Movie Review - Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

            For a little over a month I’ve been trying to finish Twilight so that I can review it. I’m nearly halfway through the book and it’s killing me. Like, it’s literally killing me. It’s causing all sorts of things like muscle pain, eye strain, abdominal bleeding, as well as receding libido. Okay, that part’s a lie, but the other stuff is true. All joking aside, I cannot express in words how much this book is torturing me. Well, okay, I can, but that’s for another review entirely! It’s time to set that abominable garbage aside to work on reviewing something else that sucks!

            Well, first of all, I’m going to admit that one of the main reasons I’m writing this review today is because it’s a Saturday that I’m not spending with James, and I also don’t work on the weekends, and if I didn’t start working on this, I would be sitting in my computer chair staring into space. I literally ran out of stuff to do or work on (except Twilight, but it singes my hands with the dark forces of suck every time I pick it up), and I tried to think of what else I could accomplish on my day off alone.

            That’s right, I wrote and read erotica.

            Oh besides that? Well I considered drawing sexual images, but I got too distracted with writing sexual situations and thinking of ways to avoid reading Twilight, because when you read Twilight, you’ll be unable to see the sexuality in anything for a very long time. Like moments ago, I opened to a random page, and I knew that at least for one day, I would not be able to write anything erotic. Porn itself had become dull and grey.

            I’m sorry, I’m talking about Twilight again. Where was I? OH! The movie I was going to review. The laughably, intolerably, unjustifiably horrible move that I was going to review.

            For those of you who didn’t know, the film The Blair Witch Project had a sequel. Of course it did. Hollywood can’t shit out twenty foot turds without making a second one to follow it, at least not in this shit-for-brains country. The sad thing is, The Blair Witch Project was actually stupidly popular and made tons of money. Critics loves it, teenagers loved it, and I even thought it wasn’t too bad. I know, strange, right?

            Then came Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. The title alone is fucking insulting. Seriously, “Blair Witch 2?!” Why did they have to add the “Blair Witch 2” after “Book of Shadows”? Couldn’t they have just called it “Book of Shadows” and leave it alone? Well, I guess most filmmakers assume that their audience is too stupid to figure out that their current project is a sequel to something. In addition, this movie has as much to do with The Blair Witch Project as a Pop-Tart has to do with a car engine. Not only that, but I’ve watched this movie and I can safely say that I’ve never seen a “book of shadows” in it. What the hell is the title supposed to mean?!

           

            What’s with the opening credits? Why are we flying over some region in Michigan to an overused Marilyn Manson song? But hey, in between all the whining about life sucking as a teenager, courtesy of Mr. Brian Warner, we see quick shots of people getting tied up, stabbed, and dragged, until finally the music dies down and we get to see a youthful-looking man in an interrogation room, who apparently fell asleep, because he’s sitting there for roughly thirty-two seconds with his eyes closed looking like a Tibetan monk who happens to put semen in his hair every morning to use as spiking gel.

            We get the first indication that we are, in fact, watching a “scary” movie when a detective enters and tells him that they found blood in his van. He seems pretty chill about it. In fact, he says nothing, which you’ll consider a huge blessing later because this idiot has a tendency to open his mouth and say stupid shit.

            I’ve actually gotten ahead of myself. I didn’t mention the introduction to this movie, which is by far probably the funniest part of it. The movie opens with a collection of clips from talk shows and the news, and it cuts people off at the most perfect times to make it sound like praise. For example, the first newscaster, Kurt Loder from MTV News only says “the film is The Blair Witch Project,” and it cuts to Jay Leno out of nowhere saying “one of the scariest films of all time!” Then it cuts to Conan saying “I was terrified!” To Andy Richter, who answers with “it scared me to death!” Each time it cuts to a different clip, the film literally screams. I’m serious. “It scared me to death!” REEE!

            Then they present Burkittsville as this really interesting place where everyone is flocking to because The Blair Witch Project was so amazing. I guess I have no choice but to believe that, since that AWFUL, AWFUL book Twilight managed to get people interested in some little town called Forks for no fucking reason.

            Oh, shit, I’m talking about Twilight again. This is going to be a long night, isn’t it?

            So Jeff, the man in the interrogation room, is sort of an entrepreneur, in the way that a cat would be if his business was licking his own butt. He operates his own “Witch Store” in Burkittsville and sells some twigs he tied together in childish shapes, probably for twenty bucks each while telling people he got them from haunted places in the woods.

            Jeff claims he went to see The Blair Witch Project seventeen times in a row after “getting released from the hospital.” Maybe I’m new at this whole “you’re crazy” thing, but I think you need to pay them another visit. Even I’ve only seen that movie three times, and I’m sort of a compulsive movie re-watcher if it’s any good, unless the movie is really fucking sad or is so good that I don’t want to watch it too often to make myself sick of seeing it. You know your movie is excellent when I do that. But come on, dude, seventeen times, in a row, in the theater?! That’s like ten bucks a ticket, maybe even twelve, and that’s money you could have saved to start up a better business, like building a lemonade stand, or at least get a girlfriend. Yeah, those cost money these days.

            So, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, this movie completely ruins its original forerunner in the worst way possible: By pointing out as hard as they can that the first movie was a bunch of fictional bull shit. Yeah! This sequel is about how people reacted to the original film, which was produced and filmed as a realistic documentary! The reason why it was so frightening (to most people) was because it was filmed in such a way that it seemed realistic, and you were supposed to believe in it, and in the Blair Witch. So what do they do with all of that hard work? That’s right, they take a huge dump on it. “The Blair Witch Project?! Yeah, that movie rocked! If only they spent their budget money for the sequel on cancer research instead!” And no, I’m not confused, and they aren’t actually talking about the first film being real, they’re talking about it as if it were fictional, while they themselves are actors portraying fictional characters. Now you have to ask yourself, “Wait, which one is supposed to be ‘real’ and which one isn’t?” Will they come out with another sequel about teenagers watching Book of Shadows, then talking about how much it sucked? If that doesn’t blow your balls to the moon, I don’t know what will.

            So, off to a great start already!

            After we watch people talk about the first film like it was fake, but they believed that it could be real (I know I’ve never taken acid), we see a pleasant image of Jeff in a hospital with doctors shoving tubes in his face and pouring what looks like steaming, hot piss into them, and if it didn’t make my nostrils have sympathy pains, I’d be turned on. Um, partially.

           

We get to see hilarious images of Jeff writhing around in a straight jacket, and when he’s in what looks like a recreation room with other patients, he screams “ENOUGH!” Even though, to me, it seemed dead silent. Well, I guess that’s why he’s nuts. And that pretty much brings us back up to speed, here. Jeff’s entrepreneurship has soared to new heights, and he promoted himself from selling stick-dolls in the WiTCH STORE to driving people around Burkittsville in a rustic painted van which probably smells like rotting Wendy’s hamburgers and ass, and is using it as a tour vehicle, which has an endearing little label on it that says:

BLAIR WITCH-HUNT

Tours by appointment only

www.blairwitch-hunt.com

I assume he spends these tours talking about all of his favorite scenes from the first film, because, honestly, what is there to “tour?” Trees? Houses? Sounds like fun… he introduces us to his three guests in the van, Stephen Parker and his ditzy girlfriend, Tristen, and the Wiccan Erica, and—wait a second. All of the characters in the film have the exact same first names as the actors who played them. I just looked it up on IMDB. That’s not the weirdest part, though. The weirdest part was what it said for Tristen’s character:

Tristine Skyler playing Tristen Ryler (as Tristen Skyler)

I’m sorry, but… my mind is so busy trying to understand that, I can’t even continue. I actually need a second to try and wrap my head around that bizarre note. “As Tristen Skyler” What in the fuck?! So Tristine Skyler is playing a character that has a slightly different name than hers that is playing someone who has an almost identical name to hers. My brain is aching.

I’m over it now.

            So now we get introduced to the snarky gothic girl named Kim who is apparently “psychic.” Yeah, as psychic as a doorknob. She can see images of the future, but apparently not well enough, because she can’t predict that she would be totally irresponsible. She tells the gang to meet her in the local cemetery, which I guess is her way of saying she’d rather be dead than be in this heap of shit movie, and they find her lying on someone’s grave. Gosh, this girl has all kinds of respect, I know she’ll fit right in with the crowd! What’s even funnier is when Jeff calls for her, and she responds “yo” Erica says “is that her?” No, it’s the ghost of Fonzie, who do you think it is?!

            Also, why does the grave Kim is lying on say “Further” on it?

Ohhh.

            Wait a sec. It said “Treacle” on it seconds before that! Look!

            I’m starting to believe that the true purpose of this film is to make you convinced that at some point, you were an avid drug addict. I watched the name of the grave carefully, and after it says “Further” it actually changes back to “Treacle.” What the shit? Kim tells them she’s exhausted and is trying to find the energy to stand up, and this was her whole reason for lying down on someone’s grave. So, you drove out here, stood up, walked through the cemetery, found a grave, lied down on it, and then said you have no energy to stand. I bet she’s a wonder to work with.

            So Jeff drops the bombshell on his would-have-been-friends that he had never given an actual tour of the Blair Witch haunting grounds, and when Stephen tells him his website says otherwise, reading off from a sheet of paper-- that I guess he for some reason printed from the website-- that Jeff claimed he had over ten thousand satisfied customers. He defended that those were the customers of his store. I’m sorry, backpedal a second—ten thousand customers for a tour is too many, but seriously, ten thousand customers bought twenty dollar stick figures from your online store?! Since “ten thousand” is a solid on-the-dot amount, it’s hard to argue that he’s a big fucking liar. If you’re going to lie about how many customers you’ve had, you could at least lie and say they were customers of your tour, numb nuts.

            Meanwhile, Jeff and Kim stop by the local hillbilly shop and pick up some booze, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry is staring at them like they carry Super AIDS. Kim reminds us she’s the snarky character by making snide remarks about everything. As Jeff and Kim discuss what their first part of the tour is (visiting the rubble that was once the home of Rustin Parr, who, in the Blair Witch mythology, heard the voices of kids telling him to kill shit. There’s a whole PC video game about it) and the movie randomly cuts to a close up of someone’s face getting bludgeoned by something, with horrible, fake sound effects and cheap special effects. And then it suddenly cuts back to the movie. Did the editor take a coffee break or something, or did the director decide he wanted to add segments of his debut street crime documentary?

            Jeff begins hauling piles of supplies and equipment out of his van and forcing his new friends to carry it all, and is even bringing a camera to film the events. Kim sarcastically remarks that Jeff is “running bull shit central,” whatever that means, and Jeff asks why she bothered to come if she didn’t believe in the Blair Witch. Kim rolls her eyes at him and says it’s because she thought the movie was cool, in a voice that was saying “you should know this, you idiot.”

