Insidious: Chapter 2

There are some decent scares in this one. There is also some humor, although I am not sure all of it was intentional.

The Lambert family, with their oldest son now back awake, are still plagued by the demon that has haunted them in part one. It becomes pretty clear, that it has latched itself (himself) onto the father of the family. Again, that is.

The details of how he was possessed as a child are filled in via flashbacks throughout the film and ultimately also reveal the identity of the ghost/demon/person that took over his body. This happened when he was a boy first and then later his son...because the person taking over their bodies was himself robbed of his boyhood, because his crazy mother raised him as a girl (and then later made him kill women).

There are some clever overlaps with the first film, as well.

6/10

Star Trek Into Darkness

We start off with Captain Kirk getting in trouble (yet again) for ignoring protocol by risking his ship and crew to save one crew member. Spock, that is, who finds all this highly illogical, of course.

The threat this time around comes from one super human (?) that goes by the name Harrison but turns out to be Star Trek nemesis of old lore Khan. Khan and his people have been asleep for centuries but he alone has been woken by Star Fleet, to use him in any way they can (him being stronger, faster...generally better than everyone else). What they didn't foresee apparently was that he did not comply with their plans and hits them hard, right there in their own HQ.

What follows is a intergalactic man hunt that leads the crew of the Enterprise to Kronos, where they inevitably have a clash with the local Klingons before Khan saves (!) them and gives himself up after learning that 72 torpedoes are aboard the Enterprise. What Kirk and his crew do not know (yet) is that inside every torpedo is a creature just like Khan, so his first order of business is to save his kin.

The Enterprise gets an unexpected visit from a ship headed by star fleet commander Marcus, who wanted Khan dead rather than captured so as to cover up his misjudgment in waking him up in the first place. He is certainly right in warning Kirk about trusting Khan but has no qualms about blowing up the Enterprise with everyone on it. So Kirk, with help from Khan and Scotty, take matters into their hands and take over the now enemy ship.

Of course, Khan turns out to be a very bad guy, indeed. He takes the ship and forces the torpedoes to be transferred over from the Enterprise. As soon as the beaming is concluded he starts shooting the Enterprise. This leads to, first, a battle of the two ships in space and, second, an epic fist fight of Khan vs Spock back on earth, where in the end both ship make it, Khan's not quite in one piece.

Other than action and fists flying, there is also a lot of crying going on, as you can see in the representative photos. Even Spock cries. And he yells. And he gets very, very angry. What gets to Spock is Kirk dying. But, thanks to Khan's superior blood, Bones is able to save him. All is well.

8/10

Victim

This is the first English language film to use the word "homosexual"...42 years after its very first use in film (in the German 1919 film Anders als die Anderen).

Dirk Bogard plays barrister Melville Farr, who gets caught up in systematic blackmails of gays when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK. One young man, Barrett, is threatened with a photo of himself and Farr being exposed. To protect the much more prominent public figure Farr, he steals money from his employer when he runs out.

The police coming to the construction site where he works kicks the story off. He runs, unable to find much assistance from his friends, most of whom are gay and living a lie themselves and some of whom are also victims of the blackmailer. In the end, the police catch up with him and he hangs himself in his cell.

Farr, feeling guilty for not having taken Barrett's desperate phone calls, starts digging into the issue and trying to find people willing to speak up about the blackmails, but most refuse. Farr is married and his wife knew about a relationship he had with a man before their marriage but she is somewhat stumped that he still feels the same way. She does, however, stand by him throughout.

Ultimately, it has to be Farr himself that stands up against the blackmailers, even if it will cost him his career.

7/10
  

The Real-Life Murderess Behind the American Horror Story: Coven Character

If you have seen the premiere episode of American Horror Story: Coven you know that Kathy Bates plays a particularly evil slave owner. Her character, Delphine LaLaurie is based on a real person...who was far worse than the fictionalized version of her.

Read about her here.

HELL NO: The Sensible Horror Film

The X Files: Conduit

Sioux City, Iowa, is the location of this particular episode. Ruby Morris, a young woman whose mother has been involved in a UFO sighting when she was a girl, disappears from a site where she has been camping with her mother and little brother. Ever since, her little brother Kevin has been painting a series of zeros and ones on a pad, from clues he is taking from the white noise on the TV (Poltergeist anyone?).

Local law enforcement does not take the disappearance seriously because Ruby has been known to runaround with every other boy in town. Then one Tessa shows up to tell a tale of Ruby's relationship with a no-good boyfriend, who has not been showing up at his job for a few days. Then his body is found and it turns out that Tessa killed him because she was pregnant with his child and offed him in revenge for him hanging out with Ruby.

