Halloween Kills (2021)

He was hiding…where?  Oh, you have to got to be fucking kidding me!

You know, when you plan on confining a notorious mass murderer in order to burn his sorry ass to death, you would think to make sure you didn’t leave anything to chance.  No loopholes, no unforeseen areas where he could easily hide and protect himself.  You would think all of this would have come into consideration at some point during what I would hope was extensive planning.

I mean, for Christ’s sake, Laurie Strode had, what, 40 fucking years to prepare for this moment and she still fucked it up?  Good God, man.  What the hell are we doing here?

At the end of the 2018 revisionist Halloween sequel Michael Myers finally looked like a goner.  Trapped in Laurie’s cabin basement while a deliberate gas-induced inferno surrounds him, one minute we see him hopelessly staring up, the next…hey, where did he go?

In Halloween Kills, a direct follow-up with far less intensity but a lot more death (the overall body count tied in to a certain date, wink wink), we get our answer.  And then, a whole bunch of firemen get hacked to bits in a horror scene, one of several in fact, that feels more suited for an action film.  Of course, none of them attack him at once, so in mere seconds, he adds 11 more to the ongoing body count.  You’d think he’d have his fill already.

In the meantime, once again, Laurie is headed for the hospital with a nasty stab wound in her stomach.  She survives the emergency surgery and eventually finds herself with a familiar roommate, Sheriff Hawkins (the always reliable Will Patton), an old flame with his own traumatic history, first noted in the previous installment, which is expanded upon here.

In a reimagined flashback sequence from 1978, Hawkins (Thomas Mann), a rookie cop, and his doomed partner come into contact with the villain in his old, now abandoned childhood home.  As the masked man grabs a human shield and refuses to heed commands, Hawkins pulls the trigger. 

But his aim is poo.  It doesn’t matter anyway because Myers is soon apprehended. And thanks to a split-second intervention, there’s a magically revived Dr. Loomis (actually, the film’s art director Tom Jones Jr. with only a hint of prosthetics and his voice dubbed by Colin Mahan, a startling effect) stymied from finishing the job he started.

Later on we see the aftermath.  Feeling extraordinary guilt for his unintentional fuck-up, Hawkins learns an important lesson the hard way.  Always have a good cover story because, you know, people won’t trust the word of cops, even if you have the best of intentions.  Um, ok.  It’s a curious moment because I’m pretty sure the citizens of Haddonfield, despite their rage and despair, would’ve been instantly sympathetic to his misfortune.  He really was trying to do the right thing.

In a moment of clarity as we forward back into the present, Laurie, recuperating in the hospital, rightly beats herself up for not locking down that goddamn tool shed.  And then new roommate Hawkins chimes in, questionably asserting that he shouldn’t have prevented an extrajudicial assassination.  But I thought The Shape couldn’t be killed anyway.  “If we only knew then what we know now,” he belatedly concludes.

It’s been a few years since I screened the earlier film so I had forgotten about Myers attacking Hawkins and leaving him behind to focus on other victims.  In this movie, a teenage boy finds him out cold with a serious neck wound and as he tends to him, the man suddenly awakens (how is he still alive?) with only one thing on his mind:

“He needs to die.”

As The Shape continues his killing spree, we are reintroduced to characters from the past, many of them destined to be sliced and diced into oblivion.  The two kids Laurie was babysitting in the original Halloween are now middle-aged and having a good old time in a local pub on an appropriately themed open mic night.

Replacing Paul Rudd from The Curse Of Michael Myers, Tommy is now portrayed by the intense-looking Anthony Michael Hall who gets on stage and basically freaks out the crowd about his own personal connection to the history of The Haddonfield Boogeyman.  For a brief moment (and there will be a few others), the movie shows faint signs of intelligence (Hall is good here as he is in general), but that will pass.

And then there’s his old pal Lindsey (Milfy Real Housewife Kyle Richards reprising the role she originated as a kid) who will once again come face-to-face with the madman himself.  Let’s just say she’s a lot smarter than the rest of the victims. And a bit lucky.

