The unnecessary sequel

November 25, 2018November 20, 2018 | cgkinnett

Major, major spoilers below.

It is rare that you will find me with a whole day to lounge on the couch with nothing to do, rare indeed. But, when it does happen, I will gladly watch crap film after crap film for as long as I can stay awake. This was exactly how my one day off a week was spent this last week. Sometimes, you’ve really got to listen to your body and sit still, damnit! So, with that being said, one of the movies I watched was the newish sequel to The Strangers which is by far one of my favorite horror films of all time. I rank it up there with Cabin in the Woods and the original Jeepers Creepers. That being said, part two was TERRIBLE.

The Strangers came out in 2008 at the height of the midnight premier craze. I distinctly remember driving home to my brand new student apartment after watching the movie. None of my roommates had moved in yet so I had this giant apartment to myself. It was really creepy! Now, this apartment was in a gated community, not in the middle of nowhere, and not on the ground floor. All of these things added up to mean that I was probably Not going to be the Strangers next victim. What the movie had done so well was keep everyone in the incredibly small cast in the same small area for the whole movie. There was no escape. And in the end, knowing that there was no way to ever identify these killers. Was this a real crime? Could the killer still be out there committing these atrocities?

The open-ended ending was perfect. We see them drive away but we don’t know if they keep on killing, if this was their first, and on and on ad infinitum. Their identities were never revealed and they remain at large which makes the conclusion perfect. It leaves you wondering but not necessarily wanting more.

What is most eerie about the stranger’s taunting of Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman in the original is that they are slow and in control. This is evident even in the way the scenes are shot, never too wide, there is always a bit of a cramped feeling – like there is no escape. Even when they are outside and running between the main house and the barn there are not too many wide shots. Additionally, they never feel unattainably unkillable, just like they have a better handle on things. They were planning mayhem after all and Tyler and Speedman’s characters were just looking to get some sleep after an emotionally taxing day. There were three of them, so the fact that one would knock on the door and another would be in the back is a totally plausible course for their actions. But they were timed realistically and never did anyone receive an incapacitating injury and then get up and further persist in their killing. Slow and deliberate.

Now, take all of that mastery of action (both in the writing and the way it was shot) and throw all of it out the window.

In the latest iteration The Strangers: Prey at Night we are taken to another remote location, this time with a family instead of a couple. Christina Hendrix and Martin Henderson play mom and dad respectively and Bailee Maddison and Lewis Pullman are the children. All of them have a pretty good chemistry and the dialogue seems natural, especially between Hendrix and Henderson. But that is where my praise ends.

The scripts were written by Bryan Bertino in both cases so I’m not sure where things start going wrong.

In Prey at Night the scene is set at an abandoned for the offseason trailer park. We begin by seeing the strangers’ killings in this park, more of what seems to be their at random killing. It is only after we gain a bit more insight that we realize that while these killings were occurring, Hendrix’s character calls and leaves a voicemail for a now dead family member, alerting the strangers of their imminent arrival.

WE’RE HERE! READY TO BE KILLED!

So, one of the aspects of the original is that we know there is going to be death, we see it in the opening of the movie, but there is not an actual murder scene until the very end. This slow build is what makes classics like Halloween so great, the building energy and anxiety felt by the audience inspired by small almost gotcha moments and chilling music. With PaN we get murder right out the gate so now we know the family is driving to their deaths.

A knock on the door of the trailer they check into prompts a question we are all familiar with, “Is Tamara home?” Nope! Bye! The porch light is unscrewed so we have the same, in the shadows, effect as in the original. Of course, after this creepy encounter, we still have the EVERYONE IN THE FAMILY thinking it is a good idea to split up. NO! STOP!

So as everyone begins traipsing across this giant trailer park, the four family members come to realize there are three masked people after them (Man in Mask, Pin-Up Girl, and Dollface). Maybe splitting up wasn’t great after all. As they all run around, the camera is consistently at a wide angle showing one of the strangers in pursuit of one of the family. This takes away the intimate feeling of them being right there and able to “getcha” as was the feeling throughout the whole entire original.

There is one exception to this when Maddison’s character dives into a tunnel on a playground in which there is a scene framed to misdirect you: Man in Mask has headlights pointed into the tunnel and out of nowhere Pin-Up appears and provides a pretty good jumpscare.

However, this leads me to my very next point. Up until the end of this scene, the chase had been between just the two of them [Man and Maddison] and then Pin-Up just appears out of the other end of the tunnel. The reason this is so irritating is that you have seven characters running willy-nilly through this park: hiding, seeking, double-digit numbers of trailers to choose from, playground, woods, clubhouse all of these different places and yet everyone is always one corner away.

