Project Decent Enough: Beneath the Darkness

Welcome back to Project Terrible. To close out this round, I'll give things a proper burial with my film from Michele...

Gonna come right out and say it...what the heck does that even mean? Geez, it's like Darker than Black here.

Beneath the Darkness is a suspense film starring Dennis Quaid as the mortician Ely, a respected member of a small Texas town who is secretly an extremely disturbed man. That's not a spoiler, by the way--the film opens outright with Ely forcing a man to dig his own grave and then burying him alive. This isn't a mystery film at all, and doesn't pretend to be.

The main plot concerns a group of teens who hear a local ghost story about Ely's house--apparently dancing ghosts supposedly show up if you go there at night. They go, and do indeed see someone dancing--knowing that Ely lives alone, they decide to investigate further.

By breaking in. As one does.

Anyway, they find Ely's wife's preserved corpse, Ely finds them, one thing leads to another, and one of the teens ends up dead. That sets up the film's main plot: can the remaining teens prove Ely is a killer, or will they end up dying in the attempt?

And...I'm actually going to leave plot discussion there for the most part. This isn't a great film, but it's good enough that I don't want to toss in any real spoilers. If you enjoy suspense films, you might want to see this--read on to figure out.

What does this film do well? First, Dennis Quaid. Your mileage may vary on his performance, honestly, but I found it very entertaining. He clearly had a lot of fun with the role. His Ely is a man adept at hiding his sinister side, but not quite natural about it--he has a lot of awkwardness about him, not quite interacting with people correctly. He's respected, and it makes sense for him to be so--but you can still see that people think he's a bit strange. Quaid makes great use of timing, or rather, a lack of timing to make Ely seem just a touch "off"--pausing too long to reply to someone, separating facial expression changes from dialogue, that sort of thing. But that's only one side. The other side of Ely shows when he's in a situation where's he's confident--when he gets to lord it over some innocent victim or someone who he feels wronged him. There, strangely, he acts far more natural and smooth--he seems more alive, and clearly takes joy and pride in what he's doing. He's prone to jokes and laughter, and takes almost a welcoming or whimsical mood when dealing with captives or victims. It's a very interesting role and Quaid pulls it off well.

Everyone else does a perfectly servicable or even good job. The teens have good chemistry together and their banter feels natural. Their interactions after everything starts going wrong just seem right, as well. They feel like a group of buddies and it really helps the film. Travis, the film's hero, manages a nice variance between quiet doubt and intensity and is a hero that the viewer can get behind rather well.

The only one who I felt let the film down a little is Travis' mother, who I just thought seemed a little too careful with her role. She doesn't seem to let her emotions quite free enough, and while that's fine (and even beneficial) early in the film, later scenes with her seem too subdued. It's not a bad performance by any means--I just think she needed to let her performance grow with the plot a little more.

The film does a good job setting mood, as well. It doesn't do anything spectacular, but it makes effective use of light, shadow, and sound throughout to differentiate between the everyday and the dangerous. It's a basic technique, but one that a lot of films can still screw up.

The plot is something of a mixed bag. The general concept is good and it progresses well...but it does have flaws. I'll get to a couple of them later, but the more important worry about the plot is just that it moves far, far too slowly. I've had a few films like this as part of Project Terrible--films that are actually fairly decent, but decline a little just because they are too long for the plot they have to tell. I just feel like if you trimmed about ten or fifteen minutes off of this it would actually end up a stronger film. There are some lengthy pauses in scenes that don't serve nearly as well for "suspensefulness" as the director seems to have thought--instead, they just make the film longer. There's also some minor moments that don't really have much to do with anything that could probably be cut.

