Alien, or When you see an abandoned spaceship LEAVE IT ALONE

Title: Alien
Rating: R

Released: 1979

Format: DVD

Version: Director's Cut 2 disc edition

Run Time: 1 hour 57 minutes (1979 Theatrical Cut) 1 hour 56 minutes (2003 Director's Cut)

Purchased: Amazon.com
Price:$14.99


Plot according to imdb.com: When a mining ship lands on a planet to investigate upon a suspected SOS, the entire crew are unaware of the terror which they would unleash upon their ship. When a alien life-form attach's itself to the face of a crew member, the rest of the team act fast to try and separate the two organisms. Unbeknownst to everyone, this is the start of the terror which would affect every member of the seven person crew.

Plot according to Allen:  Innocent people are in space, they find an abandoned ship with a distress call.  Of course they decide to investigate.  People go crazy, and people die.  I don't want to give it away but one of the most bad ass aliens in cinema history is involved.

There used to be a time when the future was this bright happy place full of shiny metals and flying cars.  If you were in space your ship was crisp and clean.  Then Alien happened.  Everything is dark, dirty, broken, and gross looking.  It looks real.  Even over 30 years after it's release Alien still looks new.  The effects work.  The acting is great.  Everything looks timeless.  If they released this exact movie without any of it's other incarnations tomorrow I wouldn't think it looked cheap compared to the Harry Potters of the world.

A lot of that credit has to go to Ridley Scott for his direction and the decisions that he made. H.R. Giger's set and character designs were so ahead of their time that you absolutely believe that that is EXACTLY what aliens look like.  The music is pitch perfect for the mood that they were going for, it's there but it isn't there.  The dialog is sparse, but in all honesty if you are being hunted down by an alien that bleeds acid and has no reservations about eating your face off you probably wouldn't be doing much talking either.  That's why it is such a perfect movie - it's realism.  You feel for these people because you are these people.  Their actions in the face of danger is exactly what you would have done.  The scares work because of the perfect mixture of tension and realism.

Every time I mention this movie to my dad, he tells the story about when he first saw it in the theater with my mother and how she was so scared she left bruising on his leg.  And every time I watch it I believe it, because if I was watching it with someone that is probably what I would do as well.

Final rating: 5 out of 5

Halloween Hits: The Ring

Title: The Ring

Rating: PG-13

Released: 2002

Format: DVD

Version: Full Screen Special Edition

Run Time: 1 Hour and 55 Minutes

Purchased: Obtained when old roommates moved out and didn't take all their stuff.
Price:$0.00


Plot according to imdb.com: Rachel Keller is a journalist investigating a videotape that may have killed four teenagers (including her niece). There is an urban legend about this tape: the viewer will die seven days after watching it. If the legend is correct, Rachel will have to run against time to save her son's and her own life.

 Plot according to Allen: Some stupid kids die in the woods and a woman goes off to discover why.  When she finds out it was because of some haunted VHS tape that kills you seven days after you watched it, she watches it and then tries to figure out how to save her life.  Then she shows it to the man she loves and their son.

Growing up in Mormon culture you don't get to watch a lot of horror movies because of the "no R rated movies" rule so as a result when a PG-13 scary movie comes along it absolutely becomes the must watch movie until the next one comes along.  All I heard about when this came out was how scary it was and how I had to see it.  Because of my less than standard upraising I was less than enthusiastic about it which led to my only response was "That movie with the haunted tape?  Really?"  and as a result I put off watching The Ring.

When I finally did get around to seeing it, I will admit that parts of it were... well not scary but rather... tense?  yeah let's say tense.  Once again there was another creepy little kid that serves another reminder to never have kids.  The stupid sounding concept played out well on film and I really liked that it was set in Seattle, but really that was it.

The pacing was slow.  The characters absolutely some of the dumbest I have seen in all my life of watching Horror movies.  That aforementioned creepy kid?  Yeah I wanted to strangle him, especially because he was USELESS and only there to serve as a third "victim" for the tape.  I put victim in sarcastic quotes because honestly anyone who actually died because they watched the tape were well warned beforehand and it was their fault for not believing the people who warned them.

