Slanted - My Take (Spoilers)

 

This was a Screen Unseen and I'd never seen a trailer for this. I was truly going in with no idea what this would be about but it was pretty obvious by the title and by the opening scene.

This is the story of a Chinese family and the daughter trying to fit into a not-really-that-wrong parody of America. The names of some of the stores were a freaking riot. The AR-15 Food Market got me.

They arrive in the town when Joan is eight years old and on her first day of school someone gives her the slant eyes insult. She has the Chinese lunch her mother packed for her mocked so she dumps it out.

Smash cut to her in high school. She trades lunches with her Desi friend so they're both happy. I'm not sure where mom works and dad works as a house cleaner. They both speak Chinese at home and very limited English where needed. Joan speaks perfect English.

The popular girls at school are the pale blondes. All of them. Even a chubby one. There's a single very popular one who the rest gravitate around. Joan has the longing looks for them and there's a hallway of fame for homecoming kings and queens, all the cleancut American guys and every single girl pale with long blonde hair.

She decides to run for homecoming queen, even with her Desi friend trying to talk her down. Things are going lackluster until her dad gets hurt at work and she has to fill in for cleaning. The popular girls see her and that's the end of her homecoming queen aspirations. She even tries dying her hair blonde herself but it's not a success so she's got a big patch of black roots and orange chunks.

Online she's been using filters that change her to be the white blonde she wants to be. Every time she does she gets a message from the company that makes them that she's a high percentage user, that she's important to them, etc. Then she gets a message that's a one hour limited offer to go to their office and after some debate she does. The storefront is an abandoned barber shop but the logo is on the window and going through the debris of the previous store she ends up in a bright and shiny lobby.

She's offered the chance to become what she wants to be - white. The doctor shows her video of the success stories. In fact he'll give her a freebie permanent hair color change. She walks out with nice blonde hair and the paperwork she needs a parent to sign because she's underage. It states very clearly, and the doctors says it as well, that the change is permanent.

She lies to her mother and says it's a form for a field trip and goes the next day to have the procedure done. The movie skips over any and all science for this process, and that makes it more believable. Joan of pure Chinese descent walks in, Joan of pure white descent walks out. There is now a different actress playing the character.

Her parents have no idea who she is and it takes persuading to get them to realize it is her. They're appalled at what she did and there's some touching dialogue later from her father about how he looked at her and saw his mother, etc. But that's not where this movie goes. They do go back to the clinic and tell the doctor they didn't agree to it and change it back. He points it that it's permanent and shows them the door.

She takes on a new name at the school and starts over. The popular girls take to her and THE popular girl pulls her into her orbit. She's got what she's wanted - she gets white privilege and she fits in. Her Desi friend is also appalled and asks if she thinks she's ugly. Valid question. During this time she's had a few patches of skin flake and peel off.

Her skin starts to sag and show some of her original skin tone. When she goes back to the clinic there's now a huge line and she's told she can see the doctor far out in the future. They give her some cream and tape to deal with the problem until then.

She gets nominated for homecoming queen by the top girl herself, who's going to be too busy shooting a TV show to do it herself. During this time there's more slippage. She runs into the bathroom and is followed by the top girl. Unexpectedly she helps with the tape to hide the damage and tells her that her original face will fight the change for a while. Well then.

She's invited to dinner at the top girl's house to find out both her and her father had the procedure, her mother chose not to and isn't in their lives anymore. The house is completely white and beige, a not very subtle showing for the situation.

When she gets home Joan sees more of her skin slipping and flaking. She starts pulling and digging. There's piles of what are meant to be bloody skin on the makeup table as she looks for her old face. It ends with her holding her hand over her new face and half of her old face showing.

This isn't subtle and it's not meant to be. However it's also poorly written and too long. Others have said it could have been, and should have been, a Twilight Zone episode. I really have to wonder how hard up the studios are for non-comic book movies when I see a lot of what's been on the big screen. The concept here is good. The execution is bad.

The funny thing is I don't see this as ever being shown in my city. This is so not the audience for this movie.

Undertone - My Take (Spoilers)

I stay away from online trailers and reviews before seeing a movie. I like the trailers in the theater and that's how I decide what I'm probably going to see. This one intrigued me and I couldn't avoid a blurb that said it was actually scary. That sold me.

The movie is about a pair of podcasters who do a show about the paranormal. Evy is the sceptic, Justin (voice only) is the believer. Yup. Got a Scully and Mulder thing going on here without the sexual tension aspect. It seems to be popular enough because they get fan mail and have been doing it for a while. Justin is in London so that means they record it at 3am her time.

During pre-show talk Justin brings up a different situation where someone who seems to be an influencer did something that because viral where a bunch of people cut off their ears and mailed them to her before killing themselves. Evy brings up the site to mess with him and it's a disturbing image of a screaming woman on a red background with a sound playing. She leaves it up long enough for him to yell at her to stop.

Evy lives with her mother and is her mother's caretaker. Her mom is end of life. She's tucked away in her bedroom, under smooth sheets and blankets. She's just lying there, breathing. The house is full of religious trappings and I do mean full of them. Lots of pictures, crucifixes, candles, statues, etc. They're in pretty much every shot in the movie.

