Tag: bmt 2023

The Exorcist: Believer Recap

Jamie

I have obviously seen the first Exorcist a few times over the years. Always great. I didn’t find The Exorcist scary, really, but I liked the tone and the effects. It was high brow crossed with genre. Anyway, I had never seen the second or the third. The second has the reputation of being one of the worst films of all time. For the first thirty minutes I didn’t disagree with that. It is hilarious. A shoddy moneygrab designed to ruin a franchise. But then this kind of wild Africa storyline started and I was turned around a little. It was just different and looked pretty cool with particular filmmaking flourishes that I dug. It’s not good (it ruined the franchise for a reason) but it wasn’t the worst of all time. As for the third, I was surprised I didn’t like it more. I enjoyed some horror aspects that felt more modern than other entries in the series… serial killers popping out of places and stuff. The problem is that it’s a little schlocky. George C. Scott is well past his prime and just chowing down on the scenery. So it plays like it’s made-for-TV. Felt a little cheap, beyond the studio-forced ending that everyone disliked. So that’s where I was for The Exorcist: Believer reboot attempt (we left the prequels for later).

To recap, Victor is a single dad raising his daughter Angela. He has lost faith after losing his wife in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, but Angela wants to feel connected to her. She goes out in the woods with a friend, Katherine, in order to summon her spirit but instead they summon something else. After several days missing they show up largely unharmed, but behaving strangely. That’s only the beginning as each girl exhibits all kinds of strange marks on their bodies and behavior once they are taken home. With the help of some neighbors, Victor tracks down Chris MacNeil, who wrote a book about exorcisms. She agrees to help them, but when she goes to see Katherine she is stabbed repeatedly in the eyes and ends up in the hospital. The parents and neighbors decide to do the exorcism themselves, even when their local priest is told by the church that he can’t participate. Things… don’t go well. The priest comes in and is killed immediately. The neighbor who decided to take on the exorcism is immediately like “oh shit, I don’t know what I’m doing.” When the girls, under the possession of the demon, propose that they must choose a girl to live and one to die, they are all aghast. They panic except for Victor. It seems like he has finally given in to belief in the divine, as well as belief that the demon is a liar. But Katherine’s father isn’t as calm and ends up dooming his child by choosing her. Katherine is sucked into the demon realm, while Angela awakens unharmed. THE END (or is it? I genuinely don’t know). 

I’m gonna come out strong on this one. I think it’s terrible. Feels to me like one of the many subpar demon possession horror films that come out regularly every year. Except this one also has a bunch of random Exorcist elements shoehorned in so that it gets the honor of being included in the series. But it’s not better than those films and only suffers with those strained connections to the series. I can’t even tell if they added the Exorcist stuff in at the end or if they cut a bunch of it out… or maybe this is how it was supposed to be. But given the way they connected it to the series, the film really only works if you make up some larger Exorcist story that it will eventually exist within. But that also means that it doesn’t work on its own and now with the film doing so poorly there would really be a question of whether the rest of the films will even be made. What a disaster.

Hot Take Clam Bake! One little problem with the film. Demonic possession isn’t real. So the girls are obviously faking it and the people would all be indicted for murder (for both the priest and for Katherine). This is actually my biggest problem with horror in general. It’s not real… so why am I scared? People just need to remember that and they’ll be fine. Don’t even get me started on Science Fiction. It’s got “fiction” in the name, people. Get a grip. Hot Take Temperature: Hellfire.

Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a legacy-quel of what some people consider to be the greatest film of all time, but totally botched and borderline offense? Let’s go!

I have a few reviews to do as there was quite a bit of homework. I saw the original Exorcist years ago and loved it. Mainly I liked the interplay between the truly frightening depiction of the hospital and equipment that the men of science are using to try their own “exorcism” of disease, and the religious supernatural and the acceptance of it by Chris. I don’t necessarily think it is particularly scary, but that seems to depend highly on whether one was religious growing up.

The second is kind of a mess with a huge own goal in trying to involved Regan again when that feels totally unnecessary. Either you can deal with a different iteration of Pazuzu, a different demon, or an anthology version of things with a world whereby the exorcist exists in the mind, but dealing with a different idea. They choose none of those and instead make a direct sequel in which we have to buy into Regan being some supernatural healing avatar and Pazuzu specifically targeting those people. There is some nice stuff with Africa and locusts and James Earl Jones. And I’m probably in the minority in which I thought the hypnotism machine was an interesting extension of the theme of science vs religion from the first film, even though they overused it. Overall, it isn’t a great film, but it didn’t seem as big of a disaster as some of the reviews suggested.

The third though I can see why people dig it even though I’m pretty sure I watched the theatrical cut (and my understanding is the director’s cut is where it is at). Written and directed by the writer of The Exorcist and based off of his third book in a trilogy about exorcism ist takes the third route. Set in the same world it posits that at the moment of Father Kerras’ death on the famous staircase at the end of the first film Pazuzu placed the soul of a serial killer killed that very night called the Gemini Killer (and based off of the Zodiac Killer). Fifteen years later a detective and friend of Kerras starts seeing the M.O. of the Gemini Killer in the murders of others with a name that starts with K. In the end it is revealed that Gemini, in the guise of Kerras, has been in a lunatic asylum as it has taken 15 years for him to regain the ability to talk and move. Over the years he has developed a supernatural ability to commune with and manipulate dementia patients to do his bidding and so that is how several people are killed. In the end there is something like an exorcism as the detective shoots the undead Kerras in his cell and stops Gemini from killing again. The film is really quite interesting with new themes and an interesting take on the serial killer thriller. The main issue? Not scary and, as a matter of fact, unintentionally funny whenever the director tries his hand at being scary. Almost certainly an issue with this only being his second film. But he does, obviously, understand The Exorcist and I kind of dug it in the end.

Which then brings us to Believer … it is just one of those things where it seems like to me that Green and McBride probably understood what they were doing and the theme they were going for was effectively: the church is dead, so what do you do when there is nowhere to turn in a time of great religious need? And I think the ultimate conclusion was going to be the father (an atheist of sorts) saves his daughter with faith and love of his own kind (while the other child, the child of what could be construed as evangelicals, is not returned). If I were to field a guess this movie was noted to death and the producers flat rejected what they thought would be an antagonistic message. This is all speculation though, Green and McBride are from the South, so maybe they were going for something a bit more that speed. I wouldn’t know. It just seems like the film was cobbled together from a thousand mixed messages and ultimately doesn’t work.

Setting as a Character (Where?) for Georgia as that plays into some of the religious themes of the film. Let’s go for MacGuffin (Why?) for the dead mother motivating the entirety of the seance and subsequent possession by The Deceiver. And Worst Twist (How?) for obviously making the choice of who to save ultimately dooms that child. The movie is Bad I think, kind of boring, muddled, and fails as an entry in the Exorcist franchise.

I feel like there is an Exorcist legacy-quel hidden in here … I’ll write it up in the Quiz, but sure, it definitely also sucks. Why do we try this dumb stuff? Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Exorcist: Believer Quiz

Oh man, so get this. I was out in the woods hunting for Pazuzu as I’m wont to do, when suddenly I was possessed by The Deceiver. Now I’m drinking wine and screaming and I can’t remember a thing. Do you remember what happened in The Exorcist: Believer?

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) The film opens with a real life event. What event?

2) Years later Victor and Angela Fielding are living in Atlanta. The day of his daughter’s disappearance she takes what from the belongings of her late mother?

3) How long are the girls gone for and what were they doing in the woods?

4) Who is involved in the final exorcism?

5) What is the one weird trick that The Deceiver pulls on our heroes right at the end of the exorcism?