            As they’re walking, Kim talks to Tristen and guesses that she’s pregnant and that she doesn’t want to keep the baby, but her boyfriend does. Tristen looks starry-eyed and gasps “how did you know?” Kim gives her this blank, empty-headed stare and says “I dunno.” No explanation needed, I guess.

            … …Okay…

            “So what are you going to do?” Kim asks.

            “I dunno,” replies Tristen.

            … …

            Look, just because you can write dialogue doesn’t mean you should, all right?

            So Jeff welcomes the gang to the ruins of Rustin Parr’s house, where the footage that Heather (from the first Blair Witch) left behind was apparently found. Erica ogles the markings on the stone wall, which consist of handprints, an X, and a cross or two. Erica refers to it as a Witch’s Alphabet. I guess witches have entire words that are only one letter long.

            So after Erica goes on insulting the retards who don’t know anything about witchcraft by saying “Only people who don’t understand witchcraft would be afraid of these symbols,” she mentions the large gnarled tree in the middle of the ruined site. Jeff spins around and gasps “Where the fuck did this come from? This was never here before!” While some eerie synthesizer music plays. I guess it’d be creepier if you didn’t realize that they would have seen that tree when arriving to the site and would have commented on it then. Even after no one is impressed, Jeff continued to rant about it. “No, really, who would build a house around a tree?!” Well, that’s not exactly the first conclusion I would come to, I would assume the tree grew after the house was ruined, but hey, I’m not a genius like Jeff is.

            The movie cuts once again to some shitty-looking blurry clips of people screaming and running and getting stabbed and tied up. I think maybe what happened was, there was an actual horror movie filmed, but some shithead recorded over all of the original footage with Book of Shadows. Of course, apologies weren’t enough to satisfy the director, so they had to work in cuts from the horror film into Book of Shadows and shoehorn some crappy plot device into it. That would be my guess, I mean, those scenes don’t make sense and they aren’t even scary.

            So Erica sits and performs some witchcraft, wicked witchcraft, and Tristen approaches her asking if she’s casting an evil spell. Erica takes this opportunity to explain to this, stupid, stupid “normal” girl what Wiccans really do, because she’s just too stupid to understand what witches really are. She admits she’s trying to commune with the Blair Witch and tries to explain she isn’t evil, and notes “She was an Earth child… like me. She’s gonna be my mentor!” What she doesn’t know is that the Blair Witch’s first lesson is how to tie sticks into the shape of a person and hang them from trees to scare away campers. Erica sluttily spreads herself on the grass exposing most of her bare stomach as she writhes around on the leaves saying she’s going to commune with Ellie (the Blair Witch). From what it looks like, she’s going to do a lot more than “commune” with her. I’m sure they’ll be “communing” all night long from the looks of it.

Tristen asks if Erica had ever seen a picture of the Blair Witch, and she helpfully shares a drawing of her with Erica, to entice her I guess, and explains that she thinks it was drawn before she was banished. Erica suddenly snaps and corrects her “BANISHED, MY ASS! They dragged her into the woods in the middle of winter and tied her to a fucking tree to die!” If I were Tristen, I would have likely said “Okay, jeez, I’m sorry. I figured saying ‘banished’ was a little more tasteful than saying ‘When the cruel people who aren’t Earth children dragged her into the woods and let her starve and freeze,’ but, hey, you know how to ruin a conversation.”

Oh, boy. There’s still a whole lot more movie here. I really don’t mean to go scene-by-scene, but seriously, every single scene is jam-packed full of ridiculous shit like this. It’s priceless. It’s like I’m watching a comedy.

            Jeff shows Tristen all of his ultra camera equipment, showing that he is going to be filming the site 24/7 with all kinds of lenses. Meanwhile Erica… (*groan* it was a blessed few seconds of screen time without her) bends down to a plant and pinches her fingers onto a leaf, uttering, “Do I have permission to take this leaf?” Rip!! “Thank you!” I don’t know if it’s just me, but that sounded like she was mocking it. “Oo, scary plant, are you going to ruffle against me if I tear off a part of your body? Huh?! ARE YOU?!”

            So now it cuts to night time, and everyone is getting completely shit-faced the night before they’re supposed to shoot their footage. Well, come on, what kind of young people would they be if they didn’t act irresponsibly? Anyways, as they get plastered, they of course make a lot of really stupid jokes, molest each other, and rape each other’s asses. Oh… heh, wrong movie. No, they just make stupid jokes and laugh like they’re comedic gold. As Stephen gets hammered, he makes some profound, deep remarks about the Bermuda Triangle. Should this have been in the film…?

            Erica gets fed up and complains to the camera that she’s sick of being “misunderstood” by the common folk, and says that people think she drinks blood and sacrifices children and worships the Devil because she’s Wiccan, and Kim interjects with, “People fear what they don’t understand. Just because I wear black, people think that I’m some sick killer, or something.” Look, you’re both wrong. Erica, maybe you shouldn’t be cramming your ideals, thoughts and beliefs down the throats of everyone you meet. It’s cool to be Wiccan, if you are. It’s not cool to treat everyone else around you like they’re less than human just because they aren’t “Earth children.” That’s why people treat you like shit. And Kim, no, it isn’t because you wear black. I wear black all the time, and no one, I repeat, no one has ever thought I was a “killer.” It’s your snarky attitude and the way you present yourself that makes people react the way they do. You act like a vicious, vapid cunt to everyone around you. That’s why people think you’re a killer. Let this be a lesson to anyone who tries to say “no one understands me.” Think of the reasons why. The real reasons.

            Okay, yes, I know they’re fictional characters. Moving on.

            They continue their drunken ranting. Stephen is going on some kind of acid trip down Deep Speeches lane, and no one but his girlfriend/wife is listening to him, even the audience. Jeff makes a valid point halfway through the scene, saying “Video never lies. Film does, though.” Kind of like the way this film lied when it said it was about the Blair Witch Project?

            Someone screams off in the distance. They become alert and step around the site looking for the source, until a cameraman and his crew of followers show up. Jeff and the other cameraman have a stare down through their cameras as if they were holding bazookas or something.

            When Jeff is asked what his business is there, he says, “Tour group, the Blair Witch HUNT!!!” Like, he literally yells “Hunt,” I don’t know why. If you ever see the film, skip to this scene, it’s hilarious. So, the partner of the tour guide from “The Blair Witch Walk” assures the people from “The Blair Witch HUNT!!!” That they have a permit to be there.

            “Bull shit, lemme see ‘em,” Jeff demands.

            Erica steps up beside Jeff. “Bull shit,” she repeats, despite the fact that Jeff already made it clear that it was “bull shit.”

            “They’re in the car,” the guy regrettably informs them.

            “BULL SHIT!!!” Both Jeff and Erica simultaneously indict with rage. In case you weren’t already aware, this is total bull shit.

            “Hey let’s put it this way,” the tour guide from the Blair Witch Walk interrupts. “One of us is staying here tonight, and it’s gonna be us or you.” He edges aggressively toward Erica for no real reason. “And it looks like us, you little bitch!” Well, I guess if you put it that way, I can’t argue with you! What integral logic!

            “It’s gonna come back at you, three fold, man,” Erica warns. She then lifted her hands in a majestic pose and began swirling them around like batons while making a noise that sounded like this: EEEooooeeeooOOOOEEEEOOOoooeeeeEEE!! With a panicked look upon her face, she glanced at Jeff while whispering “It’s not working!” Okay, that part I made up. But the “Three fold” thing was in there.

            “What’s she sayin’?” The tour guide asked.

            “Well, in the Wiccan tradition-” The guide’s partner began.

            “Shut up!” Why did he ask if he didn’t care? “Hey, where do babies come from, man?” Well, when a male and female- “SHUT UP!”

            “Your balls will fall off in three days!” Jeff explains. Why specifically three days? Why not right at that moment? She said it would come back to him three fold, not in three days. Learn to listen, Jeff. Do you have too much urine stuffed in your face?

            So they lie to the followers of the tour group, all of which consist of foreign people, telling them that they saw something at Coffin Rock that scared the hell out of them, hoping it’ll interest them and coax them into leaving. The foreign people encourage the tour guide, telling him they want to see whatever it was at Coffin Rock. They depart, and Stephen accurately jokes “They were never seen again.” He could have added “Their roles were as short as they were pointless,” but that would have broken the fourth wall.

            Jeff tells the others that he’s worried those assholes might come back, but Stephen tells him not to worry, leaps onto his back, hugs Jeff around his neck, lovingly smiling, and tells him loudly with glee “We’re gonna be up aaaaalll night, baby!!” as Jeff giggles girlishly. Yeah, I bet you two are. I bet I know what you’ll be doing, too.

You know what? That should have been the poster for the film. I would have gone to see it in the theatre, then walked out with a pissed off look on my face. I’d go to one of the ticket salesmen, and say, “Hey, what the fuck, I thought Book of Shadows was a gay romance or something,” then they’d tell me to look closer at the poster to see the evil face in the background.

            Kim says “They’re not coming back” and when they ask what makes her think that, she says, “I just do.” Note: this is supposed to make her “psychic.” Then, she walks away, and everyone continues on with the drunken scene from where they left off before they were rudely interrupted. Also, Tristen, the pregnant lady, is heavily drinking while a life is growing in her. Thumbs up, future mommy! Well, she doesn’t want it anyway, but Dog forbid she changes her mind. So they pass out. Well Kim does first, while gazing at a particularly disgruntled-looking owl, which is probably the only creepy thing about the film. This owl actually squints and glares at her with this “I know what you did last summer” look on its face.

            In the background, a lovely little ditty about drugs and alcohol screeches into your ears, with lyrics that are so garbled that it takes you several listens to before you understand it. To me it sounds like he’s saying “Look at you now, you’re a faggot on marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol.” According to sources, what he was really saying was “Nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol.” Listen to it and tell me it doesn’t sound like what I said it did!! For the record, this is one of the worst piece of shit songs ever written. How can anyone call that trash “music?”

That horrible fucking song on YouTube

            Mine’s better.

            In the morning, Tristen goes to the river to drown a towel that cries like a baby.

            Hah, psych!

            Well, not quite. That scene actually was in the movie. But it was just a dream. I’m sure she wasn’t actually drowning a baby, and she was just trying to wash all of the alcohol off that she dumped on it the night before. The passed out campers awake to find that it’s snowing… shredded paper. Paper that has been shredded into hundreds of thousands of pieces are floating down all over the site, and according to Stephen, the shredded paper was once “his work,” and “all his research.” Tristen tries to calm him by saying “you backed it up on the computer.” He said he didn’t, and they were all original documents. Seriously? You took several boxes of original documents out into the woods and sat them outside? I’m not even going to ask why he didn’t just leave them in the car… or at home.

