ThomasBleedPHD

Have you ever wondered what an Asylum Films version of Slenderman would look like? Why? Why did you will this into reality by thinking about it? Ugh, whatever.

There have been a couple of Slenderman movies over the past couple of years, and pretty much all of them are bad. I can't speak to the quality of the HBO documentary, but I don't necessarily count that one anyway.

Although Slenderman is a beloved part of internet folklore, he's a copyrighted character. Somebody owns him and has exclusive rights to use the character. That means if you don't have his permission to make a Slenderman movie, you won't make a Slenderman movie. Unless of course, you avoid ever using the character's actual name or likeness, play with him just enough to make him recognizable but never actually show him, and just call him a "Slender Being" instead of his actual name.

That's how this movie came to be. A zero-budget, zero-talent, zero- originality schlockfest that rips off the notability and likeness of Slenderman but stops just short of anything that can get them sued, this is a Z-movie bootleg.

Even if you can forgive the movie for being a tasteless ripoff (I can forgive "Due Date" for being a blatant ripoff of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" because it's entertaining) you'll find yourself being slowly tortured by the bad editing, endless filler, scenes that never pay off, scenes that have nothing to do with the rest of the movie, scenes of people yammering about nothing, and massive flaws that go directly against the most basic rules of filmmaking. This movie is a disaster, like bad poetry in motion.

If I held this movie to normal standards, I'd have to call it one of the worst films ever made. However, I can't even count this as a real film. Generally, "indie" films are excluded from my list of the very worst (because there's so, so many bad ones) unless they can hit that sweet spot where they're coherent enough to count as a real movie, but bad enough to be garbage.

This is not coherent enough to be a "real" film. This movie is a mess. This is a bootleg Slenderman film, and it isn't even a good bootleg. Avoid it like you'd avoid the real Slenderman.

This movie shares a lot in common with Blair Witch 2: a greedy studio wants to cash in a popular horror film but the original director wants no part in it, so they get someone who despised the first movie expecting something marketable only to watch in horror as the new director sends them back a confusing, pretentious mess that wouldn't entertain a toddler, let alone a grown adult.

I didn't really like the original movie, it wasn't my thing. But this movie is so offensively awful to all of the senses a movie can influence that it isn't anyone's thing.

In the span of about two hours, this movie gives us: - A magical dream machine that can look into your mind - A priest riding a giant bumble bee - Linda Blair curing a young girl's autism by smiling at her - Linda Blair walking on the air - James Earl Jones in a locust costume - Characters giving corny monologues about "hope" and "light" that really mean nothing - Sexy Linda Blair clone trying to seduce a priest before turning into a spooky zombie monster

This movie is a long, painful slog of boring nonsense and bad writing and it's all managed by a really bad director who's just a really dumb person in general.

Legend has it, this film was so bad that the only audience that didn't laugh it off the screen chased the producers down the street. You ask me? They were all far too nice.

Exorcist II: The Heretic is bedeviled by the horror of a 1/10. It is one of my Top 5 worst movies of all time.

"Bill Nye The Science Guy" was a terrific, fun show in the 90s that taught kids about science without boring them. With some clever production values, a charismatic host and great comedic writing, it was both education and entertaining.

So, when Bill Nye got a new show on Netflix years later, you'd expect it to be just as exciting and fun, but you would be tragically wrong. Rather than capitalizing on nostalgia and making a show in the same vein as his most popular one, Bill Nye decided to create a political round-table show with various sketches. The result is a trash can fire: it provides warmth to a few desperate people, but it's a dirty, smelly safety hazard to everyone else.

Bill Nye's strength as a host was his making people laugh and feeling friendly and approachable. Here, he attempts to be a typical angry, sarcastic host you'd find on the Daily Show or the Colbert Report. It doesn't suit him, and watching Nye yell at the screen and make wisecracks may be funny at first, but it gets old very quick.

The "round-table" discussions usually consist of very stream-of- conscious, bite-sized conversations between people who probably have detailed, nuanced ideas but end up having to only scratch the surface of them, because four people are talking at once. Occasionally, a guest with a dissenting opinion will show up, and Bill and the other panelists will all gang up on them at once. There's very little about these round-tables that is educational or entertaining, they're boring and obnoxious.

The general tone of the show is, again, obnoxious. There's lots of smirking, lots of yelling, lots of lecturing, lots of condescending. The show is very combative, stand-offish, seemingly to emulate the style of entertainers like Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart. But what worked for them doesn't work for Bill, because his strength is as a comedian and an educator, not as a political commentator. The show feels like a square peg shoved into a round hole: you can wedge it in there, but it doesn't fit.

Then there are the really uncomfortable moments, like the ice cream sex scene and the "sex junk" rap. These sketches attempt to use crass humor to make a point but feel jarring and tasteless as a result.

When everyone was looking for a continuation of the original "Science Guy" series, Bill Nye decided to make his own version of the Daily Show. But nobody wanted that. It's like pointing pizza spice on custard, the flavors don't go together.

I can't tell if "Bill Nye Saves the World" is a confused show unsure of its purpose, or if they knew what they were doing and simply failed, but it doesn't work. It's a bad show and not worth your time. Skip this one and watch some of the original "Science Guy" episodes instead.