SOMETHING IN THE DIRT (January 2022)

   

SOMETHING IN THE DIRT

(January 2022)

“Well, a lot of things are still mysteries. You just don’t expect to witness one on a sh!tty afternoon in your cheap apartment.”

Yes, another Moorhead & Benson Film crash lands ‘round these parts…

“I mean, what’s crazier? Believing every single coincidence you ever see or just ignoring them all?”

In Something in the Dirt, Levi (Justin Benson) has just moved into his “cheap” L.A. apartment, when some strange phenomena start, drawing in neighbor John (Aaron Moorhead), and resulting in both deciding to make a documentary to get everything on record and hopefully, find an explanation along the way. (And maybe, make some scratch too, if they can sell the doc to, oh, say, Netflix?)

“Well, why can’t it be a group like the Freemasons or the Moose Lodge or… what’s the one that’s on Discovery Channel all the time? It’s the Rose Croutons.”

“‘The Rose Croutons’? The Rosicrucians?”

Moorhead and Benson’s latest--which, from a certain perspective, is essentially their attempt to make The X-Files today--is a fascinating exploration of how people impose their own meanings onto everything that surrounds them, and how, in trying to solve the mysteries that face us, our own imperfections and obsessions tend to obscure and tarnish what should otherwise be the purity of the unknown and the unexplained.

“Stop being paranoid. It’s weird.”

Parting Shot: The duo’s past ¡Qué horror! mentions can be found here, and here, and here, and here.

(Something in the Dirt OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

MIDNIGHT MASS Season 1 (September 2021)

MIDNIGHT MASS Season 1

(September 2021)

“But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.”

--Genesis 39:21

Crockett Island (pop. 127) is the home Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) finds himself returning to after years of incarceration, just in time to bear witness to mysteries and miracles.

That, in a nutshell, is Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix offering, Midnight Mass, which is, among other things, a tale of faith and addiction, of community and mortality, of belief (and the selective interpretation of scripture) as a weapon and a means of manipulation and justification.

“The people on this island… We used to be hundreds. Now, we’re just dozens.

“This isn’t a community anymore, honey. It’s a ghost.”

One of the strengths of Midnight Mass is its depiction of a group of disparate individuals united only in their faith (though there are, naturally, a number of outliers in that respect) and the turmoil of daily existence in an economically devastated community struggling to stay alive.

And that particular strength is down to some excellent writing from Flanagan and company, coupled with some powerful performances from the cast, which includes some past collaborators like wife Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas, Starry Eyes’ Alex Essoe, The X-Files’ Annabeth Gish, and BSG’s Michael Trucco*.

And while Gilford is probably best known for Friday Night Lights, he’s been ‘round these parts before, thanks to Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter (part of the ¡Qué horror! 2008 rundown).

Oh! And Groove’s Hamish Linklater (seen more recently on TV’s Legion) is here too, in a pivotal role.

I could go on and on…

“What is otherwise horrible is good because of where it’s headed.”

Yes, there are some scares here, and sure, there is some gore, but ultimately, Midnight Mass is a heart-wrenching tale told through the lens of one of supernatural horror’s most enduring of fixtures, a story of yearning and loss and the struggle to find meaning and a sense of understanding and peace in an imperfect and often brutal world.

And believe me, it’s a final assessment that comes as a complete (albeit very welcome) surprise.

More so than a “horror” story, it’s an achingly beautiful piece of work, this.

Partake of its bounty… and be not afraid…

“I mean, what’s a little crazy between friends, right?”

* Gish appeared in Before I Wake and The Haunting of Hill House, while Trucco was in Hush, in which he acted alongside Siegel and Midnight Mass’ Bev Keane, Samantha Sloyan.

And Essoe was in Doctor Sleep, as well as The Haunting of Bly Manor (more on that below).

Yup, Flanagan does enjoy working with the same stable of performers, doesn’t he?

Parting Shot:

For a number of reasons, I haven’t had the opportunity to take in Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor (despite the fact that I thought very highly of The Haunting of Hill House).

But who knows?

Maybe I’ll finally step through Bly Manor’s door soon…

Halloween’s just around the corner, after all…

(Midnight Mass OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

DANIEL ISN’T REAL (March 2019)

DANIEL ISN’T REAL

(March 2019)

 “I had an imaginary friend when I was a kid. Umm… his name was Daniel, and he was my best friend. He was my only friend, really.”

