January-February Wrap!

Four more films down, so it's time to review and rank.

But first, I have to give a big shoutout to Joe's facebook friends.  I think they contributed to the nearly 25 page views we had last week.  25!  That's a full classroom, a crowded coffee shop, more people than came to my last conference presentation!  Thank you, whomever you are.  You are members of a very exclusive community.

Last round we had a tie for first between Bound for Vengeance and Last Shift.  But we were united in opposition to all things Pod.  Who will be their competition for the end-of-year honors?  Only the rankings will tell:

Paul's Rankings (with links to his reviews):
1)  Exeter:  Extremely inebriated teens battle an evil demon in an abandoned asylum.  Exeter has the deepest characters of the four and the best acting, which is unexpected given that most of the acting involves puking and anal sex jokes. 

2)  The Lazarus Effect:  Ugh.  I guess something had to come in second here.  Olivia Wilde returns from the dead and has super powers that she uses to kill people with e-cigarettes.  I'm not sure why I'm ranking it higher than Pay the Ghost except that it seemed to be over faster.

3)  Pay the Ghost:  A kid is abducted by an evil witch-ghost and Nicholas Cage has to save him.  It's riddled with [SCARY SOUND!!] jump scares that [ANOTHER SCARY SOUND!!] take the place of [SCARY FACE AND SOUND!!] anything like suspense.  But it does have a once-in-a-lifetime tearful and passionate swing-for-the-fences cowboy-meets-lady-pirate scene.

4)  Awaken:  Relentless garbage.  Natalie Burn kicks her way to the bottom of the pack.  This breaks right through the floor of the basement into a bizarro realm beyond bad: a strange upside-down world in which Daryl Hannah is Asian and plays with stuffed monkeys and Edward Furlong farms root vegetables while dreaming of going on a bike ride and cuddling naked.



Joe's Rankings (with links to his reviews):
1)  Exeter:  A tongue gets bitten out and scores a goal in a foosball table! And that's not even the best thing that happens in Exeter. It is, however, better than anything that happens in any of the other movies.

2)  Pay the Ghost:  Features one great jump scare, a medium getting killed by a ghost, and an unintentionally hilarious possession. I was especially tickled by what happened to the medium. Oh, so you're spiritually sensitive? Well how about JUMP SCARE WITCH GHOST *MEDIUM HEAD EXPLODES*

3)  The Lazarus Effect:  One swallows an e-cigarette. One is crushed in a filing cabinet. One has his head squeezed. One has her neck broken. You'll yawn. You'll fidget. And you'll wish your spare time would come back from the dead. SPOILER ALERT: it won't.

4)  Awaken:  Awaken was definitely the worst movie of the month, but was it worse than last month's loser, Pod? I say no, because Awaken would have been a fun movie to make, if not watch. Sure, the cast and crew did a terrible job, but they did that terrible job on a tropical island. Pod was filmed in Maine. So it sucked, AND it was cold.

Review: EXETER (2015) [Paul's Take]

Exeter begins with an epic party at an abandoned asylum.  Which is to say that, to my adult litigation-sensitive eyes, it begins with a liability nightmare.  Kids dance drunkenly on cars.  A masked man sets things on fire with an aerosol flamethrower.  Bowling balls whiz through the crowd, crashing into walls and breaking beer bottles (who brings bowling balls to a house party?  Or do you keep a bowling ball in your trunk on the off chance that it turns into a let’s-wreck-shit party?).  And this all goes down in a decrepit building full of lots of stuff to puncture yourself on as well as a probably above-average amount of tetanus.

 

Review: EXETER (2015) [Joe's Take]

The Premise
The premise of Exeter is that a group of teenagers throws a rager inside a haunted orphanage and gets stuck inside with an evil spirit.