Fool Me Once...

 

As you might remember, a few weeks back, I discovered an oddball Canadian sci-fi horror comedy (maybe) about aliens masquerading as sorority sisters with a plan to seduce college boys for breeding purposes. It was weird. Naturally, the fact that it had a sequel that was ONLY available by Netflix disk in the last gasps of Netflix disk air meant I had to have it.

Here we go.

Quick Plot: A few years after the wild events of Decoys, Luke has survived his alien romp to become an extremely anxious TA at a new university. He's assisting evolutionary professor Buckton, played with gravelly perfection by 2023's it boy Tobin Bell. Luke is also wisely in therapy with psychiatrist Dr. Geisner, played by Dina Meyer and thus giving the world the Saw II/III reunion it's been craving.

Elsewhere, undergraduate frat boys are being terrible, as is the norm. One group decides to do the very 2007-ish activity of a sex contest to see who can bed the most women, and yes, video evidence is required to count. Nevermind that it's a sex crime (or will be in the near future). Most will thankfully die horrible alien tentacle death.

All sport offensively terrible haircuts.

Look, I know 2007 was 16 years ago, but did men REALLY do this to their heads? 

Anyway, the first film's sole surviving decoy Constance (Kim Poirier) is back, now in the role of a doctor with enough sway to convince those who matter that Luke has a few screws loose in his pretty less awful haircut head. It works because Luke acts like a lunatic. Meanwhile, Constance sets her protegees on the male populace, armed now with a handy ability to scan their brains in order to nail the exact sexual fantasy that will keep them ripe for impregnation activities.

Thankfully, young Sam and Stephanie smarten up to the alien invasion and are able to rally the troops with some quick molotov cocktails and flamethrower sprays. We get a bit more action than in the first Decoys, which keeps things moving for a satisfying finale.

Decoys 2 is directed by Jeffery Scott Lando, who I last experienced via the extremely strange Goblin. This is definitely a better film, though much like the first Decoys, it still left me confused as to exactly what I was supposed to be getting out of it. It's too silly to be sexy or scary, but there still aren't enough winks that confirm the filmmakers fully embrace the joke. So credit for feeling like a true sequel, and a mild shrug for being entertaining enough.

High Points

Like the first film, I do believe Decoys 2 understands that there is inherent comedy in the overactive libidos of young men, and here and there, there are sparks of smart jabs

 

Low Points

There are plenty of things that don't fully work in Decoys 2: Alien Seduction, but I'll be petty and harp on the most glaring: what is WITH the wigwork on these women? Are the actresses actually extraterrestrials with weirdly shaped heads that can't manage a simple dye job? 

Lessons Learned

Ska was big in the mid-Canadian aughts

Flip phones had a much better cold tolerance than today's Apple products

Grad students aren't supposed to be good-looking

Rent/Bury/Buy

Do I regret using one of my last Netflix disk slots for Decoys 2: Alien Seduction? Of course not. Do I recommend you put any effort into finding this movie? Probably not. If you adored the first film (which is more accessible on Peacock) then sure, this is for you. For all others, there's a whole wide world of movies out there. Don't kill yourself finding this one. 

Losers Weepers

It's here! A whole month of posts about vertically challenged villains, forever known as The Shortening. Evil dolls, terrible children, biting insects, Tom Cruises...whatever is small and deadly, we'll tackle it here.

Onward!

Quick Plot: Newly separated Alyson moves her bratty daughter Claire into a bargain home with your typical murdery history. Just a year or so earlier, a young boy killed his parents before ending up in the local asylum. When Claire discovers a ratty doll under a floorboard, it's not long before she begins heading down the same path.

First on her hit list: neighbor Marina Sirtis's cat. 

I'm not going to lie about my bias: when your first victim is feline, I'm not going to be on your victim/villain's side.

Perhaps the hardest hurdle to get over in Finders Keepers is just why anyone should care about Claire's possession-by-doll. Sure, the kid doesn't have the greatest parental role models (we're talking Jaime Pressly and the king of Christmas movies himself, Patrick Muldoon), but it doesn't really excuse the fact that she's a miserable thing from the start. 

At least the doll has a neat look.

