Tara Reid looking confused after reading the movie script

I decided to review “Incubus” because invariably, every time I’ve sat down to watch TV in the past month, it’s been showing on Chiller, so I’ve unwittingly been subjected to portions of it enough times to equal watching the whole movie at least twice. Despite the repeated viewings, this movie is so poorly written that it took reading plot summaries on the internet (some of them even conflicting) to realize what the movie was really about. Bad writing, combined with disjointed scenes and my brain automatically tuning out Tara Reid’s monotonous drivel when she explained certain key plot moments at length, added up to one horribly frustrating disaster of a movie.

The premise of the movie is the overused, “friends on a road trip, car breaks down because of accident and they are forced to find shelter in a mysterious building” theme that makes you wonder why so many people seem to forget to use common sense when driving with a car full of people in deserted forest areas. Once the inevitable breakdown happens, Tara Reid’s character Jay, and her friends (except for one who decides to stay with the car for no known reason other than proving she is the smartest of the bunch) discover a deserted building/laboratory/abandoned zombie movie set, fall in through a roof and subsequently get trapped inside.

Scary androgynous skinny white boy

Of course, they proceed to alarmingly discover several dead bodies of scientists, plus one who’s still alive and insane, and a semi-naked unconscious bald guy locked in a glass cell with tubes protruding from all over his body, making him look like a skinny white boy version of Frankenstein. The remaining insane scientist kills Jay’s brother Josh while he looks for a generator. Soon after they all find a key to unlock the glass cell and so begins Jay’s obsessive attempt to solve the mystery of the freak in the cell, despite the fact that her brother just died a few moments before.

Jay, a medical student (what?) flips through a few folders and video tapes, and amazingly deduces that the freak in the cell is a convicted murderer who’s execution was faked so the government could use him as a test subject in “remote viewing” experiments. As a result, the “Sleeper” as he’s called, has the ability to invade people’s minds when they are sleeping and take control over their bodies, which explains the deaths of the scientists.

Tara Reid and friends, shockingly wandering the forest

The characters spend the rest of the movie alternately panicking about trying to find a way out of the compound, and trying to analyze the “Sleeper”. This somehow leads to them each falling asleep (like that would happen when you’re in a scary scientific compound full of dead people), being possessed by the freak, and killing each other to the point where the only ones left are Jay (Tara Reid, of course) and the Sleeper. I oversimplified this part, but what I wrote actually makes more sense when you leave out all the unnecessary specifics.

We are so excited to be filming this movie.

I won’t go into greater detail because this movie has so many incongruities it took me several days just to paste together this extremely basic summary. The bland hospital-like colors of the compound they spend the whole movie in, and the hazy, dim lighting further added to my inability to pay attention to the movie for longer than 30 seconds at a time. The only thing that occasionally startled me out of my zombie-like daze was Tara’s hysterical “hiccup sobbing” that occurred at random inappropriate moments throughout the movie.

Tara Reid's "Oscar moment"

It was not surprising that Tara Reid’s character was the one to survive since so much of the movie’s camera shots are devoted to her and her boobs. It’s clear that Tara was meant to stand out in her bright aqua low cut shirt, with gratuitous bend-over shots and repetitive bouncy jogs through the halls that had no direct correlation to the movie. At some point in my life and I can’t remember why, I actually thought Tara Reid was a good actress. I don’t know if it’s because of the excessive weight of her over-sized breast implants, but throughout this movie, it seemed the extent of her dramatic talent was having a constant look on her face that seemed to express a chronic state of painful constipation.

Doesn't this pink lighting make me look scary...

The “Sleeper” character was the only part of the movie that was mildly creepy. Whoever did his make-up job succeeded in creating the unnervingly androgynous android/zombie that I didn’t know I feared until seeing this movie. Even more disturbing was the fact that he could sing creepy sing-song warnings to Jay (“Jay Jay, I’m coming to get you girl, I want to be inside you…[um, what?]) despite the fact that we learn earlier that he bit off his own tongue when he was a child. And although we think Jay kills him in the end, we get a flicker of an attempted movie twist when Jay is rescued (and arrested?) and her eyes glow at the camera as a “sign” that the “Sleeper” did in fact, get his wish of “being inside her”.