The ones and zeros little Kevin has been painting turn out to be top secret information, consequently getting him and his mother in trouble. She blames Mulder and Scully for the unwanted attention and does no longer want to speak with them. Mulder, of course, is not willing to give up and when he and Scully come to look for them in their house they are not there. What they find instead are more sheets of paper laid out on the ground floor. When Scully goes to the first floor and looks down she sees that they are actually a picture of Ruby.

Mulder takes this as a sign that the mother and boy must have returned to the site where Ruby disappeared. When the agents get there they find the two as well as a bruised and beaten Ruby, that may or may not have been returned from an abduction. Ultimately, her mother encourages her to not speak about her experience on account of herself having been ridiculed for speaking up all her life.

6/10

The X Files: Squeeze

The first episode that lands Scully in grave danger. This time it is Mulder's turn to save his partner.

But back to the beginning. Scully is contacted by a friend from the bureau, Agent Colton, who asks her for help in a case of serial killings he is working on. What has him stumped is that the victims have nothing in common and are often found in rooms without any sign or, indeed, option of any point of entry. Colton does sort of want Mulder on the case but fears for his reputation if he requests Mulder's assistance, directly. Also, he is very territorial and doesn't want any interference that what make it look like he did not solve the case himself.

This leads to Scully's loyalties being tested. Turns out her attachment to and trust in Mulder is very strong after only a short period of time of working with him. His theory is, as expected, out there. He retrieves a fingerprint from the latest crime scene that is to long and narrow to belong to a human. But when he alters the prints they take from a suspect they catch at a site of interest, one Eugene Victor Tooms, by elongating and narrowing it through the help of a computer program, it is a 100% match. Obviously, nobody believes him until the two locate a former agent that worked on a series of murders with the same MO 30 years previously. His suspect then was Eugene Tooms and he has the stake out photo to even make Scully believe that there may be something to Mulder's theory of a genetic mutant that is more than 100 years old, although she thinks more along the lines of a generation of mutants.

To complete the cycle pattern of 30 and even 60 years ago, Tooms has one more kill to go before going into hiding - or rather, hibernation - for another 30 years. Mulder's theory is that he spends that time in a nest they discover make from scrap paper and bile, while the livers he takes from his victims sustains him for his hibernation. Unbeknownst to them at the time, Tooms steals Scully's necklace, hence staking her out as his next victim. Small items have gone missing from the all the crime scenes and the agents have discovered the loot in a building that Tooms already lived in in 1903.

After a blowout with Agent Colton, who called off a surveillance team that Mulder and Scully requested, Scully is furious. Mulder returns to the collection of tidbits to find Scully's necklace and realizes the danger she is in. Meanwhile, Scully is drawing a bath when suddenly a drop of bile falls on her hands form an air duct above her. She arms herself and fights Tooms after he dashes at her from another air vent in the wall. Mulder comes in the nick of time and together the cuff Tooms to the tub.

The final shot shows Eugene Tooms smiling as he realizes that there is a slit in the door to his cell where the food gets pushed through. This is not the last we have seen of him.

8/10

Hey, isn't that...?
Eugene Victor Tooms is played by Doug Hutchison, who is now known as the creepy old guy that made the tabloid headlines for marrying then 16 year old Courntey Stodden. You know who I'm talking about.

The X Files: Deep Throat

The FBI gets contacted by the wife of a military pilot, who has been missing since being retrieved from his home some four months ago. Mulder digs up the file and he and Scully fly off to Idaho, where super-secret Ellis Air Base is located.

Before they do, however, we meet Deep Throat, who claims he wants to help Mulder and warns him off the case.

In Idaho, the only people that will talk to the agents are the wife of Col. Budahas, locals that may or may not have seen unidentified flying objects and a couple of stoner kids that illegally enter the air base to watch the 'light show'. This marks the first of many guest actors of note, a category I will call...

Hey, isn't that...?
Seth Green plays one of the kids who apparently know no other form of entertainment. It is, after all, an area that does not show up on any map.

Suddenly, Col. Budahas reappears (in a move Mulder calls a decoy) and cannot remember anything about his former profession as a pilot. His memory appears to have been wiped clean very selectively.

The agents clash with the military, represented by a group of what can only be described as men in black that destroy any evidence they may have gathered (of course!) and tells them to leave town immediately. Scully is ready to pack it in and this is when Mulder ditches her for the first time (and not the last). He reenters the forbidden air base and gets caught.