Justin gets an email with ten audio clips from a random letter email address and some cryptic words. Being who they are they decide to play them and discuss.

The movie does suspense well. They stay away from the tropes and there isn't a single jump scare in the whole thing even though they set it up to think there will be. They do have images in the background as needed and they're indistinct enough to make them creepier than if they were shown. The sound was incredibly done where it's mixing the sound from the clips to the sound in the house. Cinematography had framing so well done it was both unnoticed and right in your face. Technically I'd like to say this film should be up for minor to mid-level awards.

As they listen to the clips things get progressively unhinged in what they're listening to. What went from simple proof that the woman talks in her sleep turns into more and more unexplained things. Evy also starts experiencing unexplained things that involve her and her mother.

The plot settles onto demonic possession and a relatively obscure demon who has a problem with babies, causing miscarriages, stillbirths, and mothers doing unspeakable things to their babies. Just before that starts being involved Evy finds out she's pregnant.

This is where the oddness happens from a viewer standpoint. She calls her doctor to schedule a pregnancy test instead of going to the dollar store and getting a test. The doctor calls back just before they start a 3am taping to tell her she's six weeks pregnant. Then the next clip they listen to has a baby crying.

Evy keeps finding things out of place. A statue shows up on her mother's bedside table and shows up again after she put it in a drawer. A painting over her mother's bed is askew. She finds her mother out of bed after she's gone out for an evening/night even though mom is in an end of life coma. We see her mother move in the background when something odd is happening to Evy.

The reason I bring up the sound is that it's so well mixed. When they're listening to banging on the walls in a clip the sound is on the right side of the theater. Then there's an occasional one on the left before going back to the right. It's a way to try to figure out if it's all in the clip or if there's stuff happening in the house. Evy notices something's wrong but doesn't know what.

The audio clips start Justin down the path of old nursery rhymes, what they meant, and that there may be hidden meanings if played backwards. Yup. The classic "play them backwards for the real meaning" thing. She doesn't hear anything in them, he does. Considering the movie opens with her singing a nursery rhyme to her mother it ties in well.

There's the obligatory flickering lights that Evy does not wisely unplug, given that she's living in an older house and flickering lights tend to be a sign of A Bad Think Happening with the Electricity. That bothered me as a bit of a lack of real world impact. Lights do turn off and on at crucial moments, like during a clip when something is said. It's overall building the suspense.

Evy is doodling with crayons. She took them out of the drawer in her mother's nightstand when she put the statue in there the first time and you can see a kind of disturbing drawing in black and red crayon. Her doodles are getting more elaborate as time progresses.

Jeremy doesn't want to listen to the last two clips. He's tried to answer the email but the address was deleted. He's done research and found out that the name of the aforementioned demon is in the email address (backwards) and that they are hearing it more and more in the clips. The voice of reason is overridden and they seem to have a regular live broadcast when people call in.

The callers are all about the people in the clips. The first caller says they're from the same city Evy lives in, brings up how the house was full of drawings of dead children on the walls, and they were both dead at the bottom of the stairs. The next caller seems to be trying to warn them not to listen to any more of the clips but static cuts him off. The next one describes a horrific child murder but doesn't have any useful details like when or where. The last caller is talking about how she's a horrible mother and sounds like she's going to drown her child.

The two of them work hard to convince her not to do it. Evy kind of breaks here and says she killed her mother but it's more of her not praying with her than an active role. This is where the movie breaks down.

The sound is loud enough that it's difficult to hear the various things happening at the end. The visuals are chaotic enough that it's difficult to see important things but they do show just enough of some of them, I will say that. With those two mixed up it's tough to follow the last few minutes.

Evy's house is going nuts. The TV has the image from that viral thing and she can't turn it off. It turns out it isn't even plugged in. The light bulbs are popping all over the house. As she turns you can see black and red crayon drawings over all the walls. The table where she sat while recording her podcast is covered in drawings, especially one that's multiple pages. There's flashes of faces in plastic bags. When she goes up to check on her mother the bed is empty, neatly made, and the statue she kept moving is in the middle. The last thing we get to see is her mother walking towards her from the bathroom behind her. The last thing we hear are screams and thumps.

And this is where it ends.

We get no closure. This is the same thing that happened with "Iron Lung". All buildup, no payoff. Leaving the ending to the audience's imagination is a cop out to me. I did not spend all that time getting invested in the movie only for them to pull the rug out from under me at the end.

There's a lot of different interpretations of the ending on the internet. Go figure. I'm going to get past my dislike for the concept to give some thoughts on it myself.

The audio clips seemed to match Evy's descent into whatever the heck she descended into. They paired up with events in her home and in her own life. There's an interesting bit early on where there's an off-camera voice telling her how to tell when her mother is finally dying. One reviewer noted that the signs the voice gave actually happened at the beginning of the movie and all the scenes with her mother were either in her head or the demonic entity animating her - take your pick.

The last scenes we have are the house in total disarray and not at all what we'd seen until that point. The laptop is buried under papers when the last time she was "normal" she was using it. The kitchen has the table and chairs on the ceiling rather than the floor. The walls, which were fine until now, were now covered in those drawings. There was .. something smeared on the kitchen counters. Someone mentioned there was a creepy baby or doll on top of the refrigerator. All the cabinet doors are open. The only tidy space was her mother's room.