Bonus Question: Let’s reboot this thing. What does Pazuzu want this time?

Answers

The Exorcist: Believer Preview

The next day, Patrick twirls his fake mustache in a very believable way. “Yes, well I think that room would do just fine.” He tells Jamie, pointing at a map of Fool’s Paradise, the first and only operating B&B in the interdimensional hell they now reside. Jamie is eyeing him suspiciously. “But you haven’t even seen the rooms yet,” Jamie says, confused. “Well, ahem, yes, well, once I see it, I mean… I’m sure it’ll be quite indubitably satisfactory,” Patrick says, using his substantial improv skillz to save the plan. All he needs to do is show Jamie the book. “Chapter 1: Escaping the Maze” makes it very clear exactly how they can get back to the real world. Jamie narrows his eyes and nods his head back towards the inventory closet. “Are you sure you don’t want this room?” he asks in a hushed tone. At that he grabs Patrick by the arms and pulls him into the closet. He flips on the light and rips the mustache from Patrick’s face. “My mustache! You must be a magician to have pulled a real mustache clean off like that!” Patrick exclaims, nailing the improv once again. Jamie grabs the book from Patrick knapsack and holds it up to the light. “I know when I found it that you must have the other piece of the puzzle,” he says, a note of sadness in his voice. He opens the book to the final page of Chapter 1 and places it in its proper place. Patrick looks back at what the book is saying: “To get out of the maze you must recite these words:” That’s where it had ended. Patrick assumed they could just kind of wing it, but now the words are clear: “The Prayer of Reverse Exorcism.” That’s right! We are doing our own reverse exorcism this week. In that we are watching The Exorcist: Believer and it’s the reverse of being good. A-yo. Let’s go! 

The Exorcist: Believer (2023) – BMeTric: 67.0; Notability: 25

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 0.4%; Notability: top 6.4%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 6.5%; Higher Notability: Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire, Fool’s Paradise, Ghosted, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Expend4bles, House Party, Haunted Mansion, Heart of Stone, The Out-Laws, Meg 2: The Trench, Old Dads, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, 65, Your Place or Mine, White Men Can’t Jump, Vacation Friends 2; Lower RT: Freelance, The Ritual Killer, 57 Seconds, Expend4bles, In the Fire, On a Wing and a Prayer, Fool’s Paradise, The Tutor, Vacation Friends 2, Robots, The Re-Education of Molly Singer, The Out-Laws, Knights of the Zodiac, Mafia Mamma; Notes: The finale for the year. Not a bad crop, but still, we’ll probably have to think through something eventually. It just isn’t pleasurable or sustainable to get 30 films a year and be scrambling around trying desperately to fill out a good slate.

RogerEbert.com – 2.5 stars – Friedkin excelled on both fronts: the drama and the whammies. The original is still effective because it takes its sweet time establishing characters who seem like real people, then puts them and the audience through a prolonged, brutal ordeal together—one that, at the time, no one had ever seen on a screen before. Clocking in at a relatively breezy 121 minutes in length, “The Exorcist: Believer” is a rare case where a long cut would play better than a short one. Given that the hero and his late wife were photographers, you’d expect photography to play into this film the way sound recording did in the first one, but either the script isn’t interested or just part of the movie got cut down to almost nothing. And there are a lot of underdeveloped themes and elements, including the notion that a culturally divided America needs to come together for the sake of the children, as well as oddly off-brand positive exhortations that everything happens as it should, even trauma, and there would be less evil in the world if we were more emotionally connected to one another. The message at the end isn’t, “The real exorcist is love,” but it almost seems that way.

(Oh boy. Yeah, that jives with a few other reviews I listened to / read. Mainly that it is a little unbelievable that (knowing the filmmakers) the idea is that aw shucks can’t we all just get along … but the movie seems maybe to lean that way unintentionally. Personally I don’t think that is the real message, but I’ll get to that in the recap.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r71FmJBoSDs/

(I thought the trailer was quite effective and was genuinely pretty surprised when it didn’t hit at least a little bit. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised (horror fans are so persnickety about their favorite franchises, and this is kind of maybe the best of the best in that regard), but I still was.)

Directors – David Gordon Green – ( Known For: Pineapple Express; Halloween; Halloween Ends; Joe; Stronger; Prince Avalanche; Snow Angels; All the Real Girls; Undertow; George Washington; Manglehorn; Future BMT: Your Highness; Halloween Kills; The Sitter; Our Brand Is Crisis; BMT: The Exorcist: Believer; Notes: I’m not sure where he goes from here with his direction. One would hope he’d find something that maybe he could put his stamp on, but it really seems like his last few not hitting could become a problem.)

Writers – Peter Sattler – ( Known For: Camp X-Ray; BMT: The Exorcist: Believer; Notes: Kind of a weird filmography. Camp X-Ray is from 2014, and then this is the only other thing really and he directed Camp X-Ray as well.)

David Gordon Green – ( Known For: Halloween; Halloween Ends; Prince Avalanche; Snow Angels; All the Real Girls; Undertow; George Washington; Goat; Future BMT: Halloween Kills; BMT: The Exorcist: Believer; Notes: Grew up in Arkansas, but went to college in North Carolina where he met McBride. A lot of the comedians of a specific era came from North Carolina for some reason.)

Scott Teems – ( Known For: The Quarry; That Evening Sun;; Future BMT: Halloween Kills; Insidious: The Red Door; BMT: The Exorcist: Believer; Firestarter; Notes: Oooof Firestarter. Seems like a Horror punch up guy, which maybe points to one of my theories on the recent Halloween films and this: the studios are maybe noting and overwriting these things and being too careful. But I guess we’ll see if the second Exorcist ever happens and if the series can recover.)

Danny McBride – ( Known For: Halloween; Halloween Ends; The Foot Fist Way; The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter; Future BMT: Your Highness; Halloween Kills; BMT: The Exorcist: Believer; Notes: I find it so weird that he is now one of the faces of modern horror. Just given that he is also a face of modern high-concept comedy as well.)

Actors – Leslie Odom Jr. – ( Known For: Glass Onion; Murder on the Orient Express; Hamilton; The Many Saints of Newark; Red Tails; One Night in Miami…; Harriet; Music; Only; Needle in a Timestack; BMT: The Exorcist: Believer; Notes: Nominated for 2 Oscars, and seems to have been in the original cast of Hamilton as Aaron Burr. Both Oscars were for One Night in Miami… for which he wrote an original song.)

Lidya Jewett – (Known For: Hidden Figures; Wonder; Vivo; Feel the Beat; Nightbooks; BMT: The Exorcist: Believer; The Darkest Minds; Notes: Has been in a trilogy of films called Ivy + Bean.)

Olivia O’Neill – (BMT: The Exorcist: Believer; Notes: Legit this is the only thing she’s really been in, but since the IMDb has the cast list all messed up I figured I would throw her in here since the two possessed girls seemed like important characters.)

Budget/Gross – $30 million / Domestic: $65,537,395 (Worldwide: $136,169,912)

(That is really good … The budget was only $30 million? That’s incredible. They are definitely making the next film. I’m honestly surprised there are even rumors the director is going to step away given what a miracle that budget seems to be.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 22% (55/248): The Exorcist: Believer earns points for trying to take the franchise back to its terrifying roots, but a lack of new ideas — and scares — make this an inauspicious start to a planned new trilogy.

(Hmmmmmm, yeah you would think the beginning of a trilogy is the easy bit. It is the middle and (mostly) sticking the landing in the third that is the problem. Bodes poorly.)

