12/12/12

Let me start out by saying that I had never heard of "12/12/12" until I ran across it on "OnDemand".  It sounded intriguing - I love "bad seed" stories a la "The Omen", "Rosemary's Baby", "The Good Son", etc.  I like the idea of evil kids.  Sorry, but it's true.  So the premise got me.  A story about a mother who, after being surrounded by dead bodies, determines that it's possibly due to her kid.  Interesting, no?  Anyways, I was suckered in and I now want my money back.

The characters in "12/12/12" were seriously monodimensional.  They were barely characters at all and were instead the basic idea of characters.  The mother, Veronica, is either stupid or possessed.  Either way she should have died much quicker than she did.  The cop could have been either intensely bad or intensely good.  Instead he was just kind of a dumb guy with a serious Kojak infatuation (who has that many lollypops?  And isn't six with a serious dental bill?).

And once again, horror movies serve as a sort of important lesson to us all:

1. Babies should not look like shaved Ewoks.  And if they do, check to see if they can fly. 
2. Babies, at least HUMAN babies, do not fly.  Nor do 9 day old infants have a way to propel themselves from the floor onto a normal humans neck.  
3. Human babies generally do not have fangs.  If your baby can fly and has fangs perhaps you should take him to a church.
4. If your baby is so horrific that it causes the mailman to kill himself with a boxcutter (again with the box cutter - what is the freaking deal with these as weapons in horror movies - see my review of "Evil Dead" for more on boxcutter madness) you may need to consider an exorcism.
5. And lastly, if your 9 day old baby can fly, dresses in strange hooded costumes and has killed pretty much everyone he's come in contact with - he's just not a nice baby.  Kill him.  He deserves it.

Suffice it to say there's a reason none of us have heard of "12/12/12".  It sucked.  It likely was a "direct to video" gem and there it should stay.  I give it 0 skulls. Yes.  You read that right.  ZERO.  This movie should never see the light of day again.  I watched it so you don't have to.

Evil Dead

There are a variety of important lessons to be learned from the remake of Sam Raimi's classic "Evil Dead".

1. Don't do drugs.  If you do your friends will take you out to the woods, you will become a demon and everyone you know will die.  And it will be all your fault.
2. If you must go running through the woods, wear jeans.  And if you MUST wear a dress, at least have the decency to wear underwear.  Underwear could solve the entire problem of being raped by a strange evil braided vine thing that a demon vomits.  Seriously, get your ass to Victoria's Secret and buy a g-string at least.  Something.  The entire world, especially your friends/victims, thanks you.
3. If you find dead cats hanging in the cellar, simply leave the cabin.   You didn't put them there, you don't really know why they are there (is it a decorating scheme we haven't yet heard of?) so just simply leave.  It's okay.  You can find another creepy backwoods cabin to do your intervention.  
4. If you find a package carefully wrapped in plastic bags and secured with barbed wire there is likely a good reason it's been wrapped that way.  Don't open it.  It wasn't just a backwoods Martha Stewart wrapping project.  
5. If, after all good advice has fallen on deaf ears, you decide to go ahead and clip the barbed wire and open the fancy plastic wrapping and you find a book made out of human skin, don't open the book and for gods sake don't read it.
6. Sigh... okay, you opened the book.  You read where it said "don't read this aloud or say it in your head or even think it" okay, it may not have said anything about thinking it... but I know that it definitely did say "don't read this aloud" - don't FUCKING read it.  Don't read it to yourself.  And don't sound it out just because you were a phonics whiz kid.  The book made of skin is warning you.  When a book made of skin says not to do something - you don't fucking do it.  
7. If it becomes apparent that your little druggie friend/sister may have become something altogether different (a DEMON) leave her in the cabin.  Light it on fire and high tail it out of there.  She's a demon.  She'll understand.
8. If you are given the options for killing a demon of:  Fire, dismemberment or burial alive - pick fire.  It's quicker, faster and less work.  Come on, dismemberment isn't even an option.  It doesn't say how many pieces and what do you do with the parts once you've done it.  And burial alive?  Seriously?  First you have to dig the hole, then you have to coerce the demon into the hole and then you have to fill the hole back up.  That's a lot of work.  So just go with fire.  A little gasoline, a nice match and poof - no more demon.  
9. If you decide to go with your second choice and bury your demon alive, don't bother with changing it's clothes.  It's a fucking demon.  It's being buried alive.  I don't think it cares if it winds up on "What Not To Wear".  
10. And lastly, if you are trying to hide from a demon it generally helps to be quiet.  Starting a chainsaw is not quiet.  Don't do it.  Use a nice quiet tool like a hatchet, or a nice stealthy machete.  Not a freaking chainsaw.

This is not to say that "Evil Dead" is all bad.  It has it's interesting parts.  It is packed with gore and blood and has a character who can survive almost anything (stabbed with a huge shard of glass, stabbed repeatedly with a syringe (once almost in his eye - YUCK), shot many times with a nail gun and then beaten with a crowbar - what finally kills him?  A boxcutter... sigh).  It also has one of the most obnoxiously bad continuity errors I've ever seen.  And I am not good at finding these... so if I say it's obvious it is practically screaming "Hey look at me - the directors really effed up this scene!" in giant neon letters.  It's fun but it does seem to take itself far too seriously - it might have been a better movie if it had accepted it's foibles and camped it up a bit more.

2.5 skulls