Swallow

Year 14, Day 298 - 10/25/22 - Movie #4,269

BEFORE: OK, let me just say that I tried.  I tried to get something more Halloween-like here, only my efforts were thwarted.  I could have had Tim Blake Nelson carry over to "Nightmare Alley", a Guillermo Del Toro film I really want to see.  Or I could have had Dan Stevens carry over to "The Sea Beast", an animated film about a sea monster, or "Blithe Spirit", which is about ghosts or seances, I think. Or "The Rental", which I think is also a horror movie. But the problem is, none of those films get me where I want to be, I already worked out my connections to Thanksgiving and Christmas, and those films just won't get me there - or if they do, I wasn't able to see the path.

Keep in mind that both of my theme months, October and February, are sometimes made up of small chains that get pieced together, smaller groups of bricks that get mortared together to form a wall. So maybe tonight's film is mortar, not a brick, I don't know, but it connected the end of one small chain with the start of another, and that small chain that starts tomorrow is going to get me to Halloween, then via the new "Matrix" film I'll be headed towards Thanksgiving, then Christmas. 

So no, maybe this isn't a true horror film, because there are no monsters or ghosts or demons in it. But read the plot line, because there's a reason why I lumped this one in with horror films in the first place - even if it's not blatant horror, it's at least horrific, I'm thinking.  Hey, last year I had to use the "Spielberg" documentary to connect two chains together, I'll do what it takes to keep the chain going, even if I'm bending my own rules in the process. 

Austin Stowell carries over from "Colossal". And if this one isn't your bag, I promise more films about monsters and serial killers are on the way. 

THE PLOT: Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife, finds herself increasingly compelled to consume dangerous objects.  As her husband and his family tighten their control over her life, she must confront the dark secret behind her new obsession.  

AFTER: Well, I'm just going to say that I was wrong about there not being any monsters or ghosts or demons in this film, there are all three. The monsters are Hunter's husband and in-laws, who berate and belittle her at every opportunity, to the point where her opinion on anything never matters.  There's just no way she's ever going to be an equal partner in that marriage, I think because the family has some money and she doesn't, so she's always, ALWAYS going to be made to feel "less than" by them. And the ghosts are in her past, her back-story has violence and an event that she may feel shame over, even if it's not her fault.  And then there are the inner demons that all of this chaos and uncertainty in her life cause and feed.  

Even if we're not exactly sure how all of these things lead Hunter toward swallowing non-edible things, there's still more of a connection here than I saw last night in "Colossal" between the toxic relationships and the fallout from them. I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out how a boy destroying a girl's 8th grade school project in spite led to her manifesting a giant monster from her subconscious, halfway around the world. But maybe it's a bit easier to see how a woman constantly being made to feel like her opinion doesn't matter might go a little off the deep end and start swallowing marbles and thumbtacks. 

It's still quite disturbing, make no mistake, and it's very hard to understand for those of us who were yelled at in grade school for eating paste, or paper, or dirt.  To some degree, those things might be part of the learning process, and some people learn the hard way not to chew their pencils or put the caps of pens in their mouth - I recall that certain brands of pens had to put holes in their caps just in case a kid swallowed one, then they might not die if air could still pass through the swallowed object. And I'm old enough to remember when certain toys were designated as choking hazards because they had pieces that were small enough for little kids to swallow. 

And as if it weren't hard enough to be a parent, even some foods are choking hazards for kids, depending on their ages and sizes.  For toddlers items like corn kernels, grapes or chunks of meat and cheese are choking hazards, which I guess is why all baby food needs to be puréed.  This is part of the reason why I'm not a parent, because it's just so much damn work, and I don't like cutting my own food into tiny pieces, so why should I do that for another human?  Right, to keep them alive.  It seems like nearly everything can kill a baby, even eating wrong and sleeping wrong, so to me it's a wonder how so many of them manage to grow up. I've got a nephew who had digestive problems when he was a toddler, and the only things he could eat were cut-up grapes and goldfish crackers.  But now he's 14, and he still only eats grapes and and goldfish crackers, from what I can tell. I guess once someone gets into a pattern of behavior it's very hard to pull them out of it, but I really wonder what's going to happen when and if he ever wants to try some other food. If he were my kid, I'd tell him there's a great big wonderful world of foods out there to try, but it's not my place to do so. But there I was with my sister's family in North Carolina and everyone was enjoying delicious BBQ meats but him, he stuck with his goldfish crackers, and I guess on one level I admire his commitment to them, but come on, he's missing out on so much!  

To me, the best part of life is traveling around and eating different foods - not just the BBQ of different cities, but I love sushi and pad thai and deli meats and fried chicken, and even salad if I can get one with a good balsamic vinaigrette, maybe some goat cheese and beets in there. I was married to a woman who went vegetarian, and I just couldn't handle it.  We broke up for several other reasons, but not being on the same culinary page was perhaps the start of it. My second wife doesn't eat any seafood, which is also hard for me to understand because I grew up in New England - but I do my best to understand it and honor her choices. For me, I'm not big on a number of fruits, like melons and berries and anything exotic like kiwi or dragonfruit. I don't like bananas either, but sweet plantains with Latin food is fine. But the only "good" fruits to me are apples, grapes, oranges, lemons, limes and raspberry products like jam and fillings, but not the raspberries themselves.  My point is, we all have our dietary quirks, likes and dislikes. 

That being said, swallowing marbles, thumbtacks, needles is way off the board. Pica is the name of this eating disorder that compels people to consume or crave non-food items.  And, yes, this plot checks out because Wiki is telling me that emotional trauma, family issues, and pregnancy can all be risk factors for pica.  And then within the larger umbrella of pica there are different subtypes, like xylophagia (eating paper), geophagia (eating soil, sand or clay), hyalophagia (eating glass), lithophagia (stones), acuphagia (sharp objects), metallophagia (metal), trichophagia (hair, wool) and yes, coprophagia (umm, feces). What's probably unusual about the depiction of Hunter here is that she doesn't seem to have a special focus, she eats things from several of these categories, probably for dramatic effect or creative license.  I remember that I liked chewing ice cubes when I was a kid, which is called pagophagia, and my mother was always afraid I was going to break my teeth while doing so, but that never happened. I don't know when or why I stopped, I just kind of grew out of it, I guess. 

How many people suffer from this is tough to determine, because many pica sufferers may be reluctant to admit their condition and seek treatment. The pregnancy angle is a bit disconcerting, because we're already familiar with pregnant women having cravings for things like pickles, how many also have cravings for eating paper or dirt? And how few of those women understand this and are willing to talk about it? And the desires might also be linked to anemia or places in the world where people have a mineral-deficient diet. Makes sense, I guess, if your body needs iron or other minerals, and vitamins or supplements are not available, your brain somehow tells you to eat soil or metal?  

For Hunter, her husband and in-laws try to "cure" her of her condition, and of course first they try yelling at her, but as you might imagine, that only makes the situation worse. They also hire someone to follow her around all day and watch her as she does chores, because of course they're all much too busy to do that themselves. Then they try to commit her to a mental institution, because by continuing to swallow dangerous objects, she's putting her unborn baby's life at risk, in addition to her own. But maybe there's a reason for that, maybe she never really wanted the baby in the first place, perhaps she's just living the life that other people want her to live, rather than the one SHE wants to live.  Either way, she finds a way to get away from the family in order to try and crack the code of her own life, resolve those issues from long ago, figure out who she wants to be, and then, only then, does she maybe have a shot at being happy, or at least content.  

