Visions (2015)

2015
Directed by Kevin Greutert
Starring Isla Fisher, Anson Mount, Gillian Jacobs, Jim Parsons, Joanna Cassidy and Eva Longoria

Time for everyone's favorite segment of this blog that has literally two dozen readers on a weekly basis - the boring life and times of Jon Lickness.

Now, there's a lot of things that I do to pass my time, but one of my recent favorites (as in, I just picked this up a couple of years ago) is coming up with murder mystery stories.  And when I say "coming up with," that's what I mean.  I don't actually write a full story; it's just a base framework, a cast, and a brief write-up.  You know, the kind of shit you'd find on the back of a DVD box.  Sometimes they're Joe Eszterhas-style potboilers (that I dub "Murderotica" - creative, I know), sometimes they're straight-up Sherlock Holes-esque detective stories, and sometimes they've got a whole lot of cops and forensic mumbo-jumbo.  You want volume?  I just counted, and I've done 288 of these in the last 18 months.  That's lots and lots of titles.  And since they all have somebody dead and a crime to be solved, it's a massive list of titles like "Dead Weight," "Cold Sweat," "Hidden in Sight."  You know, very by-the-book 1940s serial crap titles. 

But let me just say that if I ever come up with a title as lame and uninspired as "Visions," I'm quitting writing.  For good, forever.

That long-ass intro out of the way, here's the background info:  it's directed by Kevin Greutert (the editor of a lot of the Saw flicks), it's got some cast for a movie that went straight to Netflix, and it's just as by-the-numbers as its title.  For the most part.  Don't ask me how you make a movie with women as hot as Isla Fisher and Eva Longoria boring, but this flick manages to pull it off.  Hell, it has Jim Parsons in it and I didn't even hold this fact against the movie, so nobody can say that I didn't give Visions a shot.

I'm going to try to make this review as brief as possible, just to spare everyone else of the experience of sitting through something this tepid, so here goes.  The movie starts with a car accident involving Eveleigh Maddox (Fisher), a pretty horrific wreck where a baby is killed.  Flash forward a year, as Evie and her husband David (Mount) are now living in the country.  But it's better than the regular ol' country.  It's wine country, as Evie wants to make a go of it as a vineyard owner.  She's also expecting a baby, and that's essentially your setup.  We've also got a major guilt complex for Evie that is mentioned in the few scenes that she shares with her close friend Sadie, as she's wracked with pain over the accident and the death that she's connected to. 

And that's not just lip service - Fisher is really good in this movie, as are all of the other name actors attached to the marquee.  It's just a shame that the material is so vanilla that it pains me to type this. 

Anyway, the country house that Evie and David have moved into is a very old one, but this isn't your typical haunted house movie.  Evie starts having Visions (capitalized because title, dammit) at random intervals involving all kinds of creepy stuff happening.  Think glass breaking and mannequins.  It's horrifying.  David chalks this up to Evie going off depression medication after finding out she was pregnant; Evie isn't so sure.  See that last sentence?  That's like half an hour of Visions condensed.  Even at 82 minutes, this is a movie that doesn't have much to say.

This movie actually treaded into laugh out loud territory for me early, because I called who the villain would be within the first trimester, what the motivation and villain final speech would consist of, and how it would be revealed immediately after the character relationships were established.  Not to brag but...correct.  Umundo.  I might be zero-for-lifetime in guessing Dario Argento mystery killers, but my accuracy rating on Visions was spot-on.

And...that's pretty much it, folks.  Fisher is pregnant, starts seeing stuff, big final twist.  Now, this flick was filmed in 2013 and slated for a 2014 release, but apparently test screenings were so brutal that they held off on it.  I can see why.  There is nothing worse than a boring, by-the-numbers film, and it's why I will give almost any slasher movie - regardless of how cheaply filmed and technically worse they might be - better reviews than a film like this.  Those movies at least have a heart and soul to them (well, most of the time), and even at their worst are MEMORABLE.  This one is exiting my brain as we speak.  It's so barren of heart and soul that I haven't even mentioned Jim Parsons' character, because he contributes absolutely nothing to the movie and could have been played by a cardboard cutout holding an EKG meter.

Judgment time.  I award this movie * out of ****, only because the previously mentioned performances are actually pretty good.  But that's it.  Case closed.  It sucks.

P.S. - I actually like Jim Parsons.  I find him to be a good actor.  Having said that, I utterly hate The Big Bang Theory.  Not because it's a bad show or anything (from what I've seen of the 5 or so episodes I've caught, it's a'ight), but because I've heard this manifesto no fewer than ten times in my life: "You know, YOU should really watch that show.  Because I think YOU would really like it."  Which translates in my mind as "yeah, you're a nerd like those guys, so watch that show, you nerd."  Well, f**k you.  I ain't watching your stupid show with all the big words.