Directed by Alexander Yellen (whose career primarily involves cinematography on Asylum Studio films), Finders Keepers feels aggressively mediocre, even with (or maybe, because) it contains a fairly star-studded cast for this caliber of film. Deanna Troy purrs through a thankless cat lady part, Tobin "Jigsaw" Bell gets to give terrible psychiatric advice, and poor Justina Machado has her eyes poked out and body set on fire. 

And the brat keeps going.

High Points

There's a stupid slow motion doll toss that made me unreasonably happy, which tells you how much I was reaching for entertainment in this movie

Low Points

Did I mention how much I hated this kid?

Lessons Learned

I know this sounds crazy, but here me out: in the words of trained professionals, separation and divorce can be hard for a child

Never mess with a strange kid's ugly doll

The shorter your haircut, the longer your makeup will stay on your face

Rent/Bury/Buy

Eh. This wasn't the high note I was hoping to open The Shortening on, but it does manage to give us BOTH an evil child AND doll, so I guess it gets some kind of half nod. I got this as a long wait on my Netflix disc queue, which felt even less rewarding than I would have liked. 

Jigsaw Cleaning, Kidman Weeping, & Baldwin Malicing

Back in high school and college (oh fine: and last week), my gal pals and I would periodically revise our very detailed, very organized lists of prospective famous boyfriends that we would like to have. Categories were specific: Olympic Athlete (figure skater Elvis Stoijko), American Athlete (former utility Met Joe McEwing), Silver Fox (Steve Martin now that Leslie Nielsen moved into the category of Dead Crush), and so on. One of the most contested labels was The Guilty Pleasure, not to be confused with the Conventionally Unattractive (Jon Lovitz continues to hold that spot). The Guilty Pleasure, you see, might have the body of an Adonis and face of a Pitt, but admitting that you would like to sleep with him is not something you're comfortable with wearing across a t-shirt.

For most of the late 90s into early 21st century, my guilty pleasure was Alec Baldwin.

Multiple Emmy award winner Alec Baldwin? Jack Donaghy himself? The man who launched a supremely awesome Geico commercial? What's there to be guilty about that, you ask.

Ah, youth. Travel with me to a different time, one when cell phones were mocked for being more than Q-tip sized and Temptation Island was positively scintillating. This is a world where people associated Alec Baldwin with his steely-eyed overhamming in The Juror and other similarly forced sexytime thrillers. Young women in 2002 didn’t have crushes on Alec Baldwin.

Well, SOME did, and I was one. But to say that now means nothing. He’s JACK DONAGHY. An SNL treasure! 

I don’t know what the point of this intro was, other to say that I liked Alec Baldwin before it was cool to do so.

Now about Malice...

Quick Plot: Well, 'quick' is sometimes an impossible thing. Without spoiling anything, let's just say that Malice is about a married couple (Bill Pullman's nerdy college dean Andy and Nicole Kidman's baby-coveting and but uterus-hurting Tracey) whose lives change forever after they rent the third floor of their fixer-upper colonial house to Alec Baldwin's Jed, a hotshot surgeon with a high tolerance for bourbon and high opinion of himself. Meanwhile, a serial rapist is attacking some of Andy's female students, including a dirty blond post-Hook pre-Brad Pitt Gwyneth Paltrow.

Maybe these storylines are connected. Maybe they are not. Maybe there's a reason why a well-respected heart surgeon can't afford to rent his own place. Maybe every New England college has its own rapist. Maybe there was some sort of bonus for any actor in the film who attempted a New England accent and Bebe Neuwirth as the fairly incompetent police detective was the only taker. 

Or maybe, just maybe, every film needs an extended Anne Bancroft cameo.

You might think I’m dancing around synopsizing Malice. You might be right.

Oh, that time I didn’t need the maybe. You are indeed more than right.

Malice is essentially a film built on misdirection, so to go into any detail risks not just a few spoilers, but also ruining the very effect of the film. Depending on your mood, you might find some of its tricks to be forced or unnecessarily complicated, but there’s also something truly exciting in catching twists that you never thought to expect. Sure, seven Saw films have taught us to perk up our sensors when Tobin Bell strolls into a scene, but that doesn’t mean we know what his subplot has to do with our main characters. Seriously, I almost guarantee that.

