Wan Punch Woman

 

Hey, hey, Horror Nuts!  Welcome to another edition of WTFHM!

Every so often, you run into a movie that makes you feel many, many different emotions. Sometimes it's a good thing.  You laugh, you cry, you eat your feelings.

And then there are times when you're like, 

Listen, I've watched a loooot of horror movies in my day and I can confidently say that I've seen a lot of weird shit.  This, though...

Let's just get into it, shall we?

Malignant starring Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young, Michole Briana White, Jean Louisa Kelly, Susanna Thompson, Ingrid Bisu, Jacqueline McKenzie, Jake Abel, Christian Clemonson, and Amir AboulEla

Okay, so it should first be noted that this is a James Wan joint.  Who's James Wan, you ask?

So, James Wan is partially responsible for one of my favorite horror movie franchises of all time, the Saw series. He's also partially responsible for my least favorite horror movie franchise of all time, The Conjuring/Annabelle/Insidious Universe. So, if you've been reading this blog for some time, then you can understand how I could have mixed emotions about this new movie.

But here we go, this is our protag:

Madison(Wallis) is preggers and her husband is an abusive asshole. One night while she's minding her own business, her husband pushes her into a wall because she had a bunch of miscarriages in the past.



No, you read that right. She talks about her miscarriages, he says, "IMMA PUSH YOU INNA WALL!" But that's okay because a mysterious force offs him pretty spectacularly. Unfortunately, said unseen force also attacks her, causing yet another miscarriage. 

Enter officer Kekoa Shaw(Young). Kekoa and his partner start investigating the odd death of Madison's husband.  His partner is immediately suspicious and says, "Madison totally did this."  Kekoa's like, "No, she didn't." 

Meanwhile, Madison gets out of the hospital and goes on with her life and meanwhile, meanwhile, her attacker kidnaps a random woman because...well, we'll get to that.



So, over the course of the movie, Madison starts seeing the killer as he goes on a murder spree.  Why is he doing this?  Why is Madison seeing the killer? Whhhhyyy?

Well...

I've been struggling as to whether I would make this spoiler-free or not because it's such a crazy movie that it's hard NOT to talk about the fact that the craziest parts of this movie also involve its really crazy twist endings.

But I figure by now if you're reading this, then you've already seen some of the social media comedians out there, so let's just do this.

Okay so, Detective Kekoa and his sassy black partner, Regina(White) are investigating the murders of these plastic surgeons. What they find out is that Madison was a patient of this doctor as a child.

Oh, don't worry. It gets better. Dig this.



Madison's adopted sister, Sydney(Hasson) does some digging and finds out that Madison was treated by these plastic surgeons who specialized in fucked up shit. She finds tapes of Madison's time with them as a child and she finds out three really important bits of information.

1) Madison's adopted mom is still alive

2) Madison is a twin

and 3) and probably the most important part of all this, This is Madison's twin:

Yeeeah, Madison's basically Profession Quirrell in Harry Potter. Like, for real, real. Like:

All right, so at the same time that Sidney is finding this out, Detective Kekoa and his partner have discovered that the kidnapped woman is Madison's mom. After Detective Regina turns to her partner and goes, "I LITERALLY told you so", they arrest Madison.  Madison is attacked in jail which causes her Voldemort twin to wake up and prompts one of the single best moments I've ever seen in a horror movie.

Girl, lemme tell you, you have not lived until you've seen somebody kill a room full of people backward. I mean, would somebody come over here and look at this??

So, needless to say, Madison/Gabriel escapes and decides to finish off their mother, who's in the hospital. Sidney and Detective Kekoa both get taken out, but not before Sidney manages to reach her sister.

Madison realizes she can control Gabriel just like he controlled her. She takes back her control and manages to push Gabriel back into her subconscious. And...

And that's it. The end. They all live happily ever after, I guess.

So, I suppose the million-dollar question is did I like this movie. I...

I mean, I gotta be real with y'all. It's almost a great movie. Like, this movie drips money. The special effects were top tier and the fact that there were little things that I noticed early on were addressed pretty effectively.

