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Creep 2

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Because of an intriguing series on Shudder, I believe I mentioned that I watched Creep a few months ago. In addition to that show, there was also a sequel, and now I watched it too! Please note that this review will include spoilers for the first movie, although I think not any for Creep 2, which wears its premise on its sleeve with no coyness of any kind.

There’s this lady Sara with a youtube series called Encounters, where she trolls weird lonely people posts on Craigslist so she can film it, and gain a viewership via awkward art. And she comes across the eponymous creep from the first movie, now going by the name Aaron, who wants to tell her his story about being the most prolific unsuspected serial killer in history. We as the audience know this is almost certainly true, but she as the unwitting subject of her own film does not, and that is the tension of the movie.

It’s hard to judge the effectiveness of the first movie’s “is he or isn’t he” premise, since I already knew. So take it with a grain of salt when I say I liked this one better. But the character in the first movie was definitely going against his own instincts way past the point of believability, even if (and this is key), the creep had just been an awkward dude who wasn’t going to murder anyone. Whereas Sara definitely knows he’s hinky and troubling right out of the gate, but she keeps staying because this is the fulfillment of her dream, and she deems the payoff worth the risk.

And so they dance back and forth, and I can honestly say that at no point did I know how the movie would turn out. When you consider that this film came between a prior movie and a six episode TV series, that’s kind of impressive?

Cam

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It’s been so long since I last heard my podcast that I no longer remember exactly what the category was that led them to choose Cam. At a guess, modern and doppelganger? But I’m not sure that’s right. (It would really help if I could remember other movies they discussed watching instead, but, here we are. Or I could write most of this review, then listen to the beginning of the podcast episode about this movie to get the answer, but I have another review yet to write, so that seems like a bad idea. So I’ll just shrug and move on.)

So there’s this camgirl, Lola. (Or Alice.) She’s trying to move upward in the ranking on her site, which I think is determined by donations rather than views? Though it’s hard to tell since they correlate. Anyway, her character thumbnail sketch is “cambitious[1], not out to her mom, out to her kid brother, has a devoted following and a few industry friends”. What sets her apart from anyone else is she knows enough about practical effects to do pretty extreme shows that go in directions you would maybe not expect of a porn biography but maybe would expect of a horror flick.

Anyway, that would be the whole movie, except one day she wakes up to find herself on cam, by which I mean the stream is running and she’s onscreen, but she’s also in bed watching it, because whoever is on the stream isn’t actually her. And then the rest of the movie is a genre I like very much, wherein it’s impossible to prove to anyone that you’re really you, because if the system is rigged, the system always wins. Even the people who know you, they’re not inclined to doubt the evidence of their eyes, especially if you’ve been keeping secrets.

Naturally, therefore, I loved the rest of the movie[2]. …right up until the end, where it kind of just sputtered out. Alas.

[1] This is a word I made up, not a term of art. But I can believe it could be, you know?
[2] Except for the scene with the whale, which was more than a bit disturbing.

Creep (2014)

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Shudder just started a new series called (I want to say) The Creep Tapes, that I decided to take a look at, because why not. And then I learned it was based on a movie from ten years ago, called Creep. The show was good enough for me to say (again), why not, and here we are.

So this guy named Aaron has been hired via Craigslist by this guy named Josef, for the princely sum of one thousand dollars, to be his videographer for a day. Josef explains that he is dying of an inoperable brain tumor, and has an unborn or very young child[1] that he wants to leave a remembrance for. And that’s it, that’s the whole set up.

The only thing worth knowing from here forward is that Josef is incredibly awkward. His sense of humor is almost but not quite mean-spirited, his sense of boundaries is non-existent, he gets way too emotional with a complete stranger way too fast… it’s more or less one of those embarrassment / shame / The Office (British) style of scenarios.

….or is it?

I have a feeling this is more worth watching if you’re not spoiled, and I also have a feeling that the TV show might actually be better than the movie in some ways, mostly relating to improvement via shortened run time. All that to say: both are pretty good, if you’re okay with the premise.

[1] I forget, for the justifiable reason that these are the only two characters in the movie. Hmmm. I guess there are two and a half, but the half also isn’t the aforementioned child, so.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

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What you have to remember is, Beverly Hills Cop was not an exploitation movie. The ’80s were just like that. What is the relevance of this opening non-sequitor, you ask? It’s this: although Axel F may be the fourth movie in a series, it is mostly a sequel to the first one. Because, you know, that’s the one people remember.

And it follows most of the rules of a good sequel. All the same characters? Yep. Sort of a whodunnit for the first 20 minutes, but mostly a how does he beat them once he immediately figures out who? Yep. Lots of secret identity chicanery that allows Murphy to mug for the camera? Absolutely. Gunplay and explosions galore? Check. I said “rules of a good sequel”, and what I meant was, “same movie all over again”. This is for sure a Beverly Hills Cop movie, and what else would anyone who turned it on have been looking for?

