smkroh Reviews

30 Days of Night (2007)

All hat, no cattle

[3/10 · 4 October 2019]

I have been wanting to see this ever since it was released, struck by its intriguing premise. Fast forward 12 years and I finally do, only to find out it's a hollow mess.

First, there's no context. You never find out where the vampire clan came from or what they are trying to achieve. They speak (rarely) in guttural subtitled quips, you never know their names, and other than the leader, you can barely tell them apart except that they fall into categories like Bald Vampires, Skinny Brunettes, and so on. What do they do for the other 11 months of the year? How did they become vampires? The movie doesn't care.

Second, there's no internal logic after the villains show up. They slaughter everyone, but so violently and swiftly that you have to wonder if they even get a decent meal. Once the whole town is dead except for a few hidden stragglers, why do they stay around for another 3-4 weeks? They don't seem to be founding a vampire colony or trying to take over the arctic world. In fact, their leader explicitly commands them not to turn any of the townspeople into new vampires. Once again, no reason for this is offered.

Whenever a human ventures outside, the whole vampire clan just seems to be standing around in a loose clump in the streets, waiting (like the viewer) for something to happen. The whole movie would make more sense if the action played out over a few days of hunt/kill/hide high tension, but the conceit of using up the whole "30 days of night" forces the story to just go into mothballs until something decides to happen.

Why do we have to believe that our heroes can live in an attic for two weeks with no food or water, afraid to even sneak downstairs and use the bathroom? Then they raid a grocery store and hide out in the police station for another two weeks. The vampires with supernatural hearing and smell, scouring the town for survivors, never find them in either place until they try to move on.

Toward the end of the 30 days, the sheriff sees a signal from his deputy's house and goes to investigate. When he comes back, the survivors he left behind have relocated to the town power plant/sewage plant/whatever the heck a "utilidor" is supposed to be--sure, they had been talking about trying to fortify themselves there from the beginning, but why pick up and go without telling him or asking him? Because "Oooo, they all disappeared, TENSION!" Except he immediately guesses where they went and he's right, so no that much tension.

Then the leader decides it's time to burn the town down and move on, because the sun is about to come back. To save his estranged wife from burning to death, our hero injects himself with vampire blood and goes to fight the vampires on their own terms. Still pretty bad odds, but he wants to provide a diversion so she can escape. No worries--for no particular reason, it turns into a one-on-one duel between him and the head vampire. The whole clan just stand around and watch until the sheriff uses his new strength to punch through the guy's skull and rip out his brain. The leader doesn't say, back off, I'll handle this myself or any of that typical swaggering plot device, it just plays out as if he had.

In the meantime, the other vampires disappear and he goes to watch the sunrise and die in his wife's arms. You are left to assume that the vampires sensed the sunrise approaching and left, but no time is spent establishing this. Did one of them become the new leader? Does he have any idea what they should do next? Did they all get caught in the sunrise and die? Who knows?

The vampires speak in a foreign language. Is it Russian, because they came over the pole from Siberia? Is it Slavic because they trace their roots back to Transylvania? I found after the fact that the filmmakers invented a crude "vampire language" just to make them more mysterious and unearthly, and remove any chance for nuance or mutual understanding in the process. Even translated with subtitles, the leader's faux-profound aphorisms are dreck that adds nothing to the story. And that sums up the problem with this movie--all concept, no execution; all style, no substance; all plot, no logic. All hat, no cattle. What a disappointment after such a long wait.

Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

Dull, Listless, Nonsensical Dreck!

[2/10 · 2 February 2015]

Do not believe anyone who says this is "not that bad." Or that they "actually liked it." Either they are shilling somehow, or they have no taste. This is the worst kind of cheapie, old-fashioned horror movie--the kind that depends on utter stupidity on the part of the victims at every turn.

Seriously, we've made a lot of progress on this front in the last two decades or so. There are many well-written movies out there that use creative, plausible plot developments to trap the victims in their terrible situations. This one goes more for the "meh, they can't leave, because we say so..." approach, and then has them do everything as stupidly as possible in every situation thereafter.

As marked, I will be doing lots of SPOILERS--you have been warned!

The pacing is very odd--a sign of how cheaply this was made, I think. They do a lot of wandering in the day, running through the dark at night, but there are only a few brief scenes of direct conflict in the whole movie. There are lots of lengthy shots of abandoned apartment buildings with our "heroes" standing around outside them, though. Either this movie was shot in a single day/night with no budget, or it started out as the most depressing real estate infomercial ever made and was expanded from there.

There is a lot of arguing in the comment threads about how reasonable it is to gripe about them not leaving on foot to get help. One recurring theme is that they would not be sure which way to go. Apparently these commentators forget that, after their tour guide drives them around to a disused side road and they reach Pripyat, he specifically says, "See, this is the road we would have used if they had let us, it goes straight to the checkpoint." And it's clear in a later scene that the victims remember it--they just don't try it until it's too late. (Even then, though, reasonably determined/brave people could have probably pulled it off.)

