eer85
Joined Jul 2004
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The first "Jurassic World" was a dumb, nostalgia-ridden mess which managed to make a lot of money by rehashing the basic plot of "Jurassic Park". This sequel its the same deal, only it uses the already inferior "The Lost World" as its main source of inspiration. There's not a single plot element that makes sense, everything is jammed down the viewer's throat and the character's are a bunch of one-dimensional stereotypes. It's easier to list its few virtues than dwell in all its shortcomings:
1) Visually speaking, its 100 times more appealing than its predecessor. Kudos to the director, the cinematographer, art department and all the other people involved. The lighting, especially, is more interesting. Despite the fact it is shot with digital cameras (the Alexa 65, which currently is the state-of-the-art, along with a few other machines, when it comes to digital imagery), it feels more like an old-fashion, Technicolor epic than its captured-on-film predecessor.
2) Despite the script's lack of truly suspenseful set-pieces (we're talking about the JP franchise here: who can forget the kitchen sequence in the original? Or the caravan hanging on the edge of the cliff in Lost World?), Bayona does a good job in instilling a quasi-gothic, horror-movie vibe in the last act. Nothing that will prevent you from sleep at night, but you can tell the guy knows what suspense is. I wonder what he could've done with a better screenplay at hand.
3) The opening scene does work: it's a nice way to kickstart the flick. Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from there.
The rest is highly forgettable. The pseudo-science is one of the things that kills me every time I watch current sci-fi blockbusters: these things, of course, have never been actual textbooks you could take seriously, but nowadays it really seems that the writers don't even bother to check wikipedia and just rely on stuff they have seen in other movies. As such, not only we have to swallow a ton of silly technobabble fro Dr. Wu (who, since the last movie, has become a diabolical villain), but we are also supposed to believe you can actually do an on-the-spot, interspecies blood transfusion between animals that originally lived millions of years apart. And that's just the first example that came to mind, but there are many more. Hollywood definitely lost the mold for this kind of movie a long time ago. And the people there probably don't even care.
1) Visually speaking, its 100 times more appealing than its predecessor. Kudos to the director, the cinematographer, art department and all the other people involved. The lighting, especially, is more interesting. Despite the fact it is shot with digital cameras (the Alexa 65, which currently is the state-of-the-art, along with a few other machines, when it comes to digital imagery), it feels more like an old-fashion, Technicolor epic than its captured-on-film predecessor.
2) Despite the script's lack of truly suspenseful set-pieces (we're talking about the JP franchise here: who can forget the kitchen sequence in the original? Or the caravan hanging on the edge of the cliff in Lost World?), Bayona does a good job in instilling a quasi-gothic, horror-movie vibe in the last act. Nothing that will prevent you from sleep at night, but you can tell the guy knows what suspense is. I wonder what he could've done with a better screenplay at hand.
3) The opening scene does work: it's a nice way to kickstart the flick. Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from there.
The rest is highly forgettable. The pseudo-science is one of the things that kills me every time I watch current sci-fi blockbusters: these things, of course, have never been actual textbooks you could take seriously, but nowadays it really seems that the writers don't even bother to check wikipedia and just rely on stuff they have seen in other movies. As such, not only we have to swallow a ton of silly technobabble fro Dr. Wu (who, since the last movie, has become a diabolical villain), but we are also supposed to believe you can actually do an on-the-spot, interspecies blood transfusion between animals that originally lived millions of years apart. And that's just the first example that came to mind, but there are many more. Hollywood definitely lost the mold for this kind of movie a long time ago. And the people there probably don't even care.
EASTER BUNNY, KILL! KILL! is a small gem of micro-budget exploitation, a twisted little movie with bite. The premise is the quintessential slasher movie routine: a handful of characters confined in a house at the mercy of a masked killer. But instead of students and cheerleaders, this house is packed with fat pedophiles, hookers and sleazy, cocaine-sniffing criminals. Writer-director Chad Ferrin has a personal angle on the genre: in an age of remakes and fanboy films, his work does own the rare virtue of an individual voice. While most sleaze-abundant movies do sound pretentious, this one in particular feels uncomfortably sincere. As with Jim Van Bebber, Ferrin's movies are not for everybody: if you want a MTV-friendly horror movie, then stay away from this one.
I finally got to see this movie after about 8 years of research (when I started, Internet was something off-limits for most of the people), just because I've been obsessed with Koontz'novel (and related movies) for quiet a while. I'm pretty disappointed for what I saw, but I also have to admit I enjoyed the experience: this is one of those so-bad-is-so-good cases. The fun begins as the movie starts, when you see WATCHERS 2 footage re-used as new material (a voice-over and a detail of two boxes and you've your prologue - this is the real and pure Corman spirit) and proceeds through the entire movie, with blue-screen as sky for helicopter insides and a gummy suit with toy-eyes for the "monster". As Notz, Stanford decides to show the Outsider pretty early, giving away any chance of suspense: it doesn't matter if you insist with shadows and POV after, since you have spoiled it before. This time, the creature design is really horrible, in a bad way: even its shadow is ridiculous. A furry thing like the Oxcom in WATCHERS would have been better (and scarier). This is the first real sequel to a previous entry in the series: it takes the character of Ferguson from the previous movie, even though the two story lines are a little bit in contrast (again, other WATCHERS 2 footage: doesn't matter if the creatures are totally different). The screenplay adds some other elements from the original novel (the cave, for instance - even if it was switched to the sewers in the previous film) but most importantly completely rips off the PREDATOR storyline and settings, so we get a squad of soldiers (all convicted) against the "evil menace". Actually, the plot wants to be a little bit more dramatic than the previous entries, but you can't take seriously a movie with a bad Halloween costume as the monster. It's a little pity, since Wings Hauser tries to but has the entire feature against himself. On a first sight, this flick looks gorier than the previous, but actually it is not: after a mutilated body, we don't see very much - in fact, another funny element it's the way the characters die. The action sequences are pretty cheesy too (like the end). Again, the real and only impressive thing is the dog's performances. The first WATCHERS remains the best (and we're not talking about a masterpiece!), for now.