Have to admit it’s a small delight to see the return of Sheriff Brackett (Charles Cypher once again), now a grumpy security guard at the hospital with his own longstanding grudge against The Shape. And hey, there’s Marion (Nancy Stephens), the nurse who drives Dr. Loomis to the mental institution in the 1978 original who’s already been killed off once in this series. She didn’t learn anything from that experience. I mean, why are you shooting out car windows, you dummy?

If you recall from the 2018 Halloween, Myers escapes from a bus crash during a botched prison transfer. A news bulletin goes out that reveals another inmate is also on the run. Tommy doesn’t realize it’s this guy, not The Shape, who he confronts without seeing him through the steamed up windows after he’s discovered hiding in someone else’s car outside the pub.

The movie doesn’t fill in the blanks on the other convict’s back history which I suspect is on purpose considering his own fate. As a bunch of concerned Haddonfield residents descend upon the overwhelmed local hospital (victims keep being gurneyed in every so often) demanding answers, Tommy foolishly whips them all up into a frenzy and soon they’re all brainlessly chanting in unison, “Evil dies tonight.”

When the other missing convict suddenly shows up begging for help, they inevitably think it’s Myers without his mask and the chase is on. The man is left with no choice but to end things on his own terms.

Emblematic of its overall arc, it’s here the film feels simultaneously heavy handed and yet emotionally underwhelming with its messaging as Laurie’s daughter Karen (why is cute Judy Greer wearing a Christmas sweater on Halloween night?), the only one who tried to protect the man and reason in vain with the determinedly feverish mob, points out in passing the collective corruption of such impulsive idiocy. We have no investment in his survival and therefore when the movie forgets about him, so do we. And the mob remains undeterred.

A plan is eventually hatched to once again lure Myers into a metaphorical corner where a number of residents will be cashing in some long delayed receipts and once again, just when they think he’s dead, he pulls an Undertaker, they refuse to jump him at the same time, more mayhem ensues and he’s able to skunk away like he hasn’t taken any punishment whatsoever.

Ah yes, like the old school Dead Man, that third act finale aside, when he’s not stabbing, slamming, choking or blocking, Michael Myers is the king of the no-sell, furthering his ongoing mythology as something more nefarious than “a mortal man”, which I’ve always thought was a weak argument for his continuing existence.

Because what made the original character so frightening was not his invincibility, it was his meticulous planning, his zen-like patience and his paraphelia, his unnaturally insatiable excitement for killing people. He’s not a rapist, that’s not what thrills him. It’s the exterminating, the extinguishing, the snuffing out of distracted innocence, starting with his older, topless sister in 1963.

You’ll note in the 1978 Halloween the scene where Laurie goes across the street, climbs up the stairs and spots one of her dead friends sprawled out on a bed. The tombstone of Judith Myers is clearly in view, the symbolism unmistakable. He’s been reliving the exhilaration of that first kill, hoping to find victims who remind him of his sister. He’s like a heroin addict forever chasing that first high.

True, he doesn’t just kill teenage girls, but the other victims are simply a means to an end. He needs to replace his hospital gown so that mechanic needs to die. PJ Soles’ boyfriend is puttering around in the kitchen, so that witness needs to be taken down, although there clearly is pride in how he eliminates him with just one thrust.

However, ever since then, most especially in this movie, Myers has been watered down into basically another Jason Voorhees. He no longer discriminates. Anybody he comes in contact with now is not safe, not kids, not the elderly, not especially the gay couple now living in his old family home. Apparently, they finally found a couple of suckers willing to pay.

I don’t know about you but I’ve certainly had enough of characters exercising no common sense or good judgment whenever they sense his nearby presence. Consider Big John (Scott MacArthur) and Little John (Mad TV’s Michael McDonald), the aforementioned gay couple. After falling for a transparent prank from some neighbourhood bullies, there’s suddenly a knock on their back door and then their front door.

When Big John asks Little John if he locked the back door after he discovered no one was outside, the mortified look on his face tells you everything you need to know. He doesn’t have to say a goddamn thing.

And then, as they hear the footsteps upstairs, instead of running for zee hills, what does Big John do? He locks the front door. You’re like half his size, numb nuts. Cute boxers, though.

They are not the only ones who should’ve done the opposite. For here comes Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (lovely Andi Matichak back for another round), her off-again/on-again flame Cameron (Dylan Arnold) and his dad Lonnie (Robert Longstreet), Tommy’s former bully from the 1978 original and now a close drinking buddy. (Their last name, though.)

