Ever since The Exorcist and the Omen, way back in the 70's, and even before that, with Children of the Damned (I think that was the title) back in the 50's or 60's, children have been scary. They've made dozens, if not hundreds, of movies about it. Frankly, the little bastards creep me out too. I mean, they've like Dwarves, only meaner, smell worse, and can't handle their liquor.
11/11/11 (2011) continues the long series of movies involving creepy kids. A professor moves to a new town after accepting a teaching position at a nearby college, and his wife and son accompany him. The professor's kid, named Nathan, or Nat, is going to turn 11 in less than a week, on the 11th of November. 11/11/11! :-o The town seems a bit odd at first, and there's a long six-clawed mark on their new home, but they don't think much of it. As the days go by, the mother almost has a miscarriage, and her doctor prescribes complete bed rest. Several of the neighbors are involved in fatal accidents, and several others have strange meetings in a smoke filled van...
Sorry, that makes it sound like they were all in there smoking pot, doesn't it? They weren't.
So this movie is an Asylum picture I guess? They aren't known for their good works, and I'm afraid this one isn't exactly going to catapult them into the limelight. Honestly, there wasn't anything horribly wrong with this movie, there just wasn't very much that was right. The acting was mediocre, the sets were bland, the plot wasn't much more than adequate, and the lack of nudity and gore and blood pretty much made this one ultimately forgettable.
In a nutshell, (and the synopsis in the Netflix description of the movie gives away this fact), the boy turning 11 is going to turn into Satan on his birthday. The townsfolk are there to protect him and help the 'transformation process' along. The parents are clueless. The mom is attractive, and I'm sorry they made her stay in bed for almost the whole movie. It would have been so much better for her to have one long shower scene for the whole movie, but I don't write these things. While the mom's laid up, the nanny they get is pretty attractive, too, only she's overdressed for wherever climate they are in. It's november 11th, and there's green grass and palm trees, and at one point I saw heat waves over the road they were on, so they either just filmed it in the height of summer and said to hell with the calendar, or this story is set in a warm southern climate. Would have been nice to see some womenfolk actually dressed for the warm weather. Bikinis, anyone?
What else might have made the movie better... The boy hardly says a word through the whole film. I guess he makes some mumbles to the effect that he is trying to be a good kid, but with the townsfolk and the nanny pushing him to be bad, he's helpless. Seems to me if a boy is turning into satan, he's not very helpless, but wtf do I know? Would have been much creepier if the kid was doing this stuff on his own, and maybe giggled maniacally whenever he did something bad, with or without anyone's help. There doesn't appear to be any reason he does the things he does, and he never shows much emotion, but it's not a cold, emotionless type of thing (which would have been scary), it's more a "I'm sleepwalking and I have no idea what I am doing" kind of thing. So they take all the fun out of it. Personally I think the nanny, Denise, was quite possibly the best actress in the film, and that's not saying much, since all she really does is beat the fuck out of the real nanny and take her place, and then teach the kid to burn butterflies with a magnifying glass. The old neighbor lady played her part pretty well, too, but they make her seem more like a senile old lady who lost her cat than anything else.
Ultimately, it's probably the lack of any real blood and gore that do this movie in. There's quite a few bodies piling up, but they are shot, electrocuted, knocked out, or knocked off rooftops, and they never actually show any of the gruesome details, like the special effects department was fresh our of strawberry syrup or something. This movie is almost like a kid's version of the Omen, without any teeth to it. There's not even any monsters or demons, just some random whispering from the closet that's never explained or revealed or even mentioned after the first couple times. No scary black cats, no vicious devil dogs, barely a few wasps that never really do much of anything except fly lazily around a tree outside for the entire movie.
I can't say as this movie was very good. The plot was okay enough, though it's been done lots before, and the story was fairly coherent and understandable, just, you know, without anything that would make it very memorable or exciting to watch. So, yes, it was sort of boring. I won't watch this one again, not because it was all that terrible, but because there was nothing to redeem the absolute lack of any good parts. If you want to watch a scary kid movie, there's tons better examples. The Omen, the Exorcist, Children of the Corn, Village of the Damned, the list goes on.
I thought it might be cool to watch this on the 11th, and then review the movies 12/12/12 and 13/13/13 tomorrow and the night after, but now I'm wondering how good the next two movies will be. I've never really thought much about numbers, honestly. When you have such a limited amount of the things (0-9, and every single permutation and mathematical equation is expressed in variations and series of those ten digits) you're going to have a lot of coincidences.
Personally, I think math is just a random imagining of the mind of man, and doesn't really have much place in the universe, but I think I'm in the minority on that one. I mean, can you even prove math is real? Or that numbers are? What is the concept of zero, or 1? If you draw a line, and pick a point, and call it one, then what about the very next part of the line? is that 1.1? 1.00000001? 2? Or 7? Seems pretty goddamned arbitrary, to me. Sure, we all agree if we're looking at two apples, or two oranges, that there's two of each, and two and two make four, but, what are we really talking about, when you consider that each of those apples and oranges is really made up of an almost infinite number of proteins, molecules, chemical compounds, atoms and subatomic particles? Can you look at one of those apples and really call it one whole thing, or is it a huge complex interconnected structure of particles and forces holding it all together? Are they really separate things from the oranges, when you consider they are all composed of the same kinds of molecules, each held in place by the same forces? Aren't we all just agreeing with a series of concepts developed by the Arabians (they are called Arabic numerals, you know) many thousands of years ago? Sure, maybe it was a good idea back then, but is it still a good idea, or are we just all still working with it because nobody's thought up something better? Shit, we revise our dietary requirements every 6 months! Take beer, or coffee, or butter. First it's bad, then it's good. Then, it's bad again, and a year later, it's good. Why are we still using a bunch of ideas about numbers thought up by old men some thousands, if not tens of thousands of years ago? Don't ask me! I just live here.
That's all for tonight. If I haven't thoroughly confused you, don't worry! I've thoroughly confused myself enough for both of us. :-D I'm also half drunk, half sick, and entirely nuts! If that scares you, great! This is the month for it. Come back tomorrow for another goofy, and slightly loony, review.
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