Straight Outta Silliness

A movie called "Straight Outta Compton" is currently breaking box office records, so I'm sure that you've already seen a few memes for it on the social networks.

Other than being something to do with rappers, I have no idea what "Straight Outta Compton" is actually about. I probably won't ever see it until it ends up on Netflix anyway, but since I had nothing better to do for a few minutes, I thought I'd make a few memes for it too.

If you want to make one, the "Straight Outta Somewhere" meme generator can be found at: http://www.straightouttasomewhere.com. You can upload your own picture, change its size and contrast, and add whatever place name you want. You can't, however, correct the terrible abuse of the English language to "out of".

It's one of the cleverest and most successful marketing gimmicks (for a movie which I have no interest in) that I've seen so far.

Phobia (2013)

"In 1885, a female doctor helping a group of people with their phobias becomes embroiled in a murder mystery surrounding a patient that may or may not be a vampire."

What the Hell did I just watch? It's not often that a movie is so soulless and ineptly made that it leaves me speechless, but this is one of those times. After "Phobia" ended, I sat staring at the blank page on my computer screen for three hours afterwards waiting for the neurons in my brain to reconnect, and then I had to go to bed for a long depression nap before I could bear thinking about it again.

Even though it's only 90 minutes long, "Phobia" feels several times longer because of how dialogue heavy and boring it is. When I say boring, I mean really boring in the way that watching an amateur dramatics production or a high school play is boring. Actually, no, this is worse than either of those; "Phobia" is seven-year-olds-performing-a-nativity-play-boring but in a foreign language which you don't understand. I was familiar with the subject matter, I knew what was intended, but I couldn't process it because it was so shit.

How any movie could be both overwritten and overacted but contain characters so underdeveloped at the same time is a mystery to me, although I'd hazard a guess that it must take some severely misplaced genius to create such a thing and a lot of luck to get it distributed. Maybe not so much luck since "Phobia" is only another one of many Gravitas Ventures VOD movies which I've written off this year, but still... I can't even... I don't know... my head is full of FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU! Sorry for writing like a fifteen-year-old, but honestly, this movie was probably written by a teenager too. With no nudity, swearing, or anything more gory than you'd see in an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", it's definitely PG-13 all the way, and it's impossible to call it horror with a straight face.

She's dressed as a man, but he's wearing a fake beard. WTF?

If you can concentrate on anything in the first half-hour without being distracted by Erica Leerhsen's thumbsucker-mouth which stands out more because she's supposed to be disguised as a man (à la "Yentl") then you're a slightly better person than me. But if you don't wonder why she still wears a girl's wig, or notice that Sigmund Freud (played by Matt Moore) has a ridiculous fake beard, there's no hope for you as a movie critic. I know this is a low-budget B movie of sorts, but what the bloody Hell were they thinking?

Also how can anyone hire Eric Leerhsen—the only girl in "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2" (2000) who gets naked—and not ask her to get naked again? Wouldn't a clichéd and gratuitous nude shower/bath scene being overlooked by another character make a better reveal of her gender than removing a stupid black wig which doesn't match her ginger eyebrows? It's not as if you can't see that she's a woman anyway, but... oh my God!

Bearing in mind that director Jon Keeyes is only a couple of weeks younger than me and hasn't directed anything worthwhile other than "American Nightmare" (2002), a few shorts, and a couple of horror TV shows for kids, he should still know better. Exactly what age group is "Phobia" intended for? It's too talky for kids and too tame for adults. And what's with all the badly spoken French with subtitles? It's distancing, alienating, and irritating. It certainly doesn't make the period setting more realistic.

You just have to have a bald Nosferatu guy called Guy!

Once there are no more scenes of Americans butchering the French language, things improve slightly, but just to redress the balance towards crap again, half of them now need to have fake Romanian accents which are more like Russian. Has no one ever heard a Romanian speak before? They usually sound Latin (for obvious reasons including Romanian being a Romance language) not Russian! Jesus wept! And was it really necessary to have a bald-headed Nosferatu lookalike just so that everyone knows that this is a vampire movie? Seriously?