I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be part of the plan meant to nab the elusive Myers but by God, they did not think this out very clearly. And to make things worse, they acknowledge this. (“This is so fucked up.”) When he was a kid, Lonnie lied about sneaking into the old Myers home on a dare. All these years later, he should’ve kept trusting his fear.

As a gunshot goes off, here comes Allyson and Cameron ignoring his edict to stay in the car. Up on the second floor, Cameron knows he’s hiding in the closet. We know he’s hiding in the closet. Myers is already one step ahead of him.

Halloween Kills was all set to go in the fall of 2020 but then COVID-19 derailed any plans for a wide scale theatrical release. Universal Pictures, which has distributed most of the sequels, sat on it for a full year before unveiling it last October.

That delay paid off. The franchise continues to reap large albeit undeserved profits and unlike its predecessor, there is no ambiguity about its future. But will that future allow far more screen time for Jamie Lee Curtis? She spends half this movie in bed, far away from the action and often asleep, completely convinced her nightmare is over.

Then, Tommy spoils everything by rushing in to tell her the truth. Not in any shape to walk around, let alone go toe-to-toe one last time with her stubbornly persistent nemesis, she’s reduced to cheerleading and advocacy from a much safer distance. This is about as effective a strategy as trapping a guy in your basement without locking down that goddamn tool shed.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
7:18 p.m.

Date Movie (2006)

Big girls don’t deserve love and affection. Not until they lose enough weight to become fuckable.

That’s certainly not the message of a lot of romantic comedies I’ve seen (the women are usually super skinny to begin with so it’s rarely an issue), but it’s unmistakably the cold, barely beating heart of Date Movie, a hideously awful “spoof” of the genre. Trafficking in cruelty by the truckload, this laughless hatefest is a strong contender for Worst Movie Ever Made.

The big girl at the center of the story isn’t even a big girl in real life. It’s the very slim Alyson Hannigan in an obvious fat suit but only during the first part of the movie. Renee Zellweger and Toni Collette were more fully committed.

It’s hard to accept that she’s undateable when she’s still a cute redhead, so the movie turns her into a beast, one with bad breath, a hairy back, a chicken wing stuck between her teeth and oversized toenails. She’s also clumsy and awkward, unable to seduce any man with movement even though the two doubles who briefly fill in for Hannigan are decent dancers.

There’s one scene where she’s walking inside a building and the floor starts to loudly creak suggesting it’s barely strong enough to contain all her weight which is supposed to be close to 400 pounds but she doesn’t really look all that heavy to begin with. She’s also supposed to be a drunken smoker (the Tara Reid ding feels particularly cruel) but we never see her take any drugs whatsoever.

If that’s not humiliating enough, she has an overbearing father (Eddie Griffin) with exaggerated eyebrows who repeatedly insults her looks. He’s a Black man married to an impatient Indian woman (Meera Simhan) who, besides producing a white daughter, also has an Asian one (Marie Matiko). And no, they’re not adopted.

In an obvious nod to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Griffin and his multi-ethnic biological family run a Greek restaurant where Hannigan works as a waitress. Instead of using Windex on everything, like the dad in the original film, he sprays hummus. He demands Hannigan become betrothed to Judah Friedlander, a slovenly co-worker who looks like he hasn’t bathed in years and isn’t even interested at first.

But Hannigan catches a break when she Meet Cutes the smitten Adam Campbell while pouring him coffee. I should point out her character name is Julia and he’s Grant, a tribute of sorts to the stars of Notting Hill although they shouldn’t be flattered at all.

The overwrought Brit has no problem with her size although there’s a later scene where he’s startled to have wiped his wet face with her giant panties. Considering his initial reaction to her in A Restaurant (a typical gag as generic as the entire film), you’d think it would’ve been more of a turn on. Then again, she keeps a package of Crab Motel in her medicine cabinet so never mind.

I’m not sure what the point of Date Movie is other than to show how much the screenwriters hate women and not just big ones, either.