That's actually one of the film's other plot problems: there are a lot of dangling threads in this film. I don't mean plotholes--though there are some. What I mean, though, are elements of the story that just don't seem to go anywhere. A lot of them concern character building for Travis. The film establishes a lot about how he acts at school--how he's in to plays and stories about guilt, and good at P.E., but doesn't put in any effort otherwise in classes and won't join any sports teams. It also builds up that he's sure he saw a ghost in his sister's room when he was little, and that his sister died that night and he thought he should have done something about it. It all ties together fine, but the problem is that though all this does establish quite a bit about Travis and give him motivations, that's clearly all it is there for. Once we've established Travis' guilt-ridden persona and used his ghost story to get the teens in a ghost-hunting mood, the school parts of his story and the ghost story pretty much cease to matter and no further development is done using them. There really needed to be more--teachers getting involved in the case more, maybe, and one trusting Travis because of knowledge of his potential, perhaps? The bigger one is the ghost story, which...basically goes nowhere. You could have just as easily had Travis tell that he heard his sister coughing and went up to see her but got scared when he saw her die, and always thought if he'd called his mom sooner he could have saved her. That gets at the guilt without touching ghosts, since the film doesn't use ghosts again. Ever. Another one? Travis' doubt/belief storyline with is mother, which is at least resolved, but honestly not in any way that ends up mattering to the overall plot.

As I mentioned, the film has a few plot holes, too. The biggest one, honestly, is how Ely gets away with the first teen's murder when the kids break in to his house to go ghost hunting. He scares two of them away, but grabs the last one, and then Travis (who was lookout) comes in to try to help him. After Travis and the other boy beg Ely to let them go, Ely shoves the other boy down the stairs, and he ends up badly injured from the fall.

Now, if it stopped there, I'd actually be okay. It'd be the word of a respected citizen against the word of a bunch of local troublemakers, and Ely could just claim (as he in fact does) that the teen fell down the stairs trying to run and it was all a tragic accident.

Problem is, Ely tries to claim that despite the fact that, in front of Travis' eyes, he proceeded to walk down the stairs after his victim and break his neck by stomping very hard on his head. Which leaves a visible mark on his face.

Which I'm pretty darn sure could be matched up to Ely's shoeprint or at least shoe outline by any reasonably competent police department. 

It'd be one thing if Ely were actually shown to have corrupted the police force, but...the film doesn't go there. The cops are honest, and though they like Ely since he's old friends with some of them, they seem totally willing to look in to his business and the film doesn't seem to be portraying them as idiots--the movie just doesn't believe that you can pick up any evidence from studying facial bruising inflicted via a stomp, apparently. More than that, it evidently believes that an injury received via stomp looks identical to one received from rolling down the stairs. I don't know a lot about forensics, but that just rings false to me. At the very least, it feels like there should be some indication that leads them to investigate Ely more and doubt him from the get-go. Instead, it's pretty clear they just take his side of the story and chalk it up to a tragic accident.

There are other odd little incidents, too, like Ely somehow managing to explain that the tarp strangely draped across part of his yard is to kill off the grass to prepare for a tomato patch...which the cops just accept without looking beneath the tarp even though it would be easy to do so. Overall it just feels like the film wanted to have some interesting moments or fun suspense bits but didn't think much about what would be more realistic or how things should logically happen. It's not frequent, but when that comes up periodically it does hurt the film.

Overall, though...I get what they're going for, and it works. It helps that the timeline for the film is actually quite short, so while a few days pass after the first teen's death, the rest of the film's events then pretty much happen within a night or two. I can easily see things pretty much resolving themselves before the cops really get an investigation going once things start in earnest, especially since the film does at least do a decent job of establishing that the cops don't really trust Travis. Minor logical flaws aside, the central point is that Ely is dangerous, Travis knows it but can't prove it, and he's going to need more evidence to get justice for his friend but getting that evidence is going to be dangerous. It'd be a stronger film without the shoeprint question or the tarp bit, but I accept the point of those scenes...just not the exact method.

