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tonywilkes
Reviews
Reeker (2005)
Confused...
I'm confused because this is one of the worst films I've ever seen, and yet some people seem to like it. The characters, the dialogue ('Didn't you just go to the bathroom already?' 'Tell that to my bladder') and the acting was awful, and... actually that's enough. Take that away from any film and you have a bunch of set pieces which either work or they don't, but it's not a film in any kind of enjoyable sense.
The pre-credits part at the beginning was great and I was actually set up to enjoy a great film - only it sucked. I quickly realised that I was watching five of the most shallow, dumb-schmuck, downright stoopidest high school folk ever committed to celluloid, and after ten minutes my reaction was 'Jeez, make them die already'. Harsh but true. They weren't even clichés, they were cardboard cut-outs from a How Not To Write A Move book. For a group of young kids thrown together in the midst of an ordeal watch My Little Eye.
The inclusion of a blind guy could have been interesting if it hadn't been handled so badly. The first mention of it - 'Thanks for rubbing it in' - was a bit ridiculous; he's been blind since the age of 6, hasn't he got over it yet? He can't still be bitter about it! And when a trucker meets him he is confused by why he doesn't shake his hand: 'He's blind.' 'Oh.' As if the blind guy (his name's Jack, but his role in the film is essentially Blind Guy) would stay silent and not hold out his hand to be shook when introduced to someone.
In the scene where Blind Guy enters a room and there's a woman with no face scratching a message into a table, he doesn't see her. Because he's blind, you see. But as he keeps mentioning how his hearing compensates for his sight, would he not have heard her moving around? This, coupled with him later saying he was blind since age *7* (apparently a continuity flub), made me think that he was in on the horror side of things. The number of plot holes, blind alleys and red herrings is enough to keep people guessing about what's going on (and not in a good way) and the ending doesn't help either. You can't just montage a bunch of new stuff that makes no sense and have the two surviving characters say 'Do you remember anything about the crash?' 'No. Do you?' 'No.' It's the equivalent of a 7 year old writing a poem and ending it with, 'And then I woke up. It was all a dream'. Blech.
The whole 'Group Stuck In A Horror Motel' thing was done infinitely better in some film I don't remember the name of from 2002/2003. It's ironic that I should forget its name, as the name Reeker will be etched in my memory for a long while yet, and not in a good way.
But hey, you kids have fun!
A Room for Romeo Brass (1999)
Did I miss something?
I really liked this film, until I started to realise that the Morrell character wasn't being handled with any kind of compassion. And then it really p***ed me off.
It's fairly obvious that he has mental problems, and suffered abuse when younger, yet the film tells us that scary freaks should get the kicking they deserve and then normal people can sit down and have a good cup of tea without worrying about it. If the film had shown a twelve year old boy with mental difficulties getting knocked around by his father, there would have been buckets of sympathy - but once he grows up into the disturbed adult he's destined to be, all that is forgotten and he's just some weirdo that enjoys hanging around with little children. He's not some calculating criminal - he's got problems, but apparently no-one cares about that.
There's enough of a problem with people's negative attitudes to mental health without legitimising it on film - and the fact that none of the reviewers ever gave this a second thought is a little worrying...