Worst Movies Ever

[Ishtvan]

**SPOILER WARNING**

 

I enjoyed most of Signs, just not the ending. The part I liked most was how it focused on the family and not the alien invasion. This is just what I remember not liking from the ending:

 

M Night Shyamalan is known for trying to put a surprising ending in, and I think this movie was no exception. He wanted a twist to surprise people.

 

The "twist" was that God saved his family by forseeing everything that would happen and setting everything up just right. God made Gibson's daughter have the crazy habit of leaving glasses of water around (also, the aliens' main weakness was WATER, and they were walking around in a world that's 2/3 water and in air full of water vapor without encounter suits... wtf?). God told his wife what to say as she was dying so that he'd figure everything out later. God gave his son asthma so that his lungs would close up when the alien sprayed him. God somehow made sure Phoenix would be there at the time to 'swing away' (forgot exactly how that worked). The Christian God is so awesome for doing all this, so Gibson's character regains his faith and goes back to being a priest. Hallelujah!

 

Obviously my own personal bias against organized religion probably has something to do with it, but I found all that a bit hard to swallow. Also not very fun from a narrative standpoint. He might as well have God cause something in the kitchen to fall over and cause a bizzare rube-goldbergesque chain reaction with stuff that's been sitting around the house for years that manages to kill all the aliens while leaving the family unharmed. Then the kids wouldn't have had to suffer thru having asthma and OCD water glass placement their whole lives.

[Domarius]

**SPOILER**

 

Well I reckon you can think God did it or you can just leave it open ended as it all just happened for a "reason". No one actually tipped their hat to God for all of that at the end of the movie, it just happened. For some reason, that's the way I saw it.

 

Like in real life, things happen, and some people like to say "God did it".

 

If there was some ray of light from the sky and some booming voice and all that cheesy nonsense, that's obviously the writer saying "yes it is god" and then I would be annoyed.

[Ishtvan]

I dunno, the wife somehow knowing exactly what to say to effect events years into the future as she was dying is kind've suggestive of an afterlife-related force IMO.

[Domarius]

Yoda predicted the future - that doesn't put christian connotations on Star Wars for me ESP doesn't have to be religious.

 

Besides, the priest explained (probably after talking to a doctor) that it was random nerve endings in her brain firing off as she died (or something) and she just voiced some random flashback of his brother playing baseball. So it was just another one of the unexplained "coincidences" throughout the movie, like the girl leaving water glasses everywhere.

[sparhawk]

Signs was simply a ghost story. Not very imaginative but not so bad either. I think 90% of the ghost stories go like this. Somebody starts to see a ghost. Ghost buggers the guy until he finally starts investigating. Ghost was murdered by some bad guy who always happens to be near to the investigator. The Sixth Sense was quite nice in that regard, especially because I didn't figure it out. But the village was really predicable. The moment this guy find the costume, the suspension is basically ended and everything comes aparent. The best thing about this movie were the ads. They were really well done. To bad that this was the only good thing about the movie.

[Maximius]

"dark waters" is a really great Japanese ghost movie, its been remade for Gollywood but dont waste your $$$, see the Japanese original, it will make you soil your Under-roos.

 

 

I too read "Signs" has having a strong religious theme and that was only the beginning of its problems. For one thing, an alien species that is poisoned by water? Well, I can assure you all the aliens would have been dead as fried chicken when the encountered all the WATER VAPOR IN THE AIR here on Earth. Oh, I guess the director/writer forgot that little fact.

Edited September 19, 2005 by Maximius

[sparhawk]

Yeah, maybe this was not enough contact with water? I also found it quite amusing that this highly advanced race apparently has problems breaking into doors sealed by simple wooden planks.

[Domarius]

Well - I wasn't thinking about any of that till after the movie - during the movie it was very tense - me and my gf's hand were white clutching each others hand - I only noticed this halfway through and had to forcefully remove my hand and give it a stretch.

 

For me, the build up of suspense was really good. And I'll never forget that moment when the camera is just staring at the wall, with the dog barking outside, and then the sound of it being killed, and you are just left trying to imagine what's going on...

