the beaver

[IMDB] [Amazon]

the beaver is essentially a remake of dumbo, swapping out dumbo for a human, the magic feather for a beaver puppet, and flying for severe depression.  so, a bit darker than the disney classic.  alas, the beaver brings nothing new to the table, unless you count self-mutilation.  which i do not.

i know the bar is low when it comes to understanding and dealing with mental illness, especially in the movies, so i should probably not be unhappy with the way the beaver portrays things, but i am unhappy with it anyway.  depression is some bad shit, man.  you do not just strap on a beaver and  fix it in a couple weeks.  also, i am pretty sure that what they were showing was a schizophrenic break, which is a whole other can of worms, but take that assessment with a grain of salt because not only am i not a trained psychologist or psychiatrist, i cannot even consistently remember what the difference is between a psychologist and a psychiatrist. one of them can give you drugs?

the beaver gets one hand saw. get it?

shimmer lake

[IMDB] [Netflix]

shimmer lake does a fine job of telling a mystery story in reverse.  i first saw this gimmick used in memento, where it was meant to force the protagonist's condition onto the viewer, and it was definitely an appropriate storytelling device there.  in the case of shimmer lake, there did not seem to be any particular reason for telling the story that way, other than for the entertainment value.  luckily, it was very entertaining.  the only bad spot was that they could not seem to decide whether to make it comedic or not.  so the viewer suffers a bit of whiplash whenever a scene change toggles the comedy bit.

shimmer lake gets four dead bodies.

the rezort

[IMDB] [Amazon]

the rezort is a ripoff of jurassic park, except without all of the parts that made jurassic park good ("unix!  i know this!") and also with zombies instead of dinosaurs.  the rezort had other flaws, as well, such as an obvious supply chain issue that telegraphed the climax's scandalous reveal.  it would also be accurate to observe that the rezort employed zero competent security personnel, which seems particularly unrealistic to me, given that we were supposed to be in a world where billions had died from a highly contagious disease, the last known sample of which was wandering free range on this island.  to be fair to the writers, it would have been a much shorter and less interesting movie if they had had proper security measures and backup systems in place.

also, if there is a zombie outbreak and your failsafe system intends to scorch the entire island, then here is a hot tip for you: do not rely on AIRPLANES FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE TO FLY OVER YOU AND SHOOT ROCKETS.  instead, you need a Big Red Button which blows everything, with zero delay, via redundant, pre-placed explosives of a size that will definitely produce a mushroom cloud and leave behind nothing more contagious than some molten rock.  and actually, the BRB should be a dead man switch.  plus a remote trigger in case a zombie sits on the now-aptly-named dead man switch.

i mean, come on.  we are talking about ZOMBIES here.  a highly-contagious, blood-borne infection which turns its hosts into ravenous monsters is essentially an extinction event.  you might as well make a russian roulette theme park.

the rezort gets one clandestine thumb drive.

night owls

[IMDB] [Amazon]

night owls is the kind of movie you watch because even though nobody wants to see it and you all expect very little from it, you are also tired of arguing and the argument about what to watch has gone to a weird place where the heels are dug in *all* the way and people are pulling shit like refusing to watch a good movie because *someone else* in the group already saw it, despite the fact that the someone else says they want to watch it again.  when the discussion about what to watch is in that very special weird place, watch out.  all of the good movies are going to be thrown violently off the table, and you are going to pick something bad, more or less at random.  and then you are going to sit in silence, arms crossed and hating every second of it, but also pointedly pausing the movie any time somebody has to get up to use the shitter or get some water because you are all in it together and there is no way *anybody* is going to escape that miserable train wreck with a few minutes in the bathroom.

night owls delivered exactly according to expectations.  it gets one valium.

event horizon

[IMDB] [Amazon]

i gotta learn to let things go sometimes.  i saw event horizon almost 20 years ago, and it has haunted me ever since.  off and on, not every day.  i am not a psycho.  i mean, i am a psycho, but that is not the point.  the point is that i always felt that this movie had defeated me in some way, and since i am a sore loser, it bothered me.  wait, let me back up for a second and give you some context.

this was back near the end of my time in college.  i was all burned out, my classes were hard, and i was working way too many hours.  also, at the time, i had my day shifted so i would basically get up at 2 or 3 in the morning--it was part of my brilliant plan to have peace and quiet for doing homework or whatever--except, i also vaguely remember that i would usually not stumble home until after 10 or 12 at night, so no wonder about all the hallucinations.  have you ever been chased through the dark by your imagination?  do not answer that, i cannot hear you.

anyway.  i do not watch a lot of horror movies, and for good reason.  my sleep-deprived imagination would latch onto anything even remotely scary and just put that shit on repeat.  when i watched blair witch project, i made the mistake of doing so by myself, late at night, in a theater that i had to drive home from.  i was halfway home, driving on a narrow, unlit street, when i suddenly realized the significance of the final scene.  oh god, i thought, he was STANDING IN THE CORNER.  it is a wonder i did not plow into a parked car, what with my sudden panic attack, combined with an equally sudden conviction that the blair witch was IN MY BACK SEAT, AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY.  i "slept" with the lights on that night, and i did not bother trying to sleep for a few days after that.  when i was at work the following night, not bothering to sleep, i was convinced that the blair witch was behind me, though what she was doing in the rack with the licensing servers was not something my brain had an explanation for.  i kept checking anyway.  there was another time when my so-called friend convinced me to go see the exorcist, and that was even worse.  i slept with the lights on for a week, and on at least a couple occasions, i woke up, hallucinating that that fucking little girl was spider-walking at me from around the corner of the kitchen island thing.

um.  anyway.  so, against this backdrop, we have an opportunity to watch a "science fiction" movie called event horizon.  now, see, when i procured it, i was not aware that it was a sci-fi/HORROR movie.  had i only known, i could have walked away.  however, once i had it, i had to watch it.  if that sounds wrong, then screw you, completionists are people too.

event horizon took me three sittings to watch, and i watched most of it by playing the movie in one window while i did something else in another window.  fucking self-mutilation, man.  it really gets to me.  when i finally finished it, i felt relief, because mission accomplished, but i also felt defeat.  fast-forward to a couple weeks ago, when somebody who absolutely did not know what they were talking about wrote that event horizon, though panned by critics and viewers alike, had some kind of staying power and was much better on a second viewing.

i knew it was a trap, i knew they were full of shit, i knew i was going to hate myself, and i knew i was going to watch it again.  goddammit why am i so predictable.  my friends and loved ones were very supportive--except my asshole dog, who just wanted food and belly rubs--and every single one of them said i should forget about the movie.  just take it out of your queue, you do not have to watch it.  why would you do that.  you know you will not like it.  you know you will regret it forever.

well, i DID take it out of my queue.  then i was home alone and could not stop thinking about it and i looked it up and watched it anyway.  and that is how i got closure.

event horizon gets one black hole to hell.  it was no better the second time around and anybody who suggests otherwise is an idiot.  honourable mention to sam neill for being legitimately creepy, at least so far as i could tell from between my fingers, before the part where the mutilations started.