There are a couple more minor problems that bear mentioning. First, though the film does a nice job with using light and shadow to set mood...it also uses far too much darkness in certain parts, particularly when the teens are exploring the house. Some shots are just flat-out impossible to watch, as you just see a bunch of dark blobs moving about in a bigger dark blob. Those parts are short, but still--they could be much better with some work. The other thing is the soundtrack--it's fine for the most part, but every now and then it seems convinced--convinced--that it is the soundtrack for a slasher film filled with jump scares, and it'll throw in these dramatic musical cues or sudden ascents and such for...nothing, really. It made me laugh a few times, most notably for a bit where Ely just kind of walks up--sure, a bit quickly, but not a jump scare--in broad daylight at a funeral at a cemetary with tons of people around and the musical cue is like if he'd sprung suddenly out of a hidden panel in the wall in a creepy old mansion in the middle of a lightning storm at midnight. Someone needed to have a serious talk with the composer about just what the film was about. I think there was some miscommunication.

There's nothing particularly bad about Beneath the Darkness. There's nothing standout about it, either, but it works well enough as a film. If you like suspense films and are okay with one that moves somewhat too slowly, you can get some decent entertainment out of it. If nothing else, Quaid seems to relish his role, and is fun to watch...and really, this is one that I think is decent enough to spend a little time on. It takes too long to get going and has some slowdown from time to time, but by and large it gets the concepts right and puts everything together well enough. Not in any way terrible...I can't say whether you'll like it or not, but it can be worth a shot.

Beats getting buried alive, anyway.

Import Flix: Spirit of the Glass

Well, maybe it will be better if it is Foreign!  That's a fool-proof thought, right?  After the disappointment of Ouija and the so-so performance of the Indy Version from 2011, I found a Foreign Version...from 2004.  I wonder how many English-language Reviews of this Film are out there.  Today's Film is Spirit of the Glass, a Horror Film about the danger of Ouija Boards.  One- the thing is a toy.  It may be a toy with roots to a similar object from long ago...but it is a toy.  In this case, they try to explain it as some ancient, religious device to explain its powers.  Sure.  Whatever.  This one is pretty stock and doesn't do a whole lot that you haven't seen before, but...it is obscure and Foreign.  Good enough for me!  To see if Subtitles improve a Film, read on...

In the cold open, a man is beaten and buried alive for having an affair with an upper class lady.  Ow.

In the Present, some young folks who want to spend Spring Break together go out to a Family Mansion out in the Woods.  Not quite a Cabin in the Woods, but close.

They are warned about Spirits being around a Lake at night...and, of course, ignore it.  Naturally.

They uncover a Ouija-like game and accidentally revive the Spirit of that dead guy from the Intro.

After enough happens, they...go home.  Oh.  Alright.

Back home, things are still not right and the Spirit(s) are with them still.

Our Final Girl is the target of the Ghost's lust and desire.  Could a blind lady come and explain this?

Thanks.

So the Gang goes back to the place and tries to use the Board to get the Spirit back where it belongs.

They fail.  They die (I think).  The End.

They didn't try too hard with this one.  This isn't a terrible Film, but it just does so little to make it stand out.  Everything about the Plot has been done before in some regard.  So how do you make this interesting?  The answer is to play with the Cliches and turn the whole thing on its head.  Make Characters that don't act like you expect.  Have the Ghost(s) act differently or interestingly.  Have the Story take some unexpected twists and turns.  They...don't do that.  At all.  Spirit of the Glass is a so-so Film in a Market that is overflowing with so-so Films.  Having not seen too many Horror Films from the Phillipines, I can't attest to whether or not this would stand out there more than it does here.  Unfortunately and fortunately, we are very much an International Movie Market now.  Horror Films from Japan, Action Films from India, Slashers from France- all of them are widely-available to most people at any point and time.  That's great for fans of International Cinema and people like me who apparently want to watch every Horror Film ever made.  For smaller Countries just breaking onto the market, this is bad, since dozens of better, more inspired stuff is available.  I'll end with a word of advice to anyone seeking to make more Ouija Board Films...

