The Haunting In Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013)

Let's take a moment to pause here and consider the following: The name of this movie is "The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia." Let that sink in. Go back over it again if you need to, because it might take a second read to register on the basis of the human brain not normally being capable of processing something that catastrophically stupid on the first go-around. If it's helpful I'll inform you that at no point does the film travel to Connecticut, so if you were giving it the benefit of the doubt, you can just go ahead and stop.

Has it sunk it yet how abyssally low one's expectations should be for this film based on the title alone? I mean, there's dumb and then there's something of this caliber. And while the old adage suggests that we shouldn't, I will posit that judging a book by its cover, or in this case a movie and its title, can occasionally be very informative. If they called it something that mind-bendingly dense, what kind of effort could have really been put forward here? You can call making assumptions in poor taste, but I'm telling you that any film that is so transparent in its effort to tie itself in with a movie that has nothing to do with it, so much so that even the name doesn't make any damn sense, does not care one bit about anything that it's doing. And that's assuming that people actually remember the first movie anyway, which they don't.

Quick recap: It sucked.

"Ghosts of Georgia" is about a family who moves into an old creepy house in the middle of nowhere in Georgia. The mother, Lisa (Abigail Spencer), is a medium who hates the fact that she's a medium, and keeps her visions under control with the help of medication. This keeps her in a state of being perpetually kind of tweaked-out, since we often see her while she's coming down off of the meds, a process which leaves her feeling terrible and also provides the movie most of its opportunities to cram in a jump scare as the ghosts and orchestra stings start showing up.

This runs in her family, as Lisa's mother had it (and apparently killed herself over it), as does her sister Joyce (Katee Sackhoff). And now her young daughter, Heidi (Emily Alyn Lind), is also beginning to show psychic powers, which make themselves readily apparent when she starts talking to "Mr. Gordy," a creepy looking ghost who was the former resident of the house they now live in. And since the house also functioned as a way-station for the Underground Railroad way back in the day, complete with some nefarious goings-on, there's plenty of ghosts to go around and scare the bajesus out of the ladies.

"Excuse me. Can I borrow a cup of face?"

I'm actually kind of on board with the idea of the plot. I like the idea of a psychic being tormented by their visions and making themselves a pill junky just to make it all stop, and her watching her daughter begin the process herself does make for interesting drama. However, in a disturbingly popular trend in ghost movies, "Ghosts of Georgia" falls victim to two things that make it not necessarily bad per se, since I admit that I've seen far worse in the realms of horror, but still dull and ultimately pointless.

The first problem is that nearly every scare in this film is a jump scare accompanied by an orchestra sting. There are occasions where that tactic can work, but it's best when it's used exceedingly rarely, and it's the exceedingly rare horror film that adheres to that, which this one is not. To the film's credit they do have a couple scares that are left subtle and quiet, which are some of the scarier moments in the film, but at no point does "Ghosts of Georgia" come across any more scary than any other random, tame horror flick made to scare high school girls since they would jump at a Pop Tart coming out of a toaster.

The second problem that is baffling to me as to why it's so common is the fact that the ghosts really don't pose much of a threat to the characters. Or at least in this film, the extent of their powers is left really vague and inconsistent. For instance, despite there being a lot of ghosts around the house, there's only one bad one. And while most of what he does is just kind of stand there and look menacing, when he does (finally) do something that directly harms a person, the effect is short-lived and almost immediately reversed. So when he's got a blade to Lisa's neck later, why should I be afraid? Is it in her head? Can he actually hurt her? It didn't seem to be particularly lethal when he was performing otherworldly taxidermy on Katee Sackhoff, which would seem to me to be quite fatal. So what's the deal? He doesn't seem very dangerous when it all boils down to it, an observation made more troublesome when you take into account this film's bodycount, which is exactly zero.

Oh come on, Katee. Stop screwing around and walk it off. You're fine.

