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Picking the rare gems out of a sea of crap.... so you don't have to!

Movie Review: The Final Destination

December 22nd 2009 11:37


Premise: A group of friends are watching a car race, when one has a vision of a freak accident that results in several cars crashing, destroying part of the stadium and killing a fair chunk of the audience. He leads his group and a few others to safety, avoiding their deaths. However, Death isn't finished with them just yet, and they will have to find a way to save themselves before Death catches up with them.


Now, I liked the first Final Destination. It was a good premise, the deaths were fun and inventive, its was just a good, fun movie. The second one; nothing new, but still a fun ride. To be honest, I didn't bother with the 3rd, but I can imagine it was more of the same and didn't wander hopelessly astray like FD.

To sum it up: This movie is crap. Pure, unadulterated crap. My personal highlight of the movie was getting to see Justin Welborn, who to date I have only seen in excellent low budget flicks (The Signal, The Other Side and Dance of the Dead, if you must know). Seeing him in it gave me hope that this might hopefully not be as bad as I feared.... But it was. Thankfully his character was killed off early, so my memory of him is not tarnished by this attrocity.

Acting: Terrible. Crap. Awful. Insert any expletive you can think of here, trust me, it's applicable.

Script: I suppose by the 4th installment of any series you will have to expect some decline in quality... I mean, who has enough ideas to carry a series that far? But this is just a piss-poor attempt to milk the final drops of money out of a dead franchise.


The thing about a movie series is... you have to obey the rules. If things are a certain way in the first movie, you can't randomly change the rules in the 4th movie without leaving the audience scratching their heads. Well, I was left scratching my head until I drew blood.

******** HERE BE SPOILERS ********

For example: The whole premise of the movie is that Death is trying to wipe these kids out to restore the natural order of things. The kids aren't meant to be alive, and so freak chances will kill them so that life can go on as it was meant to. That's the GOLDEN Final Destination rule. You HAVE to play by that rule, right? WRONG! In this movie, the writers obviously thought 'fuckit, we're sick of having to make sense, so we're just going to ignore the dogma of the last 3 movies and make our own rules!'. In order to kill off the last few kiddies, there's a massive explosion that wipes out half a cinema, and then half a mall, just to nail the kids.

"But wait", I hear you cry. "Those other innocent bystanders weren't meant to die! Death can't kill them without upsetting it's own natural order! That doesn't make any sense!"

That's absolutely correct. However, Mr. Writer Man gets paid regardless of whether he makes sense or not, and obviously making a quality script would have interfered with him snorting coke out of a hooker's ass, so he didn't bother.

More plot holes: Apparently everything in the movie, visions and death-avoidance included, happened so that the final 3 kids could all be sitting in a cafe to get hit by a truck. I say: BALLS! Apparently the writers think they are oh-so-clever because they can insert a final twist into the movie, even though it doesn't make any sense at all.... personally I blame all that coke they've been snorting. It's like an assassin standing over a target, letting him go, and then coming back later and killing him... with absolutely no reason for letting the target go in the first place. Perfectly logical, right?

It gets even friggin' worse. There's a whole scene in a barber shop where there's a loose fan, and a can of hair spray that magically moves into a hot hair straightener. The can explodes, and flies straight into the fan, knocking it off the roof, where it falls... straight at the victim's feet. It's not like Death has bad aim; the victim was sitting in a barbers chair. The victim then gets up and leaves, but gets hit in the eye by a flying rock.

"But that just sounds like the writers were stupid and added the hair spray rocket for no reason at all! Why would they do that!?"

Why, indeed.

Effects & Death Scenes: Always the highlight of FD Movies... these were still disappointing. Very disappointing, actually. The CGI was bad, the props were bad, everything was just bad.

I am sitting here, trying to think of the redeeming qualities of this movie. EVERY movie has a redeeming feature, right? Some are funny, some have some hot sex, some have a memorable death scene... FD4 really has none of the above. There are tits, but only for about 5 seconds. There is death, but the lame effects and predictability make them far from memorable. In fact, the defining quality of FD4 is it's all-around, 10/10, perfect score crappiness.

