maybe Elaine and we don't give a damn about them either.

They gather around the dining room table. Now this is another quandary with this so-called 'game'. While some maintain that it is important to 'play' where you are secure and comfortable, others state to 'play' far away from where you are secure and comfortable because if something bad happens it ain't going to be so comfortable and you can't use that room no more for anything (except maybe torturing your younger sibling). Just kidding on that last bit. A little.

All put their fingers on the planchette, very lightly because everybody know that spirits are too weak to move plastic pieces of garbage (or fake wood, whatever) if you push down too hard. They're too weak to just talk to you and they're too weak to do anything else unless the script says they're strong enough to implode a house (Poltergeist). Why would they be weak?

They don't get an immediate response but that's okay, 'cause Hasbro says you should sit there very still for about five minutes to let the spirit have a chance to answer. FIVE MINUTES. If nothing happens, you need to try again... HEY, WHERE ARE YOU GOING, GET BACK HERE! Here's another little tidbit from yet another source: 

You are able to guard yourself from evil spirits by stating that only good spirits are welcome to communicate. Make certain that you are in control of the board and don't concentrate on any other paranormal activity within the room, such as knocks, bangs, tapping etc. By asking the spirits to use the board or leave, you are protecting everyone present.

Pfffft... okay, demons can be controlled by stern words and basically telling them 'If you won't follow the rules I'm taking my toys and going home'. Can you see why this is such a baaaad thing to promote to kids?

Finally they get a 'Hello' which apparently is the signal that scary things are coming. Who is it? It says 'D'. Well, of course that means 'Debbie', right? What does she have to say? Remember now, this is kid friendly so the message is: YOU WILL DIE IN A PUDDLE OF BLOOD AND YOUR EYES WILL BOIL IN YOUR HEAD AND DOGS WILL LAP UP YOUR BLOOD AS YOUR HEART BURSTS AND...

Whoops, sorry - got carried away. The message is, 'Hi friend'. They all get really scared, but it must be Debbie, 'cause best friends always want to scare the shit out of you. That's why your favorite grandma haunts you and makes you wet your pants, or your mommy hovers above your bed, making nasty sounds and dripping goo on you.. oh wait, that was the time she was trying to get you up for school and her hands were wet from doing dishes, sorry.

Okay, this was too funny not to use - sample questions to ask your new 'friend' according to one source that I will not name:

1. When did you live on this world? Are you from earth, or another planet? (I peed myself a little bit reading this one.)
2. What's the name of the city, place or area you used to live? ("Was it Candyland?")
3. What was your occupation? Did you have any hobbies? ("Besides mass murdering teenagers and little old ladies I mean?")
4. Is there something you would like to tell the group? ("Like go screw yourselves?")
5. Do you have a name? Did you have a nickname you prefer? ("I'm sorry - did you spell Legion? We met that one last time - is there anyone else?")
6. Do you know anyone present in the room? ("Besides Elvis and Santa Claus?")

It is not advised to ask questions about your own death or the death of another person (because demons really don't know but they can arrange it if you push 'em). Just because the Spirit Board says something, you must not believe this to be entirely true (for instance if they keep insisting they're from Narnia or Planet Neptune). To verify answers, you can ask the same questions twice at different intervals throughout the session (because demons just love to be treated as if they're morons).

So, to sum up, Ouija boards are completely harmless unless you break the rules and then you die, or an evil spirit shows up and you have to (???) to get rid of it, or it will speak to you but don't believe it 'cause it lies.

Wow. What fun.


Huh? Ooooh, the movie. One of the chicks is flossing her teeth and suddenly the floss turns to black string and her mouth is sewn shut. She panics, hits her head on the sink and dies. Two down.

Okay let's speed this sucker up since we all know how this is going to go. Elaine finds out that Debbie found the board in her attic along with some other weird stuff. The group is getting killed one by one so she better hurry up. Oh and each one finds, in a different form, the message 'Hi, friend.' Wow. That's... dumb. And it also means it doesn't matter where the hell you play with the board, whoever you contacted CAN follow you because there's no walls to a freaking Ouija board.

Through some Scooby sleuthing, Elaine finds that there was a mother and two daughters who held seances in Debbie's house (yes, Ouijas are used in seances too) and the girls were sort of used as conduits, as good mothers will do to their kids. One girl disappeared and the other killed her mother - and was sent to a sanitarium (NOT AN ABANDONED ONE? WHOA!) for the rest of her life. Elaine goes to talk to her.

