The Choice Is Actually Really Easy

Ripping off Saw isn’t necessarily a cinematic crime. But being terrible? Yeah, that is.

Quick Plot: A teenage girl comes home to find her parents tied up and gagged with a masked madmen waving a gun at their heads and threatening to kill both of them (plus the token little brother) unless the crying middle schooler can choose which one to take the fall. Pops volunteers himself, daughter stabs him in bad lighting, and credits roll.

Cut to the new apartment of college student Fiona (Amusement and Satan's Little Helper blond Katheryn Winnick, making a minor career out of appearing in mediocre-to-awful horror films) where the journalism major with a cop dad (Kevin Pollack, clearly owing someone a favor) senses something amiss. Through some fairly contrived investigating/remembering the suicide of her mother/dad's involvement in the case/let's tie the whole film up in one pretty character to watch in a tank top for the whole film, the killer contacts Fiona to play a not at all (except totally all) Saw-like game of stabbing and choices.

Ugh. Choose is the worst kind of mediocre genre film: it's one that thinks it's not a genre film. I imagine the marketing team sold it as a "psychological thriller" that's about the "characters" and the "choices" they make.

No, actually it's a dull horror movie too afraid to embrace itself.

Choose made me think back to an otherwise forgettable direct-to-DVD Seven-ish horror stupidly titled Dot.Kill. Now I never thought anything would ever remind me of that slog of a movie, but Choose's equally dire blue-hued manhunt has done that, so good on it. Dot.Kill: send Choose a muffin basket. Then crawl back into your DVD cave to hibernate until some other blogger stumbles upon you.

Truthfully, I don't know why I'm being so hard on Choose. I think I gave Are You Scared? more slack, and that even MORE blatant Saw ripoff was bad from every angle. I guess what annoys me about Choose is that it feels like it's fighting against every aspect that would make it interesting to an audience like me. There are some early hints of grisly violence, as our blandly disguised killer forces a pianist to pick between having his fingers cut off or ears drilled in, but the film then wanders away to invest all its energy in Fiona's ridiculous Lois Lane-lite investigation. As we slowly learn more about the killer's past, we're not entirely bored, but every step gives us a tease at what a better movie could have done. Creepy boys' reformatory with sadistic administrators and MORE sadistic inmates? Super! Cutting away from that to watch Fiona check out library books? Not super.

Worst of all, Choose ends with one of, if not possibly THE worst executions of exposition I've ever seen. Considering I've survived Diary of the Dead's comatose narrator explaining her theme, this is saying something, but SERIOUSLY, this is what happens:

Fiona is kidnapped (don't worry: Winnick's blond hair and perky tank topped boobs still look fabulous) and tied up by the killer, who now enters the full frame to reveal to us the fact that he wasn't in the movie previously, so all the effort put in place to ensure the audience didn't see his face was a waste of time from a behind-the-scenes standpoint. Sure, fine, whatever, just give us something to make the 80 previous minutes we watched mean something. Reveal a tentacle or flash back to a great backstory, give Fiona the biggest CHOICE of them all by making her decide if she gets to keep her shiny great hair or perky perfect boobs, SOMETHING!

Here's what Choose does: it has the never-before-seen bland antagonist reveal a fairly out-of-nowhere and not at all delivered interestingly story about how (SPOILERS, if you CHOOSE to care) he's actually Fiona's older half-brother because just before she was born, her slutty mom had an affair, got pregnant, CHOSE to have the baby, but Kevin Pollack said he wouldn't raise it so she CHOSE to give him up for adoption and so she instead married Kevin Pollack, had Fiona, then let her older son grow up in misery until she found him and bonded and stuff and eventually was killed when he CHOSE to give her a CHOICE about her life or Fiona's or --

Oh what, am I boring you? Are these two pages of written dialogue revealing the mystery that the ace minded Fiona was supposed to be researching not, you know, good screenwriting? Should we throw in a random little twist ending that you don't care about after the first 90 minutes that you didn't care about seem to be over and resolved?

My point is, this is a bad movie. I know, coming from me, what does that even mean? I'm the same person who planted a "hearty recommendation" tag on my review for Gnaw: Food of the Gods Part 2. My standards are confusing and I am well aware of that fact. I’m worse than the judging panel of Project Runway, who praise a runway outfit’s flow and color to the designer then cattily chat about how awful it looked to each other during deliberation (a SERIOUS bone of contention I’ve been having this season but what are talking about again?)