Beautiful Tiffany Lonsdale spices the eyecandy up a bit as bald Guy's sister with claustrophobia, but the lack of any family resemblance is uncanny. She doesn't even look like anyone in the family portraits or her cousin Val Drakul! Maybe she was adopted or a lusty milkman paid her mother a visit? Casting decisions were clearly not a strong point, so it's probably better to not overthink these things.

At least everything improves considerably after the location change from Paris to California (although it's really Texas). Once Erica Leerhsen starts wearing big Victorian dresses, lets her hair out, puts on some lipstick, and looks like a woman again, she's actually quite pretty. She's still not believable as a doctor, and her relationship with Nicholas Brendon lookalike Chase Ryan Jeffery lacks chemistry, but to give credit where it's due, her performance gets much better as the story progresses. The fact that Dr. Lesley doesn't get the chance to cure her patients' phobias is relatively unimportant.

Stephanie Rhodes (the Camp Counselor in the "Friday the 13th" remake) steals the show completely in her scenes as sexy Elizabeth, the ward of agoraphobic Annabel Lee (Carolyn Wickwire), but not enough is made of her to be memorable overall. Without any eroticism or some desperately needed sex scenes, why even add a lesbian facet to Elizabeth's character? What's the point? Again, who are the target audience?

The saddest thing is that everyone in "Phobia" can act! They've all been in other things before, whether TV shows or movies, and they don't disgrace themselves once you take into account what they had to work with. The fault rests almost entirely with the script despite annoying background music which outstays its welcome, lethargic pacing, cheap-looking camerawork, and a lot of staginess which doesn't help. Whatever clever period mystery Anne Gibson may have thought she was creating, it would have been better as a pulp YA novel than a movie. To say that "Phobia" is reminiscent of Kim Newman would be an insult more than a compliment, however, since I can't stand that grinnygog or his books.

Okay, she does look a bit better in a dress.

On the plus side, the way the use of hypnotism and vampires are combined into a mystery seems to be fairly original. If my mind wasn't still numb, I'm sure that I could find better examples than "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" or "The Vampire Lovers" to prove myself wrong, but as all roads lead back to Hammer and Bram Stoker's "Dracula", I'm positive that there's nothing new here other than the way it's presented. A couple of homages to Edgar Allan Poe are harmless additions.

Before I wrap this up, I have to mention the effects. Apart from the wig and beard fiasco, the make-up is generally good and a couple of torn throats look the part. Inevitably, there are some very cheap "Buffy-esque" CGI effects near the end which place this movie in the "Syfy Original wannabe" category and will doom it to appearing in Echo Bridge or Mill Creek multipacks one day, but they do provide some horror action. I doubt that "Phobia" will ever been shown on TV unless Chiller (or Zone Horror/The Horror Channel in the UK) get it for next to nothing though.

According to the IMDb, the ensemble cast from "Phobia" is due to reappear in "The Harrowing" (2014) but with the addition of Debbie Rochon instead of Erica Leerhsen. As I'm done with being a masochist after suffering through this borefest, I think it'll be another good one to miss.

Lost Lake (2012)

"A young couple travels to a deserted town to try and find their mysterious uncle, only to discover that ghosts are real and very dangerous."

I'm a little bit flummoxed about how to review "Lost Lake". It's not that I've forgotten how to review movies to the extent that I need to MacDougall one from somebody else, but I can barely scrape together enough enthusiasm to put one word after another after watching this turd.

If I had my druthers (as they say round here), I'd be writing a review of "The Conjuring" right now instead of this one. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances and the heat, I still haven't gone to the movie theatre since "The Conjuring" started playing, and it's starting to annoy me that I've fallen behind everyone else this time. The worst case scenario will be that I wait for the DVD to be released. I'm bound to buy it based on the very positive buzz that's already flying around the internet, so it's not as if you actually need a review of "The Conjuring" from me anyway.