She meets with the surviving daughter (a puzzling appearance by Lin Shaye, recently of the Insidious series) who explains that their mother was evil, and used the girls talents. Her mother sewed her sister's mouth shut then killed her and hid the body. She had to kill her mother. 

So Debbie broke two rules (according to the movie) - she used the board by herself and she used it in a graveyard. Wait just one damned minute. Because there's a dead body in the house that makes it a graveyard? I really don't think so. At most it would be a cemetery, since graveyards are next to churches (nobody gets that right) but if we don't just drop it and go on... So. Find the sister's body, cut open her mouth, and everything's okey dokey. Pfffft...


Well if you know how horror movies go, you know what happens next. Elaine finds the body, the 'spirit' of the mother tries to stop her, but the girl's mouth is 'freed'. But the whole story was a lie. It was the GIRLS who were evil (DUM DUM DUUUUUUUUMB!) and the mother managed to stop one but the other got her. So now the sister's spirit is free to wreak havoc. Or just reek.

Elaine is losing all her friends. No, they didn't get smart and go home, they're getting killed 'cause they're just as stupid as she is. Whether it's being possessed then dying or just being tricked into getting killed, I'm not even keeping count of the bodies. Most of all I just want this moment to end. Apparently Elaine (and her little sister) are Latina 'cause their Nana knows what to do to save their little souls from the evil sister who now is running amok. They've got to take BOTH the body AND the board and burn them together. Why would that work when the other sister is still alive... I really don't care.

So. Evil dead girl tries to get Elaine's sister. Elaine almost sacrifices herself to save her. Dead Debbie shows up to save the day (Elaine 'sees' her in the planchette window), and the evil girl is stopped, Debbie disappears again and the sisters are free to... see a therapist for the next twenty years.

But WAIT! The planchette is still in her room! Elaine looks through it and... and... and...

The end.

Oh, I'm sorry, excuse me.  G O O D B Y E

                        

I FIND THAT TRYING TO BE 'NORMAL' WILL BE THE FASTEST WAY TO KILL ME, PEOPLE ARE STILL WILLING TO BELIEVE THE STUPIDEST THINGS YET NOT BELIEVE THE REAL THINGS, BEING NORMAL IS NO LONGER 'PC', AND OH YEAH, A MOVIE...

Big Ass Spider! (2013)

I'm hella-pissed. Yeah, I know, welcome back from the 90's, right? Well in the 90's I never used the word 'hella' so I guess I get a few free ones, right? (For those with that gut-dropping feeling that I'm about to go on a rant, congratulations, you may know me a little) Now let me say first that I totally understand the never-ending battle for human beings to be, well, human to each other and treat each other with the respect and peace we all desperately crave. But then I found out that calling somebody 'normal' is now insulting? Did we go through Idiocracy already and I was just sleeping when that was called out?

...and now, this cartoon for absolutely no reason...

For those who are scratching your heads (don't, it stirs up bugs), the PROPER way to refer to a person who, well, lives, breathes, sleeps, and not much else is Cisgender. Ummm what? Well (the muckrakers desperately looking for muck to rake will tell you), when you call yourself 'normal', you're actually showing ignorance because you are labeling those different from yourself as 'abnormal' and we JUST CAN'T HAVE THAT IN THIS EQUAL, LOVING AND PEACEFUL SOCIETY, CAN WE?

Did you believe this picture of the 'giant crab'
was real? If you did, there's a special label for you, too.

Ahem. Sorry about that. To be more clear, a cisgender is a person who identifies with the sex they were born with. So what's next? To be more clear about more things, such as what kind of air we usually breathe? Let's see, that means soon we will be using labels ('cause that's all they are folks, don't try to pretend you're being all superior or anything) Mountainbreathers (for those who live in or near the mountains), seabreathers (self-explanatory I hope), citybreathers (ditto), countrybreathers (also ditto), and so on.

Big Ass Spider! For real. As best as they know
right now anyway, the Goliath bird-eating spider
is officially the 'biggest' arachnid we've
got so far.... HEY, GET BACK HERE COWARDS!!!
While they don't think it really eats birds, the
fact that it actually COULD is terrifying enough...