Also a sign of the low budget is the fact that you never get more than a glimpse of any of their humanoid enemies. One suspects that the makeup effects were very disappointing. There are just so many wasted opportunities and dangling threads. Will the bites from the dogs or the fish have any strange effects? No. Will the eerie little girl standing with her back to them to distract/lure them suddenly turn around to reveal a hideous face or at least hiss inhumanly as she retreats into the shadows? No. Will the moron shouting for his obviously dead and gone brother bring a raging horde of evil down on them? No, you'll have to wait for them to stand around and talk about their predicament for a while in a dark, dead-end alley before that happens.

When the aforementioned brother and his girlfriend get ambushed and dragged off into the dark, the group's loud and insanely dangerous search for them does actually manage to stumble across and "rescue" the girlfriend. But less than 5 minutes later she gets dragged back into the dark buildings, this time to die. With friends like these... Oh, and what do you do when your Geiger counter starts clicking rapidly and emitting a beeping alarm? Backtrack from danger? Naw, just turn it off--it's too annoying to leave on. And the next time nothing scary or tense has happened for a while, it will magically turn itself on and start clicking/beeping again. What do you do then? Why, turn it off again, of course!

Well, I don't want to waste any more breath berating the idiocy--the least-plausible part of this whole story is that anyone lives as long as they do. But the ending is worth special attention. The plot goes for the hoary old "final girl" trope, but wait--there's a twist! They kill her off too at the last second! Gee, that's never been done before (/sarcasm), and no one will be surprised that it happens--it's telegraphed from the moment she becomes the lone survivor.

This is just cheap, tepid filler. It's hard to believe it ever got a theatrical release. I saw it for free and I feel ripped off. Steer clear. The only interesting thing is the premise, and that premise is completely wasted.

The Devil's Tomb (2009)

Utter dreck

[2/10 · 4 May 2011]

I won't bother recounting the story background, I just want to vent about the many things I thought were unforgivably stupid:

1. The book of Hebrews is in the New Testament, morons.

2. Don't write your script about a deep subterranean ancient site and then shoot it on a set that looks like a generic basement boiler room/custodian's office.

3. The team is supposedly a mercenary unit, but lots of dialog as the movie grinds along makes it sound like they are on active duty with the government. Note that I don't even have to get into a critique of their skill or behavior to find a fatal flaw.

4. Would an ancient religious order dedicated to preserving the entrapment of an ancient evil have so many members who look like generic modern-day clerics? Wouldn't something with monastic robes and ancient holy weapons have been more fun? Why do half of them look like scientists and half like Father Central Casting? Are they here to fight the evil or study it? The movie can't make up its mind and probably doesn't know.

5. Cuba Gooding's flashback is supposedly critical to his character, but it rehashes the same footage endlessly, only revealing about 2 seconds of new info each time. When the "big reveal" comes it's nothing that earth-shaking, and feels empty because of a total lack of context or consequences, other than "he once did something he's ashamed of," but doled out like it's going to be as vital as the Zapruder film or something.

6. Why don't all the bad guys leave while the mercs are stumbling around getting killed?

7. How many nephilim are there in this particular location? The script sets it up as one, then says "we" and "they" an awful lot. And not in a context where it makes sense that all nephilim around the world are being discussed.

8. What is the threat? Seduction by evil? Madness? Are the sores and the black gook just a symptom or a part of the corruption process? Once again, the script doesn't know or care. One minute the gook burns like acid, the next it makes you into a demon foot-soldier.

A horror/action/suspense film that plays in the unfilled areas of the theological map can be awesome. The first Prophecy film is a sterling example. But you have to do your homework. Know something about both orthodox religion and its heretical offshoots before you start playing with alternative histories and theologies. The random, bland, conspiracy pap spouted by this script is indefensible. "It's all a game! They're playing us for fools! They're just playing both sides against the middle! Everything you believe is a lie!" Yawn.

The Number 23 (2007)

Good Psychodrama, Not Bad Thriller

[8/10 · 29 June 2009]

Ah, the tyranny of expectations! I remembered this film was considered bad when it was released, but after watching it and thinking that it did its job well, I decided to go and find out what the critics had to say. A tomato-meter of 8%? Why? In a spoiler-laden analysis below, I will do my best to break down why I thought it was effective, and why I suppose most others didn't.

First and foremost, the average moviegoer presumably knows there is nothing ominous or dangerous about the number 23. What is unexpected and satisfying is that the movie and the characters in the movie know this too. It's not about evil forces or vast conspiracies centered around a number. It's about the seductive qualities of obsession and the fragility of a happy, normal life. I don't know why someone who was actually paying attention to the story would insist on the movie being "about" the number, but I suspect that most of the bad reviews spring from that stubborn misconception.