Just to tide everyone over until I'm back on track, I was looking for other ghostie movies to watch yesterday and came across "Lost Lake" on Amazon. Although I'm sure a lot of people have watched it, nobody seems to have had very much to say about it online. Thus, to redress the balance, I thought I'd give it a try. I thought, "It's only 80 minutes long, it's about ghosties, so what could be the harm in watching it?" Little did I know that it was going to be one of the longest 80 minutes of my life.

For a low-budget movie, "Lost Lake" starts off extremely well. I have to admit that the first jump scare is so well-timed that it actually got me. That rarely happens nowadays so I thought I was really going to enjoy everything which followed. As I was watching the movie "cold" with only a vague awareness of the subject matter and no idea about who was in it, it was all a case of "Thrill me!" and "Let's see what you can do!" rather than the predominantly negative way that I've been approaching "indie" dreck recently. After all the multipack reviews I did a few weeks ago, you can't blame me for being jaded, but I honestly wanted to like this movie.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, everything went downhill from the moment I saw the lead characters. It's not that they are the typical pretty teens in trouble, but bald-chested John Shartzer (who plays Jeff) looks about 12 years old, and I initially thought that his character was incestuously in bed with his older sister or something. When the next scene had him playing on the floor with a toy robotic arm, it took a while for it to sink in that he was supposed to be a nerdy student rather than a mentally retarded pervert. It was only when I scrutinized Katie Keene (who plays Tricia) more closely that I realised she was equally young. I doubt that she is more than 18 or 19, and it kind of made me feel like a dirty old man for ogling her as the story progressed. Katie Keene is very photogenic though.

The next thing which gave me pause was the intentional misdirection about Uncle Vern's identity which could have been good if it hadn't caused me a moment of total confusion and an unresolved question which remained with me for a few minutes after the movie ended. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but once you've seen "Lost Lake" for yourself, feel free let me know in the comments section if you get what I'm talking about. The motivation for a lot of things which happen in this movie is so poorly explained that I don't think there even is a good answer. The realisation of whatever clever ideas evidently went into the script sucks, and it's very frustrating.

A more outstanding example of ineptitude is when what should be a scary supernatural scene just isn't. As the leads investigate an abandoned grocery store, it's a time when some imaginative jump scares could make a lasting impression. For whatever reason, possibly budgetary, the gags aren't even set-up enough to fall flat, so ultimately, this botched non-event adds nothing but a decoy for possessed Uncle Vern (Ezra Buzzington) to do something important which we don't find out about until later. It's a plot contrivance for sure, but it could have been handled so much better.

While the camerawork and acting are fairly decent, it's not only the plot but the lack of horror action which really lets "Lost Lake" down. Apart from a severed finger and some realistic reactions to it, nothing much happens at all gore-wise. When it does, the bits you want to see are either off camera or too dark.

Contrarily, an unneccessary bit of animal cruelty involving a white mouse and a snake is something that I didn't want to see. Yes, I know that there are weirdo reptile owners who have to feed their pets as nature intended, but this scene is both gratuitous and superfluous. I may understand what writer/director Marcus Nash was trying to do, but I don't approve of it.

Filmed in Trona, California, a desolate place which I was intigued enough by to look up on Wikipedia, "Lost Lake" is all about a location which struggles to lift everything a couple of notches higher than the horrible storytelling will allow. Apart from a few tell-tale signs which give away that it isn't really a ghost town, including the electricity still being connected and a physical sign for "Free Wi-Fi" on one of the buildings, I wanted to believe that the setting was real. Well, the town is real, obviously, but you know what I mean.

I suppose that's all I really want to say about "Lost Lake". It wasn't the ghost story that I expected it to be, and I found the ending very disappointing. Suffice it to say that there's something about witchcraft to "Lost Lake" as well, so it's probably best to classify the movie as a below average "possession from beyond the grave" with slasher clichés and leave it at that.