So yeah. Go with whatever ending you want since they weren't strong enough to give us one on their own. I still consider that lazy writing. They spent all that time doing a great job building suspense and then lost it when they ended the movie on ambiguity.

If you like suspense, go ahead and see it. That's well done indeed. If you want a full movie with an ending, you may want to skip it. I will admit to tensing up as things progressed because they were so well into building suspense without releasing it in things like jump scares and big plot drops. It wasn't interesting enough for me to go to see it again and find all the key points where the audio clips may have meshed with what was going on with Evy.

We never do know what happens to Jeremy, if anything. He sounds distressed but it's so late in the movie there's no way to tell if it's really him or in her head. So we don't get closure with him either. Another annoyance for me.

The Bride! - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I was forced to see this one twice because after I'd seen it my movie buddy said they wanted to see it, so off we went. Notice the word "forced".

I wanted to see this from the first time I saw the trailers. It looked like an interesting, modern take on the Bride of Frankenstein with a Bonnie and Clyde vibe. Those weren't something I would have mixed personally but then again I'm not a screenwriter.

Frankenstein's monster has a name in this movie - Frankenstein. Let's leave all the debate about that situation aside because it really doesn't matter. He's assumed the name here so that's who he is. In a tiny way it's him claiming part of himself because his creator didn't bother to name him. The fact that he takes on the name of his abuser (that's what Dr. Frankenstein really was) actually does a bit to set up the character, but more on that later.

He shows up in Chicago to visit a scientist he's been writing and who hasn't been writing back. This scientist writes about "reinvigorating", the term used instead of reanimating. It seems like it's a way to modernize the situation but keep the word in mind. Frank is there to get himself a companion.

The doctor is not what he expects - it's a woman. There's the classic back-and-forth where Frank talks to her about how he's been writing the doctor and he hasn't written back. The doctor reveals herself to him and takes the time to talk to him. She's not thrilled with his idea of reinvigorating a woman for himself and wants him there to study for her own reasons.

But I've skipped the beginning! This is where things take a supernatural twist. The spirit of Mary Shelley is still hanging around and is upset about all the stories she didn't get to write. Not just the ones she meant to write but the ones she couldn't write because of the times in which she lived. This is where the feminist motif starts and it doesn't leave the movie. Mary is looking for a way to tell her story of the bride for her monster, and needs someone in the real world to use for that.

OK. I'm back on track now.

Ima is a party girl who hangs out with the local Chicago mafia. She's doing just that when Mary starts intruding into her head and suddenly Ima is rattling off large synonyms and talking out of turn about the mob boss, who's at the next table. Two of the goons at her table take her away as she makes a scene. As rather expected, she dies what could be termed a natural death if you think of "gravity is natural" because she's pushed down a flight of stairs.

The fall down the stairs is done in multiple shots. She breaks her ankle but even with multiple bongs to the coconut she doesn't seem to break her neck. The last shot of her in this incarnation is splayed at the bottom of the stairs.

Frank persuades the doctor to do what he wants. Mostly it seems she just wants an excuse to do it. She seems to feel that Frank is substandard work and wonders why his creator stitched him together from spare parts rather than use one body. Frank suggests it was a bunch of research in one go. This doctor decides that one body is enough, thank you very much.

The obligatory "dig up the body" scene has them getting Ima out of the ground. She's not in a coffin and still wearing the clothing she had on when she died. This is a blip in the matrix because we don't know how long she was down there and she's suspiciously fresh, unless the doctor somehow had an in with whoever runs the pauper's graves. We'll leave that alone.

When they get her back to the lab (third floor of a very nice corner house) Frank gets upset saying "she's too beautiful". I have no idea why this would be a problem unless he felt she couldn't handle his appearance? The doctor, bless her heart, gets snippy asking what she's supposed to do with a fresh corpse and if he expects her to find another woman for him. That ends the argument.

Her method uses black fluid. It's injected through the veins and bumped with electricity. At least that's what it seems happens. Ima is hooked up to IVs, several tubes into her chest, and some kind of metal scale chest piece. The doctor doesn't wait for lightning - she's hooked into the municipal power system to draw what she needs. Modern measures!

Anyway. Glug glug zap. And we get a reinvigorated Ima. To be more accurate, we get a reinvigorated woman with a broken ankle who doesn't know who she is. Mary Shelley is still hanging around tho so there's that. The doctor is pleased, Frank is pleased, Ima is confused. The doctor fits a very large iron cage around her broken ankle that she doesn't seem to feel. I'm guessing the reinvigoration process doesn't include healing stuff.

One thing of note is Ima's hair. When she's alive it's in a conventional hairstyle. After she's thumped down the stairs it's fanned out. When she's reinvigorated it's big. Seems like her hair shows her breaking the rules of society. At least I'll say that. I'll also continue to call her Ima until later.

Ima immediately shows that she's her own person with her own mind. The doctor wants them both to hang around to be studied. Frank is completely hot to have his bride. Ima wants to do whatever the hell she wants. Frank seems infatuated by her independence.

