Beneath the Darkness 2011 5 out of 10 (Spoilers)

Beneath the Darkness 2011  5 out of 10   (SPOILERS)

A group of teenagers in a Texas town decide to investigate the rumors that the towns mortician Ely (played by Dennis Quaid) is haunted.   The movie could have been better if they had played it differently and not given away that Ely was a killer at the beginning of the film.  Unfortunately the film does so the suspense of whether their are ghosts in his house and whether or not he is a bad guy is ruined for the viewer before the kids find out his secret.  The film opens showing Ely killing someone.

What is Ely's secret you ask?   Well the shadows that the kids saw in his house are actually Ely dancing with his dead wife.  The kids break into his house and discover his secret and he kills one of them by pushing him down the stairs.   The death is ruled and accident (with no investigation what so ever),   because Ely is such a great member of the community and an ex football star. 

The third act of the movie findsthe kids trying to prove that his ex wife is still hanging around which leads to another break-in and the more action between them and Ely.   The logic of the characters in the movie is often flawed and when the police find a giant tarp in Ely's backyard they just take his word for it rather than looking underneath it....Seriously??? Great police work.   I thought Dennis Quaid's performance was odd and inconsistent and the story was just too simple to be a great thriller. 

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Gone Girl 2014 5 out of 10 (Spoiler filled)

(Spoiler filled)

I was expecting a lot more from Gone Girl as a movie. 
This movie had a lot of hype and the book it is based on was a best seller.  The film stars Rosamund Pike (who was excellent) and Ben Affleck (who was just okay) in the lead roles.   The film started off good.  The husband reports his wife missing and the police start an investigation.   The main character played by Ben Affleck slowing starts to seem more and more like a suspect and the film gives us interesting glimpses into the couple’s past.  I was starting to get the vibe that this could end up being along the lines of the great movie Presumed Innocent with Harrison Ford, but then the twist comes.

The twist of the movie is supposed to make the movie more interesting, but for me it kind of derailed this film.  As the news coverage around the case spirals into a media circus the main character starts to look into his wife’s past and finds some odd things.   And then the viewer finds out that she isn’t dead and has faked her death to set up her husband.  She has totally planned out in great detail so many points in her plot –yet makes some really stupid mistakes that someone as calculated as her wouldn’t make.   She basically does a half ass job of dying her hair and holds up in a cheap motel.  Apparently her plain actually includes killing herself at one point, but she stupidly befriends some white trash chick at the motel and gets robbed of all her money.

So she turns to one of her ex’s that she had manipulated in the past (played by Neil Patrick Harris) who helps to hide her in his mountain mansion.   Meanwhile the media storm around her husband still swirls.

The ending then just falls apart.   She decides to murder the ex and make it look like she was his captive all along, which contradicts all the evidence she had laid out against the husband.     She then returns home.   After everything she did to set up her husband as the murderer—is somehow overlooked (other than a few unaswered questions by the local sheriff).    She blackmails the husband into staying with her which is so ridiculous.  There is no way he would spend another minute in that house knowing what she is capable of.    The movie turned out not to be a good film like Presumed Innocent ---or even a fun campy mystery with twists like Wild Things.   It just ended up a complete letdown.

Don't believe the hype.

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10 Cloverfield Lane 2016 5 out of 10 (SPOILERS)

10 Cloverfield Lane  2016  5 out of 10

SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT

10 Cloverfield Lane was a cool concept and the movie itself was interesting,  however it failed for me to a certain degree.   In fact the ending kind of ruined the film for me.  It could have been an 8 out of 10, but I didn't like how it turned out.  It set itself up like an M Night Shyamalan movie that was going to rely completely on a big twist at the end of the movie.  The story is about a woman that after getting hit in a car accident wakes up chained to a bed in a bomb shelter with two men.  Her main captor/rescuer (depending on what you believe) claims that the outside world has come under a chemical attack.   John Goodman does a great job as survivalist Howard that demands respect from the 2 people he has in his shelter.   The woman (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) doesn't believe that the chemical attack is real and desperately wants to escape.  The acting is great --but the issue with the movie is the plot.   You can't have it both ways and the movie does just that.   I think the movie needed to decide one way for another which way it wanted to go.  

The movie should have you guessing whether there has really been a chemical/ alien attack is real or whether Howard is just a crazy killer.  Instead it gives you clues that the attack is real......then gives you evidence that Howard actually kidnapped and killed a missing girl ---then gives you more evidence that the alien attack is real.  It turns out both are true and I feel that is a cop out that took away from the movie for me.  A much better twist would have been to have the other character that was in the bunker turn out to be in on it with Howard or to have it be that Howard was just a strange guy that happened to rescue her.   Instead they make him a killer and .....the alien attack is real.   I feel that the film makers not making a choice to go in one direction or another takes away from the alien attack.   The alien attack being real at the end isn't a surprise....they have already gone out of their way to prove that it was real.  If you want me to suspend my disbelief---you can't have Howard be a killer and there is an alien attack going on at the same time.   It should have been a surprise until the end as to what was really going on.  Instead it just became so unbelievabl

  

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Triangle 2009 6 out of 10

This first poster is pretty lame on the poster scale.....  Definitely wouldn't have convinced me to see it based on this.

Triangle  2009 6 out of 10

Triangle was just plain strange.  To talk about it at all would be to give away most of the plot.   I came across this movie and recorded in on the DVR off of Chiller TV based on the description,  which lead me to believe that it would be something along the lines of a Dead Calm type of movie.  Instead what I got was just a really strange, weird thriller.   It wasn't a great film, but it captured my attention enough that I felt the need to stick around to find out how it would end.   The movies stars Melissa George in the title role of a women that goes on a voyage with a couple of friends and ends up with some strange weather tossing them into the sea until they come across an old cruise ship floating around.  They board the cruise ship with no one on it and the strangeness begins.  They seem to be stuck in some form of weird limbo.   I give the movie some credit for trying something a little new and different with the convoluted storyline,  that may not fully make sense, but was at least interesting in its concept.

It basically plays out like a decent extended Twilight Zone episode with some elements of Momento as well.  

(Spoiler)

I guess the best way to describe it is Groundhog's Day except everything is bad and you can't change the outcome.  The trailer does a pretty good job of setting it up with really ruining it

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