Reviewer Highlight: [Green’s former] patience and sensitivity has now been sacrificed to the cannibalism of recycled ideas; and while I don’t begrudge him his success, I do miss the filmmaker he used to be. – Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times

Poster – The Exorcist: Belieber

(F. That is awful. Why is it sideways? Why does it appear to be a hastily cropped image from the film? Why is everything else about it boring?)

Tagline(s) – Body and the Blood. (D+)

(So just the thing they say in the trailer? It’s got a little flow to it (thus why it is in the movie) but otherwise I’m not sure what it’s up to. Can’t tell if I’m being a little harsh and it should be a C- or if it’s just bad.)

Keyword(s) – Year 2023

Top 10: Oppenheimer (2023), Barbie (2023), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023), Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), The Flash (2023)

Future BMT: 84.6 Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023), 48.0 Insidious: The Red Door (2023), 43.8 Fool’s Paradise (2023), 43.5 House Party (2023), 37.2 Paint (2023), 35.8 Freelance (2023), 31.6 The Machine (2023), 27.7 Love Again (2023), 24.9 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023), 20.9 The Marsh King’s Daughter (2023), 18.4 Nefarious (2023), 9.1 The Shift (2023), 9.1 Camp Hideout (2023), 8.8 Back on the Strip (2023), 8.3 Sweetwater (2023)

BMT: The Exorcist: Believer (2023), Meg 2: The Trench (2023), Expend4bles (2023), 65 (2023), Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023), Retribution (2023), Hypnotic (2023), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (2023), Mafia Mamma (2023), About My Father (2023), Haunted Mansion (2023), Fear (2023)

Best Options (2015-2023): 84.6 Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023), 67.0 The Exorcist: Believer (2023), 48.0 Insidious: The Red Door (2023), 43.8 Fool’s Paradise (2023), 43.5 House Party (2023), 35.8 Freelance (2023), 31.6 The Machine (2023), 27.7 Love Again (2023), 24.9 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023), 20.9 The Marsh King’s Daughter (2023), 9.1 The Shift (2023), 9.1 Camp Hideout (2023), 8.8 Back on the Strip (2023), 8.3 Sweetwater (2023)

(There was no way we were doing Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. As a matter of fact. That might be the last film we ever do for BMT as they pry it from our cold dead fingers.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 19) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Ellen Burstyn is No. 10 billed in The Exorcist: Believer and No. 2 billed in The Wicker Man, which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 6 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (10 + 2) + (6 + 1) = 19. There is no shorter path at the moment.

Notes – On William Friedkin’s passing, writer and film critic Ed Whitfield posted this on Twitter(X) and Facebook : “William Friedkin once said to me, ‘Ed, the guy who made those new Halloween sequels is about to make one to my movie, The Exorcist (1973). That’s right, my signature film is about to be extended by the man who made Pineapple Express (2008). I don’t want to be around when that happens. But if there’s a spirit world, and I can come back, I plan to possess David Gordon Green and make his life a living hell.'” Friedkin actually died two months before the movie was released.

Ellen Burstyn had turned down reprising her role and was then offered double the salary. Burstyn thought, “I feel like the devil is asking my price.” She eventually accepted, using the salary to fund an MFA scholarship for actors at Pace University where the Actors Studio teaches the program. Burstyn is a lifelong member of the Actors Studio and a co-president.

Ellen Burstyn stated in an interview shortly before filming began that she accepted the offer to return solely for the money, which she donated to her charity.

Linda Blair, Regan in the original 1973 film, was an advisor on set to the actresses portraying the possessed girls in this film.

At the beginning of the movie, a small sculpted creature can be seen in Angela’s room. This is the same creature Regan drew with wings in the first movie (1973).

Fool’s Paradise Recap

Jamie

Sigh, what are we going to do with you, Chain Reaction. You have survived 70 actors (without repeats, mind you). You constantly get us into trouble. We’re always like “Gah! How can it be that no one in Furry Vengeance was in a qualifying film based on a book?!” (or something). Ultimately we end up having to pick some movie that no one has ever heard of, that was released in 601 theaters, and has four good reviews out of eleven just to move to the next cycle. Then when we get there we realize that the film we used is actually a tiny nothing film filled with nobodies that did nothing and we are scrambling around again like a couple of scrambling people… … … not saying that that happened here… but how can it be that no one in Angels in the Outfield made a better qualifying film in 2023?!

To recap, an anonymous, mute fool is held in an asylum only to be released as they can’t pay for his treatment. He’s dropped in LA where almost immediately he is recognized as the spitting image of a notoriously difficult method actor currently holding up a big Western. In quite the coincidence he is given some work shooting some scenes in the film at the same time the actor goes a little too method and kills himself. Soon he’s been given the name Latte Pronto and has agents and handlers out the wazoo. He’s thrust in a whirlwind romance with the love interest in the film, into starring in a clearly terrible superhero film, and into some violent situations by his costar. This all comes crashing down immediately and he gets a divorce, loses his representation, and loses all his friends… except… Lenny. Lenny is a super down on his luck PR guy who just needs that one client to make it in the biz. He stands by Latte the whole time even though they are both terrible at their jobs. He tries to get Latte a job, but it turns out to be a porno and Lenny (feeling terrible for being so terrible) has a heart attack. Latte feels for his friends, but through circumstances he is led to believe Lenny has died so he goes out to wander the street. He stumbles into saving the life of a homeless man, getting coerced into politics, and then coerced back out of politics until finally he finds Lenny similarly wandering the street. They reunite and Latte for the first time speaks, showing that Lenny’s friendship is beginning to cure him. They walk away together to take on the world. THE END.

Ho boy, we should not have watched this. This isn’t a patented BMT Existential Crisis (BMTEC), a la Fear, but it got close. If only because there is a complete lack of “Why?” to the film as well as a “How?”… as in ‘how did this end up as a wide release film?’ I just really don’t understand why it appears that Charlie Day cashed in all (and maybe more) of his chips in Hollywood to make this film. I could see if the movie had some message that was really close to his heart, but the message is all muddled. So maybe Day just really likes friendship, maybe that’s the message he really wanted to get across in this… Hollywood satire?… Is it a satire? I can’t tell. Anyway, I’ll end by saying that I actually think some of the acting in this is pretty good. Adrien Brody is fun and I generally don’t like Ken Jeong in anything, but this is the best I’ve seen him act in a film. So that helps bring it up from a total zero.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Day is a time traveler. The act of time traveling addled his brain so what we see in the beginning is him coming from the future. At the end he goes off to take on the world with Lenny. What they end up doing is inventing the time machine. They then concoct a plan to go back in time and make Lenny’s dreams come true. Unfortunately they don’t realize the dangers of creating a TIME LOOP and Day’s mental state is fractured and Lenny is killed as they create a TIME CRISIS. The root of this crisis is the fact that the addled Day is taken from the hospital and the original Day, a method actor and future time machine inventor, sees him. This is impossible to handle and he kills himself. Thus sticking the addled Day in a continuous TIME LOOP CRISIS or TLC. Hot Take Temperature: TLC.

Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a first time director given a blank check for no reason and producing what looks like an old-timey Chaplin film with a thousand famous people? Let’s go!

The film is truly wild. It is hard to tell what exactly they were going for. Like, there is a strange mix of both anachronistic stuff (specifically that the big film being produced is a soundstage western, indicating post-war, probably the 50s) and modern stuff (the clear indication that he is tapped for a minor superhero in an MCU equivalent). He is effectively a silent film era actor, but existing in explicitly the modern world complete with takes off of Angelina Jolie etc. It is such a muddled mess that it is no wonder it was at first shelved and ultimately critically panned.