There's obviously an abortion angle here, and this is the hot-button topic of the day right now, since several states have seen fit to find a way to take away a right that's been legal in the U.S. for fifty years. While I don't really have a dog in this fight, I support a woman's right to choose and a man's right to shut the hell up about it. Do I wish there were fewer abortions?  Well, sure, OK, but to insure that you've got to fund sex education and birth control, and for some unknown reason, the same people who are against abortion are also against those helpful things, too. Which I don't understand, wouldn't it be a great idea if the unwanted unborn babies never got conceived in the first place?  Then we wouldn't have a problem, would we?  But no, they don't want to interfere with "God's will", whatever that means.  What a crock of shit, does God really want us to be so fruitful and multiply to the extent where we use up all the Earth's natural resources and then suffer and die together as a species?  That makes zero sense, if God cared about us he'd let us figure out a way to keep the world's population down to a minimum so that all the people who are alive can enjoy it more.  But since God doesn't exist, or if he does, he doesn't get involved in the day-to-day operations on Earth, so we should all stop living based on what we THINK God wants us to do, and start living in ways that make more sense, long-term. 

Those who might think the best way to stop or reduce abortions is through legislation are flat-out wrong, the way to stop or reduce abortions is through sex education and birth control.  If conservatives could cave a bit on these issues, just maybe both sides could meet somewhere in the middle?  Or is that too much to hope for? Either way, I'm anticipating the results of the November election, hoping that the pendulum swings back in the liberal direction, because I believe that's better for the planet and the long-term survival of mankind.  If God doesn't see things that way, let him tell me that himself, but so far he's been notoriously silent. 

This film made only $33,000 at the box office, which I don't quite understand - or then again, maybe I do. If you make a film about a masked serial killer chopping people up with knives or a chainsaw, people seem to be fascinated by that.  But make a film about somebody swallowing marbles and needles, and they'll stay away in droves.  That's where we find ourselves, I guess. 

There is a popular trick where a magician appears to swallow several needles and a length of thread, and we are meant to believe that somehow he threads all the needles while they are in his stomach, then he regurgitates them with all of the needles hanging from the thread.  I call b.s. on this, because it's much easier to believe that sleight of hand is involved, and also distraction, these are the magician's best friends. And he can PRETEND to swallow them without actually doing so, then at some point distract the audience, remove the unthreaded needles from his mouth and replace them with the threaded set, thus completing the illusion.  It seems Harry Houdini started the trick with the threaded needle set already between his bottom lip and gums, sorry to burst anyone's bubble. The trick is also sometimes done with razor blades, you can look up on the internet how that variation is done, but bear in mind that if the magician actually swallowed the blades, his esophagus would be cut to ribbons. 

But then there's also Stevie Starr, aka "The Regurgitator", and if anybody's actually swallowing things and bringing them up again from his stomach in whatever order or condition he chooses, then it's him. However, some people believe that he's just an illusionist, and a very good one. The items he "brings up" again are generally free of stomach acid, though, that may be an indicator that something else is taking place, other than what we're being told. 

I'll stick with deep-fried items from the State Fair, thanks.  When I told my boss yesterday what I ate at the fairs, including a deep-fried cheeseburger, a deep-fried apple pie, and deep-fried Reese's peanut butter cups wrapped in bacon, he said, "You know, all this seems rather unhealthy..." Umm, yeah, that's kind of the point.

Also starring Haley Bennett (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Denis O'Hare (last seen in "The Normal Heart"), Elizabeth Marvel (last seen in "The Phenom"), David Rasche (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Luna Lauren Velez (last seen in "The First Purge"), Zabryna Guevara, Laith Nakli, Babak Tafti (last seen in "Terminator Salvation"), Nicole Kang, Olivia Perez (last seen in 'In the Heights"), Kristi Kirk, Alyssa Bresnahan, Maya Days, Elise Santora, Kathleen Butler, Nicholas M. Garofolo. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 rubber gloves

Colossal

Year 14, Day 297 - 10/24/22 - Movie #4,268

BEFORE: I'm back from vacation, and ready to take on the last 8 horror-based (mostly) films in the Shocktober chain. Let's see, 8 days left, 8 films, I think I may have planned this month out correctly, as Anne Hathaway carries over from "The Witches".

But first, a brief run-down of our latest trip across the south - this was BBQ Crawl #3, we passed on a trip like this in 2019 so we could do a Casino Crawl in Vegas, and then of course the pandemic happened, so it's been FOUR years since our last BBQ-based adventure, and man, we were feeling it. I don't remember needing to take so many naps on our previous vacations - but we are four years older now, so it does sort of make sense.

Saturday, we arrived in Atlanta early to get a jump on things, but to get to the airport for a 6 am flight, that meant leaving the house at 3 am, which for me meant staying up all night. So once we got to our hotel, I slept for a while, and I spent the next few days trying to catch up on sleep.  But after a nap we hit the Taste of Soul Festival across from Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which turned out to just be a 2-block long street fair. BUT there was one BBQ stand, so I had ribs, which meant the event was not a total loss. Then we hit the World of Coca-Cola Museum, where we learned about the history of Coke, the secret formula of Coke, the advertising of Coke, and basically everything one might need to know about Coke. Then we hit the tasting room to sample Coca-Cola products from around the globe, most of them were terrible and made me proud to be an American. That night I ventured out on the streets of Atlanta looking for a hidden cheesecake shop in a mall called the Underground, only to find it had closed, but instead I stumbled upon some late-night activities there like a secret Masquerade Ball (think "Eyes Wide Shut" maybe), a hip-hop concert, and I'm not saying there was a Fight Club, because if there were, I couldn't talk about it. But there was a pizza stand, so I came back to the hotel with pizza. 

Sunday meant a trip to Waffle House, which my wife loves, then we struck out north of Atlanta to find a giant antiques mall in Cumming, GA, which also had a BBQ restaurant inside it. Another nap, then we met a high-school friend of my wife's for dinner at a steakhouse in a mall west of the city. Monday, we just set out to have fun, we visited Skyline Park but it didn't open until 3 pm, and under it was Ponce Market, which was just a giant hipster food hall with a few expensive stores. OK, change of plans, I grabbed a tourist guide to "Secret Atlanta" and found a 3/4 scale replica of the White House in Decatur, so we drove off to see that and then came back for lunch at The Varsity, a famous college hang-out famous for its hot dogs. Then a bit of daydrinking at the HobNob Tavern in Atlantic Station, followed by a trip to Fox Bros. BBQ, where they serve deep-fried ribs with Alabama white sauce. If that's not enough to make you want to visit, then we maybe don't have much in common. All the BBQ was great but those ribs were just beyond. 

Tuesday we hit another Waffle House (Georgia is the state with the most Waffle Houses, or is it Waffles House?) and set out for Columbia, S.C. famous for its mustard-based BBQ sauce. I learned that they actually serve all the BBQ sauces in South Carolina (no white sauce though) but since they're the only state that serves the mustard-based sauce, that's what they're known for. This is why we do the Crawl, to learn about each city's different techniques, it's almost like having different religions that mostly preach the same things, but there are still differences. Then on Wednesday we hit the South Carolina State Fair, where I ate a bacon cinnamon roll, a donut burger, a corn dog and a fried bologna sandwich. Yes, it sounds like a lot, but this was over the course of three or four hours and I was actually holding back (sort of...). We saw chainsaw carving, sand sculptures, all kinds of crafts and even pig racing at the fair. 

