Monthly Archives: October 2019

Hotel Transylvania: Bought It Before I Watched It

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Sometimes you have to let go of a predisposition and give something a chance. This isn’t exclusive to film by any means, but given our tendency to hold certain actors or directors in a purely negative light, I’d say it’s a pretty common thing for those of us who love movies. One of my predispositions is to actively avoid most Adam Sandler films since the early 2000’s.

This is easier said than done. Sandler has remained very much in the spotlight over the past two decades, despite starring in numerous releases that were critically panned and universally rejected. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Grown Ups, Jack & Jill, Grown Ups 2 and Pixels are just a few of his misfires. That didn’t stop Netflix from handing him a multi-million dollar deal in 2014 to make exclusive content for the streaming juggernaut, which was extended in 2017. Either there’s still a market for his outdated comedy or Sandler has blackmail on every top executive in Hollywood. Maybe both.

And while there is plenty of evidence that his best days are behind him and that our time and money are best spent elsewhere, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the Hotel Transylvania franchise. I love animation and thought the premise was fun: some of the world’s most infamous movie monsters shack up together at Dracula’s manor turned hotel, mainly because they need to avoid humans to survive. It’s also not unprecedented for certain actors to be better suited for voice acting over live-action, so I figured what the hell? I paid the five dollars to buy Hotel Transylvania on blu-ray, fully prepared to be disappointed but hopeful that Sandler might still have a couple of tricks up his sleeve.

To my genuine surprise, I actually liked the movie. Now it’s certainly not without its faults. Sandler’s trademark toilet humor still rears its ugly head, despite the fact that it should’ve been left back in the 90’s. He also brings his usual cohorts along for the ride, and while I enjoy actors like Steve Buscemi and David Spade as much as the next guy, it’s hard for anything that Sandler does to feel fresh when he works with the same people over and over. I guess that Seth Rogen and James Franco are equally guilty of this type of nepotism, so I suppose I can’t trash Sandler too much for that. Thankfully, he restrains himself just enough here to allow this fundamentally entertaining story to shine through.

It’s also boosted by the presence of Genndy Tartakovsky. Having the Samurai Jack creator at the helm of your animated project is always a good thing, and of course he is his usual reliable self. Throw in some young(er) talent like Andy Samberg and Selena Gomez, and you have all the ingredients for a perfectly watchable family-friendly movie. That’s more or less what you get here, but audiences ate it up in droves. There have already been two sequels and there are plans for a fourth installment in the franchise. Is there any actor better than Sandler at securing his next payday? I’ll give him that much.

Suffice to say, I didn’t experience anything revolutionary with Hotel Transylvania. I also laughed a fair amount and didn’t feel like clawing my eyes out at any point. That’s a win for any movie not trying to take itself too seriously, especially a Sandler one. There’s also a brilliant joke at Twilight’s expense, which alone was worth spending the five dollars.

It’s the small things in life that you treasure.

Are ‘Don’t Breathe’ and ‘Panic Room’ the Same Movie?

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Jesse: So Kevin, I have one question for you before we start… why would anyone want to break in to Jodie Foster or Stephen Lang’s house?

Kevin: Depends on who you’re asking. If you’re asking Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, it’s to “save” an underage girl from her pimp. But if you’re asking Jared Leto in Panic Room, it’s for the dollar dollar bills. Or I guess I should say the old paper stocks that are worth millions of dollar dollar bills.

I will say as I rewatched Panic Room, for this specific blog idea of yours, I had fun toying with the idea that Panic Room is a secret sequel to Taxi Driver and it picks up with Jodie Foster’s character as a mother trying to protect her daughter. It almost works actually! Both movies are set in New York, both movies have men acting selfishly, and both have lots of blood. And it actually makes you appreciate Foster’s desire to keep her daughter safe even more, she’s trying to build her a better life than she had but men keep bursting in to screw everything up. If only De Niro came in for a cameo, he could have dropped her off in a taxi! I feel like this should be canon, can this be canon Jesse?

I apologize, this is quickly going from, ‘are Don’t Breathe and Panic Room the same movie’ to ‘is Panic Room a sequel to Taxi Driver?’ Don’t even get me started about my theory that Don’t Breathe could have been the second sequel in this trilogy had it been set in the 80’s/90’s!

Jesse: You just opened Pandora’s box about unrelated movies that are actually part of the same franchise. That might have to be a new series of ours. Stay tuned…

But for the sake of this concept, here are three elements of Panic Room and Don’t Breathe that I believe make them virtually indistinguishable from each other:

  1. Three robbers attempt to break into home in pursuit of those dolla dolla bills
  2. They believe the job will be effortless, but the owner proves to be more than a match for the intruders
  3. The thieves spend as much time in peril as the owner

Now while the two films differ in other ways, to me these three are fairly ironclad. You with me Kevin or do you think I’m way off the mark here?

Kevin: As someone who just signed a lease for a New York apartment, I actually think Panic Room serves as an allegory for the tough New York real estate market. Or really it’s about the existential crisis one has when they get a mortgage and settle down in an unsettling house. Really we could compare this film to, like, Amityville Horror.

