The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Hellmaster (dir by Douglas Schulze)

Posted on October 1, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to the end of the world.

Or something like that.

To be honest, it’s a bit of a struggle to say what exactly the 1992 film Hellmaster was actually about but I think it definitely had something to do with the end of the world. John Saxon plays Prof. Jones, a sadistic eugenicist who, in the late 60s, developed a drug that he claimed would — I kid you not — “cure homelessness.” Apparently, the drug would make the homeless so strong that they would be able to build a house or something. Anyway, a reporter (David Emge, best known as the helicopter pilot in the original Dawn of the Dead) discovered what Jones was doing and that the drugs were actually turning the homeless into mind-controlled zombies. Jones responded by murdering the reporter’s wife and then vanishing.

Are you following the story so far?

20 years later, the reporter is having nightmares about the homeless so he decides to start hanging out around the Kant Institute for the Gifted. We’re told that the Kant Institute is a college. There only appears to be one professor and a handful of students, the majority of whom appear to be in their early 30s. I’m not really sure what’s being taught at the school. (The only class we see features two white people debating whether or not Malcolm X hated the homeless.) One of the students, Shelley (Amy Raasch), is apparently clairvoyant and she keeps having visions of the school’s chapel bursting into flames.

Meanwhile, there are shots of an old church bus driving down various deserted roads. “Have a nice day” is written across the cross that hangs on the front of the bus. On top of the bus, someone’s painted a smiley face. The bus itself is occupied by four deformed followers of Prof. Jones. Apparently, they’ve spent the last 20 years driving around the country and killing people. One of them is dressed like a nun and carries several hypodermic needles. They come across a stalled motorist and promptly kill him. The man’s daughter (Sarah Barkoff) escapes and flees to the nearby Kant Institute.

It turns out that the bus is also heading to the Kant Institute! Eventually, Prof. Jones pops up and explains that it took God six days to create the world but Jones believes that it will only take him one night to transform the world into Hell. Why does Jones want to do this? That’s not really clear. Actually, it’s not even clear how showing up at the Kant Institute will even help Jones accomplish that goal.

Anyway, the rest of the movie is basically Shelley and the reporter and a handful of friends attempting to not get transformed into zombies by Prof. Jones. This is easier said than done because, as we quickly discover, everyone in this movie is an idiot.

Hellmaster is one of those low-budget horror films that shouldn’t work and yet somehow, it does. Yes, the plot makes absolutely no sense and, with the exception of genre vets Saxon and Emge, the performances are almost all terrible. But no matter! At its best, the film — which is full of dark hallways and deserted roads and twisty camera angles — achieves a dream-like intensity. The zombies, with their hypodermic needles and their joyful savagery, are genuinely creepy and John Saxon is properly menacing as Prof. Jones. It’s a relentless film, one that leaves you feeling as if anyone can die at any time and, when they do die, it’s often in the most macabre ways possible. A crippled student is beaten to death with his own crutch. Another is doused with acid. And you may be asking yourself, “But why was there a big vat of acid just sitting around?” but oddly, it works within the surreal dream logic of the film. It makes no sense and yet, it happens. If anything, the lack of a coherent plot and the low-budget aesthetic help this film create and maintain its nightmarish atmosphere.

For all of its flaws, Hellmaster is a thousand times more effective than you might expect.

Book Review: Carrie by Stephen King

Posted on October 1, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1974, Carrie is often cited as being Stephen King’s first novel.

That, of course, isn’t technically true. King had written three novels before Carrie, the majority of which weren’t very good. Carrie is a novel that King says he wrote in a hurry because he was living in a trailer and needed the money. It’s also a novel that King says he had absolutely no faith in because he didn’t feel like he could write from a female perspective. Despite King’s then-low opinion of what he had written, Carrie went on to become his first published novel. Thought the novel wasn’t an immediate success (the hardback edition only sold 13,000 copies), it subsequently became a best seller after it was adapted into Brian DePalma’s 1976 film of the same name.

By now, we all know the story, don’t we? Even if you’ve never read the book or seen any of the film versions, there’s been so many different rip-offs and unofficial remakes of Carrie that I doubt that there’s anyone who doesn’t know the story. Everyone knows that Carrie White was a high school outcast and that her mother was a religious fanatic. We all know what happened the night that Tommy Ross took Carrie White to prom. We all know about the cruel prank that was played on Carrie, about the pig’s blood that was dumped on her right after Tommy and Carrie were crowned king and queen of the prom. And we all know that Carrie’s response was to use her own telekinetic powers to burn down the entire town and to kill the majority of her tormentors.