Except, of course, less exploitative. It no longer makes sense to have a scene in a strip club, just because. Murphy no longer lives in the world after Dr. King and Blazing Saddles when we thought we’d fixed racism and he could just be a black cop in a Detroit Lions jacket without that raising eyebrows in Beverly Hills, back before Rodney King showed us that not only were we wrong, but the police were maybe not so cool after all. And this movie could not just ignore that new reality, nor does it. Which is obviously good, but it makes it harder to believe in the purity of Axel Foley as a character, the way we could back then,

But most of all, this is a movie designed to make anyone who watches it feels old. Paul Reiser’s Jeffrey is fat and ready to retire and could not possibly be the same guy who suddenly realized that this is not his locker. Taggert looks just a little worse than the star of Weekend at Bernie’s, and Rosewood looks worse than that, because you expect Judge Reinhold to be young. Even Eddie Murphy himself is looking worn around the edges, and the scene where he starts to scam himself into a hotel room, then says, you know what, nevermind, I’m too tired for this? He speaks for the movie as a whole and anyone who was around to watch the originals in the theater.

It’s not that this is a sad movie that they should never have made, what were they thinking. It actually works for what it is[1]! It’s just that, as nostalgia mines go, this one at least has the courage to be honest about the state of the miners. I know they volunteered to show up and get paid, I do, but the underlying sadness of it all really seems to say, shame on you for letting us.

[1] A throwback action comedy with a bitchin’ soundtrack.

Glass Onion

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Knives Out was probably the last movie I saw with Mary in the theater before Covid happened.[1][2] This is apropos of nothing in particular, just a memory from the before times. For example, here in modernity, we did not see Glass Onion in the theater at all, though it got to Netflix with surprising rapidity[3].

So there’s this tech billionaire guy, who like all tech billionaire guys on film in the past five years is probably a riff on Elon Musk. And he invites all of his friends to his private Greek island for a murder mystery weekend by way of an incredibly fancy puzzlebox. (A literal puzzlebox.) Plus he also invites the world’s greatest detective, Benoit Blanc, which is to say Daniel Craig.

It’s hard to say more (even if it’s easy to intuit more) about the plot. What I can comfortably say is that it’s every bit as clever and as funny as its predecessor, and I would happily watch Craig and Rian Johnson make these movies until the end of time.

[1] Not the actual last movie I saw in the theater, that was The Invisible Man
[2] (Also, it wasn’t even that; we saw three other movies in between Knives Out and lockdown. Huh.)
[3] Joke’s on me: apparently it is a Netflix original that had a one week theatrical release. Huh.

Uncharted (2022)

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I really like the Uncharted game series; for a while, it was probably what kept me buying new Playstations, and you can see that they have not released one lately by my lack of a PS5.

So when they made a movie based on the series, and starring Peter Parker in the role of Nathan Drake, I naturally ran right out and was skeptical, because video game movies are always bad. Always.[1] Also, for a variety of reasons it has been difficult for me to go to movie theaters of late. But Uncharted (the movie this time) landed on Netflix just a few months after release, unexpectedly, and here we are.

So, how was it? The thing about the Uncharted games is, most of gameplay is shooting (or maybe sneaking past, but it’s basically not possible) bad guys or navigating tombs and cliffs and things that involve narrow ledges and contorting jumps and indescribable upper body strength. All of the treasure hunting and decoding and knowledge and the like comes in dialogue while the game is being played or else in cutscenes. Which means that the series is in fact eminently suited to a movie adaptation.

And… they did alright, you know? It was weird seeing someone quite so young in the role[2], but all the treasures and legends and maps and weird secret keys and the like just work for me, you know? I watched National Treasure, for god’s sake, and this is maybe less over the top insane than that, but also more sincere, mostly on the (surprisingly buff!) shoulders of Tom Holland playing a young, not yet entirely jaded Drake. I had fun, and if there’s a sequel as the movie strongly, strongly implied there will be, I will make a point of watching it too. Maybe sooner, even.

[1] Not always.
[2] The movie character Nathan Drake was 25, whereas the game character has always coded as mid-30s to me.

Dark Skies (2013)

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During the first maybe 10 minutes of Dark Skies, I thought I was watching someone’s take on E.T. as a horror movie, and man, I really want to see that now that I’ve thought of it.[1] But by the time I’d seen three different scenes of stuff in Keri Russell’s house stacked weirdly or moved around when nobody could possibly have done it and then her husband decided to install security cameras, I knew I was watching someone’s take on Paranormal Activity as an aliens movie instead, and for whatever reason, that’s not nearly as interesting of a premise.