Sorry, I got distracted. It’s SHOCKING that I can’t stay on track when Choose seems so bent on being passive aggressively bad. This is the kind of film that hates everything, save maybe for the body and Pantene wonderment of its leading lady. There is no joy, fear, wackiness, mystery, thematic statement, or any other worthwhile thing that you sometimes find in movies to be found in Choose.

At least Dot.Kill had Armand Assante complaining about breakfast.

High Points

I guess the early maiming of the sad pianist isn't without interest, with some interesting post-finger-mortem staging and…that’s just about it

Low Points

So for all the movie's lines about how the killer makes people CHOOSE (a drinking game worthy magic word on Chain Letter levels), it would behoove me as one of the (hopefully) few people to see this film to NOT point out the fact that the killer's definition of "choice" is looser than a blond named Tina in an ‘80s slasher. Take the aforementioned pianist, who is told he has to pick between keeping his hearing or ability to play. Except then the killer says "Nah, I'll choose for you: I'm taking your fingers, but you get to pick HOW I do it," and then when the poor dude is understandably still unable to verbalize anything for a few seconds, the deceptively democratic murderer declares "Nah, I'LL choose how that's happening too, snip!" So the point of Choose is that you don't ever actually get to choose. Sort of like the point of Chain Letter was that chains will kill you no matter what. Weird. Now I want to rewatch Chain Letter. I can’t say I ever thought I’d say that…

The Don't Get Your Hopes Up Warning

A notice to my straight male readers: despite taking a bath AND shower, the lovely Ms. Winnick does not show any of her specialties. I'd just hate for you to queue up this film for that reason and be disappointed 

Lessons Learned

Nobody doesn’t love a girl who knows the Dewey Decimal System

21st century graduate university libraries are far more accommodating to loud-talking students who scream than the solaces of quiet study time of days of yore

To be a great journalist-in-the-making, do some research, then wait for the killer to inevitably kill you because then he’ll just TELL YOU EVERYTHING about what he did, why he did it, and how it all relates to YOU

Rent/Bury/Buy

In the spirit of today's movie, I'm giving you a choice: you can CHOOSE to spend 90 minutes watching a dull simplistically convoluted movie with no redeeming value or you could, let's see...cram in three episodes of Arrested Development on Instant Watch? Bake a pie? Clip your nails, shave your legs, moisturize, make a sandwich, eat that sandwich, wash it down with seltzer, urinate the seltzer, wash your hands, brush your cats, and make artistic stick figures on Draw Something. The point is, there are a lot of ways to spend your time. Don't give yours to a movie that clearly didn't use any of it to write a good story.

In the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki House of Fears

Time and time it’s been proven that if you dangle a movie poster involving a psychotic clown on my Netflix Instant Watch menu, I will watch it. 

House of Fears continues to support that theory.

Quick Plot: Somewhere in Africa, a man and woman find a funky monkey statue artifact amid a cave of corpses. 

It gets through customs.

Back in the states, newly united stepsisters Haily and Samantha attend a typical high school party where the trendily named Carter and Zane convince them and a make-out-happy couple to change things up by sneaking into the local funhou--er, I mean, haunted house. Once there, the doors lock them inside and guess what? The house proves to be--sit down folks--REALLY haunted.

Blame it all on a The Brady Bunch Goes to Hawaii style African tiki. Before you can say surfing accident, our pretty young heroes are being chased by bald vampires, ugly clowns, nasty scarecrows and sand. 

And that’s about all there is to say of the storyline inside House of Fears, a slick but decent little horror movie that makes good use of its naturally memorable beasties. Sure, it’s really just a simple way to throw out a few moments of  evil clown giggles and electrocution, but sometimes, that’s all a film really calls for and House of Fears delivers it without too many complications.

High Points

Hey, any film that units clowns AND scarecrows to kill pretty young people with stupid names like Zane can’t be that bad, right?