There were no deaths.  none.  Well okay there were like 2, but really there was none.  Now I understand that some horror movies can succeed without a high death count (the exorcist comes directly to mind) but if I am to believe that these people are going to watch this Deathtape I want a TON of people to die from the Deathtape.  I want a reason to be afraid of it besides just one random person I have no reason to connect with died from watching it.  Give me something to connect with... ANYTHING.

Yes the girl crawling out of the TV was cool and creepy.  I will give you that.  But one good scary scene doesn't make a good scary movie.  It makes a good short film.  Unfortunately this movie is about an hour and 40 minutes too long to be a good short film.

Now if I watch this outside of looking for a scary movie for a chilly October night I see an interesting allegory for how television is killing us slowly and deliberately.  It has a good moral to learn to just go outside and play instead of watching movies and television.  Unfortunately it sells itself as a scary movie (did you not read those wonderful puns on the poster up there?) and it finds itself in the Horror section of your video store and/or Netflix category and not in the Artsy Message section and as a result I can't really give it the positive rating you all think it deserves.

Final Rating: 2 out of 5

Halloween Hits: Amityville Horror

Title: The Amityville Horror

Rating: R

Released: 2005

Format:DVD

Version: Widescreen Special Edition

Run Time: 1 Hour 30 minutes

Purchased: Blockbuster
Price: $9.99



Plot according to imdb.com: George and Kathy Lutz and their three children move into a house that was the site of a horrific murder a year before. They decide to keep the house and try to keep the horror in the past. This is until, George starts to behave weirdly and their daughter, Chelsea starts to see people. What now follows is 28 days of sheer terror for the family.

Plot according to Allen:  A family moves into a house where people died.  The dad then proceeds to go crazy while going shirtless as often as possible.

As is popular with a lot of horror releases the last few years this one is a "re-imagining" of a popular horror movie of the past where they add more attractive stars and more blood and better visual effects.  In fact I am going to just assume that this is the first of that trend, which usually means they did it terribly.  And you guessed it, they really did screw the pooch here.

Full disclosure:  I have never seen the original from 1979.  The idea of a literal haunted house just never really appealed to me.  I just can't figure out why they would stay once all the weird stuff is happening around them.  Sure they have all their money tied up in this house and as a result feel some sense of need to stay but aren't their buyers remorse laws for this very reason?  You can change your mind, especially when your house is driving you crazy and making you want to kill your family.  Just move.

The main reason I own this movie though is one of it's few saving graces and that is Ryan Reynolds, more specifically his abs.  Normally I would make fun of an actor for being shirtless throughout one of his movies, especially one where his character complains about being cold throughout, however when they look like he does it is hard to argue with the logic that he NEEDS to be shirtless.

I suddenly understand gay men.

Another surprising turn is this movie's resident creepy child played by Chloë Grace Moretz who I am now officially convinced that she will be this generation's Drew Barrymore, hopefully without the drug addiction.  She has yet to really disappoint me in anything she has done, a feat not really seen in other child actors.  Sure her choice of roles may not be the greatest (see:  This movie) but she does what she can and provides entertainment where there really shouldn't be any.

All of the other kids though are wooden and annoying, and so really are the adults.  They are either emotionless and vacant or completely over the top and melodramatic as if to be making an Airplane! style parody of chintzy horror movies.  Even at an hour and a half it felt like it ran long.  The movie also seemed to rely far too much on the jump scare tactic.  I will applaud them for not going with the overly used bathroom scare, though that was pretty much the only of the regular offenders that they didn't use.

I think the single most annoying trait of this movie has to be that it is pitched as being "Based On A True Story".  No it isn't.  There is no way this is even remotely happened.  The only thing that might be remotely close to being based on a true story would be that a couple once bought a house on the cheap because someone died there.  Everything else is simply the stuff ghost stories and episodes of "Unsolved Mysteries" thrive on.

Honestly, this is just a regular run of the mill horror movie that isn't anything special, but for a cold October night you could do worse if you were to encounter the dreaded last minute holiday trip to the video store when all the really good ones are gone.  I can't really recommend it but I also can't find much of a reason to hate on it.  It just... is.

Final Rating: 2.5 out of 5