MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: No Escape Room (2018)

Director: Alex Merkin
Writer(s): Jesse Mittelstadt
Starring: Jeni Ross, Mark Ghanime, Hamza Haq, and Kathryn Davis

Escape rooms seem to be all the rage in recent times, with people apparently volunteering in droves to pay money for the chance to be locked in a room with several other people for an hour, and trying to use the clues contained inside to find a way out. Since that basic idea already has the makings of a horror movie built right in, it shouldn’t come as a shock to learn that escape room movies are also all the rage (with the cleverly-titled Escape Room hitting theaters earlier this year).

Enter No Escape Room (or don’t), MarVista’s timely take on the growing fad. Amazingly, despite its stupid setup and idiotic characters, this one actually had a chance to be a decent movie, but it’s squandered on an ending that goes on a few seconds too long (why do they always feel the need to do that?), and an execution that leaves a lot to be desired.

Michael is a father who’s desperate to connect with his high school daughter Karen. The problem is, she’s going through her teenage rebellion phase, and thinks spending any amount of time with her family is too much time (I love how movies portray teenage rebellion all the exact same way: loud, angry music, goth clothes, and dark makeup).

Conveniently, Michael’s car breaks down in the middle of a Podunk little town with very few attractions. They seek out some food at a local diner, where Michael flips through the town newspaper, hoping to find something that will allow him to connect on a deeper level with his offspring. After a few “out of touch” suggestions, Michael finally hits the nail on the head: he remembers Karen mentioning that she wanted to try an escape room, which lo and behold this teeny town happens to have. Ignoring the ominous warning from the old diner waitress (which is then passed off as a joke, hee haw), Michael decides that pleasing his piece of shit daughter is worth it, and before you know it, they are on the way!

The place is hard to find, secluded, unmarked, and apparently completely free (there is no cashier, and the only worker seems to be a young woman with fashion choices five decades out of touch), but none of these things seem to raise suspicion from either father or daughter. They aren't the only dumb ones unable to know a trap when they see one: soon, the duo meet up with three other individuals, where they are given a quick rundown by the lone mystery woman, along with a weird beverage that’s meant to “enhance” the experience, and then asked to sign consent forms. Nope, no additional red flags here. (And no, the weird beverage actually has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.)

Basically, they have an hour to solve the puzzle, before they supposedly will go mad from terror, something that is, of course, presented as part of the fun; if at any point they want to stop, they just have to yell the word “awake” and they will be let out of the room. One of the men in the group, a douchebag named Ty who was there for his girlfriend’s birthday but clearly didn’t want to be, flips out and yells “awake” before the “game” even starts; the doors open and he is taken out of the room, where presumably he pays the cashier, gets into his car, and drives home. Only, none of those things happen, because, as we learn later, there’s something much more sinister with this game than meets the eye. You know, something we didn’t already know from reading the plot synopsis, or knowing this was a horror movie.

Once the "game" begins, the characters must work together to solve puzzles that allow them to gain keys and combinations allowing them to move onto the next room, much in the same way actual escape rooms function. But with each passing room brings more terror, and as the number of characters slowly start to dwindle, the remaining survivors start to wonder if they're even playing a game at all...

As I said, there are some things No Escape Room has going for it: An extended sequence that finds Karen in a morgue-themed room reminds one of the entirety of Autopsy of Jane Doe in its effective use of sounds, and rather unsettling atmosphere. It’s an admittedly powerful scene, the likes of which are never even remotely replicated anywhere else; it’s almost as if the main director called off sick on that day of filming and had someone with actual experience take over. Without delving too deep into spoilers, the direction the plot heads in is actually pretty intriguing, with some allusions to time travel brought in later on; unfortunately, that idea isn’t really fully fleshed out, and so we’re left with an ending that feels unfinished more than it does ambiguous.

This one has its fair share of “MarVista moments” (i.e. moments that run the gamut from either making you laugh when you shouldn’t, or throwing your TV out your window from sheer frustration), but the atmosphere is never really “fun”, which I guess works in its favor as a horror movie, but against it as below-average entertainment, as the viewer has nothing to really “cling” to during its predictable moments. The death scenes deserve some credit for attempting something unique, but once again the writer doesn't seem to be fully in control of where he wants to take his own idea, and so they don't have the impact that they could have had.

In the end, No Escape Room is about what you were expecting: an uninspiring romp through horror movie cliches, wrapped in the appeal of a current fad. What's most unfortunate about it, though, are the frustrating hints of what it could have been: the moment when the movie reaches peak effectiveness, or presents an engaging idea, only to abandon it, instead falling back into the safety of formulaic predictability, from which it itself can never escape.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS (POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD)

• “How long have we been in this room?” Well, there is a countdown timer, as well as a clock, right there on the wall, so...
• What a great dad he is, helping his daughter gain access to a wing of the house that's inaccessible by everyone else, leaving her to wander unfamiliar halls in an evil house alone.
• Wow, being wrapped in those chains apparently turn you retarded.
• (Door slams shut; several people try opening it several times each) “It's locked.”
• My wife, concerning the ending: “So the rest of their lives they're just going to be opening locks together?”
• One thing I think I've failed to mention about MarVista movies that is most intriguing to me, is that, no matter how bad the movies themselves are, they are all competently shot.
• This is another rare MarVista movie that doesn't seem to have an alternate title.

