Tag: Matt Corboy

Never have I ever….made a list.

Actually, now that I made that dumb first sentence, I will note that there has been a few horror films based on dumb drinking games. We’ve had Truth or Dare. Would You Rather. Has there been a strange horror movie made on Never Have I Ever? Someone needs to get on that if not.

The Never List is not a horror film, or based on a dumb teenage drinking game. But it is horrible, and it is dumb, but I will get more on that later.

Hey look, they cloned Olivia Munn and made her young again. 

Eva (Fivel Stewart) and Liz (Brenna D’Amico) are best friends. Known each other their whole lives. Eva is a bit of an overachiever and doer-, Liz is a bit more wild, but they hang out, pretend to be rock stars, draw and like the same things. It is a good relationship.

It was good. Until Liz had to go and die one night, presumably in a car crash (they don’t really explicitly say). Eva is now devastated. Her best friend. Gone. During her junior year of high school, which is usually one of the top 4 hardest years in high school. Eva has a lot going on. She agreed to run for class president for her senior year. She is trying to pick out a junior prom theme. She is trying to get good grades for colleges. Her parents (Keiko Agena, Matt Corboy), especially her mom, are making sure she is always doing things to make her life in the future better.

Well, Liz and Eva had made up cartoon characters that they drew in stories. They were actually more badass than either of them. And they would make up things for them to do, that neither of them would ever dream of doing. It made up their Never List, because they are good girls, damn it. In a moment of weakness, Eva decides to sexually assault someone running in the park, one of the items on the list! (Well, it was to pinch a stranger’s ass, and she did it, so I am not wrong with my description).

Liz has a lot going on, and she wants to just throw it all away to be an artist. She wants to raise money for a summer program with her favorite graphic novelist, because her parents would never agree to that. And sure, if she gets stuff done on the list, that would also be swell. Who cares if she throws away the rest of her life in the process. Grief is weird I guess?

Also starring Andrew Kai, Anna Grace Barlow, Jonathan Bennett, and Ryan Cargill.

Hey, you know what really helps with grief? Cocaine. 

Normally this sort of film, which plays out like a made for TV movie, would be the type of thing I still probably would have avoided and given a 1 out of 4 if I had to see it. It isn’t fun, or dramatic, not sure which way it really wants to go. It is pretty damn basic. The things on the list range from harmless, to sexual assault. Not just ass pinching. She needs to trick someone into taking Viagra to embarrass him in public. This leads to a bunch of homophobic slurs being used, and the movie does a really poor job of quelling that aspect. Like…really poor.

The acting was really low across the board. Especially when it came to the sad scenes about the characters death. Just absolutely unbelievable acting. It was also true in the extremely predictable pot brownie scene. And the extremely predictable lies to protect people scenes. Yeah, that is all this is.  Predictable garbage.

But what really put me over the hump to make this a 0 instead of a 1, was the bad audio in two music based scenes. There is a concert scene, and then later on during junior prom, a live singing scene. Both of them sounded so fake and clearly just audio being played it allowed for zero emersion. The club had no noise and chatter and rough sounds, and people talking or cheering or shouting. It was bizarre. And the ending fun scene went from regular talking to, oh, this singer is a superstar, different voice, music appears, background vocals, you name it.

I don’t think I am petty here. It was just already a bad movie. And just things like what I mentioned above, combined with the acting and assault stuff, in this year, just seems like a bad movie from the 90’s coming out 20 years too late. Shit, maybe that actually is a young Olivia Munn? Who knows.

I apologize. I have been doing mostly main stream movies lately. My only weird outlet has been in terms of documentaries, which also have been pretty standard lately.

But no, I need to take time every once in awhile to do something weird. Those indie and low budget movies you haven’t heard about. Which is why I picked Circle today. I heard about it a few weeks ago, and since I could remember the title, knew it was weird, and it was short (hey, I have time crunches some times), it was the perfect movie to review.

Fifty people. Strangers (mostly). They find themselves in a two tiered circle. You can visually see it above. They are each standing in their own red circle. If they try to step off, an alarm goes off. If they touch someone else, an alarm goes off. And in the middle of the circle is a mysterious sphere.

There is a African American man (Coley Speaks). A husband (Matt Corboy) and a wife (Julie Benz). A rich man (Daniel Lench), a pastor (Kurt Long), and a Bruce (David Reivers).

Every few minutes a deep thumping sound occurs from the center, and sure enough, a lightning beam shoots out of it and kills one of our fifty participants. Fuck. Don’t worry, you won’t get piles of bodies, they get whisked away, somewhat magically into the darkness around the room, never to be seen again. Turns out if you leave your circle or touch people after the warning, you too get shot and killed. Definitely a rough life.

There is a bearded man (Kaiwi Lyman). There is the first man that talks (Kevin Sheridan), and a silent man (Muneer Katchi). There is a college kid (Carter Jenkins), an atheist (Rene Heger) and an Eric (Michael Nardelli).

Oh see those arrows? Turns out if they turn their hands, the arrows light up around the room and only they can see their arrow. Turns out they get to vote on who is the next to get killed every time the thumping starts. Now things get interested. Who do they decide to kill? What happens when there is a tie? Does the last person alive get to leave? What if there are two people left, do they tie and both die? Fuck.

There is a soldier (Jordi Vilasuso), an Asian kid (Lawrence Kao) and a lawyer (Michael McLafferty). There is a pretty girl (Sara Sanderson), a tattooed man (Cesar Garcia) and a lesbian (Mercy Malick).

There is a cancer survivor (Lisa Pelikan), a one handed man (Zachary James Rukavina), a pregnant woman (Allegra Masters) and an 11 year old girl (Molly Jackson).

I do love me some psychological thrillers. I also love me some movies that take place for the most part in one room. I also love me some dialogue based movies. Needless to say, this movie has them all. An interesting premise, a constant guessing game who is going to die, and lots of arguing. Everyone is talking to save themselves, but some people get caught up in the moment. You can see several games and plans characters have to ensure their own survival, and it is wonderful. I also definitely enjoyed the ending.

There is one bad thing, technically. The acting. There is a lot of people involved, so it is all over the place. A lot of it is kind of shit. But I forgave it for the nice concept and story.

Honestly not much more I can say about this one. Under 90 minutes, on Netflix, and a nice way to spend the evening. Unless you aren’t into slightly weird shit.