Frank takes her out on the town. They find an underground club of some kind. Ima starts having a lot of fun, leading on a couple of guys to think that it means they can have their fun with her. She objects, Frank objects strenuously, a photographer is around and gets their picture, the cops show up to deal with the aftermath of Fran's strenuous objection. The cops are the ones that continue through the movie - a detective and his female partner, who's not a detective but seems to do all the detective work he's getting credit for.

Note that any of the black on Ima doesn't wash off, or they don't try but let's go with the fact it's permanent stains. At the club in the bathroom someone mentions her tat and she doesn't correct them. They seem less impressed when she shows her black tongue. Note that the amount of black on her tongue varies through the movie but I won't bother about that since it's a hard thing to do with makeup to give her a black tongue and white teeth.

Frank is obsessed with a musical movie star. This is where the movie goes a little off the rails because he sees himself in the movies and so do we. It's a recurring theme and starts to include Ima as the movie progresses. If I were an artsy movie person I'd say it was because he wanted to escape his life by escaping into the magic world of the movies but that's so overdone I'll let you take or keep that as you like.

Let's get back to this.

The two of them head across country after the newspaper prints their picture and the police are looking for them. For reasons unknown they choose New York as their destination. Travel is a combination of stealing cars and riding in train cars. Early during the trip they're on a train car, Frank is very familiar with how to get away with this, Ima screws that up and ends up getting a police officer killed when he falls/is pushed out of the moving car. That brings the detectives back into the mix.

While in New York Frank shows her how to get money by taking it from various fountains. They're holed up in what seems to be an abandoned hotel and they're in the empty swimming pool. It's not a bad place since it's not like anyone looking in the windows will see them. Ima tries getting "friendly" with him, he declines. She gets a bit miffed about that but rolls with the situation.

For whatever reason women are starting to take up the makeup and freedom they perceive in Ima across the country. They're painting on the black mark on their face, picking up weapons, and making it clear that they're not putting up with stuff anymore. As I said I'm not exactly sure how this got to be a movement but it is.

They are going to the movies as they travel, always starring the same actor Frank adores. The female detective figures this out and they she looks up the places that are showing his movies. There's one in New York so they decide to stake it out. It's a good call because Frank is dragging Ima to go to it, she's bored with seeing the same movies, and takes him to a 3D zombie movie. Note - my movie buddy had a big issue with this since he said that 3D movies weren't invented yet but a quick Wikipedia search shows that yes, it could have happened.

During the movie a couple in the seats in front of Ima is doing some groping, the woman keeps saying no, the man keeps groping. She tells him to leave her alone. The crowd looks, sees the two of them, recognizes them from the newspaper articles that have been continuing to be printed, and panic out of the theater. The movie is showing the two of them as zombie monster during this little scene. They run out with the crowd.

As they're trying to get back to their place they go through a hotel kitchen and into the ballroom. Ima is slick enough to grab a tray and pretend to be a server. Frank catches on, flips his coat around so the light lining shows, and grabs his own tray. Here's where things go wrong and weird. It just so happens that the actor he loves is in the crowd and he finds him. Ima is working her way out, as she should. Frank goes into scary overzealous fanboy and the whole thing ends up as some sort of weird dance sequence to - get this - "Putting on the Ritz". It's a bad dance sequence, by the way.

The police arrive in force. Ima gets one of their guns. Confusion ensues. She ends up non-fatally shooting one of them who doesn't listen to instructions by his own commander. She rightly blames him. She also recognizes the male detective and shoots him for good measure. She does a monologue during all this and brings up the Chicago mobster by name.

This is where she starts to get really confused. She's three people now. She's Mary Shelley. She's Penelope, the name Frank has given her along with a completely made up history between them. She's Ima who's starting to rise back out of her memories. Turns out the detective she shot was one who was on the mafia boss's payroll and also using women like her to get information. Many of those women had been discovered and disposed of by the mob boss, who kept their tongues. She doesn't like the detective.

Here's an interlude where the two of them get, ahem, intimate. Frank finally gets what he wants and it really isn't just the sex. He wanted intimacy and companionship. And sex. He's got them all in his reinvigorated amnesiac partner.

The mobster gets wind of what she said, chides the two men who killed her the first time, kills one of them who got a little too defensive, and sends the other one off to finish the job. This time he's supposed to bring back her tongue. Since the mob boss knows his family situation and that's never a good thing, off he goes.

This is where the Bonnie and Clyde aspect showed in the trailers because of them driving around, her having the revolver, the two of them being a couple. Sadly this is not the case. She figures out Frank has been spinning tales about the two of them to suit his own desires, right down to telling her what her name is. He gets that tattooed on his chest above the big scar that also goes across his chest. The break in the ballroom is letting Ima memories return so she's rightly peeved. She's going to ditch him in the middle of a field but a police car makes her decide that's not a good idea.

They don't go back to the abandoned hotel, which the detectives find. They head out again. The male detective had called back to his station and was giving up his badge, but only if he got to choose his replacement. Yes. He gives his badge to the female detective. Not exactly how that all works but hey, reality doesn't figure much into a movie like this. Now she's at least got a badge to show.

I'll try to wrap things up here.