44 years after it was first published, it’s still interesting to read Carrie. On the one hand, you can definitely see the beginnings of King’s signature style, especially towards the end of the book when Sue Snell comes across a dying Carrie. On the other hand, this book is definitely different from any other King novel. For one thing, it’s only 199 pages long. Living in a trailer and struggling to make ends meet may not have been easy for King but I would say it actually made him a better writer. Carrie contains none of the rambling, self-indulgent filler that’s come to typify much of King’s recent work. One imagines that, if King wrote Carrie today, we’d have to wade through at least 500 pages of people talking about the history of psychic phenomena before the book even got around to Sue asking Tommy to take Carrie to prom. Instead, because King was writing while hungry, there’s a hunger to the book. It doesn’t waste any time.

King structured the novel so that half of it was narrative and half of it was, for lack of a better term, evidence. We get excerpts from police reports, newspaper articles, and books written after the prom disaster. The White Committee offers up their official report. We get to read a little bit of Sue Snell’s book, I Am Sue Snell. I imagine the structure was largely the result of King’s self-confessed insecurity with the book’s subject matter. (For instance, whenever you doubt that Tommy Ross would actually take Carrie to prom, an except from the final report of the White Committee pops up and assures you that he did.) Though borne of insecurity, the structure actually works pretty well. It leaves little doubt that, after Carrie’s prom, the world will never be the same again.

The thing that really struck me while rereading this novel was that Stephen King himself seemed to dislike Carrie White almost as much as her classmates did. King focuses, to an almost uncomfortable degree, on Carrie’s unattractive appearance and, often times, he seems to be keeping his own distance from his main character, as if he was weary about trying to get inside of her head. When Carrie does go on her rampage, she comes across more as an out-of-control monster than someone who has been pushed too far. Our popular conception of Carrie being a tragic victim really has more to do with how Sissy Spacek played her in the original film than in how King wrote about her in his novel.

Instead, the book is far more concerned with Sue Snell and Tommy Ross, who are both portrayed as being everyone’s idealized high school companion. As both a novel and a film, Carrie‘s greatest weakness has always been that the plot hinges on the idea that any teenager, no matter how guilt-ridden, would actually ask their romantic companion to take someone else to prom. The pig’s blood, I believe. The prom, less so.

Carrie has its flaws but, to be honest, I actually think it’s better than some of King’s more recent books. If nothing else, it’s a chance to look into Stephen King’s mind before he became the Stephen King.

Italian Horror Spotlight: Ratman (dir by Giuliano Carnimeo)

Posted on October 1, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This October, along with with everything else, I want to highlight Italian horror! Today, we start things off with a look at 1988’s Ratman!

Terry (Janet Agren) has come to a Caribbean island, not for a vacation but instead to collect the remains of her sister, Marlis (Eva Grimaldi). Marlis was an up-and-coming model who came to the island with a photographer named Mark (Werner Pochath) and another model named Peggy (Luisa Menon). Marlis had her entire life ahead of her but apparently, someone murdered her on the island and then left her body in an abandoned building where it was eaten by a rat.

Obviously, identifying a dead sibling would be a difficult task for anyone. Fortunately, no sooner has Terry arrived on the island than she runs into Fred (David Warbeck). Fred is a true crime writer, a man who knows the island and who is always ready with a quip or a joke. For reasons that are never quite clear, Fred invites himself to accompany Terry down to the morgue. Why does Terry allow a complete stranger to go with her to identify her sister’s body? Who knows? Maybe it’s because Fred is played by David Warbeck, who was one of the more likable actors to regularly appear in Italian horror films.

It turns out to be a good thing that Fred came along because, when they arrive at the morgue, it turns out that the police don’t actually have Marlis’s body! Instead, they have Peggy’s body. Peggy was murdered while wearing Marlis’s dress, which led to a case of mistaken identity. But, if Marlis isn’t dead, where is she?

Could she and Mark have gone deeper into the jungles of the island, hoping to find the perfect place to take the pictures that will turn Marlis into a superstar? Of course, they have! Unfortunately, what they did not take into account is that the island is also the home of the Ratman!