 

The fear of the unknown is the biggest fear, its primal, we natrually want to see something and assess it. I think that's why it was so scarey, it showed as little as possible and just kept your imagination running wild. I really liked that.

[Maximius]

I agree that they did a good job of building the suspense in the beginning of the movie. The scene in the cornfields was pretty intense too. Of course, those cornfields would have been covered in dew at that point, making them deadly poison to any aliens crashing around in them.....

 

The door thing points to another problem with that movie, the aliens technology in general. So you are going to invade another planet, so you send down one trooper per every forty square miles who will die at contact with water on a planet dripping with it with no protective clothing and who is armed with POISON SPIKES? Are you fucking kidding? A townfull of red-necks could have defended the planet with their hunting rifles and some fire hoses.

 

Too often sci-fi and fantasy are seen by movie makers as being an easy genre to produce a movie in, just some monsters and special effects, right? They have no grasp of the suspension of disbelief, of fine tuning things like magical or hi-tech abilities to lend realism to the utterly fantastic, christ of real character development and storytelling.

 

Ive mentioned that animated movie "The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb" before on the good movie thread. If anyone can get a copy of it, watch it and then watch some pile of crap sci-fi out of Hollywood. I swear to you, the claymation, erector set props, cardboard sets, and stop action animation of "Tom Thumb" are a thousand times more immersive than the majorityof big house productions.

[sparhawk]

Is there a german name for that movie "The Secret Adventures ..." as well?

 

Acutally, it always hurtsmy suspense whe I notice such blatant errors like this. My personal impression is, that the director puts so much emphasis on building up the tension, that they totally forget how to resolve it in the end. Many ending just feel like they were tagged on as an afterthought, which spoils a lot of the movie itself.

[Maximius]

Not that I can find, here is a link from a British toon site:

 

http://www.toonhound.com/tomthumb.htm

 

The Bollex brothers are fantastic animators, I highly recommend any of their stuff. Very weird, very alien feeling to a lot of their stuff. One of the things I look for in sci-fi, horror, and fantasy is for the author to develop a real sense of the "alien", not only not human but actually hard to understand in human terms. Thats one of the reasons I like Lovecraft so much, his monsters werent devils seeking humans souls or even human flesh for a snack, they were alien, with alien goals and needs and little connection to the world they were invading.

 

On a deeper level, Lovecrafts works were anti-modern, racist, bigotted, paranoid. But the real fear he felt towards the rapidly changing world of the early 20th century informs some of the best science/fantasy/horror works around. None of the modern horror kings, King, Barker, Craven, whoever, can approach him in my book.

 

I wish to hell I had the damned thing on DVD, then I would find someone to crack it for me and Id mail you a copy. Unfortunately I found it on tape. I was lucky to find it at all for that matter, I have NEVER seen it avaiable except for very highly priced versions on the net, 30$ and up.

 

Edit: Amazon has it for 14$ used. Get it and love it. Also, they have "The Strange Case of Senor Computer" for 15$ brand new. This is a brilliant piece of independent filmmaking. I have to get both of these on DVD. I cannot recommend these movies enough, especially for this crowd.

 

There are plenty of social critics who have pointed out the "dumbing down" of entertainment and culture in general in the U.S. I think that the shitty quality of movies is an aspect of this trend. Movies dont even TRY to make sense, they cobble together a few whizz-bang graphics, some one-liners for the star to crack while performing some impossible feat, and damn the story line or the characterization or whatever.

 

A few months back I watched some new horror flick about a guy who kidnaps people and then forces them to make horrible decisions to save themselves, usually killing someone else to get free. In the end, surprise!, there is a surprise ending. (every movie has a surprise ending these days, to the point where surprise endings are no longer surprising. I used to try to guess what kind of lame ass ending would come, now I try to guess what kind of lame ass surprise ending the director thinks is going to pull his crappy movie out of a tailspin) It seems the bad guy has been hiding amongst the prisoners all along! The heros thought they were safe but no! The story is not over as you all thought!