While at a drive in movie Frank and Ima/Penelope get into a fight. She's got three women inside her noggin and she's working out who she is now. She doesn't want to be any of them so she decides she's going to be The Bride. Frank drawls out that she's the Bride of Frankenstein. She corrects him - she's just The Bride. He likes that even more. She comes around to saying she loves him, at which time he's promptly shot through the head by a local police officer or maybe the guy trying to kill her. I'm uncertain at this point and it doesn't really matter.

Car chase and she gets him back to Chicago to have the doctor reinvigorate him. The doctor takes them in but is only going to study him, not bring him back. She gets a nice speech about how her and her husband were playing around with the aspects of her/their work and went a little too far. That's when she found out about how when someone is brought back they don't have any memory of who they were. She had to "put him down" when that was clear. Um. Wow. Ok.

The Bride isn't having any of that. She's still got the gun and demands that Frank be brought back. The detective has followed them along with local police. The local police do what they do to monsters - lots of gunfire which does no damage to the equipment in the room, thank goodness. The female detective gets them to stop and gets them out of the room so the doctor and her maid (who's got the black mark on her face now) can get themselves in order. Gotta love using societal norms against someone.

The Bride is now lying on top of Frank's body on the operating table. The female detective tells the doctor to take all the time she needs, looking pointedly at the two bodies before leaving. As they're all on the street you see the bright light in that top room. Frank and The Bride's hands move and they end up holding hands.

Not quite done yet!

The same restaurant where the mob boss ordered Ima's second death is full of women with the black mark on their face and blunt force weapons. The glass jars of preserved human tongues (they were in the background of the other scene there as well) have been spilled open across his table. We close with them turning his face to show that they've tattooed a black mark on him.

Wow. A lot of movie. Too bad there's not a lot of content to go with it.

The dance scenes were horrible. Simply horrible. If it had just been dancing it would have fit in to a certain extent. But they were big choreographed numbers centering on Frank and Ima/Penelope. There was no point to them except to have big choreographed dance numbers.

The power dynamic between Frank and Mary/Ima/Penelope/The Bride was interesting in that she was the dominant partner. Being four people in one body may have helped but Frank was always portrayed as more of a follow along than a leader. That makes sense because he spent his life hiding and just getting by. She was someone who was making something of her life and she continued after death.

The gangs of women taking up the call were again not really clear. I know it's a display of women throwing off their shackles and using the visible black symbol on their faces to show it. It follows the feminist theme of the movie so we'll go with that. Having the women get back at the mob boss was simply a good way to tie that string off.

I don't recommend seeing this movie. I honestly don't. It's a mess. It has too many things it thinks it wants to do but it doesn't commit to any of them. I'd say that there's a lot that could have been done but really, no. The original concept of the bride was her realizing what was done to her and burning it all to the ground. Here they have her partnering up with the monster and letting her own monster out. Too bad it's not interesting to watch it happen. The character development goes wonky when they have to keep shoehorning in all the different people she was.

Scream 7 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

With the previous six Scream movies fresh in my mind it was time to see Scream 7. On IMAX even.

One thing I like about the Scream franchise is that there's no singular "bad guy". It's a role that various and sundry bad guys take on. That makes the movies more than just horror with some comedy. It adds a "whodunit" aspect where you're really trying to figure out who Ghostface is and why they're doing what they're doing.

The general formula is that it's some connection to people in the past. Generally. I think they broke that in one of the movies that really aren't Scream movies. But overall the reason(s) are revealed in the third act even if they aren't something that could be guessed from the rest of the movie. It's more a reveal than a mystery but what do you expect? It's a Scream movie.

This one felt like a comfortable continuation of the first ones and I found out that's because it's the same writer for the first, second, and fourth movies. They took on the directing role this time as well because Wes Craven is dead and the originally chosen director dropped out due to death threats. I guess people take the Scream franchise seriously. And the guy who took the director role probably decided it couldn't get much worse for them because they were already the writer.

Most of the movie slides right into the feel of the original four movies. They kept the bigger, more emphatic kills from the last two but I'm guessing that's to keep up with the times. Overall the movies have been comparatively restrained when it comes to the actual blood and gore aspect. Lots of stabbity stabbity but not a lot of results. You get more results in this one.

The trailers for the movie were all fakeouts. I find that amusing. What's in the trailers happened but not like you'd expect. The one with Ghostface burning the house down? Happened. But it's the original house that was turned into a tourist AirBnB and in the opening scene you have the first kill being the couple who booked it, then Ghostface burned it down. I guess that could be an allegory for cutting ties with aspects of the movies that came before. Sure. Go with that.

This one does cut ties tho. The meta aspect that was building in the first four is cut back to almost nothing and I think that's a good thing. By the fourth movie it was starting to get tired. The fake "Stab" movie franchise is still part of the Scream universe but they make fun of it and how it's getting tired too. By taking that out they were able to move the location to where Sidney lives now and while the original Woodsboro is referenced it's not the center of the universe anymore. This gives them freedom to move around more. The rules that every movie to date that the characters listed was also started and cut as being lame, so another homage to the originals while moving beyond them.

We're down to two of the original actors since they killed off Dewey/David Arquette. Neve wisely bowed out of the sixth movie which makes Courtney the only one who's been in all seven movies. Well. The actor who is the voice of Ghostface has been in all of them too and the continuity is great but not being on the screen and using a voice modulator means that it's less obvious that it's the same one. Both of them are producers now so either they believe in the franchise or they wanted the extra money. Regardless they're back in character.

