Let's Shake Things Up

Maybe it's because I like interactive seasonal toys...

Or maybe it's because this was the first time I understood a Far Side cartoon:

Or maybe, just maybe, it's that they're really cool.

No matter the reason, any genre film that involves evil/haunted/possessed/powerful snow globes is, to me, worth a watch.

Quick Plot: Welcome to Normal, Alaska, where it's not only not snowing in December, but is also warm enough for a light jacket. We're used to such details in a Hallmark film, but in the case of Snowmageddon, it might have some deeper meaning. 

Nuclear family the Millers are having a quiet evening setting up for Christmas when they discover an unmarked present under their tree. Young Rudy opens it and is delighted to find a detailed snow globe that matches his small town. Nothing unusual in that, but moments later, an earthquake causes some rifts in the ground...of both the real world and the floor of...THE SNOW GLOBE. 

What follows is an efficiently competent Christmas disaster film. 

Such a statement can be read as positive or disappointing, I know.

As someone who grew up in a very Mystery Science Theater 3000 era of joyfully discovering the fun inherent in incompetent cinema, "bad" movies remain enjoyable only when they're trying to reach some level of good. Some dozen or so years ago, The SyFy Channel learned to perfect their packaging of low effort genre films that were clearly manufactured to SEEM like a "so bad it's good" experience. For me, it's inauthentic and made for a different audience.

Snowmageddon, despite being a low budget straight-to-who-knows-where-but-not-a-big-screen CGI-fueled quickie about a magical snow globe that causes natural disasters, is, thankfully, NOT an offshoot of the School of Sharknado. It's earnest. It's a bit self-serious. It tries.

So sure: it's therefore a little dull. Those expecting Shark Attack 3: Megalodon levels of buffoonery will walk away feeling a bit shortchanged. There's nothing overtly stupid about this movie, even if, as I really can't say enough, the story is about a magical snow globe that causes natural disasters.

High Points

Enough can't be said about the cast (including The Faculty's Laura Harris), all of whom clearly approached the material knowing the best way to make it work was to play it straight

Low Points

How can you possibly make a movie about a powerful world-ending snow globe and never, you know, address the reason for why this angry piece of winter decoration is trying to end the world?

Breathe Easy

Mo, the beautiful malamute who first warns the family that their snowglobe is a tool of evil, emerges unscathed 

Lessons Learned:

Being professional means no ogling or drooling

Everyone knows that Santa only brings gifts down the chimney (said with sass by a teenager)

When in doubt, just wait for an active volcano to reveal itself and solve your geological problems

Rent/Bury/Buy

It's hard to know what kind of viewer would get the most out of Snowmageddon. The movie isn't campy enough to be that much fun, nor is it, well, good enough to be actually good. We're grading on a very particular SyFy Channel curve here. The movie is far more competent than its premise and pedigree would lead you to expect, but it never quite rises to be anything overly memorable. Still, if you, like me, see "An Alaskan family receives a mysterious snowglobe that causes a global catastrophe" as the premise of a film and think, "obviously, I'm watching," you can find it on Amazon Prime. 

Slither Me Timbers

Welcome to the Annual February Shortening! In honor of the shortest month on a blog written by a short woman, all posts are devoted to stories about vertically challenged villains. If you, reader of any height, have your own mini-horror to share, do so in the comments and I'll include you in a final post roundup as the calendar changes!

I don't LOVE the idea of throwing snakes in the short villain club; when they do that coiling thing, some could probably tower over me. But hey, Vipers was on Amazon Prime and sometimes, you just have to listen to the universe of streaming SyFy creature features.

Quick Plot: Overhead stock island footage introduces us to a secret facility where government scientists are genetically modifying snakes in order to fight cancer...and terrorists.

Naturally, these titular CGI vipers escape their thin glass barrier and find their way to another small island, strangely enough, one that looks the same in an overhead stock shot. Luckily for the few townspeople that aren't extras and therefore immediate snake scraps, former 3-star military man Dr. Silverton (Twin Peaks' always delightful Don S. Davis) was in the middle of transitioning his practice over to young army vet Cal, leaving the island with slightly more strategic experience (handy in an "escape the genetically modified man-eating snake invasion" emergency).

Also on hand to do some reptile combat is greenhouse owner Tara Reid, her friend-turned enemy Ellie, Ellie's angry teen daughter Maggie, Ellie's cheating husband Jack, the woman he's cheating with, Georgie, played by the always perfect and never used well enough Mercades McNab. Did I squeal in glee when her name showed up in the opening credits? Of course. Did I immediately deflate when I realized that, by placing her smack in the middle, it meant she'd die early? Blondy Bear, you know me well.

