ATM

Some movies have such little thought put into the final product that they make you wonder if you're not just seeing a series of bloopers strung together. That is the case in ATM, a tedious, poorly acted, written, and directed horror movie that's about as scary as well actually going to an ATM. Basic plot is that three coworkers (the most notable being Josh from "Drake and Josh") get stuck in ANTM by a hooded figure that bashes anyone's brains out that gets in his way. They can't get out and it seems like he has no interest in getting in, so it becomes a terribly dull battle between the two sides. As if the concept of being stuck in an ATM wasn't silly enough (especially considering some of the past movies dealing with being stuck in such worse places; an elevator, the ocean, underground etc) the movie just feels completely clueless. Nothing remotely interesting or creepy happens at all. Add on three terrible performances, dialogue that feels as if it was made on the spot, and a ridiculously lackluster "twist" ending, and you have a giant fail of a movie that makes you wish you could get a refund of your time and/or money.

0/4

Forget Me Not

If Forget Me Not was an essay, it would be one with some pretty good body paragraphs and a rather disappointing conclusion and flimsy beginning. Shame that it had so much potential but unfortunately Forget Me Not just doesn't really know how to start or end with power.

Forget Me Not is all about Sandy (Carly Schroeder from Mean Creek) and her friends enjoying their time on graduation weekend. They should be having a blast, but after an odd encounter with an unidentified girl while playing the game "Forget Me Not" (which pretty much just looks like Hide and Seek in a graveyard), things begin to go wrong. It's up to Sandy to find out why this is happening and how to stop it before her and all of her friends are completely forgotten.

My favorite thing about this movie is easily what happens after each person is killed; the memory of them is totally erased. It's a pretty inventive idea that actually hasn't been done to death which is a rarity in basic slashers such as this one. Not only is it creepy based merely on the idea of totally losing any type of memory of your friend after they're gone, but it also adds an extra layer of mystery about Sandy when her friends start disappearing. It makes you wonder if everything is at is seems or if there's something going on with her that's being saved for the grand conclusion.

For a low budget horror movie, the effects were pretty decent as well. I loved how the ghosts would show up on the scene and the most recently murdered friend would join them. So by the end of the movie, the main characters are being chased by their entire clan....who they pretty much have no memories of. Weird. The death scenes aren't out of this world amazing, but at least it's not like most other horror movies where everyone just gets stabbed or ripped apart; everyone dies in completely different ways, and I'd be lying if I said that the death scenes involving an open grave and a wood chipper didn't bring a smile to my face.

Now for the bad....the beginning scenes are absolutely painful to endure. I've never met anyone in my life that speaks as ridiculously asinine as the characters in this movie do. It's so ridiculously contrived you would swear that some parts of this movie were written by someone with the attitude of a 60 year-old on how the youngsters communicate. 4 minutes in, and I couldn't wait for the death scenes to start happening just to get the characters to stop talking. It's quite odd how the performances get stronger as the circumstances get less and less realistic. You would think acting like a partying teenager would be easier than acting like a teenager getting chased around by a recluse ghost who makes your entire memory fade away.

As for the ending, I was pretty disappointed as well. Towards the climax, several ideas popped into my head about what I thought/was hoping the big twist would be (because you know there's going to be one...come on). Sadly enough, none of these ideas happened on screen. The final scenes feel so choppy, rushed, forced, and nonsensical (even by this movie's logic...shit doesn't add up), you would almost swear that this was the ending to a completely different horror movie and not the one that started building promise after the initial painful and stiff opening scenes. Just do yourself a favor, turn off the movie around the point the remaining characters head to the convent/hospital and we can forget the rest of it ever happened. :)

2/4



Wrath of the Titans

This is going to be a quick review, in fact, some might say my review will last as long as it took to come up with the plot of this movie. It's a quick review because I really don't have a ton to say about Wrath of the Titans actually. I thought the previews looked horrible, most of the reviews I read were horrible, so it's not much of a crushing blow that the actual movie turned out to be...you guessed it, horrible.

The "plot" deals with Perseus (Sam Worthington) leaving his life of peace to go save his father Zeus (Liam Neeson) from Zeus's brother Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and Zeus's other son Ares (Edgar Ramirez). Sounds like a Jerry Springer episode yeah? There's a ton of other shit going on with fighting and about 10,000 other names that you almost need a subscription to Greek Mythology Weekly to keep up with, but yeah that's the basic point.

Like most action movies these days, Wrath of the Titans brings the action (not very well, which we'll get into), but it's not much of a movie. There's absolutely nothing interesting or even remotely strong with this story (if I can summarize it in two sentences....that should tell you right there), the writing is so archaic and borderline embarassing at times you can see the cobwebs being blown off the script and the acting is so unbearable. This cast had a lot of of talent but if they're not overacting like Ramirez or Fiennes, they're completely wooden like Worthington or Neeson. It's a shame to watch so many good actors go down the drain along with this movie.

And the action scenes.....God, where do I begin? First off, for a movie with the word titans in it, there sure as fuck is barely any titans. They show up in the last 20 minutes (probably around the time I began going into my coma) and fight for about 5 minutes and go away. Big whoop. The other action scenes don't fare any better either. Though the scenery is quite impressive, everything in it is definitely far from it. You can almost smell the CGI in just about every scene and it's pretty much the equivalent of sitting down and watching someone play a video game for 99 minutes= not very fun at all. At least on a game though, you can quit early and save your money as opposed to Wrath of the Titans that feels like the game from Hell that will never end.

0/4