Time has moved on. Sidney has stepped out of the limelight and has been raising her family in a small town and running a coffee shop. Gale lost her big New York gig, hasn't written any more books, and is trying to get back into the reporter groove. The two younger kids are staying with grandparents and are no part of the movie. The newest character is Sidney's daughter Tatum (named for the Tatum that died in the first movie). The daughter is being a typical teenager and has issues with her mom not talking about her life previous to being married. It's kind of a plot hook because I don't think many teenage girls give a good gosh darn what mom was like when they were teenagers.

She's married to a police officer. He doesn't get a lot of screen time but that's what happens when you're not an essential character. 

The teenage guy next door is obsessed with the whole Ghostface thing and puts Sidney on the spot a couple of times, with his mom breaking it up. Tatum has a boyfriend, very similar to how Sidney did at the beginning. There's a friend group again, similar to the first movie.

This movie is unique in that there's three Ghostfaces in action. One is also more of a fakeout and a plot advance but there's two active ones working together. Of course, given that we're used to two Ghostfaces (except in Scream 3 but there's fan speculation about a second one that got left out of the final cut) having one killed early means we might think there's only one more out there. Another fakeout for us!

The whole thing starts up with Sidney getting a call from Stu, who is supposed to be dead. He was always an iffy one rife with theories that he wasn't really dead. And darn it all if he isn't on the phone talking about things that happened and what he's going to do. Gail shows up with the twins from the Scream 6 movie right about now, actually running over the first Ghostface.

The first Ghostface to die is unconnected to anything and is an escaped mental patient. Sidney and Gail go to the mental hospital to try to figure out what's going on and the friendly nurse tells them the guy hadn't seen the Stab movies or had any interest in the original events. But there was a John Doe he spent a lot of time with who was there for a couple of decades and recently left. He even shows them the nice tidy room where he stayed. They show him Stu's picture, he recognizes him as the John Doe. OK. We've now got our link! It helps that the other guy had drawings resembling stuff from Scream/Stab/Sidney on his bulletin board yet.

I had to look up the kill count because there's also survivors so it messes with things in my head.

The boyfriend is sus and ends up on the floor. The friends end up getting picked off one by one. The obsessed guy is also a kill but that one has a bit of extra to it I'll get to in the Ghostfaces. There's also the two unrelated people who get it in the beginning but that's kind of a hallmark of the movies to have some initial kills so they don't really count so much. There's six kills, not counting Ghostfaces.

Here's the survivors.

Gale takes a hit and survives. 

Gale brings two characters back from Scream 6 as her crew and while they get attacked, they survive.

Sidney's husband takes a lot of hits and survives.

Sidney takes some hits and survives.

I want to say Sidney's daughter Tatum takes a hit or two, maybe a slice, but don't quote me on that one. If she didn't she should have.

As with all survivors they get minimal medical care and function just fine with various and sundry stab, bullet, and slash wounds except where the script requires that they don't. That's a consistent thing in every single movie so it's barely worth mentioning anymore.

Ghostface deaths

Now we get into the "why" aspect of the movie. It's always about why these people put on the mask, sparkly robe, and boots. Yes, people have identified, or tried to identify, the various brands and models of boots in each movie. They need hobbies too.

Ghostface 0

The first one, and the first one to get killed, is the stalking horse. He's got no real motive except being primed to kill the whole family in residence (remember, only the daughter is at home) and botches it.

Ghostface 1

This one took me a bit to recognize but he's the helpful nurse from the mental hospital. He's the one who primed the escapee to try to do the work. He's the one who had them looking for Stu.

Ghostface 2

This is another one from left field. It's the neighbor mom with the obsessed kid. Turns out the mom was even more obsessed with being the new Scream Queen, kind of infected her son with her own obsession, and wants Sidney to finally die because it's just stupid she's survived so much. It's confirmed she killed her own kid. Even if that turns out not to be her it was her accomplice.

Ghostface Kills

Ghostface 0 - Gale's van does an excellent job of it.

Ghostface 1 - As is proper etiquette with a Ghostface, shot to the head. He also gets body shots from Tatum but when she's wavering about the proper shot to the head he escapes.

Ghostface 2 - This one gets the long fight scene, many stabs, and a final lot of shots to the head by both Sidney and Tatum.

So what about Stu? There's a scene in Sidney's very smart house which is full of screens which has him there and then morphing into other characters from the past, including the beloved Dewey. They're taunting her with how easy it was to manipulate her. Of course they never confirm that Stu is really dead or not so there's that. Or maybe they did. It was late in the movie. But the AI thing is part of what they're doing, which fits in with the movies moving along with current technology.

We end with Sidney telling Tatum the story of why she got her name. It's quite obvious what skills her mother has when it comes to evading masked killers in weird robes. There's also a bit where Gale grows a heart and lets the twin take the microphone for the story instead of keeping it for herself like she did earlier. The twins are probably part of the franchise for at least one more movie.