At A Restaurant, Julia accidentally knocks out Grant without knowing it and doesn’t reconnect with him until they both appear on a brutal version of The Bachelor where he decides to murder all the other contestants by shooting them to death. By this point, Julia has been “repaired” by some mechanics so the fat suit is ditched. But Grant’s feelings haven’t changed.

In fact, within a week, they become engaged. (But not on the show?) That’s when the movie suddenly does a deep dive into the comedy abyss with an extended riff on the Meet The Parents movies.

Remember Robert De Niro’s toilet trained cat? Griffin has one, too, but Jinxers, actually a puppet, is much grosser. Let me put it this way. If you’ve seen Dumb & Dumber, this is worse. Be glad there’s no visual. The sound effects are already too much. And the less we talk about his affair with an old lady, the better off we all will be.

Then we meet Grant’s parents, Fred Willard in the Dustin Hoffman role and Jennifer Coolidge looking but not quite sounding like Barbra Streisand’s oversharing, uninhibited sex therapist. As I have noted before, making fun of a comedy makes no sense because you can’t goof on something that’s not serious to begin with. It doesn’t matter anyway because the movie can’t even come up with any good jokes or sight gags. It flatlines on arrival.

Stuck for material (the end credits, showcasing forgettable outtakes, are extra long for a film running less than 90 minutes), we also get a My Best Friend’s Wedding-style subplot where a Cameron Diaz-type character named Andy (played here by the Australian Sophie Monk relegated to being a third-wheel sexpot in skimpy outfits) suddenly shows up as Grant’s “Best Man”. (Surely, she’s named after Andie MacDowell, the star of Groundhog Day and Four Weddings And A Funeral.) They have a previously undisclosed sexual history that threatens Julia’s fantasy of marrying her Prince Charming. She could do better. Julia, too.

That leads to a cynical parody version of I Say A Little Prayer sung by the wedding party during the rehearsal dinner. When I say cynical I should also say pedestrian since there’s barely any attempt to do anything fresh and biting with a famous sequence.

Julia’s last name is Jones and yes, she keeps a diary of her life, although the movie limits her to two entries, one at the start and one at the end. Grant’s surname is a juvenile take on Focker and emblematic of the exhausting desperation fueling all of the subpar material here.

Failing in vain to follow the now thoroughly plundered Zucker formula, Date Movie can’t deliver a single comic pay-off that isn’t predictable, gross, stupid, insulting or flat-out mean spirited. It hates fat women. It hates thin women. It hates women who make cosmetic changes. It hates women that don’t meet an impossible beauty standard. It even hates women just looking for love.

The makers really dislike the ageless Jennifer Lopez or at least they don’t like her posterior, a tired gag that has now thankfully died out. Her Wedding Planner character is represented by the thinly disguised Jell-O (Valery Ortiz) and yes, they’ve made her ass so big it gets stuck in an office chair.

Besides Griffin’s controlling dad, more of this woman hating mentality is represented in Tony Cox’s dating coach, a limp parody of Hitch. The joke is that the famous couples he helped put together are all divorced. He’s also extremely shallow so why doesn’t the movie goof on that instead of having him constantly rag on Hannigan’s weight? He’s like a pint-sized Wanda Sykes but without the zingers.

Perhaps belatedly realizing its frozen tone, Date Movie suddenly turns soft so our heroine can finally get married with the blessing of the two hard-edged characters who give her the most grief and are suddenly super supportive. The thing is we don’t give a shit. Why would I root for someone who beats the hell out of a drunk and steals his wallet?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, May 23, 2022
2:45 a.m.

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Quentin Tarantino hates women.  It explains his long association with notorious serial rapist Harvey Weinstein, the distributor of most of his movies.  It’s why he defended serial child rapist Roman Polanski. And let’s not ignore his odd love for Death Wish 2.

These thoughts can’t help but enter your brain while writing about From Dusk Till Dawn, the 1996 action horror film I finally had a chance to look at.  Tarantino supplied the script for his director pal Robert Rodriguez but he could’ve easily directed it himself.  It follows his well established modernized grindhouse playbook.  Tough talking thugs with a love for small talk, casual racism & homophobia, excessive violence, and yes, a deep loathing for women.

Of all the roles he could’ve played, it’s very odd that Tarantino cast himself as a murderous bank robbing rapist.  It’s very odd because he’s only convincing as the rapist.

