Tag: Amy Seimetz

I have never been one of those geeks super into the Alien franchise. After all, that shit is scary, and I didn’t watch horror for the longest time.

I can understand the appeal, but after Alien and Aliens, the only other film in that series I have seen was Prometheus, so there is that. Allusions and references will mean nothing to me.

So I am not excited to go into this film, but I am a bit excited it isn’t just “Prometheus 2” or anything. Because I want my scientists to be smart and not watch the opposite of that. I do want nice scares as well. But mostly, I want a shit ton of Danny McBride.

I hope this isn’t Danny McBride.

Alien: Covenant is set about ten years after the events of Prometheus, aboard the ship named Covenant. It is a colony ship, with a ship ton of bodies on board while asleep. There are also hundreds of embryos frozen and about 15 or so crew members to run the thing if problems arise or when they get close to the new planet. Lastly, they have a lovely robot helper to run their ship while they sleep in Walter (Michael Fassbender), who is totally different than David from Prometheus!

Sure enough, some bad stuff happens, their voyage gets stopped, they have to make repairs, and their captain dies! Oh no! Now Oram (Billy Crudup) is in charge, and he wants them to get back on schedule asap before more bad stuff happens. Daniels (Katherine Waterston) is the new second in command, and she was also in a relationship with the captain so she is pretty upset. Tennessee (Danny McBride) is their pilot/tech guy or something and Lope (Demián Bichir) is some sort of head of security, maybe.

While doing repairs, they received a faded distress beacon from a place not too far away, and according to scanners it is ALSO a perfect planet for them to live at. They decide it is their duty to check it out, saving them 7 years on a different awesome planet would be sweet. Once they get there though, spores, aliens, a lot of problems. But hey, they also meet David, so we get to find out what happened after Prometheus. Ain’t that swell?

And here is a bunch of the crew actors! Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, and Nathaniel Dean. With maybe, MAYBE, about 2 minutes of screen time for James Franco.

Front chest bursting is so 30 years ago.

Alien: Covenant is a film that wants to explore some pretty deep questions in a hypothetical setting. It wants to talk about Rogue AI. It wants to talk about where we came from (like Prometheus before it). It wants to talk about the next stages of evolution for beings. It wants to talk about what it means to be a creator of life, a mother, without necessarily giving birth in the traditional sense. It wants to play on human emotions at the loss of a loved one (because straight up every crew member is apparently in a relationship with another crew member). A lot of good discussions and themes can arise from this film, some of which is subtle and some of which is blasted across the screen into your faceholes.

But you know what Alien: Covenant does not feel like? An Alien movie. Oh, we get a least one Xenomorph in this film, but it kind of sucks. It is defeated easily, with the smaller aliens seemingly posing a bigger challenge. And this movie isn’t scary. We got some gross scenes? Yeah, a bit, but I have seen a lot worse. We have some people flipping their shit of course. And we have a lot of crew members make terrible decisions over and over again, a big problem with Prometheus. But I never really felt scared. I never really felt the tension.

The best elements from Covenant would fall under the Drama Genre, which would be fine if that was the goal of this film, to make it a drama. This is a franchise known for changing its genre between films, and it could have really fucking worked (although, admittedly, people would probably still be disappointed). But it still tries to hype up its action and horror moments which for the most part just fall flat.

The best part of the movie is Fassbender and Fassbender, including the best scenes where he has to act with himself. I probably said something similar in the last movie about the “best parts”. But the twists feel obvious, McBride isn’t even used as a comic relief, it is setting up for a future movie (which I will note I have no idea where it really wants go with), and above all, just not as good as most people would have hoped.

But hey, Ridley Scott wants to make like, six more of these, and he is super old, so I guess that is what will happen.

It took awhile, but You’re Next is finally in theaters. Originally premiering in a film festival in 2011, for some strange reason it took two years to hit theaters.

Maybe in 2011, the world wasn’t ready for a movie like this. Maybe we needed the Scary Movie franchise to officially drive itself into the ground before people were willing to accept a horror movie with comedic elements in it. Or they made dozens of changes and had legal issues to deal with. Who is to say, really?

Blood is the new make up.

Paul (Rob Moran) and Aubrey (Barbara Crampton) are about to celebrate their 35th Wedding Anniversary. They also just happen to be rich. Paul used to work for a defense contractor, so he left the company with a very snazzy severance package, and now they live in the lap of luxury. They decide to host their entire family to a nice dinner in a mansion in the middle of the nowhere. Because that is what rich people do.

Usually the 35th anniversary is coral/jade, not gore and violence. Oh well, the times they are a changing.

They also have four children, all in relationships. That just means there are plenty of people who can die. The main son is Crispian (AJ Bowen) with his girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson). He often butts heads with his younger brother Drake (Joe Swanberg) and Drake’s wife, Kelly (Margaret Laney). There is also the only sister, Aimee (Amy Seimetz) with her film making boyfriend Tariq (Ti West), and the youngest son Felix (Nicholas Tucci) with his girlfriend Zee (Wendy Glenn).

During dinner, an argument breaks out. Then suddenly, one of our poor house guests finds a crossbow bolt through their head. Ouchies.

Panic ensures, as bolts continue to rain into the dinner room. The family knows only one thing. People are outside (and maybe even inside) the house and looking to kill them. They don’t know why or who set it up. What the three masked killers did not know, is that Erin grew up on a survivalist reservation until she was 15, so she knows how to handle herself in emergency or life threatening situations.

Yep, looks like we have an blood bath on our hands.

Animal masks haven’t been cool since the 70’s. They’re bringing ’em back.

The weird thing about calling You’re Next a comedy/horror film is that it is not a parody or a spoof. I’d say that You’re Next is unique, and almost its own new genre of film.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of death, a lot of gore, and a lot of creative deaths. It is just that some of the deaths happen to be humorous. The banter between brothers is humorous. The inability for certain characters to die (and instead just get hurt over and over) is humorous.

If you have never heard the song Lookin’ for the Magic by the Dwight Twilley Band from 1977, then you will find it stuck in your head by the end of the film. Who says upbeat music can’t be in horror?

What I enjoyed most about this film is that I really couldn’t guess what would happen next, and believe me I tried. I would say I had a 30% success rate at actually predicting how certain characters would die, what the traps would do, and who was responsible for it all.

The movie itself isn’t too long and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is doubtful you will recognize any of the cast members from other acting roles. The brother Drake was great, and our leading lady Erin was incredible. It is refreshing to see such a BAMF actress kick so much butt. I could be wrong, but I think only one character actually fell down while being chased, a normally overused horror staple.

You’re Next might not scare everyone, but I think it is a refreshing take on the genre, with high levels of slasher and gore thrown into the mix. Above all else, it is certainly entertaining.