Folks, in the horror genre, there's a lot of shit movies. I don't think this is a secret to anyone, even to myself and fellow geeks LIKE myself who actually enjoy this stuff. But this is what makes us the most loyal, awesome, heralded group of crazies out of any entertainment genre. We'll suffer through anything - ANYTHING - to get to the good stuff. And I've seen some crap. For every Shining, there's a hundred crap found footage movies that you have to sit through first. However, in running the gauntlet of all of this cinematic excrement, sometimes, you find that extremely rare gold nugget at the top of the heap - the Good Bad Movie.
Those Good Bad Movies might even be the most fun flicks out there, because you can watch them for more purposes than just the educational, stuffy English major purpose. You can take in the bad dialogue and plot twists, throw snide comments at the screen, even have a fun evening laughing at them with friends. *raises hand* Done this. Many times. So today, we're going to do a little experiment. We're going to take a couple of bad horror movies that I've seen - one from the awesome '80s, and one from the post-ironic 2000s - and compare and contrast in terms of Good Bad Movie traits.
I think. This might work, or it might be a total train wreck. Enjoy!
THE MOVIES:
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning - Released in 1985, this is (obviously) the fifth go-round in the slasher franchise that was reviled by pretty much every critic then and now. Jason Voorhees is dead. Like, really, for reals, as in they intended for him to be gone for the rest of the series. Plotwise, this flick is more of the same, as we get an impostor killer (spoiler alert) offing a bunch of oversexed and annoying teens at a halfway house, with the surviving kid from Part IV serving as our main hero. In between, there's the whole mystery angle of who the killer is that ends in one of the most hilarious non-surprises in movie history.
The Veil - Brand spanking newly released to Netflix, it's 2016 and it's a slick flick (slick flicks - I should copyright that) about a suicide cult and the people that it affects. We've got two alternate timelines, as the nutbag leader of the Heaven's Veil group (subtle, I know) launches the biggest mass suicide in U.S. history. Years later, the one survivor returns to the site along with a film crew. The leader of this crew is also affected to the massacre, as her father was one of the FBI team members who raided the complex. Commence series of creepy ghostly stuff, a lot of which was meant to take place as a found footage movie.
THE CHARACTERS:
Friday V - Boy, oh boy, does this movie have a lot of them. First and foremost is Tommy Jarvis, the aforementioned survivor from the previous movie, played by John Shepherd and speaking something like 15 words in the movie in between bits where he beats the shit out of people. We've got two nymphomaniac kids who wander off into the woods to get slaughtered as my favorite victims in the film, and that endless scene that establishes fat kid Joey as a likable oaf only to off him minutes later. As for developed people, though, we've also got Reggie "The Reckless," a heroic 10-year-old who gets all of the movie's best lines. And I remember all of these people by name.
The Veil - To be sure, this movie has some big names on its marquee. Jessica Alba plays Maggie Price, the leader of the crew and daughter of the FBI agent who committed suicide shortly after raiding the Heaven's Veil complex. And she's...pensive? And inquisitive? Those are traits. Sarah Hope is the now-adult former member of the cult returning to the defunct camp who wants closure because the script tells us so. Undoubtedly, the best character is the leader of the cult - Jim Jacobs, a colorful-to-the-max dude played by Thomas "How am I not a Bigger Deal?" Jane. The rest of the dudes on the film crew are just actors thinking about Alba's Maxim shoots.
THE CHEESY STUFF:
Friday V - New Beginning is well known for its gleeful, almost blackly comedic tone, and this is where this movie becomes loads of fun in a crowd setting. Time and time again, this movie will introduce characters, establishing clearly defined but simple traits only to off them minutes later. It's ALMOST an intentional running joke, but not quite, and that makes it great. But it doesn't get any better than Ethel and Junior, the two random hillbilly characters living near the halfway house who really, really hate all those crazy folks up in the hills and serve as the worst red herrings that you've ever seen in anything ever.
The Veil - Now, there's a lot of cheesy stuff contained within this flick. The unfortunate part? It's not easy to write about. There's lots of jump scares, there's lots of insipid dialogue, and there's completely one-note, boring characters. Yes, folks, I just dropped the 'B' word. Confessions of an anal fanatic: I like my paragraphs in "list" posts like this to look pretty uniformly equal in Notepad, so thus, I'm just typing a bunch of sentences for the sake of length now. The catch? There really isn't much more to say about The Veil, and all of the cheesy stuff is jackrabbits Adele pancakes diorama.
THE MEMORABILITY FACTOR:
Friday V - Recently, I showed a friend of mine all the Friday movies in succession. Months afterward, he still remembered Demon's "You're gonna get it, bitch!" line and quoted it to me randomly. I don't know too many people who have watched New Beginning without remembering some of its quirks, no matter how bad some of them might be. Who's Demon, by the way? He's Reggie's Michael Jackson-impersonating brother played by Juwanna Mann himself. How is that not memorable?
The Veil - To be sure, I remembered the HELL out of Thomas Jane's performance as Jim Jacobs. Every time this dude is onscreen, he nails it. According to the ever-accurate Wikipedia, he even rewrote all of his character's dialogue. It shows. Everything else, pretty much, is instantly forgotten the second the movie is over. There's jump scares, there's a by-the-numbers story, and there's a resolution that qualifies as yet another of those "ugh" modern horror movie endings.
THE VERDICT:
Without a doubt, New Beginning is almost the dictionary definition of a Good Bad Movie. Technically, it's pretty terrible. But it doesn't matter in the least bit, because it's just so much fun to watch. Bad characters, bad acting, an insanely telegraphed main twist ("you talkin' to me, Sherriff?"), and a downright stupid amount of kills = fun.
The Veil, on the other hand, really is indicative of a lot of what plagues modern horror movies. It's competent, it's decently acted, it's got a carefully constructed plot. In other words, it's just clinical. Movies these days don't seem to have any grand ambition - they just go through the motions, content to just NOT SUCK and calling it a day. It bothers the hell out of me that the people have set their bars so amazingly low that "not sucking" is now considered good entertainment, because this movie is not entertaining.
Believe it or not, Friday V had a grand ambition - it wanted to set up the next killer in this massively successful slasher series. Since we were right back to Voorhees in the next go-round, it's safe to say that if failed big time. But in this reporter's opinion, those massive strikeouts are way more entertaining than bunt singles. Thus, the whole time that I was watching The Veil on Netflix, all I could think was how much I'd rather be watching the worst Paramount Jason flick.
And you ain't so good lookin' yourself, ya know.
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