Having a father in the hospital makes for a dramatic slowdown in consumption. Only one movie in the past few weeks, and I do have at least a couple I wanna see right now. Only one book lately too, but part of that is my choice to read a doorstop novel so as not to have to do any other reviews for a little while. (Is it cheating to acknowledge stuff like that? Well, whatever.) But, lots of Harry Potter to while away my dad’s time, and let me tell you: that lady uses really a freaking lot of adverbs. Which is pleasant, as they’re very much like script directions, and I can be sure I’m getting the voices down solid. But still, I’d never noticed just how frequent it was, reading them quietly to myself. Just saying.
However, I was actually talking about movies, this time. I saw II…. um, no, that’s not right. Let’s try it again. Um. I went to see Saw II. But I didn’t see Saw, so how can you claim you did too? Look. Seriously. Shut up.
It makes me want to see Saw (I mean it. Shut up.) even more than I already wanted, even though through a probably inevitable turn of events, I know how Saw ends already from this current film. Leaving that aside… yeah, it’s pretty good. There are twists, as all good horror movies should have. Also, violence and brutality. The conceit (I think of both movies) is pretty simple. A homicidal sociopath (or possibly an ethically unfettered clinical psychologist) puts people in deadly situations but with all of the tools necessary to escape from them, and then watches to see what they’ll do. This one has two subplots, seven people (or eight? who can remember?) in a trapped house from the mold above, and meanwhile a cop whose son is in the first subplot has captured and is interrogating the maniac, in the hopes of rescuing everyone.
The main thing I took away from this is what a great RPG subplot #1 would be. You set the house, and the clues, and assign the characters to people, and then see if they’re able to save themselves before the deadly gas kills them all. Far better RPG than movie, and it was much better than the average slasher movie, which had very nearly fallen by the wayside anyhow. So, thanks for the cool idea which I may use someday, unnamed Hollywood scriptwriter(s), and also thanks for revitalizing stuff that was just lame direct-to-video anymore. I now have a new most anticipated movie to look forward to (well, not counting if Snakes on a Plane materializes), 2006’s Slither, starring Sheriff Mal Reynolds.