Month: March 2017

The Blackcoat’s Daughter, if you check it out on IMDB, says it came out first in 2015. Shit, it must have been in the festival game for a long time.

Because today (March 31, 2017) is its actual release date, at least in this area. Maybe part of it is that it is a foreign film, from Canada! And you know it is indie, because it has a VOD release on the same day as its theatrical release.

But I digress. The real important thing I want to talk about is that this film used to be called February. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is definitely a better title, so if anything, it has props for that. And naming it after a month, and releasing it in a different month is super weird.

These poor girls have been waiting patiently for this movie to release for almost 2 months thanks to the title confusion!

This story is about a few girls and a really nice Catholic school. We have Kat (Kiernan Shipka) who is having weird dreams of car crashes, and Rose (Lucy Boynton), an older girl who is afraid she might be pregnant. On an extended break in February, both girls find themselves stuck at the school, neither having a ride home from their parents.

Kat has no idea where her parents are (but assumes they are dead). Rose admits that she “accidentally” told them the wrong date, because she wants to tell her boyfriend about the pregnancy first if she is indeed pregnant. So they are sent to stay with caretakers near the school, because they cannot just live there forever. Rose doesn’t take good care of Kat though, leaving her alone and telling her ghost stories.

But we also have to talk about Joan (Emma Roberts)! She is a weird girl, alone, seemingly homeless. And she gets a ride from strangers because of how cold it is out. Linda (Lauren Holly) and Bill (James Remar) decide to pick her up because Bill says she reminds her of someone. What is her mysterious story and how is she connected?!

Also, demons!

And she is screaming into bloody hands. Or eating bloody stuff. Or maybe some spicy cheetos?

First of all, let’s just say I don’t have any clue why this movie is called The Blackcoat’s Daughter. I might have missed it. It could have been in a story Rose told. But I don’t know. I would have understood why it was called February at least.

The film itself is very tense and slow. It takes awhile to realize how the girls are connected and the why, but it has some great reveals. The death scenes, unfortunately, feel very realistic. They are not glorified in violence, but they are graphic and still shocking. I was definitely at the edge of my seat by the end.

At the same time, it still was a bit confusing. It was also a little bit too slow at points in the middle. It has an okay story and some decent frights, it just takes awhile to get there.

Roberts/Boynton aren’t the strong suits here, even though I watched it for them. Shipka does really shine in creepiness. It must be those intense Mad Men eyes of hers.

Overall, The Blackcoat’s Daughter has a small scale story, but it offers some real thrills. It just didn’t overall do it for me as a movie and had me lost in a few places.

To start things off, I am not sure what this movie is actually called. I am decently sure at the time of this review being written, it was called The Assignment. Which yes, sounds like a sexy college film.

But before it was called Re-Assigment. And it might be changing to Tomboy, it is really hard to tell.

All of the titles make sense once you find out just what this movie is about though, and all of them seem to be various levels of offensive.

The beard is a lie.

Meet Frank Kitchen (Michelle Rodriguez). A famed mercenary killer. Deadly, accurate, sly, and he has a manly beard. He is so manly, we get to see him have sex with a woman Johnnie (Caitlin Gerard)! And she gives him her number for future sexy time, because he is a great lover. Oh we also get to see his penis after he showers. He is not a grower, he is all there always ready. What a dick!

Apparently Frank has made the wrong enemy though. While doing a job for Honest John (Anthony LaPaglia), a gangster, the tables are turn, Frank is captured. And when Frank wakes up, his beard is gone. And his dick. Oh hey, he has breasts and a vagina!

What in darnation!

Turns out Frank killed a guy, and his sister, Dr. Rachel Kay (Sigourney Weaver), a pissed off plastic surgeon, is…well, pissed off. And she does a gender reassignment surgery when Frank gets knocked out. A really great one, can’t see any scars, just perfect female body. And she provides hormones and everything, considering it an experiment.

Well, Frank wants revenge. He just has to deal with his hooters and presumably a now ticking biological clock. Or something. Also featuring Tony Shalhoub, as a psychiatrist, evaluating Kay after the fact.

Frank has to tape those bad boys down, how else could he function?