I think the movie would have been far far better served playing it as a joke on old Hollywood, with Day being a quintessential silent film star.

I also was quite confused because the doctor at the beginning basically said he could be led around like a dog, and then for the rest of the film everyone struggles to get him to do anything. It would have worked better if it was specifically more directly about that: a joke on how the Hollywood Machine consumes young actors, makes them into stars by manipulating them, declares them geniuses, and then spits them out. That message is kind of there, but everyone knows Pronto is terrible at acting and is quite frustrated by it. It would have been funnier if they were like “move there and say this” and then when he did they were like “brilliant!” and then the ultimate joke is while they are all smelling their own farts and loving his acting (i.e. their acting) audiences hate him and they can’t figure out why. You see … basically poking fun at the Hollywood Machine and the finicky nature of trying to understand the audience’s whims and wants.

And ultimately you would think a part of the film would be the cycle of consuming actors, chewing them up, and spitting them out via a final scene in which Day returns to the mental institution and they reveal that he’s actually come and gone a few times now, and they don’t know where he goes, and thus Latte Pronto is just one iteration of the world taking in and manipulating him.

It alllllllmost sounds like I’m defending the film, but if you squint you’ll notice I’m actually describing a different, maybe better, film. Fool’s Paradise is a mess and while the actors are game the whole thing never really coalesces around a message and so you end up wondering why you are wasting time on this film in the first place.

Also the film is 100 minutes when it could have and should have been 85 with credits merely by cutting out all of the bad bits involving Charlie Day’s friends, but I can see why he would be resistant to that. It is crazy though, it is a veritable who’s who of actors who are frequent guest stars on It’s Always Sunny passing through each scene.

Obviously a Setting as a Character (Where?) for Hollywood which the film is gently making fun of throughout. And I think the film is closest to Bad as it is just so long and not funny and weird as to be unpleasant.

Uh … I guess I’ll make a sequel to Fool’s Paradise? That’s in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Fool’s Paradise Quiz

Oh man, so I’m actually like … brain damaged it turns out. Probably from the years and years worth of concussions I’ve sustained while doing BMT. But that isn’t here no there because I can become a Hollywood star! Do you remember what happened in Fool’s Paradise?

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) We meet our hero at a mental institution. What does the doctor say he is afflicted with?

2) And why does he get picked up off the street by Ray Liotta and how does he end up with the permanent gig?

3) Latte Pronto performs in three films in the film, describe them.

4) After falling out of Hollywood he receives the key to the city, why?

5) Ultimately everything goes full circle and he links up with Jeong again. Why does he initially think Ken Jeong is dead, and what happened to him actually?

Bonus Question: Imagine if we did a sequel to Fool’s Paradise … imagine no more! Latte Pronto gets a call from his agent. What’s the news?

Answers

Fool’s Paradise Preview

Several weeks later, Patrick is camped out at Freddy’s. His binoculars (or ‘nocks, as the kids call them) have been trained on Jamie’s new, very haunted house ever since he abandoned him to the maze. “Jesus, that house is so haunted,” Patrick mumbles. It’s true, but there is a twinge of jealousy to Patrick’s disapproving tone because the only ghosts he’s seen are totally dope. Ghost skateboards, ghost Mountain Dew, and ghost electric guitars as far as the eye can see. “And none of this is even real!” Patrick yells, “We are in a puzzle box after probably being hypnotized!” This outburst earns him a shush from Freddy. “Shut it, Freddy,” Patrick growls, “This whole world is pain and/or pleasure and yet none of it can wake us up. That’s dumb.” He feels a hand on his shoulder and Freddy is there with a piping hot za. It’s The Pinhead, his favorite. “Aw, I’m sorry, Fred. Thanks. This will really tear up my throat,” Patrick says and this moment of kindness from Freddy brings a tear to his eye. He’s never noticed how cozy it is at Freddy’s. He’s been so focused on getting out of here that he forgot to appreciate what he has. Friendship, the torture machine in the corner that always eats your quarters, the jukebox that never stops playing Summer Girls by LFO, the large book called How to Escape the Maze, the… “What thuuu…” Patrick says dumbly as he picks up the book. Suddenly escape is within reach. He just has to figure out how to get into Jamie’s house and convince him to leave with him. As he raises the ‘nocks back to his face he smiles as he sees Jamie put a sign on his door, “Fool’s Paradise. Rooms Available.” Bingo. That’s right! We’re watching Fool’s Paradise… … … Fooooool’s Paradise. Because we have to for the chain. Let’s go! 

Fool’s Paradise (2023) – BMeTric: 43.8; Notability: 54

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 7.2%; Notability: top 0.0%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 2.8%; Higher BMeT: The Exorcist: Believer, Meg 2: The Trench, Expend4bles, The Black Demon, Knights of the Zodiac, Best. Christmas. Ever!, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, 65, The Ritual Killer, Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Out-Laws, Insidious: The Red Door, Maybe I Do, In the Fire, White Men Can’t Jump, Retribution, Hypnotic, Fool’s Paradise; Lower RT: Freelance, The Ritual Killer, 57 Seconds, Expend4bles, In the Fire, On a Wing and a Prayer; Notes: The fact that this tops the notability scale is crazy! It might seem like 54 is low, but all the numbers creep up over time as people get more notable, so there will be some higher ones eventually I think. Then again, the cast here is just so expansive.

RogerEbert.com – 0.5 stars – Hollywood will always be ripe for skewering. It employs too many comedians and takes itself too seriously as a business not to be. Because this topic is so close to home, it means many others have had a few laughs at the industry’s expense already, including Woody Allen mocking their (still growing) number of award shows in “Annie Hall” or even how the Marion Davies comedy “Show People” had fun with the odds characters you meet in entertainment in the 1920s. But “Fool’s Paradise” occupies some mirthless middle ground between “Show People” and the dark Hollywood satire “The Day of the Locust,” and it doesn’t have anything to show for it. Overblown caricatures and stale jokes about “don’t you know who I am?!” and going to see his wife’s shaman are as empty as a finished cup of coffee, and unfortunately, this movie has nothing else to offer for a refill.

(Wow, this is an extremely rare thumbs down from the Roger Ebert site. One star isn’t that crazy, but I can’t remember the last time we saw a real thumbs down. So … that’s exciting.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j6b_hevaoY/

(It is a really weird idea … and after watching the film I still don’t really know what it is about. I thought it was about like … a Chaplin-esque guy, but that isn’t at all what the trailer seems to be. It seems more like a weirdo who looks like an actor ends up becoming one while not saying any lines? That might be it I suppose.)

Directors – Charlie Day – ( BMT: Fool’s Paradise; Notes: Legit the only thing he’s directed which is crazy. I would have thought he would have done a few It’s Always Sunny episodes at least before making a giant film with a thousand famous actors.)

Writers – Charlie Day – ( BMT: Fool’s Paradise; Notes: He grew up in Rhode Island and both his parents are musicians which maybe explains why his character on It’s Always Sunny is an amazing musician.)

Actors – Charlie Day – ( Known For: Pacific Rim; Horrible Bosses; Monsters University; The Lego Movie; The Super Mario Bros. Movie; Pacific Rim: Uprising; The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part; Going the Distance; Hotel Artemis; I Want You Back; The Hollars; I Love You, Daddy; How It Ends; A Quiet Little Marriage; Future BMT: Horrible Bosses 2; Vacation; Fist Fight; BMT: Fool’s Paradise; Notes: Majored in Art History and it is indicated he was mostly acting in bit parts and waiting tables when he pitched It’s Always Sunny with his costars.)