There aren't many surprises in Vipers. This is the kind of movie where a mother muses that her teenage daughter will be the death of her only to, you guessed it, die by snaking barely a full scene later trying to save aforementioned daughter. Don't expect much more.

High Points

You know what's probably very difficult? Acting terrified for the course of a 90 minute film when there is literally NOTHING physical to act terrified of. Obviously, the vipers of Vipers are pure computer generated art, meaning director Bill Corcoran probably had to dangle more tennis balls than George Lucas to capture the right eye positions. We can laugh at the SyFy pool of goofy CGI attacks all we want, but as this was made before the network went fully off the rails in terms of style, we should also respect the fact that each actor in Vipers plays their part as if they are genuinely afraid of these almost-ridiculous vipers.

Low Points

There are three white male characters who all stand about the same height, with the same dirty blond hair, and have generically white names. It's genuinely difficult to tell them apart for the first 10 minutes or so, and just seems like such a silly decision on the part of casting. 

Lessons Learned

Give a lady a big rock and you become nothing but a wallet

If your lover thinks mistakes a snake for your caressing hands, it's probably a note to moisturize more often

Genetically enhanced snakes bite like hell and more importantly, scream like baby velociraptors 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Vipers isn't anything terribly special, but it's interesting as a time capsule of the era when you could make a cheap CGI TV creature feature and still treat it somewhat earnestly. If the mood strikes you, find it now on Amazon Prime. 

Order On the Set

I recall hearing quite the glut of negativity aimed at Wes Craven's 2010 3D slasher My Soul To Take. The film seemed to rile up such bitter venom in all who viewed that I naturally have spent the last four years anxiously awaiting its arrival on Netflix Instant.

Try as I may, I just couldn't bring myself to wasting my valuable 1-disc-at-a-time plan on a movie that by all accounts was going to be unworthy. Most mediocre slashers are guaranteed a ticket on the Instant Watch circuit, but this one just refused to take the ride. 

Full disclosure: I finally watched My Soul To Take when it aired on the SyFy Channel (in MY day, by the way, we called it The Sci-Fi Channel; in my younger days, it was better known as The Home of Every Quantum Leap Rerun). What this means is that for all I know, scenes were edited or removed to fit into the 2-hour-with-commercials-not-for-Quantum-Leap running time. I'll never know what My Soul To Take looked like to the non-cable eyes, but I will assume it had less awkward mutings on curses and more importantly, 100% less blurred out newborn nudity.

I'm really not kidding: SyFy blurs out baby nudity. Somehow I find this incredibly disturbing. It makes something so natural and non-sexual (because: baby) into something that's apparently sexual or at the very least, harder core than Rated M. 

Anyway, I guess I find the politics of editing infant nudity way more intriguing than Wes Craven's bizarrely lazy tale of teenage stereotypes trapped in a convoluted yet unexplained curse of sorts. Still, I have a non-paying job to do, so let's get on with it!

Quick Plot: 16 years ago, the town of Riverton housed a vicious serial killer played by Raul Esparza--

This is going to be a REALLY hard review to get through, isn't it...

Sidebar, your honor: Raul Esparza is probably best known to the general American audience as the current ADA on Law & Order: SVU  (though Broadway audiences are more familiar with his musical work in everything from Cabaret to Company and so on). The man is, let me say this, 5'3.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING SHORT.

I'm just, you know, pointing out that the sadistic and active murderer of this film is not too much taller than me.

Moving on, Esparza is a family man who opens the film building a white dollhouse in his basement--

SIDEBAR

Yes, the dollhouse bears a more than coincidental resemblance to something you might pass on Elm Street. And yes, this will not be the only sidebar to point out a similarity between My Soul To Take and that OTHER franchise.

So. Esparza's a family man with a wife about to deliver a baby whose nudity will be blurred out. He's also the host to multiple personalities--or souls, as the film occasionally discusses--that kill. According to the film's science, this makes him a violent schizophrenic--

SIDEBAR

Are we still, a full decade into the 21st century, calling multiple personality disorder the same as schizophrenia? Have we NOT gotten past this misconception? Isn't this to psychiatry what a misuse of its/it's is to grammar nerds? Isn't Wes Craven a pretty well-educated man who at least could have double checked this on Wikipedia?