Wow. Where to begin. Um.

Well, there is a lot of nudity in his film. I cackled early on because of an unnecessary shower scene, generally reserved for females in a movie, but at this point, Rodriguez is a dude. And to flash us his chest and penis, just to show how much of a man he was. After the transition, we had Rodriguez nude a lot, of course in the early confusion, but in several scenes taping her body down to help prepare for a kill. And no, it isn’t even her naked, but a body double for those scenes.

Genitalia aside, the film is told from two narrators. Are doctor, in a straight jacket, talking to a psychiatrist about the events, and a video diary from Kitchen as a woman. So we know immediately that Kitchen will be successful. This is where the how is supposed to be a mystery, but it isn’t. It isn’t like a giant magic trick. It is just someone going and killing a ton of people, no surprises there. Although, she does use her sexuality in ONE scene, to distract a guard. That definitely happened.

Acting is bad, plot is bad, action is bad.

Now, is this movie offensive? Fuck if I know. I am not qualified to answer that question really. On the surface, it definitely sounds offensive. But at he same time, it does show a male-to-female character kicking ass and being consistently the coolest person in the room. And on the other hand, it was a magical forced transition that makes everything seem like a fairy tale.

Yeah, it is probably offensive. But really, I am just offended by how bad it was.

Honestly, I didn’t think I would watch The Boss Baby until at least this summer when it was out on Redbox to rent.

When I first heard about the film with a poster, I just hoped and assumed it was a joke. Then a teaser trailer and a real trailer happened. Then advertising in a lot of places. They are going full on with this movie, they are serious that it is real.

Just, honestly. Come on, fuck you Dreamworks. Your animation style for your not Dragon/Panda movies is usually terrible. Your plots are bad and simplistic. You will seemingly never reach the Disney/Pixar level of work if you continue to come up with shit. A talking baby that is secretly a CEO? Just, god damn it, Dreamworks.

Like someone saw Baby Geniuses or those E-Trade commercials and thought it was the perfect idea to make some money.

The only person here who isn’t trading stocks must be the kid sitting alone!

Our story starts with Tim (Miles Christopher Bakshi), a 7 year old kid, in love with the world. He has an overactive imagination which helps his play time as an only child. His mother (Lisa Kudrow) and father (Jimmy Kimmel) also spend a ton of time with him, even though they are both marketing workers at a place called Puppy Corp, which makes puppies or something. Oh, and he is about to have a baby brother.

Tim thinks his brother showed up on his own in a Taxi. He is already wearing a suit and a briefcase. He is a “boss” baby (Alec Baldwin), in that he immediately bosses around the house. He demands things of the parents. He takes up all of their love and attention and soon Tim feels alone.

But also, yeah, Tim finds the baby talking at one point. Perfect English. Being kind of a dick. Turns out this baby is from a place where babies come from. He was put into their management team, instead of given to a family, because he was the cream of the crop. They even have a special bottle formula to stay as babies forever, to help take care of baby interests.

And he was sent here on a mission. A spy mission. A deadly mission!? No, just a mission.

Steve Buscemi plays the Puppy Corp boss, and Tobey Maguire is the narrator/older Tim voice.

The sock straps freak me out seeing them on a baby.

I know the bias is coming out, but this was a terrible film. This is the worse thing Dreamworks Animation has put out since Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. I somehow even liked Turbo more than this film.

Technically the whole thing is structured from an unreliable narrator, as we find out he is telling this story decades later, and we already established he has a big imagination, but it was too wild and over the place.

First of all, the plot is shit, the twists are shit, the mission, the backstory, it is just extremely poor writing. The comedy from the film mostly comes in the form of violence and arguing, between an adult baby and a regular kid. There is a scene where Tim records a baby meeting, which begins a way too long chase between the babies and him, to get the tape back. It is way too extreme and violent against the babies, I could barely stop rolling my eyes.

The baby also seemed to have some sort of magical powers as well that they never escaped. He could apparently teleport in the house to out of the house to in the house, because he kept appearing faster than he should have. And guess what, that is just still bad writing.