That's right. "Ghosts of Georgia" boasts a death tally of nothing. Nobody dies in this film. This is a horror movie where everyone who wasn't already a ghost sees the end credits. I'm not quite sure how that qualifies as horror, but then again they are slightly shackled to the fact that is is "Based on a True Story," an absurd claim that I'm sure only extends to the fact that it's true that at one time a family moved down to Georgia, and slavery used to be a thing. Past that I doubt that a lady did battle with an evil spirit before calling on other ghosts to attack it in a spooky tornado.

I have reservations as to the voracity of these claims.

I also can't get behind any movie where it's the good ghosts doing most of the scaring. Perhaps I'm begin naive, which makes sense because I am not in fact a ghost, but if I were and I was trying to get a psychic to help me, maybe looming over them in the middle of the night and appearing out of nowhere to make them crap themselves in fear wouldn't be the best way to convey my message. Maybe if they smiled once instead of always have their "I'm going to skin you" face on, their cause would be advanced. Of course then the film would lose about 80% of its scares, and we can't have that now can we? So sure, go ahead. Make the good ghosts out to be villains even though they're not doing anything bad. I don't even care.

I suppose in the end it was still better than its predecessor. Not by a whole lot though, and I'm sure within another two days I'll be struggling to remember anything about it since I was forgetting it while I was watching. On the other hand...it didn't have Pauly Shore. I suppose that's a point in its favor?

Oh look. A horror movie trailer. I do wonder if it will be obnoxious and give away most of the scares.

THE BOTTOM LINE - A bland horror film that doesn't do much to invest you in anything that's going on since it's predictable and not very scary with the exception of one or two decent scenes. Watching "The Conjuring" would be a far more effective use of one's time if one wanted to see a horror movie.

Riddick (2013)

One of my favorite movies ever is "Pitch Black." And I'm in the very small minority who didn't hate "The Chronicles of Riddick," despite it being a measurable step down. But then again, there are few places to go from greatness other than downwards. For the third installment, "Riddick," all I wanted was a fun, dumb, gory B-movie. I wanted it to get back to basics. I don't think that's too much to ask.

What did I get? Well, it certainly is a B-movie. It's certainly gory. It's got some elements of fun in it, for sure. It's stripped down and back to a very simple survival story. And it is most definitely, without question, really dumb.

But on the other hand, it does have a very sexy voice.

So why do I feel so empty afterwards? Why am I so disappointed in it? I'm not totally sure, but I think in the end my problem with "Riddick" is that the 'dumb' outweighed nearly everything else that was positive about it. This is a dumb movie with dumb, unlikable characters and a plot that's not exactly terrible but not exactly worth caring about. At least it's that way for the first two acts. When the third act comes along all of a sudden we get dumped into "Pitch Black" again out of nowhere, which would usually be a good thing, but here it's so jarring that it's really unwelcome. But more on that later.

"Riddick" is a direct sequel to "The Chronicles of Riddick," which I honestly found somewhat surprising, which finds our titular anti-hero (Vin Diesel) stranded on a backwater piece of nowhere which isn't the same planet from "Pitch Black" even though it looks just like it. What happened is both he and the Necromongers had had enough of each other pretty early in his tenure as ruler, so Karl Urban gets his little 40 second cameo and screws him over, foolishly thinking that a fall of a couple hundred feet and a cliff landing on him is enough to kill Richard B. Riddick.

Please. Riddick will do that and still choke a buzzard right afterwards. He doesn't even care.

After acclimating himself to the dangerous environment he's found himself in, we go through a montage of what must be a year or so as he survives on this rock. Coming across a mercenary station, he sends out a signal broadcasting his location, which sends a bunch of bounty hunters after him. While that would normally be a bad idea, he's intending to use these guys as a kind of taxi service to get him off the planet. And if they don't want to leave him a ship willingly, well he IS Riddick, so Plan B is simply for him to kill them all.

