Tag: Nolan Gerard Funk

April is rarely seen as the month for horror films. Usually it is the month for sports movies, or dramas, or I guess now super hero movies.

I hope Truth or Dare is successful, but while definitely going strong on the Truth or Dare aspect. I don’t want it to be an introduction piece and then oh no, killer, lets freak out. I need it to last the whole film.

I hope it introduces a franchise of party game horror films. I want to see the follow ups of Never Have I Ever, Spin the Bottle, Suck and Blow, and of course culminating to the film where all the pieces come together: Seven Minutes In Heaven.

Note, none of this relates to the movie Would You Rather, which came out half a decade ago. But they might try and remake it to add it to the fold, with a new, sexier cast.

I’d like to think part of the audition process for this film was to try and make that face naturally.

Down in Mexico, we have curses, because, Mexico I guess. Some sort of xenophobic nonsense.

Our hero of this is Olivia (Lucy Hale), a good person, she builds houses, cares about the greater good and all of that silly stuff. She planned on doing good things over spring break, but her BFF Markie (Violett Beane) sort of forces her to join them down in Mexico! Last Spring Break before their friend group moves on and gets old and less friendly.

They do things, have a great time, and eventually Olivia meets Carter (Landon Liboiron), an intelligent individual clearly, like her. They are about to leave but they agree to follow him to a cool place to have some more fun. Yay mysteries!

Sure enough, Carter gets the uneasy group to pretend to be middle schoolers and play a rousing game of Truth or Dare. Everyone goes around the circle, doing a dare or spilling their beans, until we learn the truth from Carter. He brought in the group to force them to join this game, to hopefully free himself from its cure. They are haunted now, and if they refuse the task given to them, then they will die. If they lie, they die. And if they refuse to play, well…

Starring as the rest of the main friend group: Tyler Posey, Sophia Ali, Nolan Gerard Funk, and Hayden Szeto. Also starring Gary Anthony Williams, Brady Smith, and Sam Lerner.

And here is another one for good measure.

You know what can make a good horror film? Believable actors, for one. The situations don’t have to be too believable. I can suspend my belief in a movie for scary aliens, monsters, demons, ghosts, ex lovers, possessed things, invincible serial killers, whatever. Sure. As long as it makes sense in that world. But if they introduce things and seemingly just change things on the go, and give no real fucks about the events? Well, that is shitty.

In this scenario, it takes far too much time for everyone to get on board with what is happening. I think two of the friends need to die before people start realizing that something bad is happening. We just get to watch friends argue and get mad about spoiling each others shit up with the truth. And afterwards? Well, it is mostly friends still being dumbasses as a group.

First of all, this movie is all over the place. With one of the dares that occurs, it feels like a really poor final destination movie, and then never really goes back to that concept. “Why don’t they just all say truth?” Well because they suck. And the movie wanted to add rules later on. This movie plays out the dumb scenario of turning a dare into telling the truth as well, just because. We have characters who over and over again get upset over the truth, but they know that if the truth wasn’t said, their friend would die. But who cares right?

The ending is the lowest point of the film, so its interesting they decide to leave us with a sour taste in our mouths. After a scene where our heroes try and get the upper hand, we find out that it still didn’t work as planned. Then they try one more plan which, as previously established earlier in the movie, won’t do shit for them at all.

I am going to put some spoilers here. The previous Truth or Dare group hoped that by putting new people in the group they would be freed. It did not, it just made it bigger. They still had to do the question just the others didn’t know about it. And despite being merged groups, they only bring up these facts when it is convenient, in lazy writing. For some reason one of them can’t do it if he is alone? Even though they have shown others have to do it when alone? For some reason order only matters for this group, and the others can just be asked when convenient for the plot? It basically shows that the two groups have their own games on it and don’t actually affect each other, meaning adding more people will not buy you any time, because your game is still limited to those players. And yet that is just what our “heroes” try to do at the end. Get more time. With this terrible, terrible, strategy, all they did was fuck over others, while also dooming themselves right after the credits role anyways.

It is just such a goddamn stupid movie. It is never really well established. When they exposition us enough in the film to try and piece it together, it just doesn’t really grok well. The strange face thing wasn’t good, wasn’t scary, and just seemed silly. So many jump scares that were pointless and lazy. And again, it is just very stupid.

I wouldn’t dare my worst enemy to watch even half of this movie. That’s the truth.

Originally, I planned to release my review of The Canyons alongside my review of Lovelace, but traveling and conferences got in the way.

Seriously. It would have been a double review.

Why them together? Well, Lovelace is a story of a porn star played by a regular actress.

The Canyons is a “regular story” being lead by a porn star.