The animation wasn’t consistant. Eyebrows would get ripped off of a character, and somehow they showed them back the next scene, while acknowledging another character still having the ripped off eyebrows. Things would be thrown onto the ground and disappear a second later. The tiny inconsistencies between frames in a scene really made it look like a shoddy C grade performance. The parents forgot to act like parents at the end, for plot convenience, and didn’t question why their kids were suddenly in Vegas.

As a note, this film has references to other movies. We got an Indiana Jones scene, several Gandalf quotes from his alarm clock Wizzie, and even Baldwin quoting his famous lines from Glengarry Glen Ross. But references on their own cannot carry a movie, do not constitute real jokes, and are the second lowest form of comedy. Right above slapstick.

They really struck out with this film.

Donald Cried is a small indie comedy/drama coming out, that is based on a short from 2012 of the same name.

And it is written and directed by Kris Avedisian, who also gets to play the titular Donald character. It is definitely a passion project, given the amount of effort one man put into getting his film and his face out there.

If anything, it means we are definitely going to get something original and outside of Hollywood, which is always a nice surprise.

The only way this picture would be more uncomfortable if one of them was shirtless.

But first, we need to talk about Peter (Jesse Wakeman). Peter just returned to his small hometown because his grandmother, who was living in a nursing home, has passed away. He is the only one who can get there and take care of her affairs, but he really hates his hometown and would rather be there for a single day before heading back to NYC.

Well, on the bus ride over, he apparently left his wallet. That had his cash and his ID, but he didn’t realize it until he got to her old house to gather some things and meet a realtor. Shit, getting home is going to be weird, because the bus has moved on. He cannot get a friend to wire him money from back home, so he is on his own, unless he asks someone from his past for help.

And there is where fucking Donald (Kris Avedisian) comes in. His old friend from high school, a long time ago. A guy who talks too much, talks about everything, just absolutely no filter and no aspirations. Now he has to ask Donald for help, for rides, and for money.

What you will quickly find out is that Donald is probably the most miserable person to hang out with, and Peter has to do it now all day. And the frustrations will get real quickly and repeatedly. Also featuring Louisa Krause as the cute realtor.

His haircut, his glasses, why I almost want to punch him already.

Donald Cried was a struggle to get through, because Donald was so incredibly hard to not turn off. As I already described, he talked constantly, he talked about terrible subjects, he couldn’t take a hint, and you just feel so bad for Peter. But also, Peter was kind of a jerkish character two.

It was a miserable person, feeling miserable, by another person who didn’t know he was miserable. Just a really fucking weird dude who didn’t have any other friends.

And that is also why I rated it kind of high. Avedisian got under my skin, got in there nice and deep, but by golly, he also made me pay attention. I didn’t try to pause my screener ever and do other things. I could only focus on the movie in front of me, because of how realistically outlandish the character was.

Now I don’t plan on ever watching this movie again, but it does feature some really well acting in a relatively simple plot. Or at least, I hope these guys are acting and not like their characters in any way.

Who the fuck is Wilson? Is this a movie about a volleyball?

Those were the only thoughts I had going into this movie. And when I saw one poster, that it would be able a creepy dude. Not just any creepy dude. A creepy older dude, with glasses, and a beard.

I also quickly learned that the movie would be a weird movie, because it was directed by Craig Johnson, who directed The Skeleton Twins. I didn’t love that one, but man, it was weird.

How shocking, that it is about a real person, not a volleyball.

Wilson (Woody Harrelson) isn’t actually creepy, really. He is a bit weird. He is weird because he hates the way the world is changing. He hates that everyone is so anti-social nowadays. He wants to communicate with people, even if they are strangers. He wants to just say what is on his mind and let other people say what is on their minds. He isn’t going to be trapped on his phone, or sleeping on the train, he just wants to experience the world. If he doesn’t slow down once in awhile, he might miss it, after all.

And then his best friend moves away, without any warning. Now Wilson is all alone. He has no purpose. Just his dog. No family, nothing. Well, he does have an ex-wife. Pippi (Laura Dern) was with Wilson for a few years, a real piece of work. Then one day she up and left him. Got an abortion and moved far, far away. But it turns out she is in the area again! So maybe he can try and see how she is and get to know her again. Maybe start a relationship so that the hole in his life can be filled.