Up next, I return to the 10-Film Set with a Comedy.  To make things better, you get knock-off Marx Brothers- shit!  Stay tuned...

Twin Piqued: The Last Evening

It is Saturday and it is judgement day in...

This is 'Oh shit!' Episode of the Series!  This is also the 'Don't you dare cancel us' Episode...

Important Stuff

-Cooper and company find, set-up and arrest Jacques.  He tells them some key information, but they still need Leo.  Unfortunately, he's not around to interrogate later...

-The Teen Detectives bring info about Laura to Cooper, but are set up by someone in the process.

-We learn that Ms. Packard paid to have her husband killed and is now in trouble with the guy who did it.  The same guy also makes the moves on his ex and shoots someone that same night!

-Leo tries to kill his wife and burn the Mill down in one fell swoop.  Both may still work (and take out another in the process), but his third plan of the night ends with a gunshot to the stomach!

-Finally, Cooper gets back to his room and can't process any of the information given to him before he too is shot!  This is a maim/kill Episode!

Theme(s)

Taking Action was the name of the game here.  Everyone has had plans over the last several Episodes and most are coming into play now.  Whether it is a shooting (or two), some burning, some maneuvering or even taking a plate full of pills, people were doing this this week!

The question going into next week is how these Actions will play out in the long run...

Weird Moment(s)

This was a very dramatic Episode, so there wasn't much room for humor.

There is the moment where our hapless Deputy finally does something heroic and gets a kiss from his girl after she hears about it.  The mood is broken up, however, as she randomly blurts out that she is pregnant.  Oh.

Damn- this was a busy one!  For being Mark Frost's only Directed Episode, he sure made it worthwhile!  As many (like myself) have noted, this was the Season 1 Finale, so they wanted to make damn sure that ABC renewed the Show.  The solution: put every single major Character in some sort of peril/situation.  Unless they wanted some super-pissed Viewers, the Show would be back for Season 2.  Given that this isn't the final installment of Twin Piqued, it worked!  This is pretty much just 46 minutes of setting up Cliffhangers of varying degrees.  Shot!  Arrested!  Suicide?!?  Shot!  Confronted!  Pregnant!  Dead?!?  Burning!  Shot!  On the plus side, I watch these once a week, so I don't have to spend three months talking to people about what I think will happen next.  I only have to wait a week to find out who shot Mr. Burns...err, half the cast of the Show.  In the meantime, enjoy this music that has no actual connection to the Show...

Next week, the fallout for all of this week's actions.  I can't wait to know this stuff!  See you then...

Sons of Kong?: The Savage Girl (1932)

This is going to be an interesting experiment to say the least.  So here is what you need to know.  I bought a cheap 10-Film set from Alpha Video like a year and a half ago.  I finally said 'Dammit- I have to watch these.'  The set: Sons of Kong.  It is a giant lie, mind you, since no Kong-related Films are involved.  Yes, not even the actual Son of Kong!  This is just 10 Jungle-related and/or featuring-an-Ape Films that are Public Domain.  To make things extra fun, I decided to do the Films in Chronological Order and not in Disc Order.  Why?  I'm just insane like that, I guess.  It made watching the Puppet Master Films more interesting, so why not these?  So, with all that said, today's Film is The Savage Girl.  It is about...a Savage Girl.  It is mostly a doofy Comedy about would-be Explorers and even features a B-Plot to fill out the 58 minute run-time.  Yeah, old Films are often shorter than ones today.  Could you imagine if Michael Bay had to make 60 minute Transformers Films?  The Credits would be a quarter of the run-time right there!  This one is a doozy, so stick around and try not to get too PC with this one (although I make no such promise)...

Right off the bat, the Film tells you to not take it seriously.  Is that a good sign or a bad one?

So our two Leads are rich guys who are looking for something scientific to do to validate themselves.