Ken Jeong – ( Known For: Avengers: Endgame; The Hangover; Despicable Me; Despicable Me 2; Knocked Up; Pineapple Express; Step Brothers; Role Models; Pain & Gain; Crazy Rich Asians; Turbo; The DUFF; Penguins of Madagascar; The Muppets; Boss Level; My Spy; Scoob!; Over the Moon; Lady and the Tramp; Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween; Future BMT: The Hangover Part II; Transformers: Dark of the Moon; The Hangover Part III; Couples Retreat; Vampires Suck; The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard; Wonder Park; Norm of the North; BMT: Zookeeper; Ride Along 2; All About Steve; Tom & Jerry; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Furry Vengeance; Fool’s Paradise; Notes: Famously a doctor who used to do comedy on the side and then once he got his big break (in Knocked Up maybe?) he quit being a doctor and started acting full time. Probably most notable for Community at this point.)

Kate Beckinsale – ( Known For: The Aviator; Contraband; Serendipity; Vacancy; Everybody’s Fine; Stonehearst Asylum; Much Ado About Nothing; Absolutely Anything; Nothing But the Truth; Jolt; Love & Friendship; Laurel Canyon; The Only Living Boy in New York; The Last Days of Disco; Snow Angels; Shooting Fish; Winged Creatures; Haunted; The Trials of Cate McCall; The Face of an Angel; Future BMT: Click; Underworld; Van Helsing; Total Recall; Underworld: Evolution; Underworld: Rise of the Lycans; Underworld: Awakening; Underworld: Blood Wars; Brokedown Palace; The Disappointments Room; BMT: Pearl Harbor; Whiteout; Tiptoes; Fool’s Paradise; Notes: British and both of her parents were British actors as well. Her father in particular was a television actor of some note who died at the very early age of 31. But he was, for example, in 17 episodes of Porridge which is quite a significant British comedy series of the 70s.)

Budget/Gross – N/A / Domestic: $855,173 (Worldwide: $881,743)

(Obviously catastrophic, but it was shelved for years and seems to have been pushed out in limited release just to get a little money and possibly for contractual reasons. I can’t think of another reason honestly.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 18% (8/45): Fool’s Paradise suggests Charlie Day may have a bright future as a director, but he’ll need to find smarter and more consistently funny scripts.

(Ah interesting. Well … he wrote it alone it would seem. But that is still interesting. I do hope he tries again, I think he is quite the talent and getting an interesting (musical?) film out of him would be fun.)

Reviewer Highlight: You’d need to be Blake Edwards to pull this off. One wishes Day had looked further afield than Hollywood for inspiration. – Nicolas Rapold, New York Times

Poster – Foooooool’s Paradise

(Seems like this is a take on a poster that I don’t get… or maybe it’s just whatever. Not sure. I like the yellow and red, though. Font is slightly better than bad. Overall, C. Some good, some bad.)

Tagline(s) – He’s ready for his close-up. (D)

(Huh. Well that’s not funny. I guess they are playing on the poster… his face it super close-up and he seems a bit scared? Don’t like it.)

Keyword(s) – Year 2023

Top 10: Oppenheimer (2023), Barbie (2023), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023), Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), The Flash (2023)

Future BMT: 84.6 Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023), 67.0 The Exorcist: Believer (2023), 48.0 Insidious: The Red Door (2023), 43.5 House Party (2023), 37.2 Paint (2023), 35.8 Freelance (2023), 31.6 The Machine (2023), 27.7 Love Again (2023), 24.9 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023), 20.9 The Marsh King’s Daughter (2023), 18.4 Nefarious (2023), 9.1 The Shift (2023), 9.1 Camp Hideout (2023), 8.8 Back on the Strip (2023), 8.3 Sweetwater (2023)

BMT: Meg 2: The Trench (2023), Expend4bles (2023), 65 (2023), Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023), Retribution (2023), Hypnotic (2023), Fool’s Paradise (2023), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (2023), Mafia Mamma (2023), About My Father (2023), Haunted Mansion (2023), Fear (2023)

Best Options (Angels In the Outfield): 43.8 Fool’s Paradise (2023), 9.1 The Shift (2023), 9.1 Camp Hideout (2023)

(Yeah and this was really the only option sadly, those other ones are even less of movies than this one! Also you’d think with the expansive cast you’d get some awesome options coming off of it, but nope. We have a pretty solid idea for it, but still, not as good of a chain as you’d expect.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 11) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Kate Beckinsale is No. 3 billed in Fool’s Paradise and No. 2 billed in Pearl Harbor, which also stars Josh Hartnett (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 3 billed) => (3 + 2) + (3 + 3) = 11. There is no shorter path at the moment.

Notes – Filmed in 2018, this is one of Ray Liotta’s last films, before his death in 2022.

Charlie Day and Mary Elizabeth Ellis are married in real life, they also star together on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Of the main cast of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005) only Glenn Howerton appears. However multiple guest stars & recurring actors from the show appear in this film: Jason Sudeikis, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Artemis Pebdani, Leonora Pitts, Jimmi Simpson, Lance Barber, Andrew Leeds, Julia Cho, Alanna Ubach, David Hornsby, Lisa Schwartz, Peter Mackenzie, Christine Horn & Christopher Macken.

Charlie Day’s character is named Latte Pronto. In ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’, in Season 1 Episode 1 around 12:30, Charlie Day is seated at a restaurant and there is a sign with ‘Pronto’ written on it in the background.

Haunted Mansion (2023) Recap

Jamie

Yo yo yo, ghost house with the most house! This movie isn’t really meant to be scary. Or at least I hope not. It’s for little kids. Sure there can be some spooky looking ghost and some kids might not like that, but I remember liking ghostbusters as a kid and that has a load of crazy, creepy ghosts everywhere. That can be fun. So creepy stuff? Yes. Actually scary? No. It did get me thinking whether I’ve ever seen a scary ghost movie. While I’m not a horror fanatic in part because I do get creeped out by them on occasion, those occasions in reality are pretty rare. Insidious? The Conjuring? Those spookify me for sure. But a ghost film? I’d have to say the scariest ghost film I’ve ever seen is… Ghost. Because isn’t the scariest thing in this world lost love? Awwww.

To recap, Ben is a super genius mourning his lost love. One day he is called upon by Kent, a priest who heard he invented a camera that can see ghosts. In need of some cash he agrees to head out to a mansion owned by Gabbie and Travis and take some pictures. Once inside, though, he is dismayed to find that not only are ghosts real, but by stepping inside he is now haunted. Uh oh! Soon they are gathering a whole gang together to figure out what’s going on with this haunting. You ready? Turns out that a man named William Gracey summoned all the ghosts there in a futile attempt to talk to his dead wife. This included Alistair Crump, a super evil ghost aiming to collect enough souls to escape back to the world of the living. He just needs one more soul (bum bum bum) and the soul has to go willingly. But who could be mourning someone they lost so much that they would give into that?… who could it be? Hmmmmm. Oh right, our main character. Anyway, they track down all the clues and find Crump’s hat, which serves as a “possession” that they can use to destroy him. But they quickly realize that Ben’s not the only one in mourning. Travis lost his dad and almost gives into Crump, but Ben rescues him. Then Ben is lured to the edge of giving into his grief, but ultimately flips it on Crump and kicks him back into the underworld. The house is exorcized and Ben and Gabbie smooch. THE END.