Speaking of filling holes, turns out she didn’t get an abortion. She put the kid up for adoption and the girl is like, 17 now, living in the same city this whole time and he had no idea! Now Wilson has a family. He has a purpose. He just has to bring it all together.

Starring Isabella Amara as the daughter, along with Brett Gelman, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Judy Greer, Margo Martindale, Cheryl Hines, and Bill McCallum.

Apparently this is also the most shocking movie ever, from his point of view.

Wilson was a surprise hit, and surprisingly hysterical at points. The man was just so absurd and so socially weird it was constantly surprising. The main poster shows him standing next to another person at a urinal, with a ton of open urinals. The biggest social faux pas you can do in a restroom, outside of also hold a conversation with them, which he does. And it is a nice scene about families and how to raise your kids. And it ends with one of the funniest, unexpected yet completely expected lines ever. I was laughing way too long at it.

Wilson was great. As a person and a character study. A movie I could watch over and over again and still crack up. An instant classic on just its humor.

But its story could use some work, a lot of work. It feels so long but the movie is only about an hour and a half. It takes awhile to get to the point, and then it goes in several weird directions. Including jail, which lasts a long time for that late in the film. And we even have a post jail tiny plot to take care about. It is a bit disjointed in these regards.

Harrelson does a great performance though and always seems to find new ways to entertain me.

Like most people, I too was a big Power Rangers fan. Not only did I see Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie in theaters when I was a wee lad, but I watched basically every episode. I kept up with the evolving story line over the various versions. I was still super into the show when it was Power Rangers In Space, because it was all connected. That is when I was able to get a lot of the toys as well.

Power Rangers Lost Galaxies is where I started to lose interest, and now of course, watching the newer versions make me cringe. But technically, watching the older shows also make me cringe. Power Rangers is NOT a good show. It is creative as fuck, piecing together the Japanese TV shows and some American actors to make something somewhat coherent. Good on them for trying. But it is of course repetitive, silly, and a bit shitty.

And that is okay. Not everything nostalgic needs to actually be great. We just have to admit it to ourselves.

Now? Let’s get back to now. Now we have a reboot. A grittier version, of course. Power Rangers. New teenagers with more attitude, because they are going to use swear words. And as it is a reboot we are going to get a few references or meta jokes, because film is dead and meaningless in the year 2017.

Hey, space man!

The film starts with the end of the dinosaurs! And also aliens, fighting. One of those Aliens is Zordon (Bryan Cranston), who dies covering up some interesting looking coins, from some repulsive looking alien lady. And after a meteor hits, we switch to modern day. Our hero, Jason (Dacre Montgomery), just got arrested for vandalizing school property, and private property, and operating a motor vehicle like an asshat.

So that means he gets to have Saturday detention forever. And that is where he meets Kimberly (Naomi Scott) and Billy (RJ Cyler), who we all know later also become rangers. Long story short, those three and two other people, Zack (Ludi Lin) and Trini (Becky G). Blah blah blah, coins, Zordon, Alpha-5 (Bill Hader), and more!

(Record scratch)! But if these kids think being Power Rangers is going to be easy, they don’t know what they are getting into. They can’t even morph! And Rita (Elizabeth Banks) is going to take over everything in just a little over a week! Uh oh!

Also starring David Denman as Jason’s dad.

It’s a bold idea, to do this review and not show any power ranger.

Let’s get straight to the point. This reboot tried to do everything, and thus fell short at everything. It wanted gritty and serious. It also wanted nostalgic references. It also wanted elements of corny, but those were few and far between. The original show was very corny, and a bit self aware. I am not saying this remake has to be exactly like the show to be successful. I have already said that the show is kind of terrible. But it needs to make an identity and stick with it.

Making references and quotes from the original series is cheap and easy. But they break us out of the movie. The one time they say “It’s morphin’ time!” feels incredibly lackluster. The Alpha-5 “Aye-aye-aye” isn’t terrible. The new version of the old theme plays over the zoid entrance really quick, but it feels like an amateur just pasted it on top of the film and feels out of place.

