Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark...

Again, sorry for the lack of blog type stuff recently. I've been riddled with man flu. Now, you ask any man out there and they'll tell you that man flu is the worst illness on the planet. It takes it out of you as if you're a rhino giving birth.

As a result of said man flu I've been all a bit "meh" for the last week or so. I'm back to firing on most cylinders now though, which means I have been able to pop along to the cinema. That is exactly what I did, although I really wish that I hadn't. Let me start this by saying that I see good in basically ever film I see. I even enjoy films that I know are a pile of shit, such as the Shark Attack series or Ninja Terminator. If a film is shit then I almost have a sympathetic eye towards it. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's because the budget of these films is minuscule, maybe it's because I know that the actors really are doing their best, maybe it's because I know it's a small crew, small set and everyone is clubbing in together. So with all of that said, it has to be a movie that has some major things wrong with it for me to totally bash it and to see no redeeming features in it. That film, ladies and gentleman, would be Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark. I went into this with really high hopes. It looked like it could be genuinely creepy. It was written by Guillermo del Toro, who I am a massive fan of. It has Guy Pearce in it - again, someone who I am a massive fan of. It had that old style feel to it, like the spooky house or monster films of yesteryear - the kind of black and white film that as a kid I'd find on late night BBC2 and would be enthralled by the texture and the feel of the film. That is the type of film that I thought that this was going to harp back to. Sadly I was mistaken.

The general premise of the film is that a little girl is sent to live with her father, Guy Pearce, and his new girlfriend, Katie Holmes, whilst they are restoring an old house. The mother is hardly referred to, only referenced a few times to show that the poor little girl has been pushed from one parent to the other. The house is your usual old, antique, slightly spooky affair, complete with the usual characters, i.e the faithful maid, the slightly grump gardener, etc. The little girl is exploring the grounds when she comes across a disused basement that is hidden away under the house. With it being an old, creepy house, the entrance to the basement is hidden away behind a wall panel. Guy Pearce duly decides to knock away said panel and opens up the basement. This is where the film supposedly gets creepy. The little girl starts to hear things calling her name and speaking to her. This is when slightly erratic behavior starts to occur throughout the house, with Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes blaming the little girl for this. During the first half of the film it's established that the girl isn't the biggest fan of Katie Holmes in the step-mum-to-be role, whilst Guy Pearce is set up as bit of a cock who is just focused on work, work, work. This leads to you not really giving a shit about either of the main adult characters. You just don't care. This is my first problem with the film. My second problem is that it's supposed to be a mish-mash of horror/thriller/supernatural/monster films, yet it doesn't really showcase any major strengths in any of the aforementioned film types. About half way through it turns out that there are creatures running amok in the house, small little mischief-makers who bang on about child's teeth. Of course, the child knows exactly what's going on yet nobody believes her until it's more-or-less too late. When the little beasties do attack then you really don't give a shit as Guy Pearce is just a prick and Katie Holmes is Katie Holmes.

Don't Be Afraid Of Shit Films...

So that's where the main problem lies. None of the adult characters are sympathetic. The little girl, Bailee Madison, is fine in her role. She is great in the role of the grumpy kid who's been moved from pillar to post and has to try and adapt to her new life with her dad and the new love of his life. The film also never really has a scare moment, which surprised me. There wasn't a moment where I jumped or even flinched. I guess there's never any real sense of suspense for the most part. Usually in this type of film there's the slow build, which this has, and then the reveal. The reveal is made all the better by the suspense leading up to it. Here, when the reveal does finally come, it's just so-so. The effects work for the little creatures is fine, they don't look particularly bad or good. They do the job needed. It's just that you don't ever feel any real threat during the film. The suspense, for me, peaked in the opening few minutes when you see an old man going at a lady's teeth with a chisel. From there on out the film just seemed to lose my interest, which saddens me. I was really hoping for a lot from this film but I was just left with a typical Katie fucking Holmes performance. I'm not sure what it is about her that I don't like so much. She's just annoyed me for as long as I can remember. I never did the whole Dawon's Creek shit so I guess me and Miss Holmes (or should that be Mrs Cruise) got off on the wrong foot. She's just one of those actors that has done nothing of note to me, bar that topless scene from The Gift. She's just bland in anything that I see her in, bland, emotionless, wooden, annoying. After years of geek expectation for Batman Begins, she nearly ruined the film for me. Luckily her screen time was kept to a minimum. I'm one of those people that hate re-casting characters but I was literally shitting myself with joy when Maggie Gyllenhaal was announced as playing Rachel Dawes for The Dark Knight.