ENTERTAINMENT RATING: 5/10

TRAILER

MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: 911 Nightmare (aka Dispatch) (2016)

Director: Craig Moss
Writer(s): Bryan Dick
Starring: Fiona Gubelmann, John Lee Ames, Scott Bailey, and Scott Broderick

I probably sound like a broken record: there are only so many euphemisms and synonyms for “terrible”, and running through MarVista’s movie catalogue has certainly tested my vocabulary limitations in that regard. But the main issue at play here, and one that I keep learning the farther and farther I dip into this project, is just how many different layers, of “bad” there really are: Every time I think I’ve experienced the pinnacle of incompetence, another movie comes along that tests my limits even more.

Case in point: I have reamed many a-main character from the studio’s repertoire for being unlikable, but none of them have ever approached the reprehensible levels of Fiona Gubelmann’s Christine McCullers. Here’s a woman who has literally been directly responsible for all of the hardships she faces, yet still plays the pity card at every turn, as if she’s a victim of circumstances outside her control. And I guess we, as the viewer, are just supposed to support her as she never learns her lesson, continuing to dig herself in deeper; we’re supposed to find our solace in knowing that this is a MarVista movie, and that, by the end, we know all of her misfortunes will turn completely around.

But I didn’t. I hated her from the first moment I saw her, and I hated her more with each passing minute, to the extent that even finishing this movie became a blood-boiling chore. I have said before that there’s nothing worse than a movie that causes feelings of indifference over hatred, because at least hatred makes you feel something, whereas indifference is just…boring; here's a movie that surely pushes the truth of that theory to its absolute limits.

Christine is a cop on the “rough” streets of a small, unnamed city (the only kind in these movies), where she patrols with her father. One night, while driving a routine route, the cops see a hooded figure running down the sidewalk, a flailing woman frantically giving chase. With no idea of what’s going on, or even what crime (if any) has been committed, Christine jumps out of the car, ignores her father’s pleas to wait for backup (you'll quickly learn that listening to others is not her strong suit), follows the subject into the alley, and confronts him at gunpoint.

Her quick action results in the city's biggest bust to date: a 15-year-old kid who has stolen a bag of chips from a convenience store. He claims it’s because his mom hasn’t been home in days, and that he’s hungry, but Christine still informs him that she must arrest him. Huh? A kid? Over an item that couldn’t cost more than $2? Sure, lady. (Granted, she at least has an understanding, consoling tone, and doesn’t come off as some brash, trigger happy officer, but this is still pretty stupid.) In just one instance of many that makes Christine look like a bungling idiot—Mr. Magoo made flesh—the dumb bitch somehow lets a teenaged child squirm free of her grasp, grab her gun, and turn the tables. Of course now is when her dad joins the fray and takes charge of the situation, calming the subject down, who gives clear signs that he is about to surrender. And this is the moment—this very moment when the situation is under complete control--that Ms. McCunters decides is the perfect time to go for a backup gun she has hidden away; when her dad notices, he yells for her to stop (probably not the smartest thing he could do in that situation), the young kid panics, and shoots them both before getting shot himself. Both the victim, and Christine's dad die in the ensuing shootout; perhaps saddest of all is that Christine does not.

When we next see her, a little while later, she is suffering a limp from a bullet that hit her upper torso. (Seriously, in the opening scene, she lays in a pool of her own blood, body only seen from the waist up; not once is a leg injury even hinted at. Even later on, when they replay the shooting, she is clearly shot above the legs.) Her disability prevents her from patrolling the streets (probably a good thing for all), and has instead confined her to a dispatcher role. As it turns out, she sucks at that, too.

One day, a kid calls in, claiming he’s seen a boogeyman, and that he needs help. Christine dismisses it as a prank call almost immediately, and urges the child, several times, to hang up, stressing that the line is for emergency calls only. She clearly sounds agitated, finding relief only after the kid finally complies with her request. A couple of days later she’s called into the office to speak with her bosses: turns out the child she ignored was actually pleading for help on behalf of another kid, a teen who was murdered that night. She’s placed on unpaid suspension barring the outcome of the ensuing investigation, then for another two months after they find her negligible, but somehow valuable enough not to terminate.

Despite her “suspended” status, though—and also in spite of the fact she hasn’t been an actual cop for months—the police station never takes her gun or her badge away. And do you know why that’s convenient? Because she doesn’t think the widely-accepted suspects, the boy’s parents, are the ones that carried out this heinous crime! So, after already getting her father, and another boy killed through her incompetence, and with a job she desperately needs on the line, she launches her own investigation into the murder that she herself failed to stop. Can you say “tone deaf”?

The aforementioned “investigation” consists of tracking down people that the police should have already talked to (but, in some cases, didn't), and either pulling out a gun and yelling at them to admit to things they didn’t actually do, or asking basic suspects basic questions that the police no doubt already asked. All this and for what? What’s her endgame? In order to truly care for a character, you have to understand and care for their goal. What does she honestly hope to accomplish by doing this, and, perhaps more importantly, why should we care? This isn't some woman who's been a victim of unfortunate circumstance: This is a woman so stupid, she’s already killed two people through her own selfish actions, actions which she never shows a shred of remorse or accountability over (and the one time she does, she's clearly seeking validation from a friend). Despite her assurance that it's all about justice, and the synopsis assuring us it's about her guilt, it never comes across that way: instead, the investigation just feels like a way for her to clear her name, despite actually having legitimate blood on her hands.