The first nine minutes or so of Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Daniel Isn’t Real establishes just how pivotal the titular imaginary friend is in the life of Luke (Halloween’s Miles Robbins), and despite what he says to his therapist, what we see in those nine minutes is most definitely not, “… just, you know, kid stuff.”

Mortimer first made a significant impression on my geek radar with his comic book collaboration with Darick Robertson, Ballistic, so when time came for his feature directorial debut, Some Kind of Hate, I paid attention.

And continue to do so.

With his sophomore effort, co-written with Brian DeLeeuw (as Some Kind of Hate was)*, he’s again made me so happy I have.

As always, I am loathe to give too much away here at the Iguana, so let’s just say that the crux of Daniel Isn’t Real is the true nature of the imaginary friend, as played by Ah-nuld’s offspring, Patrick Schwarzenegger.

Is he really all in Luke’s troubled head? Or is there something darker involved here?

Check it out to find out!

Parting Shot 1: This one’s another ¡Qué horror! winner from SpectreVision, so Yay, Frodo!

Parting Shot 2: For any X-Philes out there, Robbins also played the teenaged William in a number of Season 11 episodes.

Parting Shot 3: For any Some Kind of Wonderful fans out there, Watts herself, Mary Stuart Masterson is here, as Claire, Luke’s troubled mother.

Parting Shot 4: Among those thanked at the tail end of the credits roll?

The Grant Morrison, as well as Kristan, and… Mr. NOBODY (who may or may not be the one from Doom Patrol… who knows?)…

“It was quite a spectacle, wasn’t it? All that blood…”

(Daniel Isn’t Real OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

* Though unlike Some Kind of Hate, which seems to have been written for the screen, Daniel Isn’t Real is based on DeLeeuw’s novel, In This Way I Was Saved.

FRINGE
Season 1 Episode 2
“The Same Old Story”
Written by Jeff Pinkner & J.J. Abrams & Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci
Directed by Paul Edwards
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

“Massive Dynamic is one of the ten largest economic entities in the world. Our weapons technologies shape the Defense Department’s strategies. Our investments sway the markets and make or break presidential elections. Overseas, we have responsibilities traditionally sacred to the state: the right to direct private armies, to manage global affairs into stable equilibrium.”


Now, while a certain amount of fun was had with the short-lived Threshold, if there’s a show that’s to be crowned a successor to the late, great X-Files, it’s quickly looking to be Fringe, as it continues to display an excellent mix of speculative science and creepy horror.
And, as if to solidify that X-Files connection, X-alum Darin Morgan clambers on board as consulting producer on Fringe, which makes me a happy camper and even more eager to see what future episodes hold.

The episode’s main plot involves a serial killer/government super soldier mash-up, and writers Abrams, Kurtzman, Orci, and Alias and Lost alum Jeff Pinkner (also one of the show’s producers now) open the hour with a cracking prologue that recalls everything from Humanoids From The Deep to It’s Alive.
Of course, it really isn’t some killer mutant baby that gets born, but the horror movie echoes were welcome nonetheless. (I could have done without the subsequent Aliens–ish nightmare sequence though.)
We also get some fodder for the show’s main throughline (apparently, both Broyles and Massive Dynamic’s Nina Sharp are on a committee concerned with investigating the Pattern; this shadow cabinet, another bit that recalls The X-Files) as well as an intriguing allusion to Peter’s “medical history.”
Oh, and apparently, Dunham and company are a “new team,” and there’s a passing mention of a previous team. Hurm…


Anna Torv continues to impress, as does John Noble, who again, is the show’s MVP, nailing the script’s primo stuff (the seat warmer bit is hilarious) with apparent and enviable ease.
Joshua Jackson however, is still a tad shaky. Why a genius with an IQ of 190 (a fact repeated in this episode) would resort to using the term “magic old man baby” is a little beyond me… He just can’t seem to shake the ghost of Pacey.
At any rate, this one’s a winner and strengthens Fringe’s credentials as one of this season’s triumphs.
Bring on next week’s weirdness!


(Images courtesy of impawards.com [Fringe OS, design by FOX IN], variety.com, buddytv.com, and fringetelevision.com.)