I enjoyed it. Seeing it on IMAX isn't necessary but if you can and you want to pay the extra for the ticket, go nuts. It doesn't have anything that especially needs IMAX so go ahead and watch digital or wait for streaming. If you're going to marathon go right ahead and skip 5 and 6. The only thing you'll miss is the introduction of the twins with Gale. And Dewey's death but that's sad so you may want to skip it for that reason.

Scream 5, Scream 6 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Another late set of reviews but because of the new one I figured I could get away with it. I reviewed the first four in a previous post and this gets us current with the 2022 and 2023 releases.

I chose to separate them into two posts not for length but because they're different types of movies. Let me explain.

The first four are a contiguous set. They tie back into each other, the stories interweave, they're tight. The next two are the attempt to hand off the franchise to new characters. Notice that word "attempt". I won't say it's a bad thing to do because it can get really stale to have the same things happening with the same characters over and over and over, even if the ghostface killer(s) are never the same people with the same motivations. The victim group is what needs refreshing, especially once they've been thinned out.

Unfortunately this didn't work out well, in my opinion. I have nothing against the characters they created and the main one has a pretty interesting backstory. But it was missing the spark.

In the 5th movie they still had all three of the main characters from the beginning. The directors made a deliberate choice to kill one of them and do it as a perma-kill. This falls back to the "no one is safe" concept but it is still a divisive topic in the fandom today. I was even sad that it happened. I liked that character.

These movies start getting into overkill and sloppiness, which are kind of endemic for the time. The kills weren't just several stabs - they were dozens of stabs. That much stabbity-stabbity all but ensured that the prop knives were more obvious and the ability for people to linger and survive such things was kind of an eye roll time. The sloppiness came when they departed from canon.

They strayed from canon in a couple of ways. One - the ghostface killers didn't always have that direct personal connection to the people they killed. Two - the ghostface killer did things that they hadn't done unmasked in the past. Those may seem like small issues but when you're dealing with an established franchise with fervid fans and you're taking over from a beloved director you gotta walk a fine line. You want to make it yours, you want to pay credit to the original director/creator, and you want to make a good enough movie they let you make more.

Of course this isn't always true *cough cough Batman Forever cough* but in this case I think they did. There's a crapton of Easter Eggs in them that reference Wes Craven, enough that it's kind of overkill in my opinion. I think they would have been better off sticking closer to his core themes than putting in bird pictures on the set because he liked birds.

Again, I get it. Rebooting the franchise with new characters to take the lead and using the legacy ones for continuity and nostalgia. Plus using the legacy characters adds a patina of legitimacy to the newer movies. There were big boots to fill and this is one way to add some padding. Of course killing off one of the legacy characters may seem like it was the wrong thing to do but it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Back to the overkill and sloppiness thing. The kills were much gorier and I think part of that is changing opinions in movie rating boards. It's also part of the meta where the reboot has to be MORE. The sloppiness has to do with things like the ghostface killer getting whapped upside the face with a frying pan and shaking it off, etc. There was a lot of stuff where the violence level was upped but the effects were minimized. It's again a systemic thing but it also makes the restraint of the first four movies more obvious.

The new movie is out. It's why I made myself watch all of these in a short period of time. From the trailers and from what I've heard it seems like they're going to pretend these two movies never happened and go back to the original premises. The trailers promise more of the thriller aspect and I expect there to be some overkill because it's expected. I'll do a review on that one, of course.

As with the first movies I won't be watching these again. It's not that I don't think they're not good because they're still good enough to be entertaining and keep you wondering who the ghostface killers are and why they're doing it. It's for the same reason as the first - when you know the ending to movies like this you need a reason to watch them again. You know the ending so all the tension is gone.

Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Scream 4 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Yeah. I shouldn't have to explicitly state that there's spoilers, given that the movies were released in 1996, 1997, 2000, and 2011. I did because I hadn't seen them until this week and neither had my friend who was over for the (short) marathon. I've said before that I'm woefully behind on my pop culture movie viewing.

This isn't going to be a standard review of each movie. I don't want to type that much and it's not what this particular post is about. This is about the franchise and an overall review.

Note that this is the first four movies of the franchise. That's important. These are the ones that are the franchise. There will be more of that in the next review. These, even with the long gap between 3 and 4, are a cohesive whole. They're also the ones directed by Wes Craven so that has a lot to do with it.

First and foremost I found these not just entertaining but good. I'm not even saying "good for a slasher movie". I'm saying good without qualifications.

The entire series builds on itself and draws you in with all kinds of continuing meta references. There's a movie within a movie (the in-movie "Stab" movies) and those really start getting meta when they're doing recursive references. That's a very interesting take on the whole concept of life vs movies, within a movie. It's confusing, it's a little head-tilt at times, and it works for these movies.

I watched the first three with a friend and we were both trying to figure out who the killer was, and then who the killers were once we figured out that it's two people doing the killing. Just like in the movies we would go back and forth on it. We had a pretty good average of getting it right eventually.

The concept of the ghostface killer being a role and not a person I believe was unique or very new when these started. In later movies it's referenced as meta, where there's not a singular killer to stitch the movies together. I think it was a good choice because it makes every movie a new thriller and mystery to be solved. They did tie together motives so there's continuity there beyond the three surviving characters.

