This week in the Deep Hurting Project: the only movie based on a Stephen King book to become part of the Project: Cell.
- And the credits are just a black box covering a large portion of an airport scene that may or may not be important.
- John Cusack's appearance in this film is legitimately heartbreaking. He's a damn good actor reduced to Nicolas Cage levels of slumming it, and even though he's still making appearances in decent films (seriously, how the fuck did Love and Mercy not get a SINGLE fucking Oscar nomination?), most of the time, it looks like he's been relegated to Direct to Video shit. And he's not even acting crazy enough to justify the performances and doesn't seem to be in the sort of financial crisis that Cage has been in for the past decade plus to justify why he keeps doing shit like this.
- And then the phone shit starts, and honestly, it's really hard to tell what's going on. All we know is one minute people are using their phones, the next minute, something happens. Something that causes convulsions and extreme violence. And a security guard starts eating his dog. And an Asian girl starts making noises like Frank Welker's rejected Abu noises while smashing her face against the side of a door. At least have some consistency in what's supposed to be happening. Honestly, I love a good zombie movie, but this ain't it.
- And seeing Samuel L. Jackson with John Cusack, I'm reminded of 1408. Apart from these actors and the source material coming from the same writer, they're honestly nothing alike. That film created a well-crafted little tale of horror bilked out of a room and just one actor, slowly building up the terror out of a fucking Carpenters tune. This film starts with some crazy shit that's so chaotic it fails to be compelling in its scariness.
- Walking on train tracks... on an electrified subway track. This can't be good.
- Somehow, they make the sight of a zombie horde walking the streets of Boston boring as all Hell. And even as Cusack, Jackson, and some girl are just chilling in their apartment with the zombies at the front stoop, it's honestly dull. They don't even snipe at the zombies, like that Cracked article I read like a decade ago suggested So, of course, they decide to move.
- Good fucking God, those zombie's calls are like Ear rape. And why do we have at least two scenes of them just shambling around 30 minutes in?
- Okay, it turns out that the Trololo song does have a purpose: music somehow keeps the zombies asleep. And why that fucking song? And why are they transmitting the signals playing it?
- Well, at least Samuel L. Jackson's quoting Psalm 40:13-15 (NIV specifically), he limits his additions to “For here lies the dead, the dust of the earth.” At least there's no interpolation from a Sonny Chiba movie. And I had to hunt to find where that line came from. Good on ya, Stephen King.
- "It's too early to know the rules," even though they've spent a lot of time trying to figure out those rules, and may have found some headway.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.