Well... Netflicks has been steadily sending us movies and I've been steadily watching them. Except The Others. I skipped that one.
Quick Sum up...
Panic Room: Lukewarm suspense, lackluster performances, and just all around disappointing.
Final Destination: For a "please unplug your brain before entering the theater" movie, it was pretty cool....
Acting: Eh.... Jodie Foster doesn't do panic as well as she does other things. In this film, it took threatening her daughter in order to get her to stop pressing her fingers to her temples in the classic "You can't see me, but boy do I have a headache" sort of mannerism. Kristen Stewart is an impressively expressive little girl, except, of course, that for about the first 20 minutes of the film, I thought she was a boy. Country music singer Dwight Yoakam plays the evil, nasty bad guy and Forest Whitaker plays the nice, caring bad guy, with Jared Leto hanging out to play the good looking but rather stupid bad guy. It amazed me that there was very little chemistry between any of these actors and actresses. Even Foster and Stewart in some cute mother-daughter scenes were unable to manage more than scratch the surface of emotions. And the one time they came close, the script changed the subject so fast I was almost positive that I'd imagined it.
Panic Factor: none. I wasn't nervous or scared or even startled. And the only surprise I got was that Whitaker didn't manage to get away. Which seemed sort of a shame.
Special Effects: Well, the fire was sort of cool. The rest of it was pretty standard fare.
Plot: Well... my biggest problem was this: we have a panic room... castle keep... etc etc. With no food? I mean, yes, you don't expect to be in there for long, since the idea is to hide inside, call the police and the police come rescue you. However, there were three cases of survival gear in that room. And no food. No concentrates, no canned goods, no beef jerky. Excuse me? I don't think so. Some paranoid rich guy comes up with this scheme and he's not going to think of MOUTHWASH and forget to pack a candy bar!
Overall: Bleh... bleh bleh bleh.
Acting: Um... it's a horror movie, people don't act, they give passionate speeches just before they die and they scream a lot. Not to mention the fact that you've got your various steriotype roles. Here's Devon Sawa as the "reluctant hero" and Ali Larter as "the brainy, but outcast girl that's really quite pretty" and Kerr Smith as the "god, what an asshole popular guy, because of course, they all are, that's why they're popular, because they're such assholes." Forgive me, rambling a bit there... Despite all this, it works. Sawa is both cute and vulnerable. Larter looks more like she's really talking and less like she's reading off a teleprompter than most horror movie heroines. Smith has a lot of bravado, but he really portrays the fear and aggressive denial. I was impressed.
Panic Factor: 7 (scale of ten). The death scenes, including the dream sequence where Alex is imagining the airplane crash before it happens, are just beautiful. The earlier ones have nice build up... here you see the instrument of death... cue creepy music... cue wind for no reason... cue amorphous blob floating around in the reflection... but there's no slasher in this film, no evil "madman with a pick-axe" sort of thing... so all the deaths are accidental. Death in the everyday mundane. And my god, I'll never be able to hear "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver with a straight face again. (Of course, that's assuming I could in the first place, but we'll let that pass).
Special Effects: Fairly standard. Lots of bottled blood and nasty sharp things. I thought the bit with the downed live wire was overdoing it a lot, but the end scene really made up for it... hehe!
Plot: Well... it's a horror movie, it doesn't really have a plot, does it? I mean, the whole idea of a horror movie is to give you a bit of a chill, remind you that your life doesn't suck that much, and take $10 from your wallet and give it to the movie company... I still liked it. It set up the premise and was surprisingly true to its premise. If you accepted the idea that death had a design and Alex screwed it up, but it was going to get back its own... everything else was inevitable.
Overall: Get some popcorn, sit back, enjoy. And don't play John Denver music.