Screams and Nightmares

It is with a heavy heart that I report that Wes Craven has passed away after a battle with brain cancer.

Words and pictures can't really convey what I feel right now.  His movies scared me and thrilled me and he created one of the most iconic horror villains ever.  He was more than just a director.  He was a hero.

A hero to all of the horror fans that were validated when Freddy became a household name and a boogeyman for the ages.  A hero to those who thought the slasher was getting stale and was revived with Scream.  A hero to those who disagreed with Roger Ebert who claimed that The Last House on the Left had no redeeming social value (edit:  A hero to those who got LHotL confused with I Spit on Your Grave... do the research, Bob).  A hero to the folks that said, "I'm going to make monsters because Wes did it and the world thought it was cool."

Craven was a visionary and his dark visions both terrify and comfort us as horror fans.  They are familiar terrors and they are remembered with a fearful love.

Rest in peace, Wes Craven.

Game Fucking Over

Stomach bug day 3:  I'm delirious.  I have to be.  If I weren't delirious, I would not have wasted the last 2 hours of my life watching what is, quite possibly, the biggest piece of multi-million-dollar-budgeted, diamond-studded, horror-adjacent, five-alarm-chili-in-a-porta-john-after-a-Miralax-smoothie SHIT I have ever had the misfortune to witness in my 43 years on this planet, PIXELS.

YES, I'm counting Battlefield Earth.  Don't judge me.

Also, YES, alien invasion movies count as horror-adjacent, even if they DO star Adam "Man-Child" Sandler.

Pixels started out as an internet short.  See Below:

Now that you've witnessed the awesome, let's bring it right back to the suck-tastic world of Adam Sandler's frat-boy money machine.

Let me get this straight.  Adam Sandler plays a person who, in 1982, had the mental acuity to see all the patterns in every video game in existence like some kind of quarter-hoarding Stephen Hawking (along with his friends, the conspiracy nut and the kid who is only good at the claw machine).  He manages to lose the championship with Donkey Kong because there's no patterns at the higher levels and thus begins what is, apparently, the downward spiral that is his life until he's in his late-forties, divorced and unhappy and working as an audio-video installer, a la Geek Squad.  His claw game friend, however, manages to end up as possibly the worst President ever (akin to if Dan Quayle would have won) and the conspiracy theorist still lives in Lainie Kazan's basement pining over a video game character in a manner that would have CSI over there in a goddamned heartbeat if she actually fucking existed.

For real?

Oh, it gets better!

You wouldn't lie to me, would you?  Oh... you would.  Carry on.

Sandler manages to both befriend (for a little while) and offend the female lead who, when she isn't curled up in her closet drinking wine out of a sippy cup (when there is no toddler in sight, sooo...), is a military-esque government official.  He spends 5 minutes of the movie making creepy stalker jokes about her (after attempting to kiss her, unsuccessfully, while she was already intoxicated which tells me he's one of THOSE guys) as she follows him to the WHITE HOUSE where she has a DARPA pass and he, apparently, has an all-access pass to the Oval fucking Office.  ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?

The rest of the movie is him and his man-child friends chasing video game characters around the globe without once experiencing exhaustion which is HILARIOUS since the movie takes place over the course of, like, 4 days and part of it is in fucking LONDON.  They are led to these locations first by Conspiracy-Theorist Olaf who shows them the videotaped broadcast of 80s television clips that include such celebrities as Madonna and Ronald Reagan that interrupted his One Tree Hill binge-session... On videotape... Not DVD, not Blu-Ray... Videotape. Which give them the coordinates of their attacks because the best militaries ALWAYS say where they're gonna be like a schoolyard bully.  (I know Ronnie couldn't have voiced himself but if I find out that Madonna did, I'm burning my fan club card. Just kidding.  I don't HAVE a fan club card.  But if I did...)

ENGAGE NOSTALGIA ENGINE!  No, fucking seriously.  Engage it because so far this sucks on toast.

Also, how the hell did DARPA come up with light-based weaponry over the course of 2 days when they haven't been able to in the past ENTIRETY OF HUMAN FUCKING HISTORY?  "Oh, wait.  These little pixel fuckers don't like getting hit with lasers.  Let's just whip up working prototypes out of legos and spit and OHMAHGAWDTHEYWORK!"  Or, oh, hey, let's INVENT FORCE FIELD TECHNOLOGY THE DAY AFTER WE INVENT STAR WARS BLASTERS!

Fuck me.

Meanwhile, they have to bust out the cheesiest motherfucker ever enshrined in celluloid (Peter Dinklage, who, I'm sure, has spent the last month kicking his agent in the dick) from prison.  His demands include a three-way with Serena Williams and Martha Stewart.  This is disturbing.

You can toss those barrels any time you want to, sir.  I accept my fate and am prepared to feel the sweet embrace of death.

Oh, did I mention that every time they won a fight against the aliens, they won a trophy?  Like, "one of their soldiers" trophy?  As in that goddamn dog from Duck Hunt and Q-Bert?  Because slavery is ALWAYS cool.  This becomes relevant in a minute.

NO, I don't wanna build a goddamn snowman, motherfucker!

See her?  That's Lady Lisa.  She doesn't say a damn thing in the 5 minutes she's on screen.  She goes from righteously kicking ass in the name of her alien overlords to falling in love with a doughy stalker who, literally, calls her his fiancee five minutes after he meets her.  Because Red fucking Sonia up there has no more self-worth than Bigfoot's bunions... 'cause they don't exist, see?

They save the goddamn day and all the aliens go home.  Including Lady Lisa.  Awwww... sad Olaf.  But, oh, look.  Q-Bert, one of the trophies they won, TURNS INTO LADY LISA.  She is now LITERALLY a TROPHY.  Not only that but a trophy belonging to the kid voted Most Likely to Go Full Uni-Bomber.  On what planet did the script-writers think this was a good fucking idea?


