No.301 : Witches in the Woods (2019)

Witches in the Woods at the IMDb

If you are only in the market for a two word review, here you go : ‘Don’t Bother’.

This was a dreadful waste of time that has nothing to recommend it. It borrows heavily from many other films, but only the dull bits, nothing that would make you sit up and pay attention.

It starts out in promising, but predictable fashion with seven friends heading out for a wilderness weekend in rural Massachusetts. The opening is full of sweeping shots that scream ‘quick use the drone, it’s going back on Monday’. The film opened with a pretentious quote about the nature of beliefs so you can guess it’s going to a more in the head than on the screen type of film.

The gang’s plans are derailed when the police send them back due to a road closure. They stop at a remote gas station and one of the more vocal ladies in our entourage takes issue with a hunter who has killed a bear out of season and by using an illegal claw trap. The hunter blames mobile phones for upsetting the bear’s sleep cycles and he’s menacing enough to make you think that he may be the inevitable killer who will kill our crew one by one.

The group soon manage to get lost and the truck gets stuck in a snowdrift. The dynamic is breaking down too, with a couple revealed to be having affair behind another’s back. There is also a bitchy one and a weird one and tempers soon fray. Two go off to find help and two blokes start to fight. We get small suggestions that more is at play here with dead crows strung to trees in a ‘Blair Witch’ kind of way.

The girl who goes for help comes back traumatised and the bloke gets his foot stuck in one of those bear traps we saw earlier. Full blown paranoia starts to take over with accusations of possession and ‘did you shag my bird?’ soon flying around.

Who will survive and what is the force that is whittling our group down, one by one?

I thought this film had potential but it took 30 of the 90 minutes to get the truck stuck and the remaining hour was a dull dive into a world of screaming and accusations. I’d hoped the scary hunter would be the villain ‘Deliverance’ style but thought it was more likely going to be a coven of witches, given the title.

It turned out to be neither with nothing more than a potential witchy influence being the cause of all the deaths and mistrust. There is no pointy hats or cauldron here, just a pamphlet for a witch trail and some good old fashioned cabin fever which set in after 20 minutes.

There were a couple of bloody deaths but nothing memorable and the cast were so unlikeable that you didn’t care anyway.

I’ve seen enough of these lost in the woods type films to know that cheap does not have to be dull. This one was dull and a waste of a decent premise. Maybe the demons that dwell within us are more scary than a pointy hat and a green face but this was flagrant false advertising.

Stay out of the woods and keep this one out of your DVD player!


Best Bit :  Millennial argues with redneck  ‘W’ Rating 4/23

No.277 : Wine Country (2019)

Wine Country at the IMDb

Who fancies a trip to wine country to meet women with issues and more baggage than an airport carousel? Me neither, but you can’t always get what you want.

Amy Poehler writes, stars and directs and she should be thoroughly ashamed for this risible effort. The plot, as it is, involves six 50 something woman who met as waitresses in Chicago and are now embarking on a trip to the Napa Valley to celebrate one of their half centuries.

The group are your expected ragtag of pushy, dominated, frustrated, worried, disillusioned - basically everything that will attract a scintilla of empathy from the audience. Not this viewer - they all came across as a right pain in the arse to me.

They rent a large house off a disinterested Tina Fey whose character isn’t so much underdeveloped as non-existent. They have her dressed like MacGruber throughout - I have no idea if this was a deliberate Saturday Night Live homage. Poehler plays Abby who is the organised and pushy one of the group. She’s always bossing everyone about and is super confident so it’s no surprise that she is hiding some issues.

She has to wait her turn though, as another has designs on a younger lady artist, another is mousy and hates her husband, another is too focused on her job and yet another is awaiting cancer test results.

Slowly over the weekend the girls have madcap adventures such as getting pissed at a winery and annoying people, and shagging the help in the shape of an ‘I’m doing it for the money’ Jason Schwartzman.

After a few emotional moments the girls’ issues all come to the fore - will they fall out or be stronger for the experience? Seriously, have a guess!

This was a gawd awful waste of time, apart for the cast who all seemed to have a right old laugh getting drunk in the lovely Californian wine region.

My main issue is that all the women were a nightmare. Not quirky or sassy just the sort of people you’d leave a pub for if they showed up. The bonding was so on the nose its bouquet would make you retch as they all learn and grow and elicit cries of ‘You go girls’ from the target demographic of lonely people on their third bottle.