Who is the Ratman? Well, his name is actually Mousey (Nelson de la Rosa), despite the fact that he doesn’t really act like a mouse. Mousey was created a mad scientist who wanted to see what would happen if he crossed the genes of a monkey and a rat. The end result was a 2’4 sociopath with really sharp teeth and an insatiable urge to kill. The scientist thinks that he’ll win the Nobel Prize for this creation but Mousey seems to be more concerned with killing people. As soon as he gets out of his cage, he goes on a killing spree….

Mostly because of the presence of Nelson de la Rosa (who, until his death in 2016, was the world’s shortest man), Ratman has a cult following. And it must be admitted that de la Rosa makes for a memorable ratman. Unfortunately, he’s not really in the film that much. The majority of the film is made up of filler. For instance, we spend a lot of time watching Mark take pictures. A lot of time is also devoted to Fred and Terry having to deal with the incompetent island police. (The police are convinced that Marlis is dead and are apparently willing to force Terry to look at every dead body on the island to prove it.)

Fortunately, this film also features David Warbeck and, as any fan of Italian horror can tell you, Warbeck was one of those actors who improved any film in which he appeared. Warbeck always approached his roles with a sense of humor and a likable joie de vivre and he’s probably as convincing as anyone could hope to be when appearing in a film like Ratman. Warbeck delivers his lines with just enough of a smile to not only let you know that he’s in on the joke but to also invite you to play along with him.

Reportedly, Ratman was a troubled production and the film’s producer stepped in to take over from the credited director. That perhaps explains why the film itself sometimes feels rather disjointed. There is one undeniably effective sequence, in which a model is stalked by a knife-wielding maniac just to then be attacked by Mousey instead. Otherwise, by the standards of most Italian horror films, it’s a visually bland movie. I would have liked to have seen what someone like Lamberto Bava and Lucio Fulci could have done with Ratman.

Ratman exists in several different version. The version I saw was dubbed into French and it was obvious that a good deal of gore had been cut from the film. (The “official” Italian version has a running time of 82 minutes. The version I saw only ran 76 minutes.) Still, even in an edited form, this film has an undeniable “What did I just see” appeal to it and it’s always worth watching anything that features David Warbeck.

Guilty Pleasure No. 39: Ghost Whisperer

Posted on October 1, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Once upon a time, there were two shows about women who could speak with the dead.

One show ran from 2005 to 2011. It starred a future Oscar winner and, over the course of its run, it was nominated for a bunch of Emmys. It may have never been a huge hit but it received decent ratings and, even more importantly, it was a critically acclaimed. The show claimed to be based on fact and it took a low-key, procedural approach to its stories.

The second show ran from 2005 to 2010 and it starred a multiple Golden Globe nominee and it was never nominated for any major Emmys. (The first season, however, did receive a Teen Choice nomination.) Like the first show, it was never exactly a big hit, though it did have a loyal audience. Whereas the first show was acclaimed by critics, the second show was routinely dismissed. If the first show was subdued and low-key, this second show took the exact opposite approach.

The first show was called Medium.

The second show was called Ghost Whisperer.

I watched both of them and I can tell you that both had their strengths and their weaknesses. Medium was, at time, genuinely creepy and Patricia Arquette gave an admirably serious performance. At the same time, the show was often so serious that it was a bit of a drag to watch. You may have believed that Arquette could talk to the dead but you never really bought into the idea that they would want to talk to her or anyone else on the show. In short, Medium was good but it wasn’t much fun.

Ghost Whisperer, on the other hand…

Listen, I’m not even going to pretend that Ghost Whisperer was a great show. It was a frequently silly and over-the-top show. Jennifer Love Hewitt played Melinda Gordon, who lived in Grandview, New York and who owned an antique shop called — I kid you not — Same As It Never Was Antiques. The dead would come to Melinda because they still had feelings that needed to be resolved on Earth before they could cross over into the afterlife. Sometimes the ghosts were in denial. Sometimes they were rude, violent, and scary. Sometimes they were just mildly quirky. But they always ended up happy that Melinda was able to find a way for them to move on. Over the course of five seasons, the show developed both the quirkiness of the town and the mythology behind the ghosts themselves. We learned about the Watchers and the Shadows and the Shinies and the Book of Changes. We also learned a bit about Melinda’s history. Season 3 ended with Melinda helping her deceased father go into the light and you better believe I cried.