IT’S IMPLAUSIBLE AND IRRITATING!!!!

At least twice, if not more, there are chase scenes that just don’t make sense because there is a queer ability of the strangers to just be there. Up until the very end when there is a car crash and a fireball engulfs both vehicles. It’s not just One shotgun shot you need to kill them, it’s Two! There becomes an unnatural persistence that by the end is just like, reaally?!

In the original movie you knew the strangers were there, hiding just out of sight. In this movie they literally pop into sight so quickly you don’t have time to breathe. The films have the exact same run times yet the pace of each of them is totally opposite. You’ve got a slow and steady demise of the main characters, stuck in one house with no escape…and then you’ve got a round-em-up chase story that doesn’t really match with the M.O. of the first.

Bertino has said that he wondered what it had been like inside the house for the Tate’s while the Manson family was murdering them. What was the victim experience as opposed to a cop piecing it together, getting it straight from the encounter? Now, just those two sentences have your mind wandering, don’t they? That is what the original feels like. Clausterphobic. No escape. No nice ending…you know the ending from go. Death. So final that we see the strangers from behind as they take their masks off and you know for certain that the end is nigh. However, one final wrongness of Prey at Night is the taking off of the masks and the way that those scenes play out.

I really hope there is not another movie in this series.

I’m done ranting now.

The Importance of Sound; the Magnitude of Silence

April 11, 2018 | cgkinnett

You know the feeling you have when you leave a Fast and Furious film and the drive home is impossible to make without wanting to race someone? Or the feeling you had after leaving a Spy Kids film and pretending that your watch is really a secret communication device? You come out feeling so part of that world that your imagination just keeps going after the movie is over. Now apply that to the last horror film you saw and take away the sound and it still probably wouldn’t be half as amazing as A Quiet Place. The blinker in my car on the way home unnerved me and as I was sitting at the stop light waiting to turn, I anticipated something darting out of the dark towards me. It was in these few moments when I also realized how tightly I had been clenching my jaw.

John Krasinski has directed before in the comedy genre making A Quiet Place his terror filled debut, for which he also co-wrote the screenplay for and produced. For all of that I would like to say, “mad props, man.” This film is amazingly directed and wonderfully sound designed and suspenseful as all get out! It is becoming more and more frequent that blockbuster movies are serialized or rebooted leaving stories to become less and less original. Horror, however, continues to delve deeper into human psychology and exploring societal fears. Take the complexity of a family dynamic and add in a dystopian future in which sound is what triggers your enemy and you’ve got a roller coaster of emotional silence. It is that silence that makes this film so powerful and effective.

The Abbott family lives in a present where strange creatures have taken out the majority of the population. Due to the necessity of silence, we are not able to be given any sort of exposition so things like newspaper headlines are used for context in a fairly heavy handed but necessary manner. Very quickly we learn the consequences of this world when the rules for survival are broken. Very quickly we learn that this movie is not fucking around. American Sign Language is used to communicate throughout the film and because of this you are completely immersed in the silence within the Abbott family’s household and daily life. When the norm of this deafening silence is broken, as an audience member, you can feel the tension rise in you at breakneck speed. What is done with the sound is smartly done to match the tone of the scene. There are long stretches in which nothing comes from the theater’s speakers except ambient noise; in these moments you notice the soft whisper the wind makes in the cornstalks on the farm and the rustling of leaves in the trees. As soon as a louder sound is made though the cellos and violins are cued up and tug on your heartstrings. It is remarkable just how terrifying combining no sound with abrupt sound can be. The music that is heard during tense or emotional moments is such an integral part of the storytelling in this film. Whether it is underscoring a love filled glance between husband and wife or alerting you to an oncoming threat, the music fills the scenes fully and oftentimes quickly.

This anxiety is played upon over the course of the whole film and is heightened by using true silence to underscore danger even further. One of the Abbott’s children, Regan, is deaf and occasionally we slip into her perspective and everything goes away. She experiences this catastrophe in a completely different way than the rest of the world. Because of this, when she is supposed to be feeling anxious but is unaware you are again jerked around by this film because you have more information in that scene than she does.