            Jeff tells them that they were all supposed to be awake. I’m not sure what that means. Well, yeah, you’re supposed to be awake, it’s morning. Maybe if you idiots didn’t get hammered the night before… anyway, Jeff’s cameras are missing as well, and he makes the obvious note that they must have “blacked out or something.” Well, of course you blacked out, you were shit-faced. I know a dickhead like you has been drunk before. Kim reassures them that the tapes are still present. Yeah, the tapes. I’m sure they care about the tapes, right? Man, all of that footage of you guys recording each other smoking dope and drinking, not even talking about the Blair Witch. Those are pretty important. Jeff asks Kim if she sees them, and she says she sees them in her mind.

            Jeff rolls his eyes. That’s fine, I probably would, too. I guess the tapes were stashed exactly where the original Blair Witch tapes from the first movie were “found.” “Come on!” Stephen snidely remarks. “Why would they be in there? News flash: that was just a movie!” News flash: It was a movie set up to be a realistic documentary, but it’s fake in this movie where people are supposedly not fake, but believe that the Blair Witch is real. Let’s just get our stories straight, shall we?

            Okay, so the tapes really are where Kim said they’d be. “How did you know?” Jeff asks Kim.

            “I don’t know,” Kim whimpers.

            Well, what other answer did you expect?

            Tristen whines that she doesn’t feel well, and she’s bleeding from her vag right into her jeans. Well, I guess all of that alcohol really did its job, then.

            The scene suddenly switches back to the interrogation room, where Jeff is being questioned, and the blood in the van is brought up again. Jeff’s voice suddenly turned from boyish and stupid to low and dramatic, as if he were hosting some horror movie marathon on cable television. “Tristen… had a miscarriage.” For effect, he laughed maniacally. Not really, but you almost expected it.

            So they take Tristen to the hospital. The doctor asks why she’s so cold, and Stephen says “I dunno, we were just camping.” I’ve camped before, even in the summer. IT’S COLD, and as evidenced in the scenery in this film, with all of the falling leaves, it’s supposed to be autumn. It’s damn cold! Officer Redneck continues to interrogate Jeff, while giving the audience a good ol’ close-up shot of his grotesque face.

            Tristen is lying in bed at the hospital and sees some images of people getting stabbed and strangled and, yeah, the same shit that it’s always cutting to. Stephen wants to know what happened while they were blacked out, so Jeff takes them to his “house” to edit the videos. He calls it his house but it’s a warehouse that he took residence in and which he apparently bought for a dollar before it was torn down. Of course it’s not realistic, but come on, none of this movie is. Before we can even get a glimpse of the inside of the warehouse, Officer Redneck is back to interrogating Jeff, spitting and grinding his teeth with every word he utters.

            When you open the front door of Jeff’s “house,” which he seems to never lock, you hear the sound of barking dogs. He said it was the burglar alarm, which made me question how stupid a burglar would have to be to start running once he opens the door and hears barking but sees no dogs. I also had to wonder why it was rigged to go off every single time you opened the door. It’s not set up where it’s activated when you leave the building. It literally goes off every time the door is opened. Not very effective.

            So Jeff tours everyone through his “house” and explains how he makes money. He takes stolen goods and sells them on Ebay. Oh, just like every other Ebay seller. I bet Ebay was really happy to have their company name mentioned and have it affiliated with a scam artist, as if they don’t have enough trouble with that. So he shows them his “merchandise” that he sells at his WiTCH STORE, most of which consist of a bunch of sticks and twigs, which he confirms he just picked up on his own. He also says his hottest item is a bag of a handful of dirt. Well, this is America, a nation of morons who blow their money on ridiculous shit. Of course, he claims that its dirt from the ruins of Rustin Parr’s house, but he could just be saying that. It doesn’t make it true. If it’s a “hot item,” he might eventually run out of dirt to scoop and have to pick it up somewhere else.

            Erica quickly sounds her discontent to Jeff about the way he does business. At first, I thought she was for once talking about some other important human issue aside from “Smearing the Wiccas” and “Wiccan tradition,” and I thought maybe she was going to argue something such as the state of the economy and why it’s falling, why people are greedy, and how the country is falling to its knees due to its debts, but no. She doesn’t give a shit about that. She immediately goes straight to Wicca and how Jeff is defiling it by capitalizing off of fear and lies, because Jeff totally cares about Wiccan tradition enough to shut down his business. I mean, come on, I don’t bring up my beliefs on gay rights in every single conversation. Not only does she try to tell him it’s unfair to “exploit her culture,” but she says it in the sluttiest voice possible, while posing sensually, exposing her belly to Jeff’s camera.

            So Jeff finally stops thinking about himself after Stephen reminds him that his girlfriend needs to lie down because she just miscarried a fucking baby, but at least he politely gives up the bedroom for them. As Kim walks past she tells Jeff “They should never have let you out. You’re a long way from sane.” Why the fuck did she just say that to him?! I don’t care if she was trying to make herself look “psychic” because she wasn’t “supposed to know Jeff was in the hospital,” but seriously, what a cunt thing to say, even if that is the case. He just gave up his bedroom to those people knowing they’ve had a hard and long day, and Kim calls him insane. What a stupid bitch. I think you’re supposed to think Jeff looks shocked in this scene that she knew he was in the hospital, but I think it was just that he was appalled at the bitter rudeness.

            Tristen mentions to Stephen the weird vision of a shambling, drowned little girl she saw in the hospital. She says her name is Eileen Treacle, I guess because she read it in a book. I would have thought it was Samara, but I guess if you read it in a book… Erica, Jeff and Kim are watching the tapes to see if they catch any evidence, and Erica drolly comments sarcastically in the most teenagery voice imaginable: “This is sooooooo intense.” Kim thankfully tells her to chill out and that they only watched half of one single tape. I’d say Kim scores a point for that, but I still can’t forgive her for that “long way from sane” remark. Tristen cries as she apologizes to Stephen for losing the baby, knowing he wanted it, but she didn’t. Well, maybe I’m just being cynical, here, but you really could have told him sooner than before it died.

            Back to the snarky bitches watching tapes, Erica suddenly notices after about an hour or two that the tree from the Parr ruins (the one that people built a house around) is gone from the video. Jeff immediately takes this opportunity to defend his sanity and says “I told you there was something up with that tree.” Okay, Jeff, chill. So they try to look from another angle, but as Kim grabs a second tape, Jeff notices a blistering rash on Kim’s shoulder that looks like it came from poison ivy, but he ogles it like it’s made of gold. Stephen, who had to have only heard the conversation about it partially, walks into the room and asks if it hurts. I have no idea how he knew what they were discussing, but maybe he’s the psychic one. Also, for someone who is telepathic, shouldn’t Kim know where the rash came from? I guess she only knows “some things.” In other words, she knows whenever it’s convenient for the story.

            As they’re watching the tape, something flashes before the camera. They rewind it and freeze it on the image. From a distance, it just looks like a starfish in sand. Like, I seriously thought that’s what it was. I had to pause it on the image to see that it was in fact five bodies strewn out on the ground in the form of a pentagram. Stephen mentions Coffin Rock, and tells them the story about how men’s bodies were gutted and laid out in that same manner in 1886.

            “Great American pastime- blame it on a witch!” Erica snootily retorts. Could you please, seriously, shut the fuck up? Does every word out of your mouth have to relate to how great witches are? It’s like if someone Jewish heard the story of Jesus on the cross, and Jews were never mentioned, and he suddenly lashed out “Great Christian pastime! Blame it on the Jews!” Even though they didn’t do that. You don’t have to paint this picture of yourself that you have this unhinged stigma attached to anyone who isn’t a Wiccan. It is so unbearably annoying. Well, thankfully, the look of agitation on Stephen’s face after this was said was pretty priceless.

            Tristen calls Stephen upstairs, twice, so he goes up to the bedroom. Once he enters, however, Tristen is asleep. He hears the sound of a looping sound byte of kids crying, so he opens the barking door and sees the shambling wet girl, who just looks ridiculous, even as she twitches. She tells him “You brought it back with you.” Brought what back? The booze and dope? Yeah of course they did, they couldn’t leave that shit behind!

            “What was that?” Tristen asks Stephen as he returns.

            “It was just that stupid dog alarm,” Stephen explains. Well, at least he’s somewhat rational, enough to know how stupid that alarm is. Tristen tells him that she heard crying, and he looks at her with surprise, since he also heard it. This doesn’t mean that Stephen is sane, it just means that Tristen is also crazy. She tells him that she thought she was having a horrible nightmare of… children looking up her skirt. Wait, did I misunderstand her, or did she really say that?

         ANNA

                    Little boys. Looking up my skirt

                    as I danced. Giggling.

Okay, so that is what she said. Well, sort of, the script is like an entirely different movie. I know screenplays get changed a lot when filming, but holy hell. So anyways, I’m not going to argue that whether or not little boys looking up your skirt while you dance is, in fact, a horrible nightmare, but she’s convinced that something is definitely wrong with her because of it. I don’t know, lady, I have worse dreams than that, and I don’t wake up thinking “what’s wrong with me?” Stephen tells her there is a rational explanation for all that is happening to them. I agree. It’s called drugs.

            Speaking of drugs, this movie requires them in order to watch it. I’m convinced that only the stoniest of stoners can understand the plot of this heap of shit. Stephen tries to convince Tristen to leave with him, and she stops him because she feels that she needs to understand what’s happening. Stephen tells her she can understand it on the plane ride home. They get on a plane. That’s when a goblin on the plane’s wing starts tearing into the hull and terrorizing a schizophrenic insomniac. The end.

            Woops, sorry. Mistook this for something worth watching.

            Okay, so they don’t get on a plane. Stephen aggressively forces some pills onto Tristen to get her to sleep. While it cuts away from him yelling at her to take them, we don’t get to see an awesome scene of her jamming them down her throat, which is a shame, because it would have been fun. Then it cuts to Stephen who is suddenly in an interrogation room getting questioned by a completely different cop, who appears unfazed by Stephen’s ridiculous whimpering. He sounds like a fucking six year-old. “Bwwwaaah eeeiit was an acfident… I sweeer to Chwist it waf an acfident!”

            So Jeff and Slut (Erica) are watching the tapes some more, and they flicker for half a millisecond, and they both notice it. I mean, Jeff is actually paying attention, drinking coffee and focusing on the tape, but Erica is just sitting there, probably thinking about how she can next accuse someone of Wicca rape. But, somehow, she notices it, too. There’s a ghostly image of someone naked twirling around a tree. Oh, things are getting interesting? Well, not quite, but it’s the closest it’ll come to such. The time code jumps around from one a.m. to three a.m. Erica asks how that can happen in the middle of the footage. Clearly she’s never spent time around a VCR. When Jeff slows the image down, he notices that it’s a naked woman, and he’s immediately enticed. Well, you know he doesn’t get out much. He spends his free time building stick figures.

