Christmas Capsules: A Beauty and the Beast Christmas (2019)

Director: Dylan Vox
Writer: Scotty Mullen
Starring: Leah Pipes, Donna Mills, Ryan Kelley, and Rob Raco

The Asylum is a production company that’s generally the horror equivalent to MarVista—actually, they may be even worse. While most MarVista movies are bland retreads of popular plotlines, they’re at least more or less ripping off their own stale formula; The Asylum tends to take their ripping off to a whole ‘nother level, frequently making movies with titles and box art that are very similar to popular blockbusters, at least partly in the hopes that unknowing people may stumble on their version instead of the real one and—settle for it, for some reason? I don’t know, doesn’t seem to be a very sound business model, but it’s suiting them well, so what do I know? (Supposedly they’ve never lost as much as a dime on a release) (As an example: Fast and Fierce, a movie featuring fast sports cars, is a current release, as is Battle Star Wars a film that has nothing to do with the wildly popular sci-fi franchise).

Well now they jump on another trend: the Christmas movie. I guess that’s actually kind of a good idea, because Christmas movies already suck, and “sucking” seems to be their entire mantra. They’ve made an entire company out of churning out uninspired, Z-grade schlock; since that describes many movies churned out during the holidays, then maybe it’s a better fit than it would initially seem to be on paper?

Well it isn’t…and it is; this is one of those movies that will remind you why you fell in love (ironically, of course) with holiday romance flicks to begin with. Actually, it probably won’t: if you actually watch these because you enjoy the love stories in them, chances are this one is sorely going to disappoint. The leads lack chemistry together, the writing and direction are wooden, the storyline is awful (and only weakly alludes to the title), and Leah Pipes’ sole method for dealing with every issue that arises seems to be to pout like a spoiled 7-year-old-brat. It’s pure, unadulterated crap from virtually every angle.

But—and perhaps it’s merely the spirit of Christmas infecting me—there’s just something inherently…enjoyable about it all. The jokes are frequently off-color and actually funny, the actors themselves seem to be having a good time (and deliver mostly good performances), and the atmosphere is imbued with a sense of freewheeling fun. It does go off the rail at times, and not all of the jokes land, but we found ourselves genuinely laughing out loud on several occasions.

I don’t want to bore you with the details, but I probably should: Pipes is Ginger Holiday, a social media influencer (that’s become the new go-to job in these movies, replacing “ad exec”) who lives and breathes Christmas every single day of the year. When her follower count starts plummeting as a direct result of a facial rash that won’t go away, Ginger finds that her endorsement stature with a popular global cosmetics brand is in immediate danger. To salvage her career, her grimy agent needs to act fast—and figures the best way to right the ship is to have the holiday queen “fall for someone who’s the complete opposite.

And that opposite is Beau Bradley, an aging skateboarding influencer who also is in need of a career boost. Can the two of them successfully use each other to get what they want, without true love getting in the way? Of course not.

The intro is over-the-top, but Pipes hits all the right notes (pun intended), perfectly encapsulating the ridiculousness of the idea to begin with; the results are surprisingly funny, and set a positive mood for the remainder to come. This is literally a woman whose entire being is indebted to a titular holiday; refreshingly, even though she’s a popular star because of her Christmas-themed videos, her actual love of the holiday is genuine.

Also perfect: Rob Raco as Derek, her shady agent. Really, he’s just a stereotypical sleazeball but, for the most part, seems to mean well (at least until a rather idiotic twist near the end). He strikes that tough balance between being a complete douchebag, and being a likeable guy, consistently landing somewhere in between. He also has good comedic timing and consistency, making him far funnier and more engaging than he probably should be.

I mean, really, this is an awful movie: the two leads fluctuate wildly between liking and hating each other; there is no chemistry between them; the writing is abysmal; the entire plot is godawful and bears little resemblance to the source material; and Ryan Kelley is pretty wooden as Beau. Yet, despite all those knocks, there's something that's just...entertaining about all of it. Sure, most of these cheesy holiday romps are "entertaining", the way watching old people fall down, or get hit by cars, is entertaining. But this one somehow manages to be entertaining in all the right ways: the atmosphere is upbeat and positive, the characters are likable (at least, in their own ways), and there are some genuine laughs to be had. 

You also get the feeling that the creators are in on their own joke; nothing feels like it should be taken seriously at all.  That at least helps cancel out some of the downfalls (the terrible plot idea, for one), though the writing is still abysmally bad no matter how you cut it.

If you're one of those old-fashioned people looking for a cutesy holiday romance to get you into the Christmas spirit, this one ain't for you. But if you're a millennial looking for a trash holiday movie that's funny, entertaining, and terrible, then your search ends here.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• I have very limited experience in the matter, but this may be one of The Asylum's best movies.
• Ginger's black friend is funny. Black friends are always funny.
• The two leads' lack of chemistry is almost endearing on its own.
• Of course Ginger's mom is a supermodel still stuck in her former glory. She's funny, but also a little too stereotypical.

RATING: 6/10

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(only available on Facebook, for some reason.)

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

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