Low Points

The constant harping to call the lead actress ‘the dowdy one’ would have been even mildly more effective if actress Corri English didnt’ bare such a striking resemblance to a still-pretty Crossroads era Britney Spears

Lessons Learned

When hanging out in an actual haunted haunted house, try to avoid revealing any major life secrets that might make your inevitable death a tad more painful, such as “I’m absolutely terrified of dying by suffocation.” That will come back to you, no matter how shiny your hair may be

“I say we just go back to your house and make out” might SOUND sexy in your head, but saying it out loud will most certainly lead instead to a group date

Dates don’t generally appreciated being swapped halfway through the date

Rent/Bury/Buy

House of Fears does nothing overly special, but it does most of itself quite well for a straight-to-DVD horror film. It’s about on par with another clown-stalking-pretty-people film, Amusement, a movie that’s more than passable entertainment even if it doesn’t offer anything new to its audience. As an instant watch when your mind is working at half its level, it’s not a bad way to not think too hard.

What, am I funny like a clown? Do I AMUSEMENT you?

Few gimmicks are easier to pull off in a horror movie than menacing clowns. Plant one on your poster and you can guarantee a few automatic rentals, at least 10% of which will come from me. Hence today’s feature, 2009’s Amusement, clinched its way onto my television when it hit Instant Watch.

Quick Plot: Opening credits introduce three lovely young ladies poised for big things: Tabitha (most likely to succeed), Lisa (most likely to be famous), and Shelby (most likely to shine, whatever that means). Last is a weird little boy with mental issues, untitled but we’ll call him Most Likely to Remind People of Michael Myers.

Shelby, now grown and tired, is driving home to Ohio with her boyfriend, a young man who dreams, it would seem, of joining a highway convoy. Granted I don’t travel much by car, but are convoys some sort of secret Skulls-like fraternity that guarantees true happiness? Anyway, as you can guess, this one is filled with menace, here in the nicely twisted form of a kidnapping-happy roadster.

Following the mildly effective first story, we move on to Tabitha (Satan’s Little Helper charmer Katheryn Winnick) as she embarks in spending the evening with her moppy-haired cousins. And for whatever reason, their collection of awful evil very terrible clown dolls. A storm is raging, one first-shift babysitter missing, mysterious hooded man spotted, and giant awful evil very terrible clown doll is creaking away in a rocking chair, waiting for the perfect moment to leap to life and hunt the pretty blond.

Lastly, we move to Lisa, who worries when her good-girl roommate never comes home and hunts her down with her health inspector boyfriend. They end up in a Frankensteinian hotel headed by a little weirdo, who naturally....well you see where it’s all going.

Amusement is an odd little dish, one made with a lot of genuinely good ingredients that simply never got cooked long enough. The basic premise of following three women as they get taken by a psycho is something new, and the fact that each story has a completely different approach helps. The opening offers a neat car chase, the second, a tried and true clown hunt, and the third, a nice stalking through a funhouse. All three actresses are adequate, with Winnick proving the most charming. 

On the other hand, Amusement is also something of a mess. We don’t really know the villain well enough to ever really be scared of him, as a single childhood flashback doesn’t really give us much to fear. Ending all the buildup with one more stalk-chase sequence feels lazy, especially when we reach a point where it seems clear who will emerge the survivor. The film has plenty of genuine originality but unfortunately, not a good enough screenplay to make it work.

High Points

Though we know how it has to eventually end, the prolonged scene with the life-sized clown doll (or is it???) is fairly effective (at least if you’re naturally uneasy with giant life-sized clown dolls)

Low Points

As stated earlier, a script that doesn’t really have the energy to tie its pieces together

Lessons Learned

Entertainers and performers are also known as lovers of the laugh

There’s an art to a good convoy, and it apparently includes introducing yourself awkwardly at rest stops

Most FBI interrogations are not held in abandoned drafty warehouses with moving walls and no cell phone reception. Remember this when calling in on your job

Rent/Bury/Buy

Amusement is not by any means a good film, but it has a little more going for it than a lot of other slick direct-to-DVD modern horrors. Director John Simpson can clearly stage a few good scenes, though tying them together just never seemed to happen in Jake Wade “The Hitcher AND When a Stranger Calls remakes writer” Wall’s script. Sure, for a $10 million budget, a better story could have been told, but it makes for an entertaining enough 85 minutes of your mild attention. It’s no Drive-Thru (really what is? Other than Drive-Thru, which you should totally stop everything for and go watch immediately), but it’s a decent little horror that passed my morning with mild suspense.

Now go watch Drive-Thru.