            Erica asks what a naked woman is doing swinging around a tree. Well, isn’t that obvious? She’s probably an Earth Child. The two women hanging around Jeff fulfill their roles as worthless cunts as Kim abruptly tells them that she needs alcohol, and Jeff must be frustrated beyond belief because he looks at Erica and says, simply, “Caffeine.” Erica continues to sit there staring, and Jeff repeats himself. Erica doesn’t go away without making some smart-ass comment about servitude. She also probably said something like “You wouldn’t make a non-Wiccan get coffee for you.”

            She grumbles as she goes through the fridge, or cupboard, or whatever it is, saying that the coffee is stale and there’s no beer, and the only food is leftover fried chicken. Look, bitch, you’re not staying in the Plaza Hotel, here. You’re in the boonies, quit moaning. She seems to be complaining about all of this to Stephen, hoping that he’s paying attention to her, but when it’s obvious that he isn’t, she prods at the thoughts occupying his mind. He tells her that he and Tristen are departing when morning comes, and Erica seems almost hurt by it, probably because she never got to teach Stephen about Wiccan tradition.

            Stephen says that this “whole thing has really fucked Tristen up.” He’s clenching his fists as he’s saying this, which makes me think that what he’s really trying to say is “I really fucked her up.” Erica sluttily moves around the table Stephen is sitting at, and in her usual “I know everything because I’m a better than everyone” voice, she says “Well, how come it’s you that looks like he’s having a breakdown?” He slams his hands down on the table in aggravation and snarls “LOOK, I’M A LITTLE TENSE, ALL RIGHT?!” I know that perhaps we’re supposed to believe that it’s Stephen being a dick, but I loved that he yelled at her. Why does she have to act like some elite know-it-all bitch at all times? Everything that escapes her mouth froths with sarcasm and accusation.

            Erica apologizes in a very sensual voice and begins toying with her hair as she inches closer to Stephen with a seductive look on her face. Stephen anxiously explains he’s a bit unhinged, so Erica begins to take advantage of his moment of weakness by touching his shoulders and massaging them. Is she one of those women that are attracted to boorish aggressiveness or something?

            Then the most ridiculous scene in movie history happens. Erica and Stephen start making out on the table. Erica rips Stephen’s shirt open to reveal some red drawings of witchcraft symbols, and then Erica rakes her apparent Jaguar claws down Stephen’s gut and rips him open. When I first saw that, I could only think one thing. That. Was. Retarded.

            They snap out of their dreamlike state and they’re sitting across from each other at the table. Unfortunately, Stephen is still alive.

            Kim calls the two of them upstairs to tell them they got a better angle on the naked chick in the video. Stephen, having forgetting all about his waking nightmare, opens with “What naked chick?!” So Jeff slows the video down enough to show the woman’s face. It’s Erica. Oh, big fucking surprise, Erica is naked dancing around with nature. Erica is frightened by it, and claims to have no idea what it means. Understandably, however, the remaining members of The Blair Witch HUNT stare her down in an untrustworthy fashion. Erica storms off when none of them believe her, so Kim decides to go on a beer run.

            As Kim is leaving, Erica is chanting around some candles. What else is she good for? She shows Kim the scars on her body, the marks of the pagan alphabet, which she claims means they’ve been touched by a witch, and they brought something back with them. She cries like a baby as Kim goes to get her beer.

            Kim arrives at the corner hillbilly shop and three guys hanging out there doing absolutely nothing chime in together to cat call her and insult her at the same time. Again, I have no idea what the hell they were doing there before she arrived. She enters the shop after making her eyerollingly stupid remarks at them, like when one of them says “Hey, Elvira, I’ve got something you can suck the blood out of.” She tells him to whip it out. You can almost hear the guy’s brain short circuit. Like, was that supposed to be a verbal strike back or a proposition?

            Inside, some fat old lady with an entire cart full of canned deviled ham slams into Kim and calls her a witch. I’m sure her husband says the same thing to her every night. Kim sets her beer on the counter and awaits help from the cashier, who smacks on a piece of gum and doesn’t react. Kim tells her to ring up the goods already, or she’s calling the manager, but the cashier states that she is the manager. Instead of just throwing a wad of cash at her and taking her booze, she decides to get confrontational and combative. After insulting the woman and getting inches from her face, she starts packing her beer in a bag before paying for it. The woman, who was filing her nails instead of ringing her up, turns on the security camera. I don’t know why it was off beforehand, but whatever. The woman tries to stop her from leaving, but Kim grabs her by the throat and threatens her. She throws money at her and leaves, seeing the young men have thankfully left from their camp in front of the store.

            Erica is annoying. God, I can’t stand her.

            Kim sees some children standing in the road as she’s driving and crashes into a tree. Jeez, she hadn’t even cracked open the beer yet, and she already drives like a drunk. It’s obvious the kids aren’t really there, anyway. Okay, it’s obvious to the audience. When Kim gets back, she finds the woman from the store’s nail file in her bag, covered in blood, then she tries to tell Jeff that she fucked up his fender to avoid hitting some kids. It didn’t look fucked up to me, it looked fine. Maybe my idea of fucked up is “completely irreparable.” Yeah, then a cheap scare happens. Next.

            The next day, Erica plans to drive Tristen and Stephen to the airport. She goes to get the keys from Jeff, but then she disappears without a trace. But then the others realize there isn’t a van to drive anymore. The vehicle has been completely totaled. Now THAT is “fucked up.” Tristen tells everyone some shit about kids dipping their hands in blood and putting handprints on your body, and Jeff has the marks she’s speaking of. So, did Jeff score with some dead kids?

            They begin to search for Erica, but there’s no sign of her anywhere. I have no idea why Jeff looks in the closet. Is this a game of hide n’ seek? Why are they looking for her anyway? This is blessing in disguise! Who the hell wanted to listen to her stupid chanting and Wicca bullshit? Suddenly, the find Erica’s clothes, but no Erica inside of them. Well, time to go look at all the nearest trees, she could be swinging around them naked again.

            What the hell… it suddenly cuts to Kim handcuffed to a desk in an interrogation room, then switches back to the actual film. Look, I’m getting fucking dizzy, here. Hire a new editor for the love of FUCK.

            Jeff accuses Kim and Erica of being bitches (correct) and playing a prank on the guys trying to freak them out (incorrect). Kim denies it, so they press on with more questions. Jeff asks a perfectly reasonable question: “Can’t you see her in your ‘mind’s eye?’” Yeah. Isn’t Kim supposed to be psychic? She hasn’t done a single damn psychic thing in this whole movie. So they… call Erica’s parents… seriously? First of all, how did they get the number? Second, what good is it going to do to call them? How much of this particular situation are you going to explain to them. “Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Stupid-Bitch? We got really hammered and ran around naked in the woods and your daughter was performing some witchcraft and she’s gone missing… b-but we still have her clothes! …Hello?”

            The secretary or whatever on the phone says that the parents they were trying to reach never had any children. They immediately think Erica lied to them instead of thinking that the secretary lied. Again, what amazing logic.

            Kim tries to get a rational explanation, and Stephen goes on another of his information superhighway journeys, and tells them that it’s probably group hysteria. Jeff calls it bullshit, and Stephen validates his beliefs with the solidity of this argument: “It’s real… DUDE.” Then they start arguing about school. I… what? Oh, then they start looking at the tape again.

            Jeff sees a very short clip of a pair of hands on the video smashing up some cameras, so he suddenly thinks he knows who did it. So sheriff Fat-Fuck calls Jeff, and Jeff actually answers with the greeting “Fuck off, no one’s home.” Why did he bother answering? So the Sheriff tells him to turn on the television to see the news. Luckily, it’s right on the station they need, like in all movies. So they found out the tour group of foreigners are dead and their bodies were arranged in a pentagram shape. Come on, even retards know what’s happening in this movie. And whoever plays the sheriff is one of the worst actors of all time. “Bodehs were laid out in da shape of a PEN-NA-GRAM!” God, he’s awful. “You’d better just SIT! TIGHT!”

            Suddenly a paper Mache owl bursts through the window and dies. I’m not making this shit up.

            Jeff decides that the best course of action is to threaten everyone, telling them they aren’t leaving him alone there to take the fall for everything. Even though this is his tour and his responsibility? So, they start smoking pot together to get some clear heads and really start thinking straight. Jeff is adamant on blaming Erica. Kim disagrees with him, so Jeff starts yelling, then Kim starts yelling. Hey, isn’t weed supposed to chill you out?

            Now Kim is back in the interrogation room… I’m getting really sick of these “scene swaps.” They’re not effective. They make me feel nauseous. They aren’t even important. They tell you what you already know.

            Jeff goes to ask Kim why she’s so mad at him, and he asks this in a perfectly calm voice, but as he approaches her, she’s biting a chunk out of the dead owl. Based on what you’ve probably read in this review so far, this was just another “hallucination” and cheap “omgscare.” And it wasn’t even scary, since it was incredibly fake-looking, so it was more like “omglowbudgetscare.” After Jeff realizes that Kim is really eating the leftover fried chicken that no one else would touch in fear of getting Malaria, she shakes her head at him saying “Calm down! I’m not that pissed!” Even after his brief hallucination, he seems pretty calm, so I don’t know what she’s referring to.

            So Tristen sees Erica outside doing exactly what everyone thought she’d be doing… and no, not huddling around candles and whispering shit. That other thing she does. Strip down half naked and dance around trees. Stephen goes out to get her, asking her what happened to her, but then she spouts some cryptic shit that we’re supposed to go “oooo” at, but instead we’re going more like “groooooan, is this over yet?” So for some reason Stephen screams “ERICA!!” which I guess shook the ground enough for the metal bridge/walkway beneath his feet to give way and snap, almost sending him to his death! Well… not his death. He probably would have just broken his leg. Or… maybe he might have gotten badly bruised.

            Tristen… is… what the hell is she doing? She’s pretending to be a spinning top I guess, on top of Jeff’s bed, murmuring stuff, I don’t know. This movie sucks. Stephen tries to calm her but she keeps ranting. God, shut up. She basically re-tells the story of how the Blair Witch died. Like, god, I don’t care. If you do, watch this heap of shit. I’m not typing it.

            Kim decides the hospital needs to be called for Tristen, so she searches for a phone book in Jeff’s drawer, and finds some file folders, all of which contain photographs and information on each of the people in the whole group. They probably say something like this: Stephen is a drunken douche bag know-it-all who would rather tell people what to do than figure out what’s going on. Kim likes to alienate everyone who is male. Erica is a stupid bitch. Tristen is fucking nuts. Jeff snorts piss.