FRINGE
Season 1 Episode 1
Pilot
Written by J.J. Abrams & Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci
Directed by Alex Graves
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

When Fringe was first announced by the trades, I had a number of reservations:
One: though J.J. Abrams’ name was attached, I can’t say I love everything he’s worked on.
If you’ve visited the Iguana before, you may know that I’m a big Lost fan, and I was also a fan of Felicity. And Cloverfield was brilliant.
But I never got into Alias, and I wasn’t that thrilled with Mission: Impossible III either.
Two: the other writer/producers announced were Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, whose scripts for M:i:III and Transformers didn’t inspire much confidence.
Three: the supreme hurdle for the show, as far as I was concerned—the premise sounded terribly X-Files-ish.

So how could the show get out from under that daunting shadow? And could the Pilot, at the very least, win this X-phile over?
I think I’d have to say the answer is a qualified “Yes.”


First off, the Pilot has a very effective pace, keeping the narrative engine going at a fast clip, while allowing time for involving character bits.
We have FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Australian actress Anna Torv), whose very personal stake in the preliminary case is telegraphed well, her desperation and anxiety palpable without being overpowering.
Then there are the father and son issues between underachieving genius (IQ 190) Peter Bishop (Dawson’s Creek’s Joshua Jackson) and his mentally unstable father Walter (played most excellently by mad King Denethor himself, John Noble, incidentally also Australian).
Oh, and the case—which will require the expertise of the elder Bishop, institutionalized nearly two decades ago, and the younger Bishop, who must serve as his father’s guardian—involves the very messy deaths of all the passengers and crew on an international flight which lands at Boston’s Logan Airport on auto pilot. (I was hoping it would be an Oceanic flight, but alas, no such luck…)

Is there, perhaps, a smidgen of convenience in the speed at which matters are expedited on the Pilot? Maybe.
But I’ll let it slide, as it is, quite literally, a life-or-death situation, and the fact remains that the Pilot never drags, and it’s a great opener that’s got the thrills, the laughs, and the requisite Abrams air of mystery to make it eminently watchable.


Clearly, this is the first Orci-Kurtzman script that’s kept me attentive and absorbed, and all involved lucked out with their casting of Noble as the certified (and certifiable) genius.
Noble delivers a portrait of tragic intelligence, laced with an unnerving air of potential lunacy, the kind of brilliance fueled by an unfettered mind. And what is more freeing, after all, than insanity?
Plus, Walter gets the best lines, and Noble delivers them with a grand, understated flourish. (The LSD bit is priceless.)

If there’s anyone in the cast who still hasn’t completely won me over by the Pilot’s end, it’s Jackson, who, unlike Noble, doesn’t quite emanate “genius” (unstable or otherwise) from his acting pores. Sorry, but at the moment, Peter just doesn’t seem to scream “190 IQ.”
We’ll see though. Still early in the game…


Getting back to the pluses, the mystery throughline for the show—“the Pattern”—is introduced effectively in the Pilot, a hook which is central to Fringe’s viral marketing, complete with the show’s catchphrase: Find the Pattern.
There’s also a megacorporation—Massive Dynamic (“Your World Is Our World.”)—that figures into the narrative goings-on, has a connection to the elder Bishop’s past, and whose motivations are, to say the least, shadowy.
Oh, and their equivalent of the on-screen text to establish setting (ala X-Files) is a neat visual which takes a page from Heroes’ chapter titles. (I particularly love the bit in Iraq.)

Now, all indications seem to point to the show being more episodic, as opposed to the heavily serialized nature of Lost.
Given though that there is “the Pattern” to contend with, I imagine Fringe may follow the lead of—and yet again, the comparison arises—The X-Files, which was largely episodic in nature, with the mythology episodes popping up over the course of its run.
Or, perhaps the template here will be more akin to Alias, as I can’t imagine Fringe will have out-and-out comedic episodes as The X-Files did.


Regardless, the show owes much to Chris Carter’s pioneering work, as well as all the test driving the post-X-Files shows of this stripe managed over the intervening years.
While it understandably took stretches of The X-Files’ freshman season for all involved to work the kinks out of the show (after all, there wasn’t really any precedent as far as the kind of series it was aiming to be), the Fringe Pilot is pretty much a fully-formed, ably constructed entity.
Not as audaciously slap-in-the-face as, say, the Lost Pilot, or, going back further, Twin Peaks’ opening salvo, mind, but effective and involving nonetheless.