There were no laughs to speak of, unless you enjoy stuntmen in unconvincing wigs rolling down a hill for five minutes. Every revelation was flagged from a mile away with the false fronts being cast aside for a bit of truth and then redemption. I’ve not felt this nauseous since that bottle of £1.99 Kwik Save Chardonnay.

One to miss unless you want some quality female bonding with a bunch of women you’d cross the street to avoid.

Best Bit : Get back to you on that. 'W' Rating 5/23

No.243 : World War Dead : The Rise of the Fallen (2015)

World War Dead : The Rise of the Fallen at the IMDb

Towards the end of this British ‘found footage’ horror one of the soon to be scoffed characters does an earnest piece to camera. “This is the craziest shit I’ve ever experienced” he says. Well, he’s half right - it certainly was shit!

Of course, with a title like this one you can’t expect much and it certainly delivers nothing at all, except for a series of predictable jerky encounters with some out of focus and anachronistic solder zombies.

Still I’m getting ahead of myself - let’s do the plot - that should cover a sentence! The film opens with some captions and stock footage about the Battle of the Somme - neat way to pad the already skinny 75 minute run time. We learn that a distinguished documentary film maker (who seemingly works out of a Transit van with a bunch of amateurs) has gone missing and what follows is cut from footage that was later found. So far so very predictable.

The characters have none to speak of and they all bitch about each other and argue pointlessly to either build up the tension or to disguise the fact that there is no script and that the zombie extras have only been paid for 20 minutes. The shoot is interrupted when mysterious figures appear in the background and a ‘French’ passer-by advises that it is ‘tres dangerous’ to be in the area.

There are plenty of false starts before the expert starts pulling on a chain that was next to a lake. This reveals a skeleton which belongs to a soldier from an African regiment who practiced bringing the dead back to life. He has a handy amulet in his stomach which the expert pockets, oblivious to its deadly powers! In no time flat the crew is besieged by resurrected soldiers from the Somme battlefield who strangely seem to be wearing World War 2 uniforms. They also have a taste for flesh which is unexplained apart from that’s what zombies do, I guess.

Some of the cast get chomped and another lot find an abandoned, but curiously well stocked, bunker and plot their salvation. Some handy 100 year old dynamite may help their fight and if they can rebury the skeleton (which wasn’t buried in the first place), maybe the dead will rest again. Can’t fault logic like that!

This was a shocker of a film and in no way is that a compliment. For starters I’ll bet the whole thing was filmed in England with one stuck on number plate and a dreadful ‘local’ the only nods to the actual location of the Somme battlefield. To be fair there is no way rubbish like this would get permission to film there, and if that’s the case you have to wonder about the inclusion of old footage of real and dead soldiers from the time. Regular readers will know PC isn’t my thing but real dead soldiers being used to set the scene for this tosh was plain disrespectful.

The acting was ghastly, as was the script which I don’t doubt was improvised throughout. The jerky cameras were vomit inducing and the added crackles and interference offered only annoyance, not authenticity. Very little was done in the was of explaining the zombies’ motivation or the fact that after 100 years the only decay they exhibited was that pasty face make up that students do at Halloween.

The only scares were of the usual ‘jump out’ variety allied to a screech on the soundtrack which wore thin the first time, never mind the fifth.

OK it’s hokey garbage with no pretense at great art or even competent movie making, but this was an embarrassment to all concerned not to mention an affront to common decency in general.

Best Bit - Head gets pulled off
‘W’ Rating 3/23

No. 120 : Wild Child (2008)

Wild Child at the IMDb

We recently had a look at the teen girl coming of age in merrie olde England comedy ‘What a Girl Wants’ and deemed it acceptable. ‘Wild Child’ uses the same formula but to a lesser effect, so much so that it leaves a sour taste rather than some soppy but heart-warming feel goodness, which let’s face it, we’re all after.

The titular child is Poppy played by Emma Roberts whose subsequent credits include canine boarding caper ‘Hotel for Dogs’. She is a spoiled Malibu princess who responds to her Dad’s new girlfriend moving in by giving away all of step mom’s clothes - thought Dad would be quite happy with that! This being the last of several straws he resolves to send her to the boarding school in England, where her late mother went, to straighten her out.

