62 - The Cabin in the Woods

    A handful of college friends go for a weekend at a secluded cabin, where evil, aided by a well-run organization, stalks them.
    I wanted something good.  It’s a rarity, I know.
    What’s so impressive about this movie isn’t just the cleverness of the plot, or the layered way you can interpret a meaning behind the story.  It’s also how well the direction handles shooting the different layers of the story.  When we get the sequences of the kids getting packed up, or approaching the cabin, or goofing off in the car, it’s all shot in a different way from the way the material for the complex material is shot.  It’s a careful balance, because if it were too wildly different, it might make the movie feel awkward.  Instead, it actually reinforces one of the core ideas of the movie - placing the audience in a voyeuristic position.
    It’s a shame that such a unique movie is effectively destined to be the only one like it.  I can’t imagine a sequel to this movie existing, and I can’t imagine any other movie trying to imitate it successfully.

61 - Altar

    A family moves into a decrepit old mansion, which the mother plans on restoring.  They find that there are ghosts that gradually possess the father.
    Ugh.  With a summary like that, I probably shouldn’t have expected anything original.  Still, I tend to like bad movies, and I was looking for horror…
    It’s weak.  It’s really weak.  It’s weak enough that I had a hard time looking for the interesting elements.
    First, the good stuff.  There’s a scene where the father starts getting weirdly preoccupied with dripping his blood onto his wife’s back, and massaging it in.  After she flips out, she runs to the shower and washes it off.  He follows her and takes a bunch of pictures.  This is a really strange sequence, and it captures the imagination pretty well.  The problem is that this strange event should be a point of contention between them.  It doesn’t seem to be something that bothers them.  The house is well-designed and interesting.  The acting is perfectly fine.
    Where the movie goes wrong is a bigger problem.
    1.  I’m sick of seeing movies - especially horror movies - that think that filming everything in darkness with muted colors is an effective way of creating atmosphere.  Even movies that take place heavily in the darkness can shoot things in a way that makes them understandable.  When I see dark blobs moving around in the darkness, I don’t think “that’s spooky.”  I’m curious about what I’m seeing, but I usually give up pretty quickly.
    2.  The movie seems to be a strange amalgamation of horror elements gathered from a wide range of sources.  The Shining, Hellraiser, nearly every haunted house story out there.  I don’t mind borrowing from sources or paying tribute to influential works, but this seemed to do it without regard for creating a unique story for itself.
    3.  The biggest problem.  No answers are ever given.  The vast majority of what makes a haunted house story interesting is the backstory for the house.  What happened that made it haunted?  Here, we learn of a human sacrifice, and a suicide.  We never learn why either of them happened, and what the reasoning was.
    At the end of the movie, there’s a little dark twist to imply that the evil spirits haven’t been defeated.  When that happened, I realized that I didn’t care.  What does it matter?  We don’t have any motivation for the ghost.  We don’t even know if he’s evil, or if he just wants to complete some ritual.

60 - M*A*S*H*

    A group of military surgeons and nurses have fun goofing off and pulling pranks at their base, in between the time they spend patching up the wounded.
    As a child, while my parents would fall asleep, I would hear some of the shows they would watch.  There would be Cheers, sometimes Taxi, and usually MASH.  I was too young to appreciate it.  A few months ago, I started to watch the series, and I’ve come to like it.  It’s not spectacular, but it’s very enjoyable, and I don’t think I’ve seen a single show like it.  It’s got such a strange blend of comedy and tragic dramatic themes.  The longer I watch it, I find it more affecting.
    So I’ve been wanting to watch the movie.  It came out two years prior to the TV show.  I knew that only Radar was retained from the movie, so I thought there would be a little bit of a learning curve.
    I hate to say it, but I didn’t care for this.  Most of the characters are poorly drawn.  There’s no actual plot, it’s just a slice of life, and even the heavier themes about the absurdity of war are effectively nonexistent.
    One character seems to have an arc, and it doesn’t seem to be much of one.
    During the first season of the TV show, there’s an episode where the camp is living in fear of a sniper nearby.  None of this tension is present in this movie.
    I know that Altman likes to mimic the normal rhythms of human interaction by making his characters talk over each other.  I liked that when I saw it done in Rope.  But here, it’s nearly constant, and it stops adding to a sense of reality.  It mostly just gets annoying.

