SethDano Reviews

Plan 9 (2015)

Derivative hipster trash.

[1/10 · 19 September 2020]

I first heard about this movie back in 2009 when they were still working on it and I was one of those people who were actually looking forward to seeing it but then it seemed like they canceled it for a while due to the delays and lack of updates but that all changed just recently when I found it on demand. Apparently it was only released a few years back with zero advertising. It was promised that this would be a good quality remake of Ed Wood's "worst film of all time" but somehow this remake is far worse than the original.

At least the original felt like an inventive idea and contained only a small cast. This remake contains like fifteen subplots and nearly fifty characters which made the whole narrative hard to follow and this was made even worse by the film's pacing. Some scenes are very dark and serious like something out of a J.J. Abrams sci-fi thriller but then the next scene would be so gross and childish, it would make you think you accidentally sat on the remote and switched it to some stupid Adam Sandler comedy. The pacing is so inconsistent, it makes the day/night graveyard scenes in the original look like Citizen Kane by comparison.

Additionally I don't really see what the point of this remake really is. Originally the whole hype was that they were going to make the movie that Ed Wood would've wanted to make if he had the budget but that's not the movie we got. It borrows a couple of story elements from Plan 9 but aside from that, it's just another cookie-cutter zombie flick you can find in a cheap dvd bin at the store. The one and only thing that sets this apart from all those movies is the fact that it's called Plan 9. If it had been called anything else, critics would be bashing it to pieces just like all the others. You may as well call it a remake of Night of the Living Dead and it wouldn't make any difference. The whole movie is just way too standard and I think that's the complete opposite of what Ed Wood wanted for his movie.

The production value might be better than the original but the direction is horrifically misguided. For some reason they felt the need to cram in as many jokes as possible within a single scene which results in some parts of the movie being dragged out way longer than necessary especially during that pointless truck monologue at the end.

It seems like whoever directed this was just some ironic hipster who traded the original film's sincerity for cheap meta humor and spent way too much time trying to make cute little nods to the original along with other notorious "worst movies ever", a clichéd label that gets thrown around way too often by film snobs who haven't even seen that many movies. "Oh ha ha! The town's called Nilbog!" This is almost the same level of entertainment I would expect from a crappy Channel Awesome movie and that's pretty bad. I guess if you're a fan of Rifftrax (which I'm not) then maybe it'll keep you entertained but I would rather just stick with the original.

Strange Things Happen at Sundown (2003 Video)

Two hours you'll never get back.

[1/10 · 12 September 2020]

As somebody who loves both z-grade horror flicks and vampire fiction, I was really letdown by this garbage. It starts off pretty good but once we're introduced to the two main characters, the whole thing falls apart. We follow a mob enforcer who happens to be a vampire and his girlfriend who is also a vampire and all they do for most of the movie is argue with each other over every stupid little thing. There is an interesting subplot about vampire gangsters lacing drugs with their own blood to sell around the world, transforming everyone into their vampire minions but this subplot takes up only about fifteen minutes of the movie. This thing is two hours long, half of it is just the two characters arguing and the other half is just a bunch of dreary slo-mo clips of people crawling on the ground and having seizures because apparently that's how people transform into vampires once they're bitten. Speaking of which, this film's interpretation of vampires is really headache inducing. So apparently vampires don't have any special powers aside from having fangs and being harmed by holy water. I'm not kidding, that's literally it. The most pathetic of all is watching our two vampire villains running after a woman in the forest at a snail's pace and one of them is even dumb enough to put a gun to his face and shoot his own eye out. No joke.

Some of the actors were pretty good but unfortunately this movie was written and directed by somebody who doesn't know how to write or direct. For a movie called Strange Things Happen at Sundown, most of the action in the movie takes place in the middle of the day and the nighttime scenes are so badly lit, it's too dark to tell what's even happening onscreen. I'm not even giving this the pass for its low budget. There are cheaper films out there like Cannibal Campout and Woodchipper Massacre which were only half as long as this movie but still a thousand times more enjoyable. Don't even waste your time with this.