If Medium was an often dour, somber, and deliberately frumpy show, Ghost Whisperer was bright, fun, and unapologetically glamorous. While poor Patricia Arquette always seemed to be carrying the entire weight of the world on her shoulders, Jennifer Love Hewitt always appeared to be having a blast playing Melinda. While she may not have been as good as an actress as Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Love Hewitt always brought just enough natural enthusiasm to the role that she could make even the most hackneyed of dialogue believable. When I looked over some of the reviews of Ghost Whisperer’s first season, the immediate thing that I noticed was that many of the critics (in particular, the male critics) were obsessed with pointing out that Jennifer Love Hewitt was continually dressed and filmed in such a way to emphasize her breasts, as if there’s some sort of crime in being proud of what you have. But for me, as someone who shares the struggle of trying to find cute clothes for big boobs, it was empowering that Melinda didn’t hide her body, her personality, or her beliefs. As played by Hewitt, Melinda was confident, outspoken, and unapologetic. Yes, she dressed a certain way. Yes, she looked a certain way. Yes, she believed that she could help ghosts cross over. And if anyone had a problem with it, so what? Melinda was a role model who never really got her due. If I ever find myself speaking to ghosts, I hope that I handle it half as well as Melinda did.

Ghost Whisperer ended in 2010 and Medium ended in 2011. Medium may have been nominated for more awards but guess which one I’ll always make a point to watch in syndication?

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Horror on The Lens: The Tower (dir by Richard Kletter)

Posted on October 1, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there and welcome to the October Horrorthon!

This is our favorite time of the year here at the Shattered Lens because October is horror month. For the past five years, we have celebrated every October by reviewing and sharing some of our favorite horror movies, shows, books, and music!

A part of the tradition of Horrorthon is that we begin every day in October by sharing a free movie. Now, I should warn you that most of these movies will come from YouTube and you know how YouTube is about yanking down videos. So, if you’re reading this in 2024 and wondering where the promised movie disappeared to … well, you should have watched it in 2018!

Let’s start things off with the 1993 made-for-television movie, The Tower!

Have you ever asked yourself what Die Hard would have been like if it had starred Paul Reiser and the Alan Rickman role had been played by an overzealous automated security system? Well, watch The Tower to find out! This is one of those movies where the hero, played by Paul Reiser of all people, manages to get almost everyone in the movie killed and yet we’re not supposed to hold it against him.

By the end of the movie, you’ll totally be on The Tower’s side!

Enjoy!

(I wrote a more in-depth review of The Tower over at HorrorCritic.)

Lifetime Film Review: Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey (dir by Jim Donovan)

Posted on September 30, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1984, Lisa McVey was seventeen years old and working at a doughnut shop in Florida. When she wasn’t working, she was having to deal with her dysfunctional home life, including regular sexual abuse at the hands of a relative. One night, after ending her shift at work, Lisa hopped on her bicycle and rode off. At the time, she was fully intending to kill herself. Instead, she found herself being chased and eventually abducted by a man in a car. That man was Bobby Joe Long and, though Lisa didn’t know it at the time, he has already killed at least ten other women in the Tampa Bay area.

After kidnapping her, Long held Lisa prisoner for 26 hours. Keeping her bound and blindfolded, Long raped her repeatedly and planned to kill her. Lisa, however, managed to talk him out of it. By her own admission, she used the same techniques that she had previously used to survive the years of abuse that she suffered when she was a child. She promised him that she wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. She told him that she understood that he wasn’t a bad guy and that she would even be his friend if he just let her go.

And that’s just what Bobby Joe Long did. He set her free. Lisa ran for home, not realizing that her family had reported her missing and that the police were looking for her. However, once Lisa reached her house, she discovered that neither her family nor the cops believed her. They assumed that she had run off with a boy and, when things didn’t work out, she came home and made up the kidnapping story to get out of trouble. The more Lisa tried to explain, the more the police doubted her….

That’s the story that was told in tonight’s Lifetime premiere, Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey. Usually, I tend to take a humorous (some would say “snarky”) approach when reviewing Lifetime films but that really wouldn’t be appropriate with this film. My friend, the writer Trevor Wells, compared this film to Cleveland Abduction and he’s absolutely right. Much like Cleveland Abduction, Believe Me tells the true story of one strong and underestimated woman who survived the worst experience possible and who, against all odds, managed to create light in the darkness. It’s not a pleasant film to watch but it is an inspiring one, one that offers up strength to any woman who has ever had to fight to be believed.