59 - Winnebago Man

    A documentary about Jack Rebney, whose angry behavior in some commercial outtakes created an early viral video on VHS.
    This is a strange documentary, because it shouldn’t be that interesting.  The subject is a man who seems intent on not being known.  He refuses to talk about his background, and he seems to be perpetually annoyed.  He comes across a little like a conspiracy theorist, even if I agree with him politically.
    His refusal to engage makes him a difficult subject, but it also gives him an arc, albeit a small one.  By the end, he seems to realize what sort of effect his video has had on the world.
    The Winnebago Man clip is one that I return to every now and then, but I don’t find it as charming as some others.  Seeing it in this context though, I felt a greater sense of him being a decent person, but just deeply frustrated.  He curses a lot, he picks on other people, but there’s an undercurrent of humanity to him.
    It’s nice to have the mystery laid to rest by learning more about him, even if the result isn’t all that important.

58 - Mockingbird

    Different people receive video cameras at their houses, along with instructions to not stop filming.  They are directed in different things to do, and terrorized by outside forces.
    This is a rare instance where the ending seems to ruin the production.
    I’m getting tired of found-footage movies.  It’s hard to do them well, and I’ve started to feel like they’re just a side effect of having no budget.  I stuck with this one because it seemed to start off well enough.  The characters get their cameras, they play around with them a little.  There’s a brief, violent scene to pique curiosity.
    But then, there’s something that just doesn’t seem that interesting about the development of the idea.  The subjects get their threats, they’re instructed to keep filming, there’s noise outside, phone lines are cut… but it all seems pretty aimless.  The exception is the plot for clown, who gets a variety of tasks that are supposed to be embarrassing or strange.  There was a lot more potential for him, and I had hoped that his plot would intersect with the others more firmly.
    The ending ruins the movie.  First, there’s a completely bizarre series of gunshots that somehow results in four people being shot by two guns.  The logistics of this scene make very little sense.  It requires that each person with a gun shoots an unarmed person first.  This could have been handled better, and some clever direction would fix the implausible nature of this scene.  To compound this problem, there’s a postscript, in which we learn who has orchestrated these events.  We never learn why.  There’s also an air of absurdity to it.  Once we learn who is behind it, it makes everything else even more implausible.

    I don’t know why I’m getting so soured on found-footage.  I still have a lot of respect for the Paranormal Activity movies, and I enjoy the V/H/S movies.  Prior to watching this, I was going to watch The Houses That October Built, but once I found it was a found-footage, I just couldn’t bring myself to watch it.

57 - Clockstoppers

    A scientist’s son gets ahold of an experimental watch that allows the user (and anyone he touches) to enter hypertime - an equivalent of freezing time.
    It’s a bad sign that there are four people credited as writing the story, and three of them credited with writing the screenplay.  That, and it’s a Nickelodeon production.  It’s directed by Jonathan Frakes, who has done some good work, and his direction here is completely fine.
    I guess I’m just not the right audience for this.
    It’s a story that should be really enjoyable.  The premise is something that everyone thinks of in their youth, and it’s a wildly tempting superpower to fantasize about.  There’s a portion of the movie dedicated to that fantasy, and that works.  But it’s the plot that gets in the way.  Some organization wants to get the technology… I have no idea what’s happening with that plot.  Even when it resolves, it doesn’t seem like it makes sense.
    There are two things that hurt this movie.  The first is the casting of Jesse Bradford as a teenager in this movie.  He was roughly 23 when he shot this movie.  His jaw is too well-formed, and he has a hint of facial hair, making him look like a college kid throughout the movie.  This is remarkable, since the girl that plays his love interest is five years older than him, and she looks younger!
    Anyway, the other problem is that it breaks some of the cardinal rules of sci-fi premises.  Once you establish the rules, you obey them.  The rules are what make a story work.  The idea of hypertime is established, but then there are a bunch of scenes that break the rules they establish.  In particular, there’s a scene where they use their time-freezing power to help a friend of theirs win a DJ competition (which seems to be less about music, and more about scratching records).  They use this power to somehow help him do some funky-fresh dancing to impress the audience.
    We see that the kids are in hypertime, manipulating his body, making him dance.
    This makes no sense.  If they were doing this, he would be moving inhumanly fast.  If they were moving him slowly enough, they would have spent an absurd amount of time on this project (no numbers are available, but I would guess… maybe a few days).