To cope with all of the bad luck that she has completely brought upon herself, she frequents a local bar, where she somehow meets an attractive man who takes an interest in her. She assures him that he shouldn’t be interested, and shows her the crutch she uses to get around, something that’s pretty goddamned obvious considering she stumbles around everywhere in the first few scenes like a baby duck trying to walk for the first time in the movie's initial post-injury stages; an injury that seems to change in location and severity by the minute. The man, who luckily for her happens to be an actual cop with real credentials, assures her it’s okay and that he still wants to be with her, even though she has absolutely no appealing characteristics whatsoever. (No joke, she smiles once the entire movie, and spends the rest of the time either pitying herself, or using other people for her own personal gain.)

There have been several other movies where I’ve been against the leads getting together: most of the time, it’s simply because the actors are awful, or lack the basic chemistry necessary to make me think they deserve each other. Other times, despite the writers’ insistence that you cheer for them to get with the other lead, they just seem to fit better with a different character. But this is the very first time where the thought of her with anyone made me physically ill: this is an abhorrent character, who has wreaked havoc on herself and everything around her, without so much as an apology, or a basic acknowledgment that she is a terrible person; the idea that we are supposed to cheer for her to do anything except die alone is one of the great miscalculations of the entire 21^st century. (Actually, the love story isn't necessary at all; it would still be an awful movie without it, but at least a little shorter and minus one overblown plot point.)

Anyway, her investigation picks up: she starts enlisting the aide of actual on-duty cops to help her, something that would get everyone involved fired if they found out. But why should she care how her terrible decisions and complete lack of moral awareness affect others? She's got a name to clear, and it's entirely her own. Oh, and the parents who are going to jail for murdering their kid, but they are just the lucky beneficiaries of her obsessive need to prove to everyone that she's right about everything, and everyone else is wrong.

So she breaks into house after house, and follows suspect after suspect, and falls down from her slight knee bruise that's made to sound like an amputation-worthy injury (no joke) time and time again, all without police credentials or a search warrant, and all without the department's knowledge that she's going behind their backs to find a killer that they don't seem to have any interest in finding. If only they all had selfish reasons to dig deeper into the evidence like Ms. Child Killer does here, maybe they would have seen the errors of their ways and tried to find the real perpetrator a little harder.

Really, it all comes down to three words: fuck this movie. Fuck everything about it. It's alarming in its tone-deaf sincerity, in which we're supposed to cheer for a former police officer to avoid accountability for her own actions. So heartless is this cunt, that the only time we ever hear her apologize is to a man with whom she had a one night stand, and then kicked him out the following morning—and only because she needs his help. She doesn't apologize to her father's grave, or even to the mother of the child she so carelessly allowed to be killed, who she visits in prison simply to tell her she believes she's innocent; she doesn't apologize to the janitor she holds at gunpoint, screaming at him to admit to murders he never committed. This is a woman who finds her entire life in hot water thanks to a series of bad decisions, and the only way she can fathom getting out is by making a series of even worse decisions.

And of course, it works, because by the end, she solves the murder and gets her old job back. She also gets the officer to fall for her, despite having the personality of a fucking napkin (actually, that's not true, because napkins clean up messes instead of constantly creating them). Nevermind that she trespassed and gained every bit of evidence illegally, and that she risked the jobs—and lives--of others to achieve her own goal...all that matters is that she managed to prove that for every two lives she murders, she's able to save the only one that matters to her: her own.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS (POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD)

• The scene where a superior makes fun of her limp while making a crying face is both politically incorrect, and absolutely fucking hilarious; in fact, it's the only scene that isn't genuinely infuriating in the entire movie (although the scene right after, in which Christine is so enraged by it that she throws her cane away and walks down the stairs perfectly fine, is.)
• DRINKING GAME: Every time that stupid bitch falls, take a drink.
• If you're going to have a movie where the main character has to alternate between limping and crying all the time, shouldn't you make sure to hire an actress that can consistently do both?
• DRINKING GAME: Every time her limp changes, take a drink. In the beginning it's cartoonishly overblown, and by the end it's very nearly forgotten, yet we're notified she's very close to needing it removed because it's so badly damaged, and she falls over in dangerous situations no fewer than four times.
• She's broken into that suspect's house so many times at this point, that I think she owes him rent money.
• NOTE: If you're ever going to break into someone's house, it's probably a good idea not to touch their mail.
• How does she get to call the shots all the time? Her “partner's” a cop who doesn't have blood on his hands, and is actually still a credentialed cop, for God's sake, and yet she's ordering him around like she isn't the worst officer ever to don a uniform.
• If you're building a case around someone, it's probably not a great idea to do it in a car parked right in front of their house.
• It's also probably not a great idea to use the same car, parked directly in front, for several days, either.
• She calls an officer friend to warn him of impending danger; he doesn't get notification of the call or texts despite literally using his phone to take pictures at the exact same time.
• Example of her outstanding police ability: (Subject far away at night) “Freeze!” (subject runs; she takes one step forward and falls down).

ENTERTAINMENT RATING: 0/10.

TRAILER

MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Caught (2015)

Director: Maggie Kiley
Writer(s): Marcy Holland
Starring: Anna Camp, Stefanie Scott, Sam Page, and Amelia Rose Blaire

I hated almost every single minute of Caught, a movie that seems to pride itself on gleefully missing the mark in every way imaginable. It’s as if the makers of this dreck took notes on how to make the perfect movie, and then reversed every single bit of advice; it’s not just a bad movie, it’s an infuriating one. It’s the kind that inspires new generations of filmmakers, by providing an example of how godawful a movie can be, yet still see wide release.

