Seriously. Just look at it. I had to check three movie websites before I could be convinced it was neither an intentionally so-bad-it’s-funny movie nor a joke trailer. I mean, it’s presented by Uplifting Entertainment, for God’s sake! Oh, right, better not use the Lord’s name in vain. It’s presented by Uplifting Entertainment, for fuck’s sake!

But it is a real movie, it isn’t supposed to be bad or funny at all, and it really is presented by this “Uplifting Entertainment.” Okay, let’s break it down.

1. How awful is the acting? My favourite part is when she blankly stares straight into the camera and says “It’s… Him.” Dear Unnamed Deity, could someone teach this girl how to deliver her lines with something resembling proper emotion? She sounds like she’s reading them straight off a card.

2. The plot.  So there’s this girl, and she loves dancing, and then she gets cancer, and then she’s been chosen by God and can make people get visions of Jesus, and she uses this to start converting everyone, and then this pisses off the devil, and so he comes  after her, and it turns into a horror movie, and her dad fistfights Satan on the lawn, and then she fights Satan off herself with The Power Of Ballet. And then, hopefully, dies.

See, I just can’t see how this got any sort of backing. If director/producer/writer/actor Greg Robbins had come to me looking for any help on this idea, I would have either thought he was high as a kite, or started backing away from the crazy man.

3. The captions. Okay, to get them all together: A GENTLE ART… FROM A GENTLE SOUL… WILL CHANGE HEARTS… WITH A SINGLE TOUCH… WILL FACE EVIL.

Not only is it sappy and cliche-ridden, it doesn’t even make sense. That they couldn’t even make the freaking captions in the trailer make sense is a simple, stupid mistake I haven’t seen on that scale onscreen since I watched “Manos” The Hands Of Fate, wherein they forgot the opening credits to the movie.

4. The direction. You know what the way this movie is shot resembles? It looks like a crappy student film. I saw a lot of student films a couple of weeks ago, and this honestly was just the sort of direction the bad ones had.

I am just dying to see this. There are films that are so-bad-it’s-good, and then, once in a great while, there are films that are so-bad-it’s-fucking-legendary. This looks like it might be one of the rare cases of the latter.

Here’s the movie’s website, for anyone interested. This was my favourite part, from the synopsis page.

“Marketing Note: This movie is a chick flick with a manifested menacing devil. This will attract a wide demo of men and women.”

Riiiight. Sure it will. And also, what the fuck? Weirdest marketing note ever.

So, what did y’all think of the trailer? Did it blow your mind, with it’s amazing ability to suck beyond belief?

They’ve taken it down now, though. Anyway, I’m sort of glad to say that now I’m officially not interested. I’d slowly gotten my hopes up that it might be good, and now at least the ambiguity is over.

Shauna Mac and Natalie Mendoza will probably turn in some really good performances again, and I do like that they’re apparently keeping up the idea that Sarah might have imagined the crawlers. In fact, I would even say her part of the story pre-crawlers actually looks decent. Apart from that, this appears to be a shallow splatter flick. Once the film kicks into gear, we might get a some nice directing, but I seriously doubt we’ll get good writing. Just a feeling.

If it surprises me big time and gets quite good reviews, and recommendations from fellow fans of the first movie, I’ll go see it. However, if it holds to the bad-to-mediocre impression I’ve gotten from spoilers, promotional pictures and that trailer, no fucking way. Especially not since it changes canon by bringing two original characters back.

I’ll post the trailer once it appears they’ve stopped feverently deleting them all from Youtube.

If you can’t tell from the title, this particular Smallville parody is going to be a strange one. Not as strange as the one where Clark mourns his lost love Lex Luthor in a rewritten version of Sarah Silverman’s awesome “I’m Fucking Matt Damon,” song, because there honestly isn’t much in the way of “Smallville parodies,” that could beat that for weirdness unless I started snorting crack before writing these. Although it might surprise some people to learn that I wasn’t already.