And the references can get really distracting too! There was a scene between Zordon and Alpha-5, sort of freaking out about the fact that the new rangers were just teenagers. It was just begging for him to say something about how they had attitude as well, and it didn’t, so it was just an awkward moment in the theater.

This is a lot of detail on technically a small aspect, but it frames the entire film. The only entertaining Ranger is of course Billy, because they made him nice, caring, and interesting. RJ Cyler is still killing it, just like when he played Earl in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. The camera work felt too teenage angsty and HD. It reminded me of I Am Number Four and other similar tone movies, where the whole thing just feels fake and rushed. And the megazord moment just is overly long and…well, awkward.

Despite all the complaints, the movie is still at least okay. The plot isn’t the worst, they add a lot of mythology to the story and give us storylines to work on in the future. Zordon was a huge dick, so it was just nice to see him with a personality. And how they connected Rita to the Rangers made some sense as well. Although, Banks didn’t feel right for the role. She looked like she was trying to act like Parker Posey, and now, I really just want the role to magically have been given to her instead.

This is not a movie you have to GoGo to see right away. It will be on Netflix before the end of the year, guaranteed.

Goat is apparently a movie about a frat and about hazing. And honestly, there is only one reason I watched this movie.

To find out if someone fucks a goat.

College? Hazing? Goat as the title? Someone has to fuck a goat right? Right? But they don’t let us know in the description. It is vague. Why the fuck is it called goat, unless someone fucks a goat?

And that is all I needed to convince me to see the film. A 90~ minute run time also helped.

And some men screaming without shirts.

The film doesn’t start with hazing, just a party, where Brad (Ben Schnetzer) ends up leaving early. A dude from the party asks for a ride for him and his friend. He lets them in, not wanting to be a dickweed, and they totally kick his ass and steal his car as a result. Should have been a dickweed!

Fast forward some time, and Brad is now going to the same college as his older brother Brett (Nick Jonas). Brett gets Brad to pledge to his fraternity! Now they can be fake brothers along with real brothers, hooray!

And then hell week happens. Hazing, drinking, humiliation, degradation, and the worst fucking torture ever. This doesn’t seem to bring them closer together, and the hazing might be worse than normal. Hell, people are getting hurt. And before I get too much further, they call the pledges Goats.

Now, that doesn’t mean there is any goat fucking. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t any goat fucking either. I just won’t tell you, because that is the only reason I wanted to see this movie. To see if someone had to fuck a goat.

Also starring a lot of bros, of course! People like Brock Yurich, Will Pullen, Austin Lyon, Eric Staves, Danny Flaherty, Jake Picking, Gus Halper, and a little bit of James Franco.

That goat literally has the word fuck on him!

Hey, you hear about that Edward Snowden guy? He leaked a lot of USA secrets, namely what they were doing to the American people. Spying on everyone as part of the NSA.

Yeah! Big crazy stuff. And this patriot is now still living overseas in Russia, granted a temporary asylum. He is willing to come back to the USA if he would get a fair trial, but he knows he won’t and thus, a giant stalemate.

And if you watch the documentary Citizenfour, you will get the inside scoop of how he leaked the data to a few press markets and their plan for getting him out to safety. It is thrilling and great, which is why it was nominated for so many awards. Hell, it won best Documentary.

So this Snowden movie, off of its success, is meant to tell his story before the leak and a little bit after it. A regular biopic. But also, Oliver Stone directing, so you know a lot of shenanigans.

Computer shenanigans are some of my least favorite shenanigans.

Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a smart dude, worked for the USA, stole from the USA, and is about to be on the run. The USA didn’t know he stole from them until the leaks began to happen, but he was a paranoid sun of a gun who knew how to keep his tracks hidden and knew how to keep his profile low.

He tried to join the military in his youth, he really did. But he broke something during a drill and got booted out, with knowledge that his foot was frail and had a big potential for more ouchies. So he instead found himself getting a job with the intelligence agencies. Sure, he doesn’t even have a college degree, but he was self taught and really fucking good at computers.

So Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans) gave him a shot. They knew the next wars would be fought with computers, not nukes, and they had to make sure the USA had the biggest and best computers for when it all started.

But what drove Snowden to eventually stealing and spreading out the secrets? Did he get a moral code? Did he get beat up at school? Or was it his very liberal girlfriend (Shailene Woodley)?

Also starring Nicolas Cage, Scott Eastwood, Tom WIlkinson, Timothy Olyphant, Melissa Leo, and Zachary Quinto.

Her color choices make her look like a cartoon compared to Snowden.

Snowden is the most important thing to leave Elizabeth City, NC since the Wright Brothers left it to go to Kitty Hawk and learned to fly. And in a way, Snowden sort of taught us all to fly, didn’t he?

The problem with a biopic after a really good documentary is that it has to be really fucking good or else it won’t stand up to its predecessor. If they really want a biopic, they gotta come out before the documentary if they want a time in the sun. Just ask the movie Nina.

And in this case, this movie goes over so much the documentary does not, but still, it feels shallow in comparison. Honestly, who cares about them before? Unless Snowden also is the reason the spying happens, his life and story before the point are insignificant. The only part that’s that matter is how he got access and why he decided to tell the world.

So don’t see Snowden. Watch Citizenfour, get active in politics, do something. Don’t just continue to watch Oliver Stone movies and move on with your life.

Hey! A new movie, on Netflix! That means this bad boy didn’t go to theaters, it just appeared in our lives, and in some film festivals. Because I had quite a few critic friends talking about it, and I had no idea why.

When I heard the words I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore, I groaned. Last thing I need to see is a bunch of twenty-somethings bitching about the tiniest inconveniences and quoting Futurama. I then assumed it was some indie movie opening in five theaters across the USA, and only decided to watch it when I got on Netflix and the film slapped its dick in my face.

And even then I had reluctance. It was that little boy from those ring movies that made me want to watch it.

Actual footage of man me and girl me glaring at the movie from afar. In my car.

Ruth (Melanie Lynskey, indie movie princess) is pissed off at the world. She is a nursing assistant, but that doesn’t matter right now. She lives alone, has some friends, and people piss her off. People cut in front of her at the supermarket, dogs shit on her lawn, people spoil the book series she is reading, and someone broke into her house, fucked it all up, and stole some of her things.

Oh yeah, that is a pretty big one. She is shaken up about the whole thing, even more upset that the police (Gary Anthony Williams) seems to not give a shit about it, taking her statement and not giving her hope for restitution.

So she sets out to finding the culprit on her own, footprints and all. And after a brief tiff, she enlists the help of a neighbor, Tony (Elijah Wood), who is upset over theft in the neighborhood. They have hacking skills, ninja stars, and they are pissed off at the world. They will find out who took her stuff and there will be some sort of payback. Maybe a stern talking to.

Also starring Christine Woods, David Yow, Devon Graye, Robert Longstreet, and Jane Levy.

Nothing like book spoilers to spoil ones appetite as well.

Despite my rantings about indie films, I really didn’t know what to expect. Elijah Wood has been doing a lot of this darker, trippy stuff in his post Hobbit career. There was Sin City, there was Wilfred, Cooties, and now this. And of course Tobey Maguire was in The Details, which is kind of the same thing since they are similar. I didn’t expect this film to be a dark comedy, but once it started, it delivered hand over feet.

It has a few shocking events, sudden escalations, death, violence, and a bit of realism. If there is a fight, both sides are getting hurt and in unexpected ways, as they realize they are NOT superheroes. There is real danger for the characters involved and a lot of morally gray areas as well. And morally very very black areas, but we get through those as well.

This has got to be Lynskey’s best work to date. I am not going to call myself a super fan of hers or anything, and I have only seen a handful of roles, but most of them are side characters, reserved, and forgettable. In this film, it is HER movie, she grows as a character, she starts to take charge, and it is a good change.

If this film had problems, it would mostly just involve the ending. How everything ends up resolved might not match the tone from the rest of the film. It also took me awhile to really get into it, the build up being necessary, but still unexciting.

The Belko Experiment trailer seemed to come out of nowhere, and it honestly got me really excited.