We then see him strapped down and getting injections and some sort of medical procedure. What follows it the first of many missions of one agent rescuing the other, when Scully forces a man connected with the air base at gunpoint to have Mulder returned. When they reunite, Mulder has no idea how he got to where he is and obviously cannot remember what it was he saw inside the air base.

The episode ends with Mulder out for a run and Deep Throat once again contacting him and warning him that his life is in danger. He identifies himself as a fellow truth seeker.

7/10

Film Quote

from Reservoir Dogs

The X Files: Pilot

This year marked the 20th anniversary of the airing of the pilot episode of The X Files. Here is what happens.

Young agent Scully (those shoulder pads!) gets called into FBI headquarters where she is told that she is to work with an agent that she knows by his nick name 'Spooky' Mulder. Mulder, despite being considered the best analyst in the violent crime section, appears to his peers to have lost his direction and dug himself into the so-called X Files, that are often dismissed and ridiculed. 

They meet for the first time in the basement office and get to work on a case right away. The ingredients of it will be a few classic themes that will reappear often in the 9 series of the show: alien abduction (or not), time loss, air turbulence, car radio going weird, bright lights and the implant one will come to associate with little green (or rather, grey) men.

The setting is Oregon and the victims are all from the same high school class (class of '99). The fourth of the group has just died when Mulder digs up the case and the two agents fly across country to investigate. There they meet the defiant locals (of course), headed by the sheriff (of course), and immediately make their mark by exhuming a body - or so they think. What they actually find are the remains of what Mulder would like to be an alien and what Scully believes to be an orangutan, but (nearly) all the evidence they gather gets destroyed when the motel they stay in burns to the ground.

One key player in the deaths and possible abductions is Billy Miles, who is in a catatonic state that he only ever wakes up from when time stops and people die. And his father - the sheriff - knew it was his boy that kills or causes the deaths of those kids. In the end, he and Mulder intervene when Billy is in the woods with a would be victim, while Scully is too far behind to see what is actually happening. This will also be happening again and again.

Billy Miles will revisit the show much later for several episodes. One frequent player is also introduced, but wordlessly, the Cigarette Smoking Man, who in the end stores the one piece of hard evidence that Scully managed to bring back from their trip - the implant - in the huge storage room deep inside the pentagon (also, to be revisited again and again).

And so it begins...

7/10  

Gravity

By now you probably have had a few people telling you to watch this. And you should...it really it that good.

It all starts off merrily enough, with astronaut Matt chatting away with Mission Control and floating laps around the aircraft his fellow astronaut Ryan (a woman, don't be fooled by the name) is trying to fix something on. There is also a third person with them, one Shariff, but let's not get too attached to him.

But everything goes south when they get an 'Abort Mission!' command and are warned of debris from satellites heading their way. The shuttle gets hit and consequently destroyed and Shariff does not survive the first wave, either.

In the aftermath, Ryan gets thrown off into space, turning and turning and turning. Partially, we see this from Ryan's viewpoint (which is to say that my stomach started turning and my head started spinning...and never stopped for the rest of the film. Luckily, Matt catches up with her and together they start their near impossible mission to make it to the ISS space station in hopes of using an shuttle there to get back to earth safely.

What follows, however, is a string of incidences that make their mission harder and harder until - when they do reach their target - the tether linking them rips and only Ryan can hold on the the ISS, barely staying conscious because of her low oxygen level. Matt spins off into space.

Ryan now has to fend for herself....and it is quite the ride, including a fire that destroys the ISS, lack of fuel in the capsule and Chinese signs on the controls of the next stop to possible safety.

Had me on the edge of my seat.

And can we please give Sandra Bullock an Oscar for this?

9/10

House of Wax

Paris Hilton dies in the most satisfying way imaginable. This is really all you need as a motivation to watch.

6/10

The Hitcher

Brace yourselves for what I am about to tell you...Sean Bean's character dies.

This is a reimagination of  the 1986 film of the same name. Back then it was Rutger Hauer hunting down C. Thomas Howell. This time around it is Sean Bean coming after a young couple played by Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton.

The two ignore a guy with a broken down car standing by the side of the road in the pouring rain only to run after him again at the next rest stop. He is being all chummy and "I wouldn't have picked my up, either *chuckle*" and when he now asks for a ride to the nearest town the young man, guilt ridden, says yes. And really, he should have listen to his girlfriend, as she will remind him later.