So consider me hopeful and strapped in for the ride, though I will admit to still having some reservations about the upcoming experience.
Colour me cautiously optimistic over this one.


(Images courtesy of impawards.com [Fringe OS, design by FOX IN], latimes.com, tvweek.com, fringetv.blogspot.com, and fringetelevision.com.)

IN MEMORIAM

Don S. Davis
August 4, 1942 – June 29, 2008

(Image courtesy of donsdavis.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (77)
NEIL’S NEW CLASSIC MONSTERS

Amidst all the “New Classic” craziness currently going on at ew.com, Neil Gaiman has a list of his choices for 10 New Classic Monsters. (And by “New Classic,” they mean anything that saw the light of day from 1983 till the present.)
Among Neil’s choices:

9. The Pale Man from Guillermo del Toro’s El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth)

7. The Nightbreed, from Clive Barker’s Nightbreed

6. Eugene Tooms, from The X-Files episodes “Squeeze” and “Tooms”

5. Grendel, in Gaiman’s words, “The first and the best,” seen most recently in Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf (which Neil co-scripted)

4. Hannibal Lecter (though Gaiman specifies the Lecter from Thomas Harris’ novels Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, “… back when he wasn’t quite human and was all the scarier for it.”)

2. Max Schreck, as portrayed by Willem Dafoe in E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire

And at the top spot…

Swamp Thing. As Neil puts it, “The 1984-87 Alan Moore/Steve Bissette/John Totleben revival. The best muck-encrusted monster in the best comics.”

You can find the entire list here.

Parting shot: Reviews of El Laberinto Del Fauno, Beowulf, and Shadow of the Vampire, can be found in the Archive.

(Images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com [El Laberinto Del Fauno and Shadow of the Vampire]; amazon.com [Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed Chronicles cover art]; fredfarm.com [The X-Files]; and dccomics.com [Swamp Thing Vol. 1: Saga of the Swamp Thing cover art].)

reVIEW (27)
THE FORGOTTEN

For those unaware of it, the premise of The Forgotten is an interesting one: Julianne Moore plays a woman with the unlikely name of Telly Paretta, a grieving mother who lost her son in a plane crash some fourteen months ago. One day, she is suddenly told by everyone—including her increasingly estranged husband, played by E.R.’s Anthony Edwards—that she never had a son, that the memories she has of her little boy’s life and death, were all constructs of her mind. Even treasured photos of her son Sam are somehow altered, her boy erased everywhere else except from her memory.
For the first thirty minutes or so of the film, the mind games are enough to keep the audience engaged and curious, but when Telly makes an astounding leap in logic, the story bungles its way into X-Files territory, complete with shadowy operatives apparently working for the government, and never quite recovers from the fatal misstep.

Though it could be argued that Moore chose to do The Forgotten because of all the maternal angst and inner strength she gets to sink her considerable acting teeth into, it boggles the mind why actors of the caliber and talent of Gary Sinese and Alfre Woodard chose to appear in the film, given the glaring flaws in the script itself. It doesn’t help any that director Joseph Ruben is notorious for helming lackluster thrillers like the Julia Roberts-starrer Sleeping With The Enemy, or The Good Son with Macauley Culkin and Elijah Wood.
I can’t even say The Forgotten’s failure is because the material is now inherently hackneyed, given that the X-Files Moment has come and gone: Alex Proyas dealt with much of the same themes and subject matter in the astounding Dark City, in a much more fantastic, yet much more emotionally-satisfying way.
What’s more, the manner in which the film ends does nothing to resolve the primal quandary: the problem is still hanging over everyone’s stupidly smiling face once the credits roll. And the ultimate triumph of Maternal Love over the sinister machinations of Them rings so hollow, I can still hear the echoes nearly half a day after I’ve seen the film.

Having mentioned Maternal Love though, the film does seem to display a feminist streak, in that the two main female characters played by Moore and Woodard, are the ones more readily open to accept the fantastic, improbable explanation, as opposed to the male characters, who are either slow on the uptake, totally inept, or outright collaborators.
I think part of the problem is the fact that there is no apparent reason why Telly is immune to the process. Is it because she’s a woman? Surely other women underwent and succumbed to the forgetting. Is it because she’s a parent? But other parents forgot their children as well. Is it (as she underscores in a line of dialogue towards the film’s end) because she is a mother? But again, surely other mothers were made to forget too.
So Telly is apparently an exceptionally strong-willed mother. But what made her so? What events in her life contributed to these characteristics? What is Telly’s psychology? The script doesn’t give us anything to work with on that score.
So we are asked to identify and sympathize with Telly because she is a mother in pain trying to convince everyone else of her sanity, proof that grief is not a sign of weakness, or worse, madness. Fine. Given Moore’s acting chops, that’s the easy part of the deal. It’s all the other stuff that comes along with The Forgotten that’s difficult to swallow.

