The Curator of Schlock #236 by Jeff Shuster

47 Meters Down

Mandy Moore in a shark cage.

July 2018 came and went, but brought with it a many splendid thing. Like the trailer for that new Aquaman movie. He’s not wearing the orange trunks, though. He could also do with a shave and a haircut if you ask me, but maybe he’ll work his way up to the Aquaman we know and love.

Still, what July didn’t give us was James Patterson’s The Zoo Season 4. How could they do this to me? In the finale of Season 3, an army of hybrids stormed the wall protecting the remnants of human civilization. I guess James Patterson was too busy palling around with former President Bill Clinton to be bothered to get on the horn with the head CBS to save the greatest summer show in the history of summer shows! James Paterson just doesn’t care. I’ll repeat.  James Patterson just doesn’t care.

But we care here at The Museum of Schlock. Don’t bother with TV shows. They’re a waste of time. Cinema is where it’s at. Tonight we’re watching 2018’s 47 Meters Down from director Johannes Roberts.

It stars Mandy Moore and Matthew Modine. It’s about two sisters, Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate, having a fabulous vacation at a Mexican resort. Or they would be having a fabulous vacation if Lisa wasn’t moping about her ex-boyfriend. Apparently, he left Lisa because she was boring. Details weren’t giving, but I would hazard to guess it had something to do with Lisa’s refusal to wear the Raggedy Ann costume on their anniversary.

Kate and Lisa meet a couple of local boys who tell them of a crusty, old sailor who takes passengers out to the middle of the ocean, fits them with scuba gear, sticks them in cage, and dunks them in the water so they can see killer sharks up close. Lisa thinks this is dangerous, but Kate reminds Lisa of how boring she is and how boring girls don’t get the guy. Plus, if Lisa posts pictures of herself underwater in a shark cage, surely her ex-boyfriend will come running back to her.

The crusty, old sailor is played by Matthew Modine. His name is Captain Taylor. And unlike Captain Phillips, he remains the captain throughout the entire movie. There are no emaciated Somalia pirates trying to steal his vessel, mainly because it’s a hunk of junk. Captain Taylor asks them if they are certified scuba divers. Kate says she is. Lisa isn’t a certified scuba diver because being such a thing might make her less boring, but she lies and says she’s certified.

After boarding the boat, Lisa has some trepidation about going into the cage since it’s rustier than her Spanish language skills. Captain Taylor insists that it’s safe.

A man named Javier (Hey, it’s my Spanish namesake!) proceeds to chum the water with rotten fish parts and blood. Lisa points out that it’s illegal to chum ocean water. Javier asks how else should he get the attention of the sharks? Should he call them? “Hey sharks!” he screams.

Yes, we hate Javier at this point.

The girls get in the cage and under the sea they go. It’s a magical experience filled with blue luminescence, colorful fish, and aggressive sharks. And then the cage falls 47 meters down. I’m not trying to sound negative, but even Ethan Hunt couldn’t get out of this mess. FYI, this movie is actually adapted from Matthew Modine’s debut novel, Boring Girl Gonna Die in the Shark.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #231 by Jeff Shuster

The Last Exorcism Part II

Nope. There’s no sequel when something is the last of anything!

I’m sorry, but if we can get The Last Exorcism Part II, we can get The Last Starfighter Part II. I’ve been waiting over three decades for a follow-up. I want see Alex Rogan face off against the maniacal Xur once and for all. Maybe we’ll even see a resurgence of the Ko-Dan Armada.

How about that? Looks like The Last Starfighter was turned into an off-Broadway musical back in 2004. I’d rather see that than Hamilton. I’m just saying.

Tonight’s movie is 2013’s The Last Exorcism Part II from Ed Gass-Donnelly. The enticing Amazon description states, “The evil force is back with horrific plans.” Huh? When did the evil force leave? The Last Exorcism ended with a satanic cult pulling a demon named Abalam out from a pregnant Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell) and then tossing said baby demon into a bonfire where the flames caused it to grow into a GIANT DEMON. Reverend Marcus gets burned alive and the satanic cult butchers his camera crew.

I assumed that the demon then proceeded to create hell on Earth or maybe he got a cushy job over at Lucasfilm. Regardless, Abalam didn’t go anywhere. He was made flesh and doing damage out in the world.

The Last Exorcism Part II forgets all of that. Abalam is non-corporeal again and stalking an amnestic Nell. She ends up being taken in at a home for wayward girls run by Frank Merie (Muse Watson), a therapist who doesn’t believe in demons. He even convinces Nell to reconsider the whole religion thing. Nell is enjoying her new life with the other wayward girls, especially since the girl’s home is located right in the middle of New Orleans. Party time! Seriously, you can hear jazz music being played live at four in the morning in the Big Easy! I’ve been there.

I wish I could be a wayward girl living in New Orleans.

