Just Another Teen Movie

When the second spoken line of a film is “There’s no service!” you as an audience member has to know what you’re getting into. Otherwise, why don’t you just go investigate a strange noise or take a sexy bubblebath or assume that guy who’s been chasing you all night is actually dead after you put a puny bullet in his chest.

Pff. Amateurs.

Quick Plot: Credits roll over a photo montage of pretty young people partying it up at a Mardi Gras, because that’s where pretty young people party and get outstanding tax breaks on filming locations. We see the gang hop in a car—presumably intoxicated, though if so, these are the fastest recovering-from-drunkness humans in the history of mankind—only to get into a horrific accident on an abandoned road. Wedged behind their tires is an escaped hospital patient, which turns out to be quite convenient when an ambulance immediately hits the scene to recover him and hall in the group to clean up their scratches.

The average IQ for a character in a horror film is never high, but even the dumber ones should notice something amiss when the ambulance attendants roughly drag a critically injured man onto a stretcher then both hop in the driver’s seat to roll along. The kids never seem suspicious by the fact that the accident victim is clearly losing blood by the minute, something that is mildly forgivable if a) they are indeed drunk (though don’t act like it at all) or b) one of them wasn’t a former medical student.

The hospital, of course, turns out to be mostly empty save for a few creepy employees. In addition to the orderlies (Michael Bowen from The Lost and Deadgirl and Poolboy’s  Robert LaSardo) we meet a very southa’hn belle nurse (genre royalty Jenette Goldstein) and a suspiciously old fashioned doctor (her Terminator 2 costar Robert Patrick). The kids remain as such:

-The Main Girl whose name I only remember because it’s my own

-Her Boyfriend

-Their Blond Friend

-A Russian Guy Hitting On Their Blond Friend

-The Guy Who Always Has to Take a Leak

Before long, all are escaping or experiencing extremely graphic stabbings, scalpings, and autopsies, all in the name of saving the good doctor’s cancer stricken wife through, shall we say, alternative treatment. In terms of originality, Autopsy is extremely bare bones. You knew that the second “No signal!” was shouted three words into the film.

But putting things like creativity aside, Autopsy has one vital strength: practical effects, and lots of them. This is a film more excited by visuals than silly things like ‘character’ or ‘story,’ and if you know that going in, it’s a surprisingly good time. Organs are tossed around like pizza dough, heads bashed in Irreversible style with a fire extinguisher, and intestines canopied on a ceiling like a baby mobile by way of Tarsem’s The Cell.

As for the rest of the film, it happens in a competent but never inspired way. The young cast is pretty and unmemorable. Veterans Goldstein and Patrick have mild fun, but it feels more like a paycheck job than any form of vacation. The biggest issue comes from the inconsistent tone, which occasionally finds chuckle-worthy humor in the macabre but more often than not reverts to a serious Dead Teenager heaviness. Had director Adam Gierasch (who also did the not terrible Night of the Demons remake) had a little more confidence in his abilities to get laughs, Autopsy could have been genuinely special.

High Points

The aforementioned gore truly is executed with gusto

Low Points

Who are these kids again?

Lessons Learned

Even the coolest hospital orderly isn’t going to just give you a roomful of free experimental drugs

Family illness can be one of the great life altering experiences

Louisianan hospital walls are extremely soundproof

Rent/Bury/Buy

Autopsy is one of 2009’s AfterDark’s 8 Films to Die For, and while it’s fairly unexceptional, it’s also not a bad way to kill 90 minutes of Netflix streaming time. Ignore the fact that you can predict the big picture five minutes in and sit back for some creative kills, at least if that's the type of movie you're in the mood for. You won't care about anyone or thing onscreen, but as lightweight eye candy, one could do worse.

Because Not All Abductions Are As Fun as XTRO...

Dear extraterrestrial visitors,

If you ever decide to stop by this little blue planet, consider planning your vacation in advance. Yes, there are indeed some beautiful trees to be found in Arizona (who knew?) and some friendly mid-1990s character actors willing to embrace folksy accents, but there’s also exciting places like Dollywood, Times Square, Niagra Falls, Machu Picchu, and a lot of other attractions that may be more rewarding than drilling holes into young men’s flesh.