 

Gimmicks. Movies rely on all sorts of gimmicks today, the surprise ending, the star cameos, the widely announced fact that the movie had to be edited cause it was "too shocking" or "too scandalous" or "too intense." (which helps DVD sales as you are tempted to see the deleted scenes in the extras menu)

 

As vid. gamers, we have seen this all before in miniature with the slew of bad games that accompanies every one good game to the market. Look at Might and Magic, from what you all have said its the same game over and over again. Doom 3 was the same, great graphics, same old story line and plot twists.

Edited September 19, 2005 by Maximius

[obscurus]

Not that I can find, here is a link from a British toon site:

 

http://www.toonhound.com/tomthumb.htm

 

 

A few months back I watched some new horror flick about a guy who kidnaps people and then forces them to make horrible decisions to save themselves, usually killing someone else to get free.  In the end, surprise!, there is a surprise ending.  (every movie has a surprise ending these days, to the point where surprise endings are no longer surprising.  I used to try to guess what kind of lame ass ending would come, now I try to guess what kind of lame ass surprise ending the director thinks is going to pull his crappy movie out of a tailspin) It seems the bad guy has been hiding amongst the prisoners all along!  The heros thought they were safe but no!  The story is not over as you all thought! 

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

That movie was called "Saw", and technicaly it was a Thriller, not a Horror film. I personally really liked it, and it was an independant film by a young film-maker shot on a very small budget, not a committe-made Hollywood production. IMO it was a little gem of a film, and I really thought it was a breath of fresh air in a very stale genre...

 

I much prefer the American versions of The Ring and The Ring 2 over the Japanese versions, I found the Japanese versions too comical to take seriously, although both versions of the sequal to The Ring were very silly, stupid films, and the slew of Japanese sequels got worse with each version... I haven't seen the American version of Dark Waters, I didn't realise their was one, but I wasn't overly impressed with the Japanese version... All of that guy's films are the same: - dark puddles of water, long black hair in bath tubs, pasty skinned ghosts, TV static - he repeats himself ad nauseam and I don't find them suspensful at all, they are predictable repetitions of the same themes and images... You could cut and paste scenes from The Ring into Dark Waters and vice versa - they are not really distinguishable.

 

Maybe it is a cultural thing, I like quite a few Japanese films, but probably for the wrong reasons - they tend to make me laugh more than anything.

 

I like a lot of chinese films though, the ones that come out of mainland China have breathtaking cinematography, they make film into an exquisite, fine art, while a lot of the Hong Kong flicks tend to be badly dubbed, cheap films (I still love 'em though!). The Emperor and the Assassin is one of my favourite films, along with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero, and I am a big fan of Chow Yun Fat and Jet Li (thoug some of his Hollywood films have left me cold)....

 

 

And maybe I am biased, but I think some of the best films ever made are Australian - The Castle is a timeless classic, as is The Dish, and I can't think of many Aussie films I didn't like...

[sparhawk]

That movie was called "Saw", and technicaly it was a Thriller, not a Horror film.  I personally really liked it, and it was an independant film by a young film-maker shot on a very small budget, not a committe-made Hollywood production.  IMO it was a little gem of a film, and I really thought it was a breath of fresh air in a very stale genre...

 

When I first looked at Saw I thought that it is a movie catering to the underground gothic audience, which enjoys violence, so I was rather reluctant to watch it. I don't mind violence in a movie, but only if it serves some purpose. Just watching violence for the violence's sake is simply boring. But after watching it thought it was a very good movie despite the violence. The suspense was unbroken until the end and it was some surprise as well with several twists. Even though I thought the ending a bit unrealistic. Don't want to spoilt it though.

 

I much prefer the American versions of The Ring and The Ring 2 over the Japanese versions, I found the Japanese versions too comical to take seriously, although both versions of the sequal to The Ring were very silly, stupid films, and the slew of Japanese sequels got worse with each version...

 

I have seen both and for once I also liked the Hollywood version more. Funny thing was, when I first watched The Ring my DVD player had a bug with the colours, so they were all twisted. I think it mixed up RGB with that american format Yxx something. I didn't know this as it was the first movie I watched on this new player, and I thought this was done on purpose, and I must say it gave the movie another creepy twist. When I watched it afterwards with the correct colours it was much less frightening then before.