Well, I have (as I have mentioned hella-times) fibromyalgia, so where is my label? If lifestyle gets one, and gender preference gets one, then we better get our dictionaries out and figure out labels for people with different disabilities. Hmm? Disabled IS a label? Well that's freaking boring. I want a 'special' hella-label to go with the illness that prevents me from doing simple things in a reasonable period of time without becoming so ill I get (symptom deleted due to gross description), my feet swell like they've been bitten by hella-spiders, I get so dizzy and weak I sleep for a month and then I look at all the reviews I have to do and hella-cry.

Hmm? Okay, okay, NO MORE HELLA. No, wait a minute, I have rights. I'm a CISHELLA! GET USED TO IT!


So. Let's talk about bad movies. Big Ass Spider! is one of those fun ones that wasn't supposed to be serious (or good either, apparently), and also was NOT made by either The Asylum OR SyFy. It polarized critics (a fancy way of saying they either thought it was lovely or a piece of crap) but hey, any movie with an exclamation point at the end is all right by me. To rip apart. Oh and since the Google pictures are all copies of each other's picture and I get screamed at for using copyrighted material anyway, I'll be using my own screenshots for my (ahem) unique perspective.

The hubby had to watch this with me, anticipating a bit of fun watching all the mistakes, bad CGI effects, and huge plot holes... and got really, really, bored. Yeah, unfortunately, they pushed the word 'comedy' really hard in this thing but - nope. Horror comedy as a genre is pretty difficult to pull off, and a nasty spider that's bigger than a cruise ship isn't really a reason to yuk it up.

Our movie opens with a picture of a guy watching this big ass spider (to make this easier we'll just use BAS) tear the top off a building as a really weak copy of the song 'Where Is My Mind' by Pixies plays in the background (which, by some weird coincidence, is the only Pixies song I actually know). People are screaming, running, burning (for some reason) and shooting weapons at something that's 73 stories up (uh, don't think bullets travel that far guys). Let the bad CGI begin NOW!


He's an average guy with a blue collar job who's lonely. Okay, so our first lesson of the movie: Unless you're movie gorgeous and have an exciting career, you can't get a date. Nice. Somebody needs to have a talk with Mike Rowe. No, not for a date you potatoheads, because real work is... ah skip it.

His day started twelve hours earlier (cue flashback) and we get to see that he's a kind hearted hard worker even if he doesn't get paid much. Sounds like a great guy to me but this is Hollywood's view of blue collar workers so they make him out like he's a loser. His day starts with doing a favor for a crazy cat lady (a puzzling appearance by Lin Shaye, who you would know from the Insidious series) who pays him in fruitcake (oh, that's subtle) and goes downhill as he has to go to the hospital for a brown recluse bite.

Lloyd Kaufman (Troma Films) appears 

briefly as himself and as spider bait.

Just for info - a Brown Recluse spider is mainly found towards the Gulf Of Mexico and people scoff at the thought of them being anywhere near California. I'm not going to argue with the where and the when and the why. I'll just say from personal experience that while living in Washington state, a friend was bitten by one (they're not supposed to be there either) and was hours from death by the time he got to a hospital (not that it's that lethal, the friend was that stubborn about going for treatment).

So. While at the hospital our hero, Alex, notices a body bag go by... yeah, that happens a lot at hospitals. Not. But it's a convenient plot device to tell us how this spider got into the hospital in the first place - inside the body of the dead guy. Nice. It starts the size of a puppy and will grow exponentially according to the Army guys who suddenly show up and explain that it's not a real Earth spider 'cause they took some stuff from extraterrestrial sources so it's a...

...and that's the best I could come up with for this movie, sorry.

The rest of the story is simply Alex and his new sidekick, a Hispanic security guard from the hospital cleverly named Jose, to catch the spider before she (It's always a she isn't it?) lays her eggs and infests the world...

Just one Kardashian butt could
feed a giant spider for a month...

Sigh. I wish I had a lot more jokes for this but with the two repeating that they need to 'shoot it in the butt' a thousand times, there's not much comedy material there. Oh, they want to shoot the spinneret because apparently the flaxen material is highly flammable so they believe that will cause the spider to explode from the inside out.

Despite the fact that she does lay her eggs and there are tons of baby spiders running around toward the end of the movie, they conveniently forget about those when they manage to bring the big girl down. Duh.