So to sum up, I had a good feeling for Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark yet I was left feeling like the film was a waste of what could have been. It had all of the factors to be great. Guillermo del Toro? Check. Creepy old house? Check. Little monsters? Check. Potentially creepy kid? Check. Katie Holmes death scene? You'll have to watch it and see.

The film at times felt like Critters in the way that it's little monsters were behaving. Whilst they were supposed to be menacing, you never really felt like they were going to do anything too brutal. The thing there is, Critters was meant to be firmly tongue in cheek and was on a small budget. Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark had a $25 million budget and was set up firmly as serious film. Now don't get me wrong, $25 million is nothing by today's standards, but the standard of the film is similar to the shit films that I mentioned in my opening paragraph. The only difference is, these films are firmly aware that they are shit.

On a slightly lighter note, my favourite band of all time are due to announce they're reunion today. Ian Brown, John Squire, Mani and Reni supposedly have a press conference booked for 3pm today. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. I'm not going to touch on the subject any further as I'm planning on a blog of sorts on the band. I'll just leave you with this.

Shark Night 3D

Again, sorry for the lack of blog-type stuff recently, I've been a busy bee. I'm planning on not doing a whole bunch of much over the next few weeks so that should mean more time to dabble with this stuff.

Now let's get down to business. The cinematic world is still reeling from Friday's release of Shark Night 3D. That's right, not Shark Night, not Shark Night 4D (see the Spy Kids franchise for that), and most definitely not Shark Night with smell-o-vision. Nope, this was Shark Night 3D! On a slightly side note, mid-way through the film I did get a smell of burning. I couldn't place whether it was the smell of knackered electrical items or the smell of burnt toast. It's a fine line to decipher between the two. So, yeah, I went to watch this shark infested beauty last night. For anybody that knows me then you know all about my irrational fear of sharks. You name it, I've done it (or not), as in I don't go into the sea (that's suicide!), as a kid I'd make sure I was always hunched up in a ball in the middle of the bench to make sure that no limbs were hanging over the edge of the bed for the waiting sharks (very sensible kid), and I try and do as little flying as possible (plane goes boom, drops from sky, I survive impact, land in ocean, sharks come to nibble on me). As well as this fear that I am very aware is all totally irrational, there's always a morbid curiosity and I'll watch any and all shit that I can find that involves sharks. That includes the piece of shit called Shark Night 3D.

Now it's not often that shark films come along these days. It's even rarer that they get a cinematic release, and it's even rarer still that the Odeon in Wrexham gets to show these films. Obviously there's a great demand from the Wrexham public to see more creature features. That said, upon walking into Screen 2 to watch the film last night I was greeted by the grand total of 2 other people in there. They were both on their own also. So there was 3 of us in the cinema, all sitting on our own. There were a few appreciate nods between us as I walked up the stairs to take my place amongst the popcorn covered seats. As the film began it immediately peaked my interest as the very first shot was a nice nod to Jaws (currently sat at approximately #4 on my favourite films of all time) as it was an underwater shot supposedly shot from a shark's point of view. As the scene unfolds it establishes a teenage couple messing around in the water. The boyfriend leaves the water to go and get some food (I can imagine him hunting antelope with a spear) and whilst he's gone his girlfriend gets devoured into a whole lot of bubbles and red stuff. There's another nice nod to Jaws in here too as the death of the girl echoes the opening scene death of Chrissy from Jaws. I think this is basically where my interest reached it's high point as the film slalomed down the toilet after this. The story picks up with a group of college kids, with each one supposedly ticking the box of a college stereotype. There's the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess and the criminal... oh wait, that's the wrong film. These stereotypes are the geek, the athlete, the pretty boy, the quirky guy, the girl with issues and a few other girls that really don't have much of their characters fleshed out (meaning you know that they're going to be getting munched at some point). The one big, big, big, big problem I have is the main guy. He's portrayed as the geek, the medical student who has poor people skills and who is never going to get anywhere with the ladies. The problem is that the dude is pretty ripped and has chiseled features. Just because his first scene shows him in a pair of glasses (and only the first scene) does not instantly make the guy your Anthony Michael Hall.