George Clooney, with his Hamlet haircut and fake neck/arm tattoo, plays his brother (sure), his fellow partner in crime.  Sprung out of prison by Tarantino (wisely not shown because who would believe it?), the two are on the lam and making all kinds of questionable decisions.

We first meet them at a highway liquor store fresh from their latest heist.  For some reason, they’ve taken three women hostage but only two are in the store with them.  (The other, a bank teller, is in the trunk of their borrowed ride.)

Tarantino is supposed to be the hothead, deeply paranoid and prone to impulsive acts of depravity, but he looks more like a mild-mannered accountant with those glasses on, especially in his mug shots.  He’s not scary in the slightest.  When a thirsty sheriff (the late Michael Parks, who resembles Roddy Piper, in an exceptional cameo) arrives to complain to the clerk (future Oscar nominee John Hawkes who’s also good) about a “mongoloid” family member and his unsanitary cooking, among other soft-spoken grievances, Tarantino thinks the clerk is giving him secret signals about their unwelcome presence.

After the sheriff returns from a tinkle, Tarantino goes nuts, blasting away for no good reason.  Then the clerk pulls out his own weapon locked away in a safe and suddenly, we’re in a western.  Clooney isn’t happy now that he has to clean up his creepy brother’s mess. 

After one last moment of resistance, they’re out of there.  In the midst of all of this, undetected by the anti-heroes, the two women hightail it out of there themselves which makes me wonder why they were even kidnapped in the first place since they’re not missed nor mentioned again.

The brothers are on their way to Mexico where they will encounter three different Cheech Marins:  a suspicious inspector at the border who doesn’t respect boundaries, a pussy-obsessed pitchman for a curious nudie bar, and ultimately, their contact who commissioned their latest bank job.  They have to give him his cut of the loot.

But to get there, they need to sneak in somehow without detection since their escape is breaking news. (An actual journalist instead of Kelly Preston would’ve had more credibility.)  Enter lapsed former minister Harvey Keitel who doesn’t quite nail that Southern accent and his two teenage kids swinging through on vacation in their RV.

Keitel hasn’t been the same since his Asian wife died in a terrible car accident.  We only know this because Clooney is a nosy motherfucker pressing for more and more details and trying to pass the time as they head for the border.  After Tarantino gives in to his worst impulses regarding the middle-aged bank clerk in their cheap motel room, who also didn’t need to be taken, they force the family by gunpoint to drive them to their destination.

Tarantino becomes obsessed with Juliette Lewis, Keitel’s oldest kid.  It is well documented that the two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter has a foot fetish.  Almost every movie he’s ever made has featured at least one close-up of a woman without socks on.  For this movie, Rodriguez indulges him twice.

While en route to Mexico, the camera lingers uncomfortably on Lewis’s wiggling toes.  And at the nudie bar, the stunning Salma Hayek pours booze down her leg so that Tarantino can drink it from her bare foot which is a strong contender for the least sexy thing I’ve ever seen. And I can think of two more examples from the same sequence.

Before the trip, Tarantino imagines Lewis asking him in her family’s motel room to eat her pussy but he thinks she actually said it.  In the RV, he tells her he’s fine with that whenever she wants it as if any woman in the real world would accept such a gross offer.  Thank goodness the subject is dropped for good when Clooney tells him hypocritically to stop making small talk of his own.

The third Cheech Marin has arranged for the two brothers to meet him at a place called The Titty Twister where there’s literally a neon sign of a hand groping a nipple.  A little too on the nose for a Dimension Film.

Inside are a whole lot of topless table dancers, a local band that plays along, and very appreciative bikers and truckers, the only patrons allowed to get in, for reasons that become clear not long afterward.  Danny Trejo, the future Machete, is the barman who at first refuses to serve the brothers and their latest victims but Keitel notes that in order to drive his RV he needs a trucker license, so Trejo relents and soon, they’re doing shots.  They should’ve taken the hint.

Out comes Hayek looking amazing in that bikini to the point where everyone is shocked into complete silence.  (She’s not much of a dancer, though, snake or no snake.)  It turns out to be a brief cameo once the secret of this place is revealed.  All the staffers are vampires and they are insatiable.  But they’re very easy to defeat.