In one of those films, there is a different type of smoking. Pole smoking. Okay, both films have that.

Christian (James Deen) is a movie producer, living in LA. He has some trust fund money, so he is living large, doing coke, and having wild sex parties. He also funds shitty movies. Sometimes he makes his own. Of course when I say he makes his own, I mean adult based film. Bow chicka, good sirs.

Well, he is currently dating Tara (Lindsay Lohan), someone else who is now related to the film industry, thanks to Christian. He likes her a lot too, more than any other skank he has slept with. He also likes that she likes to swing with him and other couples as part of his strange video film. She likes him too. Just not as much as she likes Ryan (Nolan Gerard Funk).

Tara might have been seeing him for years in secret, and now she was able to get Ryan a job on an upcoming movie Christian is funding. Probably a good idea.

Just kidding, that just makes Christian rage. Like, a lot. He gets jealous, thinking she is cheating (which she is, but so is he). Like really jealous. Like, someone might die jealous. On snap.

Also Amanda Brooks and Tenille Houston are in here. One is a lying ex, the other works on films. Take your guesses!

In situations like this in real life, I’d wonder who is happier: the porn star having sex with an actor/actress, or the actor/actress having sex with a porn star.

In case you missed it, James Deen is the porn star. One of the biggest male ones of the day, he has recently starred in DP My Wife With Me 2, Don’t Tell My Husband 3, Anal Buffet 8, Jack Attack, and James Deen Loves Butts. Yeah, pretty big deal.

Lindsay Lohan, not a porn star, just a crackhead, and she is very naked in this film. Lots of people get naked, and you can see dicks too. Overall, this film is definitely not worth if just to see this woman naked. Just google that shit, weirdo.

This is a film that decides it wants to make it as uninteresting as possible, despite the huge naked sex factor. I had to tag this film as “Erotic Thriller”, which might be a first. The acting isn’t necessarily bad, just non important. There are no real plot twists or turns at all. The only thriller aspect comes near the end, when James Deen does bad things to people, and then we end shortly after.

His character is fucked up, and we got a fucking lame movie. That is all.

House At The End Of The Street has had a little bit of an interesting history. It was actually filmed before Jennifer Lawrence went on to do The Hunger Games. But hey, releasing it before hand is bad for business. Why not ride the hot young actress coattails, and put it off, like, a year.

Heck, I am even fine with their marketing campaign. Shortening the title to HATES is a lot more convenient. Just annoying that it ignores the “of The” part of the title. Can’t even argue that it is unimportant articles and shit, since the “At the” is prominently features in the acronym. Oh well, making movie titles into acronyms (or vice versa!) is a lot of work.

Warning: This movie might feature a lot of miss Lawrence rolling about and running in this outfit.

Elissa (Lawrence) and her divorced mother, Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) have just moved into the house of their dreams. It is actually affordable. Why? Because the house “next door” has a secret. And by secret, I mean well known fact that a double murder occurred there. A girl, Carrie-Ann, killed both of her parents one night, and escaped off into the woods. They think she drowned, but never found her body.

She did leave her brother alive though, how nice! Ryan (Max Thieriot) mostly keeps to himself after the incident. After all, a fucking double murder happened, and he is still in the house. The town wants to buy his house and demolish it, but it is all he has left, so he refuses to sell, not caring about everyone else’s poor property values. The only person who doesn’t give him crap is a local cop (Gil Bellows).

Unfortunately for Elissa, Ryan is the only guy who actually seems decent. Tyler (Nolan Gerard Funk) is just as mean and pompous as the rest of the town, and just wants some sex. Can’t have any of that. So she tries to fix Ryan instead. Hopefully it is not weird either that it looks like his sister is still alive and living in a closet in his house. Whoops!

“Why is there a girl up in your trunk? In your trunk? In your trunk?”

On second thought, the title doesn’t really make that much sense. There is no real street here, just seems like random houses in the woods, despite it being a mostly rich like area. Even though their house is “right next” to Ryan’s, it is also as if there is still a big forest in between them. Can’t even tell how much of his house is on the same street. Plus, it seems like no one else lives close by. How could it ruin their property values?

Semantics. I was kind of bored by the movie to start. It had “Jennifer Lawrence” singing original songs at the start. Or at least that was the plan. Apparently someone else sang over her to make it sound a bit more better. That is silly.

But by the end, as it is with most horror movies, some twists began to happen and I actually liked them. It actually added some backstory and reason to the actions of the main characters, pretty surprising for a horror movie. Not enough to make it exceptional, but enough to make it kind of cool. For one viewing. Definitely wasn’t really scary either, felt a lot more like a thriller. But don’t worry, you will get to see at least two deaths.