That's a big chunk of the movie, which consists of Riddick making complete chumps out of all the dumb mercenaries that are too stupid to understand that they are hopelessly outclassed or to attempt any kind of basic safety procedures like "Don't split the party." And while it was cool in "Pitch Black" to see him be a supreme bad-ass like that, by the time the third movie rolls around we know all this already. And frankly I have no idea why Riddick, who is capable of such absurd feats of invisibility and stealth so as to be under suspicion of being a wizard, doesn't just sneak on one of the ships, steal it, and leave. I guess then we wouldn't have the pleasure of dealing with the jackasses who make up the mercenaries/fresh meat.

Like this piece of septic run-off.

Jordi Mollà plays Santana, the weaselly leader of the first band of mercs, and he is without question one of the most insufferable characters I've seen in any film this year. He loses out to that carrot-eating piece of crap from "A Good Day to Die Hard," but it was a pretty close match. He comes across like Peter Stormare after being flushed down into a Tijuana sewer and coming back with a brain injury and even more indecipherable accent. He's one of those special characters that, while you're watching him, you're actively trying to understand why nobody is shooting him in the face. The character is that bad. And Mollà is so unwatchable that he makes professional wrestler Dave Bautista look like a pretty damn good actor in comparison. Allow your mind to process that.

Also in the merc group is Katee Sackoff, so that's a thing I guess. She's basically playing Fem-Starbuck again since that's a thing that she does since she's Katee Sackoff. She's fine, but it's really one of those 'neither here nor there' things. It doesn't matter that much, and it could have been anyone. And as far as tough blondes in this series goes, I assure you that she is no Radha Mitchell.

Oh, and the best part about her is how she's evidently a lesbian, and is forward enough about it to get in people's faces over it, but she ends up being Riddick's love interest at the end because he promised to RAPE HER at one point and then kills a bunch of people which evidently is a move that gets her all kinds of hot and bothered and ready for some heterosexual lovin'. Because that's how human beings work, right? And I'll bet you if we saw an interview with Katee she'd call her character "strong." Because all actresses playing horribly offensive characters say that in an effort to defend it.

I don't mean to go on a feminist rant, but what the actual hell?

At the end of the film, a whole bunch of monsters come out of freaking nowhere to kill off the rest of the chumps who Riddick hasn't gotten around to yet, and the movie becomes something between a remake of "Pitch Black" and any other movie that features a lot of aliens crawling out of walls and burly guys shooting shotguns into the darkness going "AAAARGH." It's not that it's particularly bad, in fact it's just average at worst, but the fact that it only takes up the last half hour or so makes it feel particularly rushed and frankly out of place.

I suppose there are some redeeming qualities. There are some stunning visuals if you can get past the comic book looking, CGI-heavy style. The gore is actually pretty effective and the right level of gratuitous (an especially nice change after the PG-13 of "The Chronicles of Riddick"). And there are plenty of moments that strike the pitch perfect note of enjoyable cheese, particularly with the dialogue. When lines like "Instead of Furya, we wound up someplace called 'not-Furya'" are being said with stone-faced seriousness by Vin Diesel in his earth-quaking baritone, it's hard to not find a bit of fun in it. And as silly as it sounds and admittedly is, Riddick gets a dog. Yup, that's a thing that happens.

"Well, I'd certainly say she had marvelous judgment, Richard, if not particularly good taste."

Those positive qualities being said, I can't really give much more than a slightly below average review for "Riddick." It's not that the fact that it's a B Movie is bad. But you can make a good B Movie (see "The Thing" or "Escape From L.A.") and you can make one that's not so good. "Riddick" just didn't have a good enough script or good enough characters to balance out the B factor. And it's especially noticeable when the first film in the series has already shown us how good a genre film starring this character can be.

Man, this trailer makes "Riddick" look so much better than it was...

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Riddick" has some entertainment value, but despite being the return to an R-rated creature feature (by the end), the story feels very insignificant, the characters are nearly all grating, and so much time is spent with them that by the time the monsters heralding the main event show up, it seems out of place and unwelcome. It's not technically a terrible movie, but it feels superfluous when you could just be watching "Pitch Black" instead.