Tara Reid...or is it?

It was finally at this point that I was able to make the connection of why the title of the movie is “Incubus” – a lascivious male demon who possesses women while they sleep, impregnating them, or in this case, impregnating themselves into the woman’s brain. It might have helped if the title connection was a bit more obvious earlier in the movie to at least give the viewer some direction of its overall point.

A poster that actually makes the movie seem scary

Basically, this movie was horrid. I can’t believe Chiller played it so many times, forcing me to endure it’s horribleness repeatedly. I forgot to mention that this movie was created with the purpose of being the first “direct-to-download” film, sold exclusively through DVD. This was not a good movie to use to set an example for a new method of movie distribution. I think it doomed the assumed “quality” of all future “direct-to-download” releases.

Plus, I never realized how hard it was to construct a review of a movie that had a horribly disjointed plot. I wasted way too much time on trying to figure this movie out because I don’t really think it was ever supposed to make sense. The target audience of this movie was young males who would be hypnotized by the bouncing of Tara Reid’s giant botched boob-job breasts, thus rendering the need for a discernible plot pointless. Overall, “Incubus” gets one-half of a cheese wedge out of five for just being crap – no quality and not even any real cheesiness to enjoy. Just crap.

"Open Graves" poster

The only thing that narrowly saved “Open Graves” from being a complete disaster was the fact that is was filmed in Spain by a foreign director. It’s long been a mystery to me as to why even “bad” foreign horror movies can still be scary, while the “bad” American horror movies end up just being stupid, almost farcical. I think one of the reasons for this is due to differing approaches to the use of cinematography. In foreign horror films, we often see the grainy auras, the fast blur-like movements, the feeling that what we’re watching is somewhat hazy, like a bad nightmare, giving the movie that element of “spookiness” even when the storyline is badly written. “Open Graves” starring Eliza Dushku  certainly imparts that “spooky” aura but it’s still not quite enough to make you forget that the plot that’s evolving throughout is pretty darn ridiculous.

Eliza Dushku as "Erica" and Mike Vogel as "Jason"

Eliza Dushku is an adequate actress but I don’t think that her “American surfer girl” persona really fit in with this movie. Besides her love interest Jason, played by Mike Vogel, the rest of the cast are either Spanish or European actors that are not recognizable in the US. The fact that these actors are from the area from where the mythical game board originates, adds some validity to the eerie-ness of the movie. Erica (Eliza Dushku ) and Jason however, stand out like sore thumbs…two “white bread” American surf kids surrounded by a group of passionate, mysterious Latin friends who were raised within the culture that created the legend of the cursed game.

Eliza Dushku (in a bikini) as "Erica" and Jose Casasús as "Novio"

It seems comical that Jason would be the one responsible for unleashing the curse of “Mamba” and that he and Erica would be the ones that take initiative to try and thwart the curse when they wouldn’t even be familiar with the creatures referenced in the game.  It would have been somewhat more believable if one of their Latin friends wised up rather than being presented as mindless partygoers only interested in alcohol and sex 24/7. Wouldn’t one of them have heard of the legend of the “Mamba” game at some point in their lives, growing up in Spain, and been able to take the reins of controlling the quickly spreading effects of its curse? Of course not, that would make too much sense. We need the aimless American surfer kids to be the smart ones regarding an ancient cursed board game especially since they’re in a foreign country where everyone routinely speaks English. (Huh?)

Eliza Dushku (again, in a bikini) during "Baywatch musical interlude"

“Open Graves” was oddly interspersed with bizarre “musical interludes” that made me think someone was paying homage to Europe’s strange obsession with “Baywatch” . There were these seemingly random moments where the camera focused on Eliza Dushku getting ready to surf with the sun shining through her hair and some cheesy rock ballad playing in the background. There scenes were definitely not needed and definitely distracted from the minimal “spooky” aura that the movie was attempting to achieve unsuccessfully.