Haunted Mansion is a long and kind of boring movie. I think it suffers mostly by leaning too heavily on a cast that just can’t hold your attention through a flimsy script. At times it appeared like they were improvising a la Curb Your Enthusiasm. Often scenes would just end with a character saying they should look in the attic or something with no prompting or reason, as if they plumb forgot to improvise that part. Patrick is right, they should have had them do a seance or something to try to get a ghost to help them in battle and instead they get a bumbling coward ghost. Something fun to look at and to give us some laughs and to help the story from point A to point B. Anyway, the one highlight of the film is that the ending is very sweet and emotional. I actually had tears in my eyes (no lie) when Travis and Ben were trying to overcome their grief and not succumb to Crump’s temptations. They find hope in friendship and family. It’s sweet. Just wish the rest was a little funnier and fun. As for Ghosted, it has the worst first 15 minutes I can remember with some truly dire Apple product placement. After that you get a solid 70 minutes of cute, kinda funny action rom com. Music was terrible and the ending did an unnecessary rip off of John Wick, so overall it kind of shook out as merely mediocre. I expected much, much worse.

Hot Take Clam Bake! They were all dead the whole time! JK, obviously the ghosts were dead. But yeah, Ben was definitely also dead the whole time. Didn’t you think it was odd when Ben taught Gabbie to sculpt oddly phallic vases in the middle of the movie? Or the unexpected money laundering plot? Or when Whoopi Goldberg showed up and won an Oscar? Alright, fine Whoopi Goldberg didn’t win an Oscar for this. She just won a Golden Globe. But the other things definitely happened. Hot Take Temperature: Ghost Fire with the Most Fire. 

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about the third Haunted House film and the most soulless one yet? Let’s go!

When I watched this trailer I legit thought it kind of seemed good. I liked bringing in Wilson and Devito, it seemed fun, and there is something about colorful ghosts flying around in an explicitly non-scary horror-adjacent kids film.

Watching it there is a fundamental flaw that tripped the whole movie up: too few ghosts. For the first half of the film (more honestly) you basically see no ghosts. And when you do “see” a ghost it is instead a trash non-picture produced by a magic camera.

The back half is better than the first and you can kind of see where they should have gone the whole time. Ghosts and ghosts and ghosts and ghosts. They still needed more visualization of said ghosts, but at least there were some ghosts in this haunted mansion finally.

The ending got me a bit as well. Grief, a husband mourning his wife, a child mourning his father. That’s some feelings. The whole thing resolves quite cleanly, but definitely the most fun part of the film.

Hot take: They should have had more Casper-like stuff in this. Like … a machine that makes a ghost into a human or some junk. That stuff is fun and nonsense and would be a motivation for Leto (oh yeah he’s in this movie), the kid, and the main character to maybe butt heads about who should (and whether anyone should) use the machine. Especially once they reveal that the machine must consume 1000 souls for eternity to work. See? I think I actually made this already nonsensical movie better by adding more nonsense.

This film was desperately yearning for a Planchet ghost. Alas. There is so much Product Placement (What?) in this film, it is crazy. Burger King is prominently displayed, but the vertical integration of Marvel action figures and (blurg) a Marvel Comics Monopoly set really takes the case. Setting as a Character (Where?) for New Orleans. Secret Holiday Film (When?) since the film ends on Halloween. Wild Coincidence (Why?) alert for them just so happening to stumble onto the house reaching its 1000 ghost milestone just as our heroes arrive. And naturally Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that the kid’s father has been dead the whole time. I still think this movie is closest to Good despite being kind of soulless and nonsensical, mostly due to Wilson and Devito who are just fun enough to float the more serious roles some of the others are saddled with.

For the friend this cycle we kind of had to do the biggest streaming disaster of the year. I think Ghosted fits the bill. If only this was about g-g-g-g-g-ghosts like The Haunted Mansion. Instead it is about Chris Evans’ constant pursuit of vertical integration between his Apple iPhone and Apple AirTags. Meanwhile Ana de Armas is a spy who then has to drag Evans’ clingy character around on a world tour trying to disarm a bioweapon peddled by Adrian Brody in one of two BMT performances this year (the other is the upcoming Fool’s Paradise). The film eventually gets a bit fun, but it is let down by (1) the initial scene involving the Apple advert is maybe the worst thing I’ve ever seen and instantly soured me on the film, and (2) the music is awwwwwwwwful. I’m mostly convinced the music was actually generated by an algorithm which analyzed songs that play a lot on Apple Music. The needle drops were constant and bizarre and the entire soundtrack was poppy weird inappropriate music. It was truly weird. Also weird that I can’t find a single critic who has a similar complaint, I would have thought it would stick out like a sore thumb there. Anyways, C- I think in that it is harmless, but also soulless and completely void of any reason to watch or ever think about ever again.

Might as well make a fourth one. Read about it in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Haunted Mansion (2023) Quiz

Oh man, so there I was invited to a dope mansion in Louisiana, when a ghost in a suit of armor popped out and bopped me right on the head with his ax! Now I don’t remember a thing. Do you remember what happened in Haunted Mansion (2023)?

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) We open with a party and a bit of a meetcute, who is meeting and what do each of them do?

2) That meetcute results in tragedy, and now our hero is a little drunk and a little sad. He is approached by a priest though, why specifically does the priest think this person would be useful in investigating this Haunted Mansion?

3) Why do all these people even stay at the mansion?

4) In the end it turns out this is all pretty important. How many souls does Crump (aka spooky Jared Leto) need to … uh, be immortal? But more immortal than I guess he is? And how many souls does he currently have.

5) What is so special about the final soul Leto needs, and who does he choose to give it and why (there are multiple answers)?

Bonus Question: Everything is all cleared up right. What’s this? A call? But from whom could it be?

Answers

Haunted Mansion (2023) Preview

Five days later, Patrick wakes up at Freddy’s Resort, Spa and Pizzeria. It’s actually been a fairly routine four days. Relaxing by the maze, sightseeing in the maze, and all the za you can eat. Each night Patrick expects to awake to whatever nightmare Freddy’s has to offer, but so far no scares to be found. “I’m telling you, Freddy’s isn’t scary,” Jamie insists when he sees the look of concern return to Patrick’s face as night falls. “The only thing scary is how dope this za is,” he says before scarfing down another slice of The Hellraiser. While he wouldn’t normally like a pizza who’s only topping is five pounds of ghost peppers, Patrick has to admit that it’s oddly pleasurable to consume. “Yeah, I’m sorry man. I’ve just been on edge ever since we’ve ended up in this puzzle box to an interdimensional hell,” Patrick admits. “I think I lost sight of what’s important, and that is that you found love with Demon #1 and Demon #2.” He slaps Jamie on the back, who winces in pain. Four night of pleasure (or is it pain?) has left his back shredded like Shredder from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Jamie smiles, but then his face turns serious. Patrick is suddenly afraid that the other shoe is finally going to drop. “Patrick,” Jamie says, “I have to tell you something.” Patrick holds his breath. “We just… we love it so much here. Freddy’s is a dream and really, what do we have to go back to in the maze?” Jamie’s eyes are filling with tears. “We’re… we’re moving here. We’re… moving there. And I need to do it on my own,” Jamie is pointing at what is clearly a very haunted house. “Say what?” Patrick asks incredulously. That’s right! We are indeed watching a very haunted movie in Haunted Mansion. No, not the Eddie Murphy one (we’ll pick that up at some point), but the new one. You know, the one that would have gone straight to Disney+ a year ago. We are pairing that with Ghosted, a blockbuster Chris Evans/Ana de Armas vehicle that went straight to Apple+ (in this economy?). It was the biggest, baddest streamer we could find. Let’s go!