All you really need is a makeshift stake to drive into their bodies (a busted chair or table leg will do) and they dissolve into slimy goo.  You just have to avoid being bitten to survive.  Naturally, our party of five will soon dwindle in numbers.

It’s curious that it takes a full hour or so before the actual horror of From Dusk Till Dawn starts happening and honestly, it’s nothing that will ever haunt you afterward.  Your patience is not rewarded.  Up to this point, the film has basically been an urban western more or less following a basic pattern. The brothers brandish their pieces, threaten innocent civilians into keeping quiet or helping them out, Tarantino’s character usually fucks up and then, it’s time to flee again.

Speaking of Tarantino, he sucks up way too much screen time, although thankfully, at one point, he gets knocked out and then eventually exits altogether.  That make-up makes him look too much like Lurch, though.

As the tone shifts, so does the forced relationship between the bank robbers and Keitel’s family.  No longer at odds, they’re now awkwardly fighting on the same side.  They also get some help for a time from Vietnam vet Fred Williamson and special effects legend Tom Savini (a real-life vet) who plays a whip-cracking biker named Sex Machine probably for just one reason.  If you fuck with him, he literally whips out what can only be described as a little cock gun on his crotch.  And yeah, it’s fully loaded.  I will say this about Savini. He looks like he’s having more fun than anybody else on screen.

Too bad From Dusk Till Dawn doesn’t provoke the same overall feelings of enjoyment.  Because Tarantino wrote the script, this is basically an overwritten B-movie, with some uncharacteristically clunky dialogue at times. It has the same problems as the two Kill Bills.  It doesn’t really take us anywhere new or special, beyond the trademark small talk.  And you really don’t care what happens.

Clooney had not yet established himself as a movie star when he took this role as one of the bank robbers (he was still doing ER at the time) and although he looks great in close-up (Gene Siskel’s famous test), it’s not one of his standout performances.  He’s supposed to be the more level headed bank robber but he’s really not.  He’s a foolish, stubborn enabler of someone not really worth defending, frankly, regardless of owing Tarantino for freeing his ass.  At the same time, he’s not all that intimidating, either, even with his pistol.  In fact, he might be too good looking for this part. Weathered character actors with more gravelly voices would’ve been far more effective.

By setting the third act in a strip bar and having the exotic dancers transition into vampires, Tarantino finds the excuse he needs to show scenes of barely dressed women getting murdered.  For a man who managed to write a wonderful role for Pam Grier in the excellent Jackie Brown, the movie that would follow this one, this is more typical and emblematic of his misogyny.

There’s a moment where Hayek declares her intentions to enslave Clooney who then proceeds to make a dumb crack about his ex-wife asserting he’s already been there. Yeah, leave the “take my wife, please” gags to Henny Youngman, thanks.

For the most part, women in a Tarantino project are either victims, girlfriends, sex workers, drug addicts, meek bystanders or violent monsters.  To continually restrict your female characters to these tired, archetypical roles is a sure sign of someone stuck in an outdated mindset.

With the exception of gun fights, we’re thankfully spared any on-screen sexual assaults. He’s limited himself here to creepy gawking and whispering, which is still too much.

From Dusk Till Dawn pretty much ended the illusion that Tarantino could be a star in his own right, regardless of who wrote his roles.  The film is certainly not as terrible as the utterly forgettable Destiny Turns On The Radio but time has not been kind to it.  It is astonishingly unfunny, as well.

Late in the film, despite everything that has just happened and after being given some of the stolen bank loot as instant compensation, Juliette Lewis offers herself up to one of the men personally responsible for her family’s dilemma.  He replies, “I’m a bastard but I’m not a fuckin’ bastard,” meaning you’re on your own, toots.  She should consider herself lucky. It’s the only act of decency in the entire film.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, May 14, 2022
4:12 a.m.

The Descent (2006)

Poor Juno.  Screwing around with one of her best friend’s husbands, accidentally attacking the only other person who knows, putting the rest of her circle of pals in unnecessary danger.  She’s having one fucked up year.

One wonders if The Descent, the title itself, despite everything that happens, mostly applies to her.