            Jeff continues to claim that he had no idea where the profiles came from. Stephen decides to testosterone it up and push Jeff around some because that might solve a problem or two.

            Interrogation room scene number 6,110: Stephen looks at his profile as a cop slaps it down in front of him. Please, god, stop with the scene switching.

            Sheriff McBadActor calls Jeff again and tells him to come outside. Puzzled, they wonder how he could be outside if the bridge is gone. Note: there is a yard beyond the bridge that you can park in. Despite that, they still look at the camera pointing outside, and see that the bridge that Stephen’s fat ass broke earlier has somehow repositioned itself. So Jeff goes to the front door to check, despite there being no one outside on the video feed, but we already know these guys aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer.

            The sheriff continues to pound relentlessly on the door because he figures if he continues, Jeff will eventually say “Okay, come on in.” As he keeps pounding on the door, he keeps spitting out random shit in that hillbilly voice, like “DAG BLAGAT, YOUNGSTERS, YOU GONNA GIT IT IN DA BUD!” At this point, you really want Jeff to open the “Got-demn-door” as the sheriff refers to it, just to get him to shut up. So Jeff finally does open the door, and… and…

            So Jeff grabs an enormous shotgun from his closet that I guess no one else knew about and returns to the door to pump those mutts full ‘o lead, I guess. Of course, once he opens the door, the dogs are gone. Yeah… who didn’t see that coming? Jeff goes to put the gun back in the closet, but there he sees Erica standing inside facing the corner. He turns her around and her eyes are all white, but she otherwise looks alive. I mean, she’s standing there stiffly, like her body is made of ice. It breaks all laws of physics. But I guess she’s supposed to be dead… I don’t know, this whole movie is just guesswork. Stephen and Kim happened to also see Erica’s body, so now they’re feeling a tad… stressed.

            Jeff uses his pothead logic in trying to find anyone guilty but himself. He says Stephen was the last one to see her alive. So now they get into another one of their “Who has the bigger dick” arguments. Haven’t I seen enough of these? So they just go around blaming each other, blah blah blah. Tristen comes up to see them and says some crazy shit about “backwards,” so Kim translates this into “we need to run the tapes backwards. It might help us figure out what happened to Erica.” Whoa, whoa, movie, slow down. You lost me.

            You know what else should go backwards? Time. That way I can reverse the effects this movie has had on me, and go back to a time when I’ve never seen it.

            “This makes no sense!” Jeff argues. Right from the horse’s mouth.

            So Jeff plays the tapes backwards. It doesn’t work, so Stephen has this bright idea of using the keystroke commands backwards. WHAT!?!?!? So, somehow THAT works. Don’t fucking ask. So now they finally see the footage they’ve been missing out on. They’re taking their clothes off and getting drunk, naked, and more drunk. And it looks like Tristen is waving a long stick around… but other than that, it just looks like a normal party. They fuck, they tear shit up, and they break shit. THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET DRUNK.

            So, yeah, they discover that it was them all along that broke the cameras and other equipment, and that Tristen is apparently the bag guy who gave them knives and told them to kill the other tour group. Yawn. Why Tristen was making out with an owl, though, I’m not sure.

            So they all grab Tristen and surround her and question her, and try to force her to admit she’s the cause of it all. Tristen then starts talking evil nonsense and telling them they’re all going to die. “SHE’S THE WITCH, MAN!” Jeff says. Uh, yeah, thanks Jeff, we’re on it. Tristen slaps Stephen and tells him Tristen is gone. She ties a noose around her own neck and Stephen tries to stop her, but she pushes him away. Jeff, reverting back to eighth grade whispers “Witch bitch,” because hehehehe it rhymes. Tristen starts insulting Stephen and calling him a pansy, pussy bitch, so he pushes her. I expected nothing else from Stephen. So Tristen’s dead. I mean, pointless plot point is dead.

            The Blair Witch HUNT gets arrested. Yaaaaaay!

            So now, the interrogations actually mean something. The rest of the interrogations in the film, completely pointless. The only time they matter is now, at this point in the film. As each character gets interrogated, it’s revealed that all of them, except for Tristen, were corrupted, and they all killed someone. All of the videos, even the one Jeff was making of Tristen going crazy in front of them, showed they were murderers. The security camera in the store showed Kim actually killed the cashier/manager. Jeff actually killed Erica, and I guess he raped her first or something, because he’s naked as he’s hiding her body. Each of them are distraught finding this out, saying “I didn’t do that! That’s not me!” Tristen was actually innocent and was never possessed by a witch, and Stephen was acting completely differently in the video than what we saw earlier, and he pushed Tristen to her death mostly because he hated her face. I don’t blame him.

            Sigh, yawn. THANK GOD IT’S OVER.

            Now I get to give it my rating.

            Out of a possible score of ten, I give this film a negative 8. Everything about it was horrible. Cast, lines, acting, music, nudity, all of it. It was garbage. There should have been more orgies.

            I’m tired of writing now, so get out of my face.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Deploy Boring Potato Chip Decoy Bag!

      If you watch television, unlike myself, you probably see dumb fucking shit like this every day. I, as I previously stated, don't watch television, so of course, whenever I'm at a home where a television is on and shows are playing, I'm more curious of what's happening on that big screen that ISN'T my computer monitor, for once in my freaking lifeless life.
      I have a high tolerance for commercials and ads. I browse the internet for at least 1000 hours a day. Ads happen. They're usually the same mundane shit over and over: YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT THIS AWESOME PHONE, OH MY GOD! IF YOU DON'T GET IT, YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY WILL HATE YOU! That's how they work, right? Most of the time, you know what an ad is going to be about before you even see it, depending on the product in the commercial. A piece of technological hardware? Make it look flashy and cool and way more interesting and functional than it really is! Toilet paper? Make it look like one sheet could wipe a thousand filthy asses! A cleaning product? Dress up some dingbat housewive and make her reflect on the "honeydew melon scent" of her kitchen which she spends all of her time in while making some ridiculous "mom" joke about how her husband and kids are big babies who don't know how to housewife it up and clean up after their dirty selves!
      Yeah, they're retarded. That's why we usually just ignore them and roll our eyes, or change the channel, only to land on more of the stupid things. They're supposed to be retarded. That's the whole point. They want you to literally become frustrated enough so that the image of their product is burned into your mind. It's a manipulative tactic that works on most of the couch vegetables that spend the majority of their lives watching reality TV.
      But... I saw a commercial today that I just couldn't wrap my brain around. It was probably the stupidest commercial I have ever seen, at least since the old Hotels.com ads that plagued cable television, which always ended with some corny motherfucker saying "OF COURSE! HOTELS.COM!" Today, I saw a commercial for Chex Mix. Everyone on the freaking planet already knows what Chex Mix is. The shit is everywhere. Why are they making ads for it? Why are they spending the money to make ads for plain, bland, regular Chex Mix? Did they add something to it? More rye chips, maybe? No, they fucking didn't. It's just the same old Chex Mix.
      I don't necessarily have anything against Chex Mix. I have something against this ridiculous commercial, the one they didn't even need to make. I guess maybe Doritos has been cashing in the stocks more than old Chexy has, and I don't know about it. That's understandable. Doritos are good fucking chips, and a hell of a lot better than Chex Mix. But this commercial was aiming to force you to disagree.
      The plot: Cool, sleek, hipster young guy is at some sort of young party with young people. I would say a frat party, but no one looked as if they were drinking. No, they weren't focused at all on alcohol. Do you know what they were focused on? The guy at the party carrying around a bag of Chex Mix. Each of these laughing, hipster douchebags dogpiled the main character, reaching into his bag of Chex Mix like a pack of greedy, ravenous hogs, while the young man's face contorted into an expression of dismal dejection, probably wondering what the fuck everyone's problem was. How often can you say that while at a group gathering, you carried around your own personal snack and munched on it from time to time, while everyone you passed reached into the bag you were carrying and stole bits of it, smirking like pricks. Well I can tell you with complete honesty, that's NEVER happened to me. Of course, I've never been to many parties, but I have been in a place where lots of people were. And I'm pretty sure people didn't try to steal my goddamn beer or food out of my hand!!
      The product spotlight: This partygoer's resolution to people stealing his food isn't to say "What the fuck is your problem?" It's to stand there looking hurt, as if he was being bullied in fifth grade and receiving a multitude of massive wedgies. But wait! Some game show host superhero holding a microphone enters the scene! He also has the ability to stop time, egads! As the nameless hero appears onscreen to save this random dude's snack, he presents what he calls the "Boring Potato Chip Decoy Bag" to the victim, and advises that he just stuff his Chex Mix bag into it so that the apparent chimpanzees in the room would lose several brain cells and forget all about the Chex Mix bag. The "Boring Potato Chip Decoy Bag" literally looks like a re-drawn Doritos bag, only with less color and the word "BORING" painted at the top. Yes, it actually says the word "BORING." The grateful young man gleefully begins toting around his "BORING" bag, and suddenly all of the frat-but-not-so-frat boys turn away from him and his utterly depressing "BORING" bag.
 He proudly grins, apparently pleased that he can now eat his TOTALLY NOT BORING Chex Mix in peace.
       The reality: I don't need to repeat that people aren't going to be stealing food and drink from you left and right if you go to a party with a snack bag. But what I do need to address is how INCREDIBLY focused these people seemed to be on the bag of Chex Mix, like it was an Aztec artifact found in some catacombs, and when the bag said "BORING" they all seemed uninterested. This commercial didn't say anything interesting about Chex Mix at all. All it did was say other chips *cough cough* Doritos *cough cough* were "BORING." That doesn't even mean they were saying that Chex Mix was "good." It just means they're saying other chips are MORE boring than Chex Mix. Now, you might argue that they used the "party people" greedily reaching for the snack to address that it was just, like, so awesome, that people were blinded with unreasonable raging hunger and they forget how manners work, but that doesn't mean Chex Mix is good, either. What this commercial seemed mostly to be saying, in realistic terms, was that people are too stupid to ask about a potato chips bag that says "BORING" on it. THAT'S ALL. It literally treated people as if they were brainless lab monkeys, and they only reacted on stimuli. Well, that's not to say that people aren't like that, because they most definitely are. But come on, seriously? They avoid the potato chips bag because it says "BORING" on it? Wouldn't any other human being be MORE interested in that? I certainly would. I would think it was an ironic joke or prank, or better yet, a front to hide something even better (Chex Mix isn't better).
      I know it's pointless to rag on commercials. They're supposed to treat people like morons, because morons are the ones who buy their product after seeing an ad like that. They are designed to portray the most simple of messages: BUY BUY BUY OUR PRODUCT. Don't buy that "boring" OTHER product. BUY BUY BUY OUR PRODUCT! DO IT NOW! DO IT! DOOOOOO IIIIIIIIT!!!! They're supposed to be hurling this into your face and forcing you to think inside the box, or more accurately the bag. But that's just my problem with them. People are always going to decide whether or not they want your stupid product, no matter how much you try to cram your stupid chips down their throat. They're still going to buy Doritos if they like them more. You can't influence an already set opinion on something. But maybe.... just maybe... there's that fraction of people they CAN affect. And I sympathize with them.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Movie Review - Hausu

A lot of humorous movie reviews start off with a "hilarious" bitchfest of how stupid/ridiculous/inane said movie was, usually with a grossly exaggerated description of the adverse physical effects watching the movie made the reviewer suffer. If the reviewer thinks he's particularly trendy, he may channel Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons and bust out a "Worst. Movie. Ever." reference. The fact that that technique is sadly overused is a real tragedy, because I could sure fucking use it right now. I realize that explaining that I’m not using a particular technique is a kind of meta, pretentious, insufferable way of using it, and I sympathize with your annoyance right now, but, well, blow me. I’ve had to watch Hausu, twice, and you haven’t. I’m not in the healthiest state of mind right now.