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

A most bogus journey.

[3/10 · 7 September 2020]

I'm a pretty big fan of the original Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. I didn't grow up with the sequel Bogus Journey but I still thought it had some charming moments which is far more than I can say for Face the Music. Trying to get through the first thirty minutes of this thing was like a chore. After watching the first teaser trailer, I already knew exactly what the movie was going to be like. I already knew they were planning to give Bill & Ted the same treatment as Paul Feig's Ghostbusters and I'm actually surprised this was not made by the same people because it shares a lot of the same bad jokes and awkward political jabs. I was at least hoping they would've amped-up the special effects to make them look better than the last two movies but instead it somehow looks cheaper. Bill & Teds older selves look like they're buried alive in makeup, the time travel effects look like they came straight out of a Nickelodeon made-for-tv flick and don't even get me started on the death robot.

Like many other sequels these days, Face the Music trades the hope and imagination from the originals for the constant depressing reminder that we live in a reality where we cannot succeed no matter how long and hard we try. The whole thing is way too heavy-handed for a Bill & Ted sequel. Seeing our heroes all grown up and failing at everything that was promised to them at the end of Bogus Journey takes away from any fun this movie tries to achieve. It also feels like a twist of the knife when the movie decides to show us the future versions of them where they become these disgusting prison skinheads who trick and abuse their own past-selves.

As others have also complained, the daughters seem to play a more important role in uniting the world than Bill or Ted do. I probably would've forgiven this if they at least gave the daughters their own personalities unlike their fathers but instead they're just carbon copies of them. For some reason, seeing two spunky 2020 girls shouting out 80's slangs feels a lot more forced and cringeworthy than when two actual 80's boys were doing it but it's even more embarrassing to watch a couple of old wrinkly gen-xers still doing it three decades later. The big twist of the daughters being the ones to write the song was not only contrived and predictable but it also made Bill & Ted look more like pawns rather than heroic icons, especially after we were introduced to their future-selves which overall tainted how I felt about the characters.

I was actually surprised at how many cast members from the first two movies returned for this but it also made for some really bad jokes. Did we really need to find out that Bill's ex-stepmom is now married to his little brother? That takes the joke from the first movie and just makes it seem gross. But what really kills this movie is the absence of George Carlin. Honestly they should've made this back in 2007 at the latest but they lost their chance when he died and it probably should've been a sign for them to quit after they spent years struggling to find investors. Keanu Reeves doesn't even look like he wants to be there for most of the movie. He spends most of the time just darting his eyes back and forth, waiting for his cue.

Maybe they should've left these movies in the past where they belong but as long as people keep paying for them, Hollywood will keep making them.

Magic Island (1995 Video)

A decent children's adventure movie.

[6/10 · 13 June 2019]

I originally saw this little gem on cable tv back in the 90's when it first came out. This was one of Full Moon Pictures' efforts into making movies aimed towards kids. Magic Island borrows an awful lot from The Never Ending Story (which is far superior) but it still manages to bring some of its own creative ideas to the table.

Most of the actors are really over the top but in a fun and goofy sort of way. The pirates are less like villains and more like a band of Three Stooges wannabees. Zachery Ty Bryan is about as engaging as he was on Home Improvement but he still shines above the rest of this cast of no-names. The cinematography is pretty cheesy compared to other Full Moon flicks but it's a pretty rare movie and it might just be a poor video transfer that I watched.

One of the movie's biggest highlights is the weird special effects like the stop-motion stone giant and the sand shark puppet which honestly gave me nightmares as a kid but unfortunately the goofy 90's special effects are too far and few in between. Maybe if they had something else like the giant crab from Ray Harryhausen's Mysterious Island then I would've given it a much higher rating.

The concept is still pretty inventive and there are a lot of silly moments to keep children entertained and I guess that's technically who the movie was made for. I might not have the same appreciation for it as an adult but I loved it as a kid so the movie does its job.