Mix the importance that hearing has in this reality with a family tragedy and you’ve got a recipe for emotional misunderstandings. The people in their family are all that these characters have. Because of this is it crucial that they work together to help make life work. The relationship between father and children, man and wife, and mother and children are each well written and conveyed. Story is as important in this instance as facial expressions in conveying the tale at hand. Not only are Emily Blunt (Evelyn) and John Krasinski (Lee) great at this silent acting, the kids are too. Millicent Simmonds (Regan), Noah Jupe (Marcus), and Cade Woodward (Beau) are able to communicate fear, love, and confusion with painful clarity. The father/daughter angle always gets me in movies and this one is no different. When tragedy befalls the family Regan and Lee’s relationship becomes strained. Simmonds plays the moody teenager impeccably and you are able to see the stubbornness of youth mingle with the fear that being deaf in this world has infused her with. Blunt and Krasinski work as a good team in seeing their kids through these scary times. At one point Blunt asks, “who are we if we can’t protect them?” The lengths that parents go to to raise their children in our reality is sometimes unfathomable and so to do it in this one is even loftier. These two adults have to be 100% aware of everything all the time and mind the children at the same time. Don’t make a noise. Don’t step off the established path. Be careful. Be quiet. Imagine all of these stresses bearing down on a marriage and see the grace with which these two operate. Krasinski is a dutiful husband and father whose sole job is now to protect his family. He is stoic and expresses an intense determination over the course of the film. There is no comedy from him in this role, he is as serious as you can get and he does it wonderfully. Blunt’s motherly role as protector of her babes is touching and the pain and struggle that plays across her face is beautiful.

The intensity of this movie is felt in sight and sound and the lack thereof. There are jump scares and silent scares; creeping dread and sudden “holy shit”. Your body goes on a journey with the Abbott’s and I don’t know how a single person will see this movie without holding their breathe and clenching their jaw. Silence is a powerful tool and to place a whole premise on the notion of having to be as quiet as possible in a film is a welcome tool utilized by Krasinski in getting tension and emotion across to an audience.

***

With all that being said, I hope your theater is a quiet place and I would like to take this moment to encourage you to be mindful of what you are eating if viewing at a Drafthouse type theater. Don’t order something crunchy and be like the guy sitting next to me chomping loudly at tense moments. Just. Don’t. Do. It.

Annihilation

February 24, 2018February 24, 2018 | cgkinnett

annihilation

To annihilate something is to obliterate it; to cause something to cease existing. Such a finite word, such a fine word, don’t you think? The complete destruction of a thing. There is a menacing beauty in the complete erasure of a noun. This menacing beauty is captured in the enchanting work of Alex Garland (Ex Machina) in the newly released Annihilation. Adapted from the book of the same name, Annihilation is told to us in a disorienting non linear fashion. Lena’s husband has been gone for a year, Lena is in a clean room being interrogated and unable to remember things clearly, Lena explores a secret zone of national park that has been closed down due to the effects of a meteor. There is much that Lena (Natalie Portman) doesn’t know and the switching between time lines non chronologically makes for a perplexity on par with subject matter that is the cause for everything in Annihilation. The way that this movie and everything in it is shot makes for a dazzling and terrifying and smart film.

The dazzling:

The Shimmer is a biosphere like dome that is slowly expanding and enveloping the lands around a lighthouse which was hit by a meteor. The teams that go in to the Shimmer don’t return so no one has been able to gauge what goes on inside. We journey with an all female team of scientists to see what is on the other side. Three years have transpired since the initial impact and in that time the life inside the Shimmer has had time to grow and thrive in a beautifully alien way. Every shot of the environment inside somehow contains a rainbow whether in light or in flora and fauna. The scenery is at times scary and yet beautiful at the same time. There is a scene in a drained swimming pool that shows death and life intertwined so organically and you sit there thinking about how breathtaking what you are looking at is…and then you remind yourself what you are looking at…and its terrifying.

The terrifying:

The amount of times I realized that I was holding my breath was pretty high by the end of this film. “The monster” is so thoroughly portrayed and yet still unable to be understood. Crocodiles, bears, each other, and on and on…the tricks that this film play on your mind are never ending. One thing that I loved was that you would start to feel comfortable as an audience member, thinking that there was a definite genre path that a scene was taking and then all of a sudden something totally different would happen (again with the disorienting) and you would be left speechless or scared. Garland does not over explain Anything. This is one of the most well paced part one films that I feel like I’ve seen in a while. By the end we are left with as many questions as we had in the beginning, if not more. The enigma that is the Shimmer is so appropriately otherworldly and as we are taken deeper and deeper in we see an endless amount of possibilities that revolve around the very make up of life on Earth. Biology and DNA are used to explain terrifying sights, psychology is used to explain the terrifying behavior of humans under extreme circumstances, nature is used to show us how terrifying our lack of understanding is. All of these elements combined with the twisty turny track of the film are able to terrify while giving us a story that is so smart.