Katie Douglas gives a strong and empathetic performance as Lisa McVey. While the film doesn’t shy away from showing both what she experienced and her struggle with PTSD afterward, it also showcases the strength that helped her to survive both her Hellish childhood and Bobby Joe Long. It’s that same strength that caused her to never stop demanding that both the police and her family believe her.

Thanks to Lisa McVey, Bobby Joe Long was eventually captured. He’s currently sitting on Florida’s death row. As for Lisa, she is now a school resource officer and a motivational speaker.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Conrad & Michelle: If Words Could Kill (dir by Stephen Tolkin)

Posted on September 30, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recorded Conrad & Michelle off of Lifetime on September 23rd.

In 2014, 18 year-old Conrad Roy committed suicide in Massachusetts, poisoning himself with carbon monoxide fumes while sitting in his truck.

Conrad was an outstanding athlete and a good student but he has also struggled with social anxiety and depression and had reportedly often insisted to various therapists that he wanted to die. Some reports stated that Conrad had attempted suicide at least once before, with an attempted drug overdose when he was 17. Any suicide, regardless of the circumstances, is a tragedy but making Conrad’s story all the more disturbing was that, minutes before his death, he was texting with an acquaintance named Michelle Carter. Supposedly, a few years earlier, Michelle had talked Conrad out of a suicide attempt. This time, however, she insisted that he grow through with it. Even when he texted her that he was scared and that he had gotten out of his truck, Michelle texted back that he needed to get back in truck and go through with what he was planning.

After Conrad’s death, Michelle reportedly used the tragedy to generate as much attention for herself as possible. She described herself as being Conrad’s girlfriend and his soulmate. At the same time, Conrad’s friends and family said that Conrad had only met Michelle face-to-face a handful of times and that their relationship was almost entirely conducted online. Some friends went as far as to say that they had never even heard Conrad mention Michelle’s name and that Conrad had actually been doing better before Michelle started sending him text messages in which she goaded him into committing suicide.

When Michelle was arrested and put on trial, it made national headlines. Attorneys for the defense argued that Conrad had a history of suicidal behavior and that he was ultimately responsible for his own actions. The prosecution, on the other hand, argued that Michelle was a narcissist who heartlessly manipulated a vulnerable acquaintance. In the end, Michelle’s was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Specifically, she was convicted because of the text in which she told Conrad to get back in the truck. In August of 2017, she was sentenced to serve 30 months in prison.

Given the sensational nature of the case and the fact that the trial made national headlines, it’s not particularly shocking that Lifetime would make a movie about it. Starring Bella Thorne as Michelle and Austin P. McKenzie as Conrad, Conrad & Michelle does a good job of presenting the basic facts of the case. We watch as Michelle and Conrad first meet while on vacation on Florida and then we follow along as both of them spend the next few years texting each other, taking different psychiatric medications, and attending various therapy groups. Conrad struggles with his depression while Michelle deals with, among other things, an eating disorder. After Conrad’s death, we watch as Michelle awkwardly forces herself into the lives of his friends and family.

Some people will probably complain that the film never solidly takes a side as to whether or not Michelle was truly responsible for Conrad’s suicide. Though we see Michelle texting Conrad to get back in the truck, the film leaves it ambiguous as to whether it was specifically Michelle’s text that caused Conrad to follow through with his suicide. Still, after Conrad’s suicide, the film leaves no doubt that Michelle relished her new-found fame and her status as a self-declared tragic heroine. (After learning that Conrad’s suicide note was addressed to her, Michelle brags to her friends that Conrad didn’t write a note to anyone else. Later, when Michelle sets up a charity softball game in Conrad’s memory, she breathlessly reminds everyone that it was her idea and worries that someone else might try to take credit.) Bella Thorne does an excellent job in these scenes, playing Michelle as an unstable narcissist who is incapable of understanding why no one else is as excited for her as she is. In these scenes, Michelle’s monstrous selfishness is revealed and Thorne gives a chilling performance.

Like the story that inspired it, Conrad & Michelle is a sad and disturbing movie and one that I would recommend catching the next time that it’s on.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #195: Long Lost Daughter (dir by Christopher James Lang)

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On Friday night, I watched the latest Lifetime premiere, Long Lost Daughter!

Why Was I Watching It?

First off, let me just say that, considering what the folks on the East Coast have had to deal with over the past two weeks, I feel really guilty about complaining about getting a little bit of rain in Texas. (And it’s not really a complaint because, to be honest, I love stormy weather!)