Last Thursday was my birthday, and we spent it at another Waffle House, then driving to Raleigh, North Carolina, where my sister lives. The first night we just hung out at her house, got burgers for take-out and I had some beers. But come Friday, we were at the North Carolina State Fair, where I had a deep-fried cheeseburger, a pork chop sandwich, chicken & waffles on a stick and a deep-fried apple pie with cinnamon ice cream. Saw a dog and camel show, also an act called "Cast in Bronze" which was on "America's Got Talent" a few years ago, it's a guy playing the carillon, which is a series of bells held in a frame and played like a pipe organ, sort of. Then I finished off with some deep-fried Reese's Peanut Butter cups, wrapped in bacon and battered, covered with powdered sugar. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. 

Saturday rolled around again, and after a diner breakfast we did a little shopping, since our hotel was right in the middle of a giant mall-like area. Then we visited a geek-based Halloween market with my sister and her family, before heading out for, of course, barbecue.  North Carolina has its own spin on pork and brisket, mostly they use that thin vinegar-based sauce, but I'm all about trying out each city's BBQ religion and giving them all a chance. So one more giant platter with ribs, chopped pork, sliced brisket and BBQ dark chicken, plus potato salad, beans, biscuits and Hush Puppies. Then Sunday we just headed for the airport to return the rental car and catch our flight, but there was a problem with the plane, and Delta had to fly in another plane just to replace that plane, which added a few hours to our trip home, but in the end I'd rather not switch a flight just to get home faster, because then you never know, you might make it home but your luggage won't, so I'm in favor of staying the course and not panicking, there's food at the airport so why not just relax, have some fried chicken and not worry about it?  

THE PLOT: Gloria is an out-of-work party girl forced to leave her life in New York City and move back home. When reports surface that a giant creature is destroying Seoul, she gradually comes to the realization that she is somehow connected to this phenomenon. 

AFTER: Come on, say it with me this time - "THIS is a weird movie."  Almost TOO weird, but then maybe there's no such thing as "too weird", there's really no bottom to that chasm, now, is there?  We're meant to believe that whenever this messed-up woman walks over a certain spot on a certain playground in a small New Hampshire town, then a giant colossal monster appears in the city of Seoul, South Korea.  And her movements on the playground in New Hampshire are mimicked by the monster, meaning that she could easily step on people on the ground, or swat a helicopter out of the sky, if she's not careful.  But I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here, first the movie starts out just like any little indie film, with a woman who's got a drinking problem, causing her NYC boyfriend to break up with her, which causes her to return to the small town she grew up in to try to get herself together, or maybe start over.  

But the problem there is, she bumps into her childhood friend, Oscar, who now runs his late father's bar, and after accepting a waitress job at the bar, Gloria falls into another cycle of bad relationship juju, she's just traded downward and a love/hate relationship with Oscar develops.  Clearly she only thinks of him as a friend, but when she starts dating Oscar's more attractive friend Joel, Oscar gets jealous, and before long he's making her work late shifts and allowing her to drink at a bar, when we all know that a bar is the last place where a person with a drinking problem should work.  But Oscar also keeps bringing Gloria free furniture for her parents empty house, plus he's her boss, so I guess that's a complicated relationship?  

Things get worse when the colossal beast shows up in South Korea for the first time in 25 years, and not-so coincidentally, Gloria hasn't been in her hometown for exactly that period of time - so she starts to realize that she and the monster are connected, and I guess this is some kind of metaphor, but it kind of falls JUST short of having some meaning.  Like, is this the beast within her, or does the beast symbolize her drinking problem, or her self-destructive behavior?  A little clarity here might help the film, but the movie in general is very unclear on the "HOW" and "WHY" of everything.  

And you might think that the solutions to Gloria's problems would be very simple, like maybe don't drink so much, or don't work at a bar, or don't walk through the playground if you know that walking there causes the monster to appear in Seoul.  Or, I don't know, maybe leave town all together if that's where the nexus or the portal or whatever is. Then maybe work on your issues, go to some AA meetings, see a therapist, do something positive or constructive, because clearly whatever you've done so far just ain't working.  But no, Gloria decides to show Oscar and his friends that when she walks through the playground, the monster walks through Seoul.  When she dances in the playground, the monster dances in Seoul.  

What's worse is that Oscar then learns that he has the same ability, when he walks through the playground, a giant robot walks through Seoul.  Again, what does this mean?  Does he have a dark side also?  Why are these the only two people who have this power, does this mean that they are meant for each other, or are they meant to be each other's nemesis?  Again, is this a metaphor for the hostile nature of relationships, the battling monsters are from Venus and the giant robots are from Mars?  Is this a man/woman thing, deep down men are uncaring, unfeeling automatons and women are secretly beastly and dangerous to themselves and others? Or am I just reading too much into this situation?  No, that's OK, lazy screenwriter and lazier director, I'll do all the work, you just sit there. 

If I'm right, maybe this is an innovative mash-up of monster movie and relationship film - but maybe that's giving the film a bit too much credit.  I'm still scratching my head over the HOW and the WHY of it all, though. 

There's a huge NITPICK POINT to be made concerning the delay involved with a television broadcast, even if it involves a live feed.  The monster's movements appear to be completely in sync with Gloria's, but the monster is half a world away.  Even if something magical or mystical was involved here, and the signals from her brain could travel through the Earth or across the globe instantaneously, it would still take time for the video image from a camera to be uploaded to a central server, then broadcast, then sent to a live feed, then to the tablet that Oscar was holding.  There really is no "Now", even with an internet live-stream, you're always going to be looking at a few seconds ago, so syncing up her movements with the monster's doesn't make sense.  But during the pandemic there were bands that recorded music together, even though the band members were in different locations, so I'm thinking they must have used some software during the recording to account for any transmission delays, right?  

The bigger NITPICK POINT probably concerns how Gloria somehow got herself to Seoul without having enough money for plane fare - she probably wasn't making enough money as a waitress to pay for a last-minute flight to Korea, that would be a couple thousand dollars at least. Did she sneak aboard a cargo plane or something? 

The final confrontation between Gloria's monster and Oscar's robot makes even less sense than that - just saying. BUT, I will credit the film for getting one thing right, when it's 8:00 am in New Hampshire, it's nighttime in South Korea, and SO MANY films get this wrong, they show events happening in different parts of the globe and they just use the same lighting.  

Also starring Jason Sudeikis (last seen in "Driven"), Austin Stowell (last seen in "Fantasy Island"), Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "Monster"), Dan Stevens (last seen in "The Call of the Wild"), Hannah Cheramy, Nathan Ellison, Sarah Surh, Haeun Hannah Cho, Joe Costa, Christine Lee, Rukiya Bernard (last seen in "Get Over It"), Agam Darshi (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 blackouts

The Witches (2020)

Year 14, Day 287 - 10/14/22 - Movie #4,267

BEFORE: Octavia Spencer carries over one more time from "Ma", and now you can sort of tell how behind I'm running, this film came out in time for Halloween 2020, and it made a big splash on HBO Max, but now here we are, two years later, and I finally found a way to link to it.  One big problem, though, it's not on HBO Max any more, which is weird because it was pitched as a "Max Original", and I know Netflix keeps their original movies on their service long past the typical two-year window, I finally watched "Mudbound" on Netflix after three or four years of trying to link to it. So why did this disappear from HBO Max so quickly?  That suggests to me that the film is terrible, and/or nobody was watching it.  But if it's a horror movie, or even a horror-ish movie (it's for kids, umm, I think) you might expect that people would want to watch it during October, and then maybe sort of forget about it during the other eleven months.  It's not the movie's fault...or is it?  

THE PLOT: A young boy and his grandmother have a run-in with a coven of witches and their leader. 