So, previously on Smallville. Lana made a lot of rodent-like faces and stole the nuts off all her boyfriends, earning her the nickname “Squirrel.” She also wore a lot of pink. Clark and Lana moped about how they were so in love. Lana disappeared. Lex disappeared. Lois fell in love with Clark. Lana reappeared. Lex reappeared. Lana got a skin treatment that gave her superstrength, superspeed, and invunerability like Clark. Clark and Lana kissed. Clark and Lana had bed-breaking superstrength sex. The world gagged. Lana absorbed a bigass Kryptonite bomb made by Lex, in his big grand scheme to make Clark break up with his girlfriend. Yeah, keep dreaming big, Lex. Anyway, Clark decides that this is reason enough to murder Lex, and Lana has to talk him out of it. Lex dies anyway. They go back to the farm, Clark makes himself kiss her one more time, gets to experience the same amount pain from being around Lana that the audience feels, and she leaves. I rejoice and celebrate with a weird parody.

One week after Requiem.

Clark: *dials phone* Hi Lois, it’s me. Would you like to come over and try something? It’s a little kinky.
Lois: You know I’m always open to new… experiences.
…
Lois: So you’re the superpowered alien pretending to be a Kansas farmboy…
Clark: Right.
Lois: …And I’m Nutsy The Squirrel.
Clark: But not just any squirrel. Nutsy is the kindest, purest, most beautiful squirrel to ever live!
Lois: Riiight. If I’m a rodent in a tree, do I really have to wear all this pink?
Clark: Yes! The pink is essential!
Lois: Alright, but this better be some really hot roleplaying, Kent.
Clark: Trust me, it will be. Could we start?
Lois: *monotone* Oh Alien Farmboy, I’ve just realised you’ve been lying to me again. This makes me angry and confused.
Clark: And angsty. Don’t forget that, angst is the most important part of this roleplay.
Lois: Why are they angsting that they love each other so much?
Clark: Because they are. Please, would you just trust me? Don’t forget to whisper and tear up.
Lois: Kent…
Clark: Alien Farmboy!
Lois:…Alien Farmboy, is crying during sex really such a turn-on for you?
Clark: Sex? Don’t be ridiculous, Nutsy the Squirrel and Alien Farmboy aren’t going to have sex.
Lois: Huh?
Clark: They can’t.
Lois: Huh?
Clark: He would crush her with his superstrength, duh.
Lois: Hmm. So if they don’t go as far as sex, they’ll be okay.
Clark: *earnest* Yep. They can still kiss, when his Secrets! and Lies! aren’t getting in the way.
Lois: Well we have to go further than that. I suppose we could kiss somewhere other than the mouth.
Clark: W-w-what?
Lois: Or even sex would probably be okay so long as it wasn’t in the missionary position.
Clark: There are other positions?
Lois: God, do you have a lot to learn. Tell you what, how about we get on with the roleplay, Alien Farmboy, and I’ll show you?
…
*Next morning*
Jimmy answers a knock on he door.
Jimmy: Clark?
Clark: I-is C-Chloe here? I need to t-t-talk to her.
Chloe: Clark, wha- oh no.
Jimmy: What?
Chloe: That’s the “Unexperienced guy who slept with Lois” look. Very stunned, very scared, and all innocence lost. You just sit him down on the couch, I’ll go see if there’s any morning-after-Lois whisky left.

A friend of mine does some drawing, and I came up with an idea for a Twilight spoof. I’ve done a couple in writing only, but this wouldn’t work unless it was a visual gag, and in any case if I drew it, they would be stick figures. Crappy stick figures at that, it’s still hard to draw those things if they’re doing anything but standing up.

So Luca, who can draw people who aren’t stick figures doing things that aren’t standing up, is making a comic out of it. Which you can see the first part of here.

Saw V came out last month. I haven’t seen it and I don’t want to. Actually, this post is on why I dislike the franchise.

I do have to compliment them for managing to convey the plot so cleverly in this poster, though.

Major spoilers for the first movie and minor ones for the second ahead.

I’ve seen the first two movies, and was highly disappointed. The first one had a good setting; some cool traps, and was clearly done by someone who actually gave a crap, which is more than I can say for most American horror movies that have come out this decade. But it was slow and uneventful [making it boring] and though the big twist at the end would have been nice, it was ruined by the big glaring flaws in it. How would someone pretend to be dead for so long in a room with two other people who have a full view of him? Why didn’t he cramp and move involuntarily? Why didn’t he cough or sneeze if he was there with his face in the dust for hours? Why didn’t they notice his breathing? And for crying out loud, why would someone subject themselves to lying awake and face down in the exact same position for six hours and staying completely still the entire time? Can you imagine how freaking uncomfortable that would be?