"Mamba" game board

The concept of a “cursed” board game has potential as a focus for a good horror movie, and it has been done before, but it seems like common sense that the associated “game board” should be suitably scary in and of itself. In “Open Graves”, the “ancient” game board was supposed to have been fabricated centuries ago, out of the skin and bones of an executed witch. However, the game in the movie looked immaculate enough where it could have been just produced by Parker Brothers. The writing on the cards and “board” were very intricate, and as we learn later, were supposed to have been written with the blood of the executed witch. Considering that Erica and Jason learned how to play the game pretty quick without having an ancient voodoo priestess or the like, explain it to them, I guess there also must have been some “blood-written” instruction booklet included with the game that we never saw on screen. Those 17^th century religious fanatics were definitely ahead of their time!

Eliza Dushku pouting in cemetery

The premise of the game was that as the players moved around the spaces on the board, they could land on a space that instructed them to pick a card, and that card  would reveal if they were to live (play on) or die (be out of the game). The cards of “death” were inscribed with complex quatrains interspersed with Latin that described how the person was to die. As the player read these poems out loud, I had no idea what they were talking about. Subsequently I did not feel any “impending doom” awaiting their death because I really had no clue as to what their “warning” was. I felt the tension increase among the characters as they read their fate on the card, but I had no idea what it was predicting until after they died and someone explained exactly how the card “foresaw” the specific method of death they had succumbed to.

Eliza Dushku trying to look European

In general, the special effects were acceptable. They weren’t near as cheesy as your typical American-made Syfy movie fare. The explosions looked real, which leads me to believe that the laws regarding creating random explosions in public in Europe are a bit more lax than they are here. Also some good creepy make-up jobs, ranging from a guy who had his eyes clawed out by some crabs to a girl who ages to her death virtually overnight and explodes in a fountain of blood when docs try to do CPR on her. Even the “Mamba” game itself (a reference to the “Black Mamba” snake, which was one of the few extremely cheesy looking effects in the movie) was crafted superbly, looking like an artisan piece with some great calligraphy and miniature sculptures, despite the fact that it looked like it was made in this decade and not during the Spanish Inquisition.

Don't put these in your mouth

This brings me to another point that greatly disturbed me – Did anyone else not notice how often the characters placed the game pieces and cards up to their mouths or noses while they were playing the game? Seriously, even if they didn’t know it was supposedly made out of a witch’s skin and blood, they did get it from some creepy no-legged dude who ran a run-down, dark, dirty voodoo shop. I don’t know if I’d have even been touching those game pieces without wearing rubber gloves

"Open Graves" Spanish ad

The concept for “Open Graves” had potential, but unfortunately the movie couldn’t decide if it wanted to be about an ancient foreign curse or a musical tribute to Eliza Dushku’s bikini bod.  If it had stuck to being a movie about a centuries-old, cursed board game discovered by Europeans familiar with its legend, the storyline could have been developed much more effectively. Instead, the unfolding of the story was very disjointed, almost as if the storyline was continually interrupted to explain the presence of the American surf-kids, most notably Eliza Dushku in a bikini. The only thing really scary about this movie was basically the special effects, so I’m giving “Open Graves” 2 cheese wedges for taking itself too seriously to be entertainingly cheesy while at the same time, not taking its storyline seriously enough.

RSS Aggregator

dqfhyej4ai

"Lightning Strikes" starring Kevin Sorbo

Ok, well maybe he can’t control actual lightning, but there’s a good chance he  could make you believe that he could since he played Hercules on TV for about 7 seasons. I’ve been a fan of Kevin Sorbo ever since “Hercules”and the science-fiction show “Andromeda” were on the air, so I was looking forward to seeing him in the new SyFy movie entitled, “Lightning Strikes”.  The movie trailers were a little “sketchy”, describing a “demon in the lightning” that was attacking people in a rural town where Kevin Sorbo plays the sheriff. I was interested to see if this far-fetched storyline could be kept in the “somewhat believable” realm with Kevin Sorbo at the reins.