The smart:

As mentioned above, the pacing of this movie and the amount of information we are given is phenomenal. There was not a lot of clunky exposition and at times you just have to accept that there are some things you might not know. In my head throughout the film I kept thinking things like, “ya but what about…x…” and then the story would be moving on and you would just have to wonder about it. I think that that adds fuel to the terrifying aspect to the film too. In addition to the plot of the story, the way in which Garland directs and shows us the story is so thoughtful. There is a scene that is shot with the visual focus on the other side of a water glass. The image is distorted by the water. Tiny things like this are peppered throughout the whole of Annihilation tying in the theme of disorientation in every way possible. But what is good writing and amazing visuals without a great cast rounding things out? The expedition team that we follow is made of five women who are strong and smart and not led by any men. While the number of characters in the film as a whole is pretty small, only like three of them are men. The women carry and lead this film in a wonderfully strong way. They are smart and refreshing and pass the Bechdel test with flying colors.

There is so much more I want to say about Annihilation however I don’t know how to go further without giving any major spoilers and this is a film that really needs to be seen and not spoiled. I’ve heard that the book is pretty different from the film. I’ve definitely added the trilogy to my reading list (you can read more about the Southern Reach Trilogy here). Do yourself a favor: see this movie.

World building whimsy

January 15, 2018 | cgkinnett

The best part of getting lost in a world (be it through a book or a film) is that anything can happen. Certain storytellers have the ability to submerge their audience in world’s that can be very similar to ours or very, very different. It is not just that full characters are created or that the story line is well thought out and planned, it is that every aspect of the world is notably considered and taken into accordance within the story’s unfolding. A writer who is able to convey the mores of a culture which they’ve created or enhanced without shoving it down your throat via clunky exposition is a talented one indeed. This is most evident of series in that there is so much more time for customs to be laid out and histories to be relayed. Tolkien took up volumes with the detailed history of a whole land as did Paolini. Lewis built his world volume by volume which allowed for a slow expansion and understanding of the world in which Narnia existed. I think this is why The Magician’s Nephew has always been my favorite. This world building is something that I am noticing more and more as I tear through the Game of Thrones saga (I’m currently in book three) and also something I noticed recently while watching the latest installment of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean films. I realize I may lose some of you there. What?! The Pirates movies are being thought of in the same breath as GoT?! Hear me out, lovelies.

When considering a fully realized world, we are able to recognize geography and history yes but there is something else that is also important. The rules of the reality of this alternate-verse are very important to establish so that the author knows what is and isn’t possible and so does the viewer/reader. Rules within a world establish these parameters so that characters experience events with logical outcomes, so that there is a reason when crazy events happen, and so on. What got me thinking about the importance of this was watching the latest (and hopefully last (although through my research I see it won’t be the last)) installment of the Pirates movies.

Over the course of the five films that make up this series there are many things that happen that in our reality would not be possible. From the very beginning of the first movie we are let known that curses and magic are real. This is evident even from the title: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Thus begins our education into this world. We are taken in to a time that existed (early to mid 1700’s) and a place that is real (the Caribbean) however the reality is altered from ours. Having Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) as our primary guide through the events of the first film, we learn as he does about the lives of pirates. To start, Turner is pretty landlocked in his life and does not know much about pirate culture. It is only once his love Elizabeth Swann (Kierra Knightly) is abducted by pirates does he get pulled in to the mysteries of the sea. We see with Will that curses are not to be trifled with and that they are indeed very real. Once out at sea, we learn that most of the terrifying tales told by sailors have some sort of basis in the sea’s reality. Monstrous creatures of lore like the Kraken do exist and the boogiemen of your dreams like Davy Jones are real and perfectly able to getcha! As we adventure along with Turner and Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) we almost become used to the fact that, yeah, of course they’re encountering monsters. Because of this I feel we almost become jaded in a sense through to the latest installment in which our leading lady Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) is thrust into the mystical world that revolves around Jack Sparrow. There is a point when Carina finally sees something supernatural. She screams and runs out of the water and up the shore shouting that ghosts are real. An appropriate reaction, honestly.