    The biggest problem is that there’s a scene that is supposed to fulfill the promise of the premise.  We see the couple going around, having fun with their newfound powers.  But it’s boring.  It’s a lot of dumb trickery, and nothing that interesting.  This might be able to engage a young kid, like pre-teen.  But the rest of the movie is so dull that it might be hard to keep their attention that long.
    It’s hard for me to judge this too harshly though.  I got a clear feeling that I wasn’t the intended audience.

    One other thing - the soundtrack for this is hilariously a relic of the times.  Blink 182.  The Cranberries.  Nickel back, New Found Glory, Third Eye Blind, Lit, Sugar Ray, Uncle Kracker covering Time After Time, and over the credits… Smash Mouth.

56 - Perfect Sisters

    A pair of sisters resolve to murder their alcoholic mother.
    Based on a true story.  There aren’t many public details for the actual crime, because the girls were underage when it happened.  Their true identities are not known, and they have both since been released from prison.
    It’s interesting for a true-crime story.  Some brief research online turns up a cursory wiki article, which is remarkably clinical.  The technical details are there.  The rest of this story is a mystery to me.  How much of the background for the mother is accurate?  How accurate is the behavior that the girls exhibit?
    Their decision to kill their mother seems very levelheaded, which is interesting for this movie.  Usually there would be a balance struck between making the girls sympathetic and suggesting a malevolence.  In this movie, I never picked up on any real hints that the girls were evil.  If anything, they seemed pragmatic.  They didn’t hate their mother, and it didn’t come across as a crime of passion.  It came across as a logical way to improve their lives, the life of their younger brother, as well as increase the odds of surviving to adulthood, and probably avoiding molestation.  The mother shows no redeeming qualities (well, she isn’t outright bad, but she’s not doing anything good either).
    The breakdown of both of the girls afterward is pretty well handled.  They both react differently, and it’s hard to tell how much of it is a personality distinction, and how much is just a matter of who actually killed the mother.
    For what it is, it’s actually a very good true-crime movie.  And it makes me feel like the Canadian justice system is probably more reasonably balanced than the US one.

55 - Nine to Five

    Three women, working in an office, deal with a terrible boss.
    I guess I just wanted something a little more lighthearted.  It’s a strong effort to be a comedy, but it didn’t resonate with me.  I wonder if it’s just that the protagonists are female, and I had a hard time identifying with them.  Or maybe it’s that the antagonist is too silly, and it was hard to take him as a legitimate threat.  There’s also a chance that this movie is just too dated for my tastes.
    There is something odd about the movie though.  I didn’t care for it through most of it, but the ending seemed to work.  This is weird.  Normally, I’d have to be invested in the rest of it to care about the ending.
    It might be that the story has the possibility of being a fantastically hilarious farce, but it never reaches the heights it needs to.  It weaves in a certain amount of fantasy, but it always seems too grounded to achieve the hilarity it needs.  There’s a sequence that incorporates animated Disney animals into a fantasy.  But the interaction with those creatures is limited, and they mostly just serve as backing for her fantasy, nothing more.
    There is a very classic feminist angle to the story, something that I could easily imagine seeing in a screwball comedy.  The problem with the feminist angle is that there isn’t much to the relationships between the girls.  Each of them should have an opportunity to grow from the experience, but they never do.  In fact, they seem to start off exactly where they began.  They’re right, but they just get an opportunity to demonstrate it.  And they rid themselves of their antagonist.
    So it doesn’t work the way it should, but it isn’t terrible.  I wouldn’t ever want to see it again, but I wonder how well it resonates for female viewers.

54 - A Good Marriage

    After 25 years of marriage, a wife discovers that her husband is a serial killer behind about a dozen murders.
    I’ve read the story, and I liked it.  It’s Stephen King, and it’s a pretty hefty story for fairly little plot.  But it’s interesting.  And it got me interested in the story that inspired it, the BTK Killer, which I learned a good amount about last year.
    I was glad to see that Netflix picked this movie up, but I’ve put off watching it.  As much as I like the premise, I could tell it wasn’t going to be an exciting movie.  And I was right.  It follows the source material pretty faithfully, and it does a good job of it.  The performances are generally good.  But there wasn’t a way to turn this into a normal horror movie without creating new material, and that new material would have gone against the feel of the rest of it.
    The story isn’t so much about her discovery as it is about her dilemma of what to do about it.  He clarifies that he would never harm her.  She’s free to turn him in.  But she has to weigh the effects that it would have on the family.
    There are a few changes that the movie makes, mostly in condensing the series of events.  The book takes place over several months.  The movie seems to take place over a few weeks.  The book includes some material about his marriage acting to suppress his urge to kill.  The movie eliminates that.  This is a surprise, since King wrote the script himself.