The japanse versions were prtty boring though. Maybe it's the differnt cultural background because I have seen some other japanese horror movies and I also thought them rather boring.

[Darkness_Falls]

Signs was okay, until...

 

**SPOILER ALERT**

 

...The same pattern of "scary noise outside > panic/fear > research ... scary noise outside > panic/fear > research ... scary noise outside > panic/fear > research...etc." was continued over and over again. It drove me nuts. I can accept it once or twice, but it got really old very quick. I need more substance than this. So, in the end, I didn't much care for Signs either, but I liked it better than The Village. And I agree, M. Knight's moves are in a downard spiral progression.

 

Side note: The repetitive nature of those dark horses in "Lord of the Rings 1" annoyed me for the same reason. Repititious patterns with no substance are just boring for me.

[Domarius]

The Ring, and Signs - the two most suspensful scarey movies I have ever seen

 

Some people I know found those movies boring the whole way through. They can't appreciate the suspense, and I suppose they're just thinking "when is the hockey masked psycho going to jump out with a chainsaw? Hurry up." I bet they are the same people that can't appreciate Thief.

[Darkness_Falls]

"They" is me, Domarius So no, your theory doesn't hold water. Well, I can't say I was bored the whole way through those movies, but I started to not care for them about mid-way through each one. It was just unfulfilled suspense. I guess I do need that psycho popping out at some point, otherwise it's just teasing me with a feather. I get to the point of, "Okay, cut to the chase already!" I'm not the same with Thief because there are constant things to keep me entertained in Thief. I like exploring, so the explorative aspect holds my interest. As does the sneaking around -- laying low. That's very fun for me. Obviously there are many other things that I like about Thief, but I'm too tired to write more. I should've been asleep about 3 hours ago but I'm addicted to writing in our forum tonight. I CAN'T STOP! and it's driving me insane.

[obscurus]

I don't know why but I have never been scared by movies, or gotten swept up in the tension or suspense... to me it is just a movie, and I am dissociated from it emotionally. However, I do find games like Thief suspensful, because I am an active participant, not a passive observer... So when I watch a horror movie I do so either for amusement or because I enjoy seeing stupid teenagers etc being ripped up by psychos and zombies and so on... I tune out once the bit with the good guys beating the evil monster comes around, because I would rather see the monster/zombie/psycho triumph...

 

At the end of The Ring, when Samara pops out of the TV, I was pleased as punch that the good guy got wasted, but my wife was gripping my hand like a vice in terror... I just don't get how people get so caught up in movies. I just don't get emotionally involved in passive entertainment for some reason.

Yes, I am a very disturbed individual

[Domarius]

Well for me its the same as reading books too. I am constantly engaged in what it would be like for me to be in that situation, and what they are going to do next. Its not a consious desicion, its just something that happens when I'm enjoying the movie.

[sparhawk]

Why do you watch movies then, Obscurus? If a book or a movie is well written, then I'm also engaged. I'm not so engaged as I was when I was younger, but still. It all depends on how it is done. Same for a game.

[Maximius]

Yes, I am a very disturbed individual

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Which explains your passion for Robin Williams....

[obscurus]

I wouldn't say I had a passion for Robin Williams, I just like some of his films..

 

@Sparhawk:

 

Well, I enjoy watching movies for the visuals, and for interesting storylines, humour. I become engaged, but rarely to the point where I have more than a brief flicker of immersion or empathy for the characters on a shallow level. I laugh watching a good comedy, and there are couple of films that I must admit get me all teary eyed, and a couple that make me mildly tense, but I just don't usually get the visceral response to films that some people do.

 

I usually find novels even less engaging, if the story is interesting I will enjoy it, but mostly I don't which is why I tend to read mainly non-fiction...

 

But games have a different effect on me altogether, and again, I think it is the difference between passive entertainment and active entertainment.

 

I find watching sport immensly boring, but I enjoy playing sport quite a bit. I guess I need to be directly involved to really feel engaged.