High Notes

Aforementioned extended Anne Bancroft cameo. Seriously, after a rough night of prayer to the porcelain god, I’d thought I'd sworn off drinking scotch for good but I would give up my beloved beer forever if it meant I got to share a bottle of single malt with that dame

Low Notes

The more you think about certain details involved in the secrets of Malice--the history of a certain marriage, a double life that doesn’t seem logistically possible, the fact that a major crime may have only existed in the screenplay to incidentally reveal a key character detail--the harder it is to accept a lot of the story. So like most difficult things in life, just don’t think about it

Lessons Learned

If you play with plastic bags, Nicole Kidman will tie you up and feed you to the kid monster

Nothing turns Bill Pullman on like eating Chinese food in bed

Office supply rooms for college administration offices generally resemble medieval dungeons

Chekhov’s Rule of Creepy Dummies Employed by the Police Department

Aside from being extremely creepy looking, never rule them out from the action until the last reel is rolled

Rent/Bury/Buy

Malice harkens back to that early ‘90s era of mainstream thrillers advertised with attractive floating heads and insured by Alec Baldwin’s night forest of chest hair. With a script co-written by Aaron Sorkin, it’s a film that tries a little too hard but dangit if it doesn’t have fun making the effort! So long as you go into the film with little to no knowledge of the plot, I think you’ll find it as rewarding an experience as I did. And not ONLY as a reminder that Alec Baldwin was once a worthy guilty pleasure.

I Saw Saw Six on Sunday and Just Developed a Lisp Saying That

At this point in time, I think I’ve written quite enough  about how and why the Saw series is unjustly despised by the horror community. For today, let’s just say that the films are like Doritos. Every so often--in Saw’s case, once a year--a new flavor comes along that nobody was really asking for. Chipotle Ranch in chip form and Costas Mandylor in a starring role don’t sound appealing or seem necessary, but once you dig in, you’re thoroughly satisfied. Plus, much in the way a Habanero can only work in a Collision bag with Guacamole, Saw III can really only be enjoyed followed by Saw II, and so on. Sure, each serving isn’t necessarily good for you but that's never stopped me from ordering pizza and eating it for breakfast.

So like a bag of Cool Ranch, I ended my Super Awesome Halloween Weekend with a Sunday night viewing of America’s second favorite horror film. What follows will be a mildly SPOILERed review, sort of like milk one day past its expiration date. Okay for lightening up your coffee, but a full glass may just ruin everything.

Apparently, my stomach is writing this review.

Quick Plot: Scream Queen royalty Tanedra Howard and an actor I don't recognize that played Walt in The Brady Bunch In the Whitehouse (whoah: huge tangent. Mike Brady was elected President in 2002? This is incredible beyond words) scream a whole lot in the opening scene, mostly because they’re morally mean loan officers who now have to cut off some of their flesh to prove some sort of point. It’s predictably loud, ugly, and lovably ridiculous in establishing just how to sever your own arm in 45 seconds.

A lot more stuff happens in Saw VI, and it seems nearly impossible to merely summarize in any linear fashion. Instead, let me break it up by storyline and character:

-Mandylor's Detective Hoffman continues his reign of tanned terror, capturing a few beaurocratic baddies while trying to maintain an aura of snarling cool around two of the stupidest police detectives to ever survive more than one horror movie. 

-Obligatory flashbacks give Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith a paycheck. We learn the contents of Amanda’s envelope opened at the end of Saw III and yet another minor character connection is established. Tobin Bell gets to model a variety of looks, including one where he wears a fuzzy albino caterpillar in a vertical fashion down his chin

-The president of a private health care provider takes on the token guinea pig role, this time being kidnapped and forced to undergo multiple 'tests' that challenge his cold and greedy ways in the eyes of the human beings he so often reduced to dollar signs and paperwork

-A sensationalist journalist gunning for Gale Weathers’ job is trapped in a cage across from a mother and teenage son. Their only hints at their fate are two tubs of hydrofluoric acid and a switch marked Live or Die

-Jill, Jigsaw’s ex-wife, continues to wear an oddly half smile/half sneer while helping heroin addicts and appearing mysterious

Somehow, everything kinda sorta comes together in time for a montage, musical crescendo, and the words “game over.”

