Friday, January 18, 2008
I guess Friday turned into a day of horror movies. This wasn't planned. I just happened to notice this one on Fearnet, and decided to damn any attempt at K2K for the night and watch it. I always like adding to my oeuvre of slasher movies, and I know Shenan (who was helping take care of my sick ass) is usually game, too. Also, I was pretty zonked out on cold medicine.
For a while, I thought maybe I had found a minor genre classic. Great opening murder scene. Well shot. Competent acting. Entertaining murders. My hopes were high.
Then somewhere maybe around 2/3rds in, it starts to peter out. The last chunk of the movie really drags. And you know what? It's just too fucking long. These movies should be about 80 - 90 minutes. 95 minutes if you do something cool to earn that extra time. This one is 110 minutes. Shenan and I only realized this too late. I think our internal slasher movie expectation clocks starting ringing. We knew the movie should be over any minute. Only it wasn't over... what seemed like the finale just kept going and going and fucking going.
This is a bad movie to watch while zonked out on cold medicine, is what I'm saying. I could feel the warm, fuzzy hands of drug-induced slumber reaching out for me, but I could only accept their embrace at the end of the movie. Which didn't seem like it was ever going to happen.
Then there's the ending, which is so fucking bad and weird that I think actually it's a great ending. The killer turns out to be the heroine... or so you think. Because then you see that the heroine is tied to a chair. Does she have an evil twin that was never mentioned before? That would have been great, but it's actually even better. The killer suddenly pulls off their own face, revealing the killer to be another character. So, the killer had, I guess, a perfectly life-like mask of the heroine that was skin tight, and moved just like a normal human face. Because this technology exists. Oh and also I guess she learned how to speak exactly like the heroine, too.
Well, if the last 1/3rd had been as good as the first part, or if the rest of the movie had been as batshit crazy as the end, I think I could have recommended this one. Instead, it's more like the one that got away.
Oh, I forgot one thing. Glenn Ford is in this. How fucking random is that?
1 comment:
wow. i was surprised it was only 110 minutes. it must be like you said, that internal "slasher clock" that demanded it end like 20-30 minues earlier. i remember both of us going "does this feel like it's been going on forever?" around the same time.
but some of that might have been super exaggerated for you, being zonked out on nighttime sinus meds.
but yeah, i pretty much agree. i liked it, but the ending made no sense. i mean, they kind of introduced the concept of the life-like mask earlier in the movie with their friend who made them and like, impersonated another friend of theirs earlier in the movie. but still- it doesn't change the fact that it's kind of a cheap cop-out for how the killer managed to make everyone think it was the main character, because, like you said, NORMAL PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE THAT TECHNOLOGY. also yeah, the voice thing was never explained. and i guess it was just lucky they had the exact same height and build, and her friend managed to replicate the dress she wore on her birthday two years ago or whatever.
also, how did the killer get access to ether or whaever it was that she kept making her pass out with every time she wanted to impersonate her? and how did she keep getting into her house? does this girl never lock her damn door??
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