AFTER: Yeah, this one's pretty hard to get a read on - I know it's based on a children's story written by Roald Dahl, but he was an odd bird, right?  Like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is really about a reclusive, madman chocolate maker who employs slave labor Oompa-Loompas from some fictional African country, and for fun he allows children to compete amongst themselves for tickets to enter his chocolate factory, where most of them get tortured or injured in the name of teaching them life lessons on how to be better people.  And yet somehow that's one of the most beloved stories for kids?  What's wrong with THAT picture?  Don't even get me started on "James and the Giant Peach", we all know what THAT's a metaphor for...

Now they're making a new version of "Matilda", and that one's all about bullying a girl with telekinetic powers, but rumor has it that the new version's very problematic because they're really dyking up Miss Trunchbull. But there was already a film version of "Matilda", and many people like it, so why do we need another one?  Similarly, this 2020 HBO film is the second version of "The Witches", there was one released in 1990 with Anjelica Huston as the lead witch, here in the 2020 version it seems they changed the lead boy character and his grandmother into African-American characters, and I suppose that's fine, they're the heroic characters and the lead witch is still white.  Though, to be fair, they added some Black witch characters here, too.

Really, none of this should matter, but of course it does, on some level. 

I do want to watch the earlier film version of "The Witches", but there was no way to link to it from here, or to make it part of my October chain this year. Of course, the version I don't need to see right now is still available on HBO Max, but the one I can link to is gone - sure, it's on iTunes for a $3.99 rental, but I found a weird foreign version of YouTube that had it available for FREE. (Shhh...don't tell anyone...). This week's loose theme is sort of about families, from weird ones ("The Addams Family 2") to surrogate ones ("Ma") to even psychotic and demon-possessed ones ("The Amityville Horror") and tonight's film is about a young boy who loses his parents in a car accident, and goes to live with his grandmother, who tries her best to help him learn to enjoy life again.  

Part of that involves telling him stories about witches and how they navigate the world - Grandma is some kind of faith healer or herbalist or something, and when she was very young she watched as another girl, Alice, fell under the spell of a witch and got turned into a chicken.  The girl's family didn't believe that their daughter had become a chicken, or perhaps they knew and didn't care, because they needed the eggs. (Sorry, old joke.). Back in the present, Grandma runs afoul of another witch who curses her with a recurring cough, or perhaps a more serious disease, and the coughing is just a symptom.  But the movie sort of glosses over all of that, because our young Hero Boy encounters a witch himself in the grocery store, and she offers him candy.  Our parents always warned us about strangers with candy, but yet somehow they still sent us out on Halloween to get exactly that.  

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Halloween is just a little over two weeks away, and let me remind all parents out there that if you take your kids to the drugstore and give them $10 each to spend on candy, they can buy EXACTLY what they want, which is much better than them getting all the random candy that they DON'T want from strangers.  Then you won't have to worry about them eating tainted candy, or candy with drugs in it, or apples with razor blades in them.  AND you'll save money because then they won't need a costume, so this plan is cheaper and safer - and any kid of mine would take this offer, if I'd trained them right. I know I'm a total buzzkill, but also, hey, you're welcome. Think about it for a bit and you may realize the benefits of my plan.

SO, once Grandma realizes that there's a witch cursing her and trying to tempt her grandson with candy, she packs their bags and they head off to stay in a hotel on the Gulf of Mexico.  But damn, wouldn't you know it, this fantastic hotel is also scheduled to play host to the witches coven, like they're having a convention or their annual meeting there.  The coven is pretending to be an organization established to prevent cruelty to children, but really they're gathering together to discuss their plan to use a potion to turn all children into mice.  As Grandma pointed out, witches in this story can't stand the smell of children, but this kind of goes against what we were told in "Hansel & Gretel", also "Tales from the Darkside", where witches are shown EATING children. Well, which is it?  If they can't stand the way children smell, then they probably wouldn't want to eat them, right?  A big part of the taste of your food comes to you through smell. 

We also learn that all witches are bald, they have claws for hands and clubbed feet, and they wear special shoes and long gloves to blend in.  Umm, OK, sure, but aren't they usuall depicted in drawings with long hair?  Next you'll tell me they don't ride flying brooms or wear pointy hats...

Anyway, they're going to spread their mission around the world, tempting kiddies with tainted chocolate bars that have enough drops of the potion in them to turn them all into mice.  On the other hand, hey, free chocolate!

By coincidence, Hero Boy also has a pet mouse that his Grandma gave him, he's been training it to do tricks - but he accidentally gets stuck in the room where the witches are having their meeting, and he watches as another boy staying at the hotel - an Augustus Gloop sort of kid, who loves his chocolate - gets turned into a mouse, and then the witches eventually smell the main character in the room, and they pour potion down his throat, too, and transform him as well.

This is about when this film starts to get very clunky - like when the hotel manager confirms very blatantly to the head witch that the meeting room only has one entrance, there's no other way out of the room.  This was a very unnecessary bit of dialogue, the film essentially explains to the audience why the main character couldn't sneak out the back, but we didn't really care.  As long as the boy didn't know there was a back exit, or how to find one, it really wouldn't matter.  But the film insists on solving this problem for us, before it ever becomes a problem, and that's very clunky. It's like if a character pointed out in a line of dialogue that the curtains in the room are very flammable, and they must take care not to light a match or smoke near the curtains.  The only reason any character would have this conversation would be to set up the plot point that somebody's going to light a match, and those curtains are going to catch on fire quickly, because that's what the story needs to have happen.  It's a verbal fungo.

Another example of this is when our heroes decide to turn the tables, and Grandma and the mice decide to spike the pea soup that the witches are going to eat with the potion, thus turning all the witches into mice themselves.  But adding the potion to the hotel's soup in the kitchen could mean turning some innocent bystanders who order the same soup into mice, so they have to add this line of dialogue about how the witches are all allergic to garlic, so the head witch has to request from the hotel manager that they be served pea soup WITHOUT garlic.  And this would make the soup very bland, meaning that nobody else in the hotel dining room would want to order it, or they wouldn't be allowed to order it, which is even weirder, and now that I think about it, I don't think that garlic is a key ingredient in pea soup in the first place, so this is also a very, very clunky plot point.  It has to happen so that ONLY the witches will drink the soup with the potion, but man, there just HAD to be a better way to get there.  Why couldn't the mice just add the potion right before the kitchen served that table?  Why do we need all this nonsense with the garlic / no garlic at all?  It's just bizarre. 

If you walked up to a deli counter and ordered some salami, and the deli guy said to you, "I can't serve this salami to you because it's a special order for one of my customers, and it's unique, and it's not poisoned in any way....anyway, you wouldn't like it." that would be very suspicious, wouldn't it? 

Another example is the numbering of the hotel rooms, Hero Boy and Grandma are given the key to Room 766, which is on the fourth floor.  Huh?  Every hotel in the world numbers their rooms by floor, so therefore Room 766 should be on the seventh floor, right?  Later on, the story dictates that their room needs to be right above the head witch's room, which is of course Room 666.  So, room 666 is therefore on the third floor?  Why did we need the line of dialogue telling us that 766 is on the fourth floor, what does that even get us?  Why does it matter?  Was the exterior shot of the hotel one of a building that wasn't seven stories high?  WE DON'T EVEN CARE.  Why couldn't their room be on the 7th floor, and why was the screenwriter trying to solve a problem that doesn't even seem to exist? 

OH, there are so many more weird contradictions.  Like if the head witch hates money so much, then why does she have a whole steamer trunk full of it?  Makes no sense.  Why doesn't anybody try to turn the mice back into children, since they know that mice have much shorter life expectancies than people?  Couldn't they have blackmailed the head witch to cast a reversal spell, or provide an antidote, while they had her on the ropes?  Nope, I guess the kids just like being mice?  Clunky, clunky, clunky. 