Like I kept thinking "Why does Gabriel move so weird?" and "What are these weird shots with the back of Madison's head?"  Directorially and technically speaking. Solid movie. No complaints.

But the execution of the story kind of sucked.  Sorry, I'm just going to say it.  Things happen for no reason, people do things with no motivation, there's a very real sense of impatience with the actual plot.  It's very "let's just...get to the good parts!  We don't need to tell the story!"

I'm giving it two scores because the plot was just as bad as the rest of the movie was good. So, overall:

But the actual plot:

Next week's movie!!!  Think I'm gonna check out Bloodthirsty as I love a good vampire film...or even a bad one. We'll see.

See you next time!

O~
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A Love Letter to John Krasinski

 

Hey, hey, Horror Nuts!  Welcome to another edition of WTFHM!

You know how you kinda know somebody for a long time, say, like, nine seasons or so and you're all like, hey, that guy's pretty funny. I might have coffee with him or something outside of work.

And then, THEN you come into the break room and hear him talking about how cool Candyman and Stephen King's newest novel is and you're suddenly like,

Like, I love John Krasinski. Like I never not liked him, right? I mean, he's easily everyone's favorite character on The Office...other than Dwight, and let's be real, Dwight wouldn't be Dwight without Jim as his foil.

So, when A Quiet Place came out and I witnessed this movie's ability to get a full theatre to shut the fuck up for an hour and a half while holding us all on the edge of our seats? Giiiiirrrrlll.

So, you can imagine when they announced A Quiet Place 2 of COURSE, I'm all about it. And despite having to put it off for a few thousand weeks, I've been pretty excited to check it out this whole time.

Cuz, I love John Krasinski. Sincerely. He was already a universal good in this world, and he gets horror, too. 

Which brings us to this week's movie:

A Quiet Place 2 starring Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Djimon Hounsou, and, of course, my boo, John Krasinski.

By the way, I'm lifting my policy of not spoiling new movies because...well, I can't really talk about this movie without talking about the stuff that happens in it. So, that being said:

We go back a little bit to tell this story. Back to the beginning when shit first started hitting the fan. Lee(Krasinski) is chilling with his oldest daughter Reagan (Simmonds) at his son, Marcus' (Jupe) baseball game. Wifey, Evelyn (Blunt) and their youngest kid (whose name is Beau, btw. I had to look that one up. Hey, don't you judge me! You forgot his name too!) are chilling at the game too...and so's half the town.

So, yeah, chilling at the game and all of a sudden, they see a really big comet fall from the sky. Being relatively smart people, the family (and everyone else) collectively decides, this is a good time to leave. They don't make it far before pandemonium ensues:

Y'all, the first five minutes of this movie are lit. The family is suddenly is running and jumping and dodging and shit and you are invested.

So, fast forward to right after the events of the first movie. Evelyn and the kids realize they need to leave their sanctuary because...well, it's kind of jacked up from the last movie.  They pack their stuff and get moving on the road.

Things are pretty uneventful until they make a little too much noise coming through a field which, of course, tracks some monsters and now mom's all like:

So, they're running and here's a fun fact about running barefoot through an overgrown field by some sort of abandoned plant/warehouse place.  You're probably gonna step on something bad.

Little Marcus has stepped right into a bear trap and proceeds to scream his whole face off like we're not in a pandemic right now. Mom tries to put her hand over his mouth to shut him up, but, bro, he got his leg caught in a bear trap. 

I mean...I wanna be mad at him, cuz, he's basically gonna get them all killed screaming like a slapped newborn, but...I mean, can we really expect a ten-year-old to take that pain like a G? 

Anyway, Momma got something for that incoming monster, so it's all cool.

Using their newfound feedback technology, they blast the monster into the next area code. While all this is going on, they're being watched:

A not-so-kindly stranger helps them and gives them shelter in the warehouse.  In a vault, specifically.  Evelyn puts it together that their savior is none other than their old neighbor, Emmett (Murphy).