In the end, the motivation for Them seems almost dismissive, as if to say, We can give you the barest skeleton of a reason, but that’s okay; we’ll just give you another scene of Telly remembering Sam, thus proving her pure, unwavering love for him. Or worse, We don’t need to outline the motivation here since you’ve seen all the motivation for this sort of thing from every single X-Files episode in existence, from back when Mulder first met Scully.
And though I could commend the filmmakers for the naturalistic approach to the fantastic elements of the plot, I choose not to, since that decision didn’t help in raising the credibility of the material one iota: the film is as hard to swallow now as it would be if it had pink laser beams and vari-colored lights pinwheeling through the night sky. (Though seeing Telly on a flying bicycle with Sam might have been an amusing sight.)
The best I can say is, if you’re a Julianne Moore fan, then maybe you should see The Forgotten.
Stress on the “maybe.”

(The Forgotten OS courtesy of impawards.com; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)

(The above review was originally published under the title, “Best Forgotten.”)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (15)

15.1 Congratulations to all involved with the following TV shows, for being chosen for Time’s 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME list.

Battlestar Galactica
“A stark, well-imagined story of a war in a galaxy far, far away, yet too close for comfort.”

Felicity
“The finest, funniest and quirkiest of the '90s explosion of young-adult dramas, this WB bildungsroman was a rare soap about a young woman in which her personal growth was as important as her love life.”

Lost
“In a way it's a misnomer to call Lost one of TV's best shows—it's a fine show on the level of character and writing, but what makes it a classic is that it's the finest interactive game ever to appear in your living room once a week.”

Six Feet Under
“Alan Ball's all-in-the-funeral-family drama expanded on the themes of his movie American Beauty: families keep secrets, people maintain facades, and while death may be final, life is messy.”

Twin Peaks
“The story of a teen girl's death in the Pacific Northwest—and the pie-eating, deadpan-soliloquy-spouting FBI agent investigating it—carried on the theme, from Lynch movies like Blue Velvet, of sordid secrets and ancient horrors hid behind a facade of wholesome Americana, proving that TV could equal or surpass film in its storytelling ambitions.”

The X-Files
“… for years this conspiracist gem drilled into our reserves of horror and mistrust, and struck black oil.”

Hey! J.J. Abrams wound up with two of his shows on the list. Sweet.

All quotes are from the article. For the complete list, go here. (Each title above brings you to that particular show’s entry.)

15.2 Meanwhile, Lucas and Spielberg have apparently made up their minds: it’s officially Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I’d referred to the fourth Indy film once or twice here at the Iguana as Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods, which was actually merely one of several rumoured titles.
I still like the sound of City of the Gods more than the official monicker, but hey, it’s their movie.

(Images courtesy of space.com [Battlestar Galactica]; atnzone.com [Lost]; answers.com [Six Feet Under]; tarnishedlady.typepad.com [Twin Peaks]; and amazon.com [The X-Files].

reVIEW (18)
WONDERFALLS

Instead of taking a look at an old film, this installment of reVIEW is about the sadly cancelled Bryan Fuller co-created TV series Wonderfalls. Consider it a companion piece to TV Watch 2007 (3), where I heartily recommended Fuller’s new ABC series, Pushing Daisies.

“It’s a really quirky, smart, feel-good show about a pathological narcissist who wakes up one day to discover the universe has sort-of forced her to become fate’s b!tch.”
-- Bryan Fuller, when asked to describe Wonderfalls


Classic Gen Y underachiever, Jaye Brewster (Caroline Dhavernas) has a Philosophy degree, but works a dead-end job at the souvenir shop of Niagara Falls. However, inanimate animals—wax lions, metal monkeys, stuffed donkeys—begin to speak to her, giving her cryptic instructions, which she finds herself hesitantly following, inadvertently helping others, when all she’d really rather do is nothing in particular.
That’s the quirky premise of a great TV show called Wonderfalls (one of its working titles during its development, Touched by a Crazy Person), which almost never got seen.