Anyway, it was obvious in the second one that the creators had noticed the popularity of the traps from the first, because now there were a lot more of them. Only they weren’t as good anyway, with the exception of the Arm Box bit. The movie overall felt more generic and Hollywood-ized than the first one had, the setting wasn’t nearly as good, and the twist wasn’t as good. So it’s a big step down from a mediocre movie.

Yet everybody still keeps saying he doesn’t kill them. If the writers really wanted this to be an intelligent social commentary with lots of blood, guts and death traps, they would have bothered to be consistent with their overarching, anvilicious symbolism, rather than chuck it out the window whenever they feel like it and then ram “Jigsaw doesn’t kill,” down my throat some more via clumsy exposition and hope I was too distracted by the blood, guts and death traps to notice. Shit, the first movie wasn’t so bad, but even then, the playing at being a smart, socially conscious message movie was pretentious and cheap, and the spotty application of the all-important metaphor revealed it as such.

It really irritates me that this is so popular. I mean, sure, people can enjoy it if they want, but now when someone thinks of horror, they’ll often think of this, and then snub the genre when they might enjoy something a less torture pornish. And I think stuff like this, which depends a lot on gore, can sometimes make folk dismiss all gory movies, whether they’re using it as a crutch or not.

Anyway, Rotton Tomatoes’ critics and plenty of other movie or horror buffs share this opinion on the franchise, so it looks to me like it’s a lot more loved amongst regular audiences than anybody else, which is usually not a good sign. But Your Mileage May Vary, so let me know what you think of the franchise, and why.

The Twilight movie is coming out in a couple of days for you Americans, so I guess it’s time to do another post. To celebrate, or whatever. I’ve been taking a look at what director Catherine Hardwicke has been saying about the budget. Basically, she’s been doing more than her fair share of whinging about how low it is. Anyway, I figured it would be an interesting little exercise to see if she was right, and might help with budgetary issues when I have to make short films for Media next year. Yaaaaaay, education!

Sorry, I just couldn’t contain my excitement. Anyway, from what I can see, all the budget complaints are unjustified. Twilight cost $37 million to make. There are vampires in it, sure, but it’s a teen romance. It’s not set anywhere that would be expensive to shoot in and the leads aren’t nearly famous enough to have gotten much. There are two or three action scenes in the whole book. So to me, $37 mil definitely sounds like enough.

Then in a couple of these complaints I’ve found, she got a little more specific.

“I mean, you know, if you think of a 37 million dollar budget versus a Harry Potter, 150 million dollar budget, you can appreciate a little more what I was dealing with logistically.”

“That was really hard because on one logistic level, we didn’t have a “Harry Potter”/“Lord of the Rings” budget. On a normal movie you would have built a beautiful meadow on a soundstage, that way you could control the sunlight so that Edward can step into and out of it. But with under $37 million, that was impossible.”

Now this makes more sense. If she’s comparing it to the other big popular fantasy movies adapted from books instead of just looking at it independently, then yeah, she’s going to be disappointed. Although I have to say, the stuff in the Harry Potter and LotR books means the movies should get a bigger budget than Twilight does. They take place in a fantasy setting where there’s always something magical or big and spectacular going on. Twilight takes place in the normal human world – there just happen to be a few vampires in it.

Besides, plenty of wonderful movies have been made for much less. Plenty of movies that had a wonderful look to them were made for much less. More cash is preferable, but trying out alternative methods to just CGI has worked wonders as far as making things cheap go. Or if you simply have someone who’s a talented cinematographer, that does just fine too. Most of the movies on that list of my favourite films in the About page, they cost $20 mil or less. Half of them cost $10 mil or less. But I can tell you they all look damn fucking good, be it through prosthetics or creative cinematography.

Anyway, that’s not the end of it. According to her, the movie will have to make at least $150,000,000 to justify the budget needed for the sequel. When I heard that, I immediately thought it was ridiculous. Not that they could use that large a budget, but that they would need it, which was what she was saying. Anyway, here’s why it  supposedly has to have all that money.

“It’s got werewolves, it’s got visual effects that turn people into werewolves, it’s got motorcycle stunts, you go to Italy.”

Yeeaaah. Again, how much of that is actually necessary, and how could you make it cheaper?

Werewolves: Definitely needed, they were a huge part of the book. However, that doesn’t mean they have to be expensive. An American Werewolf In London cost $10 million. Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers both cost less than $5 million. That’s overall, not just for the werewolves, and all three have critical acclaim and cult followings. Dog Soldiers, btw, was a horror/action [/comedy, but that’s not relevant] about soldiers fighting off howler monkeys werewolves. Sounds a lot more expensive than angsty teen vampire romance to me, so if they could do that for such a small amount…

Dog Soldiers

Werewolf transformations: The movie would survive without ‘em, but there are some alternatives. Like, they don’t need to give the audience a direct shot of it. Jacob had a bit in the book where he transformed while leaping, right? That would be easy to do while never giving the audience a clear view. Or do it in silhouette/shadow… plenty of ways to keep it in and cut corners here, and besides, they definitely don’t have to do more than one, if they had too small a budget.

Motorcycle stunts: What, is Bella going to loop-de-loop now? If I recall, they were just riding the bikes in the books, and she stacked a couple of times. Get their stunt doubles, give them helmets, put them on the bikes, shoot.

Italy: Okay, first of all, I want to point out that Doctor Who shot in Rome for “Fires of Pompeii.” Despite being A) British and B) a TV show, both of which would shrink funding down quite a lot, not to mention that they already always have to spend on period sets and costumes, otherworldly sets and costumes, and of course, aliens. Even considering the UK is a lot closer, I have a hard time believing Doctor Who could afford to fly everyone to Italy and shoot there, yet Catherine Hardwicke needs her $80 mil to do so.

However, for the purpose of this exercise, I’ll pretend a certain UK SciFi TV show never paid to go to Italy, and that it would indeed be super-expensive, far beyond Twilight’s mere $37 mill. So, there aren’t other options? Sets, or finding somewhere to shoot a little closer to home? They would probably have to dress the place up a bit to make it look like Italy, but that should do the trick. So what’s left? I was having a conversation with someone about this last week, and she pointed out it might anger the fanbase if they didn’t shoot on-location.

While that’s true, it doesn’t affect the movie at all as long as it looks like Italy. If it does, the angry fans will only be being petty. And yes, maybe Hardwicke wants to go to Europe to please the fanbase – but as the director, she needs to be responsible and not spend millions of dollars just so she can pander to a few irrational fans who just want a clone of the book.

BTW, I was getting curious about what else Catherine Hardwicke had done, like if she had only ever worked on big budget movies before or something, so I looked it up and it’s actually completely the other way. Her first movie, Thirteen, was something she just decided to do with her friend’s daughter Nikki Reed, and they managed to scratch up $1.5 mil to make it.

“Thirteen was desperado,” [Hardwicke] says. “We were begging for locations and stealing shots. We didn’t even have a dolly—we found a shopping cart on the side of the road. Totally guerrilla style.”

And then it went on to get heaps of awards and shit. Good for her. To get back to Twilight, from the sound of things she was expecting a far bigger budget than she got, and even though she’s used to smaller budgets she hasn’t gotten over the disappointment, which is showing in her attitude to the second movie. I mean, she’s sort of acting the way Smallville does, in that they feel the need to use CGI all the time for everything and make it all so impressive, even when they’re running short on cash. Hardwicke saying that $80 mil is completely necessary to make New Moon is equally impractical. I’m sure they could use it, but… Well, if Twilight didn’t make $150 million at the box office? Instead of not making a sequel, they should just fire Hardwicke and get someone who knows how to make shit look good without spending a fortune. It would be funny if they got Del Toro, he would hear the word “vampires,” and pack the whole thing full of Nightmare Fuel. Or James Gunn, he would make a huge joke out of it.

However, it probably will make enough that they’ll just get Hardwicke back. Which is fine with me, she seems to be following the books pretty closely, in all their so-bad-it’s-good-ness.

The choice of TV and movies in Australia sucks hard. For a start, most programs and movies start airing here long after they have in the States. More importantly, quite a bit of stuff just doesn’t get released here, period. That “limited release,” thing? Either I’m going to the wrong cinemas, or we just don’t have that here. So practically everything you get in limited release doesn’t arrive Down Under at all.

Usually I’m envying America, but right now, it’s the UK. For example, I am absolutely dying to see Doomsday. Since I plan to review when I do see it I’ll just say that it’s directed by Neil Marshall, half the cast is from his first two movies, and the entire thing looks intentionally over-the-top to the point of bloody insanity. Insane is fuuunnn.

Then there’s Happy Go Lucky. This one I can’t get mad at my country’s limited amount of movie imports, this actually was released here, and I just missed the boat on it. Kicking myself plenty over that now, because it sounds like an English Amelie and the trailer is brilliant. Yes, I know Poppy seems kinda annoying at the beginning, but damn if she doesn’t win y’all over by the end of the 1 minute and 47 seconds.

This one was a TV movie over there. It might be on UKTV someday, or else I could perhaps find it on DVD. Wedding Belles is from the writer of Trainspotting, and concerns a woman about to get married and her three friends. Shauna MacDonald, whom I love from The Descent, plays an ex-model whose fiance was murdered and now she’s using the insurance payout to fund her worsening drug addiction. Shirley Henderson, whom I love from Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, plays a woman bullied by her mother and losing her hair from stress. There’s also someone nailing a priest and selling Viagra to the elderly, and the bride of the upcoming wedding, who is trying to look after her friends. And if the posters are anything to go by, things are going to get violent.

Shauna Mac and guns probably isn’t the best combination. She’s shown herself quite capable of going on a killing spree with a pickaxe, animal bones and her thumbs, so imagine what she could do with something that’s actually meant to hurt people.

Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. On the other hand, onscreen weddings and onscreen violence does sound like a good combination. Either this movie is going to be very funny, very tragic, or both. Or possibly all three.

Finally, the last one is called English Language (With English Subtitles). It’s a short film, actually, and I think my chances of ever getting to see it are pretty small, but I would like to try. Anyway, it’s a strange little mostly-black-and-white romantic comedy about the couple’s break-up. And there are subtitles, through the whole thing, that paraphrase, reveal subtext, sometimes cut under what they’re saying. Which sounds pretty fascinating, and I would love to see it in action.

I guess this is the bit before they break up, or the happy memories montage, which would explain the signs they’re messing about with. The fact that they’re either about to seperate or have already done so stops it from leaning too far over the sappy line. Really, the whole thing’s adorable, although I think “The Time The Frisbee Got Stuck In The Tree,” is taking it to Pushing Daisies or Wall-E levels of cute, which is pretty impressive. This isn’t in black-and-white, BTW.

Then there’s the trailer, which is in b&w. I like the music better on this one, although what with the random shots of the artists playing, it does make it seem a bit like a music video. Like the park clip, this doesn’t have any dialogue. No signs either, this time. I’m impressed they managed to still convey what it’s about at all actually. No dialogue [that inlcudes voice-overs], no signs or captions, the girlfriend’s only even in three shots and half the rest of it is shots of deer or a train, but it’s still clearly about them breaking up and the dude dealing with it. Anyway, it’s very well shot and quite a nice odd little trailer.

 Hmm, to describe this movie. A tropical island is full of giant spiders running amok. And they’re actually from outer space. Yes, it’s that kind of movie, and it sounds awesomely funny.

Also, it has Alex Reid, who was great as Beth in The Descent, IMO the best against some very stiff competition. This was her first film, and she said in an interview that she thought she wishes she could go back and do it a bit different, but still, I wanted to see her in something else, plus this has the amusement factor of big alien spiders in the Caribbean.

The players:

The lead guy is a tool. A tool made out of cheese. He spends the first half-hour or so following Alex around cheesily trying to get in her pants while pretending he’s just being friendly. Did I mention he’s called Valentine? Every time someone says his name I imagine him holding a big heart-shaped box of chocolates and singing Barry White. And at one point he left Alex to stew waist-deep in a heavily spider-infested hole so he could pick every last bit of webbing off his hands. She was a lot less angry than I would be, it must be said. 

Mercer [Alex] started off pretty well though. She’s snarky, kind of funny and successfully elicited sympathy enough after having to put up with doctors bitching at her. Unfortunately, during the second half, she stops snarking, which is doubly a pity because Alex Reid is good at it, and Cheesetool and the two doctors stop giving her shit because they’re busy with the spiders. On the upside, she remains tough, not overtly stupid [for a B-movie, that’s quite the compliment] and sort of a badass, none of which I was expecting in a movie like this.

We had two doctors. One was called Suzanna. She started out being bitchy but not the snarky, funny or awesome kind [with one notable exception] and after the bitchiness went away she was sort of just there. I didn’t catch the other guy’s name, but he was even more non-awesome pissy, plus bossy and lacking much in the way of compassion. He was just the group antagonist, nothing more. 

Spider expert Capri is one of those guys who sees the world through his job, but it didn’t get annoying or anything. I like nerds and weird people besides, so I enjoyed his character.

Bear is a big tough guy who’s good with a gun, and that’s about it. His partner merc is another big tough guy, but mostly there to suffer a horrible and graphic fate – getting killed chestbursting Xenomorph style, except with gigantic ticks, while the supposed medical personal stand by looking mildly wigged. 

The natives of the island are sadly reduced to pure spiderbait. There was one who got a little time spent on him, Toeboy, but apart from that… No effort was made to give any of them a personality, they’re the first ones to die, and portrayed rather stereotypically. Yeah, that pissed me off.

So here are all my favourite parts. 

The whole opening was amazing. A jet pilot [and Alex’s brother] for some reason decides to fly after the big flying invisible-yet-shimmery thing that was making the whirlpool, even when his equipment was beeping off warnings about something or other. Plane fails, he ejects, abandoned plane crashes into shimmership. Even though we never saw any land at all, pilot and shimmership both land on an island. The pilot sees a shimmery transparent alien come out of the ship and get attacked by a giant spider [also from the ship, I think] that puts it’s legs through the alien’s chest. I’m not making any of this up. The spider then jumps onto the pilot and we go to black.

That thing with Cheesetool, and Mercer in a hole, it gets better. There’s something down there with her! The ”something,” [a big spider, the original’s offspring] grabs her foot and is somehow making a good effort to drag her into the hole. There are so many things wrong with this scenario. What did it grab her with? How could a cat-sized spider be that strong? And how the fuck is the little eight-legged freak snarling and growling? Just… epic. I want to know who came up with that, and what they said to the sound effect folk. “I don’t think the scene feels threatening enough, could you add some growling noises?” “Uh, I don’t think spiders do that, sir.” “Maybe not, but these are giant spiders. They have… giant mouths!” “Whatever you say, sir.”

And then after the drama’s over her and Cheesetool’s shirts get stuck together by the webbing and they have to pull them off. Oh my god, now the alien mutant spider is sending its children to force everyone to strip! Everybody, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES CLOTHES! Seriously, that is far and away the most creative reason for fanservice I’ve ever seen. Simply amazing.

Mr Useless decides to get her boot back, and sticks his whole arm and head down the hole to get it. Consider it foreshadowing – later he will do something else all brave and chivalrous and completely fucking stupid, only that time there’ll be actual consequences. 

Somehow the spider is spawning mutant centipedes, ticks and the like. Just… I really don’t know how someone could actually be so dumb as to come up with this and think this makes sense while sober, so lets all assume whoever wrote this had been mixing their meds with alcohol… and lots and lots of crack. Good. Now sit back and enjoy your killer centipedes.

Spiderguy gets caught by the spider, right, and then even as the thing is finishing wrapping him up he’s blathering to his new friend about the different kinds of spider webbing. Bwah! Also, he’s upright, the thing is spraying the web all over him from directly above, yet his body is completely covered and his head is untouched. Hey, at least it’s not as bad as the centipede with a spider for a mother. Although there’s more, as once the team happens upon him, in the exact same scene, the spider just vanishes to give them their last moments together. Funnily enough, you don’t usually get movie villains who are so considerate and sensitive to their victim’s feelings [awwww] let alone spidervillains.

So it’s down to three people, since the natives have simply disappeared into thin air and Bear is off trying to get reception on the phone, a plot point that serves absolutely no purpose. They find some shelter, and fight the spider a little. Of course, Cheesetool decides to do something brave and heroic and incredibly, indescribably stupid. He runs out of bullets, and instead picks up a machete and runs right into it without even attacking. So of course the idiot gets himself bitten, and now the others can’t even shoot because he’s in the way. Worst. Hero. Ever. 

I kinda love how useless he is, though. There was that scene, right, and then because the wound wasn’t that deep he’s alive. But from this point on, pretty much all he does is get his poisoned ass half-carried about by everyone else. And when they pick up the slack on spider-fighting, we find that our leader/ex-marine/hired protection/gun enthusiast/hero is the only person in the movie who cannot shoot the huge target that is the spider. He kept missing it with each shot, over and over again, but the doctor and the pilot hit it like, every single time. It’s hilarious.