Amazingly, Caught’s problems don’t start with the plot, which could actually have been put to greater use in the hands of a more talented bunch: Sabrina (Anna Camp) discovers her husband, Justin, is having an affair with a high schooler (who’s eighteen, of course), and kidnaps said high schooler, keeping her tied and bound to a chair in the attic. Her plan is merely to keep her there for a day or two while her husband is away on business, scare some sense into her, torture her psychologically, and then let her go.

But things don’t always go according to plan.

As it turns out, of all times, Justin’s out-of-town business meeting was canceled, so he unexpectedly returns home to spend some quality time with his wife, and her sister, Paige. What he doesn’t know is that his teenage mistress is bound and gagged upstairs, and what started off as a simple prank will become a desperate fight for survival for everyone involved.

Doesn’t sound too shabby, does it? Unfortunately, it’s very, very shabby, playing its cards far too early, and far too often to offer any sort of tension. For example, Paige clearly regrets her role in the “prank” even when it’s still just a (fairly) innocuous joke—it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what’s going to happen when things quickly spiral out of control.

The mistress Allie, offers up no personality at all, besides looking sad and crying all the time; we’re merely supposed to cheer for her simply because she’s the damsel in distress. But the one flaw with that logic—and something the movie never really seems to take into account--is that she is far from an innocent victim being put in a situation outside of her control: she’s sleeping with a married man. And-- to my surprise, I must admit—no evidence is ever presented suggesting that she wasn’t aware he was married, nullifying that potential bit of admonishing information. In other words, she's just as guilty as everyone else.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but the lone thing Caught has going for it is Anna Camp: arguably the least entertaining character in the Pitch Perfect series, she’s the only thing worth even the remotest of damns here, playing her role with an over-the-top zest that signals she's in on a joke that no one else realizes is being told. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: when your movie forces people to cheer for the bad guy, that's not a good thing; when the supposed “heroine” is as bland as Allie is here, it’s even worse: I wanted her killed 30 minutes into the movie, a feeling that only grew and grew as time went on.

So boring is her character that, after suffering a leg injury, she spends the entire second half of the movie limping, crawling, and falling all over the place at a snail’s clip, treating each life-or-death scenario as a game of hide-and-seek with friends. Most people with a leg injury, who hear that they are going to be buried alive, would probably get a little pep in their step through adrenaline; not Allie, who struggles to get out of a bathtub and manages to crawl about three feet in an hour’s time. Dear Lord, girl: if you don’t have an intense desire to live, then why should anyone else want you to?

Sure, there are twists and turns, and near escapes, and near deaths, and a stupid mom who randomly saves the day, and all the other non-thrills required of thrillers, but it's all executed with the sincerity of a cast and crew who would rather be somewhere else.

A feeling that's contagious for the viewer.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS (POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD)

• How the hell does the husband know that the pregnancy test isn’t his wife’s? Sure, conception wasn’t supposed to be possible, but he seems to believe her when she tells him; yet after finding the positive test in her own dresser drawer, he automatically thinks she’s lying?
• Um…so this dumb kid is kidnapped and the first person she thinks to call isn’t her mother, or the police…but her 40-year-old boyfriend?
• Haha, this one delivers a twist in the whole “no cell phone service” trope by having a phone drop a signal in mid-call.
• So let me get this straight: Allie’s mom finds three possible houses with names that match the married man’s name, and somehow knows for a fact that the one on fire is the one her daughter’s in? Christ Jesus.
• Also, I hate that piece of shit mom. What kind of mother makes her 18 year old daughter work 7 days straight in a shitty restaurant just to pay the restaurant’s bills? It’s not her fault your restaurant sucks.
• Good to know the easiest way to wake someone up who has passed out from smoke inhalation is to just scream their name.
• If you’re looking for someone who’s hiding in an attic, a good method is to take a step into the attic, and then spin around in place once or twice. If you don’t see them, they’re not there.
• CLASSI C TROPE ALERT! Anna throws someone down a flight of stairs to kill them. This is probably the #1 cause of death in Lifetime movies, despite probably not even placing in the top 100 in real life.

ENTERTAINMENT RATING: 2/10

TRAILER

MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: House of the Witch (2017)

Director: Alex Merkin
Writer(s): Neil Elman
Starring: Emily Bader, Darren Mann, Michelle Randolph, and Coy Stewart

If this were from any other studio, House of the Witch would just be another tired retread of the stale “killer entity” theme that's been done to death over the last few years. In the hands of MarVista Entertainment—the studio responsible for many of the weekly Hallmark romance and Lifetime “Stalker of the Week” movies—it's probably the closest thing to a “triumph” that they have ever accomplished.

Don't get me wrong: it's a bad movie. But it's the kind of “bad” every other studio churns out, rather than MarVista's own brand of “bad”: the unintentional laughs are kept somewhat in check, the writing is less lazy than usual, and—dare I say—some of the special effects nearly manage to approach the level of “good”. Hey, “nearly” is closer than most anything else I've seen out of them, so take it as a compliment.

A group of seven high schoolers sneak into a house rumored to be under the spell of a demonic witch. One-by-one, they are picked off in semi-grisly fashion as the witch—who looks like fog when moving--protects her territory. That's it: there are no real twists, no scares, no meaningful character development; it's just a straightforward march toward death for our poor youth.