This moment is what really got me paying attention to the world within these films. Because of this moment I realized how prevalent these mystical adventures are in the lives of our leading men and I realized something else too: they all take place far out at sea. We are along for the ride with these men seeing pirate royalty convene for a summit; witnessing undead men, monkeys, and sharks; boarding ships that have been sunk for hundreds of years. These things are very real in this world however there is a whole population who is unawares of their existence. This is a part of the rules of this world. Creatures whose presence cannot be explained shock those who are not used to them (which is again, appropriate). Even when a character becomes used to these things and is part of the pirate life there are still instances where one of them will see something and have wtf moment.

Another saga that I am currently immersed in is that of A Song of Ice and Fire. With five books published and seven total promised, George R. R. Martin has created a whole universe with its own precedence and standards. The history of Westeros and the surrounding lands extends for thousands of years and with one continent and many island countries, the make up of these lands is vast. In fact, there is so much history to cover that in addition to the primary novels that make up the saga ASoIaF, there are also several novellas that give us further knowledge of different times within this world that we come to know so well. Because there are many houses and each of them have their own pasts (in addition to a global history of wars and times of peace) there is an endless amount of possibilities for characters we already know and for those whom we have not met. But again, it is not the characters that make the rules of the world.

Much like our world and that of the world in Pirates, there are laws of reality that must be followed. Due to the fact that there are many different cultures that we are encountering, there are several different realms in which people exist. Those who live in the far North have very different lives than those who live in the far South and very different again from those who are Dothraki or Lyseni. While there are many different realms there still is only one reality within which everyone operates. It is established within the prologue of the very first book that otherworldly magic exists but is not wholly understood by persons at large.

Something interesting that Martin has done in this land is to establish that there are old gods, ancient myths that revolve around the First Men; new gods, known as the seven; and a Lord of Light, who is very mysterious [and seems somewhat cultish]. I find this compelling as it is a small similarity to our own world in which many different religions and schools of thought exist. Because of this, we are able to see very quickly that the many different regions of this land operate under different beliefs. Most often the new gods are mentioned. Those who worship in this manner visit the Sept to pray to one god who is represented by seven faces seen as the Mother, Maiden, Warrior, Father, Crone, Stranger, and Smith. Each of these are prayed to for different reasons: to keep a son safe in battle, to keep a woman safe during childbirth, etc. Then there are the old gods, worshiped in the North by the first men and by some who live still. There is a magic in this belief; a connectivity to the forest and all its creatures. The wierwood trees in the forests and in the godswoods of castles and forts create a conduit of sorts for these gods to see through and be prayed to. Lastly, there is the Lord of Light, who is said to show his true believers the way if they stare into the flames of fires. The character Melisandre is who [largely] leads us through our knowledge of this particular religion and because it is not widely known or practiced in Westeros, many men distrust this vein of thought and see it as witchcraft. That last bit is interesting. The fact that the Lord of Light’s followers are mistrusted because of their “devil worship” or “sorcery” draws attention to the fact that magic is not something that is trusted in this land. The gods of old seemed to posses some magic but their times are long gone and there doesn’t seem to be any magic left in the world. That is, until dragons are born and a crippled boy becomes the keeper of knowledge past and present.

Aside from religion, there are other aspects of the world of Westeros that are outlined to establish the world. In battle, men die (whereas as pointed out above in the Pirates world, ghosts exist). There is a hierarchy that exists by which the land is governed. Despite the fact that there is a very large scale war going on for the Iron Throne, there is a system in place: lords, wardens, etc. Culture is explored through songs sung by bards and tales told around the campfire. It is fascinating to me how deep and rich the history of this land is.

Getting lost in a world that is not our own is part of what makes reading and watching movies so compelling. We are able to escape our lives for a span of pages/the run time of a film and truly be somewhere else. The greatest storytellers create fully realized settings to further allow for this escape and totally submerse their audiences. While it might be easy to create a tale, coming up with the entire world is what makes the escape successful. Whether it is building the world from scratch (example: Lord of the Rings) or slightly altering our reality to make it their own (example: Inception), an author who takes the time to think out all aspects of their world is a skilled one indeed.

All aboard the live action train

October 19, 2016 | cgkinnett

I grew up with an extensive VHS Disney collection; it was my first library. As an adult, I am able to recognize all the racism and innuendos but it’s hard not to still wish upon a star or live by the problem free philosophy. Despite the terror of an old lady giving you poison apples and a mad lady putting you in a coma, there was the enchanting notion of being a princess and having a tiger for a pet. The dark storylines juxtaposed with the happy songs make for instant classics.