Anyway, the Riverton Ripper or Reaper or whatever you want to call him is caught by, as usual in a Wes Craven film, completely unqualified police officers who somehow let him shoot/stab several last minute victims AFTER being captured. It's sort of resolved by an ambulance accident that, 16 years later, one can still see because in 16 years, why would a town ever do something as minor as remove the burnt vehicle of a fatal car accident from the street?

Did I mention it's now 16 years later? You're forgiven if you didn't catch that detail since all of the characters shown 16 years earlier haven't aged a day. This includes supporting unqualified policewoman Danai Gurira (Michonne from The Walking Dead) who hasn't even changed her hair style in 16 years. 

Gurira's character in 1994

...and 2010

You know what HAS changed in 16 years? The baby, he of the blurred out baby nudity, is now a creepy high school student named Bug played by The House At the End of the Street's Max Thieriot. What's more interesting is that on that fateful night, there were six other babies born who might have required blurred out nudity in a deleted scene. Today, these teenagers are known as the Riverton Seven and take part in an annual performance before their peers and that burned out but still unmoved ambulance, wherein they ceremoniously slay the puppet embodiment of Raul Esparza to ward off his spirit--I mean schizophrenia--I mean, souls.  

Among the Riverton Seven are:

The token jock jerk

The token Asian artist kid

The token blond brat

The token religious girl

The token weird kid (nickname: Bug; hobby: birdwatching)

The token weird kid's friend with an abusive father 

The token blind black kid, who in the most disappointing SPOILER twist of all, is not the killer

When the awkward Bug fails to complete the Riverton party charade, the kids quickly begin to die in horrifically boring ways. Meanwhile, Bug begins to display some of his friends' personality quirks, such as being able to construct an elaborate condor costume for show and tell (because that's what high school biology apparently is in 2010) or capturing his pal Adam's movements in one of those mirror games you play in Acting 101 class. Mind you, it's not exactly clear or interesting in any way, and all of it makes me long for a much-needed rewatch of Nightmare On Elm Street 4.

SIDEBAR

I love that one. I know most horror fans see Renny Harlin's goofy take as the series' beginning of the end, but I find the visual creativity and super elaborate death sequences to be the best in the bunch. It references Kafka! Plus, it's the installment that resurrects Freddy Krueger via dog pee. 

What was I talking about again?

Right. So. Stereotypes die. Wes Craven displays a strange understanding of high school politics, envisioning a society where a bitchy super senior who goes by the name of Fang serves as a sort of fascist dictator who can enact edicts about levels of bullying and matchmaking. Maybe I just didn't "wake up and smell the Starbucks" (actual line of dialog) but I think modern teenagers aren't quite as Napoleonic as Wes Craven seems to believe.

There is so very much wrong with My Soul To Take. Aforementioned 'what the hell kind of teenagers ARE these people?' being just a teeny tiny part of it all. It's clear that this film was repackaged five times or so for test audiences, as minor plot threads seem to be introduced only to dangle lazily until you accept that you shouldn't care about them. The nature of why a schizoph--er, multiple personality carrying musical theater star could have such magical Shocker-ish abilities to inhabit and pass on multiple souls is never justified with any kind of mythology. One cop (who uses great anti-aging cream) suggests something about soul jumping. The kids sort of discuss it. Apparently, it happened in the movie and the script forgot to mention it.

SIDEBAR

I’ve now written over one thousand words about My Soul To Take. I think nine out of ten soul holders would agree that that’s at least 900 too many. And yet, I’m not done. So let me leave you with a few more bullet points worth noting. We’ll call them evidence:

Exhibit A: The Riverton Ripper uses a knife that has the word “vengeance” carved in the blade. This is an exhibit because never in the film does any real sense that the Riverton Ripper sought vengeance come into play. Other than, perhaps, the fact that the motive for Freddy Krueger hunting the children of his killers was vengeance. 

Exhibit B: I started keeping track of how many times a character turns around as the music CRESCENDOS and he/she is about to scream before realizing “oh hey! It’s just a friend.” I gave up after three.

Exhibit C: The very first shot of the killer--not musical theater multi-soul holder killer, mythical soul sharing 2010 killer--sprinting at his first victim was almost cool. 

Exhibit D: Maybe I’m reaching, but once the Nightmare On Elm Street winks started coming, I couldn’t stop seeing them. Everywhere. Bug’s best friend visits him by climbing in through his window. Maybe it’s nothing. Or maybe it’s a rather meh director trademark.