It's okay, he's was just a weekend dad anyway...

All the movie seems to care about is Alex getting the girl, in this case some Army chick named Karly who of course IS movie gorgeous so even though they've known each other for an hour, tops, they're in love and everything is in flames and destroyed but they're happy so it's good, right? Right?



                        

OKAY I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, BUT DID YOU HAVE TO MAKE US WAIT TWO FREAKING YEARS?


Insidious: Chapters 1 and 2 Mashup (2013)

I dunno, maybe I'm losing my ability to appreciate a good, scary horror movie. Show me one and let's see - 'cause this ain't it. This will be a very unpopular opinion (most of mine are) because from what I've read, people think that James Wan walks on water and is the best thing since Sam Raimi. Okay one, that's blasphemy. Two, before you get hooked on a director who uses cheap tricks to force a scare (see below) and lots of twists, lets remember a similar director who nobody seems to want to work with anymore. Does the name M. Night Shyamalan ring any bells?

In 2011 Insidious came out and I reluctantly reviewed it on 10/10/12. To me, that movie was so full of unanswered questions, half plots and just plain WTH? moments it was impossible NOT to tear it completely apart. I called the movie out because it ripped off ideas from every other movie of its type. AND it claimed to be scarier than the Exorcist. 

Can you make this quick? I've
got three other houses to buy...

You know what was scary about the first and second Insidious? I'll tell you. The dialogue and whatever's going on is done softly, almost mumbling in spots so (if you're watching it at home) you have to turn the volume WAAAAY up to understand what's going on (especially if there's no CC available).

Then, since there's really no scares, they ramp it up by BLARING MUSIC AT TOP VOLUME!!! Damn thing just about blew out my woofer each time it did that. I can just imagine what it sounded like in a theater. THAT was scary. The movies were not. I mean just look at the movie poster. Duh. 

Remember waaaay back in the days of dial up modems that joke you played on your email buddies by sending them the 'ghost car commercial' joke? That gem shows a car driving around a road in the country and you were supposed to look reeeeal closely...

The most infuriating part is that this second movie which kind of explains the first wasn't even planned. OH NO YOU DON'T I CALL BULLSTUFF ON THAT ONE!!! I believed that at first, but consider this: the character of Elise Rainier, the medium who wears the most hilarious getup during her sceances was played in the first movie by Lin Shaye. At the end of the first movie she is killed. So the second movie backs up to explain what happened with the family way back when and Elise is alive and played by... Lin Shaye. 

THAT means that obviously something was planned to follow the first movie, otherwise why make her character look older if not so she can play her younger self in the second movie? AND she is to play that same character in the third, currently in pre-production? Huh? Huh? Yeah, thought so.

Hey! Heeeeeey! Remember me?
How come I'm not in this movie? Huh? Huh?

Nice mind-screw Mr. Wan. Just one small problem with your eeeeeevil little plan: Seeing them TWO YEARS apart would be worthless to the average moviegoer, considering they would have seen dozens of movies in between and so who memorizes movies for that long anyway? For the purpose of this review I actually watched the first movie again (don't say I never suffer for my readers) before watching the second.

I tried to think of a way to present this movie as an explanation to the first but as I said, there were two years between these films. SO I am going to attempt what may be impossible - give you the story by combining both movies. If you can't understand a bloody thing that's happening, that's perfectly okay. It just means you're in good company with others scratching their heads and wondering why they wasted money in the theaters just to have a soundtrack by Joseph Bishara blow out their eardrums. So here we go:

Dammit I'm dead and I'm still in this stupid movie...

We have a seemingly normal family called the Lamberts who live in a huge house because, as a school teacher, Mr. Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson, who is also in The Conjuring and seriously in danger of pigeonholing himself into roles in dumbass paranormal movies) is practically a millionaire. One day their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) has a spill and goes into a coma. He has no injuries or brain damage, but won't wake up. And the movie is over.

What? Okay, okay. He won't wake up so eventually they move him, hospital bed, tubes and gunk, back home. And weird things start to happen. Don't expect anything original. We're talking doors banging, opening by themselves, and the requirement of every paranormal movie: the kitchen furniture makes a big pile because we all know that ghosts are just frustrated interior decorators who want things a certain way. 

Grandma?

