edwardkeaton Reviews

Long Time Dead (2002)

Oh the horror, the horror!

[1/10 · 19 January 2002]

What an utterly incompetent piece of absolute garbage, can someone please tell me how movies like this get made? On my Episode 1 rating (You know how bad Episode 1 is? Well I now rate movies as to how long they take me to get restless, bored and angry as that George Lucas trash did) this rates a 7. That's 7 minutes it took me to realise I was watching a stinker; even Rancid Aluminium scored a 10!

The plot, such as it is, is that a group of teens decide to have some fun with a ouija board but inadvertently raise an evil Djinn, who then sets about killing them all in gruesome ways. So OK, we're in comfortable teen horror movie territory here, but wait, there's been so many of these movies recently, we need to find a new spin on it, right? So what can we do? I know, great idea, let's just do the same old crap, but let's make it British! Yep, instead of annoying American high-school kids getting gutted instead we get annoying Brits. And that's it. Acting is appalling, direction sub-standard, writing woeful, even the production values are on the shoddy side. At least the 'enjoyment' in these movies is seeing people murdered in gory ways, but here the killings happen off screen. And every bad horror-movie cliché is relentlessly churned out, then used again for good measure, and again, and again.

Example, the old staple of young guy (let's call him Chad), unwisely exploring shadowy lit basement hears loud thump, so nervously calls out name of his buddy, `Chris? Chris, is that you? Hey man, quit screwing around!' But Chris doesn't reply. So, tentatively, Chad walks down the corridor, slowly at first, then building up a little as he nears the door. And as the sweat breaks out on his revered brow and he strains to hear every sound, he tentatively reaches out an outstretched hand to the door knob, yanking it open in terrified despair only for Chris to jump out at him and shout `Got you Chad!'

Yahhhhh!

How many times have we seen this fake tension builder before, I ask you? Well obviously not enough, because director Marcus Adams uses it five times in this movie; I know, because I counted! I mean, what gives? Does Marcus Adams want to be the next Danny Cannon? They even had a spooky old man, straight out of Scooby Doo, who pops up at appropriate times saying things like, `You kids don't know what you're dealing with here!' And this took four people to write?!

Ahh! I refuse to write any more and waste my time on such junk.

THE HORROR!

South West 9 (2001)

I want my money back

[1/10 · 2 November 2001]

South West 9 was made by the same company as Human Traffic, which although itself not really much of a movie is emerging as one of the better British flicks of recent times, which shows you just how bad most British films are. But Human Traffic, I feel, was a film of two halves; the first, weaker half, contained all the movies references to drugs, pubs, clubs, raves etc. (which is what the film was promoted on), while the second, stronger half instead concentrated on such traditional elements as narrative, characterisation and relations between characters. When Human Traffic laid off its drugs/clubs scene setting and concentrated instead on its characters and story it became a decent enough little film. So you would have thought that the filmmakers would have learnt a lesson for their second feature and produced a movie with a great story and interesting characters. But no, everything that was weak and superficial in Human Traffic is brought to the fore in South West 9.

The story, such as it is, concerns the lives of various characters in SW9 over the course of 24 hours, yet all they seem to do is take drugs, deal drugs, steal drugs and waste their lives away; and characters are so flimsy as to not even drift into stereotypes. But this is no Robert Altman style slice of life where numerous narrative threads are brought together to produce something greater than the sum of its parts, this is just botched film-making. Nothing really happens in the two hours and nothing interesting is said; the film just trundles along. And there is also a very nasty anti-capitalist, anti-police sub plot culminating in an animation of London office blocks being destroyed; if the filmmakers had a legitimate political point to make about capitalist support of corrupt military regimes, as they seemed to, it was lost completely in its clumsy exposition. And then as if sensing that all was lost, at the end of the movie they tack on a totally unnecessary gangster/gun action finale; yep, another Brit gangster flick. But frankly, by then, I was so tired of the whole sorry deal I couldn't have cared less.

The British film industry seems to be in dire straights at the moment with one bad film after another and films like South West 9 can only bring it down even furthur. I would also like to point out that I went to see this film on its opening Friday night at my local multiplex and I was the only person in the cinema! Even when I went to see the absolutely awful Rancid Aluminium on its opening night there were a few dozen people there. As nasty as it may seem, I was glad to see that after only one week on release SW9 was pulled from cinemas.

The Martins (2001)

And...

[25 October 2001]

Where's the third act?

This movie just stopped two thirds of the way through. Lee Evans was just about to undergo his perfunctory final-act character reversal from conniving scum-bag to well meaning family man when the film suddenly finished.

Actually though, considering it was fairly rotten maybe that isn't such a bad thing. Avoid this one.

Loop (I) (1997)

A newly discovered genre: a comedy without laughs

[1/10 · 11 October 2001]

I own, and actually enjoy, all of Steven Seagal's movies... I think I'm the only person who liked Batman and Robin... Keanu Reeves' acting really puts a smile on my face...

As I'm sure you've guessed, I am a lover of bad movies and when I saw this in a bargain bid outside a newsagents in Islington, I thought, for 99p, I can't go wrong. But boy oh boy, wrong I was!

This movie is awful in every department, from its lame script, to its amateur acting, to its stilted direction. There was not one camera movement in the whole film, not a single pan or tracking shot; all of it was shot with a static camera, making for a very static film. The plot, forced as I am in a critical comment to mention it, was non-existent, some guff about a woman on the run which didn't so much end as just finish. And not one funny line in the whole movie. It must take some work to write a comedy and not include a single gag, but this movie managed it.

I've sat through Rancid Aluminium, House!, Circus and a slew of the worst that Britain has to offer, but this one tops the lot. And the thing that bothered me most about this film? That for another 50p I could have had Death Wish 4; I'm sure the extra investment would have been worthwhile.