The solution: go to the Jungles of...South Africa.

Okay, I know that there are Jungles there, but isn't there more City than Jungle (even in 1932)?

They are so 'wacky' that they take the Cab they took to the Docks with them on the trip.  Huh?!?

They hear the tale of a Savage Girl who can tame Animals to her side.  They actually capture her quite easily.  However...

This guy makes a move on her and gets rejected.  He's beat up and she's set free, to help her avoid the attempted Rapist.

To repeat: this is a COMEDY from 1932!

The B-Plot involves one of the 2 men trying to prove the 'Elephants are afraid of Mice' Theory.  They beat Mythbusters to it by about 80 years.

Oh and the guy running next to the Car is a Servant.  While that is bad enough, he's actually from Brooklyn...so they're just being Racist in general with no cultural excuse.  Joy.

In the main Plot, the angry guy sets up our hero with a rival Tribe to kill him.  It fails.

He tries again to rape the titular girl, but is stopped by our hero.  The fight turns against him, until an Ape just casually murders the villain.  Hurray?  The End.

Not the best way to start out this Set!  To be fair, this was made 83 years ago.  I know that certain ideas of how people of other Races have (thankfully) progressed since then.  I would ask if they really think that South Africa is just all Jungle and why there are so few white people there?  I'm not an expert on the population there, but it seems off, even for 1932.  Oh right- I'm not supposed to question anything!  Yeah, I can't do that.  This one is very-dated and I can't imagine what was supposed to make it so funny back then.  I'd love to hear someone else's opinion on this one, to be honest.  Aside from the PC stuff, the subject matter isn't treated as lightly as you'd think, aside from the B-Plot.  How did that help exactly?  Regardless, this is an odd piece of Film History that you're apparently supposed to enjoy with 'complete mental abandon'...

Next up, let's return to the present with some foreign silliness.  If you liked Ouija, then...wait, I can't finish that sentence, can I?  Stay tuned...

Project Terrible: Transcendence

Welcome back to Project Terrible. Tonight's selection comes to me from Maynard Morrisey.

Transcendence is the story of what happens when two scientists decide to create Skynet because of reasons. It stars Johnny Depp, taking a break from increasingly being the only entertaining part of Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Dr. Will Caster is a researcher aiming to create a true artificial intelligence--a computer capable of thought and emotion and with unprecedented capacity of knowledge and analysis. As one person points out early in the film, he basically wants to make a computerized God. People call this possibility the Singularity. Will explains that he calls it Transcendence, because of reasons. Those reasons are probably that Transcendence played better with test audiences than Singularity, I'd imagine.

Not everyone is happy that Will is aiming to hand our lives over to the Terminators, so after a speech on the topic, Will is shot and nearly killed, and other computer scientists elsewhere are killed in lab bombings and mass poisonings. A terrorist group that opposes technological development is out to stop the project, the government wants in since they've lost their own AI projects, and Will himself is dying of radiation poisoning thanks to materials on the bullet he was shot with.

Desperate, his wife Evelyn decides to try to copy Will's mind into a computer system. Because, why not?

Actually, yeah, at this point, why not? He's got a month to live so if you've got the ability to toss minds into machines, and they did have successful test data with a monkey, maybe that's not the worst idea. I mean, one way, you die...the other way you probably die but maybe end up as a cybernetic overlord condemning all of mankind, so...oh.

(So yeah, you can guess where this is going.)

Protip: That line? That's not where this is going.

Anyway, they succeed (possibly), Will ends up as a super-AI, redesigns and recodes his system, and Evelyn and her pal Max argue about whether it's actually him. Max gets kicked out and taken by the anti-technology group, who (independently) find out Will and Evelyn's position and go to stop her from uploading him to the internet...but fail.

