Take a Dip...If You DARE

As someone whose karaoke repertoire includes a fully accented rendition of Under the Sea, I love me a good water-based monster as much as the next singing crab with a Caribbean accent. That's why I've assembled a hearty gang of bloggers to share their own underwater fears, be they theme park-hating sharks or urine-leaking children.

It’s all part of HeyNOTLP!, a new feature on Night of the Living Podcast’s busy bee blog where once a month, we copy the AV Club format take a horror-themed question and share our answers.  Head here for a salty read and remember to join in the action by tweeting us your own wonders with the hashtag #heyNOTLP.  

Hate reading? Can’t actually read? Have just discovered that you CAN read (since you read this) but don’t like it because you’d rather look at pretty pictures or listen to, well, five people discuss the wonders that is the 2006 slasher comedy Drive-Thru? We’ve all been there, and now you can return by downloading Night of the Living Podcast’s Episode 322, wherein I guest starred to discuss what happens when fast food mascots go bad, Gossip Girl refugees get dead, hobbits get stretched out to star in Citadel, and Irish people attempt to do anything that doesn’t involve Guinness.

Also for your ears: a new episode of The Feminine Critique, wherein my cohostess and I rev up our Game Genies to tackle 1989's Nintendo extravaganza The Wizard and the far more recent, less Clark Bar filled-Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Load up on the vegan meals and go get it!

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.

Would you like some fries with your face?

So within the first five minutes of Drive Thru, we get to watch a jumpsuit wearing clown butcher two urban talking white boys that spew out every possible stereotype of ghetto speak (holmes, dog, busta cap in yo ass, etc.) before dying wonderfully exciting painful deaths (face fries and all). Naturally, I’m instantly convinced Drive Thru is the best piece of cinema ever to include a cameo by Morgan Spurlock and Sean "Aawon Buhh" Whalen. Screw that, the best piece of cinema ever made by mankind.

Quick Plot: In the quiet, wonderfully named town Blanca Carne, a hip hopping van of weed smoking teens orders some artery clogging dinner from Hella Burger, a greasy fast food chain best known for its popular Horny the Clown mascot. I never understood how such an ambitious venture like McDonald’s could succeed despite 30% of the greater population being absolutely terrified by the face that graces every Happy Meal, but apparently, I’m just not that smart.

Anyway, our stoners don’t make it to their milkshakes because Horny, accompanied by some intensely annoying metal music, slices or fries them up while making excruciatingly awesome puns. Meanwhile, high school senior McKenzie (Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester) is partying with her friends (including another Gossip Girl actor, Penn Badgley, in a glorious curly afro) and playing with a Ouja board in the hopes of contacting Marilyn Manson. Instead, they receive a mysterious bunch of letters and numbers that later proves itself to be the license plate of the ill-fated diners.

Before you can say ‘xoxo,’ McKenzie is receiving all sorts of ominous warnings through her retro toys, including a Magic 8 ball and Etch-a-Sketch. Like a straighter haired Nancy Thompson wearing eye liner that would give Blair Waldorf hives, McKenzie pieces together a mystery involving her former hippie mom (Jan from The Office) and a typical prank gone wrong from many years ago.

If there’s a fatal flaw to Drive Thru, it’s that the film overplays its hand during its incredibly American cheesy opening. The ridiculous joy shown in those first five minutes just can't quite be matched once the (sigh) story kicks in, even if it means we get Blair Waldorf singing rock ‘n roll and calling the preppy Bush supporters Banana Republicans. In fact, Drive-Thru kind of has an insane case of identity crisis all the way through, selling itself as urban horror but primarily focusing on rich white people. Even Horny himself makes the Leprechaun look like the little guy belongs in the hood. It's strange.

But also, simply great. Great. Great. And kind of okay. 

   

And great.

High Points

Kudos to a movie that finds a more realistic way to show a microwaved head than Last House On the Left, providing one could poke a hole in the bottom of a microwave, stick someone's head through it, and make it explode. That's how it works right?

Low Points

Obviously, the soundtrack wasn’t going to go on my iPod, but that doesn’t mean it has to be played at 10 decibels louder than the rest of the film

Buddhist Question of the Month

Does the pope shit in the woods?

No seriously, does he? When using this expression, is it rhetorical in the affirmative or negative? I. Don't. Know.

Lessons Learned

It takes about 10 seconds to realize that your body has been severed in two

Taking a secret to the grave is a great way to guarantee your presence in a horror movie

Psycho killers usually keep shit in the garage

All you can really hope to get out of fancy college is a designer drug addiction or stalker

Today’s youth are quite retro, using dark rooms to develop photographs and making hip references to Greg Brady and Captain Kangaroo 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, some of us really love these kinds of movies, and God clearly loves such people because Neflix/God puts them on Instant Watch. If logic follows, those of us that adored Drive Thru will enjoy watching such films on fluffy cotton candy clouds up in heaven. I kind of can’t wait for that, even if it means I have to be sliced up by a 7’ tall clown making bad puns in order to get there.

In other words, add to queue, queue up, watch, rate 5 stars, and move on. Your afterlife will be better for it.