Exhibit E: It’s been at least a few hundred words since I mentioned it, and this has less to do with My Soul To Take than it does with The SyFy Channel or FCC, but seriously: the innocent biological genitalia of a BABY was blurred out, yet underage children being gutted, decapitated, and gutted again (the kills were incredibly not creative) was considered perfectly fine to show in full glory on television. Just something to consider, America.

Exhibit F: The end credits roll over an animated sequence of sorts involving condors. It’s sort of adorable. Until you remember that this is the credits sequence for a horror film that has, up to now, taken itself rather seriously

The prosecution rests.

High Points

Well, it's hard to hate a movie that includes a dramatic scene wherein the lead character gives an interactive book report on a condor while his friend is dressed as said condor and said friend dressed as condor vomits and poops on the film's minor villain

Low Points

Aside from this not being a very good movie, the mere premise of a whole bunch of kids being born on the same night can't NOT make me think of Bloody Birthday, and how much greater a viewing experience that film is (not just compared to My Soul To Take, but really, compared to 99% of cinema in existence. Have you SEEN Bloody Birthday???)

Lessons Learned

A good show 'n tell needs shock and awe (artificial bird poop and vomit helps as well)

It's not okay for everybody to be killing each other all the time

Epinephrin kicks ass

Computer imagery enhancement was at its peak in 1994

Hey. Relax. If things get too tough, just turn on the prayer condition

Rent/Bury/Buy

Yup. My Soul To Take is bad. It also earned over 1700 words from me, so it might be bad--

SIDEBAR

It is bad. No might about it.

Yet it somehow led me to write quite a bit. So whatever that says about the movie, that’s that.

Don't Stop Stock Footaging

I’m going to let Netflix take care of this:

“Using a risky transplant operation, Dr. Hewlitt (Justine Bateman) restores the vision of newly blinded Aaron (Cory Monteith) by replacing his eyes with those of an injured wolf's. Now, Aaron can see in the dark, and his dangerous wolflike behavior only increases with time. Part wolf as well, museum curator Lydia (Tinsel Korey) decides to help Aaron, but Dr. Hewlitt's colleagues are convinced the man-wolf is dangerous and resolve to hunt him down.”

RIGHT?!

Quick Plot: In gloriously foggy stock footage, wolves hunt bison across a beautiful prairie.

I'm going to pause right now to say something of vital importance: I hope you really like watching stock footage of wolves. Because if you choose to watch Hybrid, you are essentially choosing to watch about 58 minutes worth of, you know, stock footage of wolves.

Still with me? You're brave. Brave, like a WOLF.

After what feels like 9 hours worth of wolves running freely as credits roll, we meet a biologist (played by the lesser Bateman Justine) explaining to two dozen local doctors that she's heading military experiments on transplanting animal body parts into humans. The "confidentially recruited" 24 local doctors are asked to help find possible participants for such an experiment but to be really quiet about it. Somehow, the fact that every single doctor from the nation of Canada knows about this "secret" and therefore it's no longer a "secret" is never acknowledged.

We'll forgive this, because while Dr. Not Jason Bateman is describing her work, we get the pleasure of seeing a chimpanzee with Siberian husky eyes. It's cute.

Moving on...

Finn Hudson--er, "Aaron" but it's oodles more fun to refer to every character Corey Monteith ever plays as "Finn Hudson" so we shall--works as an operator at some sort of plant. Or something. I thought he was a security guard who spends his work days playing video games, but I'm apparently just not as smart as this movie. Or maybe I’m just lost because for a good 8 minutes, there was no insertion of stock wolf footage. Now I’ve forgotten what movie I’m even watching.

Pull it together Emily! Be one with your spirit animal!

(sigh) That's better

A fire breaks out at the plant security video game land where Finn works. Ever the hero, Finn races through flames to save the idiot whose chainsmoking habits started the explosion in the first place. I guess that’s supposed to tell us that his character is  noble (like a WOLF), and we’ll have to accept it since it’s the only—and I really do mean only—thing we ever learn about Finn Aaron Hudson.

Meanwhile, over in the local Native AmeriCanadian reservation, teacher Lydia (although the Netflix description says museum curator, but who’s counting?) drives home to discover a dying—you guessed it--wolf. She promptly drives it to the vet, who even more promptly passes it on to the local military biological research facility (EVERY town has one of those) where the overenthusiastic doctor from the intro does some radical surgery. Before you can say Don’t Stop Believing, Finn Hudson wakes up with beady yellow wolf eyes.

Sometimes the universe is very generous. Sometimes the world seems to say, “Emily, I haven’t been nice to you lately and I want to make up for it with a gift. It’s nothing extravagant or expensive—heck, this being SyFy, it probably cost less than a trip to Super Cuts with a Groupon—but it’s just a little something that I think you’ll appreciate. Something to say, ‘don’t feel lost and alone. I care.’”

