Day: February 23, 2012

The 5th Quarter had a weird effect on me. I knew the basic story: guy dies, older brother of guy changes number, and also Wake Forest wins a lot of games, despite not being good on paper.

Alright, so cliche’d sports movie. Right? Wrong. Because this is horribly done.

It also apparently popularized something similar to the Nazi salute.

So yeah, Luke (Stefan Guy) is a high school kid. On the football team. From a pretty tight family. Kisses and acknowledgement of love at every greeting/goodbye. But his ride home is in question, and instead of calling his mom, he accepts a ride from a fellow high schooler. OH THE HUMANITY. Because that guy goes off road, and puts Luke in the hospital. Severe brain damage.

Eventually his brother Jon (Ryan Merriman) gets all mopey, and eventually rejoins the wake forest football team. Changes number to 5. And like I said, Wake Forest wins a lot. They call the 4th Quarter now the 5th Quarter for more inspiration I guess, to give them an end of the game edge. The parents constantly hold their hands up, to represent the five. Andie MacDowell and Aidan Quinn do a good job of staying sad the whole damn movie. Then they lose at the Orange Bowl. But hey, at least they made it?

But is Mr. “I’m Playing For Two!” happy?

So here is what bugged me about the movie. The first 35 minutes. It took awhile for the accident to happen, a while for the hospital stuff to happen, and a long time for pre football to happen. Most of it was in montage form. Video of people being sad with music playing over it. Also a long extra story about the dangers of teenage reckless driving, and organ donation.

Then another montage, of the brother training. Why does he need a trainer? I dont know, because as far as I can tell he was always on the football team. BUt for some reason he needs more training, and thus more images and music.

Then football happens. Most if not all of the scenes of the football games are actual footage. The only thing they did is showed the parents in the audience, doing that hand shit over and over. Also some made scenes to include Jons character talking with others. Eventually everyone does the hand thing.

But do I care? No. The movie makes it hard to care. They seem to be trying to do something just to make you sad, without substance. The amount of times in the movie where very little talking occurs and just a background song going on, I’d need to raise two hands.

They took a familiar story, and pretty much trashed it to try and make it a dedication to Luke instead of an actual good story. The people should be punished for making a poor movie of an actual good story. Captain Hindsight tells me that they should have done a documentary movie instead. I mean, this was in 2006. Can have the actual people talk about the experiences, talking about Luke, and a nice dramatic voice guy going over the game /win highlights.

But nope. Instead some filth. Filth I tell you!

This is a movie I have walked by about a jillion times, with no intention of rushing to watch it. Vanishing on 7th Street just sounds like a dumb title. I also couldn’t tell if it was a horror or a mystery (its the former).

But I did the craziest thing, and read some of the back. It takes place in Detroit, yess! WATCHING THAT SHIT IMMEDIATELY.

No horror can terrorize Detroit. They’d either take a punch to the face, or leave because its already terrorized.

Movie begins at the movies. Thats awesome, because this is a movie. John Leguizamo is some sort of maintenance guy, flirting with the ladies. But while he is in the back, (where it is already dark, so he is using his nice head flashlight thing), it gets darker and he hears a lot of screaming. What what?!

When he gets to where there is people, well, there isn’t people. There is a bunch of clothes on the ground, but no bodies. Some more screaming, but that is it. Turns out that whatever is happening takes the bodies when they are without a light source, in the darkness. Main power generators were all taken out, but anyone who had a lighter or flashlight or something at the time wasn’t taken.

Until their light goes out. Thankfully day still happens, but it is getting shorter and shorter. What ends up happening is his character, Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, and Jacob Latimore all end up meeting at a bar that has a generator and is making it a safe haven.

The rest of the movie is them trying to figure out how to escape the city, not sure if there is others out there, or if it is just affecting Detroit area. Mostly thing this because of the Lost Colony on Roanoke, and also claiming that the phrase “CROATAN” is mysterious, and not a very well known Indian tribe also in the area of Roanoke colony.

Oh noes! Look out for the darkness, John!

But the movie also feels like a huge let down. I feel like it didn’t tell a complete story. No you will not find out about the darkness. No, you won’t get any closer to what the hell is happening there. And you also really won’t get any [real] hope for the survivors. They tried to give hope, but that hope seems like bullshit.

And really, the comparison to that situation and the Lost Colony was stupid as shit. Colonists were told to leave where they were going carved in wood, and they did, “CROATAN” a neighboring island tribe. They may have been killed there or whatever. But for the character to say no one knows why they did that, or what it means it just dumb. And a horrible “possible movie plot point” to make.

I thought the movie was horribly slow, for no real payoff.