You start with a decent guy who leads an ordinary life. He finds a book that gets under his skin. It doesn't necessarily make sense that a guy like him would be so easily ensnared by the book's premise, but there is a lingering suggestion that there's more than just the conspiracy theory that gets to him.

I don't know if it was one of the movie's intentional red herrings or if I manufactured it in my own imagination, but my beginning belief was that an undiagnosed infection (rabies or otherwise) from the dog bite he suffers in the first scene would prove to be the fuel of his descent into madness. That fades out of likelihood rather quickly, but the story provides the justification that the book gets a grip on him via the perceived similarities between his life and that of the book's protagonist. It's a little thin, but it's enough to keep his obsession moving forward with a patina of respectability.

And this is one of the several places where the movie both plays fair and exceeds expectations. The answer to the riddle justifies that thin motivation both by revealing that the connection between Carrey and the book's protagonist is deeper than supposed, and that Carrey himself is more susceptible to obsession than he seems.

Another place where the movie goes beyond the status quo of the genre is in the non-cartoonish progress of Carrey's obsession. On some level, he obviously knows that it can't be real and that he risks losing himself and everything he values for an illusion. I felt the pain of his struggle to avoid falling into the abyss. There are pitfalls at every step. Maybe he will assault his wife. Maybe he will destroy his marriage by giving in to jealous suspicions about her relationship with a male friend. I kept expecting him to snap and for the movie to turn into a low-rent The Shining, but that never happens. Reading the book messes with his head, but whenever he puts it down and deals with the real world, he doggedly clings to an insistence on facing insane possibilities in the sanest way he can.

Even as the climax builds to the big revelation, the movie doesn't cheap out. He is given a gold-plated excuse to turn on his wife, but he still doesn't want to. He DID uncover a skeleton that was subsequently made to disappear, and his wife's hands ARE dirty. Lest we think the movie will take the cop-out of it being all in his head, his son was there as a witness. He, she, and the audience are never off the hook. I began to suspect where the plot was headed while his wife was exploring the abandoned mental hospital, but the depth and totality with which the book's hidden authorship would encompass all the threads of the story was still a surprise to me.

Family is powerful in this story, all the more so for steering clear of stock "no one believes me, no one will help me" thriller conventions. His wife's one act of apparent betrayal is actually an expression of how deeply she loves him and how desperately she wants to preserve what he is and means to her and their son. The son is eager to help his dad and willing to let the craziness slide for the time being for the sake of the father that Carrey has been. No eye-rolling, no lectures, no pat dismissals or hysterical denunciations--his family and friends are as desperate to save him as he is to be saved.

The movie sets you up to expect the story of a good man driven to become a dangerous, paranoid freak, but ends by revealing the tortuous road by which a dangerous, paranoid freak became a good man and fought to remain one. It meditates thoughtfully (for this genre, anyway) on what might constitute sufficient atonement for his past. It was once said that the best revenge is living well, and perhaps that is the best atonement too. His wife, understandably and forgivably, wants him to stop short of facing the music. She doesn't want to lose him and she feels (not thinks) that he has suffered enough. But it is a measure of just how decent a man he is that he must go all the way. The price will be high, but knowing he lived up to the ideals of the man he (and everyone else) thought he was is worth that price. And by choosing to pay it, he sets an example of integrity for his son that will leave a positive legacy for generations to come.

This movie deserves more credit for unexpected nuance, decency, and grace. Give it another chance!

Land of the Lost (1974–1977)

The Birth of Good Taste by Bad Example

[1/10 · 25 May 2009]

I ran across a marathon of this show on the Sci-Fi Channel today, obviously a tie-in for the new Will Ferrell movie. I was 9 years old in 1974, and my goal on Saturday mornings was to watch kids' shows from breakfast to lunchtime with as few gaps or interruptions as possible. There weren't a lot of options, so I tended to gobble up anything that was on. As I sat through three episodes this morning, all the bad memories came flooding back.

This was it--the breaking point! This was the show that was so consistently, irredeemably stupid and boring that I began to think maybe there were ways of spending my time that were preferable to watching TV at any cost. The concept was cool, but there was never a payoff where it mattered--on the screen. Each episode was five minutes of plot stretched over a half hour, filled in with running/hiding from dinosaurs, yammering dialog about trite sibling rivalry, and the repetitive gibberish of the annoying little missing link named Cha-Ka.

I turned to the Internet after I could stand no more, wanting to find out if the refugees ever made it home or if some of the arcane motifs were ever explained and/or explored in depth. The answers were no and no, respectively. To my greater disappointment, though, I found that most of the commentary on the Web was singing the praises of this cheap tripe, calling it deep, groundbreaking, well-written, yadda yadda yadda. Don't be fooled! It's garbage.