Perhaps you have read Franz Kafka and seen The Matrix and Inception. Perhaps you believe you are a seasoned veteran of having your mind totally blown. Perhaps you are an idiot. Released in 1977, the movie purports to answer the question “What happens when several characters that I suspect are insane Japanese versions of American stereotypes spend a night in a haunted house inhabited entirely by the ghosts of schizophrenics?”, but actually answers the question “What has Japan been planning for the past thirty years to get revenge on the United States for World War II?” This movie was not made by a director. This movie is the product of scientists using extremely advanced techniques and staggeringly complicated algorithms to cram 1500% insanity into the length of time of one single movie. In lieu of reasoned argument supporting this view, I’ll simply point out that the “director” (scientist in charge of the project), Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, happened to be born in a little town in Japan called “Hiroshima.”


“HAHAHA! HAMBURGER ROUNDEYES WILL PAY FOR SPEEDY END TO PACIFIC WAR!”



You don’t believe me? You, who grew up on Back To The Future, Star Wars and Family Matters? And now you dare to experience Hausu? You are not prepared. But I was foolish enough to promise Keisha that I’d review the next movie we watched, and as luck would have it, that was Hausu. Okay, so let’s settle in, surely I can find some funny in this thing.

The movie opens with Japanese text over a kaleidoscope of colorful rays, and campy 70s music plays, which lulled me into a false sense of security – maybe it’s some kind of Japanese Starsky and Hutch where they solve the mystery of who’s been breaking into all the schoolgirl used-panty vending machines in the city. A few opening graphics which display the words “A” “MOVIE” “HOUSE” one at a time scroll by. The O in HOUSE proceeds to grow teeth, lips, and an eyeball in the center, eats its own eye, then casually dribbles a hand out of the mouth while a man sonorously intones “HAU…su”


“I don’t know, man, are you sure about this? We could just check out Weekend at Bernie’s, or something that won’t end up with a dick lodged three inches inside of me.”

Duly noted, brain.



Two incredibly green Japanese girls are now in a room with a slow version of “We’ll Meet Again” playing, which seems to be the Hausu theme, so that’s how I’ll refer to it. One is surrounded by candles and lab equipment, and the other is taking pictures. They both seem happy, but it’s that creepy kind of Japanese happy where everything’s fine one minute, but you’re worried any second one or both of them will start gushing blood out of their eyes without changing their facial expression or even acknowledging it. After the picture taking, they turn the lights back on and one of them excitedly says “We need to explain the backstory to the audience!” No, wait, I mean “’I’m so jealous of you, Angel, going to your dad’s villa” “But you’re going on a school trip with everyone, Fantasy” (yes, “Angel” and “Fantasy” The names only get worse from here, somehow) They gibber in that overenthusiastic Japanese schoolgirl way about summer, and then, again excitedly (you know what, just assume everything one of the characters does is done excitedly, that way I don’t have to keep typing it. I hate that word anyway) congratulate a teacher, who looks really uncomfortable, about her upcoming marriage, saying they bet she’s “head over heels in love” despite her noting sadly that it’s an arranged marriage, and telling them to get to class so she can sit quietly and ponder her life and how it came to this alone. The girls skip away with creepily large smiles on their faces. Maybe it’s just that it’s a different culture, but to me, that’s like bouncing up to one of my friends and saying with a huge grin, “Hey man, I heard your sister was in a car accident! That’s so neat! Do you think she’ll ever be able to walk again?” Well, anyway, moving on.

Then there’s some kind of forest-fade (leaves grow all over the screen, or…something) to Angel going home and talking to her dad, who scoops up his 17? year old daughter in his arms like a bride and talks to her…again, different culture, I guess. Her dad introduces her to his new fiancé, who comes in the room to violin music and a heavy breeze, whom Angel immediately hates and storms out of the room. She goes to her room and stares wistfully at a picture of her mother. Oddly, I felt comforted by this scene, since a kid hating their parent’s new significant other is something a Westerner can actually relate to. It will be the first and last instance of me feeling this way during the movie. She looks through a collection of old photos of her family while the Hausu theme plays and begins scribbling over her father’s face in them while saying “I hate you now, Daddy” She talks sadly about her mother and missing her while the slow music plays, and suddenly – smash cut to half a dozen Japanese schoolgirls dancing around a fountain while the music changes to what sounds like a rejected Buddy Holly track. Okay, things are about to get cra…Japanese again, aren’t they?
The characters discuss more things we already know, and we’re introduced to “Melody” who plays instruments, “Kung-Fu” who has good reflexes or something, “Prof” the token smart girl with glasses who’s reading a book, “Mac” a “fat” girl who eats a lot (by fat I mean she’s about 120lbs compared to 90-100 for the rest of the girls) and “Sweetie” who is a soulless horror. I’m sorry, I mean Japanese schoolgirl. Okay, so, “Angel” “Fantasy” “Melody” “Kung-Fu” “Prof” “Mac” and “Sweetie” We’re in for a wild ride, folks. I should note that to all appearances, these are their real names, not nicknames – not once in the movie was there any indication any of them had any other names. They’re always referred to that way, whether laughing with friends or when a cartoon abomination of a cat is attempting to murder them all with laughably bad special effects and all dialogue is shrilly screamed. But now I’m getting ahead of myself. Moving on. Angel joins them and bitches about her dad, then a guy who looks like a skeevy 40-year old Japanese bus driver pulls up and talks to them. This must be the Mr. Togo they’re all talking about having the hots for, despite the fact that in America, you could take one look at this guy and just KNOW as soon as all the kids were off the bus, he went around and sniffed all the seats. While they all laugh and talk, (and the 50s era American rock music never lets up during this whole scene) the screen suddenly goes black except for a little circle around Angel looking depressed and pissed. Some directors (not to Michael Bay any names) have only a tenuous grasp on the concept of subtlety, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a movie grab me by the throat and carefully explain a concept to me until I croak out that I get it and please let me go. Once again, I’m going at a glacial pace here, I know, and I feel bad, but, just…folks…this movie. I’m sorry.


Another cut to Angel writing to her aunt asking if she can stay with her, I guess to remember the old times. Around here a fat white cat Angel calls “Snowy” makes an appearance. Remember that, there’s a test later.
Angel’s aunt responds, sure, come and visit. There’s another boring scene between Angel’s dad and his fiancé that has pretty much nothing to do with anything. After that, a rejected Beatles upbeat track plays while Mr. Togo is packing, gets tripped by Snowy, gets his ass stuck in a bucket, and gets hit by a car. He then calls the girls with the bucket still on his ass while a little kid drums on it in a visual that made my blood run cold, and explains he needs to get the injury treated and he can’t come with them right now. Well, who’ll surreptitiously grope us now? All the girls pile on a train. Snowy is on the train, and the movie does another black-screen-with-circle-around-the-cat, since Angel picking the cat up and talking to it wasn’t enough to let us know, yes, the cat is on the train. In Nobuhiko Obayashi’s defense, he is a terrible director. The girls talk about stupid shit on the train, piling around Snowy and talking about the cat as if they’ve never seen a goddamn cat before.

Angel talks about her aunt and the freaking Beatles music finally ends, to be replaced by the Hausu theme. As Angel talks about her mom growing up during WW2, stock footage plays and then an old-timey type movie about her mom and grandparents. Sure, it’s a flashback, whatev-wait, why are the characters commenting on things that are happening in the movie? “That’s my grandma. That’s my mom. Beautiful, isn’t she?” “Wow, you look just like her!” Did Angel pull out a 8mm projector or something to help tell her story? Did she have enough room to set it up on the train? Then the movie starts burning and breaking apart, and they comment on THAT. Then it repairs itself and stock war footage plays. Angel’s mom’s fiancé gets shot down in a fighter plane and looks mildly irritated that he seems to be going down in flames. His expression is the exact same as mine as when someone takes the last cup of coffee. Then very sped-up footage plays of a Japanese wedding, with no groom present, while the Wedding March plays aaaaaand smash cut to the atomic bomb going off on Hiroshima. Yeah, now we’re getting into it, aren’t we, Mr. Obayashi? Stanley Kubrick managed to keep people in the dark about his shadowy Illuminati connections for forty years, and you held out for twenty minutes. Angel says her aunt lives alone in the house now. Then the bus stops in the middle of fucking nowhere and the characters all get out – wait, they’re on a bus now? Yes, I just rewound the movie and they definitely got on a train. I guess they got on a bus sometime during Angel’s story. The characters look cheerily around the vast NOTHINGNESS and one says “Which way?!” “That way!” “Yeah!” HOW ON EARTH DO YOU KNOW THAT? THERE’S NOTHING AROUND FOR MILES. The girls start walking and Japanese text appears on screen, which the subtitles helpfully inform me say “RETURN TO COUNTRYSIDE AND GET MARRIED” Wow. I don’t know if I’m going to make it to the end of this. We’re then treated to picture-in-picture of all the characters’ faces with their names under them, just in case you didn’t know or to refresh you if your brain is already trying to do a complete wipe of anything to do with this movie.