Haunted Mansion (2023) – BMeTric: 28.2; Notability: 34

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 15.6%; Notability: top 2.4%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 22.4%; Higher BMeT: The Exorcist: Believer, Meg 2: The Trench, Expend4bles, The Black Demon, Knights of the Zodiac, Best. Christmas. Ever!, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, 65, The Ritual Killer, Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Out-Laws, Insidious: The Red Door, Maybe I Do, In the Fire, White Men Can’t Jump, Retribution, Hypnotic, Fool’s Paradise, House Party, Locked In, and 19 more; Higher Notability: Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire, Fool’s Paradise, Ghosted, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Expend4bles, House Party; Lower RT: Freelance, The Ritual Killer, 57 Seconds, Expend4bles, In the Fire, On a Wing and a Prayer, Fool’s Paradise, The Tutor, Vacation Friends 2, Robots, The Re-Education of Molly Singer, The Out-Laws, Knights of the Zodiac, Mafia Mamma, The Exorcist: Believer, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, Pain Hustlers, The Family Plan, God Is a Bullet, Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire, and 28 more; Notes: This year has been a bit odd still. I do hope things return a bit more to normal in 2024 as far as the cinema goes, but with the writer’s strike I fear we are in for another weirdo year of stuff getting pushed around and jockeying for space.

RogerEbert.com – 2.0 stars – “Haunted Mansion” is constructed with the familiar bricks of a Gothic tale, down to the theme of grief that runs throughout. There’s a thoughtful examination of how grief makes us vulnerable while also being able to harness the power of that love to connect with one another and appreciate the lives we lead. There’s also value for family audiences in the nostalgic spookiness that rides along the surface. But with a repeated sourness in the film’s comedic efforts and a tragically misused ensemble, “Haunted Mansion” misses the chance to become a Halloween classic.

(This is a better review than I expected. Spoiler: I mostly agree. The film is more entertaining than it has any right to be, but it also is a lot worse than it needed to be. Some fatal misteps which were entirely avoidable.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB_1o3c19y0/

(Wait … that’s Jared Leto? How weird. The film looks very interesting actually, but (spoiler) … yeah they show most of the good parts. The problem with the film is it takes ages before you actually see any ghosts which is pretty unfortunate. The ghosts are the most fun part!)

Directors – Justin Simien – ( Known For: Dear White People; Bad Hair; BMT: Haunted Mansion; Notes: I’ve heard the series Dear White People is pretty good. He seems really young, although his age isn’t on his IMDb.)

Writers – Katie Dippold – ( Known For: Ghostbusters; The Heat; Future BMT: Snatched; BMT: Haunted Mansion; Notes: Wrote 31 episodes of Parks and Rec. Kind of weird she has a solo credit here all things considered. I would think Disney would want to get a few more cooks in there.)

Actors – LaKeith Stanfield – ( Known For: Knives Out; Get Out; Uncut Gems; Straight Outta Compton; Snowden; The Purge: Anarchy; Selma; Short Term 12; Death Note; Judas and the Black Messiah; Dope; Sorry to Bother You; The Harder They Fall; War Machine; Someone Great; Miles Ahead; The Incredible Jessica James; The Photograph; Crown Heights; Come Sunday; Future BMT: The Girl in the Spider’s Web; BMT: Haunted Mansion; Notes: I forgot his was nominated for an Oscar for Judas and the Black Messiah. Played a major role on Atlanta as well.)

Rosario Dawson – ( Known For: Sin City; Death Proof; Unstoppable; Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief; Zombieland: Double Tap; Grindhouse; 25th Hour; Sin City: A Dame to Kill For; The Lego Batman Movie; Clerks II; Trance; The Rundown; Sorry to Bother You; Kids; Rent; He Got Game; Shattered Glass; The Captive; Jay and Silent Bob Reboot; Top Five; Future BMT: Seven Pounds; Eagle Eye; Alexander; Unforgettable; Ratchet & Clank; Light It Up; BMT: Men in Black II; Space Jam: A New Legacy; Zookeeper; Haunted Mansion; The Adventures of Pluto Nash; Down to You; Notes: A crazy year for her, ended up in Ashoka as well. All over that Disney brand. She was a rare addition to the Rent film adaptation since the original castmember was pregnant and couldn’t do the role.)

Owen Wilson – ( Known For: The Grand Budapest Hotel; Cars; Midnight in Paris; Wedding Crashers; Night at the Museum; Meet the Parents; The Royal Tenenbaums; Zoolander; Fantastic Mr. Fox; Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania; The Darjeeling Limited; Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian; The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; The Cable Guy; Wonder; Marley & Me; Starsky & Hutch; The French Dispatch; Shanghai Noon; Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb; Future BMT: Meet the Fockers; The Internship; Cars 2; Hall Pass; Little Fockers; You, Me and Dupree; Drillbit Taylor; Masterminds; How Do You Know; Free Birds; Paint; BMT: Armageddon; Behind Enemy Lines; Anaconda; Around the World in 80 Days; The Haunting; Zoolander 2; I Spy; Haunted Mansion; Father Figures; Marmaduke; Notes: Nominated for an Oscar for playing Lightning McQueen in Cars. Joking, he was nominated for writing The Royal Tenenbaums with his long time collaborator Wes Anderson. They met in college in Texas.)

Budget/Gross – $150 million / Domestic: $67,653,287 (Worldwide: $117,449,790)

(Yeah that is quite bad, but the whole streaming thing muddles all this stuff. But it seems doubtful this necessarily moved the needle for Disney in any way. Also weird that they released two different Haunted Mansion films pretty close together.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 37% (94/253): Haunted Mansion’s talented cast makes the movie a pleasant enough destination, although it’s neither scary nor funny enough to wholeheartedly recommend.

(I don’t think it would ever be scary. But yes, I would have imagined it should have been funny. It should have had like … a ghost sidekick or something.)

Reviewer Highlight: There is a mansion, it is haunted, boo, blah, the end. – Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Poster – A Haunting in Orlando

(I’m not sure the cast warrants this poster. You would think the mansion is the star and yet it’s just a little itty bitty thing in the crystal ball. Mistake. Nice font and colors, though. B-.)

Tagline(s) – Home is where the haunt is. (A+++)

(Noooooooo. I appreciate the effort though. I have to make that very clear. I would take a terrible, horrific pun 100 out of 100 times over some generic bullshit. So obviously this gets an A+++)

Keyword(s) – Year 2023

Top 10: Oppenheimer (2023), Barbie (2023), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023), Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), The Flash (2023)

Future BMT: 84.6 Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023), 67.0 The Exorcist: Believer (2023), 48.0 Insidious: The Red Door (2023), 43.8 Fool’s Paradise (2023), 43.5 House Party (2023), 37.2 Paint (2023), 35.8 Freelance (2023), 31.6 The Machine (2023), 27.7 Love Again (2023), 24.9 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023), 20.9 The Marsh King’s Daughter (2023), 18.4 Nefarious (2023), 9.1 The Shift (2023), 9.1 Camp Hideout (2023), 8.8 Back on the Strip (2023), 8.3 Sweetwater (2023)

BMT: Meg 2: The Trench (2023), Expend4bles (2023), 65 (2023), Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023), Retribution (2023), Hypnotic (2023), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (2023), Mafia Mamma (2023), About My Father (2023), Haunted Mansion (2023), Fear (2023)

Best Options (imdb-keyword-haunted-house): 28.1 Haunted Mansion (2023)

(I genuinely thought maybe there would be some odd Haunted House one there, but naw, this was the only one. Whatever,)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 15) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Rosario Dawson is No. 1 billed in Haunted Mansion and No. 2 billed in Zookeeper, which also stars Kevin James (No. 1 billed) who is in Pixels (No. 2 billed) which also stars Adam Sandler (No. 1 billed) who is in Jack and Jill (No. 1 billed) which also stars Al Pacino (No. 2 billed) who is in 88 Minutes (No. 1 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (1 + 2) + (1 + 2) + (1 + 1) + (2 + 1) + (3 + 1) = 15. If we were to watch Like a Boss we can get the HoE Number down to 14.