    It’s a good story, but it isn’t the right material for a movie.

53 - Carrie

    After being picked on in the girls shower, Carrie White discovers and harnesses her telekinetic powers to exact revenge.
    It’s a rare thing for me to say this, but…
    This remake was unnecessary.
    Normally, I like to see competing visions of the same material.  I love listening to covers of songs, and I’m very forgiving of missteps, as long as it comes across as a new idea.  And that’s where this movie falters.  Most of the movie is almost identical to the 1976 movie.  Not the same script, or the same shots.  What it feels like is a little confusing.  It’s almost like someone took an outline of the original script, then rewrote it to fit it into modern times.  The structure is almost the same.  There are minor differences - like uploading the video of Carrie in the shower.  Most of the scenes play out exactly like you remember.  Specific lines are still in place.  The differences are usually trivial, and don’t offer any new insight or development.
    Some of the changes are minor, but wind up hurting the movie.  In particular, Carrie controls her powers using her hands for emphasis.  This is far less creepy, and it makes things a little comedic.  It also turns her into less of a victim, and more of a villain.  Part of the idea is that she is not in control of her rage.  Watching her move her hands around turns her into an active participant in the things she does.  This turns the character from a tragic monster to just a vengeful teen.
    Another problem is that the actress playing Carrie is just too attractive.  She’s not hot or anything, but she doesn’t have the same awkwardness that Spacek had.

52 - Dogfight

    On a brief leave before shipping out, a group of marines have a dogfight party, wherein all participants compete to see who can bring the ugliest girl to a party.  One guy comes with his girl, but gradually relents as he comes to like her.
    This one was suggested to me, and it’s an unusual movie.  It moves slowly, and the roots it has with a stage play is evident.  It’s mostly notable for being one of the few performances that River Phoenix turned in.  Honestly, I don’t care much about him, but it’s a good performance from Lili Taylor that makes the story work.
    There’s one thing that bugged me about this movie, and it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it was a bit annoying.  Lili Taylor wears some padding to make her look a bit fatter.  Since this takes place in 1963, the standard of beauty was a little different - she probably would have been more attractive this way than her normal, skinny self.
    It’s a nice story.  It’s good, but not great.  As pleasant as Lili’s character is, the story doesn’t resonate with me.  I find the main character to be dislikable, even when he has supposedly matured.

51 - Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey

    A documentary about the recruitment and first tour of Arnel Pineda, who became the lead singer of Journey.
    I don’t care much about Journey.  Now and then, I find myself liking Open Arms or Lights, but I don’t pay much attention to them.  In fact, after watching the movie, I realized that I feel about the same way about The Eagles.  Most people passively like the bands, but I’ve never met anyone who actually was a fan.
    Arnel is a strange subject for a documentary, because he seems unusually normal.  He’s got a remarkable voice, and not just because of his ability to sing Journey’s songs convincingly, but because he’s a skilled imitator.  We see bits of him singing like Steven Tyler.  At one point, he runs into the singer for Chicago, and starts singing with him.  Their voices are nearly identical.  Outside of his role as singer, and his remarkable stage performance, he comes across as a very humble guy.  He’s appreciative of his situation.  Even when he grumbles about the annoyance of having to travel, he still looks at the bright side - he still loves getting to perform on stage with the band.
    There’s no conflict in this documentary, and it’s easy to keep waiting for something to happen to derail things.  You expect him to get caught up with drugs and women.  He eventually addresses that; he already went through that well before signing on with Journey.
    Beyond his shy charisma, I found myself appreciating Journey much more than I expected.  The songs are skillfully written.  The band performs them perfectly, and it doesn’t just sound accurate; it sounds passionate as well.  I never get the impression that the band is cocky or that they have the petty intra-band conflicts.  They don’t seem especially close to one another, but they all seem very professional.
    I also came out of this with a greater appreciation for the support crew that sets up for shows.  The amount of behind-the-scenes work that people were doing is remarkable.  I knew there was a lot of work, but there’s even more than I expected.
    This is a pleasing watch, but there isn’t much depth there.  But there’s still a value to a documentary that is pleasing, rather than confrontational or conflicted.  If anything, this left me with a sense of hope for musicians working together.