That said, it rained all day Friday and it’s supposed to continue to rain through the weekend. When I was driving home from work, the rain was so bad that I actually had to limit myself to 30 mph. We’re under flash flood warning right now. What better way to pass the time when you’re trapped inside by a storm than be watching a Lifetime movie?

What Was It About?

Cathy Rhodes (Molly Hagan) is a successful and acclaimed author of children’s books. She’s written hundreds of stories about Mr. Poppins, a rabbit who can’t find his way home. It’s made her a beloved figure in her small town but there are some who find Cathy and her husband (Bates Wilder) to be a little bit strange. They whisper about how, 20 years earlier, Cathy’s 7 year-old daughter, Michelle, vanished.

Meanwhile, two new arrivals have come to town. Jonathan (Richard Brancatisano) is an aspiring science fiction writer. And his wife (Sofia Mattson) is going to help run the education center that Cathy has helped to fund. It turns out that Jonathan’s wife is 27 years old and has no memory of her mother or her childhood. And her name is …. Michelle!

Could Michelle be Cathy’s daughter? That’s certainly what Cathy thinks and she’s willing to do anything to make sure that both her daughter and Mr. Poppins find their way home…

What Worked?

Molly Hagan may not be a household name but I can guarantee you that you would recognize her if you saw her. She’s been in a countless number of films over the years and she is a truly great character actress. She’s played so many different characters and she’s been totally convincing every time. (I think her best-known recent film might be Sully, where she played one of the flight attendants who chanted, “Brace! Brace! Head down! Stay down!”) Anyway, Hagan does a great job as the Cathy Rhodes, making her both frightening and sympathetic.

Also giving a good performance was Bates Wilder, who played Cathy’s somewhat creepy husband. Both he and Hagan keep you guessing.

Speaking of keeping you guessing, this film had an ambiguous ending that I absolutely loved. I won’t spoil it but it was handled very well. It’s the type of ending that I wish Lifetime would try more often. Sometime, it’s not necessary to spell everything out.

What Did Not Work?

Could Michelle and Jonathan have been anymore unlikable? Michelle acted like moving from the city to a small town was the equivalent of moving to a different country. When Cathy mentioned she was making a casserole, Michelle’s smug response of, “Casserole!” was enough to make me decided that I wouldn’t ever want to know someone like Michelle in real life.

As for Jonathan … well, I lost all sympathy for him when he announced that, for him, being a writer was about business and not art. “No one ever reads Proust anymore,” he said, at one point. What a jerk! Michelle, at least, kinda redeemed herself as the film progressed. But Jonathan …. well, once a jerk, always a jerk.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

Whenever Michelle got annoyed with Jonathan, I was like, “Oh my God! I feel the exact same way!”

Lessons Learned

Don’t insult Proust.

Film Review: Life Itself (dir by Dan Fogelman)

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Watching Life Itself is like getting a Hallmark card from a serial killer. Even if you appreciate the sentiment, you still don’t feel good about it.

Written and directed by This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman, Life Itself attempts to juggle several different themes, so much so that it can sometimes be difficult to understand just what exactly the film is attempting to say. That said, I think the main lesson of the film is that you should always look both ways before stepping out into the middle of the street. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a horrific backstory, involving a decapitated father, a pervy uncle, and a gun. It doesn’t matter if you love Pulp Fiction or if you think Bob Dylan’s more recent work is underrated. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a dog and husband who is so in love with you that he’s practically a stalker. It doesn’t even matter that your pregnant and looking forward to naming your firstborn after your favorite musician. If you don’t look both ways before stepping out into the middle of the street, you’re going to get hit by a big damn bus.

That’s the lesson that Abby (Olivia Wilde) does not learn and, as a result, she not only gets run over by a bus but we, the viewers, are subjected to seeing her repeatedly getting run over by that bus. As temtping as it is to feel bad for Abby, my sympathy was limited by the fact that she and her husband (Oscar Isaac) named their dog Fuckface. I mean, seriously, who does that? Not only is it cruel to the dog but it’s also inconsiderate to the people who have to listen to you shouting, “Fuckface!” whenever the dog gets loose. For whatever reason, the movie doesn’t seem to get how annoying this is. That’s because Life Itself is another one of those movies that mistakes quirkiness for humanity.

The other annoying thing about Abby is that she’s an English major who somehow thinks that the use of the unreliable narrator is an understudied literary phenonema. In fact, she’s writing her thesis on unreliable narrators. Her argument is that life itself is the ultimate unreliable narrator because life is tricky and surprising, which doesn’t make one bit of sense.