They walk several miles through the forest, if the montage is any indication, while not stopping their laughing like ninnies for one second, then come upon a melon stand run by Japanese Jabba the Hutt, who points out the mansion they’re heading to, and they all skip gaily off while he puts a hat on a melon and laughs maniacally.
At the door they shout various things to try to get it to open; it does on their own and they all finally stop laughing. Snowy runs inside, and as the door opens, we see an elderly lady in a wheelchair, holding Snowy in her lap. Angel greets her aunt, who says “Well, well, seven pretty girls” in a tone that would certainly get her arrested if she was in earshot of any cop in the world. Auntie wastes no time laying a guilt trip on Angel, saying she’s been waiting for a visit for a long time, and consents to having a picture taken. But while Sweetie is trying to take the picture, a bad special effect makes Snowy’s eyes glow green! Surprised by the shittiness of the special effect, Sweetie lets the camera get jerked upward out of her hands by a technician with a piece of string, who then drops it on the ground and breaks it. The awkwardness is smoothed over by Mac, who presents Auntie with a melon the other girls accuse her of stealing from the shop, and say it “looks like her” Wow.
They go into the house and turn on the lights. Another shitty special effect makes the chandelier sparkle, and a ridiculous tune plays while a couple three-inch rhinestones peel off the chandelier and drop to the floor, somehow impaling a lizard. Kung-Fu inexplicably punches one into an old-timey phone while the girls scream. Snowy inspects the dead lizard, then we cut to the characters talking about the grand piano. Melody plays a bit of an upbeat tune while the other characters look around, which stops abruptly when someone pulls back a curtain to reveal…a nine dollar skeleton from Target! Stunned by the sheer cheapness of the producer, Angel screams in outrage, then all the characters inexplicably freeze while Auntie glibly informs them “This room used to be an examining room” and wheels into the room. Auntie says she’s usually very lonely, but now she “has so many lovely youngsters visiting me” while the girls all giggle and coo over her. Oooooooookay. The girls break up to perform various tasks. Kung-Fu kicks a closet door open and some rats fly out and land on the girls’ chests, which I’m assuming has to be a metaphor of some sort. Mac, Angel and Auntie go outside to deposit the watermelon in the well, since the fridge is broken, and Auntie comments “Mac, that’s a funny nickname” Angel explains “she’s always eating, so it’s short for the English word for stomach” That’s ridiculous, but okay, fine, I suppose it’s really no different than Westerners proudly sporting Japanese character tattoos which they think make them look mystical and mysterious which actually say “HALF CHICKEN, 3 DOLLAR, WHOLE CHICKEN, 5 DOLLAR” and far be it from me to engage in cruel mockery of any culture’s terminally mentally ill members. I thought it was short for Big Mac. That would have made more sense. Auntie smiles and says “Plump little Mac, you look good enough to eat” She is then asked “Why do you wear your glasses outdoors?” and responds “I’m frightened of the blinding sunlight” Well, discomfort, sure, but frightened? Of sunlight? Practically everything Auntie has said so far has been wistful or really creepy. Guess which one is going to be fleshed out the more fully as this movie progresses?

After dinner, Mac runs off to retrieve the watermelon while the girls play with Prof’s hair and clean up the dishes. Mac doesn’t return quickly and Fantasy goes to the well to check on her, noting she hasn’t pulled up the watermelon yet. When Fantasy pulls up the watermelon, she sees that it’s a waterlogged, insanely grinning head that I guess looked a little like Mac. It says “Faaaaantaaaaasy” as she screams and falls to her hands and knees. The head flies around in a manner that was frightening and menacing and certainly not a technician bobbing it up and down on a fishing pole. The head then latches itself onto Fantasy’s butt with its teeth and says “That tastes good!” Fantasy shrieks and runs inside as the head vomits blood and falls to the ground.
The girls gather around Fantasy as she repeats about a dozen times “A severed head, a severed head” and tells them it’s in the well. Auntie says she’ll go and see and stands up. One of the girls disinterestedly says “You can stand up?” Auntie casually responds “Having you girls around has given me energy” and all the girls seemingly go Oh! Okay! That’s cool! No big deal that the aunt just fucking stood up out of a fucking wheelchair! Hey, you know, *I* don’t even care, because if *I* was in this movie, I would have checked myself into a Motel 6 right around the time the girls decided it would be a fabulously brilliant idea to wander through the woods looking for a house they didn’t really know where was located. So *I* wouldn’t have even been around for this. None of the girls takes this rather obvious cue to say “Fuck all y’all, I’m outies” and removes themselves from an incredibly fucked up situation unfolding, however, so they frankly deserve whatever’s coming to them. They all go to the well.

From the well, the girls pull up a watermelon, and they eat it. Auntie winks at Fantasy as she eats, and opens her mouth twice to reveal an eyeball in her mouth looking around. Fantasy reacts mildly surprised, but I guess she figures, hey, after a severed head biting her butt and a crippled woman standing up out of a wheelchair, an eyeball peering out of a mouth? Pfft, that’s clown shoes.

The girls clean up again, and a few of the girls get very gently terrorized by some extremely minor disturbances. Kung-Fu is outside chopping wood, and after a moment she looks up and says “The cicadas have gotten so loud” Suddenly, Kung-Fu’s upbeat 80s theme music plays as cut pieces of wood fly into the air, wiggling like severed limbs and launching straight for her. She punches and kicks them all out of the air, then deadpans “How weird. Just my imagination!” Well, I guess keeping a positive attitude about your impending institutionalization is important.

Auntie dances into the kitchen where Fantasy is washing dishes, and glibly informs her she’ll soon see Mac again, then pirouettes inside the fridge. Fantasy drops the dishes in shock and stammers to Prof that Auntie jumped into the fridge, as Auntie sticks her head into the frame in the foreground while the girls argue and smiles at us. I’m not sure how to write about what happens next. There are five second clips strung together of Auntie dancing, dancing with the Target skeleton, eating a rubber gorilla arm, eating goldfish out of a bowl, and Snowy meowing in tune with the nonchalant elevator music that plays throughout this entire scene as he/she teleports on and off the piano stool. I watched that scene five times to write this one paragraph. Brain Cell Squadron Blue 732, you were the greatest heroes of all.


“I’ll drop kick a big ball of crazy right into your face out of nowhere, I don’t even care.”


Some more maudlin bullshit about Angel’s grandparents that as far as I could tell added nothing to the plot, although to be fair, saying that something added nothing to this movie's plot is a little like trying to add salt to the concept of human love. Melody plays the Hausu theme on the piano while, unseen by her, the Target skeleton slowly dances in the back of the room. While the music plays, Angel applies lipstick, and the mirror she’s looking at freezes an image of her smiling, then an image of her with fangs, then thunder sound effects play as the mirror breaks and blood starts to run down the shattered shards of the mirror. We then cut to the real Angel, and pieces of her face break off like glass, revealing a fire underneath, then her whole body and the mirror are like that, just…replaced with fire. She seems completely nonplussed by it. Keep in mind that, like many scenes in this movie that make you check your soda to see if it’s been spiked with LSD, the music is wholly inappropriate. Melody is still playing the slow, relaxing Hausu theme through all of this, and it’s impossible to convey through words how disorienting for the viewer this is.
Cut back to Melody, and the keys start to glow red (a really bad CGI red glow, I should note), and the cat stares at her, its eyes glowing green. Cut to Sweetie looking at a light, and in the background, the music starts to sound shitty. Melody begins hitting the wrong keys, starts screaming, and the girls run in to check on her. While this is happening, Sweetie is totally murdered by futons. Seriously. A bunch of futons and pillows buffer her and goose down flies all around her as she screams while fast paced and “scary” music plays. Fantasy, looking in the window at all this happening, screams in helpless jealousy that Sweetie is getting out of this shitheap and Fantasy didn’t take her chance to opt out of this movie when she could.

Cut back to Kung Fu and Prof talking to Melody, who says she “thought she’d been bitten by the piano” Fantasy bursts in, yelling “Sweetie! The futons….” then breaks down crying. The girls minus Melody run into the room, with feathers still flying everywhere, but they can’t find any trace of Sweetie. Suddenly 70s cop drama music starts playing (that is the only way I can think of to describe it) as Fantasy goes back to check on Melody, finding her in a closet (it was COMPLETELY unlit, tiny, and looks EXACTLY like my hallway closet, do not try to tell me that is a bathroom), who asks Fantasy to pass her some toilet paper, although in her defense, since the girls’ presence has apparently cured Auntie’s paraplegia, I doubt she’d mind them pinching a loaf in the closet too terribly much.


“We got you out of a fucking wheelchair. You shut the fuck up now.”



Kung-Fu and Prof are still sifting through the futons, bitching that Sweetie “didn’t have to vanish” as they find her apron and bra. Yeah, what a bitch. They also find the cat, and Melody announces “I found her panties” and sniffs them. Wait, what? Yes, I definitely saw that. You know, just in case you forgot that we’re definitely still in Japan.


Yes they do, Melody. Yes they do.



Fantasy says “The futons and bedding attacked her as if they were alive” and Prof replies “That doesn’t make sense.” Prof, I appreciate the effort, but I don’t know whether or not you’ve seen the last hour of this movie, because I have, and sense gave us all a three-finger salute and walked off shaking its head and muttering 4 seconds into the opening credits. Fantasy suddenly remembers Mac is still missing, and says they’re all going to disappear. Luckily for her, Prof has the absolutely perfect comfort for Fantasy’s woes – she reminds Fantasy that Mr. Togo will be here soon, and “he’s a man, he can help us. A knight on a white charger coming to save us damsels in distress” Fantasy’s eyes glaze over as heroic trumpet music plays and she imagines Mr. Togo riding up on a horse screaming “OH, PRINCESS FANTASY!” and she runs across a field to him yelling “I LOVE YOU!” and then “THE END” appears on screen. Hey, that was a totally fucked up way to end your movie, but whatever, I’ll take – oh, that was just for the movie in Fantasy’s head. WHY MUST YOU TEASE US, NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI?

The girls suddenly realize Angel is missing, and they go upstairs to find her. They find her wandering aimlessly with a blank expression. They go back downstairs and Kung-Fu chirps gaily about phoning the police station. Gee, you think? Your fat friend’s only been missing for about six-plus hours. Unfortunately for them, only very-distant yelling can be heard through the phone – they can’t make a call. Angel announces she’s going for the police, and leaves the house. Kung-Fu reminds everyone “There’s nothing to be scared of, Auntie’s here!” which is a little like saying “I know we’re trapped here in the mountains, but Alfred Packer is an experienced guide! I’m sure he’ll get us safely out of this!”

Shit then gets real as all the doors and windows in the house shut and lock themselves, with machine-gun sound effects for some reason, as the girls scream trying to get out, but fail.
Cut to Angel wandering in the woods humming a truly inane poem about dancing to the Hausu theme, and juggling balls of blue light, I guess to show the audience that no, Angel has lost it and there isn’t going to be any help coming from that direction. Then we cut to Mr. Togo in a big traffic jam, and despite his adept insulting of the perpetrators of this atrocity (“Bastard in the toy car! Get out of the fucking way!”) he is well and truly stuck. No help – er, I mean white knight on a stupid horse coming for Princess Fantasy – from that direction either.