And yet, there are some things to like here: It's gleefully violent, at least by the studio's conservative standards; occasionally profane (I think a couple of characters might swear); almost sexual; and there are actually a couple of eerie sequences. Now, that's not to say any of it is genuinely scary—the story is far too predictable, and the actors far too...”inexperienced” for anything resembling terror to creep in—but just the fact that the studio responsible for creating total garbage like Work Wife has made something resembling an actual movie is a feat in and of itself.

There are times when MarVista “logic” tries to force itself in, like characters who constantly back up for no reason, throw three eggs at a house and call it an egging, and an awfully protracted scene in a room with a haunt where the main character spins around for about five minutes while loud sounds play on the soundtrack as literally nothing else happens, but they are limited in comparison to most of their other productions.

House of the Witch isn't the type of movie that you can “recommend” to anyone, because that word insinuates it's a movie that they should see, and with legitimately good media being released daily, there's really no reason to settle for anything less. But if you're in the mood for something that you can just pop in, put your brain on autopilot, and forget about immediately after seeing it, there's enough entertainment value contained within—both intentional and unintentional, but mostly the latter—that it should carry you through to the end.

ENTERTAINMENT RATING: 5/10

TRAILER

MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Fatal Flip (aka The Fixer Upper) (2015)

Director: Maureen Bharoocha
Writer(s): Bharoocha, and Ellen Huggins
Starring: Mike Faiola, Dominique Swain, Michael Steger, and Tatyana Ali

We all have our favorite Hollywood crushes. For most people, it’s the hugely popular Goslings’ or Gadots’ of the world, if for no other reason than their wide reach and massive exposure. Would you believe it if I told you that one of my earliest crushes as a teen was none other than Dominique Swain, star of Adrian Lyne’s adaptation of Lolita, from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov?

Swain, as the jailbait femme fatale, enraptured me in her role, to where I couldn’t take my eyes off of her; she was beautiful (which I can say without being creepy because I was thirteen when the movie came out, though I didn’t see it until a couple of years later), and although she was just 14 years old at the time of filming, managed to share the screen with Jeremy Irons without being overpowered by him. That's a feat in and of itself.

I can see almost everyone scratching their heads right now: not necessarily because they're wondering how in the world I could think she's cute, but simply out of complete ignorance as to who she is. And I can't fault you for that, because, unfortunately, the controversy of that movie—and, more specifically, her role—seems to have been a curse, a death blow to a once-promising career that has since been diminished to a neverending series of thankless roles in countless B-movies (hey, work is work, right?) She’s exactly the type of actress for which MarVista roles were made, so it should come as no surprise that she ended up in one called Fatal Flip. And having stumbled upon that information, it should come as no surprise that I watched it.

In it, Swain plays Alex, a woman who buys a rundown home, along with her boyfriend Jeff, in the hopes of fixing it up to sell for a huge profit. The couple are hugely confident that their investment—which has tied up all of their available money—will reap big rewards, but the gravity of their situation quickly settles in: although Jeff is a knowledgeable handyman, he doesn’t know enough about plumbing or electrical work to finish the project himself. And there's a pretty strict deadline from purchase to sale before the interest kicks in on their credit cards and threatens to rob them of any profit at all: 45 days.

With no money available to pay anyone, they happen to meet Nate, a man who offers his services for free, in exchange for a place to stay. You know the age-old saying “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is?” Well, that would definitely hold true for someone who offers to do countless hours of grueling labor in exchange for virtually nothing. As it turns out (and this is not a spoiler as it’s alluded to in the opening scene), Nate goes around offering his services to couples in need, and then…seduces the women, or something? And then kills them, or the guys, or...I guess I’m not really sure what his MO is, honestly, but either way, all you need to know is that he’s not a good guy.

Things take a turn for the worse when Jeff is injured falling from a roof (an act of sabotage by Nate that, refreshingly, goes uninvestigated). Unable to help the two physically, he also seems unable to help the two mentally, as Alex and Nate make quite a few decisions about the appearance of the house without even consulting with the poor guy locked away in his room.

Aside from Alex, Jeff, and Nate, the other main character is Roslyn (played by another childhood crush of mine: Tatyana Ali, who played Ashley in “Fresh Prince”), Alex’s good friend who’s also smitten with Nate. This leads to a weird jealousy triangle where the writer doesn’t entirely seem to sure on where to take it: one moment, Alex is vying for Nate’s attention, then when she gets it, she acts offended that he would look at a taken woman like that; she seems creeped out by him, yet still puts herself in positions where they’re alone, and even has a one-on-one dinner with him. Um...does she not realize she's clearly leading the poor guy on, whether she thinks she is or not?

Roslyn's “competition” with Alex to be the object of Nate's desires is another source of inconsistencies: what starts off as a playful, innocuous “battle” between the two for Nate's attention eventually leads to the dreaded “180-degree character change” trope that we see too often in these movies, where Roslyn is so consumed by her lust for Nate that she flaunts it around as atonement for the college years, when Alex was popular and got all the guys. Poor Ros meets her end the way she lived—stupidly--when she goes snooping around Nate's room after spending the night with him, and sees some things she shouldn't.

Can I break off for a second here: Why do characters always snoop around in these movies, even when there's no reason for them to? Here, there isn't even an inkling that he's a psychopath until close to the end, meaning Ros is literally just looking through his stuff because she's a nosey little bitch. What could she possibly be hoping to find in this instance that would lead her to look at all? A secret journal where he professes his love for her and mentions his intent to marry her? I just fail to see any logic in this whatsoever, save for the required advancement of the plot through her murder.