Notes – Gracey Manor is modeled after the original Disneyland Haunted Mansion. Crump Manor is modeled after Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World.

The namesake of “William Gracey” and the “Gracey Manor” (the Haunted Mansion’s mansion name), stems from Yale Gracey, a Disney Imagineer and member of the Academy of Magical Arts (their clubhouse is The Magic Castle in Hollywood, CA). Yale was the one who created a modernized version of “Pepper’s Ghost Illusion.” He showed a model to Walt Disney, who loved it and honored Yale by calling the mansion “The Gracey Mansion.” Today, the attraction still holds the largest display of Pepper’s Ghost Illusion in the world (it is the dining room scene with the ghosts flying around the table). The original, working, model is still on display at The Magic Castle in Hollywood, California.

The chair in which Harriet is seated at the spirit session, and in which she is later expelled from the Mansion, resembles the ride vehicles, known as “Doombuggies”, in the Haunted Mansion ride in the Disney parks.

Eddie Murphy, star of The Haunted Mansion (2003), was invited back to make a cameo appearance but was turned down when he demanded $500,000 for one days work.

Vic, the cohost at Crump Manor, can be briefly heard to play the theme to another Disney attraction, “it’s a Small World,” on the piano.

Five Nights at Freddy’s Recap

Jamie

As we churn through films (and particularly as the year’s crop gets decimated by the Good Review Plague sweeping the BMT movie fields) sometimes we have to look in the mirror and ask… wait… shouldn’t we just do the best (read: worst) movie available? It’s amazing to look back and see how we valiantly stayed the course through the storm that was straight-to-streaming releases. We (mostly) avoided dipping our toes too far onto that slippery slope and years later it looks like the storm may have passed and it’s a beautiful story of courage. But now it’s not the theaters that are too empty, but rather the pockets of the reviewers are too full (only kinda kidding). Luckily this time the changes we can implement involve watching better (read: worse) BMT films. So for “Achievement” we originally put in the remake of House Party. It vaguely fit the category and yet… why? If the crops are so lean, shouldn’t we pick the best fruit available instead of, you know, eating rotten fruit. A+ analogy. 

To recap, Mike is having a tough time. His parents died leaving him in charge of his kid sister Abby. Add a conniving aunt looking to take custody of the girl and an inability to keep a job due to his obsession with the long past kidnapping of his younger brother and things are looking rough. In a last ditch effort to keep Abby he agrees to take a job as the night security guard at a defunct Chuck E. Cheese style restaurant called Freddy Fazbears’s Pizza. The place is creepy, filled with giant animatronic robots, and a police officer lady Vanessa is all up in his business, but as they say, “It’s a living.” (or is it… the opposite? Bum bum bum). As part of his obsession, Mike lucid dreams about the day his brother was kidnapped and finds that in Freddy’s he interacts with a bunch of kids that claim they can find his brother’s killer. Add on top of this that when he brings his sister he finds that the animatronic animals are actually “alive” and she can talk with them and they love her. We know this is bad news though, as the aunt hired a bunch of vandals to break into the Freddy’s and we see the robots rip them to shreds. Vanessa is pissed. He has to take this seriously. Mike leaves Abby with the aunt one of the nights and dreams about the kids. He accepts their offer to take Abby in exchange for having the younger brother back and in real life we see the robots (really the ghost kids) kidnap Abby. He returns to Freddy’s and is able to stop the robots, but his employment officer shows up and reveals that he’s the killer of the kids (and Mike’s brother) and that Vanessa is his daughter (what a twist!). He aims to kill them all, but Abby is able to draw pictures for the robots that reveal the evil of the man. They turn on him and everyone lives happily ever after (besides all the people who died). THE END.  

Horror is in an interesting spot. This and M3gan were the two big smashes of the year and they are simply not scary. But I think that is kind of the point. They are baby horror. The audience isn’t there to throw up in the aisles. They are there to get a few scares while also getting their daily dose of memes (the FDA now recommends at least two memes a day for anyone under 17 years of age). So that’s one problem with the movie. The other is that the ending doesn’t make much sense. Matthew Lillard was obviously the bad guy (you don’t get MLil on board for nothing) but his motivation and plan are nonsense. Anyway, the point is that this is not a good horror film, nor is it a good film film, but… I still liked it. It’s fun. Interesting story, fun big robots (especially the cupcake), and Hutcherson does a good job. I had a good time watching it. I thought it was actually quite a bit better than M3gan because the setting, situation, and characters were more interesting and likable. So take that, M3gan! I like Five Nights at Freddy’s better!

Hot Take Clam Bake! It was all a dream, duh. You guys didn’t get that? I mean, the whole film is about a kid who lucid dreams about solving his kid brother’s murder. So you think he does that with the help of a bunch of ghosts in the Chuck E. Cheese machines? You think that makes sense? Dreams never really make sense when you think through the logic and details and check out the ending? Does Matthew Lillard’s motivations and plan make sense? Nope. It’s a dream. You just got tricked by a dumb dream movie. Hot Take Temperature: Pizza.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a plotless game being made into a film only fans of said game like because it isn’t scary and mostly confuses people? Let’s go!

Kind of fun.

But only kind of.

Because (checks notes) it isn’t scary and mostly confused me. Joking about the second, the story is really straightforward. But no, it isn’t scary.

I think I need to steal Jamie’s bit for a second. Hot take: this isn’t a horror film. As a matter of fact, I think a lot of horror films (of the bad variety mostly) aren’t really horror films. They are thrillers. M3gan fits the bill as well. It is like calling Meg 2: The Trench a horror film. Are creature features horror films? I guess. Is Jaws a horror film? I guess. But really they are something else because they aren’t meant to scare, but rather to shock and thrill. M3gan is like a techno-thriller, although that is a little closer because it gets close to slasher. But once you cross the rubicon and reach to expand your audience I think you can easily cross over from slasher (horror) to serial killer film (thriller). Is Silence of the Lambs a horror film? I guess it could be classified as such.

My point is that horror has become too large of a tent. We need to be much clearer about what we are getting. This film is closer to a serial killer thriller than a slasher I think, partially because the body count is too low, and partially because the primary focus of the film is the investigation and pursuit of a serial killer. As a serial killer thriller it also sucks because it doesn’t thrill and the serial killer isn’t interesting. It suddenly tacks into the supernatural, when the serial killer itself should be far more specifically what the film is about. Also, as a small supernatural-adjacent serial killer thriller The Black Phone is superior (and also distinctly flawed).

Come at me. I love genres, and I think there needs to be more of them. And when you cross genre bounds and become a mix (like a horror-comedy) either both sides of the genre equation have to be good (rare), or it has to be more specifically one (like Shaun of the Dead, which is obviously a comedy, not a horror film really). This is more of a thriller and it sucks at it really, but it takes way too long to get to the point where you realize it is a serial killer film anyways.

The actors are game though and the young cast in particular were fun. I would be interested to see any of them in anything else.

Let’s go with MacGuffin (Why?) for the missing brother which motivates the main character’s entire arc. And Worst Twist (How?) for the obvious reveal that the only other major character (played by Matthew Lillard) is the murderer, duh. This film is closest to Good I think, despite being not scary it is a halfway decent thriller film in the end.

I’m going to try and make a version of this movie that is more my speed in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs