Sometimes we hear nothing but good things about a movie. Sometimes we go into a film expecting something amazing. We go into a film expecting an artistic, soul stirring masterpiece, because countless people have labeled it as such. Ever so often, I feel like I've seen everything that mainstream film making has to offer, so I dig a little deeper into slightly more obscure movies, relying only on word of mouth and some Wiki exploration. Sometimes I end up with something like Videodrome or Mary and Max, and other times I stumble upon the garbage featured on today's list.
(NOTE: I know the tone of this list may seem a bit more serious and to the point, but trust me, I understand that every movie is enjoyed by someone, and I have no right to kill someone's enjoyment. Everything said here is simply my opinion, I'm not trying to convince any of you that happen to enjoy these movies that they're bad. We good? Read on.)
(NOTE: I know the tone of this list may seem a bit more serious and to the point, but trust me, I understand that every movie is enjoyed by someone, and I have no right to kill someone's enjoyment. Everything said here is simply my opinion, I'm not trying to convince any of you that happen to enjoy these movies that they're bad. We good? Read on.)
#5 - Gummo ('97)
Let me say one thing here that may completely discredit my opinion of this movie... I've never finished it. Nope, I never plan to. I honestly couldn't justify wasting an hour and a half of my life on this thing. It's an ugly, nonsensical "artsy" film that is praised for its supposedly realistic depiction of white trash in rural America. Apparently it's hateful and offensive to portray "white trash" as ignorant, cruel, mentally disabled, and violent in a film, but a movie that centers around a group of ignorant, mentally disabled, cruel, violent rednecks is worthy of praise when its shot on shitty film stock and directed by a pretentious twat. Go figure.
Okay, I suppose I should at least make an attempt to explain the movie. Keep in mind, I haven't finished it, and I know that makes me seem like an ass for not giving it a chance, but trust me, simply reading a synopsis will make you lose the will to see it, too. The film is... Really about nothing. It's simply a collage of scenes cut from the every day lives of people living in a rural Ohio town that was hit by a tornado in the seventies. You'll see characters fondling each other and discovering that they have cancer, drowning kittens, selling stray cats to butchers, wearing bunny ears for no real reason, and performing countless other pointless actions. I suppose the ending is worth mentioning for being exceptionally stupid...
...that scene is really a nice summary of the movie, from what I understand. It's an hour and a half of a derpy kid yelling "HURRR DURRR KITTEH!" while swinging a dead cat over his head. But that's not really why I'm showing you the ending, oh no. Let's take a look at some comments on the video...
that the single most beautiful to ever appear on film. it has such a haunting grace to it
Let it be known that fans of Gummo find bunny hood wearing, pre-pubescent boys making out with naked teenagers in a pool beautiful.
Yes it does, it's quite obvious for a person observing the Movie..even if it doesn't makes sense, it stills has a mysterious message.
Ah, this is the one I really need to highlight. You see, the film's director Harmony Korine is, in fact, a pretentious "hipster" who fills his movies with so much "style" that there's no room for any substance. But here's the thing... He's actually admitted that there's no message in Gummo. It exists simply to show off how bleak and nihilistic life can get for some people, there's no hidden meaning buried in it. To be fair, I really respect the guy for admitting this, and you have no idea how hard it is for me to respect someone who directed a film called Trash Humpers. But regardless of this fact, fans still cling to the idea of an underlying meaning hidden in the movie. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and something a shitty movie is just a shitty movie.
Yes it does, it's quite obvious for a person observing the Movie..even if it doesn't makes sense, it stills has a mysterious message.
Ah, this is the one I really need to highlight. You see, the film's director Harmony Korine is, in fact, a pretentious "hipster" who fills his movies with so much "style" that there's no room for any substance. But here's the thing... He's actually admitted that there's no message in Gummo. It exists simply to show off how bleak and nihilistic life can get for some people, there's no hidden meaning buried in it. To be fair, I really respect the guy for admitting this, and you have no idea how hard it is for me to respect someone who directed a film called Trash Humpers. But regardless of this fact, fans still cling to the idea of an underlying meaning hidden in the movie. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and something a shitty movie is just a shitty movie.
#4 - Paranormal Activity ('09)
Paranormal Activity isn't really as "underground" or obscure as the others featured on this list, but it's just as pointless. Honestly, I love mockumentary style horror, the genre has endless potential if the stories presented are even partially believable. Unfortunately, Paranormal Activity doesn't live up to that potential. It tries to go the lost tape route ala Cloverfield, Noroi, or Blair Witch, but leaves quite a few gaps in the tape's origin and really feels redundant all around.
It's the story of a couple, Micah and Katie, and their first days living together in their new San Diego home. Katie has, supposedly, been followed by paranormal events throughout her entire life, and when odd happenings startle the couple, Micah decides to film every waking moment in hopes of catching the creature responsible. The setup is actually interesting, in my opinion, but the execution is so redundant and boring that it loses all its impact barely twenty minutes in. Really, it's a screamer, that's all it is. You spend two hours watching this couple prance about, hear some explanations about the haunting, then something jumps out at you. What's really sad is, it couldn't even get that simple concept right.
There are several points in the movie that are never addressed, and that bugs me. For one, they claim that the creature has been following Katie, so they can't escape it. But if that's the case, why wasn't it manifesting itself before? Why didn't Micah know about it until the movie started? Did Katie just forget to mention that she's haunted for the first few months they were dating? I don't get that, does it just lay dormant for a random amount of time then start ominously closing doors and shit? For that matter, why are we even seeing this tape? At the end of the movie, Micah had the camera mounted on the wall, and a demon possessed Katie kills him and a group of cops who enter the house. Did demon-Katie just take the tape out and send it to America's Funniest Home Videos or something? The tape's origins are kind of important in the lost tape subgenre.
The movie itself isn't terrible, honestly. It's just... Boring. It's comparable to watching paint dry for a few hours, then just before it all hardens, you realize that there's an abstract face forming in it. There's so much build up that by the time the pay off comes around, it has no impact whatsoever. This was called the scariest movie of all time, the trailers have people shitting themselves in terror when a door knob turns or a blanket gets hit with a breeze, and there's a sequel coming... Where did we go wrong with our horror movies, exactly?
#3 - We Are the Strange ('07)
We Are the Strange... With a title like that, you can instantly see which audience the movie is pandering to. The "nobody understands me, I'm so different" crowd that just happens to be comprised almost entirely of pretentious twelve year olds. But, upon seeing the trailer, you might think it was aiming for the gamer crowd. The use of Sinistar voice samples and the gorgeous chiptune music just screams "this is for you, gamers." Hell, there's even a mention of a giant robot! But then you see the movie...
To put it simply, I saw the trailer, and I was like this...
"A surreal, dark, tongue-in-cheek animated film that pokes fun at those who look for deeper meaning in shallow entertainment while referencing retro gaming? Fuck and yes."
But then, I was all...
"What the fuck was that? Why are my eyes bleeding? Where am I? What just happened?"
So, the story... Well, we open on a woman named Blue being abused by a primitive CG model of a man that wouldn't look out of place in ReBoot. We notice that the character's actor speaks like a dyslexic Speak and Spell. That's because he's voiced by our director, MDotStrange, a pretentious weeaboo whose only talent involves splicing together random, shaky footage shot with a handy cam. But I digress... Blue has a strange disease that makes her skin harden into scales under certain circumstances, and director dude doesn't like this so he tosses her out.
She runs off, depressed by the fact that she just escaped someone she hated, because apparently that's sad. She runs into a semi-aborted monstrosity made out of paper clips and a baby doll head, he's called eMMM, because we needed more proof that our director, "M," is self absorbed beyond reason. The two team up, because eMMM wants ice cream... What? Anyway... The pair ends up in a seemingly abandoned city, and after an impromptu dance number that would make even Bollywood blush, they're attacked by poorly designs monsters that look like inside-out weasels with nails hammered into them.
Meanwhile, a pair of criminals named Rain and Origami are fighting creatures for some unknown reason. Rain is a rather dumb looking Kabuki mask wearing fighter with whip-like claws, and Origami is essentially the Annoying Orange's special cousin, the Derptastic Post-It Note, who has the ability to fold himself into different shapes. Turns out, Rain is eMMM's father. I know, the resemblance is uncanny. Apparently he was also a giant robot creator, and was training his malformed son to pilot one by making him play a Gameboy for years on end. The two groups meet up, there's a nonsensical giant robot fight, and the movie fizzles out with no real explanation for anything you just witnessed or closure. But hey, maybe I'm being too hard on Strange here. Maybe We Are the Strange isn't his masterpiece like I've heard. Maybe his other movies are great.
...Six minutes of awful CGI, someone in a mask going "durrrrr" while picking up a phone, and a clown-faced cowboy doin' the monkey. Why am I not surprised?
#2 - Eraserhead ('76)
I'm gonna lose a lot of you right here, and I understand why. Eraserhead is the premiere feature length film by beloved director David Lynch. Admittedly, Lynch has improved by leaps and bounds over the years, but many people seem to forget that in his early years he did nonsensical short films like The Alphabet and Six Men Getting Sick. If you haven't seen Eraserhead, trust me, it's more The Alphabet than it is Twin Peaks. This is the only film on this list that isn't just loved by fans, but by the god damn US Library of Congress. I must really be in the minority here...
Eraserhead is the tale of a man named Henry Spencer. Spencer lives in an industrial wasteland of sorts, and he leads a rather mundane life with his girlfriend, Mary X. (Because X is the coolest letter ever!) But after an awkward dinner with the X family - involving at least one old lady orgasm and some bleeding Cornish hens - Mary drops a rather dramatic bomb on Henry. She's pregnant. A bit later, the "baby" is born, way too early, in fact.
The baby is a strange, sheep headed abomination wrapped in bandages. Sure, it's fugly, but it's the cry it lets out that really makes the thing unlikable. It sounds like a bee hive crammed into a vuvuzela being played with the ass of a wolverine that's viciously clawing at a chalkboard. Being the one apparently intelligent human in the movie, Mary leaves her big haired baby-daddy and the creature he made her spawn. So now Henry's alone with his demon brood, and he begins escaping its whining by hallucinating a random singing chick with cheeks the size of tennis balls, who's giving him personal concerts inside his radiator while stomping on falling sperm cells.
That's pretty much all there is. The rest of the movie revolves around Henry's insanity and some off the wall dream sequences. The only moderately interesting scene involves Henry finally snapping at his "son" and cutting its bandages, revealing nothing underneath but a pulsating pile of goo and organs. What's sad is that the idea of a parent taking care of a child that they didn't want, a child that was born with a serious disfigurement and condition that made the parent's life harder and the baby's life unbearable is a great idea. It could be touching, dramatic, and disturbing all at once. But, of course, Lynch has to inject a simple but charming idea with copious amounts of his trademark "style," which made the whole thing devolve into an eighty nine minute acid trip. But hey, on the plus side, a good horror-drama about childbirth came out three years later - David Cronenberg's The Brood.
#1 - Begotten ('91)
Oh, man, this movie. This one is fresh in my mind. This is the movie that inspired this list. Much like Eraserhead, ninety percent of the reviews I see of this movie are unbelievably positive. Hell, look at that trailer, it's nothing but footage with a narrator reading exerts from reviewers who were practically gargling the movie's balls. So I go in expecting a dark, gory, surreal, interesting story with striking visuals and a unique design. But ten minutes in, I finally understand one reviewer's quote. "Makes Eraserhead look like Earnest Saves Christmas." It makes an ugly, nonsensical movie with no discernible plot and no rhyme or reason look like a mediocre but watchable comedy. It makes Eraserhead look decent. God help us all.
Speaking of God, our story opens with a fairly interesting shot of a bandaged man representing God. The first five minutes fill you with hope. Sure, the picture is awful, you can barely make things out, there's no dialogue, and there's no music... But hey, at least it looks kind of cool. God is apparently depressed, and he decides to end it all with a straight razor in his gut. After the one gory scene that you'll actually be able to make out, God is dead.
Descriptions of the "plot" say that a new character, Mother Earth, is born from God's corpse. In reality, she simply crawls out from under a sheet that was draped over him. Whimsical descriptions of mundane things can do wonders, can't they? Mother Earth is apparently a bit of a slut, as her first instinct is to rape God's corpse. Classy. I think she grabs the corpse's hand and fingers herself with it, but between the untamed 'pubes of the nineties, the terrible film quality, and the extreme contrast, I can't tell if she's going necrophile on us or if I'm watching a close up of a chinchilla that wandered in front of the camera while the director was on a lunch break.
Apparently she breeds through osmosis, because slight touch left her pregnant. Then, after ten minutes of a random coffin dissolve wiping across the desert, she gives birth to a fully grown man. Assuming the barely conscious, twitching pile of man-meat she just squirted out can fend for itself, she vanishes until later in the movie. Those sand people from Star Wars kidnap the guy, who is known as Son of the Earth - Flesh on Bone. They're a bit cruel at first, but after he coughs up some delicious tumors for them, they warm up to him awfully quick. Naturally, to thank him for his "gifts," they hunt down his mother, rape her, then proceed to dismember her. Now it's his turn. So, everyone's dead. Movie over? Nope. We get one more shot of the mother and son wandering around a forest. How? Who knows, and honestly, who cares?
You know what's really sad? My description condensed the movie down to its most basic form. It's actually an hour and fifteen minutes long. But you know what? Nothing. Happens. There are a handful of events, and they cover about twenty minutes altogether. The rest of the movie is comprised of drawn out scenes that serve no purpose. For every semi-interesting scene, there are ten scenes of rocks, or a dozen scenes of a sun in the background, twenty minutes of the Son being dragged through the desert... Nothing happens.
To make matters worse, when things do happen, you can't fucking see what's going on. I don't know if the director thought he was being clever when he decided to turn the contrast up high enough to reduce every scene to something comparable to a Rorschach test on a brick Gameboy or what, but that decision has killed this movie. This is an arthouse film, I expected a pointless, shallow story. But if the visuals were neat, I'd forgive it. After the visually striking opening, you might expect something special as far as the designs and style go, but no, by the end you won't be able to tell where one character ends and the other begins. It's ugly, plain and simple, offensive to the eyes.
It's not offensive to the ears, though, that much is certain. No, don't take that as a positive point. What I mean is... There's practically no sound. Not one word of dialogue is spoken during the entire film. Hell, there's barely three notes of music. In fact, the only sound you'll hear consistently - and by that I mean, through the whole damn movie - is a chorus of chirping crickets. No, I won't lie, I honestly don't get that. What on earth do crickets have to do with gore-tastic creation myths?
Honestly, I can't understand why this movie is thought of so highly. I mean, I don't like Eraserhead, but at least stuff happened in it. This is one of the ugliest, most poorly made, heinous movies that has ever assaulted my retinas. Surely the man behind this garbage ended up dead after getting high and trying to pork a bear, right? There's no way he could do anything significant after this travesty, right?
...He made what?
This Shadow of the Vampire?
I guess saying film makers could improve was an understatement.
(Hey people, thanks for reading. I know this wasn't as good as my usual stuff, it's 5:04am as I'm adding the final touches here, and I know everything I write when sleep deprived ends up hilariously bad. But despite that, I hope you at least got some enjoyment out this. I've got a metric ton of toy reviews piling up, including one of MacFarlene's Halo Reach figures, a sequel to an older list of mine, and some horror reviews for Awesomesauce Productions, so keep an eye out for all that nonsense. Thanks again for reading, and have a great day.)
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