Things are going well until strange things start a brewing. While Nell is working at a chambermaid at a local hotel, she hears Reverend Marcus trying to warn her about Abalam through an old radio. A boy she’s interested in calls the house, but all she hears on the other line is a crying baby. She keeps seeing her dad, and I can’t tell if he’s real or a ghost.

He warns her that Abalam wants to join with her and then he’ll be unstoppable or some such doomsday mumbo jumbo. I think one of the other wayward girls, Gwen (Julia Garner), is also possessed by Abalam because her eyes keep going all black and she keeps smiling a wicked smile.

All is not lost. A secret society known as the Order of the Right Hand wants to kill Abalam by transferring his essence into a chicken and then killing the chicken. Sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo voodoo horseshit to me.

The ceremony goes awry.

Abalam joins with Nell and she goes on a killing spree.

The movie ends with New Orleans being torched by hellfire. Now you don’t have to watch the movie.

You’re welcome.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #230 by Jeff Shuster

The Last Exorcism

The Citizen Kane of found footage demonic possession movies.

So I’m on the Interweb and take notice of an upcoming motion picture called Death Kiss? The title sounds familiar. It stars Daniel Baldwin and some actor I’ve never heard of, a Robert Bronzi. Still, the name Robert Bronzi reminds me of another actor celebrated at this establishment. And then I watch the trailer. Daniel Baldwin is playing some kind of shock jock radio host, keeps talking about how someone needs to deliver the “Kiss of Death” to the criminals terrorizing our society. Out from the shadows steps a man:

I am crying tears of joy. Everything’s come full circle now. We’ve come home, folks.

Anyway, back to Satan Month. This week’s feature is 2010’s The Last Exorcism from director Daniel Stamm. Now, the first thing you’ll notice is that this looks like a real documentary. It’s professionally shot. The camera doesn’t shake all over the place. There’s no zooming in and out unlike some other found footage movies that will never be mentioned on this blog again. The movie centers around a skeptical preacher named Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) and a teenage girl named Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell) who may or may not have the devil inside her.

Here’s where I’m at with horror movies. I’m ecstatic when they’re great, but those are rare. Many are good and I’m fine with good. And even a bad horror movie is better than watching Young Adam or The English Patient. The Last Exorcism is a good horror movie and good is good enough.

What makes it good is the best horror movie protagonist I’ve seen since Ash from the Evil Dead films, Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a preacher from the Louisiana Bible Belt. Reverend Marcus started preaching the good word when he was a boy, groomed by his father. Reverend Marcus is an exorcist, but there’s just one problem: he doesn’t believe in demons anymore. When he reads a news story about a young autistic boy who gets suffocated to death during an exorcism, he decides it’s time to expose exorcism for the fraud that it is.

With a documentary crew in tow, he heads to the backwoods of Louisiana, interviewing yokels about the Satanic cults and UFO sightings. We laugh at the rubes, but maybe we shouldn’t. Reverend Marcus has been summoned to the Sweetzer farm, where a teenage girl named Nell is supposedly possessed by a demon named Abalam. With his linen suit and Jimmy Swaggart swagger, he convinces her God-fearing father, Louis, to let him perform an exorcism on Nell, emphasis on perform since it is a performance.

Reverend Marcus has an exorcism kit complete with an MP3 player filled with demon sound effects, a crucifix that emits smoke with the press of a button, and other instruments of fakery. A shaky bed and an avalanche of quotes from The Exorcist, and presto, Reverend Marcus has convinced Nell and her family that she’s no longer possessed. But that isn’t where the movie ends. Nell starts to act really strange, drawing pictures of Reverend Marcus on fire and the camera crew hacked to pieces. Oh, and then Nell mutilates the family cat. The cameraman wants to leave, but not one listens to him. I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say that fire and brimstone may be involved.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #222 by Jeff Shuster

13 Cameras

This is a gross one, folks.

No Friday the 13th movies this Friday the 13th. I thought about going with the 2009 remake, but 2009 isn’t 2010 and I am committed to digging for schlock from this decade no matter what the cost. We could have had another Friday the 13th movie this decade, but Paramount studios took a bath on the Ring sequel, Rings, and have now forsworn the production of any new horror movies including another reboot of Friday the 13th.

Boo!

I’ll have to find out what went wrong with Rings.

Not to worry. I’ve got 2016’s 13 Cameras from director Victor Zarcoff for your consideration this weekend. It’s on Netflix. It has 13 in the title. Good enough.

The movie begins with a clerk in a home security store giving the hard sell to a disgusting looking man. Seriously, this guy has patchy hair, oily skin, the frame of a goblin, and dead man’s eyes. I don’t like him. Granted, one in seven Floridians look just like this guy, but that doesn’t mean I’m used to it. His name is Gerald (Neville Archambault). He’s a landlord who rents properties in a California suburb. The clerk manages to sell him thirteen cameras to install in one of his properties, all out of sight and hidden.