Stay away from this movie if you value your time, you sanity, or your taste in quality cinema. My first thought when the credits started rolling was... I'm glad I watched a pirated copy and didn't contribute a cent to this abomination. I've wasted my time; please don't waste yours.
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Part 2 of the Sci-Fi Channel Crock of Shit Double Feature Extravaganza!



Premise: A group of voracious snakehead fish decimate the fish population of a lake before the lake is poisoned, supposedly killing them off. A few years later, the snakeheads are back, only this time they're huge, and start eating everyone. Oh and they can walk on land. Oh, and one of them is the size of a whale. Yeah, it's that kind of movie.

This, alone, couldn't have killed 'Sy-Fi' (that will now on be referred to as Sci-Fi, because the whole rebranding is mind-numbingly stupid) for me. I have fond memories of the channel... going over to a friends house who had cable and catching the latest Battlestar Gallactica episodes (which is quite possibly the best sci-fi series ever, right up alongside Firefly, Stargate SG-1 and even The X-Files. And a ways back I reviewed Altered, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Unfortunately, it seems that the fun ended along with Battlestar. I've seen a number of Sci-Fi channel movies in the recent past, and they have pretty much been the same story over and over again, with a little twist in each one. Start with a flashback to the beginnings/Last attack of (insert bad-guy here). Introduce supporting character, who knows details of the plot, usually someone knowledgeable in the field of (bad-guy). Often Supporting Character is related to one member of the main duo, be it as father/brother/friend/etc. Then introduce hapless victims, mixed gender, usually teenagers. They come across some evidence of (bad guy), but don't realize exactly what is happening. Main duo (guy/girl) will get some indication of what's going on, and while they are investigating it their friends will start dying. They realize, and start trying to stop (bad guy). They come up with a plan; which subsequently fails. Supporting character will then sacrifice themselves to stop/slow down (Bad Guy), allowing main duo to finish the job, and live happily ever after.... until there is some invariably stupid twist allowing Bad Guy/Spawn of Bad Guy to survive and star in the sequels!

There are some small variations. Supporting Character doesn't always die, and on rare occasions there isn't a twist. Oh, an interesting fact for y'all, the name of Bad Guy, More often than not, the name of Bad Guy can be found in the title. Locusts had locusts, Snakehead has the snakeheads, Pumpkinhead has... well, you get the idea.

Plot: About as hole-y as you would expect from a movie of this title. I'm only going to point out some choice plot holes, as describing all of them would ruin the movie for you... ha. Lets start with the snakeheads. They can walk on land, but who am I to say that the fish can't do that. They grow to enormous size... because someone is dumping human growth hormone in the lake. Like I mentioned, one is whale sized... because a lake would totally have enough food for an animal to reach that size.... other than that, totally plausible, although surprisingly none of the others seem to be longer than 10 feet.

Next... SPOILER!... well, sort of, this movie really sort of spoils itself.

They kill the snakeheads by electrocuting the lake. They cut a power line that's feeding a town, and drop it into a lake. It then sends an electric pulse through the lake, killing all the snakeheads. Mightily convenient that all the fish happened to be in the lake, seeing as they had been roaming around the land right up until then. I'm no physicist, but wouldn't a power line dropped in a lake do very little? It's a lot of water....

What's that, I hear you cry? Horror movies require a little suspension of belief? It would appear in the act of being suspended, belief got tangled up and hung itself.

The acting is terrible. Nothing worth mentioning.

The effects are typical sci-fi... better than some, but pretty terrible. I laughed at them.

Gore is pretty tame. Again, nothing worth mentioning.

Overall... Avoid it. Please, for the love of god, avoid it. I have lost all hope of seeing anything resembling quality being produced by Sci-Fi, and the dumb-ass rebranding just makes it that much easier... Sci-Fi holds some fond memories for me... Sy-Fy can suck my nuts.

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Part 1 of the Sci-Fi Crock-Of-Shit Double Whammy!

Premise: A company genetically engineers locusts that are carnivores, trying to make them eat bugs off crops as an alternative to pesticides. Predictably, they escape captivity, and start eating people.

First up, sorry for the hiatus. I have been having some internet issues, but the reviewing machine that is Evil Pleasures is in full swing. I have a fresh batch of godawful movies for your twisted entertainment, beginning with some trash offerings from the Sci-Fi channel.