A Battle Royale experience, with regular office workers, in a potential psychological horror film with difficult moral decisions? That sounds like an amazing film, one that would quickly become a cult film and something that would top my end of the 2017 list!

And to top it all off, it was written by James Gunn, who has been kicking ass lately. Not directed, just written, but he is a pop culture junkie and someone who can really get to the heart of issues with, yes, excessive violence.

But really, the hype was real on this side. Fictional people killing people with office equipment.

Office equipment, like guns!

Head on down to Bogotá, Columbia, where the sun is always shining and everyone is so happy! And it is also the location of Belko Indutries, a very large office building seemingly in the middle of nowhere. They help hire foreign workers for American companies, or something like that. Hard to say, doesn’t matter, they have sweet government contracts, so life is sweet.

Weird things are afoot today. All of the local workers are being sent home. There is a larger security force than normal, checking cars and looking intimidating. But hey, it is still a work day, so even with some missing people they have meetings and phones to call.

And then, a voice (Gregg Henry) comes over the loudspeaker, that they didn’t even know existed in their building. It said that most of them would die, and that if in the next 30 minutes two people were not killed, then there would be consequences. Ha ha. Must be a prank. And then the office building straight up closes entirely around them, windows, doors, all covered in large metal panels. Fuck! Well, of course no one kills anyone, so then four people die from sudden head explosions. Head explosions! Each person had a GPS tracking device put into their head, in case of kidnappings, because Columbia. Turns out they are bombs and now everyone is even more fucked.

Of course it gets worse. Now they know it is serious. And now they know that with 76 people left in the building, they now have 2 hours to kill 30 people. Or else overall 60 will be killed, randomly. Now it is time to let your animal instincts out. Now is the time to go wild for survival. And hell, a few of the people have some special forces training before this job. Doesn’t look good for your normal receptionist.

And we have a lot of workers, so here they are: John C. McGinley, John Gallagher Jr., Tony Goldwyn, Adria Arjona, Melonie Diaz, Michael Rooker, James Earl, and Sean Gunn are some of the bigger players. We also have Brent Sexton, David Dastmalchian, David Del Rio, Gail Bean, Josh Brener, Owain Yeoman, and Rusty Schwimmer.

Blood bath? More like Blood…um. Office. Yes, Blood office.

I wanted so badly for The Belko Experiment to be good.To give me a satisfying psychological horror. To really emphasis the experiment parts, and showcase human spirit and humans in general. And yes, I also wanted it to feature a ton of violence through the use of common office equipment. Things like coffee pots, staplers (of course), paper weights, chairs, paper clips, who knows. And honestly? We maybe got 3. Definitely two that stand out, and of those two, one doesn’t even kill a person, it just injures them.

When it comes to wild and crazy deaths, this film lacks them. It just gives us death. MOST people, out of the 80 starting amount, die from a gun shot wound or from their GPS tracking devices exploding in their head. And I do mean that by most, definitely well over half. We have some knife/cutlery related deaths, a couple accident based ones, and a few explosions, but most of them are just regular violence in what could have been a creative film. The trailer implied a lot different film from the tone given.

A lot of screen time is given to the characters actively trying to escape. Making signs to hang, getting through the metal, taking out their “GPS devices” and so on. Perfectly good rational behavior. And that same behavior is why we never really get the all out blood bath the trailers seemed to imply. We get forced into a situation where a few people with power and guns just start killing off random individuals without the thrill behind it.

Overall, I guess what I am getting at is that the film is too serious. The violence doesn’t lead to the fun deaths which doesn’t lead to a fun movie. But it isn’t serious enough that it makes any point either. It just feels meaningless and hollow.

Sure, we have some interesting characters. Gallagher is our voice of reason. McGinley is a creep. Goldwyn is a typical executive. A lot of people play scared office worker quite convincingly. Surprisingly, Sean Gun, James Gunn’s brother, known basically only for Gilmore Girls, is the most exciting character and his actions are fun to watch, but he can not entertain us enough on his own.

The Belko Experiment seemed like it would be an immediate cult classic, but I doubt even a sequel could save the story it tried to piece together.