Said property gets rented to a young man named Ryan (PJ McCabe) and his pregnant wife, Claire (Brianne Moncrief). Claire gets a little creeped out by Gerald as he lets them into their new home. Maybe it’s the fact that he smells like “rotten mayonnaise.” Ryan assures Claire that Gerald just won’t show up to their house out of the blue, that he has to give 24 hours’ notice. What Ryan and Claire are unaware of is that there are cameras everywhere! There’s even one in the bathroom! As Claire undresses and showers, a mouth breathing Gerald sits transfixed in front of his array of monitors. Ewwww.

I remember and episode of Errol Morris’s First Person documentary series that centered on a guy who had cameras all over his apartment. He would broadcast his life on the Internet for the entire world to see and comment on in the forums of his website. If he had a fight with his live-in girlfriend, members of the forum would debate over who was in the right. They’d also rejoice when they kissed and made up. I suppose people were living vicariously through him, but I was always disturbed by one aspect of this gentleman’s voyeuristic lifestyle. He has a camera installed in his toilet. Best not to dwell on why someone would tune into that camera feed.

Back to 13 Cameras. Ryan is having an affair with his office assistant, Hannah (Sarah Baldwin). He keeps inviting Hannah over to house while Claire is out attending pregnant women’s yoga sessions. Don’t worry. He’ll still let Claire have their Italian dinner leftovers. Hannah keeps calling at all hours of the night. Ryan wants to call the affair off.

13 Cameras reminds me of Peyton Place if Peyton Place had a sweaty, troll-like man (1) watching the beautiful people through hidden cameras and (2) building a soundproof torture room in the basement of their house while the husband and wife are out shopping for an antique rocking chair. Check it out!

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #219 by Jeff Shuster

Shut In

Naomi Watts is the Shut In.

Lots of snowstorms assaulting the country right now. Our Northern friends are getting buried in their houses. In my home state of New Jersey, they’re saying these are some of the worst snowstorms in the state’s history. There’s an article about it online. I didn’t bother reading it. I mostly read headlines. That’s all you really need to read anyway.

How is any of this relevant? Well, I’m covering 2016’s Shut In from director Farren Blackburn.  See how I segued into that. Pretty sweet if I do say so myself.

Shut In currently ranks in at 8% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Seems the critics weren’t too kind to this one, but your Curator of Schlock has different criteria for judging movies than your average cinema snob! For instance, Shut In stars Naomi Watts and that gangly guy from Stranger Things. The movie gets 12% for that alone. People put too much stock in Rotten Tomatoes scores anyway. I noticed a “Certified Fresh” sticker on the cover of the Blu-ray of Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. It’s Walt Disney’s Pinocchio! You don’t need the approval of the herd, Disney. The movie was considered a masterpiece long before Al Gore and those Swedes invented the Internet. If you care so much about what the herd wants, make TRON 3 already.

The herd wants TRON 3, Disney, and they want it now!

Shut In centers on a psychologist named Mary Portman (Naomi Watts) and her troubled stepson, Steven (Charlie Heaton, the gangly guy from Stranger Things). Mary and her husband, Richard (Peter Outerbridge), decide to send Steven away to some private academy because he is so troubled. On the way there, Steven gets into a fight with his dad, grabs the wheel, and steers right into the path of an oncoming Mack truck. Richard dies and Steven ends up in a vegetative state, leaving poor Mary in charge of his daily care.

For Mary, daily care of Steven involves feeding him drugs and shoving him in front of a TV to watch infomercials. Mr. Popeil ain’t gonna knock this kid out of a coma, Mary. Try a KISS concert or some reruns of Mr. Belvedere. That would certainly work on me.

Also, singing that “Hush, Little Baby” song to your 16 year-old stepson is a little creepy in its own right. Maybe you think he can’t hear you because he’s in a coma or a vegetative state, maybe he can.

In addition to taking care of Steven, Mary treats the troubled kids of her New England small town as a trained psychiatrist. One is a little deaf boy named Tom who’s being sent away by his foster family after breaking another kid’s arm. Mary feels bad for him, but is surprised when he manages to sneak back into her house. There’s a raging snowstorm outside, so Mary puts him up for the night, waking up later to find him running away into cold, dark night.

The authorities start of a search and rescue for the young boy, but Mary thinks it’s too late. She’s also experiencing night terrors where little Tom is actually still in the house, living in the walls.

This might have something to do with the fact that Tom is still alive and living in the walls of her house. Also, it turns out that Steven has been faking his coma all along and has dastardly plans involving Mary, a bathtub, and the singing of “Hush, Little Baby.”

Did I mention Shut In stars Oliver Platt as Dr. Wilson, Mary’s psychologist and trusted friend. That deserves a bump up to 16%. Steven stabs Dr. Wilson to death. That deserves a bump up to 20%.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.