Oh, also cracking my shit up, no matter how many times they hit Spidey, they’re never able to even hold it up much. I mean, that thing must have gotten about thirty bullets in it’s abdomenon, but it’s not even bothered by it. What is it, made of kevlar?

Blah blah blah, Bear and Toeboy return, everybody hikes down to the caves to find the spider and kill it. And for some godforsaken reason, there appear to be dinosaur bones down there in the webbing. I guess the spider’s supposed to be all ancient and shit, only that’s ridiculous because it came from the spaceship at the beginning of the movie. The tagline even says “It’s coming from another world… To stay!” Maybe someone came up with one idea and someone else came up with another idea, and they had some sort of bet to see who’s idea made it into the movie, and then it ended in a tie and they decided “Let’s just throw them both in,” and then walked off with their arms around each others shoulders and possibly someone making a Casablanca reference. Maybe. 

The spider, chasing Alex? Looks completely ridiculous. Not as bad as the giant spider from Stephen King’s IT but still crap. Oh, and it ate Bear, too.

Oh, for fuck’s sake… Alex trips and the spider magically appears right over her. We didn’t hear it moving. Even though the camera was facing the direction it was coming from, we never saw it. Frankly, the idea that a spider bigger than a horse could be so stealthy in the first place is setting off my “doesn’t make sense” alarm bells, and they aren’t doing anything to help that. 

Alex and Toeboy take down the spider together. Didn’t expect that, but it doesn’t make up for all the earlier treatment of the natives. So, as they’re walking towards the beach, the camera pulls back to reveal they’re being watched by a giant… well, it looks like a grasshopper, or maybe a praying mantis. Hee. I am so enjoying the implication that the survivors are going to be eaten by a motherfucking GRASSHOPPER.

So, this is pretty crap, but it it’s fun crap.  And I keep imagining the giant spider on the LOST island, which leads to all kinds of funny scenarios.

Oh, and BTW, I thought I’d let y’all know. I found out about this movie through this interview with Alex Reid, which is pretty awesome by its own self, and then yesterday, from a link on a different site, I find the blog, written by “Final Girl,” who, as it turns out, had been the awesome interviewer. And her website is also awesome, and then I find a post recapping Arachnid. This was about ten days after reading the interview, and I had already written most of this post. Crazy, huh? Anyway, check out her recap here, it’s fantastic.

So, here’s what I thought of/during the final Twilight trailer, which is the movie of the hugely-popular-amongst-teenage-girls book series that intrests me through an odd mixture of so-bad-it’s-good and bile fascination. I do genuinely like several of the secondary characters, but then, my standards for liking a character are pretty damn low. If you want to know what it’s about, watch the trailer, it gives a pretty good idea. It doesn’t mention that her new vampire boyfriend sparkles, though, or that before they were together he was stalking her, or that due to her weirdly floral smelling blood, every second he was near her he was desperately tempted to eat her making his stalking even worse, or that when he kisses her she faints or that the other time he kissed her, her heart literally skipped a beat. No joke. Anyway, here we go.

00:10 What is with that music?

00:20 Still with the same music, and the titling… Seriously, it’s sparkly teen vampire romance, stop being so melodramatic. No, wait, I take it back. I just remembered it’s ridiculous to stop asking anything remotely related to Twilight to stop with the melodrama. But could that goddamn music shut the hell up anyway?

00:35 Thank god.

00:46 Heeee. Edward climbs the tree exactly the way my kitty does. How cute! Is he going to run out of steam and cling there looking crazy too? Although it’s really dangerous and stupid to give Bella a piggyback up while doing so – she spent most of her time in the book in various states of only partial conciousness or dizziness [my theory is she was stoned the whole time and just never mentioned it] and if she lets go, there would be no way to save her, even if Eddykins wanted to do something like that. As opposed to living the dream and feasting on his ready made gigantic freesia-scented meaty Bella pancake.

00:48 What, she thinks he’s got a kryptonite infection? I don’t know how common that is in other incarnations of Superman, but that’s how most Smallville villains get their start. I so wish they would have a crossover episode with Eddykins as the “villain.” It would be so-bad-it’s-fucking-awesome.

00:54 Um, Edward? People are staring, and it’s probably because of how badly those sunglasses go on you. Might want to wipe that smirk off your face, dude. You look like a tool.

1:03 So what, is he perfect at soccer now, too? Gawd, how many skills does he need?