The final act, where they face off against the head witch, is similarly clunky, it reminds me of the ending of "Back to the Future III" where they have to put the Delorean in front of a train to go 88 mph and travel back to the present, but the train can't go fast enough, so they add special power sticks or something, then someone has to go back and save Doc Brown's girlfriend, hang off the side of the train, use the hoverboard, and it becomes a nearly never-ending chain of tiny little problems that all need to be solved just to bring about the required result.  But I'm left thinking that there could have been an easier way to do it all.  That film's from the same director as this one, Bob Zemeckis, so I wonder if he's got a think for Rube Goldberg-type devices. Now I'm going to go read the Trivia and Goofs sections on IMDB to see if I'm the only one bothered by these issues.  

AH, now maybe I see why the film is no longer on HBO Max. There was some kind of controversy after depicting the witches as not having regular hands, instead they have only three fingers on each hand, and they're like elongated claws.  This apparently was offensive to parents of children with limb differences or hand deformities, because it implies that anyone with differently shaped hands is a witch or inherently evil. Right. And nobody complained about the other things, the ways in which witches are shown trying to kill children, isn't this biased against people who practice the Wiccan religion?  No issues there? 

NITPICK POINT: Another one, of many - early on, according to Grandma's stories, witches are not humans, they're demons who have taken the shape of people.  So, then, what's the guarantee that the potion's going to work on them, and turn them into mice?  What if the potion only works on human physiology, and demons have some kind of different system, or a chemical or magical defense against such potions?  Just saying. 

Oh, and then I'm going to shut the blog down for a week. I'm going on vacation tomorrow, we're traveling down South ourselves, on the long-awaited and very delayed Birthday BBQ Crawl #3.  Crawl #1 was in 2017, Crawl #2 was in 2018, and then in 2019 we changed it up and did a Casino Crawl across Las Vegas. Then came COVID, and we haven't had a decent vacation in three years, unless you count the week in Chicago last year, but then we were visiting my wife's brother, who moved there.  Finally, we're back on the BBQ trail of our own design, and we'll be hitting Atlanta, Columbia SC and Raleigh NC.  I know, I know, the horror film chain just really got rolling, and now it's on hold for a week.  But this is why I started the scary movies early, with "Muppets Haunted Mansion" and "Morbius" in September, so I could take a week off now and still make it to Halloween on time.  So just hang tight and I'll be back here on October 24. 

Also starring Anne Hathaway (last seen in "Locked Down"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "The King's Man"), Jahzir Bruno, Codie-Lei Eastick (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Charles Edwards (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Morgana Robinson, Josette Simon (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Eugenia Caruso, Ana-Maria Maskell, Orla O'Rourke, Eurydice El-Etr, Penny Lisle, Simon Manyonda (last seen in "The Current War: Director's Cut"), Philippe Spall (last seen in "Judy"), Brian Bovell (last seen in "Tom & Jerry"), Jonathan Livingstone, Miranda Sarfo Peprah, Ashanti Prince-Asafo, Vivienne Acheampong, Sobowale Antonio Bamgbose, Angus Wright (last seen in "The Courier"), Dempsey Bovell, Paul Leonard (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), with the voices of Chris Rock (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Kristin Chenoweth (last seen in "You Again")

RATING: 3 out of 10 galvanized nails (another bit of unnecessary dialogue that goes nowhere...)

Ma

Year 14, Day 286 - 10/13/22 - Movie #4,266

BEFORE: Octavia Spencer carries over from "The Nines", and this is another case where I'm really hoping this turns out to be a horror movie of some kind.  I can't be sure, as I haven't seen it yet, and I don't want to just look up the plot on Wiki to find out, I'd prefer for this to happen naturally, either it counts as horror or it doesn't, the chain is good either way, and I've learned to give that preference over being strict with the rules about what counts as what.  After I've seen it, it counts as whatever it is, even if that isn't much.  So, umm, maybe this is a horror film?

The film studio (Blumhouse) certainly pitched it that way, mentioning that this comes from the same producer as "Get Out" and "Happy Death Day".  It's funny, you never hear anybody say, "Oh, yeah, I want to see THAT movie, I hear that the producer is very, very good...."  Yet the studio persists in its thinking that you'll want to go see a film if they can say that a producer on a very popular film was also the producer on THIS one.  Sorry, that doesn't work that way...but I suppose if they said "From the director of "The Help" and "Breaking News in Yuba County" then you wouldn't get a horror-movie vibe from it, and then since you were really looking for a horror movie, you'd skip this one and move on.  It's very silly. 

THE PLOT: A lonely woman befriends a group of teenagers and decides to let them drink at her house. Just when the kids think their luck can't get any better, things start happening that make them question the intention of their host. 

AFTER: This film is about a divorced mother and daughter who move back to where the mother grew up, so she can get a job in the local casino.  (This could be set in AnyTown, USA, but it was filmed in Natchez, Mississippi.). Maggie, the daughter, has a tough time fitting in, until she meets a few other teenagers in school who like to hang out, get drunk and smoke weed. All normal teenage behavior I suppose (unless you care about high school, like I did...) but the teens find it hard to buy alcohol, the drinking age being what it is and all that.  So, they hang out near the liquor store and ask passersby to help them out by buying them beer and various spirits. (Teens are the only ones who drink Fireball, the movie gets that right, at least.)

They luck out when Sue Ann, a worker at a veterinarian's clinic, helps them out by buying the booze, and then after they get busted for drinking by the rock pile, she helps them out even more by letting them drink in her basement.  Sure, it seems a little weird, but if they're going to drink anyway, why not do it in a safe place, where an adult can at least make sure they're sober before they drive home?  NITPICK POINT: If they've got the money for buying alcohol, why don't they also have the money to take Ubers home?  Or why don't they just drink in their own basements, or in the back of the van?  Because then I guess we wouldn't have a movie...

They start calling Sue Ann "Ma" because she's looking out for them - but is she?  She's also checking out the teens' social media feeds and finding out their last names.  Then she's FaceTiming them and sending a bunch of text messages encouraging them to come over and party.  But Maggie and her friends find that the alcohol starts hitting them harder than usual, and then they realize that some of their jewelry is missing, so what's Ma really up to?  Well, it turns out that Ma's got more issues than a newsstand, and seeing the kids interact with each other triggers some flashbacks of emotional trauma that happened to her in high school.  Also, why doesn't Ma want the kids to leave the basement and see the rest of her house, what's going on THERE? 

It turns out that Maggie's boyfriend, Andy Hawkins, is the son of Ben Hawkins, who pulled a prank on Sue Ann back in high school, and now, years later, she's decided she wants some form of revenge.  Ben lets his son drive one of the company vans, and they have tracking devices, so Ben starts to wonder why his son is spending so much time at Sue Ann's place.  Ben confronts Sue Ann, but it only sets her off more, because he's not at all apologetic for the prank he played on her in high school. OK, so it wasn't a bucket of pig's blood at the prom, but it was still traumatic and not cool. 

With the help of drugs from the vet clinic, Sue Ann holds Ben and the teens hostage, and she's got some pretty weird ideas about what to do with them when they can't fight back.  Finally, we get to something close to a horror film, so my including this one here is justified, in the end. Some might say this is reminiscent of the "Saw" films, but I wouldn't know, I didn't see "Saw". Maybe if I saw "Saw", I might say that I've seen this in "Saw".  Maybe one day I'll see "Saw", but I don't know, we'll have to see. 