50 - The Incredible Hulk

    Bruce Banner is on the run from the military, led by General Ross, who wants to weaponize the Hulk.  Bruce wants to cure himself and keep himself calm.
    One of the least-loved of the Marvel Cinematic Universe titles, I like this movie.  But I’m starting to understand why it isn’t well-liked.
    One of the strongest things this title has going for it is that it isn’t an origin story.  It glosses over the origin in a montage early in the picture, but it helps that the first half of this movie isn’t devoted to a story we already know.  Edward Norton is likable as Banner, and there’s something very enjoyable about watching him trying to learn more to keep the Hulk in check.  Seeing him existing as an outsider in a foreign country is a perfect choice.  He’s choosing a life of isolation in a city.
    I like the development that the movie takes with revealing the Hulk.  We get teases of it earlier, and even his first appearances are short and shot to place him in shadow.  They progress, leading to the big, sunlit military encounter on a field.  That scene is excellent.  The action is easy to follow, and it isn’t clear how the confrontation is going to end, even as the Hulk maintains a strong upper hand.
    The main problem that I can see is that the last act isn’t handled as well.  I like the idea of the Hulk fighting Abomination in the city.  But the sequence is shot at night, and the editing is more frantic.  It’s harder to trace the action.  The result is that the last half-hour of the movie feels pretty boring.
    It’s not as fun as Iron Man was, but that’s probably because Banner isn’t a really fun character.
    I did feel a little more sympathy for the Hulk than I usually do.

    There’s one thing that did feel wrong to me.  The Hulk’s head seemed rounder, and the hair somehow made him look less dangerous, and more childlike.  This doesn’t square with the version of the Hulk that appears in The Avengers.

49 - X-Men: Days of Future Past

    In a dystopian future, the surviving X-Men attempt a last-ditch effort to send Wolverine’s consciousness back to the past, hoping to change the future.
    I know that I liked this when I saw it in theaters, and I’ve been looking forward to watching it again.  I’ve still got some mixed feelings.  If anything, I feel a little more conflicted than I did about First Class.
    There are fun moments, there are some clever writing bits.  The action is generally good.  I love the period costuming.  There’s still some very good use of powers, which is something I really love.  When the characters in Avengers use their abilities in tandem with others, it’s very satisfying.  The first instance I can think of that used this was actually Spider-Man 3, near the end.  But there’s something that doesn’t work when it happens in this movie.  I don’t know if it’s how poorly defined some of the powers are (it doesn’t help that this is the first time we’ve seen some of these characters) or how these sequences are shot in mostly dark settings.
    The inclusion of the new characters doesn’t seem exciting, either.  Blink, Bishop, Warpath, Sunspot… and Ink (who I just had to look up.  Introduced in 2008?  Please, classic characters first.)  It almost comes across like there was an effort to include unique looking characters for toy purposes.  I even preferred the massive number of characters in The Last Stand, since that at least made sense.
    The plot isn’t bad at all, and it plays better the second time through.  I felt like Magneto’s plan and motivation was more clearly executed.  But I also realized that Wolverine doesn’t even have to be there for most of the story.  He kicks it off, and he gets Professor X over his weakness, but near the end, he’s incapacitated, and the remainder of the story plays out without his involvement.

48 - Mall

    A series of vignettes dealing with a variety of characters in and around a mall.  Events center around one guy who goes on a brief rampage, shooting some cops and burning a business.
    I was a bit wary going in, considering the fairly poor rating on Netflix.  It has a 5.1 on IMDB.  It’s bad, but it’s not bad for the normal reasons.  It’s bad because it feels like a young director trying to be edgy and create a splashy style.  The opening scene is pretty good.  I liked the handheld approach, I liked seeing the camera move around the subject, and I liked the unbroken take.
    Then we go into the opening credits, and the movie takes a nosedive.  There’s a variety of visual effects, mostly distorting the video.  I don’t understand the purpose of this.  It doesn’t establish a tone, it doesn’t convey a message about mental state.  It’s mostly just an annoyance.
    Then we get to meet a bunch of other characters.  There’s a young, pale guy named Jeff who is everything I hate about pretentious teenagers.  It doesn’t seem like he develops either.  He points out a bunch of other people and makes up stories about them, which I think are supposed to be accurate.  Somehow, this actually makes me hate the character more.
    While the movie is supposed to hinge on this guy attacking the mall, that doesn't seem to be any more important than any of the other stories.  What I found to be supremely annoying during this was that there didn’t seem to be consistency in the flow of time.  Mall businesses are closing down… but it seems to be morning, or at least it just was.  Then it’s night.  Then it’s back to daytime, and mall businesses are open.  This isn’t even a difficult area to straighten out.  It’s a side effect of wanting to intercut a few characters, combined with a lack of planning.
    The script is pretentious and annoying.  It’s nonstop character observations that are an effort to be “deep” or “meaningful.”  They’re terrible.  They’re boring, they’re generally dislikable…
    I thought there would be a possibility for the script to pull things together and lead to a good ending, but instead, it just fizzles out into a dull stupor.
    I’m not too picky about movies, as you can probably tell.  I usually look for the good in everything.
    The good things about this are that it was technically proficient, at least as far as the photography and sound was concerned.  But everything that makes a good story or a compelling script was gone.  This is one of those rare “bad” movies that I watch.

