Happy holiday, pagan scum. Seriously though, Halloween is not really *my* holiday, since I haven't really dressed up since I was a teenager. Add in the fact that I tend to be working for every Halloween in the last five years or so & you get a holiday that I'm not 'big on.' I have nothing against it, mind you. Any holiday where women wear costumes that begin with the prefix 'Sexy' or 'Slutty' & really
want you to stare at them is a plus for me. So last Halloween I did a little trick and reviewed Dark Star, since it was made by John Carpenter. This Halloween, I'm going to be a purist. However, since this is still my site, I had to find something that I can guarantee that almost nobody would bother talking about. A long Netflix title search led me to this film:
Mr. Halloween. Never heard of it? Well, good for you. Honestly, you're better for not having heard of this 2007 direct-to-video film. You could hope that it turned out to be better than most of my holiday fare- i.e.
Peter Rottentail,
Psycho Santa or
Pocahauntus- but you'd be wrong. In fact, the only thing it has in common is the star sharing the same last name with a character from
Halloween- Loomis. Other than that, don't get your hopes up. Get out your unexplained magic fluid for my review of...
The film begins with some random, off-screen death. To make matters dumber, they play some newsperson talking about the problems that a small town is having. Basically, numerous kids have gone missing over the last few weeks. This awkwardly segues into a teenager watching the news on her TV, since watching someone watch TV is so thrilling. She apparently got pulled away from some sort of board game involving zombies that I'm too apathetic to actually look up. Besides, this movie just reeks of being Canadian (watch me be wrong now), so we probably don't even have it here. She's hanging out with her two best friends, one of whom she has a crush on. They engage in some 'real' (read: bad) conversation before leaving. One of the guys- a future Brian Posehn- is going to hang out with a young friend of his. Eighteen year-olds hanging out with kids that don't be more than twelve is not weird, right? As a bonus for weirdness, he wants the kid to go to his basement to watch a 'scary movie,' under the pretense that his audio equipment is better down there. Where's that Chris Hanson guy when you need him? After the film, he takes the kid to see Mr. Loomis' Horror House. Yes, the star and his character name are the same- how sad. The film's title comes Loomis' nickname, based on his house. The film finally picks up when the pair get attacked and captured. About freaking time!
Okay, so here's the situation: Loomis captures teenagers and props their bodies up (some living) in his Horror House as decorations. That sounds interesting enough until you realize that this movie is too cheap to really make use of the premise. Never mind that Loomis wears a version of the mask on the box art maybe once while giving a tour. The guy's friends get worried about him, so they go all Scooby-Doo on Loomis' ass. Unfortunately, the town Sheriff (who's totally not in on it) and his deputy (who's also our heroine's cousin) are not much help. The pair go to the haunted house, but narrowly avoid finding out the truth. Fun fact: the guy is the son of the actor playing Loomis. Mind you, it's not part of the story, but it's really freaking obvious! After killing the best friend and injuring the young guy, the villain seems to get away with it. How do I know? Because the movie jumps ahead one year! Apparently, this guy only work on the holiday, so we can't have the story flow in a logical manner or fashion. During that time, nothing seems to have happened and our heroes have not visibly-aged in the slightest. You think that the guy's barely-pubescent mustache might have filled in a bit during the last 365 days, but I guess not! More kids have gone missing, but our heroine still holds out hope. Yeah, about that...
We get more talking and more shots that refuse to end. Seriously, one shot of the pair walking and talking doesn't end until they're about two blocks away from the steady camera. Oh yeah, they're also not talking during the end of it either. So, just to be clear, you're padding out your run-time at my expense- thanks. After another chat, the pair run into Loomis and...just kind of leave. He apparently follows the girl home, however (after another long, drawn-out shot), and kidnaps her. She discovers that the kid from before is still alive and has just been kept this whole time. No, really. They draw this out for a bit, having the deputy come by and get killed, before we learn the whole story. Apparently, Loomis died some fifty-years or so ago, but his brother (the sheriff) brought him back to 'teach teenagers to respect adults.' How did he do it? It has something to do with an unexplained machine pumping some unexplained fluid into Loomis, but that's all they say. Eventually, the Sheriff goes to 're-kill' Loomis, but gets killed. The pair make a break for it, but ran back into the Horror House. You stupid, stupid people! After a drawn-out chase, the kid dies and the girl escapes, managing to cut Loomis in half with his own, fully-operational guillotine. In the Epilogue, she lays flowers on the marker for her friends, only to be killed off-screen by Loomis (or, at least, his legs). The End.
This movie sucks today and all year round! The story sucks, the acting is bad and the production quality is on par with a school play. I mean, just wow! The DVD's lone extra- save for a Commentary track that I skipped- is a look at the original, six-minute film that the people made in 2001. You turned your six-minute film into an eighty-minute on, but at what cost? You clearly didn't have that much material, but you tried to make the whole thing fit. I'll give you credit for trying, I guess. There's almost no real gore in this film & what little you get occurs only at the key screenplay points (the forty-five minute mark, the hour mark, etc). Other than, you get a dull as dishwater film that consists of people walking, talking and not conveying anything all that interesting. Honestly, the characters are so generic and uninteresting that I feel nothing for them. Never mind that the story is so full of holes that it could pass for a dead mobster from the 1920s. Seriously, how does this 'zombie Loomis' thing work anyhow? They never explain it! Do yourself a favor and do anything else on Halloween.
Next up, November brings us a whole new month to endure shitty movies. First up, an obscure, kung-fu film with a ridiculous plot and possibly the worst dubbing of all-time. Stay tuned...
No comments:
Post a Comment