The flashback story was added to the original script, and I think that was a smart idea.  Without it Ma would be a totally unsympathetic character, but knowing that she was bullied and traumatized in high school explains a lot, not to the point where her actions against the teens are justified, but at least you can understand how she got broken inside, and how the actions of one generation can be felt by the next. I have to admit that this is pretty clever in the end, pertaining to how some things can come full circle, but with unintended results. But maybe I'm overthinking it, maybe it's just about a person in a small town who's very messed up. 

Also starring Diana Silvers (last seen in "Ava"), Juliette Lewis (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), McKaley Miller (last seen in "Wish I Was Here"), Corey Fogelmanis, Gianni Paolo, Dante Brown, Tanyell Waivers, Dominic Burgess (also last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Allison Janney (ditto), Tate Taylor (ditto), Heather Marie Pate, Luke Evans (last seen in "Message from the King"), Margaret Fegan, Missi Pyle (last seen in "Feast of Love"), Kyanna Simone Simpson (last seen in "The Immortaly Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Andrew Matthew Welch, Skyler Joy, Nicole Carpenter, Victor Turpin (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 photos cut out from the yearbook

The Nines

Year 14, Day 285 - 10/12/22 - Movie #4,265

BEFORE: After tonight, just two more films before I go on vacation - we're flying down to Atlanta and we're going to drive to Columbia, SC and Raleigh, NC, on BBQ Crawl #3, with additional stops at state fairs in both Carolinas, plus whatever else we find fun to do.  My wife and I prepare to go on vacation in very different ways, she's setting up the cat-sitter, doing laundry, figuring out what to pack three days in advance, while I'm busy getting my COVID Omicron booster shot and trying to clear episodes of "Jeopardy!" and "Law & Order" off my DVR so it doesn't fill up while we're gone.  I'm checking the dates of the World Series to see if maybe my favorite TV shows will be off that week. Nope, no such luck.

Ryan Reynolds carries over from "The Amityville Horror" (2005). I'm not sure this qualifies as a horror movie, it's listed as some kind of psychological thriller.  There may be some potential there, but I'm really just using this film to connect two horror chains that I had planned, connecting them together this way gave me 19 films for October, which I'm counting as a full month, once I removed days for vacation and NY Comic Con.  I didn't come up with a better plan, so it is what it is at this point. 

THE PLOT: A troubled actor, a television show runner and an acclaimed videogame designer find their lives intertwining in mysterious and unsettling ways. 

AFTER: OK, so this is not a horror movie.  I'm still not sure what it IS, but I know it's not a horror movie. I'm not even sure how much of a "thriller" it is, because it didn't thrill me, I kept falling asleep. Of course, I was watching it after another late night working at the movie theater, but I'm going to ahead and blame the movie. 

The film is in three sections, titled "The Prisoner", "Reality Television" and "Knowing".  Ryan Reynolds appears in all three sections, but playing different characters, who of course look very much the same.  And they sort of appear to be in each other's orbits, or so it seems over time, but they don't ever meet each other directly.  Hope Davis and Melissa McCarthy also appear in all three segments, also playing different characters in each one.  So, umm, what's going on here?  Well, that's the big question, isn't it? 

Reynolds plays a TV actor at first, someone who appears on a crime procedural show, but who gets confined to house arrest after setting fire to some of his girlfriend's possessions, then doing drugs with a prostitute and totaling his car.  OK, maybe he's going through some stuff, or maybe he's just an addict.  Someone who works for his agent bails him out of jail and finds a house that belongs to another client for him to serve his time.  She takes away his phone, all the alcohol in the house, and also anything that could start a fire - this lady seems like she's on top of things. While under lockdown, the actor seems to go a little crazy, he keeps seeing the number 9 everywhere, every dice roll adds up to 9, he sees more 9's in the newspaper than logically should be there, and there's a cryptic note in his handwriting that says, "Look for the nines" - only he didn't write it.  After befriending the single (?) mother next door, who seems to be flirting with him, he can't quite get a read on her, because she says she's going to come over, but then leaves him hanging.  Finally a talk with his handler convinces him to step outside the range of the ankle bracelet, and it seems at this point that the entire reality dissolves. 

Next, we see Reynolds as a TV writer, and I think he's the guy that owns the house which the actor was staying in after getting arrested.  Not sure. He's away working on his show, "Knowing", which stars Melissa McCarthy.  The same actress who played the single mom before now appears as a TV executive trying to convince him to dump Melissa McCarthy from the show in favor of a more well-known actress, who turns out to be unavailable.  But this ruins the relationship between the writer and McCarthy, so what was the point of that?  Near the end of this, we learn that the writer is also the subject of a reality TV show, currently being filmed.  Did he NOT notice the camera-person following him around everywhere?  This is where things got just a bit too confusing for me.  

In the third segment, Reynolds plays a video-game designer who's on a long drive with his wife (played by Melissa McCarthy) and daughter, but their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and he leaves them alone to try to get a signal on his phone.  He meets a woman who looks just like the neighbor and TV executive from before, and he tries to get a lift from her to the next town or gas station. Meanwhile, his daughter, back in the car, watches clips from segments 1 and 2 on a digital camera, which sort of ties everything together, except that it also fails to do that.  

There is an answer for everything, how it all fits together, I suppose - but I wasn't that happy with the answer.  At one time Reynolds' character runs through the various possibilities to explain the unexplainable events and connections taking place.  Perhaps this is a dream, perhaps he is dead, perhaps he's in a coma.  Nope, it's none of those, and it's not time travel or multiverse travel either.  I won't say what it is, just to point out that I'm unsatisfied with the explanation given.  At such a late point in the film, a revelation should clear up everything that's gone before, instead it just makes everything we've seen so far even more confusing. 

This film played at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, which is something that DOES make some sense - the programmers there often love arty, challenging films that defy explanation. But the film bombed at the box office, and it's easy to see why.  This would be very confusing to any movie-goer who wasn't on that indie, intellectual, vibe and seeking out a thought-piece of a film. I really wasn't in that mood tonight, I came here for another horror film, but at least if this film didn't deliver, I can fall back on the fact that it's made a connection to the next batch of horror films, so I'm essentially calling a mulligan tonight, this one's just going to move me on to the next, after the reveal there's really no reason for me to care about this one, or ever think about it again. Sorry. 

Also starring Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Hope Davis (last seen in "Greenland"), David Denman (ditto), Elle Fanning (last seen in "Reservation Road"), Octavia Spencer (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Ben Falcone (also last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Dahlia Salem, John Gatins, Andy Fielder, Greg Baine, Ellen Treanor, Sean Andrews, with a cameo from Jim Rash (last seen in "The Onion Movie")

RATING: 3 out of 10 focus group participants

The Amityville Horror (2005)

Year 14, Day 284 - 10/11/22 - Movie #4,264

BEFORE: Chloe Grace Moretz carries over one more time from "The Addams Family 2". Anybody who can cross genres, and appear in different genres can do well in my end-of-year list.  She's been in 2 animated (or half-animated) films this year and now two horror films.  And I'm back on Ryan Reynolds, who's having an even better year, with four action movies, one animated film, and appearances in two documentaries - so I'm not surprised that now he's showing up again in the horror chain.  He can't beat out Nic Cage this year, but maybe he can tie Bruce Willis. 

The horror linking is a tricky thing sometimes - I've been second-guessing myself all month by passing up on links to "Freaky" and "Old" and "Hocus Pocus", which makes me want to say, "Geez, maybe there was a better way to do this?"  Like what if next October rolls around and I find that I can't put a solid chain together, and I've left all these horror films stranded and unlinkable?  That's negative thinking, and not only do I not want to go there, I have to keep my eyes on the prize because the end of the year is in sight, and if I leave the path I'm on, who knows, the whole chain could fall apart and I won't be able to get to my Christmas movies as planned. Sure, now I realize I could follow the Philip Baker Hall link and get to "Coma" which would lead me to "Creepshow" and/or "Dead Ringers", but honestly, I don't have time to even consider an alternate path.  I'm working every day this week and then on Saturday I'm supposed to get on a plane - so even if there WERE a better path, I don't have time to chart that course.  At this point, the chain is what it is until December 25.  