Lightning Strike

Immediately in one of the opening scenes we are presented with a scene so unbelievable, that if it were done badly, would have definitely made me give up on the rest of the movie and change the channel.  We see a mother and her son driving down a highway, eventually being “chased” by a bolt of the “super lightning”. They try to outrun it, but when they can’t (lightning is very fast you know), their car is cut cleanly in two as the monstrous bolt of lightning slices right through it.  Being that this was a “b-movie” of sorts, this scene could have easily been extremely cheesy. But, instead of groaning at a lame attempt to make this scene appear believable, I was pleasantly surprised by my friend shouting, “Dude, that was awesome!”

Mom and son running in "Lightning Strikes"

In fact, I was pleasantly surprised throughout the movie in general.  I felt the special effects surpassed my expectations for a typical movie on the Syfy channel. The lightning was fairly realistic, meaning it didn’t look like shots of lightning from another movie that were spliced in. The scenes where the actors interacted with the lightning weren’t horribly fake-looking either. The only complaint I would have is the appearance of the demon/alien inside the lightning. It looked more like an actor in an alien costume that filmed the scene alone in front of a blue screen and as a result, its movements didn’t exactly correlate with whatever it was supposed to be interacting with in the movie.

Kevin Sorbo and SyFy

The acting was definitely “above par”. I was quickly reminded that no matter how bad or “cheesy” a movie is, an actor with veteran acting abilities, such as Kevin Sorbo, can automatically kick it up a notch. It was evident that Kevin was not simply reading his lines, as we see actors doing in a lot of SyFy b-movies. Instead he delivered his lines with a purpose, actually creating a Sheriff that the viewer can identify with and care about, no matter how unbelievable the situation and characters around him were.

Kevin did an excellent job of “grounding” the movie when he was in scenes with “over-the-top” characters, most notably, Todd Jensen as Mayor Fordice, who was portrayed as a highly annoying cross between Max Headroom and Matthew Lesko. I know this dude was meant to be annoying, but he was a one-dimensional caricature and extremely hard to take seriously. It was equally hard to believe that a guy wearing melon and salmon colored business clothes with bleached blonde hair, could ever be elected mayor in a small blue-collar town such as the one portrayed in the movie. The guy was more likely to get his butt kicked outside the bar at closing time and run out of town permanently.

David Schofield plays "Donovan"

The main storyline was simple and a bit dragged out, but overall, it kept my interest, which is not an easy thing to do over the course of 2 hours. The plot centered around the demon that lived in a very intense lightning storm, which actually contained an alternate plane of existence. People could only see and interact with the demon/alien if they were being struck by the lightning, and thus inside of it.  The “lightning demon” had a knack for taking the lives of children, but letting their parents live, leaving the parents immune to further lightning strikes. This sets up the two characters that are out to seek revenge, the  “preacher/adventurer/father” Donovan (David Schofield), and the mom that was driving the car in the beginning of the movie, Nancy (Annabel Wright),  who awakens from a coma to find out that her son was killed after their car was split in two by the super bolt of lightning.

Annabel Wright plays "Nancy"

Thrown into the whole mix is a group of University “storm chasers”, a professor and 2 students, who serve as the scientific “foil” to Donovan’s proclamations of the mythological history of the “lightning demon”. I found the play of these opposing viewpoints very interesting and actually educational, as I learned some interesting true facts about lightning, as well as the mythological stories that illustrated how ancient cultures explained its existence. Other than that though, the “storm chasers” didn’t really have a pivotal role in the plot of the movie.

Double lightning strike

Overall, “Lightning Strikes” exceeded my expectations. It has pretty decent special effects and the quality of the movie was carried mostly by Kevin Sorbo’s acting talent. The storyline was simple and drawn out, but not overly predictable. It was cheesy, but not “groan-worthy”, so I’m giving it 4 cheese wedges for “high cheesiness” combined with “high quality”, which ends up equaling a pretty decent Syfy movie.