Unbeknownst to Sarah, Juno is having an affair with Paul, her spouse.  There are no scenes of them canoodling, no real backstory either, just a knowing look during a white water rafting trip picked up on by one of their mutual friends.

Literally moments later, Sarah’s life is completely shattered.  As she tries to understand why a quiet Paul is suddenly so distant with her in their moving car, she loses him and her young daughter in an instant.  Not paying attention to the road for just one second proves very costly. It is not surprising.

Waking up in the hospital confused, Sarah learns the shocking truth and is devastated.  And then there’s guilt-ridden Juno looking on, perhaps mourning Paul a lot more intensely than her friend who is clearly more upset about little Jessica getting a copper pipe thrust through her noggin which is thankfully only implied.

A year later, Sarah makes a request of Juno.  Both devoted adventure seekers, they agree to go down and explore a cave in the Appalachians with four of their mutual girlfriends.

Now, five of the women think they’re headed to a place called Boreham, a popular tourist attraction that might not prove so challenging or exciting.  But in reality, where they’re really going, is literally unnamed territory.  As they’re about to find out, there’s an excellent reason for this. No one gets out alive.

But it takes a long time before the danger actually starts to emerge, one of the many problems with The Descent, a slow burning horror film that never really reaches full boil.

Sarah is completely oblivious about Juno’s deception and it doesn’t really become a plot point until the very end when a decision is made that one could argue is so cold, it makes one particular character look especially depraved and heartless.

Then again, what would you do if you belatedly discovered you had misplaced your faith?  That you trusted the wrong friend?  And because of that you’ve just finished experiencing even more trauma on a much bigger scale?

That said, Juno herself makes a snap decision based partly on guilt but mostly on self-preservation that makes it very difficult to sympathize with her dilemma, especially since her initial impulsive act is very clearly unintentional. The movie never really makes her out to be a true heel, but her walking out on a close friend at her most vulnerable is not what heroes do.

Continually haunted by the memory of the accident, Sarah keeps having nightmares.  The same image keeps coming up, that of her daughter eventually blowing out the candles of her own birthday cake for a party she didn’t live long enough to attend.

This new adventure in America (Sarah is Scottish) is supposed to alleviate such enduring pain.  Instead, because of Juno’s enormous blunder, it’s compounded by more sadness and even more loss.

Once down in this mysterious cave, these six women band together and spend considerable amounts of time crawling in tight spaces, walking around these seemingly secluded areas, and dangling from precariously placed ropes.  Too much time, in fact.  Regardless of what’s waiting for them far down below, this is more tedious than exhilarating. I’m glad I’m not a cave dweller.

As they continually explore this endlessly labyrinthian underground, Sarah starts noticing what appears to be a naked man popping around.  When she gets a closer, confirming look the second time, Juno gaslights her, but the worry on her deceptive friend’s face suggests she’s trying to convince herself there’s nothing there.

Of course, the naked man is not a naked man, it’s a Crawler, a Nosferatu-like cannibal with a whole lot of compadres just waiting for fresh flesh to sink their vampiric teeth into.  The ladies have a slight advantage, though.  Like the much scarier, spider-like creatures in A Quiet Place, these Crawlers are completely blind.  One character correctly speculates they may use their heightened sense of hearing like a bat employs sonar.

And they have monstrous appetites.  There are lots of scenes of our victims walking through and surrounded by waves of skeletal remains, especially the human kind.  Juno’s misguided ambition is how they end up jobber meat for some very generic looking creatures.  The more you get a closer look, the less scared you are.

Even the way they sound evokes memories of better horror films, like that recycled snake-like rattle from Predator, for instance. When one pounces on Sarah, he actually sounds like a meowing cat.

And the film is awfully dependent on mostly predictable jump scares, a tired gimmick often employed by hacks unable to create a real suspenseful atmosphere in more original ways.  The Shining, this isn’t.

Admittedly, the movie does pick up a little bit in its last third when the Crawlers stop hiding and need to feed but it’s far too late to make much of a difference.  And when they do show up, because we’re deep in the bowels of a cave, and the film has an over-reliance on needlessly frenetic editing, it is often very hard to see everything that’s going on. Ultimately, it’s impossible to be fully invested in something so generic and obvious.