Josh (the millionaire teacher) has a mother (Barbara Hershey) who knows just what's going on but didn't bother to warn him. Thanks mom. Josh Lambert packs up his family and moves to a new huge house. And things get worse - much worse. Josh's mom finds family portraits and is freaked that Josh is in them because he can't have his photo taken - it steals his soul. 

Sigh, you guys aren't going to let me have ANY fun, are you? There is a small reveal that since Josh was small, every time she took his picture there was a ghostly figure of a woman near him and with each picture it got closer so she called a medium (I thought she was a small myself) named Elise who determined that Josh has the power of astral projection.

Who am I and why am I in this movie?
<sings> I'm not going to tell you...

Umm what? He's got the OBEs? That's out of body experience BTW SMH. He thinks he's been dreaming but he's been wandering Through The Never... oops, sorry, that's a Metallica song. He's been in what Elise calls (and she's the only medium here so she calls it anything she wants) The Further. You got your sad spirits, your mad spirits, your parasites (huh?), and your downright eeeevil ones. This woman she calls a parasite and says the way to protect Josh is to hypnotize him to forget he ever could do whatever she thinks he can do. So they do.

Back in the present his mother decides it's time for Elise to butt in again with her opinions. She tells the family it's not the houses - it's Dalton. Remember, this is a mashup of both movies so if you only saw the first one and are thinking WTH it's because you need to rush out and rent the second one okay? Or not.

Apparently they never pay their light bills in The Further...

Elise and her two assistants set up a sort of seance and this was so funny to me I had to watch it in sections 'cause I kept laughing too hard to hear what was going on. If I had been in a theater they would have thrown me out. They sit at the table and Elise... wait, let me put away all sharp objects and carbonated beverages. 

Elise brings out what looks to be a WWI gas mask with a long hose and an earphone at the end. Supposedly she's supposed to communicate but can't be heard by normal means <pfffffft> so she talks in the mask and the guy <choke> and the guy <choke> and the guy writes down what's going down on a pad of ppppppp... on a pad of paper. Whew. At first it's normal but of course it gets nasty really fast and she ends up screaming and passing out like every other medium.

Sorry, there's a three nightmare limit in this bedroom...

Dalton is in big trouble. Mostly because he has a horrible agent and he's stuck in this movie. Elise says there's a horrible thing keeping him in the Further and he's lost. Josh has to go get him. She and his mother confess to his previous trips twisting, turning, through the never. You heard what I said. 

So Dalton, whose condition has nothing to do with having his picture taken, is being pursued by Darth Maul - umm I mean an entity that is a cartoon demon - the only thing he was missing was a trident. I can't take credit for the Darth Maul reference either - somebody else said it, I just don't remember who. 

Excuse me ma'am? Sir? Grandma?

Josh finds Dalton and they both go Through The Never... sorry, The Further and wake up. Everybody's happy - for a couple of seconds. Then Elise notices Josh's hands are dirty and like claws. He is now the old woman who chased him as a boy. She takes his picture quickly before he kills her. The wife finds it and as she sees it he comes up behind her. He kills her and the whole thing's over.

Ah c'mon, do you really want this to continue - 'cause I didn't. Sheesh. He doesn't kill her, he just goes on with the rest to a second movie. Renai is suspicious of Josh but he's acting all nice and stuff so everybody moves in with Josh's mom until the police are done with their investigation of Elise's murder. And strange things happen - AGAIN. Doors open by themselves, something sets off the alarms (THAT was freaking annoying - can't hear them anyway and now this piercing noise) and the piano keeps playing by itself. Badly. 

But Josh has had enough of the boogeyman, he wants everybody to just shut up - for a very good reason. Want me to tell you why? Tough. What happened to Darth Maul? Apparently he went back to the Star War's set 'cause he conveniently is dropped in this movie.

Oh, a small continuity error and boo boo in one - Renai had been knocked unconscious by a ghostie and Josh finds her and places her on the couch. As he does you can see her pull her feet back so her knees are bent. Kind of hard to do when you're supposed to be knocked out. Also he places her with her face straight up toward the ceiling but when it cuts away for a second and back, her head is cranked all the way to the right.