47 - Paul Williams: Still Alive

    A documentary, following Paul Williams, acclaimed songwriter and performer.
    While I would have recognized Paul Williams, I wasn’t familiar with the name until I watched Phantom of the Paradise earlier this year.  Then I discovered that he had written a lot of very well-known songs.  My curiosity was piqued, so I gave this a try.
    It’s not an especially good documentary, but it’s interesting.  It remains interesting through a certain charismatic charm that Paul Williams has.  He’s nice, he’s clever, and he’s skilled.  He’s fairly shy though, and that’s what makes this documentary fail.  There isn’t much insight into Paul, how he thinks, how he works.  In fact, they almost never talk about music at all.
    The most frustrating thing is that the documentarian doesn’t seem to have any particular insight or focus.  He just wants to follow Paul Williams because he liked him as a kid.  His lack of focus becomes a problem as the movie progresses, and you realize that you seem to understand Paul Williams better than he does.  It’s nice that he comes to the same realization at the end, but it seems like something he should have picked up on during the first day or two.
    Here’s the spoiler.  Paul Williams has a sense of regret about his drug and alcohol addled past.  He’s worked past it.  He’s happy to work now, and he’s found a sense of fulfillment in his normal life.

46 - Beneath

    A miner’s adult daughter joins her father on his last day of work, during which an accident leads to the whole team being trapped underground, with rescue coming in three days.  They all start to go crazy, or something.
    Netflix describes them as dealing with an “ominous presence.”  This is misleading.  It’s just the characters going crazy.  There’s a touch of misdirection to imply a supernatural element, but it doesn’t take long to figure out that they’re all just nuts.
    This is pretty good.  At least, it’s better than I thought it would be.  It’s very much like The Descent, but without the subtext and the character development.  The direction doesn’t use the large cavernous spaces, but it does focus on some small passages - just not as effectively as they did in The Descent.
    When I started watching this, for some reason, it started about 2 minutes in.  I didn’t notice this: I just assumed that’s how the movie started.  This actually improved the movie.  It didn’t start with a bang, but it just built nicely over time.  Once I finished the movie, I looked up a review of it, and found that it complained about two opening elements.  I went back and watched those first two minutes, and realized that those two minutes were a big mistake.
    First, the movie opens with a text bit about how this is “inspired by a true story.”  Then it goes on to talk about a recent group of miners that was trapped underground.  The second mistake is that the movie opens at the end of the story, with a rescue worker breaking through and finding the survivor.  I’m tired of that.  It’s a sign that nothing exciting happens early in your script, so some rearrangement was needed to spice things up.
    There was something I enjoyed about this, and it was probably a sense of the story being unpredictable.  Odd things would happen, and it’s hard to say that any of them were explained.  It’s entirely possible that I wasn’t following things closely enough to figure out who did what, but I don’t think the story was written to be airtight.

45 - The Devil's Carnival

    Three people are sent to hell, which is a carnival run by the devil.
    As a fan of horror anthologies, this has been on my Netflix queue for a long time.  It turned out to be completely different than the description led me to believe.
    There are three stories - sort of.  The stories are mostly a vehicle for musical performances.  It’s primarily a musical, with creepy makeup and some gothic touches, but the horror is pretty tame.  The stories barely qualify as stories.  But this isn’t able plot - it’s about presentation.
    It’s kind of nice, in that regard.  It’s a spectacle, and the music is interesting.  The lyrical approach is a bit flawed, since there’s so much padding of the lyric to match some awkward meter, but it’s always nice to see some music that doesn’t feel predictable.