Fox, you see, unceremoniously pulled the plug on the show after a mere four episodes, despite the fact that it was a critical darling. Apparently, the show wasn’t racking up the ratings Fox would have liked, and the network wasn’t willing to wait for an audience to discover its witty charm.
(It should be noted that this isn’t the first time Fox has speedily kicked a show off the air. They’ve done it to Chris Carter twice, despite the phenomenal hit he gave them in The X-Files—with his virtual reality series Harsh Realm, and the X-Files spin-off, The Lone Gunmen.)


The magnitude of this injustice is compounded even further when you consider that, a) Wonderfalls was actually a really good show, and b) as I’ve pointed out before, this is a world with three CSI’s. Three CSI’s and we can’t have room for one unique show with a voice all its own, managing to fuse the inertia of Gen Y slackdom with the inevitability of destiny, turning in an existential comedy bristling with witty dialogue, and pop culture referents and metaphors aplenty.

“She’s a snarky character, so she’s going to be snarky about the things that she encounters in her life. When tchochtkes start talking, let the snark reign.”
-- Bryan Fuller, discussing Jaye


As Jaye Brewster, Dhavernas (from a host of Canadian productions) displays a refreshing, disarming quality, even when she’s in her persnickety slacker mode, and witnessing the character’s torturous metamorphosis from self-involved, aimless cynic to confused, hesitant Samaritan is a peculiar joy.
Surrounding Jaye with their own brand of insanity is her family, father Darrin (William Sadler, from The Green Mile and Kinsey), mother Karen (Diana Scarwid), sister Sharon (Katie Finneran, from You’ve Got Mail, and the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead), and brother Aaron (Lee Pace, from Soldier’s Girl).
Of particular note amongst the Brewsters is Scarwid (from What Lies Beneath and Party Monster), whose Karen is the aloof, snotty socialite who nonetheless loves her family (though she may not particularly understand them).

Ultimately, Wonderfalls is a show that manages to give us a funny glimpse at the workings of those “mysterious ways” we keep on hearing about. It’s like an Early Edition or a Touched by an Angel, but with a lot more wit, and a lot more brains; a show that displays the causality of destiny, and how every little thing we do, no matter how seemingly insignificant, impacts somewhere, on someone, thus keeping the great engine of life moving in perfect synchronicity with the Will of some higher, manifest Power, a Power that, apparently, has a pretty hip (and often absurd) sense of humor.


Parting shot: Though only four episodes of Wonderfalls were broadcast on Fox, thirteen were actually filmed, and all are available on DVD.

(Images courtesy of aintitcool.com, episodeguides.com, hollywoodjesus.com, and logoonline.com.)
(The above is an altered version of a previously published article entitled “The Causality of Destiny (Or, The Greatest TV Show You May Never See).”)

DARK
RIDE
(Review)

Bolstered by the interesting The Abadoned (review in Archive: May 2007), I came at my fourth After Dark Horrorfest title, Craig Singer’s Dark Ride, with a smidgen of hope that this would at least be better than J.S. Cardone’s Wicked Little Things (review in Archive: April 2007).
No.
Such.
Luck.
If I had seen this as a double bill alongside Wicked Little Things, I would’ve right then and there changed the title of the affair to the “After Crap Horrorfest.”
But, onto the details…

There’s a perfunctory prologue set in the 80’s, which sees a pair of frizzy-haired twins (Brittney and Chelsea Coyle) get murdered in a dark ride. (And as early as this, there is no attempt at all to make our first view of the film a memorable one. No move to grab hold of our attention the way Wes Craven did at the start of Scream, or Hideo Nakata, in Ringu. This is a painfully standard opening that serves simply as the switch that starts the film’s clunky narrative engine, and nothing more.)
The opening titles then offer a montage of newspaper clippings, filling us in on the aftermath: 14 other bodies are found on the premises, the killer is put in a mental institute, and the ride is closed.
Flash forward as the millennium turns, and it seems that the dark ride is about to open up for business again.
We’re then introduced to five college students set to go off on a road trip for spring break. One unstable hitchhiker later (Jen, played by Andrea Bogart), and they’re off to the infamous dark ride of the title, a pamphlet for its impending opening apparently found by Bill (Patrick Renna, from TV’s Boston Legal; genre fans may remember him as the vampiric pizza delivery boy, Ronnie Strickland, in the hilarious X-Files episode “Bad Blood”) in a gas station rest room.
They’re off to the dark ride because a) they want to save money, so they decide they’d like to spend the night there; and b) because Bill argues that everyone says their generation doesn’t do anything and is doomed. “So let’s do something,” he says, with the earnest conviction of the damned and the completely insane.
Yes, let’s! Let’s break into an amusement park ride where at least 16 people were killed, so we can prove to all those naysayers that, dammit, our generation is not doomed! That we have significance!
Why is the average (or, in this case, far-less-than-average) horror movie populated by morons?