A couple years ago, Disney released Maleficent which, if you think about it, was the first in the trend. While not an exact retelling of the animated film, it gave us more context on the protagonist Aurora faces in Sleeping Beauty. More of an origins story, Maleficent starred Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning and grossed $758 million worldwide.

When the live action announcement of Cinderella came, I was skeptical. Not everything needs a remake. However, I was pleasantly surprised after I came out of the theater. Not only did I only have minor critiques (see said critiques here) but I actually found it enjoyable. The movie did really well in both domestic and foreign markets garnering a total of $543 million dollars. Shortly after this success Disney announced their plans to bring another title to the live action big screen.

The Jungle Book seemed like such a huge undertaking that I was sure this time they wouldn’t be able to pull it off. Talking animals are usually pretty cringe worthy. But as the news of the cast steadily rolled in over the next year or so, I started to wonder if there was something to it. Surely all of these amazing actors wouldn’t attach themselves to the project if it were hokey. Man was I wrong. The Jungle Book was the best of the remakes yet and grossed just shy of a billion dollars worldwide!

Jungle Book.jpg

This added an insane amount of fuel to the fire that has become live action. After The Jungle Book’s massive success Disney announced plans for a whole slew of titles to be released over the next five years and a slew if definitely not an exaggeration.First, Beauty and the Beast will come to theaters. This is being hyped beyond belief with nothing but stills and a few seconds long teaser released so far, with Emma Watson playing Belle. Then, Cruella is getting her own film and so is Tinker Bell. Dumbo is getting a new take from the mind of Tim Burton (I really don’t understand how this is going to happen but maybe this will be better than his Alice movies). And just this past weekend it was announced that Guy Ritchie will be at the helm of the Aladdin film. This is another stumper in that Genie is so heavily associated with Robbin Williams and the recreation this character is hard to imagine. Also this weekend it was announced that the script for The Lion King now has a confirmed writer. We can only hope that titles like Aladdin and Mulan won’t be whitewashed and will reflect their characters and cultures appropriately.

I really enjoy that my doubt has been proven wrong thus far but these are pretty lofty goals they are setting.

disney_characters_by_ficklestix

Black Mass

September 18, 2015 | cgkinnett

Despite the fact that today is Thursday and not yet the weekend, I still wanted to contribute to the opening numbers with my [not so] measly $11.50. The showing was sold out and the atmosphere in the theater was excited as the lights went down at the Alamo Drafthouse on 6th Street.

Black Mass, directed by Scott Cooper, is the story of James “Whitey” Bulger and features an all star cast the likes of which haven’t been seen in a mafia movie set in Boston since, well, The Departed in 2006. Where the Scorsese flick alludes to a Bulger type figure in Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of well established mob boss “Frank Costello,” Black Mass is the telling of the events that lead to Bulger’s rise to power in the Boston area known as Southie.

Bulger, played by Johnny Depp, is an incredibly chilling figure who is not to be trifled with. Even before he becomes the towering figure that history now knows him as. His crystal blue eyes pierce you even as an audience member. The mannerisms adopted by Depp are truly telling and as the movie progresses, you are able to tell when Whitey is about to do something “bad.” I believe that this performance is what will bring Depp back into awesomeness and out of his Burton spiral.

But I digress.

John Connolly’s (Joel Edgerton) task force at the FBI is cracking down on the mafia presence in Boston in the late 80’s and in so doing decides to make an “alliance” with his friend from the old neighborhood, Bulger, who has juicy information on the “Italians.” A group of people who are more talked about than shown on screen. What could go wrong? Connolly gets in waaaaay too deep and his blind eye towards Bulger and the mobster’s curiously clean slate begins to raise some eyebrows with the higher ups. Murder and mayhem ensue. I lost track of the body count. After a while however, the plot became so transparent that it was almost irritating. Whenever a problem arose Bulger’s first and only solution was murder. These actions are what makes him a great psychopath but not a good main character and it is because of this that the movie was so predictable. The story itself is told as Bulger’s posse (all rounded up and jailed) divulge their secrets about their finished leader. They are aged out and defeated. The movie ends with stills detailing all of their sentences. (A cop out technique as bad as narrating in my book.)

As a whole the movie was just okay. Definitely not the be all end all that the previews made it out to be. I give it a 3.9 out of 5. The pacing was good and the writing was fantastic (quite a few really funny moments) but the score was incredibly cheese and the plot was transparent in a not so good way. Plus, points way off for Benedict Cumberbatch’s atrocious attempt at a Boston accent.

Poor Sherlock.