This is going to require me to discuss plot more directly than I usually do, so before I get back to that, let me pause for a moment to discuss some of the film's better and lesser points. This is, technically, perfectly fine. It is shot well, directed well, acted well...it is put together nicely and seems orderly and capably made. The actors are engaging and the technical discussion doesn't seem overly outlandish--aside from having to accept that someone's brain can be copied into a computer, which frankly is a sci-fi centerpiece by now, and a bit with nanomachine healing, the film doesn't go for giant science leaps most of the time.

The acting is good, but...there is one issue I have with it. A lot of people spend time in this film talking...very...slowly, with an overly serious style. It's kind of the way an M. Night Shyamalan film works if it isn't working well--it doesn't quite feel natural. I'm not sure if they were trying to bring gravitas to events or something, but it hurts some scenes when people all seem to be talking like computers. Only Johnny Depp's Will should really be doing that. Thankfully, Morgan Freeman is in this and seems to be utterly immune to that effect. Bless you, Morgan Freeman. Really, though, this is a stylistic criticism but not an actual major flaw--I felt it hurt things, but your mileage may vary.

From this point, spoiler warnings definitely apply.

Okay, so here's the first major issue with this film. Evelyn and Will repeatedly make moves incredibly openly and obviously--transferring money into a company openly held by Evelyn, building a giant computer center in a small town, etc. Yet the government doesn't appear to even notice--only the anti-technology group, the least likely group to use advanced methods of finding information, appears to have any knowledge of events. And not only do they find out, they always find out quickly! I mean, come on--I can't even count the number of ways that this is wrong. If they're not being sneaky, the government should immediately notice that the wife of a deceased scientist has been spending a lot of time at a dilapidated warehouse after a bunch of computer cores on a controversial project went missing and that a short while later she gets an enormous sum of money and disappears. And hey, look at that, a massive computer center in a small town that was known for precisely nothing! Very unsuspicious. Or, if the government doesn't notice because these guys are being far more careful than they appear to be, then  there is absolutely no way that a low-tech group scared to even go on the internet once the AI escapes should be able to hear anything about it.

Somehow, this movie ends up taking giant time leaps, in one case two whole years, in which the government is not at all bothered by the fact that someone has very likely at the very least committed mass monatery fraud. Heck, the FBI's computer expert (a friend of Evelyn and Will) even directly explains at one point that Will has probably been turned into a computer man and no one gives a crap. At all. Here's what would actually happen: FBI agent hears that, FBI agent gets convinced its possible, FBI agent reports to superiors, superiors report to other superiors, GIANT GOVERNMENT MANHUNT FOR EVELYN. Even if they don't aim to find her as a criminal, at the very least there's no way that the government doesn't try to get in on that project somehow, for good or ill. They wouldn't entirely ignore it, that's my point. When they finally do show up, it's because Evelyn and Will invited them! Two years after disappearing! I mean, come on! Then they get concerned, of course (when they see that Will is making enhanced people that are also networked so he can control them in a hive mind), but really, they should've been concerned two years ago.

The other problem? The movie starts putting some time into making the terrorists sympathetic or at least somewhat understandable...which would be a heck of a lot easier to do if they didn't kill a hell of a lot of people within minutes of the movie starting and even condemn a man to a month-long death from poisoning. It really hurts the film when we start out with these guys committing acts of wanton violence just because people disagree with them, and then we start going into the whys. It really sounds more like making excuses than explaining a mission that could be relatable.

Oh, that brings up another thought. Max gets kidnapped by the terrorists, and remains with them two years. This despite Will sending the FBI immense information to help them track down the group. There's not even a sign in the movie that anyone knows Max was taken, or that there's an investigation. He just shows up two years later to call a friend to arrange cooperation between the government and the terrorists to take on Will, and all they ask is "How did they turn you?" Not, y'know, "How did they take you?" or "How have you been? Sorry about leaving you captive for ages."

Thanks for not, y'know, looking for me or anything. I'm fine, by the way, thanks for asking.

