Tag: Sara Paxton

I am still atoning for my year and a half of never really doing horror films, but Cheap Thrills is a new one. If you take a quick look at the cast list, you would probably assume it was bad. Most likely you haven’t heard of three of the cast members, and the fourth you will recognize but not for his talent.

I was definitely intrigued by the title and plot line, so I gave this lower budget film a whirl. It is a very simple concept but it can go a lot of places. Kind of like The Purge, I guess.

Cheap Thrills on a cheap set? Checks out.

The story is mostly about one man, Craig (Pat Healy). He has a wife, a kid, and now he is getting kicked out of his home. Evictions suck. But they both lost their job and are having lots of trouble making cash. Not looking too good for their house. So Craig goes out to get a quick drink. There at the bar he meets Vince (Ethan Embry. The main character from Can’t Hardly Wait with a beard), an old high school friend who dropped out and he hasn’t seen in years.

They drink a bit, both of their lives kind of suck for different reasons, but at least there is alcohol right?

But then they meet two strangers: The ever texting and silent Violet (Sara Paxton) and her talkative husband Colin (David Koechner). They are celebrating her birthday and they have wads of cash!

They are looking to have a little fun, so they invite the two “friends” along for the ride. They also start giving out cash like its nothing. In fact, they pay Vince and Craig for them to do some outlandish behavior.

But happens when it starts to escalate? What then? What would Craig do to help protect his family?

This Ethan Embry doesn’t believe in destiny so much.

Living up to its name, Cheap Thrills provides cheap thrills to the characters in the movie and to the viewers watching. Just kidding. The thrills in the movie are anything but cheap, with about 250 thousand dollars overall being up for grabs based on the extremity of the stunt.

With only four characters, three of which are vocal, they actually have to act. The three males all have personalities and we learn about our two friends more and more as the story progresses. Some of the moments were actually quite powerful. They both have needs, and if only one person can win, it can get quite serious.

Not much else I can think to say about this movie, but it took a simple concept and made it really work. Nice job, movie.

When someone sees the title Shark Night 3D they will assume certain things about it. One, that there is a a lot of gore, peopl getting ripped up in bloody disgusting ways. Two, if it is about college kids, sex and naked swimming is bound to happen, and then those people will die. Three, probably they will die because of having sex, or doing drugs, or being bad people, not just dying for no reason.

I can say that this movie has none of the three expectations, and for one obvious reason. It is rated PG-13.

WHY THE FUCK IS A MOVIE LIKE THIS RATED PG-13??

This is about all you will get on option 2.

So yeah, group of college kids going to…a lake house! The “main character” is Sara Paxton, from the picture above. She used to live in this area of Louisiana, and left for college to get educated! It shows, because no wone they meet in town seem to have any brains. Not even local sheriff, Donal Logue, or that guy from Grounded For Life.

The main guy, if any, is played by Dustin Milligan, but they also have Joel David Moore, or that guy from Dodgeball / Grandma’s Boy. So yeah. Eventually a shark attack happens. Not sure whats going on. Sharks take out boats too. Other twists and turns. And then it ends, on a very very vague note. Not in “oh man, what happens?” way, but a “okay, they won! Hey look another shark” kind of way. Boring.

Oh no watch out!!!!!!

Also, the sharks in this movie. They look horrible. Fake and bad. Not even scary, just dumb. Obviously CGI’d, and CGI’d badly. Might even make you throw up. Which is a reaction the movie might be going for, since there cannot be any gore.

The plots for the characters and how they die are stupid. One guy, for some reason, wants to get vengeance so badly that he takes a spear and walks into the lake, just to try and fight it. What the hell? His whole character doesn’t make sense.

Usually I give it a 0 only if I am angry at it. While I am not as angry as I normally am for an 0, I am angry that they attempted to do this sort of movie, with the rating restrictions in place.