Speaking of narrators, Life Itself has three, which is three too many. Two of the narrators are unreliable but I get the feeling that the third one is meant to be taken literally, which is a shame because the film would have made a lot more sense if it had ended with a Life of Pi-style revelation that none of what we just watched actually happened.

Anyway, Abby getting hit by a bus has repercussions that reverberate across the globe and across time. Not only does it lead to her husband writing a bad screenplay but it also leads to him committing suicide in a psychiatrist’s office. Abby’s daughter, Dylan (Olivia Cooke), grows up to be what this film believes to be a punk rocker, which means that she angrily covers Bob Dylan songs and stuffs a peanut butter and jelly sandwich down another girl’s throat. Meanwhile, in Spain….

What? Oh yeah, this film jumps from New York to Spain. In fact, it’s almost like another film suddenly starts after an hour of the first one. You go from Olivia Cooke sobbing on a park bench to Antonio Banderas talking about his childhood. Banderas is playing a landowner named Vincent Saccione. Saccione wants to be best friends with his foreman, Javier (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) but Javier suspects that Saccione just wants to steal away his saintly wife, Isabel (Laia Costa) and maybe Javier’s right!

Javier has a son named Rodrigo (who is played by five different actors over the course of the film before eventually growing up to be Alex Monner). When Saccione gives Rodrigo a globe, Javier decides to one-up him by taking his wife and child on a vacation to New York City. Rodrigo has a great time in New York, or at least he does until he distracts a bus driver, which leads to a bus running down a pregnant woman…

…and the movie’s not over yet! It just keeps on going and believe it or not, there’s stuff that I haven’t even mentioned. Life Itself has a running time of only two hours. (For comparison, it’s shorter than almost every comic book film that’s come out over the past few years.) This is one of the rare cases where the film might have been improved with a longer running time because Fogelman crams so much tragedy and melodrama into that running time that it literally leaves you feeling as if you’re being bludgeoned. This is one of those films that gets in your face and screams, “You will cry! You will cry!” Even if you are inclined to cry at movies (and I certainly am), it’s impossible not to resent just how manipulative the film gets. You get the feeling that if you spend too much time wondering about the plot holes or the on-the-nose dialogue, the third narrator might start yelling at you for not getting with the program.

Life Itself is full of twists that are designed to leave you considering how everything in life is connected but, for something like this to work, the twists have to be surprising. They have to catch you off-guard. They have to make you want to see the movie again so that you can look for clues. The twists in Life Itself are not surprising. Anyone who has ever seen a movie before will be able to guess what’s going to happen. For that matter, anyone who has ever sat through an episode of This is Us should be able to figure it all out. Life Itself is not as a clever as it thinks it is.

Also, for a film like this work, you have to actually care about the characters. You have to be invested in who they are. But nobody in the film ever seems to be real and neither do any of their stories. (To the film’s credit, it actually does point out that one narrator is idealizing the past but that’s an intriguing idea that’s abandoned.) Everyone is just a collection of quirks. We know what type of music they like but we never understand why. Background info, like Abby being molested by her uncle or Isabel being the fourth prettiest of six sisters, is randomly dropped and then quickly forgotten about. Almost ever woman has a tragic backstory and, for the most part, a tragic destiny. (Except, of course, for Rodrigo’s first American girlfriend, who is dismissed as being “loud.”) Every man is soulful and passionate. But who are they? The film’s narrators say a lot but they never get around to answering that question. This is a film that insists it has something to say about life itself but it never quite comes alive.

Some critics are saying that Life Itself is the worst film of 2018. Maybe. I don’t know for sure. The Happytime Murders left me feeling so icky that I haven’t even been able to bring myself to review it yet. Life Itself, on the other hand, is such a huge misfire that I couldn’t wait to tell everyone about it. There’s something to be said for that.

Music Video of the Day: Blue Fear by Armin van Buuren (2009, dir by Ciro Ayala)

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

To be honest, this music video freaks me out a little bit. I think that’s understandable, though. When you see a big disembodied head chasing someone through a maze, it just makes sense that you’re going to get a little bit freaked!

That’s actress Calina Chen being chased through the maze. She also appeared in the video for Matt Darey’s Follow You, which was directed by the same director who did Blue Fear, Ciro Ayala.

Enjoy!