Movie Reviews

Frighteningly, I managed to score 3 decent movies in arrow last night. This breaks my streak of mediocre to crappy movie picks.

First up was The Resurrected, a 1990’s horror piece with all the cheese you could possibly want. Based on Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it has possibly the most stereotypical opening: a thunderstorm at night outside a castle-looking insane asylum.

It only gets more cliched from there. The modernized Sam Spade is sitting in his office when The Damsel In Distress shows up to have him investigate her Mad Scientist husband.

Next up, I caught The Shrine. It, too, starts out with a cliche  with a standard Investigative Reporter with her equally standard Intern go to Czechoslovakia to investigate a student’s disappearance, dragging along their photographer who is, of course, the reporter’s Reluctant, But Protective Boyfriend. Their investigation leads them to a secretive village with cult-ish villagers who tell them to leave.

Unlike The Resurrected, the clichés end before the movie does. If you suffer through the horrible stereotypes, the plot takes a twist about 15 minutes from the end that saves it from being just another waste of brain cells.

Why yes, I am thinking of you, Midnight Meat Train (Now there was an idiotic movie).

Finally is Serial Killing 101. At this point, I should mention that my new dark comedy standard is Tucker and Dale Versus Evil. It used to be Burn After Reading, which took over from Fargo. All that to say my standards are pretty high for dark comedy.

While nowhere near that caliber, Serial Killing 101 does not disappoint. Like Burn After Reading, it starts out slow. One Netflix reviewer said he almost turned it off after 15 minutes, but was glad he stuck it out. I second that.

The premise is that in order to impress a hot-but-slightly-goth chick in his senior-year career class, the protagonist claims he wants to be a serial killer. This, of course, does not amuse his teacher, who sends him off to the psychologist. Meanwhile, the girl turns out to want to be killed by a famous serial killer so that she too will be famous.

Insert about 15 minutes of idiotic fantasy scenes that try way too hard to be funny. Kind of like American Psycho.

Unlike that particular waste of celluloid, this movie eventually hits its stride with the protagonist’s first attempts at serial killing and the introduction of an actual serial killer.

All in all, it made for a great late-night replacement for Coast To Coast AM, which was being hosted by someone other than Noorey. Even Lump liked them. Or maybe not, since she just slept through them.