But hey, we all have our travel hobbies (mine include wax museums, so what do I know?) and so perhaps I’m trying to make the alien cruisers in 1993’s Fire In the Sky something they are not. Have fun. Wear sunscreen. And take lots of pictures.

Quick Plot:

A manly group of lumberjacks enter a folksy Arizona bar in near shell shock. Led by a strangely scruffy Robert Patrick as Mike, the men tentatively agree to stick to their story and call in the police (quickly aided by famed Montana detective James Garner) to explain some very mysterious happenings.

We learn in flashback that the gang was finishing up a day’s work tearing down a forest when, upon driving home after sunset, an incredible red light filled the horizon. Big dreamer Travis (D.B. Sweeney, forever he of ‘toepick’ Cutting Edge fame and one of my favorite drunken celebrity encounters in the subway ever) insisted on investigating, wandering under a gigantic space ship before being stuck by its beam. 

With the rest of the fellas squealing like thirteen year old girls learning that Robert Pattinson is really a slug in a man’s suit, Mike speeds away and leaves his best friend/fiance of his kid sister to his mysterious fate.

Upon returning to the clearing, Mike can find no sign of Travis. A search party is mounted, failing to come up with any evidence of the young man’s whereabouts. In the small town, people talk. Well, not quite. They just constantly stop what they’re doing any time the suspicious loggers enter a public place so as to ogle and whisper inaudibly in judgement.

Fire in the Sky is an interesting, if strangely organized thriller that doesn’t quite know where the best part of its story is located. As Mike, Robert Patrick is sympathetic and believable, but we as the audience just aren’t that interested in the financial and marital problems brought on by his insistence to tell the truth. Similarly, Craig Sheffer’s moody Dallis never makes much sense in the big picture: Garner and the rest of the police force want to make the ex-con a prime suspect, but we as the audience already know he (and all the men) are innocent. Why waste time developing a subplot that simply won’t go anywhere?

The answer, of course, stems from those five little words that tend to mildly doom any promising premise: Based. On. A. True. Story. 

Travis Walton did and does exist, and Fire In the Sky is supposedly a fairly accurate story to his tellings of what happened that day in 1975. The grabby tagline is fine for unsettling a certain audience, but the film unfortunately falls into a bland formula that insists on documenting the police investigation and relationship drama that came from the event. 

Of course, most people that celebrate this movie focus on the third act, where (mild spoiler, but not really) the newly recovered Travis remembers just what happened to him  in those five mysterious days. For this reason alone, Fire In the Sky remains a powerful, creepy little film that finds new ways to portray a not-so-friendly (though never quite defined) race of extraterrestrials. It doesn’t completely redeem what comes before (and after) it, but this sequence is truly terrifying and, whether ‘true’ or not, sends satisfying chills down any viewer’s spine.

High Points

Right from the opening, we totally believe Robert Patrick to be everything the town sheriff says: a good straight man with a clear record to his name. Though I kind of hated where his character ended up (more due to scripting than performance), I’d say Patrick  grounds the film with believable sympathy

You won’t find a review of this film that doesn’t compliment the actual spaceship sequence because darnit, it’s truly chilling

Low Points

Of all the ways to end the film, was a quicky epilogue that jarringly swerves away from such a powerful and haunting sequence really the right way to go?

Lessons Learned

Being abducted and probed by gooey Baby Oopsie-Daisy-like aliens will not harm one’s fertility

One can grow a mean collection of facial hair in 2 1/2 years

Unfriendly ETs have diverse film tastes, with interior design styles inspired by both Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and A Clockwork Orange

Rent/Bury/Buy

I was a little let down by Fire In the Sky, but that stems more from the fact that it’s so well-made and acted and yet weirdly misguided in its plot structure. Ultimately, the film didn’t win me over yet at the same time, I recommend a rental, particularly if you enjoy alien-centric thrillers. X-Files fans should easily dig this, and even straighter horror viewers will find some neat stuff.

Also, for whatever reason of contagious movie thinkery, Fire In the Sky is a hot pick for the week here in the blogosphere. For more talk about D.B. Sweeney's shivering and true story tinkering, head to From Midnight, With Love, where TheMike himself (but not as played by Robert Patrick) does some reviewing, and The Horror Digest, where Andre digs into the real stories of FItS and other such films so proudly wearing their genuine status.