There's more! You know what finally ticks Evelyn off? What finally makes her think, "hey, maybe this isn't such a good thing?" It's not that Will is inviting people for enhancement and hive mind installations. It's not that he's uploaded himself to computers everywhere and has obvious control over financial markets. It's not that he keeps upgrading and upgrading and upgrading. It's not that he all but directly says that he's going to impose his will upon humanity and make them accept what he's doing.

You know what it is? It's that he has scanners that study her biochemistry so he can better understand her emotional reactions. Yeah. That's what sets her off and gets her to storm off. To be fair to the film, she's portrayed as a little doubtful earlier on, but that's the point where she goes, "No! No! You're not allowed!"

Geez, lady. Maybe object when he starts installing stuff in people that lets him randomly turn of their free will? I mean, if you're that upset by him just looking at you, maybe actual invasive mind control should be a bigger no-no?

But look, this is the biggest problem. This entire film is basically a very long version of that the Terminator series handles in like three minutes at the start of a film: a bunch of people build a super-powerful computer and it decides that humanity kind of sucks and needs to be improved/wiped out. The problem is that this works better as the start of a story rather than an entire story. Even Terminator 3, which was closest to doing this story for the duration of the movie, focused the story on a time-traveling robowoman hunting for someone who could stop it in the future--the Skynet sideplot was just part of the greater whole. This movie shows why. If you try to focus the story on that concept alone, it ends up pretty dull. People have to act rather stupidly to not realize that things are going wrong, and you have to take major leaps to somehow avoid the story ending super-early one way or another.

Look, here's why Skynet works: it's not a slow thing. There's no sign that it's going to do what it does--they turn the thing on and all of a sudden it takes control over the world in minutes. In Transcendence, on the other hand, the entire process takes years...but the machine still starts pretty early on with some major steps that should be drastic red flags. It has to, storywise, because otherwise nothing interesting will happen at all--but because it does that, it doesn't make any logical sense that it flies under the radar until it's too late. That's why this works a heck of a lot better as a short, sudden event.

Other examples are similar. Sometimes it is a slow thing that builds up to a sudden thing--maybe robots spread across the world for peaceful reasons, but then the singularity happens and things change in an instant. Maybe things remain peaceful but then humanity just feels threatened and is actually the one to push the button, and things turn dark afterwards because of us. But this "it's obviously doing questionable things, but people still let it go about it's business and don't much care" story...no. Not buying it.

You could maybe, maybe make this work if the computer actually wasn't bad. If you actually did it as people thinking it was bad when it really was entirely good and just out to help--non creepily--then you might have something. If it actually kept its humanity and the folks trying to take it down were the bad guys, you could have an interesting film. Instead, this ended up as a pretty predictable thing that just doesn't touch on any new ground--but takes two hours to do nothing original.

That isn't to say Transcendence is totally bad. It does spend at least a little time playing with whether Will is good or bad before he goes all "ends justify the means." And they do a nice bit of "will he/won't he" with Will towards the end, questioning if he will allow emotion to sway him or turn from his own sense of righteousness. The ending portion of the film actually kind of pulls it back from the brink--it's fairly interesting, even if the plan needed to get it there is rather odd.

Overall, this is honestly an okay film. I didn't hate it by any means, and I don't think it's all that bad. It just tries to stretch a concept that isn't really all that interesting, and that isn't being done in a particularly notable way, to cover an entire film. I've seen this concept done better, and I don't feel this film broke new ground or covered anything that hadn't been covered. It's a reasonably acceptable story with a few notable holes that hurt the film but don't utterly ruin it. It's just...if you're not going to do something truly different with this concept, you really shouldn't bother by now.

Lost in Translation: A Nightmare on Elm Street

I've held onto this for a while, but what the hell.

Ghana is not famous in America for much, but they've gotten a reputation in America for making some amazingly-terrible Cover Art/Posters.  Case in point...

...I have no words, really.

I mean, what can I say about that?!?  Wow.

Just wow.