Tangles!!!
Prologue: "The following film depicts (Tangles-related) events that occurred in October 2007 (to Tangles, among other people). It contains official police evidentiary material (including a lot of hand-held camera footage that will remind you of other very true stories such as "Blair Witch", "REC", and "Verynormal Activity"). Several person involved in these events declined to be interviewed. (They refused to be associated in any way shape or form with this B-movie.)"
The overly dramatic, corny prologue is the only "interesting" thing going on in the first 40 minutes. You can skip these 40 minutes of the movie, easy; you miss out on nothing - aside from some rather trivial details involving in-fighting and power struggles in the offices of an Aussie newspaper. Who the hell cares?!
Not only does TT take an eternity to get its ass out of the dull politically-based back-story and finally shift gear into horror-film territory, but we also have two people being interviewed, very much in a Woody Allen, Bergman or Christopher Guest vein. It didn't work for Bergman, so why should it work here? Nothing will take you out of a horror movie quicker than actors pretending to be real people in a quasi-documentary set-up while explaining the bleedin'-obvious. An action scene in a tunnel – followed by someone blabbing into the camera about what he thinks he/she saw or heard. Nothing will derail a movie's horror potential than this kind of trendy docu-bull.
Nothing – apart from Tangles, of course. After 40 minutes of dreariness, finally someone is attacked Yes, people it's Tangles time! The ten minutes that follow this abduction are about a character running through the tunnels, shouting "Tangles". "Tangles!... Tangles!!!... Tangles!" I kid you not. And then: "Tangles!... Tangles!" And so on. I am surprised they didn't call him "Kermit" or perhaps "Popeye". What a dumb name. Shouting out "Tangles!" a thousand times would be considered total overkill in a comedy, let alone in a horror film in which this kind of silly repetitiousness is a full-blown kamikaze act perpetrated by the presumably alcoholic screenwriter. Didn't he want TT to be scary? Apparently not. Hence the whole Tangles Affair, which could have sunk a government, not to mention a little Aussie horror movie weighed down so heavily by its utter excess of tanglesiness.
Then again, why am I complaining about the name? It's not the movie's fault that the man is actually called that way. After all, this is "based on true events", right? Tangles: the man, the legend. Let's not desecrate the name of this boom-man who ended up in the belly of an actual, real tunnel zombie.
Why have the survivors describe the events in cheesy interviews? That only serves to dilute the mood, not to mention that it serves as a major spoiler: now we know who makes it out of the tunnel alive and who doesn't. Well done, movie: take away whatever little surprise elements you may have had in store for us.
As if running through tunnels and shouting "Tangles" weren't stupid enough to already give TT high marks on the stupidometer, we then have two characters involved in ludicrous bickering; he shoves the camera into her face, blaming her for this and that (as if she could possibly know there was a flesh-eating zombie in the tunnels) and she responds to this badly-timed harassment by actually sulking. All of this in the midst of a monster attack. But at least there is a bit of realism inasmuch as the briefly sulking Natasha doesn't get all Lara-Crofty on us, but falls into hysterics at one point, which is how 99% of all women would react in such circumstances.
I love how they portray the tunnels in Las Vegas as some kind of bizarre, huge mazes impossible not to get lost in. Totally false piece of information.
Epilogue: "The whereabouts of Jim "Tangles" Williams remain unknown (He is presumed unemployed, unable to find any new movie roles.) His family is still searching for answers (They were told to start looking for them in the insides of the monster who ate him.)"
Prologue: "The following film depicts (Tangles-related) events that occurred in October 2007 (to Tangles, among other people). It contains official police evidentiary material (including a lot of hand-held camera footage that will remind you of other very true stories such as "Blair Witch", "REC", and "Verynormal Activity"). Several person involved in these events declined to be interviewed. (They refused to be associated in any way shape or form with this B-movie.)"
The overly dramatic, corny prologue is the only "interesting" thing going on in the first 40 minutes. You can skip these 40 minutes of the movie, easy; you miss out on nothing - aside from some rather trivial details involving in-fighting and power struggles in the offices of an Aussie newspaper. Who the hell cares?!
Not only does TT take an eternity to get its ass out of the dull politically-based back-story and finally shift gear into horror-film territory, but we also have two people being interviewed, very much in a Woody Allen, Bergman or Christopher Guest vein. It didn't work for Bergman, so why should it work here? Nothing will take you out of a horror movie quicker than actors pretending to be real people in a quasi-documentary set-up while explaining the bleedin'-obvious. An action scene in a tunnel – followed by someone blabbing into the camera about what he thinks he/she saw or heard. Nothing will derail a movie's horror potential than this kind of trendy docu-bull.
Nothing – apart from Tangles, of course. After 40 minutes of dreariness, finally someone is attacked Yes, people it's Tangles time! The ten minutes that follow this abduction are about a character running through the tunnels, shouting "Tangles". "Tangles!... Tangles!!!... Tangles!" I kid you not. And then: "Tangles!... Tangles!" And so on. I am surprised they didn't call him "Kermit" or perhaps "Popeye". What a dumb name. Shouting out "Tangles!" a thousand times would be considered total overkill in a comedy, let alone in a horror film in which this kind of silly repetitiousness is a full-blown kamikaze act perpetrated by the presumably alcoholic screenwriter. Didn't he want TT to be scary? Apparently not. Hence the whole Tangles Affair, which could have sunk a government, not to mention a little Aussie horror movie weighed down so heavily by its utter excess of tanglesiness.
Then again, why am I complaining about the name? It's not the movie's fault that the man is actually called that way. After all, this is "based on true events", right? Tangles: the man, the legend. Let's not desecrate the name of this boom-man who ended up in the belly of an actual, real tunnel zombie.
Why have the survivors describe the events in cheesy interviews? That only serves to dilute the mood, not to mention that it serves as a major spoiler: now we know who makes it out of the tunnel alive and who doesn't. Well done, movie: take away whatever little surprise elements you may have had in store for us.
As if running through tunnels and shouting "Tangles" weren't stupid enough to already give TT high marks on the stupidometer, we then have two characters involved in ludicrous bickering; he shoves the camera into her face, blaming her for this and that (as if she could possibly know there was a flesh-eating zombie in the tunnels) and she responds to this badly-timed harassment by actually sulking. All of this in the midst of a monster attack. But at least there is a bit of realism inasmuch as the briefly sulking Natasha doesn't get all Lara-Crofty on us, but falls into hysterics at one point, which is how 99% of all women would react in such circumstances.
I love how they portray the tunnels in Las Vegas as some kind of bizarre, huge mazes impossible not to get lost in. Totally false piece of information.
Epilogue: "The whereabouts of Jim "Tangles" Williams remain unknown (He is presumed unemployed, unable to find any new movie roles.) His family is still searching for answers (They were told to start looking for them in the insides of the monster who ate him.)"