Naturally, bad things happen at the dark ride, though it does take some time before the blood starts to spatter. And when the “thrills” kick in, they are, appropriately enough, of the funhouse variety, mechanical and ultimately meaningless.
More to the point, this entire movie smacks of pointlessness. There doesn’t seem to be an ounce of creativity or intelligence in the entire production, and the blatant transparency of the tale Bill tells is vaguely insulting to the audience; any horror fan worth his salt should spot the “twist” coming a light year away.
And when you suddenly drop a gratingly annoying “Two weeks earlier” flashback in the midst of the proceedings without an apparently good reason, you just have to throw up your hands and the towel. (The baby, the bath water, and the kitchen sink too, while you’re at it. And throwing them in the general direction of Craig Singer’s head would be good. Now that’s entertainment!)

I apologize. I don’t normally advocate violence (or mash up my clichés), but Dark Ride was really just a lame excuse for a horror movie. It’s jostling with Plane Dead for Worst Movie I’ve Seen This Year Thus Far.
And as for the After Crap (oops, I mean After Dark) Horrorfest score card, I hoped it wasn’t possible, but this is actually worse than Wicked Little Things.
(Wow. I’m looking back at that last sentence, and I can’t believe I actually typed that.)

Well, I’m at the halfway mark of the After Dark Horrorfest*, and the score is 1-3, in favour of the “What were they thinking? Can I have my money back?” School of Horror Films.
When will the madness stop?!

* The other four Horrorfest titles are: Jason Todd Ipson’s Unrest; Richard Brandes’ Penny Dreadful; Mike Mendez’s The Gravedancers; and the Butcher Brothers’ The Hamiltons.

Parting shot: To any Sopranos fans, Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s in this one.

(Dark Ride OS courtesy of toxicshock.tv.)

ENTOURAGE
Season 3
Episode 13
(WARNING:
SPOILERS)
“Less Than 30”

After, what, a four month break, the boys are back, and look who their new hottie agent is: Amanda, played by Carla Gugino!
And speaking of breaks, that’s sort of the way Vince and Ari are acting, as if they were once an item and now they’re on the outs. (E makes an interesting point: outside of Mrs. Chase and the guys, Ari’s is the longest relationship/friendship Vince has had.)
All this tension (and yes, jealousy) comes to a head when, ostensibly as a birthday gift, Ari gives Vince the script for Medellin (which was once a bone of contention in light of the Aquaman franchise; of course, Benicio Del Toro ended up with Medellin, and Vince was passed over for Aquaman 2). Amanda’s understandably annoyed by that, and Ari makes his pitch at Vince’s party.
It’s a great scene, where it’s pretty clear that beneath all the agent schmooze, this is really just a friend reaching out to another, hoping to salvage the relationship. And the thing is, with Ari, his friendship with Vince is all wrapped up and intertwined with their being agent and client. (Perhaps not the best set-up, but there you have it.)
And though Vince says all they really can be at this point is friends, he holds back on signing a deal to make an Edith Wharton adaptation with Sam Mendes, just to see if the whole Medellin thing pans out the way Ari claims it will.

Parting shot: It’s too bad the Carla Gugino-headlined Threshold was cancelled. One of the Lost clones to storm the network schedules in 2005, Threshold was a great X-Files throwback I enjoyed.
Maybe that was its downfall, though. Classic case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If it had come out during the whole X-Files boom, it would have been a rip-off. In 2005, when it premiered, it was probably a little too late, given that the boom had already gone bust. (Invasion—another show I enjoyed—was a fresher and more involving approach to the X-Files idea of aliens among us, but even that couldn’t get past its freshman year.)

(Image courtesy of aol.com.)