Just to make things more... confusing, the deceased Elise's assistants go into her house trying to find... I have no freaking idea. But they do find a tape with Josh's name on it and observe the little boy and the session where they made him forget everything. They digitize the tape and lighten it up. Standing in the corner in back of the kid is the grown up version of Josh. Oookay. Something is amiss. Mostly that you spent anywhere from twenty bucks on up to see this. They then go see Elise's friend Carl for more fun.

Wait.. is mortis allowed in Scrabble?

Carl's version of a Ouija board (since they seem to be determined not to have one in these two movies) is playing Boggle. No, really I'm serious. He has a bunch of 'dice' with letters in a cup. He shakes them up, asks a question and throws them on the table. What, no Magic 8 ball? What's wrong with these people? After a couple of false starts they get an answer to go to an abandoned hospital conveniently open when Josh's mom was a nurse. Oh. No. We've gone from slightly interesting with a two movie mashup right back down to paranormal hand held camera crap in an abandoned hospital. Mr. Wan you SUCK!

They find the ICU and Lorraine remembers a patient called Parker Crane, there because he attempted to castrate himself. The last time she saw him he was in the elevator with her and got off on a different floor. She asked the admitting desk why he was up and was told he had died by suicide the day before. Conveniently because otherwise this movie will be four hours long they immediately find his records in the abandoned record room (geez, that would be an identity thief's treasure trove - all those names, social security numbers, etc.) and find out where he lived. Oh yes, we're hunting wabbits now.

The Church Of The Perpetual Plot Fail

Parker's house is not only still conveniently standing, but unoccupied. They break in and find a secret room that has pews like a church and the dessicated corpses of dozens of women, all in wedding dresses. Parker had been a serial killer who kept clippings of all his crimes (he was called The Bride In Black) 'cause of his mother. The living discover Elise didn't send them here, Parker's mother did, and not because she wanted to be nice. 

Just to keep things nice and confusing, Josh (the real one in The Further) finds Elise (why is she there?) and they try to figure a way to find the woman who killed Elise. She suggests they ask the one person who would know - Josh the child. Oh geez, now we're doing time travel in The Further. He asks the Josh who's still under hypnosis where to find the woman and Josh stands up and points at his bedroom. They go to the door and open it. This was shown on the tape in the first movie with absolutely no explanation. Now you know. Happy?

Tell me again why you couldn't CGI this?

Meanwhile among the living - Josh's mother rushes home and tells the wife and kids to get out and that Josh is not Josh. Duh. The three men surround Josh who by now is becoming ill for... I don't know, cause he's not really Josh? I don't really care. Three strong men cannot subdue Josh. This is not even the BIGGEST duh of the whole movie but it came close since they made a big deal of Josh starting to fall apart and becoming ill and THREE men can't hold him? Sigh. This movie is 105 minutes long. That's 105 minutes more than it needed.

The family gets the okay to come home and of course get ambushed by Josh/not Josh. So now we have The Shining going on as a crazed Josh/not Josh hunts down the family. They end up down in the basement and Dalton gets the bright idea of twisting, turning, Through The Never... sigh. I mean he goes into The Further to get his dad. So what, two people are going to be in this body now?

Son? Daughter? Grandma?

Nope, apparently it's one per customer. Dalton finds his dad and Elise and Carl (the Boggle guy) and they make their way to get out of there - well not Elise, she's dead. On the way they discover the reason the woman's been following Josh - it's not a woman, it's the serial killer. As a boy he was forced to live as a girl and so hates all women and kills... you know what? I really don't care.

Everybody gets out, all go to the right bodies, and we have another happy moment that's surely going to go to hell any moment. That is, as soon as Mr. Wan gets another freaking script and maybe another two years go by...

What's that Mr. Wan? I get a five movie contract?

Our epilogue is the two assistants who seek out those who need help with 'parasite spirits'. Oh. Brother. They show up at a family's house, telling them when their daughter, currently in a sort of vegetative state, was resuscitated, she brought something bad back with her. Unseen by everyone except the youngest daughter is the spirit of Elise, who decides to tag along in astral form I'm assuming, to help the two with their, uh, endeavors. 

Our last scene (THANK YOU!) is Elise staring at the afflicted girl, then at the corner where, I'm assuming there is something really nasty. She yells 'Oh my God' like anybody's going to hear her and the movie's over. And Mr. Wan has more money. And a setup for another freaking movie. And I have a freaking headache. You're welcome.

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