Emmett's been through a little more shit than the Abbott family. Pretty quickly, we find out that both his wife and kid are gone and he's been chilling underground all this time. Being the misanthrope that one becomes once they lose their whole family to misfortune and space monsters, he basically tells them there's no room at the inn and keep it moving.

They agree to leave in the morning but in the meantime, they hear music over a portable radio. The smartest person in the room, Regan, figures out that it's a coded broadcast coming from a nearby island. She tells Marcus that she's heading out there because her broken hearing aid broadcast over the radio waves can actually save everybody.

But Marcus...Marcus is all:

(Low key getting on my nerves)

Anyway, Regan breaks out anyway because saving everybody is the right thing to do and I really feel like everybody should have been on board with it, but whatever.

Regan doesn't get too far before she runs into trouble when a monster finds her

But that's cool because Emmett was tracking her and he shows up just in time to send the monster to Jesus. 

After, Regan tells Emmett what she's planning on doing (kind of. There's a communication issue since Emmett doesn't know but one sign) and Emmett agrees to accompany her, you know, because she's going whether he is or not because she's a G like that.

Things are going pretty good with the two of them traveling until they get captured by some crazy people...

Hey, so...can we, as members of the human race, collectively agree not to jam other people up during an apocalypse? I mean, I realize that's asking a lot in the world we currently live in where we can't even get people to perform the simple task of wearing a mask so that they don't kill other people with their germs, but...

I, for one, am a little done with knowing full well that if everything goes up, some of y'all are going to be totally cool with making it their mission to screw people during world-ending type problems. I mean, damn, can y'all just not?

Anyway, Regan and Emmett and Regan get captured by the resident plague rats who...you know, I don't even know what the goal is here for them.  To rob them? Kill them? I mean, what are we doing here?

In any event, Emmett uses the one sign he knows to orchestrate an escape...

See, cuz...they're on a dock, right?  It means "dive".  

Anyway, Regan dives into the water, Emmett whoops some butt and attracts some monsters and they whoop some butt. Emmett jumps in the water and accidentally on purpose discovers that we've got a "Signs" situation on our hands.

Yup. We've got aliens that can't swim landing on a planet that's 90 percent water.  

Anyway, Emmett and Regan manage to get a boat and get to the island where the broadcast is coming from. That's when they discover:

Yeah. People just...chilling. No monsters, no dirty faces, no bare feet. Emmett and Regan basically rolled up on a backyard block party.

So, Emmett talks to the head guy in charge...

Okay, he's played by Djimon Hounsou and he doesn't have a name according to IMDB, which I feel some type of way about, but we're gonna let that go for now.

See, the story is that since the aliens can't swim, some people managed to escape the initial invasion by escaping to the island. Emmett and Regan explain their plan to save the world, which Head Dude in Charge is totally down with.

The bliss doesn't last long, however. In a total Aliens last act twist, one of the monsters has hitched a ride on one of the boats.

Pandemonium, madness, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.  Regan and Emmett and Head Dude make a break for the radio station. 

Don't worry. They make it.  Most of them, anyway. Head Dude gets got and yeah, I see the red shirt energy you guys gave him. I guess all I can say is at least he wasn't the first to die.

They do make it to the station and so do the monsters. Regan makes it to the station just in time to broadcast the feedback from her hearing aid and saves the day and Emmett who's about to get eaten.

So, yaaaay! The monsters go all head explody and the day is saved. 

Oh, yeah, there's this whole B story plot where Marcus almost gets him, the baby and his mother killed because he's kind of an idiot and goes snooping around where he's not supposed to and ends up making a whole lot of noise and attracting monsters...

...but, yeah. It's fine because they get saved, too.

So, what did I think?  Well, undying love for John Krasinski notwithstanding, A Quiet Place 2 is not without its issues. I ain't really that mad at it, though. It's still a decent story and I feel pretty good about throwing it a jewel.

So, next week!  I was going to find some money and check out Don't Breathe 2, buuut, a sister is broke these days.  Instead, I noticed a movie called Malignant is getting some decent reviews, so gonna check it out and hope we got a good one.

See you next week!

-- O~
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