There are a lot of movies to watch between now and next October - I can't predict what else could also get added to the list before that.  I'll just do what I do every year, put together the best possible chain I can from what got left behind. 

THE PLOT: Newlyweds are terrorized by demonic forces after moving into a large house that was the site of a grisly mass murder a year before. 

AFTER: This is my first film from the "Amityville Horror" franchise - and like any other franchise, it started with one movie, and then when it did well, somebody in Hollywood said, "Well, why can't it be TWO movies?"  And then three, then a remake/reboot, and maybe a Netflix series a decade or so after that.  Because if you just make one movie and call it a day, well, you're leaving money on the table.  There are like a dozen horror movie franchises that I haven't even started on yet, like the "Halloween" films (shout out to Jamie Lee Curtis, who I saw in person at the New Yorker Festival this past weekend) and then "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm St." 

But cable's running the original "Amityville Horror" film from 1979, with James Brolin and Margot Kidder, and I'm thinking I should record it for possible future inclusion, and then there's "Amityville II: The Possession" with a less stellar cast.  But then, where do I draw the line, do I add "Amityville 3-D" and "Amityville: the Awakening" or just call it a day?  Honestly, I have no idea. When should I put the "Halloween" and other missing franchises on my to-do list?  I guess I'll work them in when I have time, or if I get an inkling that they're going to help me make my future connections.  

I've tended to avoid the "haunted house" genre ever since I got roped into watching "Poltergeist" way back in 1983, and got the bejeebus scared out of me at the age of 14. After seeing the "produced by Steven Spielberg" credit, I was expecting something akin to "E.T.", and well, it just wasn't that at all. I found it very difficult to sleep for about a week, and now 40 years later, well, not that much has changed, except I don't take the scary movies quite as seriously.  The Amityville franchise wears that "based on a true story" line like a badge of honor, but once you start reading about the real-life DeFeo murders that took place in 1974, you realize that probably there's no supernatural connection at all.  It was just a guy with a broken brain who shot and killed his whole family. Case closed. There's just no reason to think that the spirits of his dead family had any influence over the house's future residents, or that the house was built on a Native American burial ground, or torture prison, this film kind of throws all that in for good measure, by way of explanation.  

Something funny (unusual funny, not "ha ha" funny) happened during the recent pandemic, with the crime statistics.  Most violent crimes - carjackings, muggings, bank robberies - were way down, which makes sense, nobody was going anywhere during lockdown.  But the exception was the murder rate, which went up in 2020 and 2021. What gives?  If everybody was at home, under lockdown or quarantine, the inevitable conclusion is that more people were killing their roommates or family members. Logically, this makes some sense, if people found that their relationships just couldn't survive close contact in small spaces for an extended period of time. All those little petty annoyances between spouses or parents and children, well, they build up, and if there's no school or work to go to, the effect is somewhat cumulative.  And then in some cases, things boil over and you just want to KILL that person, metaphorically at first, but then...

In the end, what's more believable, that the spirits of the murdered children reached out from beyond the afterlife into the here and now to convince more people to kill, or a supernatural force that feeds off of human misery took up residence in one house's ventilation system, or that one imperfect human, who regularly used heroin and LSD, and had been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, was under a lot of pressure and somehow thought that killing family members would stop the imaginary voices in his head?  I know what I believe, and it's the most likely answer. The direct motive for the killings might still be unclear, but Ronald DeFeo Jr. had a volatile relationship with his parents, and it was most likely added by the author of the original book, and then Hollywood compounded things with the movie.  Obviously it benefited someone financially to do this, because there have been TWENTY-EIGHT films with "Amityville" in the title throughout the Amityville multiverse. 

That being said, as we learned in "Last Night in Soho", nearly every house or flat in London has a checkered history, somebody probably died or was murdered in every room at some point, that's just statistics.  When a real-estate agent sells a house on Long Island, or anywhere else, there's probably a little voice in their head repeating, "Don't mention the murder, don't mention the murder..."  But then if they do, they might as well lean into it, because there is a contingent out there that might be MORE interested in living in a place where a violent crime happened.  They say that lightning can't strike twice in the same place, but of course, it can.  The top spire of any skyscraper has probably been hit by lightning thousands of times.  So it's NOT the house, it's the people who live there next, but of course in the back of their minds, they may be looking for some excuse as to why they find themselves having dark thoughts, just like the previous residents. 

George and Kathleen Lutz divorced in the 1990's, and both died in the mid-aughts. And Ronnie DeFeo died just last year, he'd been in prison ever since 1974, and the stories about the house have now taken on an (after-)life of their own, but let's get real, I say.  I know, I know, I'm really no fun, but that's what I've done since I was a kid, try to separate fantasy from reality.  The real house in question, on Ocean Avenue in Amityville, doesn't even have those two giant curving windows that look like demon (or pumpkin) eyes.  The house used for the first two "Amityville Horror" films is in Toms River, NJ, sorry to burst everyone's bubble, and the one seen in this film is really in Wisconsin. 

You can't have it both ways, in my opinion - you can't say this is "based on actual events" and then acknowledge that all the names and some of the facts had to be changed for legal reasons. Bottom line - if ghosts were real, and if a house could be haunted by one event enough to drive a second family to the brink of madness and murder, then there wouldn't be so many lawsuits after the fact about what the books and movies got right and got wrong. Just every little single detail about the Lutz's time in the notorious house is wrong here, right down to the fact that their dog actually survived the experience.  Nice try, Hollywood, but I'm on to your tricks. 

Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed"), Melissa George (last seen in "Mulholland Drive"), Jesse James (last seen in "Jumper"), Jimmy Bennett (last seen in "Shorts"), Rachel Nichols (last seen in "Alex Cross"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Isabel Conner, Brendan Donaldson (last seen in "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them"), Annabel Armour (last seen in "Contagion"), Danny McCarthy (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), José Taitano. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 Alice Cooper and KISS posters

The Addams Family 2

Year 14, Day 283 - 10/10/22 - Movie #4,263

BEFORE: OK, I'm back on horror movies, well, sort of.  This is a cartoon one, so how scary could it possibly be?  It's a hybrid of animation, comedy and spooky stuff, but I did say I wanted to get all these silly ones out of the way, so here goes.  I think things kind of get progressively scarier from here, which is how it should be - the scariest movie should be saved for the big day on October 31, right?  

I found a new band that does a lot of mash-ups, not spooky songs, but just mash-ups of popular songs, like not TRUE mash-ups that use the sound samples from several songs, these are more ones that they record themselves in a studio, incorporating elements and riffs from two or more songs.  I found their mix of "Take on Me" and "99 Red Balloons" over the weekend on a long shift at the theater, like a 17 hour shift.  The band is called Pomplamoose, I think their name is a riff on the French word for "grapefruit", which is "pamplemousse".  They also mashed up "Sweet Dreams" by Eurhythmics with "Seven Nation Army" by White Stripes, and "I Will Survive" from Gloria Gaynor with "This Love" by Maroon 5, and "Every Breath You Take" by the Police with "500 Miles" by the Proclaimers.  Now those are my kind of mash-ups, check them out on YouTube or Spotify if you get a chance - I'll be downloading all their covers and mash-ups as soon as I figure out how. 