Kung-Fu’s music plays and she tries to kick some of the wooden planks away from the door, but her music fails her and sputters out as her kicks have no effect. Prof reasons “Auntie lives here by herself, so there must be a way of closing the doors automatically at night” First, no. Second, you guys had to use a fucking outdoor well to keep a watermelon cool, I really think the likelihood of Auntie living in some kind of Silicon Valley superhouse (in 1973!) with sophisticated defense mechanisms is about as likely as this movie sweeping the Oscars. Third, no. Melody provides support for this view: “She said she’d gone to music school in Tokyo, right? So she’s clever” I…just….wh…you’re a fucking maniac, Mr. Pilkington. Prof suddenly unsheathes her supergenius brain and exclaims “That’s it! Let’s just ask her!” and the girls all react as though Prof just laid some kind of quantum theory proving the existence of God on them. Unfortunately, they find a hand in a jar, with Mac’s ribbon on it. Well, that’s unfortunate. Mildly disturbed by the discovery of a fucking pickled hand in a jar (now it’s not just Fantasy flipping balls, they all saw it) they decide Melody should play something for them to calm everyone down.
As Melody plays the Hausu theme, the girls muse over their situation. Soon a voice starts singing along with the music, which the girls say is Angel’s, and they go to look for her as Melody keeps playing. Fantasy, thinking something is wrong, tries to get Melody to stop playing and turn around, but she won’t. Her fingers start to glow with really bad special effects again, and Kung-Fu and Prof find a geisha upstairs. I…don’t know. Back downstairs, light effects that look like animated comic-book explosions play over Melody’s fingers as the sound abruptly changes to sound like someone is hitting all the piano keys at once. Suddenly the music stops and Melody holds up her hands. All of her fingers look partially or completely eaten. Melody’s reaction?


Look at her face. Look at her fucking face.




The piano then actually eats Melody in one of the more gruesome and disturbing yet butt-fuckingly insane death scenes I’ve seen, actually, while Fantasy screams on the floor and does nothing to help her friend, but she does pull a fishbowl over on top of herself, so there’s that. Also toward the end Melody’s detached head floats near her kicking legs sticking out of the piano and says “Oh, how obscene!” I feel as though I’ve been watching this movie all my life.

Upstairs, the Hausu theme is still playing as Prof spouts “It’s unscientific. Irrational. Unnatural. Unreasonable. It’s absurd.” Well….yeah. Kung-Fu sees Sweetie’s image looking at her out of a grandfather clock, and as Sweetie’s stone gaze rests upon the weeping Kung-Fu like a judgement and green slime pours down the clock, Sweetie’s voice chirpily says “You did it, Kung-Fu! Cool!” The slime turns red like thick, goopy blood and the two girls run downstairs to see Fantasy unconscious on the floor with one of Melody’s half-eaten arms next to her. Prof clutches a book, staring at the piano, that has Melody’s severed fingers still playing the Hausu theme on the blood-soaked instrument. I admit, that’s kind of messed up in a good way.

The girls frantically tell Fantasy “You were right all along! This house is haunted!” and make mention that there’s only three of them left since Angel is also “a phantom” and they have to stick together. Fantasy turns her head forlornly to the right and…some red-faced Japanese man shoves a bowl of noodles towards her and he chows down messily as she stares at him. He pulls back and the scene cuts to the guy in some kind of noodle shop with Mr. Togo. A guy in the noodle shop says “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when” to the guy behind the counter as Mr. Togo chows down. Besides that being the lyrics to the song of the Hausu theme, I have no idea what this scene had to do with anything.

Another short sequence plays with a young girl gradually getting older, putting on the geisha costume and turning into Auntie, who smiles creepily at the audience. Cut back to the girls downstairs….

Okay. Fair warning. This movie’s about to take a turn for the crazy. Yes, that’s right, another one.
Prof is reading a diary as the girls huddle under a light, which goes out, and in the darkness they hear Angel calling “Fantasy” Lightning suddenly lights the room back up, and Angel’s giant head thrusts into the screen saying she’s entered her Auntie’s world.


YOU ARE NOT PREPARED.





Random objects start flying slowly around the room as a 6-foot pair of Angel’s lips talk to them telling them her Auntie died years ago and since she didn’t marry, her spirit is still here and she eats any young women of marriageable age who come to her house so she can wear her bridal gown. I’m not even going to note that that doesn’t make any sense, I feel like it’d be trying to stop a hurricane with a teaspoon. Some kind of combination of evil twangly music and Kung-Fu’s music plays throughout this scene. Kung-Fu punches and kicks various objects out of the air as her music plays and she tries to get to the phone, which Angel lied about being broken. A huge picture of an evil looking Snowy grins at them. Kung-Fu gets to the phone and leafs through the phone book as the phone cord winds around her neck, which she completely fails to notice until it starts flipping her around the room. She kicks the phone off the wall, which apparently stops the cord from killing her, and then after bursting through a couple of smoke and fog effects, runs into Angel in a bridal gown-and-hood, who somersaults and flips through a window, then stands there smiling at her. Cut to Mr. Togo with a hillbilly banjo soundtrack for no reason, lost. Cut back to the house with the same music as before. Angel wraps her arms around Kung-Fu and tries to smother her. Kung-Fu escapes and kicks Angel over top of the house, and the movie zooms in about 15 rapid fire times on a ridiculous “menacing” picture of the cat with a pair of fake Frank-n-Furter lips and teeth. Fantasy cries “Kung-Fu, it’s Snowy! You have to kill the cat!” More utter insanity that I can’t transcribe happens, and then the light comes down on Kung-Fu’s head and lifts her off the ground, electrocuting her. The cat’s head superimposes on the screen, then some boy’s head we’ve never seen before floats around confused with a background of a bunch of blue painted people staring at the audience, then a bunch of disembodied limbs float around and….look, folks, you really have to see it. I know you don’t know what’s going on, but I am firm in my belief that no human who has ever lived knows what’s going on in this movie. If schizophrenia could manifest itself physically, the last 15 minutes of this movie would be EXACTLY THAT.


A problem has been detected and Brain has shut down to prevent damage to your psyche.

DO_YOU_BELIEVE_THIS_SHIT_RIGHT_HERE

If this is the first time you’ve seen this error screen, go lie down for an hour. If this screen appears again, take a shot of bourbon and jog around the block. If you’re watching a Japanese horror movie made in the early 70s by a director whose mother never really loved him, restart brain in safe mode to reenter second grade.




Kung-Fu’s music plays as her legs grow out of the light that….ate her, I guess, and delivers a flying kick to the picture of the cat. The picture falls off the wall, along with everything else, but the cat remains on the wall and starts spewing blood. Angel is there, too, also bleeding like a stuck pig and looking extremely sad, while Kung-Fu’s leg bounces up and down and then gets eaten by a chest of drawers which ALSO start spewing blood. The girls grab the diary and keep reading from it as they float on a river of blood, which they say is “the cat’s blood” Fine, I’ll believe anything at this point. My hopes of a normal life are shot forever, I’ve got nothing to lose. Sure, it’s the cat’s blood.

Cut back to Mr. Togo, looking like one suave motherfucker as saxophone music plays. He drives up to watermelon-selling Jabba the Hutt and asks for directions. Jabba jumps to his feet and says “The girls…have been eaten. Eaten!” That’s not even close to what Mr. Togo asked, but Jabba then says, excited and dancing like an excited kid, “How do you like watermelons?!” Mr. Togo, excitedly dancing back, says “I hate them!” “What do you like?” “Bananas!” Jabba turns into a skeleton and his skull floats around. Mr. Togo gibbers “Bananas, bananas!” and goes back to his car and slumps down in the seat and twitches there. I feel I have to stop again to remind the audience who hasn’t shot themselves yet that I am not making any of this up and I am not engaging in any kind of comedic style hyperbole. This is exactly what happens. All of it.

The girls keep reading the diary about how Auntie sent Snowy to meet Angel, then Prof loses her glasses in the lake of blood. Prof thrusts her hand in the blood to search for them, and what looks like an oxygen tank with teeth grabs her and pulls her under. It then surfaces wearing her glasses, wiggles at Fantasy, who screams, and goes back under. Then a naked girl, I think Angel, surfaces, then goes back under and eventually disintegrates in the blood. Fantasy is washed into another room, and as she’s crying and screaming, the theme music begins to play again and Angel-in-geisha-costume comes down the stairs. Fantasy begs for help, saying “I knew you weren’t a phantom!” and rips off her bodice, then sees that it’s Auntie. Then it changes back into Angel. Then we get a tit shot as Angel rubs Fantasy’s head and her eyes glow green at the audience.

There’s a long black screen, then Angel’s dad’s fiancé (remember her? No, you fucking don’t, don’t lie to me) is in a car driving. She stops at Jabba’s place and we see several cut-together scenes of her driving and occasionally getting out of the car to dreamily dance around while another stupid maudlin song plays. Eventually she reaches Auntie’s house. Angel meets her there and they look lovingly at each other while Angel slowly slides back the wooden walls that were barricading the house. Angel invites her in, and they sit cross-legged staring at each other. The fiancé asks where everyone is. Angel says “they’ll be getting up shortly. They’ll all be very hungry. They’ll wake up when they feel hungry,” while eye-fucking the shit out of the fiancé, who notices absolutely nothing wrong. WE GET IT. SHE’S GOING TO GET EATEN.
Then Snowy walks by, Angel’s eyes glow green, and some CGI fire appears over the fiance’s face. Zoom in on Angel’s face, who slow-motion swishes her hair very slowly and carefully, never taking her eyes off the audience, while the aunt says some stupid bullshit about love or something.
Then a race of hyper-advanced scorpion people claw their way out of the ground and murder everyone involved in the making of this movie. Okay, to my eternal regret, I made that last part up.

There’s really nothing else I can say about this movie. . This movie should make it very clear prior to watching it that afterwards, you’re going to have to go through a rehabilitation session of several weeks similar to that gone through by people who have temporarily lost the use of their limbs. After watching it twice (and some particularly delectably mindfuck scenes four or five times so I could write about it accurately, FOR YOU) I feel like I need to spend a week rereading old elementary school books to start the long, painful process toward learning how to reason again. I can only make educated guesses from a brain that looks like a dystopian wasteland about what on Earth I just saw. Nothing I can say is going to convince you of the sheer insanity of Hausu. This is an experience everyone should probably have at least once, but don’t go into it naked like I did. Have a team of trained professionals ready to administer powerful drugs at key points unless you want to see that picture of Angel in the mirror and immediately forget how to do multiplication.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find a movie with Sorority or Vampire or Cheerleader in the title to review for my next project.

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