Oh Universe! You’re making me tear up here!

See, Corey Monteith doesn’t just get wolf eyes (and therefore, wolf night vision). He gets misaligned wolf eyes that seems to keep one pupil located south and the other pointing to the sky. He doesn’t just start having wolf feelings; he begins to FEEL what wolves FEEL, mostly in stock footage form. His appetite changes towards the rarer meat side, making him become, dare I say it, HUNGRY LIKE A WOLF (a song which, hey! was even covered on Glee).

Best of all, Aaron/Finn catches the newest symptom of 21^st century werewolfishness: an allergy to shirts.

Perhaps it’s the presence of Twilight franchise actress Tinsel Korey, but by the end of the 90 minute Hybrid, Corey Monteith gives Taylor Launtner a run for his residuals in the Who Wears a Shirt Less contest that every young male actor dreams of winning.

Except unlike the buff and brown Launtner, Monteith sports a farmer’s tan and runs like a kid who ducked out of gym class his whole life with falsified claims of asthma.

And run he does! Hilariously! And a lot. Almost as much as those stock footage wolf actors run, but in more of a gentle jog kind of manner. It’s fairly wonderful.

So to break down: Hybrid is essentially a hybrid film of four ingredients:

1-65% stock footage of wolves. Did I mention the stock footage of wolves?

2-25% long shots of Corey Monteith’s awkward 5K training

3-7% bland dialogue by Lydia about the importance of heritage and landzzzzzzzzzzz

2%-other stuff of little importance (although watching a nurse at the research lab discover adorable loose chimpanzees and react as if fleeing from Leatherface is kind of amusing)

4- 1% stock footage from the buffalo’s point of view

Of all this action, 80% is scored to what must have been public domain Native Ameri-Canadian tribal drum and flute music, with the remaining 20% playing out to a very conspicuous, very bad rap reggae something. There’s a love scene, which is about as sexy as flossing your teeth after eating a lot of broccoli. A bar brawl that makes me sad to see so much wasted beer. A last act introduction of villainous soldiers that just leaves you missing that comforting stock footage rather than, one hour and ten minutes into a 90 minute film, having to decipher one camouflage clad character from the next.

We have no real reason to ever care about Wolfboy, because we know absolutely nothing about him prior to his transplant. His romance with Lydia is as stiff as Finn’s scenes with Lea Michelle’s Rachel, only worse because we don’t even get the bonus of choreography. And of course, when all else fails, director Yelena Lanskaya simply cuts to the same reel of wolf film, all scored to the same generic tribal tunes. It’s terrible, and yet, it’s exactly what I wanted from a SyFy movie about wolf eyes.

High Notes

Well um, see, the thing is that…uh…wow! Look over there! I see WOLVES!

Low Notes

Aside from the fact that the film is just not good at any real point, the third act soldier hunt—which literally spends about 10 minutes with brand new characters we can’t tell apart—is just a painfully sluggish way to bring down an already sluggish film

Lessons Learned, Canada Style

So let’s say you’re a world class biologist conducting groundbreaking research for the Canadian military. Where might you go when an experiment goes wrong? Why, hop on that Interweb and hit up LycanthropyResources.Com of course! Modern science at its best

During the process of making love, it is customary that the man removes his shirt while the woman remains fully clothed at all times

In Canada, young men read magazines from back to front

When in need of content to pad out the running length of your film, there are two handy tricks one might try: 1) STOCK FOOTAGE OF WOLVES! and of course, the far less obvious 2) Have your lead character have a spiritual experience that is essentially a montage of the entire film that ran before it, complete with—wait for it—STOCK FOOTAGE OF WOLVES

Rent/Bury/Buy

Thankfully, Hybrid is streaming on Instant Watch and does not require any monetary effort to view. Bad movie fans will enjoy its awfulness, but be aware that this is bad in a ‘so dull it’s good’ way (which makes it more interesting than Basic Instinct 2, if that makes sense on your cinema scale). Considering this is part of SyFy’s “Maneater” series (the same brand that bred the similarly terrible yet on some random level amusing Blood Monkey), you should know whether it will bring you enjoyment or not. Basically, if you like wolves, this was made for you. If you want to see Corey Monteith stumble through dialogue with even more clumsiness than he does on Glee, this is for you. If you want to see a really awkward white dude run like a really awkward white dude, then by all means, queue up Hybrid. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.