By
Phantom Troublemaker
Originally posted in 2009 on the Phantom Troublemaker MySpace page.
I’ve got two more relatively brief movie reviews for you. Me and Mrs. Troublemaker watched both of these on Sunday.
The Haunting in Connecticut
Mrs.
Troublemaker was more excited about this one than I was. She’s been
talking about this movie ever since we saw the first trailer because
she saw a special about the events it is based upon a few years ago.
Apparently, the interviews with the family and their descriptions of
the events were so unnerving that she had trouble sleeping for a few
days, and my wife isn’t exactly squeamish. I wasn’t as excited
because typically the “based on true events” claim means one of
two things: boring or bullshit. If the movie or whatever sticks to
the facts it is inevitably dull; whereas if the creators embellish
for entertainment purposes they tend to go so far that the claim
becomes a bit of a misnomer.
Anyway,
A Haunting in Connecticut is a pretty solid movie. You’ve
got a family trying to keep it together while the eldest son suffers
from cancer. The father is a recovering alcoholic and the mother –
Candyman’s Virginia Madsen – is pretty much TCB. The trips
to the hospital in Connecticut
are taxing on the son, so the apparently pretty well-off family
decide they need to rent a house nearby. Enter spook central.
It
doesn’t take long for supernatural shenanigans to ensue. The son
chooses a room in the basement that features an adjoining room with
darkened windows and an initially unopenable door. The adjoining room
is, naturally, chock full of evil. A whole lot of really creepy shit
happens in this movie, and the tremendous acting skills of whoever
plays the son with cancer get you invested in his character - not
only his paranormal plight, but his mundane physical ailment as well.
Shortly
after the creepy shit starts, a factor is introduced that would have
gotten me a lot more stoked about this movie if I had been aware of
it – Casey Jones: Ghost Hunter! Okay, not really, but Elias Koteas
does play an older gentleman of Gypsy heritage that the son meets at
the hospital. He knows a thing or three about the supernatural and
helps our hero get to the bottom of events. I don’t know if they
did anything to make Mr. Koteas appear older than he really is or
not, but I was shocked once I recognized him. It’s kind of hard to
accept what nineteen years can do to you, I guess.
I’m
not going to go any further into the plot, but I will say everything
unfolds in an extremely satisfying manner. The story is very, very
good. I was looking forward to watching the documentary and
interviews on the disc to find out how closely the movie followed
actual events, but apparently there is a special edition or that
stuff is only on the Blu-Ray. There were no special features on the
one I rented. That’s fine, I’ll buy it once I find it used – it
was that good.
4
out of 5 Ectoplasmic Belches
(although
the special features might bag the DVD itself an extra point – I
dunno)
The
Unborn
The
Unborn is an entirely different sort of movie than A Haunting
in Connecticut. With both being ghost stories comparisons are
unavoidable, especially when you watch both of them in the same day.
The
Unborn’s differences manifest early, when there is a
particularly exploitative shot of our heroine in extremely
well-fitting panties and an equally well-fitting shirt. You are left
with no doubt that this movie is a bit more about entertaining you
than making you think. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
If
you’ve seen the trailers then you know the plot. The Unborn
was yet another victim of Hollywood’s contempt for us – we’re
just not smart enough to choose movies without knowing every little
facet of the story. I really think this one would have played a lot
better if we hadn’t known in advance that the antagonist was a twin
that didn’t get to make the great vagina exodus. Then maybe you
wouldn’t have been able to focus so intently on all the plot holes
and narrative omissions. Seriously, there were a couple of times the
wife and I had to question each other about something we thought we’d
missed, only to come up with “I guess they just didn’t explain
that…”.
Despite
all that, this movie is very entertaining and creepy. There were
several moments where I was genuinely startled, and not just due to
loud music cues (despite what the honorable Chris Gore might have
said). The acting is all as good as it needs to be, although Gary
Oldman seems like overcasting (is that a word? Spellcheck says no) to
me. He isn’t given enough to do to justify his presence. I guess an
actual Jewish person as the Rabbi might have been off-putting to us
dumb sheep.
The
effects are solid except for one really awful-looking CGI shot. Maybe
you won’t notice it if I don’t point it out. That’s why I don’t
get too specific with problems in some of these “reviews”. Once
somebody has shown you something, you can’t un-see it. If you don’t
know about the potato in the asteroid field, you might never notice
it on your own. Some people love knowing about the potato, but I kind
of wish I’d never seen it. So I’m not going to be the one to
point it out to anybody.
Enough potatoes – The Unborn will
thoroughly entertain you as long as you don’t pay too much
attention to it. The odd thing is that the story is awesome. In other
hands it might have been an incredible movie, as things stand, it is
merely entertaining.
3
out of 5 Upside-Down Head Creatures
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