Truthfully, outside of the minor characters and amateurish writing, Fatal Flip actually isn't all that terrible. It's bad, but at least competent in ways that can overcome some of its obvious shortcomings: Dominique Swain, for all the low-budget junk on her resume (Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre, for God's sake?!) is actually an accomplished actress who can rise to, or above, the level of the material she is working with. Here, she gives a capable performance, thanks in large part to her ability to convey emotions through facial expressions, without looking entirely stupid. Michael Steger as Jeff (who my wife recognized from his role in the remake of “Beverly Hills: 90210”) is also above-average, though he's largely relegated to a secondary character by the halfway mark.

But this is a Lifetime production, and at some point it's inevitable that all of the movie's weaknesses (like, almost everything else) eventually become too great for anything to overcome. In fact, looking back, it's almost as if the decent acting is actually more of a negative, firmly entrenching the movie in the uncomfortable netherworld between “merely bad” and “bad but entertaining”: With a less experienced (or dedicated) cast, this one could have been more enjoyable in that familiar “campy cheese” kind of way these movies often excel in. Instead, there's just enough competence within the production that it's just flat-out boring and uninspired, rather than laugh out loud terrible; the difference is that one of those is at least entertaining, and the other isn't really worth your time at all.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• In what may actually qualify as “brilliant”, no one even notices that Ros is dead. (Jeff mentions not seeing her in a while and suggests Alex call her soon, but her body is never found onscreen.) While it might sound silly, it's actually pretty believable given the tight timeframe this movie takes place within.
• Why does Michael Steger's face look like he's wearing a mask of himself over top of his actual face? There's just something off about it, like it's stretched out or something, especially after my wife's adamant insistence that he is good looking in other roles. We'll blame it on his stupid hairstyle.
• Why do psychopathic characters always have to make things blatantly obvious? Case in point: Nate, who constantly makes his true intentions known by intently staring at Alex for uncomfortably long periods of time.
• I mentioned it already, but Alex's flip-flopping is anger-inducing: one moment she smiles as he intensely stares her down, then the next time she's grossed out: repeat that cycle about a dozen times.
• Honestly, there's the structure of a good movie in here somewhere.

RATING: 4/10

TRAILER

MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: 12 Feet Deep (aka The Deep End / Trapped Sisters) (2017)

Director: Matt Eskandari
Writer(s): Eskandari, and Michael Hultquist
Starring: Nora-Jane Noone, Alexandra Park, Diane Farr, and Tobin Bell

There's seriously more drama in this poster than there is the entire movie.

We were actually, legitimately excited to see 12 Feet Deep, for a number of reasons, and all of them point to an anti-MarVista MarVista movie: 1.) The trailer gives nothing away, unlike most of their thriller previews which literally give away even the twist; 2.) the trailer is professionally edited, and the movie professionally shot, making it look like a legitimate movie; 3.) the plot breaks away from obsessed students and teachers to deliver an intriguing premise that’s way outside of their norm. Would we be rewarded for our sense of adventure, or punished because of it?

It didn’t take long to realize that a MarVista movie is a MarVista movie, no matter how flashy or professional the trailer is.

Bree and Jonna are two sisters who, through a pretty much completely impossible and stupid event, become trapped underneath the fiberglass cover of an Olympic-size public pool, trying to get an engagement ring that fell in. No problem, you’re thinking, all they have to do is wait until morning and they’re golden, right? Wrong! It happens to be a holiday weekend, as we are informed thanks to a typed up notice that the pool's owners tack to a bulletin board about an hour before they close, so they are forced to survive under the cover for three whole nights.

As intrigued as I was by the trailer, and as disturbing as the idea of being trapped under a cover would be, it took me but five minutes to realize that, if it’s anything like it’s pictured here, it would actually be pretty boring. After all, this being a public pool means that there are no terrifying creatures lurking within, and there’s the benefit of a shallow end, two things that pretty much negate the potential for any “natural” scares. (Claustrophobia could have made things interesting, and would be an actual concern for people trapped in real life, but neither of our heroines seem to suffer from it.)

Even the writers realized how boring and thin the foundation for this story was, so in order to inject as much tension as possible, and to provide a little “story” with which they could hang a formula around, there are some other elements at work here: Jonna is a recovering drug addict who may or may not still be using; Bree is a diabetic that must rely on insulin shots to keep her blood sugar regulated; and Clara is the pool janitor, fired that day but allowed to work out her scheduled shift (alone, oddly) who has a personal vendetta against the world…naturally, once she discovers there are two people trapped in her pool, she finds the perfect guinea pigs to take out her frustrations upon.

Unfortunately, none of it works, because it all just feels like a movie straining to make up for an ill-advised plot: any time you rely entirely on a series of health problems and coincidences to drag the story along, you're putting a lot of faith in your audience to just go along with it, and there are only so many things the audience can forgive before it all becomes laughably obvious. Take, for instance, Bree's diabetes symptoms, which seem to come and go simply to fit the dramatic needs of the screenplay. Movie running out of excitement? Oh no, her blood sugar’s so low that she’s nearly unconscious, with no possible treatment options within reach! Writers write themselves into a corner? Whoops, nevermind! Now she's perfectly healthy and functional in the next scene, just in time to give her pitiful, whiny sister a reassuring pep talk about how no one thinks she's a fuck-up and how she's a great and wonderful person that the world would miss if she were gone (all lies, by the way).