Speaking of that, how about that ending? I mean, like the car accident, you can see it a mile away. Curiously, it was only seen in UK theatres, not here in North America. Too depressing, they said. If I cared, maybe. But by cutting it in half, it leaves out a very important detail. It suggests a haunting and nothing more, which doesn’t make sense because that character has no remorse.

The full European version is essentially a rip of John Carpenter’s underappreciated remake of The Thing. One character seemingly coming to terms with her delusion while also knowing full well the odds of escaping are practically null. Locked in a trance and completely ignoring the growing shrieks, she is now finally, and ironically, at peace.

But then, they made a sequel that reportedly rewrites history. Based on the Wikipedia plot summary I read, let’s just say I’m glad I don’t critique anything that goes straight to video.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, May 8, 2022
2:27 a.m.

Beauty Sleep

There once was a fool
Selfish to the core
A pain in the ass
A colossal bore
A very silly man
Petty and weak
Often mistaken
For a hideous freak

One night, a noise
Caused an unwelcome disruption
He suddenly awakened
“What is this annoying interruption?”
Who dared to disturb
His beauty sleep?
He thought it was
Some horrible malicious creep

While he quietly stewed
In the middle of the night
And prepared to tweet
Purely out of spite
A family was worried
About a missing child
A beloved young daughter
Sweet and mild

The alert was sent out
Most were alarmed
A desperate hope
She had not been harmed
While everyone was trying
To stay focused and keep cool
None of this mattered
To the selfish old fool

He ranted and raved
Enraged by the noise
He publicly complained
With his usual poise
The blowback was swift
His critics were enraged
They were more willing than him
To remain fully engaged

For you see, he couldn’t take it
The mockery drove him nuts
He eventually departed
With the grace of a klutz
Was it his choice to leave?
We’ll never really know
He has never returned
The end of the show

As for the girl
Her story is sadder
She was murdered by her father
Which made everyone madder
The fool complained
But the alert led to her recovery
And eventually caught her killer
What a horrifying discovery

Regarding the complainer
He wasn’t alone
At least a hundred more were annoyed
By the buzzing of their phone
But he was the loudest
And most vocally offended
Taking a doomed position
That no one else defended

He had a history
Of posting such awful things
Acting as though
He was Lord Of The Rings
One time to show
He was truly with it
He let stand a tweet
With a racial epithet

With no real concern
How this blunder would look
He blamed it on technology
The oldest trick in the book
And carried on as though
It was perfectly fine
It’s still easy to locate
On a resurrected timeline

Years have passed
Since he vanished without warning
Not terribly missed
And no one is mourning
There’s been nary a sighting
Nor an unexpected peep
He’s been too busy catching up
On his beauty sleep

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, May 7, 2022
2:26 a.m.

CORRECTION: The girl was murdered by her father, not a stranger. I apologize for the mistake and have updated the text.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, December 30, 2022
8:35 p.m.

You Fucked This Up

You had years to prepare
For these erosion of rights
You refused to listen
To engage in these fights
And now it’s all over
The mass reversal has begun
You fucked this up
And your time is done

The outraged are assembling
The torches will be lit
Filling up the streets
But you don’t give a shit
A rising fury
A cacophonous horde
Are you sitting this one out?
Or drawing your sword?

Sharpen the guillotines
And tighten the ropes
Down with the kings
And fascist popes
No more peaceful vigils
Burn this shit down
Voting is for suckers
And gullible clowns

You should fear what’s coming
It won’t be pretty
A gathering discontent
In every fucking city
Cynically fundraising
On a vulnerable law
Arrogant hubris
Your fatal flaw

It should not be safe
For tyranny to rise
It’s blatantly apparent
This “moderate” disguise
You bailed on the people
To preserve a con
Now you’re choking on your failures
And soon you’ll be gone

Living in a bubble
A hermetically sealed dome
Don’t expect a tidal wave
The masses will stay home
They’re not pulling a lever
For bastards who lie
Who pretend to be their champions
While watching them die

A war is coming
The people are pissed
Do-nothing Weimercrats
You won’t be missed
Your empty rhetoric
Is fueling the fire
You fucked this up
The law will expire

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, May 5, 2022
7:56 p.m.