No longer are the days of Happy Madison, where it was perfectly acceptable for Sandler to act like a baboon who had somehow managed to find a human skin-suit.  Somehow, though, this news has appeared to bypass Sandler entirely because he still thinks that it's open season for grown men to act like sexist asshats with no ambition and less brains and still manage to save the day.  The end of the movie doesn't even show Sandler's character doing anything useful with his life even though he finally does get to kiss the woman who, by all rights, should have reported him to his supervisors the minute he left her home for invading her personal space and attempting sexual advances.

 I know that this movie is supposed to be fantasy but under NO circumstances should this be considered a "family film" unless you want to teach your kids that it's perfectly OK to degrade women who turn them down and that women will automatically fall in their laps and do whatever they want because they're men. No child should be taught that you can get away with not doing anything with your life.  Frankly, no child should be taught that video-gaming is a legitimate career or an actual sport (and I say that as a gamer) but, hey, there are competitions and so forth so that could work for some folks.  I still say get an education.

About the only GOOD lesson, here, is that people CAN be productive members of society after they get out of prison (even if they get released and basically given a government promise of payment in sex because women are commodities).  They couldn't even get "Cheaters Never Prosper" right.  I swear, the more I think about this, the more I'm absolutely certain that Rose McGowan was right and Sandler needs to have his testicles roasted slowly and fed to him.

Seriously, kids, I HATE Adam Sandler and everything he stands for but I wanted to like this one.  I really did.  And it's not badly made from an effects standpoint but in all honesty, the only good thing to happen in this movie is that Sean Bean didn't die.

I don't normally want to wish harm to anyone (OK, that's a damn lie) but Adam Sandler needs to be fed to rabid feminists (like, actual feminists infected with rabies who, I'm sure, have utterly correct arguments for the equal treatment of women when they aren't foaming at the mouth and infecting Saint Bernards) right about now.  Everyone even remotely associated with this movie should be followed around for the rest of their lives by the Shame Septa (Game of Thrones, kids.  Seriously?  I had to tell you that?).  There needs to be several pillories and scheduled whippings.  This is a gigantic, mysogynistic mountain of suck that I can never unsee.

I hate you Adam Sandler.  I hate you with the power of a million suns.  From Hell's heart, I stab at thee.  Grow the fuck up and stop making this trash.

And also FUCK YOU.

The Internet is Forever

So, I'm home with a stomach bug of some sort and, me being me, I decided to catch up with some new friends.

Friends that stabbed me in the goddamn back like the lying, cyberbullying bitches they are.

For you see, my tried and true friends, I watched Unfriended.

Yeah, if that poster tells you anything, it should be telling you "RUN SCREAMING FROM THIS HORRENDOUS SHITSHOW!"

So, this movie is about your standard teenage shenanigans.  Faux sexting.  Skype in the middle of a school night.  Being young and pretty.

Look at them.  Young and Pretty.  And also the bottom of the casting barrel.

Driving a classmate to suicide via a drunk video posted to YouTube which subsequently leads to the haunting murders of 6 assholes who don't think they're horrible people who spend their time faux sexting, Skyping in the middle of a school night and being young and pretty.

Yeah, that's it.  Tease your primary demographic.  You're in a horror movie.  Tits or GTFO.

For fuck's sake, this movie STARTS with the "lead" looking up the video that caused this whole dumpster fire to begin with.  AND the video of the bullied individual shooting themselves in the head on school grounds.  (You'll notice that I'm not naming these characters.  It's best they remain nameless.  I don't feel as bad when they end up shoving a flat iron into their bitchy faceholes.)

Oh, and did I mention that this entire movie takes place on a Mac screen?  Because young, pretty, horrible teenagers don't know how to set up the internet in Windows, apparently.  This is not about Mac vs Windows, it's about the fact that they're just reinforcing the fact that teenagers are stupid.  Except for the fat stoner who, apparently, knows how to write multi-platform anti-virus software that downloads and works in 2 minutes because computers are fucking magic.

And he REALLY likes his salsa.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm kind of OK with the premise of this movie but for real, kids.  If I seriously wanted to watch an hour worth of texting (which is about the total amount of screen time this movie has devoted to instant messaging), I would fucking play World of Warcraft.  At least then, I would have epic loot and game coinage for my troubles and I would have EARNED my death by wandering into an area with high-level monsters wearing nothing but a sword and a smile at level 1 which I would do only because I was trying to be one of the idiot assholes in this movie.

And don't get me started about the "ghost" because that shit was WEAK, yo.  "Let's play a game!"  Seriously?  For real?  You're literally going to play "Never Have I Ever" on the internet to force people to admit that they're more twisted than if an episode of Days of Our Lives managed to have a baby with Cards Against Humanity?  You know that it would actually be easier on both yourself AND the audiences ears if you just went to their fucking houses individually, right?  Plus we wouldn't have to stare at weak computing skills for 2 hours.  How this girl wanted to get any kind of decent job after graduation is completely beyond me.

I'm so sorry I have to look like a reject from Blair Witch.  Please forgive me!

She used CHAT ROULETTE to get a stranger to call the police.  Ugh.

Look, I get that this was a giant, anvilicious means of getting the anti-cyberbullying message out there but come on, now, kids.  This was lazy film making and you know it.  Unfriended is the world telling me that I really need to find the directors and slap them with a medium-sized tuna. For realsies, this movie isn't even "funny" bad.

Skip it, kids.  Make a donation to The Trevor Project instead.  You'll feel better about yourself.