[sparhawk]

I can understand the sports part. Watching it is boring most of the time. If I do this sport as well, then it is more interesting to watch it, but doing it yourself is always the best. I never understood poeple who are so immersed in a soccer game, but then again, some of them also don't understand my involvment in computers.

[Maximius]

I wouldn't say I had a passion for Robin Williams, I just like some of his films..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

All right, Ill leave you alone about Robin Williams. BTW, Ive started taking night classes and the course Im enrolled in is the Philosophy of Biology. The name of the one textbook is "sex and death", one of the authors is Kim Sterelny, a philospher at the Victoria University of Wellington. Its really interesting stuff, I just have to figure out how to tie the coursework in with a paper on free will.

 

Most movies move me to anger and disgust, and usually move me to hit the power button and walk away, but a well made flick can pull heavy emotions out of me. Take that movie "Rikyu" I mentioned earlier, about the Japanese Tea ceremony master who served the Hideyoshi, the peasant shogun. The movie is about how Rikyu protested Hideyoshi's expansionist military schemes, both vocally and through his artform the Tea Ceremony. Eventually, his protests would cost him his neck.

 

The movie is quite sparse and dry to the intial viewing. Long scenes of dialogue and little activity, some scenes convey their message with only a few movements of the actors and fewer words. But the effect is incredibly powerful. Less can definitely be more. One scene comes to mind, after Rikyu has been banished by Hideyoshi and has returned to his home. His wife and friends plead with him to write a letter to the Shogun begging forgiveness, if he does he will certainly be forgiven as the Shogun loves him dearly but if he does not, he will just as certainly be ordered to commit seppeku (ritual suicide).

 

Rikyu refuses to write the letter, arguing that to do so would be to undermine everything he and his artwork as been about and that death is preferably to a compromised life. The movie then shows Rikyu and his wife hanging some parchment to dry in the sun, laughing and quietly talking. The only line you hear is Rikyu telling his wife "At last we are alone."

 

I have watched this movie about four times, and I will be watching it for the rest of my life. It wasnt until the fourth viewing that the full impact of that scene hit me. He and she both know that he is doomed. They also know that Rikyu's mind is made up, he cannot face a compromised life so he has decided to face death. They are laughing, sharing some simple labor and enjoying their time, but the scene is saturated with the knowledge of his inevitable demise. I cannot fully express the poignancy of that moment, the intimacy and sweetness of them together counterposed with the knowledge that he is a dead man walking. The total scene is only a few seconds long but even as I write this is comes back to me with force.

 

Movies like this are the obvious exception though. The majority suck for all the reasons already discussed. This is why video games are so exciting for me, not just to play but as a new artform that is full of potential.

[obscurus]

Acutally, it always hurtsmy suspense whe I notice such blatant errors like this. My personal impression is, that the director puts so much emphasis on building up the tension, that they totally forget how to resolve it in the end. Many ending just feel like they were tagged on as an afterthought, which spoils a lot of the movie itself.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I have always preferred movies that don't resolve the tension, and leave you hanging (as I said before, I find it hard to get immersed in the tension, and when you have a typical movie ending of "and they all lived happily ever after", it really blows away any immersion I might have started to feel). My ideal film is one where a totally new character is introduced in the last ten minutes of the film, and they do nasty things to the central protagonist of the story. That is why I liked Saw so much - it didn't resolve the tension (you never find out what happened to the two protagonists), and the bad guy was not exposed until the very last few minutes of the film. Perfect.

 

I absolutely despise it when films neatly wrap everything up, and it becomes a typical good-versus-evil and good always wins farce.

 

The majority of films fall into the standard 3 Act format of Act I: introducing the characters, setting the stage, Act II: building the tension and drama, resloving it slightly, Act III, building the tension a bit more, the central protagonists has a major setback, then all is put right, happily ever after, blah blah, the end.

 

Seen it, been done to death, boring.

 

Give me some wierd schizo film that jumps around like a spastic frog anyday. Preferably with spaceships and lasers if possible.

[Ishtvan]

You would like Primer, if you haven't seen it already