One thing you need to get past, fast, is how characters who have been very well stabbed and slashed continue to function. They're also given rather minimal medical assistance about half the time. This has to be done to keep the action going. When the story calls for it the same wounds will disable one character but let a different one keep on truckin'. Once you can accept that and not keep saying "Oh come on!" to the screen you'll be happier.

Watching them as a marathon is darn amusing because Dewey's moustache gets fuller with each movie. That had to be a deliberate choice, given how it started. And it's darn amusing without being referenced in the movies in any way.

This set of movies is well constructed, well structured, has strong callbacks to previous ones without being held back, and has legacy characters that keep on going in each one. They all get injured, they all heal, they all come back again. It's pretty cool since at least two of them are or became pretty well known actors during this time.

It seems like doing opening cameos in the movies within movies became a thing because there's some big names involved. The first movie had Drew Barrymore on the poster when she was A Big Thing and then she was the first kill. This was done intentionally to show that no one is off limits and frees up the movies to bring in and then take out anyone they deem necessary, or amusing.

I chose these four to "review" together because this is the core of it and the new Scream 7 goes back to these roots. The ending of Scream 4 sets things up for what's going to be discussed in the next post about Scream 5 and Scream 6. Overall they didn't do a bad job on the setup and it didn't feel like they were throwing in the towel.

Good writing, good acting, and consistency are what I would say make these movies good for this long. Of course people will disagree because, well, they like to disagree. Let 'em. The movies specifically didn't do much with topical subjects so they don't feel dated. The technology is older but that makes it more fun to yell at the screen and then see the technology evolve over time as newer movies were made. Even then newer technology didn't solve problems. It was used to replace the technology that was used previously. Landlines to cell phones is a big one, even though landlines seem to be one of the consistent things in all of them.

I don't know that I would watch them again. Now that I know what's gone on and read the IMDB trivia there's no mystery or surprises. Even the jump scares won't hit as hard. That's the problem with mysteries and thrillers - once you know the ending there's not much to draw it into rewatching. Unless you get into the fandom, which is also addressed within the meta of these.

My one big beef is that ghostsface uses unlimited shiny stainless steel knives. First, the unlimited thing. Second, the stainless steel thing. Everyone rightly rags on movies where there's shootouts with unlimited ammo and the same holds for when a character has an unbelievable number of the same kind of knife. The shiny stainless steel is just me being annoyed because those crap knives don't hold an edge. But they shine on camera and that's more important here. I can still gripe to myself about it.

What The Hell Kind of Blog Is This, Rastl?

 

So yeah. There's a whole lotta movie review and a whole not a lot of hobby stuff going on. I'm not exactly apologizing.

I've got the AMc A-List movie subscription, I'm retired, and I live literally two minutes from the theater. I get to see up to 4 movies per week and darnitall if I'm not going to get my money's worth. I don't see everything and there's going to be a slowdown for a while due to what's being released. But I like giving my reviews so I put them on my blog.

Here's where I get a bit real. I've been keeping personal stuff off of here but decided to start putting a curated part of my life back online. Why not? If people aren't interested, they can skip the post.

I didn't get to ease into retirement. One day I was working, the next I was retired. That happened ten years ahead of schedule. I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong. I highly recommend being retired if you can manage it. I can manage it from the practical side but I've had problems doing it from the mental side. When there's no pressure to do anything then things don't get done. It's simple, at least for me. That's why my hobby blog is missing hobby stuff.

I will also say that I'm at a point now where I will be talking to my doctor about adjusting my meds. I think I'm high on the anti-anxiety side since so many of the things that I was anxious about no longer exist and I have enough of a social network I feel less uncomfortable messing around with my medications. I'm thinking that the overbalance of anti-anxiety is pushing the depression. And depression means I want to do things but I don't.

So that's why there's not that much on the hobby side. It's not that I don't want to do them. It's that I'm not set up to do them. I haven't had my 3D printers running since I moved and I'm just getting that back. The house is so not unpacked. My painting area is in enough of a state I can use it but it's not nearly what I want it to be. I can't use the gaming table I got because there's stuff on it that I haven't dealt with. I've had some help but it hasn't been enough to finish anything. That's why I'm saying it's the depression.

I do want to finish painting the tanks, especially since the next pieces are coming out. That means really dealing with at least part of the office so I have a place to process resin prints. I have projects stacked up after those are done and I'm looking forward to them. But I'm also going to keep chipping away at the paint area so that it's finally in a usable state and can stay that way.

The next thing will be testing some skin tones for orks. Not my ork army, mind you. For a Combat Patrol box I was given and that doesn't fit into my ork army so I can paint it different. After that is assembling the box set. After that is painting the box set. I'm not sure what happens then but that's plenty to keep me busy going forward.

There will still be movie reviews. I like doing that. I need to push myself and do more hobby stuff. I think I'm just going to schedule it like I would any other thing so that I have to make the decision to do it or not rather than a nebulous idea of what to do. I'd say it would help if I painted at the game stores but I do not like to paint anywhere but my own area and that's that.

Anyway. Expect more tank pictures since they're getting closer to getting color on them. Then the post showing all the ork skin tone tests. There should be some interesting stuff in there. At least I hope so. Then the box set. And while I'm doing all that I get to think about the next project in line. I have enough of the freaking things.