Yeah, I survived New York Comic-Con once again, two and a half days at a table in Artist Alley, with some time at the end of each day to walk around a bit and take some pics of the costumed crowd.  Comic-Con is itself a mash-up, mixing comic books with movies, TV shows, panels, costuming, collecting, t-shirts, and now they're starting to add interesting food, too.  I saw booths serving ramen, okonomiyaki, a bunch of different food trucks with too-huge lines, and so on. But I managed to survive on Egg McMuffins for breakfast and empanadas for lunch, because I didn't have time to wait in line for unique and interesting food.  I miss the days of having a booth on the main show floor and catching some bulgogi hot dogs being served a few aisles away.  And then once I made it through Friday and Saturday at Comic-Con, I had to work at the New Yorker Festival at the theater, and that was that LONG 17-hour shift, which ended at midnight. Got home at about 1 am this morning and still had to watch this movie before crashing.  Tuesday I can sleep in and catch up on some sleep.  

But really, I'm toggling between the silly-scary and the very scary, the horror chain makes for some strange neighbors sometimes, but Chloe Grace Moretz carries over from "Carrie" and she'll be here tomorrow when I get back to scary-scary.  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Addams Family" (Movie #3,683)

THE PLOT: The Addams get tangled up in more wacky adventures and find themselves involved in hilarious run-ins with all sorts of unsuspecting characters. 

AFTER: Well, now I'm thinking I should have dropped this one, or saved it for next year, where it could have helped me link to "Hocus Pocus" and "Hocus Pocus 2" via Bette Midler.  Yeah, that might have been the smart move, because then I also wouldn't have to figure out another film to drop from this year's schedule, I'm still running one film over.  I watched the first animated "Addams Family" feature just two years ago, I probably could have waited another year for the sequel.  But I didn't, so it's too late to turn back now.  

This film is just eighteen different kinds of dumb, that's all.  It's corny dumb, it's makes-no-sense dumb, it's boring dumb and it's also just random-things-happening dumb.  I don't see how a film studio just thinks they can throw a bunch of wacky happenstances into a random order and call that a movie.  Sure, stuff HAPPENS in this film, but it felt like those things had zero chance of coming together and adding up to any kind of coherent storyline.  So Wednesday feels disconnected from her family, SO WHAT?  Who the hell cares?  She's told that she's not really the child of Gomez and Morticia, and may have been switched at birth, which is doubtful because the animators designed her to look JUST like a tiny Morticia, so why wouldn't she be her daughter?  Just like Pugsley is chubby and big-eyed and resembles his father - so come on, I knew from the start that Wednesday was mistaken or get bad intel on her parentage, because it's right there in the character design.  

So her being told this makes no sense, her believing this falsehood makes no sense, and then of course once the reason for someone telling her this in the first place is revealed, that makes no sense.  But that's just the main thing of like a hundred things that don't make sense - take Wednesday's science experiment, for example, where she demonstrates that she can make Uncle Fester smart by giving him a potion derived from the DNA of an octopus that can solve a Rubik's cube.  But you just can't change someone's DNA by giving them something to drink, the digestive system does not lead to any system in the body that controls DNA.  I drink a lot of Mountain Dew, but that doesn't get from my stomach to my cell nuclei, so I can't become part soda, that's just not how things work.  It's done for laughs, of course, so that we can watch throughout the movie as Fester slowly turns into some kind of human-octopus hybrid, but that's not even all that funny, and furthermore, there's no pay-off.  It's like a big set-up for a joke that somebody forgot to finish, where's the punch line? OK, so he does become a giant octopus monster for a bit - again, not funny, and it only tangentially counts for moving the plot, such as it is, forward. 

But there are so many NITPICK POINTS to be made with the premise - like if Wednesday is some kind of child prodigy, a scientific genius, how come she doesn't do a DNA test like right away once her parentage is in doubt.  Eventually she gets there, but why wasn't that the first stop?  And then the reason for the DNA test failing doesn't make sense either, like she'd have to be really stupid to not have factored that in.  So, which is she, smart or stupid?  And I don't even think this is how DNA tests work, anyway.  Would it kill some screenwriter to do a half-hour's research into how DNA testing functions?  Because that's kind of important to the whole premise.  

Instead there's this "noted scientist", Cyrus Strange, who has his belief that Wednesday is his real daughter, as the daughter he does have shows no interest in science.  But not every kid develops the same interests as their parents, or goes into the same line of work.  As a parent, he should know this, and as a scientist, he should be able to prove it, but damn, as a human he's not doing very well.  What kind of message does this film send out to the kids, by depicting a character who can't love a child that isn't biologically his?  So it's clear from the start that he's a heartless bastard, and evil scientist can't be too far behind that.  Saw it coming a mile away, and the kids in the audience probably did too.  

It's all some weird flimsy excuse to show the Addams Family traveling across the country, which I'll admit is a little clever if their final destination is Death Valley, that's a good one, but then stops in Miami and Niagara Falls feel very off-brand and unmotivated by the plot.  Salem, MA would have been a good stop, but then the story decides they shouldn't go there.  Huh?  Why the heck not?  Sleepy Hollow, NY - excellent choice.  But Miami?  There's nothing scary about Miami, except the fact that you have to drive through the garbage state of Florida to get there.  San Antonio and the Grand Canyon feel like throwaway destinations, too - so in terms of having an interesting travel itinerary, the movie succeeds only with two of the six visited cities.  New Orleans, with its connection to voodoo and ghost stories, would have been a better fit than Miami, for sure. 

More NITPICK POINTS - who drags their kids on a family vacation because their kids are spending less time with them?  Oh, right, every American parent, never mind.  But who drives in a camper van that's shaped like their house, and only slightly smaller than that house?  There could have been so many comedic opportunities with the family cramped into a tiny RV, or worse, a van or a station wagon.  Then the trip would REALLY have been a nightmare.  But a house-sized vehicle?  Not funny.  You might as well just put wheels on their spooky mansion and move that around from one travel destination to another.  Anyway, they stole the "summer vacation" idea from "Hotel Transylvania 3", so, umm, it's been done. 

I will note that there is a BIT of an attempted takedown of American culture - the Addams Family ends up in places like a kiddie teen pageant and a biker bar, and those are PRIME opportunities to make fun of a certain sort of Americans - the whole pageant culture deserves to be made fun of, with Moms turning their pre-teen daughters into overly made-up little sexpots with bouffant hairdos, and then of course the bikers with their denim outfits, tough attitudes and tricked-out cycles, it would be very easy to take the wind out of their sails, too, just make a couple of them look weak or effeminate and you're on to something.  But the movie just doesn't GO THERE in either case, either because somebody didn't want to offend middle America, or because maybe it was just too easy?  Either way, huge missed opportunities to poke fun at the culture. 

One point, however, for Wednesday dropping buckets of blood, "Carrie"-style, on to her fellow pageant competitors.  But the film should have gone even farther.  The science fair pointed out how stupid it is to give out "participation trophies" and declare everyone winners, and of course the film gets this right, but then it should have kept up that tone and really become a satire on the stupidest parts of American culture. 

Also starring the voices of Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Dune" (2021)). Charlize Theron (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), Nick Kroll (last heard in "Sing 2"), Javon Walton, Bette Midler (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Conrad Vernon (last heard in "The Addams Family"), Snoop Dogg (last seen in "Jagged"), Bill Hader (last heard in "Lightyear"), Wallace Shawn (last seen in "Atlantic City"), Brian Sommer, Griffin Burns, Courtenay Taylor, Ted Evans, Cherami Leigh, Mary Faber,.

RATING: 4 out of 10 juggled babies (yeah, that's not a thing.)