I blame my tolerance of Sci-Fi on Altered (Which I review here). Altered was a decent flick... however, Locusts is not, for a number of reasons.

The acting ranges from wooden to terrible, without a single decent performance over the whole movie. I really, honestly wanted the locusts just to eat everyone after the first 5 minutes so that the movie could be over and done with... but they managed to drag it out for another hour and a half, much to my dismay.

Likewise, the script is terrible. The dialogue is horrible, and combined with the horrible delivery is in some scenes laughable. The writer also wasn't bothered with that whole 'plausibility' thing, so they didn't bother to include it. For example, the locusts are attracted to pesticide, and only kill people because of the residual pesticide in their bodies (I know, right?). Also, the locusts seem to have this magical ability to fly straight through people... some of the silliest scenes in the movie are seeing a person get hit by a locust and having the bug explode out of their back. Also, from what I know about locusts, they eat everything and leave nothing behind. Well not these locusts, oh no! For some reason they like leaving behind half-eaten corpses.... for no reason at all. Oh, and my personal favourite: The locust swarm is comprised entirely of drones, which cannot breed. However, the swarm somehow manages to breed... somehow, which is never explained. It's these kind of stupid plot holes that are the result of nothing more than lazy writing that really ruin the movie, although there wasn't alot there to ruin...

In what seems to be a running thing with Sci-Fi Channel movies, the effects are almost all CGI, and terrible. Totally unconvincing. There are a few crappy bug props, but these too are just... well... crappy.

I think the problem here stems from the fact that Sci-Fi is, after all, a TV network. They make shows for TV, and I am renting/buying expecting something more. Locusts is mindless entertainment, exactly what you would expect to see on TV, with little thought or effort put into making quality cinema. Sci-Fi has adopted the quantity over quality approach, convinced that their audience would rather see endless crappy movies rather than repeats of fewer quality movies. While this may work on TV... it doesn't for stand-alone movies.

Take HBO, for instance. They make quality shows, but repeat them all the damn time. Back when I had cable, you could easily see the same movie 7 or 8 times in a week.

Overall... possibly worth watching if you are stuck at home on a rainy day with absolutely nothing else to do. Other than that, ignore it.
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Film Review: Doomed

June 19th 2009 23:41


Premise: 10 convicts are offered a full pardon and 50 million dollars if they can win a game show. They are split in to teams of two, and placed on a remote island with one goal: to reach the other side of the island. Sounds simple, except the island is crawling with zombies


[ Click here to read more ]
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Movie Review: War of the Dead

June 17th 2009 05:13


Premise: A trio of nazi soldier zombies is hunting down the members of the platoon that killed them, and it's up to a member of an x-files-like government agency to stop them


[ Click here to read more ]
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Dying God

June 2nd 2009 14:27


Premise: Some kind of god/demon-type creature is dying, and for some reason this makes it necessary to rape anything that comes nearby. Not in a figurative sense, literally. Because, you know, what better than a little cancer to bring out the nympho in you


[ Click here to read more ]
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Komodo Vs Cobra

May 24th 2009 21:38


There's something about 'vs'... The way I see it, having it in a title just means that means the movie will be disappointing. Friday the 13th was great, Nightmare on Elm street, great, Freddy vs. Jason... not so great. Alien, awesome, Predator, awesome, Alien vs Predator... not so awesome


[ Click here to read more ]
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Blood Monkey

May 4th 2009 11:57


Premise: A bunch of students are enlisted by an eccentric scientist to help explore an as-yet-uncharted section of jungle, populated by undiscovered flaura and fauna. Little do the students know that the scientist has ulterior motives


[ Click here to read more ]
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Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent

April 19th 2009 10:50
I blame it on Anaconda.

Anaconda was a good movie, despite what all the nay-sayers say. The cast was, for the most part, good. Yes, there were exceptions. I don't like J-Lo in any of her movies, and Ice-Cube isn't the greatest actor on the planet, but I think Jon Voight is a superb actor, and Jonathan Hyde is always watchable. Anyways... Overall, the movie was good


[ Click here to read more ]
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