Advocates point to the list of respected sci-fi writers who contributed scripts. Who cares? Again, the quality (if it was there in the scripts at all) didn't make it to the screen. That's all that matters. I don't care if Shakespeare wrote it, junk is junk.

These fans also excuse the laughably awful special effects as being pretty good for the time the show was made. Really? This was 1974, for Pete's sake. Star Trek had premiered seven years earlier. Other shows like Space: 1999 and UFO were mesmerizing my young imagination. But, say the fans, this was a Saturday morning kids' show. They couldn't get a decent budget, they did the best they could! Baloney. Look at Dr. Who, for example. Super low budget and plenty of cheese, but variety and inventiveness made it come alive in spite of its limitations. Land of the Lost had no variety and very limited inventiveness.

I think the lack of quality can be better explained by the names on the show. As I said, this series was the awakening of my critical judgment as a consumer of entertainment. Before Land of the Lost, I got excited whenever a show was promoted as a product of Sid and Marty Krofft. They were great! How did I know that? The TV told me so, so it must be true. As I began to realize that Land of the Lost was garbage, I looked more closely at their other shows and saw that they were all utter mindless dreck. The Kroffts were ripping me off, turning out goof-ball cheese in vast quantities for a quick buck.

Let me give another example of how they skated by on creating big expectations without ever fulfilling them: the opening credit sequence for H.R. Puff'n'Stuff was one of the coolest things I ever saw. A little boy like me! A magic boat that takes him to a strange land, a wild storm, a talking flute! WOW! The show itself? A bunch of dumb gags and low-rent physical comedy done by guys in retarded Muppet ripoff costumes. I kept tuning in wanting to see the story in the credits, but never getting it.

The Sleestak looked very cool; their costumes were the only thing that really worked, except maybe sometimes the look of the pylons and the gems. Their hissing and their bug-eyes were genuinely scary, at first. But then I caught on to the fact that they never really seemed to accomplish anything. Ho-hum--it's the Sleestak again! Thanks, I guess, Sid and Marty, for helping me to realize that not everything on TV was great by virtue of simply being there. Now I hope some people can begin to realize that not all nostalgia is good nostalgia, either. Sometimes the passage of time turns coal into a diamond. In this case it reveals it for the manure it always was.

The Legend of Tillamook's Gold (2006)

Mystery Science Theater, Where Are You?

[2/10 · 12 March 2009]

I'll give this movie one star for having moderately competent performances by some of the veteran supporting actors, and one star for having no glaring technical errors. Otherwise I cannot recommend any aspect of it. I watched it on cable because I grew up in Oregon and have fond memories of visiting Tillamook. What I got was a poorly written and edited clinker that resembles the unholy love child of Nancy Drew and Carlos Castaneda.

The first problem is that the producer cast his own daughter in the lead role, and while not particularly unpleasant on screen, she cannot act a lick. She is certainly not alone among the cast in this regard, but it's a huge liability in the main character.

Her line delivery is wooden and her emotional range is flat, but she does doggedly carry out her assignment with a modicum of dignity and consistency. The script and editing are another matter. This is one of those movies where you find yourself telling the story in your head because the movie apparently can't be bothered with fulfilling that chore. Each scene appears content to sketch out the bare outlines of its main idea without actually building a narrative. Then it ends abruptly and the movie wanders on to the next loosely connected event. Scenes often feel like they end a few actions or lines of dialog before they are finished, and the movie as a whole ends up playing like a Cliff's Notes version of itself.

Told in this manner, the story would probably only occupy about 30 minutes, but the movie falls into the amateur trap of trying to make up for a lack of substance with sheer quantity. The scenes may be short and light on dramatic content, but there are a lot of them. Some needlessly rehash previously covered material, some fulfill stock checklist purposes like Comic Relief Scene or Local Scenery Chewing Scene, but most of them do little to advance the story.

Many of the other reviews posted here praise the film for being family-friendly. If you are seeking wholesome, uplifting stories with a minimum of offensive content, there are many excellent choices that have strong narratives and talented performances. This is not one of them. Watch a Pixar film or the growing Narnia series instead. For those who claim that the girl in the leading role has great prospects ahead of her, I doubt she'll ever land a role in another project unless her father has a hand in making it. I wonder how many of these glowing reviews were written by people who were involved in making the film, or who come from the Tillamook area and are blinded by their enthusiasm for a homegrown product.

The people who made this movie meant well and tried hard. They did not succeed. Avoid it unless you can see it for free, and even then only watch it if you are looking for an instructive example of how not to make a movie, or if you enjoy giving bad movies the MST3K treatment I alluded to in my Summary line.