It was fine, though, other than the teen drama bits, which seriously did not fit the tone of anything else going on. I think if you remove the neighbor teen love interest, you lose ten minutes of footage and change nothing at all about the movie. That’s never a good sign, you know?

Also: there were never any especially dark skies, so I guess it was a metaphor.

[1] …or make it? That would also be cool. I guess step one is a script, although realistically I shouldn’t let that stop me. Except, there’s a pretty strong case to be made that Stranger Things already partially did this, which will stop me, so, nevermind.

Truth or Dare (2017)

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IMDb says the version of Truth or Dare I just watched was a TV movie. And now that I’m thinking about it, like, maybe it was? Most of the violence was reactions or cutaway, and I honestly do not remember the language levels, though also I’m not sure if made for cable counts as what they consider “TV movies”. There are just a lot of layers here.

And then, on top of that, the Happy Death Day people did a remake the next year that was theatrical. Man, why didn’t I just see that one instead?

Anyway, this implies that I was unhappy with the truths and/or dares that the movie provided. And, nah, it was fine. Maybe a little too deep in the gross-out mutilation angles, but…. it’s like, I can imagine this having turned into a franchise the way Final Destination did. A bunch of college kids rather than high school kids, but either way: they’ve gotten mixed up in something outside their control, and now they have to find a way to survive something that very much wants them not to. We’ve seen it dozens of times before, but have we seen it with people who immediately rule out anything sexy in a goldurn game of truth or dare[1], can’t figure out how to rob a gas station, and accidentally miscount the number of body parts they have to sever?

I think we perhaps have not.

[1] If there’s anything that makes me dislike the movie, this was it. Either play the game or don’t, but, come on.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Somebody[1] watched Halloween (the recent one, not the first one) and thought to themselves, hey, if they can bring back Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, I can bring back Sally and Leatherface.

You know, I could nearly have stopped the review right there?

So there are these Austin[2] hipsters with far more money than anyone should have at the age when they could be aptly described as hipsters, who have decided to buy up all the main street property in a tiny town that happens to be where a certain massacre occurred in the early ’70s, a massacre with one survivor, a massacre that has never been solved, a massacre that at least tangentially included a chainsaw.

You know the one.

Since Austin hipsters are the new Austin college kids, you can of course imagine that this is going to be very triggering for that one fellow who never got caught, and him being triggered is going to be very triggering for the survivor I mentioned. And from there, well, I think the script to Texas Chainsaw Massacre writes itself, you know?

I guess the main thing is, all these psycho killers are getting way too old to a) still be psycho killers and especially b) shrug off that many gunshot wounds. Your Jasons and your Freddies are explicitly supernatural, so they get a pass, but these guys? I’m not sure I buy it. Plus, there was something a little bit wrong about bringing back Sally, but not as Marilyn Burns, may she rest in peace.

I wonder if Tobe Hooper would have signed off on this.

[1] and by “somebody”, I mean Kim Henkel
[2] Or maybe somewhere else? It’s weird to have someone talk about it being a 7 hour drive to somewhere near Austin, but also they are big city folks with their big city ways, because Austin is either much closer to or much farther from anywhere that could be described as a big city. But if they meant 7 hours from Austin, I simultaneously salute their understanding of Texas while rolling my eyes at their conception of where the original Chainsaw happened. No matter how I look at it, you can tell I’m overthinking things.

Circle (2015)

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Outside of it showing up on one of the random tabs of movies that Netflix wants me to endlessly scroll through, I have never heard of Circle. And yet, whatever the description said and / or the Netflixised movie poster looked like was sufficient for me to add it to my queue. And now, an unknown number of years later, here we are.

So, as to what it actually is? It’s a weird amalgam of 12 Angry Men[1] and Survivor[2], with lightning bolts. See, there are dozens of people who wake up standing on white circles in a black room, and also they themselves are arranged in a circle[3]. And then they start dying. And then they start realizing why they are dying, and start bargaining to live longer.

The movie proceeds in real time, and could have been a play or a single take, except for all the special effects involved making that seem like sheer misery for everyone involved. It has no payoff as to what is going on or why or what happens next, but if you are in it simply for the human drama of seeing who will do or say what, a microcosm of people trapped under glass like ants, going about their lives (if their lives were spent weighing morality versus survival), then it works pretty well!

I both liked it and would not especially recommend it. I semi-wonder if watching a second time knowing the outcomes would make me walk away with a different take, but that’s not going to happen.

[1] the 1957 movie, or take your pick as to a newer version or stage version instead.
[2] the reality show
[3] Imaginative Titles R Us