1:15 Bella thinks trees don’t exist. Told you she was stoned.

1:26 “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you.” No, that was Alice with Jasper, twerp. She’s the one who can see the future, remember? You just realized that the new girl at school smelt really good [like freesia!] and without her knowledge, decided to go break into her house every night to watch her sleep, until she saved you the trouble by just agreeing to be your girlfriend.

1:34 Mmm, shirtless James is goooood.

1:36 Darling Eddykins is randomly up in a tree throwing a snit. Ha!

1:46 Uh, trailer, maybe leave a little plot unspoiled.

1:48 Oh god. Kids, this is not an example of a healthy relationship and Bella is not much of a role model, ‘kay? If you have to “stay away” as Bella says, from your boyfriend or girlfriend, dying is still a pretty bad option. Try chocolate and friends, and if you’re genuinely depressed, maybe get some professional help. Although chocolate and friends are still nice to have around too. Getting off soapbox… now.

1:58 Seriously trailer, just the tiniest smidgen of plot. Okay, I know that there wasn’t really much of it in the book, but telling the people who haven’t read that everything that happens doesn’t really give them the strongest motivation to go see the movie.

2:02 Never mind, if Edward’s shown up the whole thing’s spoiled anyway. Everyone who sees this knows that he’ll rescue her, and then there’s nothing left. And he still looks really strange doing his little spin crouch.

2:18 They made the title sparkle! Bwahahahahaha! Awesome. Who came up with that idea? I want to send them flowers. Or glitter, whatever.

The Infected are coming… Here’s the review.

The characters aren’t as great as the ones in 28 Days Later, but that set a very high standard and the one here are still quite good. They’re realistic, reasonably fleshed out, didn’t seem superficial, decently acted, had arcs, characterization didn’t go away once the horror started. That is a tendency in modern horror movies where the horror takes place over a matter of hours. Once it starts, what usually happens is everyone will just sort of revert to “scared,” mode, and for the rest of the movie the only thing they will do is try to combat the threat and don’t really display a personality. Sometimes the way they combat the threat displays a personality, which is great, but it doesn’t happen all that much. Anyway, that’s why I put that in there, it should be the standard to avoid this but it really isn’t. And having character arcs during the horror is well above the bar.

The atmosphere was so fantastic, 28DL was excellent, but wow, this was a better. They shot parts of it like a doco to make it feel more realistic, and also used the shaky cam and the music to get chaos, and as we moved through the movie it kind of progressed into being more surreal [through lighting and colouring for the most part] and lonely – that was camerawork and silence.

It was quite a contrast to the first movie, like one of the themes of that was subverting the saying that “Hell is other people,” by doing “Hell is no people.” This one goes back to the original saying, with the scenes of crowded pandemonium, practically riots. But it wasn’t just that, the army, the people, they were even more dangerous than the Infected, who weren’t people in the same sense.

HERE BE SPOILERS! The group dynamic was great. The role of protector kept shifting around as new members were added, first it was Tammy [the sister], then Scarlet [the military doctor] then Doyle [the soldier] and it kind of became this family unit, for a little while. Then the “protectors,” started getting killed off so the role shifted back down the line until it was just Tammy again. And they all made the decision to put their life into that role at some point, like Scarlet did when she gave up her chance of getting out the military exit to stay with Tammy and find Andy, Doyle kinda did when he abandoned his post to help people get out and then followed through on that with the car, Tammy was so desperate to stay with Andy that she was actually chasing her brother so they would stay together and he would eat her face.

And I don’t know whether this was supposed to be because he got it from Alice or because the new writer/director team just wanted to do the virus that way, but after Don was infected he still seemed to have some intelligence and some memories. We hadn’t seen anything like that before, they even made a point in the first movie of explaining that the Infected had nothing else to them but the desire to attack and eat. He kept popping up everywhere like he was following the group the entire time, and he didn’t attack his kids immediately, he went for Scarlet and left Tammy. He used the gun as a club, he responded to his name… There were other examples, but you get the idea. Anyway, I’d certainly be interested to see if this idea of the virus mutating continues in the sequel.

So, is it as good as 28 Days Later? Almost. Not as pretty, and the tone wasn’t as defined in places and as mentioned the characters weren’t quite as good – but even those things weren’t done badly at all, just not as well as the first movie did them. So it’s still a highly commendable 9 out of 10.