Ditto goes for Clara, the fired janitor who switches back and forth from psychopathic aggressor, to being stabbed in the ear by a sharp piece of shrapnel, to a misunderstood victim. As it turns out, she's not a bad person, just a victim of circumstance, much like her two trapped guinea pigs, a shared notion that gives them all something to bond over, and that brings the story to a simplified, "happy" ending that just as easily could have occurred much quicker to save everyone the hassle of trying to stay awake for 90 minutes.

Honestly, there's not all that much to say about 12 Feet Deep, because there's not really much of note that happens. And most of that boils down to the entire project being a failure from conception, centering its story around a mostly boring non-event, and then cramming in as many coincidental moments as possible in an effort to create enough artificial tension to carry it along to the finish line; a finish line that isn't at all worth the time and patience involved in making it that far.

The lead actresses--although playing poorly-written, overly annoying characters—are better than the material deserves, and the movie is shot competently; it's also at least a change from the typical MarVista thriller, which typically involve some kind of weird obsession or love triangle. Other than that, there's really no reason to even acknowledge its existence.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Aren't pool drains typically in the center of a pool? So then how does the pool operator not notice two grown women swimming in it when he takes one final glance before closing the pool cover?
• I hate both of these girls. Could they both just die?
• All Clara has to do to stop the video cameras from recording is turn off the monitor, a method that would defeat the entire purpose of having a camera system and that works in direct contradiction to every single video monitoring system ever.
• How do these characters constantly lose sight each other, despite being confined to the wide-open expanse of a pool?
• One character's advice after Clara turns on the jets to fill up the pool with more water is to “block the jets!”, a very logical fight-or-flight response given the dozens of jets spread across an entire pool's length and their confinement to a 5 ft. frame and four limbs.
• Being a former junkie, you would think Jonna would have much better negotiation/bargaining skills than she does.

RATING: 3/10

TRAILER

MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Country Christmas Album (2018)

Director: Danny Buday
Writer(s): Buday
Starring: Hannah Barefoot, Evan Gamble, Taylor Bedford, and Alexander Kane

There is a sinking feeling that I think every avid viewer of Hallmark or Lifetime movies can relate to: Checking the remaining duration, seeing there are precious few minutes left, and realizing there is still a key part of the story’s formula missing from the equation; because if there is one thing those kinds of movies can’t be bothered with, it’s altering their “tried-and-true” formula.

Country Christmas Album is, for the most part, a doofy-but-enjoyable romp through harmless romantic territory for most of its running time. Of course, it doesn’t do anything even remotely unique or even all that fascinating, but it’s carried along by the likeability of its cast. Then we run into the obligatory “fight”, and nearly all is lost.

Why do these B-grade studios feel the need to follow their formulas to a “T” every single time? I understand that’s what made them a “successful” (depending on how you quantify that) studio, but certainly something could be said for wandering off the beaten path once in a while. Especially when it involves a simple communication error that feels absolutely forced, and turns Tess from an enjoyable movie heroine to an ignorant, stone-cold bitch almost within a single scene.

Tess Stapleton is a country star whose time in the spotlight is running out. As a last ditch effort to save her career, she is forced by her label to record an album with Derek Copeland, a former boy-band member and teen heartthrob who could also use a career boost. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that the two of them—who on paper seem like complete opposites—start to develop feelings for one another.

Complicating matters for everyone involved is Tess’s ex-husband, another musician who stays with her in between touring on the road, and her pre-teen daughter Mazzy.

All is going well until the final twenty minutes, when one of Derek’s ex-bandmates gets on a radio show and voices interest in getting Derek to rejoin them for a reunion tour. They call him up, live on the air, to gauge his interest level. Half-asleep, he agrees to having a discussion with the band, but literally doesn’t commit to a single thing besides that. The next day with Tess, his record producer comes up to congratulate him on agreeing to tour with his old band, something that was never, ever set in stone.

Right here, all Derek has to do is explain that’s not at all what he said, but that’s too much of an effort. Because, you know, “communication” isn’t tops on the list of what makes long-term relationships work, by virtually all accounts, or anything. Instead, he just keeps his mouth shut, while Tess turns into a super-cunt, performing a complete 180-degree character turn from the rest of the movie and closing both Mazzy, and herself, off from Derek, believing him to be a bad guy because he supposedly chose music over his “family”.

Yes, of course they reconcile and we get the happy ending we all deserve (insert retching sounds here), but that's not the point. The point is the strict adherence to the formula, which always overrides common sense in these movies, and that undid a movie that, honestly, isn't otherwise all that bad, at least for what it is.

In fact, it showed resolve in avoiding another terrible cliché that was incredibly welcome: the jealous ex-husband. The formula for it—having the ex-husband stay with Tess and his daughter in between road trips—was there, and after Mazzy randomly invited Derek over for Thanksgiving dinner without anyone else's approval, I knew for sure that's where it was headed. But aside from an early-ish scene where he mutters “Jesus Christ” under his breath after Derek gives a particularly cheesy toast, he's actually very supportive of both. (Also a high point: Tess asks him “You don't like Derek, do you?” to which he laughs and replies, “No, but I don't have to.”) This is a nice change of pace from the norm, where this would be yet another obstacle for the two lovers to overcome.

The remaining characters, while still consisting of romance movie stereotypes, are likable enough to navigate the movie through ultra-familiar ground without being too overbearing or annoying, and the two leads are charming together.

