Spin the Bottle

I watched Spin The Bottle because Justin Long and Ali Larter are in it, but let me tell you this... they're seriously slumming it in this one; it's an extremely weak teen horror that is totally unworthy of their talents.

Larter plays Maura Randell, who is recovering in a mental hospital while her son Cole (Tanner Stine) makes himself at home in the house where, decades earlier, his grandmother Lorelai killed several of her friends while playing a game of spin the bottle. Turns out that there was a demon trapped inside the bottle, and playing the game enabled it to possess Lorelai.

This being a wholly unoriginal and extremely predictable piece of crap, it will come as no surprise when Cole and his new high school pals find the bottle and play their own game of spin the bottle - with disastrous results.

The teenage characters are extremely irritating, which wouldn't be a problem if we got to see them all die in very gory fashion, but the film is practically bloodless. There's really bad CGI visual effects, loads of wearisome exposition, lots of kissing (but no gratuitous nudity), and the whole thing is spun out over two excruciatingly dull hours! Justin Long is the best thing about the film, playing the local town sheriff and father to Cole's love interest Kasey (Kaylee Kaneshiro), but he needs to be a bit more choosy about his roles: I'd hate to see him wasted in more worthless garbage like this.

Where do I even start? It's amazing to me that a movie with a listed budget of over $2M would be as hollow, lame and look as bad as this. There is no style, there is not even an attempt at atmosphere, it's not remotely scary and the script is lifeless and on the nose. Why use CGI so much in the movie? Open the furnace, CGI fire! CGI smoke! CGI blood! Who financed this movie? I don't think anyone involved has ever actually seen a horror film before. It was like a combination of trailers for Halloween episodes of Days of Our Lives. None of the characters act real, zero verisimilitude. A total dud. Overblown lighting that looks like a carnival haunted house. And it's over two hours long! We live in the age of Barbarian, Hereditary and other edgy, hard hitting horror movies that push the envelope and have well constructed stories along with well designed productions. This ain't that. Awful. Like watching a high school church production.

This one actually surprised me. Went in with low expectations and still managed to be entertained.

Always love seeing some familiar faces when I got into a movie blind and this one did not let me down on that front. Heeelllloooo Justin!

It had plenty of the horror tropes to offer, but where it lost me often times was with the excessive dialogue and the somewhat simple and unsatisfying death scenes. I would have loved to see more especially when you have such a recognizable cast in your movie.

All in all I did have a good time with the movie, and would recommend to anyone who like a good game night that we all know too well.

Then this movie would have been just another teen unfunny movie of underage drinking and making out and football tryouts and middle-aged fitness influencers attempting to play high school cheerleaders and Justin Long and Ali Larter and not F Murray Abraham as the only people you know.

But instead this haunted kissing game adds like an unnecessary seven hours to what would have been a 80 minute thing for you to drop your nieces off at the theater while you danced danced revolution over at Dave and Busters.

I think all that remains of the original premise to the adolescent romp is the soundtrack which is more apt for an American Pies reboot than for a horror movie this dull and overly long.

And who doesn't wear a black tie to a funeral!

Boring, meandering, and decidely un-scary. Basically a crummy teen football flick. With ghosts. Complete with a 300lb quarterback and a token black guy.

Yikes, this sucked. Someone needs to do a sit-down with Ali Larter and Justin Long and remind them they're still fringe A-listers and they are putting even that in peril by signing off on this piece of swill. Really, they're that hard up for cash? At least Bruce Willis could claim encroaching dementia for things like this. Don't see that working for Larter or Long.

There's also the 'horror actually needs to scare you or disturb you' thing ... but 90% of horror flicks miss the point on that.