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IF there is one type of movie that I enjoy, it is the horror film. Actually, there are lots of types of movies I enjoy, but I want to focus on the horror film for right now. I've never really had a problem with the gore, or the violence, or the swearing, or the ocasional nude shot. Heck, of all of those, the swearing seems to bother me the most, but I can usually just raise an eyebrow at it and then move on. I like the good ones that actually frighten you, or more likely, the ones that draw you in, make you really care about the characters, make you wonder what exactly is going to happen to them, and make you realise what is going to happen is not only the worst possible thing, but also completely inevitable, no matter how hard you yell at the screen. Saw and Saw II were a couple of examples of such movies. I also really love the cheesy horror films, the slasher ones that seem to have no discernable plot featuring characters dumber than a bowl of hair. The worse it is, the better. I love being able to make fun of the movies (as people who have read previous posts about some of the movies I've watched, i.e. Stealth, can tell you) and to tell people why they are so gloriously bad. Some are fun (Anacondas amused me), some are funny (the Evil Dead trilogy), and some are just unbelievable (Boa vs. Python). I'm actually pretty easy to please in one form or another at the movies.
Why am I talking about this, you may ask? Well, it's because Peter and I went to see Hostel tonight. This is a movie about a group of backpackers (two Americans (kind of amusing story about that later) and an Iclandic fellow) who are going around the country trying to score with ladies, mostly because one guy broke up with his girlfriend. Apparently they've decided that the best solution for his woes is for him to have sex with another woman. Any other woman.
A good horror movie will introduce the main victims and make you interested in them. You don't even have to like them, but you will care about them. The writer of this movie watched a great number of good horror movies, and then said 'screw it,' and wrote this movie instead. When Peter and I walked in, the woman taking our tickets asked us for ID, though she was only joking (because some of us actually look older than 18, Jeff). Peter was confused because he didn't really know about the movie, and I just kind of laughed, because I thought the movie was all about the gore and violence.
Turns out she only mentioned ID because she was letting us in to a softcore porn movie. After thirty minutes of the movie, no one had died, and I they had shown more naked women than some countries have people. And if they weren't naked, then they were mostly naked and acting like they wanted to be naked. Actually, they were either naked or drinking and doing drugs. Worst of all, I didn't give a rip about any of the characters. They were just annoying, and boring. There was nothing to them at all. The one guy, as I mentioned, wants to have sex to forget his old girlfriend, but he just can't go through with it. His buddies, on the other hand, are all for encouraging him through example. The only character I had any interest in was the gay businessman they met on the train. He seemed to be slightly sympathetic. Slightly.
I seriously would believe someone if they told me this movie had been written by a thirteen year old. Actually, a fourteen year old might be more believable, but only because the guys didn't actually use the word 'boobies'. It was seriously pathetic. It's not even the nudity that bothers me. I can usually ignore that, and it's usually just a brief moment. Plus, most movies make it more believable in that the woman is in a shower, or with her boyfriend, or something like this. In this movie, they set it in Amsterdam so that everyone would be stoned and naked. There was no other place that they could really set the movie because Amsterdam is a bit different than most places in that pot and prostitution are legal, so drugs and nudity are allowed and expected. But I really believe that it was just a thin excuse to show as many breasts as possible. Like I said, a horny teenager wrote this.
I finally got to the point where I decided that if they showed another pointless sex scene then I was out of their. Two minutes later, after getting relationship advice from a gay man and almost being mugged by a group of kids, the main guy is in his hostel room with some woman he found (his roommate is in the next bed over with another woman), and she takes off her shirt and almost shakes them for the camera. It was at that point that I shook my head and walked out.
It's not even the storyline that bothered me. I could write the exact same story with the exact same result, and make it much better without showing all the nekkid chicks. Plus, people would actually care about the characters one way or another instead of thinking that they were horny teenagers or whiny teenagers. I'm just in shock at how utterly pointless this movie was. Right now, I would like to apoligise to Peter for taking him to such a movie. I should have examined this a little more closely before deciding it was a good movie to see. My bad.
I'm not even angry or enraged. I'm just disappointed that the movie was so bad and so pointless. I can't even really say much more about it because it's just too sad.
Oh, right, the slightly amusing part. At one point they were somewhere and their friend mentioned he was from Iceland. When asked if he was also from Iceland, the main guy said that he was from America. His friend then said "I'm Paxton." But I thought he said "I'm Pakki", which I took to mean he was trying to make people think he wasn't from the States. The mistake was partly because he did look like he could have been middle-eastern, so it seemed like a logical lie to make. It took until the third time hearing his name that I realised he wasn't saying that he was from Pakistan. Kind of amusing, but not really.
So don't go see the movie. It's too terrible to even be amusing.
But stay tuned. I've got reviews of some good movies coming up. I swear.