But it's all of these qualities that make that obligatory fight scene all the more jarring, and that instantaneously takes Country Christmas Album from a charming movie, to yet another tone-deaf exercise in maddening formulaic frustration.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

-The hit “country” song that Tess and Derek write wouldn't even be “country” by today's ever-expanding standards.
-I hate kids in real life, but I think I hate kids in movies even more.
-Why does the radio DJ look like he's having a seizure every single time he talks? I can't tell if that was supposed to be a spoof of someone, or if it was just some of the worst overacting in movie history.
-Derek's hilarious (and serious) response to watching Tess sing an upbeat Christmas standard is that she's “soulful.”
-How out-of-touch with reality are these writers? At one point the DJ seems to be in awe of a song's mix of pop and country, acting like it's groundbreaking and original. Um...has he never listened to a modern country station before?
-Jason Burkey as Derek's brother—and constant source of moral guidance—is as charming here as he was as Lauren Alaina's boyfriend in Road Less Traveled, another country-themed MarVista production.

RATING: 4.5/10

TRAILER

ASININE ASYLUM: 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (2012)

Director: Martin Wichmann Andersen
Writer(s): Nancy Leopardi
Starring: Hayley Derryberry, Tony Besson, Mike Holley, and Adam LaFramboise

Now it's time to take a slight reprieve from the onslaught of MarVista movies we've been reviewing, to check out an offering from The Asylum, essentially the “MarVista of horror” (I hope I get that quote on one of their movie posters!). Actually, they’re probably a grade or two lower: whereas MarVista tends to retread over their own tropes (or the tired clichés set forth by Hallmark and Lifetime, two channels for which they produce), The Asylum tends to directly rip off existing horror films (and the occasional non-horror hit), reworking them into super low-budget carbon copies in an attempt to swindle unsuspecting folk into watching their films. Don’t believe me? How about Snakes on a Train? Paranormal Entity? Atlantic Rim? The only mainstream “success”—term used very loosely—on their resume is Sharknado, the type of off-the-wall mashup they’d been doing for years, but that just happened to hit pop culture at just the right time.

Well here we have 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck, a found-footage film that is actually the fourth in their Paranormal Entity franchise, something I did not know until now since there’s no indication of that anywhere on the packaging. Don’t let the lame title fool you, however, because 100 Ghost Street is every bit as lame as you were expecting.

Now, I have to be completely honest: Any supernatural movie makes me a little nervous going in, because there’s no reason for any of them not to be scary. I mean, if you think about it, stalkers and killers and murderous animals and mummies and zombies…while they can all be creepy or scary in the right hands, they are all visible beings that can be seen and heard; most of them also have to get in close to attack. Ghosts, on the other hand, follow no such rules of physics, and can make their presence known whenever they want, or however they want.

How is it, then, that ghosts are oftentimes so dull? Here we have a subgenre with almost limitless scare potential, and you still end up with movies like this, in which the stupidity of its characters somehow becomes the main attraction.

The style of 100 Ghost Street is a direct ripoff of any number of other found footage flicks, with opening title cards informing us in advance that everyone you are about to see has died. I’ve never really understood why this is so prevalent in these movies: sure, Blair Witch made it work because it was “the original”, and everyone believed it was real. When you know it’s a work of fiction, all that forehand knowledge does is prevent some tension for the viewer. For example, when the final character makes it out of the house alive, we know that she doesn’t, because the intro already told us that. Word of note to wannabe filmmakers: The less information you give from the outset, the better.

Anyway, the plot is very simple: Six paranormal investigators, give or take a few, go into a house that’s supposedly haunted by an angry ghost. It is. They die.

But movies aren’t necessarily about what happens, but how they happen, and 100 Ghost Street is—like most bad horror movies—a textbook example of what not to do in this situation. Characters wander off on their own, leaving the safety net of the entire group; the dickish “leader”—who looks like a fifty-year-old emo singer—refuses to let a woman, who just got attacked by a ghost(?) leave; a character is forced to go into a known danger zone (complete with freshly-ripped body) alone just to recover some keys that may or may not matter; the list really goes on and on. My initial hesitation melted away after the first thirty minutes, when I realized just how little this movie cared about entertaining its own audience, and was replaced with a kind of indifferent boredom.

It’s not completely without merit, though it’s certainly without the kind that makes it worthy of a watch: some of the ghost effects are actually pretty well done. Unfortunately, most of the good effects are wasted on a scene in which a woman (the one who was attacked by a ghost earlier, then is—surprise!—left entirely alone less than an hour later) is raped by an entity. Now, actually, having a character raped by a “ghost” isn't a new idea; after all, there was a movie based entirely around that idea (1981's The Entity, starring Barbara Hershey as the victim). But in the hands of The Asylum, the whole scene just puts the “icky” in “gimmicky”.

Of course, Asylum movies literally do exist solely as a cash grab to leech off the success of already-existing movies, so any attacks you make on the film’s quality or similarities to other works, are only part of their draw. It also, in a way, puts them above critique: they don’t care what you think about anything in their library, because they already have your money and wasted your time; that, in the end, is clearly all that matters.

So with that in mind, I’ll just say 100 Ghost Street is exactly what you think it is going into it: a lifeless supernatural found-footage “thriller” with very little in the way of thrills, and absolutely nothing in the way of intelligence.

RATING: 2.5/10

TRAILER