The predictable fish out of water scenario is then played out as she shows up with her sun glasses and fancier mobile phone. The fact that she’s materialistic is laid on with a trowel - remember that later cliché fans - she may have a choice to make! She immediately falls foul of the school bully and of her room mates after she earns them all a detention from Shirley Henderson’s shameful Scottish matron.

Desperate to get home Poppy decides the only way to get out of the school is to be expelled and various mild shenanigans follow. Just as her exploits are having the desired effect she falls for the Head’s sexy son and realises that her room mates are all nice and there is more to life than stuff. Fate takes a hand however when after failing to log out of her e-mail a bad person uses the account to send mischief. Things come to a head when a fire possibly caused by Poppy threatens the school and only her former friends can save her from the inquisition that follows.

In some ways this film is better than ‘What a Girl Wants’ in that the British aren’t made out to be backwards weirdoes and Prince Charles isn’t on hand. What is lacks however is any form of sympathy for the lead, who rather than ‘Wild’ appears to be whiney and annoying. The road to Damascus style conversion is awfully handled with the loaning of a jumper the catalyst for total character rebuilding.

The lead is dreadful and loses any school girl foxiness when she takes out the blonde hair dye and goes mousey brown. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the American character holds all others in awe but it is unusual that the Malibu princess is the best lacrosse player in the country and has the personality to ignite an ‘I’m Spartacus’ style uprising at the student council, which bizarrely has the power to decide fire raising claims.

It’s sad to note that this rubbish was the last film of Natasha Richardson who plays the firm but fair head in a role which has ‘where’s the pay cheque?’ written all over it. Elsewhere you also get a pikey looking Daisy Donovan as a sports teacher and a cringe worthy Nick Frost as a gay hairdresser.

An absolute shocker with nothing to recommend it.

Best Bit : Uh, let’s say the lacrosse final, but even that’s poorly staged and predictable.
‘W’ Rating : 4/23

No.36 : Who Made the Potatoe Salad? (2006)

Who Made the Potatoe Salad?


Sorry pedants everywhere, that’s really the correct spelling of the title. I don’t know why, unless they are implying that the person posing the question can’t spell, but the issue is never raised in the film, although the identity of the potato salad creator is requested.

I’d be frankly amazed if anyone reading this has heard of, never mind seen this film. I found it on a random trawl through the internet and managed to find an unloved and clearly unwatched copy.

The film stars Jaleel White, who seemingly is the ‘Urkel’ Homer Simpson talks about, as a policeman in San Diego. He isn't good at his job, losing a pair of criminals and his trousers in the opening sequence. Things are looking up however, as he plans to propose to his infeasibly beautiful girlfriend. After accepting the girl invites him to her parents’ for Thanksgiving so that he can get permission from her father.

Predictably the visit is a disaster for both our man, Michael, and the viewing public who have to watch over an hour of humourless housebound ‘hilarity’. Michael’s fiancée has a family full of stereotypes from the cranky dad who hates cops to her pimpy drug dealing brother. Various fissures open up from Michael’s reluctance to eating pork to him having a boner at breakfast.

Hoping to salvage the situation Michael stages a fake burglary so that he can save the day. Unfortunately for the burglar, the family get to him first and beat the crap out of him. With his deceit exposed Michel is expelled from the family home and sent home in disgrace. Can the obstinate Dad be turned around and can the marriage proposal get back on tracks?

This was a gawd awful car crash of a movie. It’s basically a sub-par black version of ‘Meet the Parents’ only without the laughs but with more racial slurs. N-bombs are dropped all over the place with virtually all the black cast being shown as stupid and prejudiced. If the script had been written by the Klan I wouldn't have been surprised.

I'm sure the humour was ironic and playing on the stereotypes used but it was handled so poorly that it just looks like a load of offensive trash. The characters were so thinly drawn they were transparent and the only time I laughed was when someone got stuck to a sofa that had been covered in plastic. My bad, I know. It’s not that I don’t like this sort of humour with ‘I’m Gonna Git You Sucka’ one of my favourites, it’s just that this was a lazy, pale imitation of something half decent and worthwhile.

The title ,for some unknown reason, came from a sequence at a family dinner where Michael enquired about the maker of the potato salad. In reply came a two minute salvo of abuse and swearing and I’ve no idea why. Is it a black thing? I doubt it, what I do know is that it was an unfunny thing.


Best Bit : Eddie Griffin shows up, on tape, but is sadly all sweary and laugh free.

‘W’ Score 5/23