The drive turns pretty ugly, pretty quickly and after the hitchhiker pulls a knife on them, they throw him out of the moving vehicle. They thought they were done with him but the very next day they are overtaken by a Christian family with two kids and see the culprit sitting in the back, playing with the young son. They pull up next to the car to warn them - which is never a good idea, because the people in the other car will think you are crazy and an oncoming vehicle will force you off the road.

Now the car is trashed and they have to walk and soon enough come across the family car with all but the badly injured father dead. They think they can save him and drive him (and the very bloody bodies) to the next diner to alert help. This all looks pretty bad, with the young couple all bloody and now their fingerprints all over the car.

They get taken into custody but the hitchhiker is not yet finished with them. He kills off everyone in the police station except for the two (no, I don't know what he wants with them, either) which they will also be suspected of doing. Only one cop has his doubts about their guilt and after a highway chase with multiple police fatalities it is pretty obvious who the bad guy is.

The hitchhiker is taken into custody after ripping apart (literally!) the young man with the help of two trucks only to cause the police car that is to transfer him to another location to crash, killing of that one sympathetic cop and gets offed by the woman, lone survivor of the string of tragedies.

The film is not as good as the 1980's one but Sean Bean is as evil a killer as Rutger Hauer was.

7/10

Joy Ride

You really don't want to mess with a truck driver who has nothing else to do all day but plot his revenge while driving down those long lonesome highways.

Here, two idiot brothers think it is a great idea to impersonate a woman via CB and luring one "Rusty Nail" to a motel for a meetup. They send him to the room next door. This one, quite handily, is occupied by a first class racist asshole. Talking about killing two birds with one stone. The sounds coming from next door turn a little weird and the younger brother gets a little nervous and reports strange noises to reception. When the night clerk check in with room 17 via phone they get an answer saying that everything is fine.

Except it isn't. The racist asshole gets what he deserves - and then some. He is found lying on the highway with his jaw removed (but, miraculously, he lives and serves as a means to scare the shit out of our two brothers).

From there it only gets worse. Rusty is pretty resourceful and soon knows their car and their names and that they picked a female friend up from college, as well. And he comes after them. He kidnaps the college student's friend as a means to get them. He lures them to a deserted road near a corn field (aren't those fun?) and drives after them with his big-ass truck. In the end, he gets the girl and props her up with a gun pointed at her head that will go off if someone opens the door (room 17!). The brothers come to her rescue and nearly get killed in the effort.

Bruised and battered, they end up sitting in an ambulance when they are told who the guy was. And they are the only ones realizing that the now dead assumed truck driver is not the Rusty Nail that has been after them.

As a last scare in the film he talks to them via the CB of the ambulance.

7/10

No One Lives

A group of violent criminals (although the level of violence each member is ready to dish out varies) kidnaps a vacationing couple to - what? - kill them? rob them? torture them? Nobody knows for sure.

Then the most violent of the violent group, one Flynn, when searching the freshly obtained car, finds a young woman in the trunk, this one kidnapped herself by the pretty couple (recently considered harmless). Turns out the guy (no names, please!) is a psychopathic asshole who has not only kidnapped the girl in the trunk but apparently also the girl he was with who - rather than spending more time with the psycho - throws herself onto a bowie knife that has been threateningly held against her throat. Both women have been equiped with a sensor by the psycho, placed in their lower belly.

Things get out of hand for our group of ciminals when they find that psycho has escaped from their associate Ethan's watch and is now hunting them. And, as the title and the whipered words of the psycho suggest, "no one lives".

However, this turns out to not be quite true as the orignial kidnapped young woman survives and the psycho walks.

What it lacks in coherent story it makes up in disgust. Kind of meh.

3/10

The Internship

Alright, if it is free I might as well go watch an Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn comedy. Even though I hated The Wedding Crashers and normally don't get the funny in what they do.

So, I did not expect anything. This is probably the best possible mindset as it frees you to enjoy the few jokes that are actually funny.

The premise is stupid. Two salesmen get canned after their boss closes down the business without bothering to tell them. They have no skills (other than selling stuff) to speak of so one of them decides to make an application for an internship at Google that may or may not lead to an employment.

Because, see, the way they do that at Google is they split the interns into teams and give them challenges (like writing an App - most downloads win - or playing Quiddich) which will lead to one team winning and all their team members getting offered jobs.

I'm sure that is exactly what Google does.

Will Wilson/Vaughn be on the winning team?
Will whatever team win in the nick of time?
Will the kids get the Flashdance references?

Nailbiting. Totally.

4/10