Geek with added pen

Not so much geek and not so much pen

That was my biggest gripe. The rest of the cast just play out like the usual background characters that you see in the OC. They're all nice and shiny but ultimately lacking substance. I guess I should get back to the plot rather than the cast, so these kids all end up going to a friend's place for the weekend. Now when I say a friend's place then I don't mean someone crashing on someone else's sofa after a few beers too many. Nope, I mean that one of the girls actually owns her own island in the middle of a huge lake which is miles from anywhere. It's almost as bad an idea as the whole tropical island plot of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. At least that film had Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts in to keep my attention. Whilst I'm at it, Shark Night is a PG, meaning no boobs, no language and no particularly gruesome deaths. So, anyway, these kids get to their destination after coming across a few rednecks on the way. We're not talking Deliverance style rednecks but it's worth making a note of the guys as they do pop up at times later on in the film. The girl that owns the island also happens to own a boat and so a few of the guys go water-skiing on the lake. The athlete is showing his moves off when all of a sudden he vanishes under the surface. This is where the sharks kick in. Whether he makes it or not, I'll let you watch and find out. You'd have thought one logical idea would be to stay on the land once they realise that there's sharks in the "salt-water" lake.

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"I'm gonna eat your balls!"

Sadly for these kids they lack any kind of sense, even the medical student having moments that can only be described as a bit like Rodney from Only Fools & Horses. There's one moment where one of the guys loses an arm. This prompts some of the other guys to go and seek help, which means they have to go back into the water. This is a slightly plausible reason for why the cast would have to leave the land. The thing that shits all over logic is that the guy with one arm eventually ends up going back into the water to find the shark that attacked people. He goes in with one arm and a spear and literally wrestles with the shark as if he was "Macho Man" Randy Savage against Hulk Hogan. Ridiculous doesn't cover it. There's also a back story of two people falling out years ago because one ripped open the other's face open with a boat propeller by accident - I shit you not. There's then moments of sharks leaping through the air like Spider-man (obviously minus the outfit - now that is a film idea, Spider-shark!). After several of the supporting cast are offed in various munchable ways, the rednecks of earlier turn up to help. This is when things all go a bit sinister and there's a twist that is different to say the least. It kind of borrows parts from Hostel and Scream 4 but I'm not going to say any more on the subject.

I really hope that this is where the SFX budget went

To sum up, the plot was intriguing at times, the characters were paper thin in depth, the effects were poor at best, the need for 3D was a retarded idea and you had absolutely no sympathy for any of the characters involved. It's hard to care about the nasty things that are potentially happening to cheese-spewing, rich, ripped, good looking people. Shark Night fails to have the kitsch factor of Piranha 3D, whilst failing to have the serious tone of a Jaws, the scientific (if ridiculous) logic of a Deep Blue Sea or the brutally-honest-in-how-bad-they-are outlook of the various shark themed B movies that came before it. It does baffle me why they only went for a PG rating. Sure, Jaws had a PG rating but it also had a serious, strong story with a fantastic cast and one of the greatest directors of all time. I honestly expected Shark Night to go for the Piranha 3D route - play to your strengths. Don't take yourself too seriously, don't make ALL of your characters annoying, focus on the boobs and gore that has served similar films well over the years, make it camp, make it fun. I'm not sure, even after watching it, what Shark Night is entirely trying to set itself up as.

All in all, I did actually find parts of the film to be enjoyable but I do love shitty horror films, especially those involving sharks. For all those with a love of the very bad of the bad, you'll enjoy this for what it is. That said, most people will just think that the film is an absolute waste of 90 minutes of their life that they could have spent doing something more enjoyable, such as shoving a pineapple up their backside. 

I guess that means that I like pineapples.

Not the worst of views, I suppose...