I’ve suspended any shame in admitting that I genuinely enjoy these films. Like the latter Friday the 13ths, Saw has lost any real scare value (if it arguably ever had any) in favor of over-the-top murders, but unlike any franchise I can think of, it continues to play with its growing roster of chracter actors and increasingly complex story. Some of the twists are genuinely surprising and even the more obvious (gee, I wonder what could possibly be in Envelope #6?) have carefully executed payoffs.

The most noticeable aspect of Saw VI is its social commentary on the unsolvable rat maze that is the health care system in the U.S. Does it work? Yes and no. Screenwriters Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton have less subtletly than Michael Moore, but it’s an admirable effort to say something with a film that has absolutely no need to do so. I’m reminded of an acquaintance's baffled reaction when I explained the plot of Saw VI. 

“Wow. I just assumed it was a stupid horror movie.”

He is, of course, not incorrect. Saw VI doesn’t break any filmmaking molds and lacks a lot in terms of tone and performance. At the same time, it continues to develop a complex story, tosses in some macabre humor, and offers some good intentions towards making a political point about an issue on many a ticket buyer’s mind. I can’t ask for that much more from the sixth entry of a franchise that keeps me entertained.

High Points

The carousel contraption is one of the more interesting traps. The moral nastiness of its rules works well, much like some of the fan-favorite tests in Saw III

Tobin Bell continues to be a true find as Jigsaw, especially as his voice grows to dangerously unchartered levels of graveliness

Once we get past the turn-it-to-eleven opening scene, the fast cut edit so grating in the past few films feels a little dialed down here, letting the horror of some of the traps speak for themselves, rather than screaming in your face and ramming your head against your theater seat

Low Points

I wasn’t a fan of the plot heavy, ill-defined character stuffed Saw V but I gave it a pass with the hopes that it was done primarily to set up a killer sixth installment. If “set up” translates to “introduce mysterious box to be opened one film later,” I suppose it worked

As someone who spent a few weeks last year laughing at the terribly rushed acting school and hokey set design in VH1’s Scream Queens, it’s impossible not to comment on Howard’s performance. It’s passable, although fairly one note. The hardest part is watching it and not wishing upon a star that Jessica Palette took the crown. Girl was insane in the membrane, and picturing her eagerness in the all-too-angry role is enough to make a gal look up wacky clips of the 5th runner up on youtube:

Lessons Learned (From the Incredibly Obvious Edition)

Never let a man suspected of serial killing hold a steaming pot of coffee in your vicinity, particularly if you’re planning on confronting him about his possible guilt

When cutting off one’s limb, a butcher knife is a far more efficient a tool than a slim kitchen dagger

The privatization of American health care has led to EVIL

Bringing your five year old into a showing of Saw VI is probably not the best idea you’ve ever had as a parent

Winning Line

“When you’re killing me, you look at me!”

I’ll add this to “You can’t fire me, I quit!” as a phrase I’d like to use before I die. Hear that, heart disease/car accident/zombie/potential murderer? We will be making serious eye contact when the time comes.

Lingering Questions (Highly Toxic Spoilers)

-Where is Jeff and Lynn’s daughter, first introduced and last seen in Saw III, where it was implied that she was kidnapped by the Jigsaw Jets. This theory was further supported in IV, when Hoffman was seen with a stuffed animal, explaining it away as being “complicated.” I’ll say

-What was Hoffman’s actual test? Was it winnable in any way as a method of demonstrating to the bloodthirsty bad cop what it’s like to be brutalized?

-One of my biggest issues with Saw V was the ambiguity of Julie Benz’s surviving character. The film seemed to suggest that she too was in on the Jigsaw game, simply because she’s able to trick the pyromaniac into donating his whole body for the blood that ultimately sets her free. I assumed we’d learn more about her identity but alas, Benz seems to be busy filming Dexter and every other film put out by Lions Gate

See/Skip/Sneak In

If you haven’t seen Parts III, IV, or V, Saw VI will probably confuse the bear trap right off your little noggin. Still, it’s one of the best entries in the series and may prove to those who unjustly pan it that it’s a franchise of some merit. I would say it's a closest match in tone ton Saw III, with the added Sicko-ish slant for the politically inclined. It won't crash the Oscars or even Bravo's Even More Scarier Movie Moments That We Forgot the Last Three Times Around, but it's a good time for those still invested in the story or the curious without a jaded sense of hatred for anything a studio dares to put out.

Hate On Me, Not Horror

We horror fans are a surly bunch.

Opinionated. Angry. Easily disappointed and even more easily disheartened. When we’re subjected to hack job remakes and speedily rushed sequels at a rate that defies the speed of a cheetah, it’s no surprise that we tend to bash any movie that dares to appeal to our well-honed tastes. What I wonder now, as Saw VI prepares to land its bloody feet on our ticket stubs, is if we were always such cinematic snobs.

Perhaps it’s the extreme nature at the very heart of most horror films that breeds such intense negativity. I guarantee that just as many people disliked the last tepid romantic comedy as those who greeted Halloween 2 with sneers (I was among the latter group), but you won’t see IMDBers drawing petitions to remove Diane Lane from Must Love Dogs with quite the same levels of ire as those itching to go all Godfather on Sheri Moon-Zombie and her fine white horse. 

Hating bad horror films is nothing to be ashamed of, especially if the films in question are made and marketed with little heart or respect to what its fans actually want. My problem with the oft-irked horror crowd is our habit of cracking the bad jokes before we actually sit down in the theater. I can’t count how many like-minded film lovers whose opinions I respect have issued death warrants to Jennifer’s Body based on its trailer, cast, and one-credit writer who has somehow amassed mass hatred by penning a single successful indie screenplay. Oh yeah, and of those who have cracked smug grins at the mention of its failed box office, take a guess how many actually confirmed their judgment by seeing the film. 

“Things were so much better in the ‘80s,” we grumble to our babysitting charges while taking a gulp from a rusty can of New Coke. Right, cinema was more innovative when a burly mute was silently slaughtering topless bimbos whose only method of survival was virginity and whininess. What have we come to when the most successful face of horror is a wrinkled old man with actual dialogue about the nature of mankind?

I won’t--and can’t--argue that the Saw series is composed of quality filmmaking, but every Halloween, I never fail to take a deep sigh before issuing a defense of the 5 and counting blockbuster(ish) films. Yes, the gore is gratuitous and the soundtrack grating, but how can someone who forked over $50 for the Friday the 13th boxed set still huff and puff about how torture porn is ruining the horror industry when Jason brought the bar down so low, the only escape was outer space? My idea of date night doesn’t usually include watching Brandon Walsh’s sociology professor get her rib cage torn apart, but at least Dina Meyer’s ill-fated detective was a literate and developed character. 

There’s something charming about ‘80s slasher cinema and daringly dark in the grindhouse days and cannibal genre of the ensuing years. Then again, there’s also more forgettable slashers than a Sesame Street vampire could count before sunrise.  And hey, it took a lot of cruelly killed wildlife in painfully unwatchable movies before Cannibal Holocaust cruelly killed wildlife to make a statement about such painfully wrought cinema. Maybe Martyrs’ twisted analysis of torture is the evolution of “gorenography”; just like we needed eight ho hum Halloween sequels before we could get a Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, so each sub-genre needs to work itself out before it can achieve greatness. In the meantime, we as audiences watch what we like and judge what we actually see.

I can’t claim that we’re currently in a golden age of horror, as thus far, this decade has produced one masterpiece (Let the Right One In) and a few memorable gems that succeed mainly by honoring the old with a smart twist of new (Shaun of the Dead, The Descent, 28 Days Later). Still, there are plenty of modern films to make us celebrate the cinematic time we’re living in. Roll your eyes at Repo! The Genetic Opera for its headache-making chords, but don’t put it in punchlines and turn around with a ready-made rant about how filmmakers are currently devoid of creativity just because the few sparks of newness don’t appeal to your personal tastes. Most of all, bash nothing until you’ve actually basked in its badness. 

Rants and rusty sharp device heavy games are welcome below. Are we a glass of blood is half-empty kinda crowd, or has horror truly taken a dip into disappointing hell? Share your thoughts, preferably after downing a bag of sugar-coated happy thoughts.