Fine, I’m just being a brat. The films do have those generic things in common. But I’m fairly certain we could apply that filter to a number of films. Case in point, Home Alone:

  1. Two robbers instead of three. Fine, a minor difference.
  2. The robbers think the house is abandoned but find a wee young lad who they believe is no threat.
  3. The thieves spend more time in peril than the kid.

This reminds me of when you tried to create structured rules for what makes a Christmas movie and, somehow, Die Hard did not count. So should I expect a ‘What Makes a Break-In Movie’ this year?

Jesse: Only if we don’t already answer that question here. Home Alone is definitely a Christmas movie, by the way. Being a brat is kind of fun.

So I think what you’re trying to tell me is that I’m not looking deeply enough for similarities and am just lazily skimming the bare surface to try and prove my point. Or something like that. Maybe we should look at what they don’t have in common?

Kevin: Hmm okay let me skim through my notes…

Panic Room had floating title cards that looked like it came out of an early 2000’s superhero movie. It had the largest CGI budget for dust and feathers probably in the history of film (seriously the detail on the dust was unsettling). And it might be the only film in existence that drags AFTER Jared Leto dies.

Okay and Don’t Breathe opened with an old dude dragging the lifeless, bloody body of a girl down the street, a little different than a 2000’s superhero movie. No CGI of any dust particles that I can recall. And it got better after the character, who Jared Leto would have played, died. That dude sucked, he literally peed on the floor.

In all seriousness I think the biggest differences between the films is the genre. I see Panic Room as a strict thriller that plays with the themes of change and protecting our children while Don’t Breathe is much closer to horror with it’s tropes of an unkillable killer and young heroic survivor and speaks to themes closer related to poverty and breaking out of the life path you are given.

Plus Don’t Breathe did that thing where they set themselves up for a sequel explicitly, which I think reeks of desperation. Can you imagine if Panic Room ended on a shot of a seemingly innocuous bookshelf that swings open to reveal a new panic room and then panned out to a frightened Jodie Foster who proclaims, “not this shit again” while Kristen Stewart cocked a shotgun? Then we would be talking about how these two movies really are the same.

What do you think? Did I miss-genre the two movies?

Jesse: Yeah, that probably wouldn’t have played as well at the end of Panic Room. I also think you’re on to something with the CGI effects, which have aged poorly in my opinion.

But no, you didn’t miss-genre them. If anything you right-genred them and emphatically answered, “No!” to the question, “Are they the same movie?” It may also be the least amount of time it took you to prove me wrong. Simply put, these films can’t be the same if they aren’t in the same genre and if they hit on different themes. To your point, Panic Room gets virtually all of its tension and suspense from the situation itself. Don’t Breathe throws in a lot of jump scares and seems determined to build up Stephen Lang as the next unstoppable horror movie monster. It’s a different approach to similar premises, although I would argue that Panic Room remains the better crafted and tightly paced film.

Did I throw in the towel too quickly here, Kevin? Or do you have further evidence to back up your points?

Kevin: I will admit I knew I would win this round, however I did expect you to put up a greater fight. I feel like I’m Jared Leto in Panic Room and the guy who reminded me of Jared Leto in Don’t Breathe. I’m aggressively trying to fight you on this and you’re like Forest Whitaker in Panic Room, “alright this was a bad idea, can we just leave?” In either scenario I end up dead but at least I was right!

I have to admit, even though your thesis was proven wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed re-watching Panic Room (not so much with Don’t Breathe). I wrote about two pages of notes with quips and observations. Let me leave you with my favorite and then you can wrap this up as you wish (hopefully you wrap it up but leave for the possibility of a sequel because I enjoy winning arguments). Anyway, here is the best joke that I couldn’t work into this article:

Kristen Stewart learned Morse Code from Titanic? Too bad she didn’t learn to jump off a sinking ship!

Yes, that was a jab at Twilight, and yes it was seven years too late.

Jesse: The joke’s on you, because I never saw Twilight, so that went completely over my head. Also, if you really are Jared Leto in this scenario, don’t do a flip when you get shot in the head and killed. It’ll just make you look silly.

The Conversation: The Importance of Listening

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What follows is a lengthy summary of an 86-year-old man’s life for the review of a 45-year-old movie.

Recently, this blog lost a dedicated reader. This reader wasn’t our typical audience, he was an older man who likely lived a more interesting life than most of the characters in the movies we write about. However, he preferred to keep these stories to himself. Most likely due to a mix of his humility with a dash of fear of facing old demons.

This man caught onto the blog way back when Jesse and I had no clear idea what we wanted to write about (truth be told, we are still working through that). He stuck with us as we wrote about people dying in the zombie apocalypse, as we explored becoming a daily site for our local sports teams, and even the one or two video game posts that we have since buried. And as far as I could tell, he never missed a post.

I remember feeling embarrassed when I found out about this reader. Would he enjoy my writing? Would he understand what the hell I’m talking about? Would he bring it up at Thanksgiving?

Yes, like I said, this was no ordinary reader. This man was my grandfather, my ‘papa’ if you will. He was your typical curmudgeon of an old man. You couldn’t hold it against him because he was a marine and he fought for our country in the Korean War. He was also a cop, starting off small time and eventually working his way up to work on some harrowing sexual abuse cases as he worked on what you Law & Order fans might call the Special Victims Unit.

Eventually Red, as he was called his whole life due to his shocking color of hair, found a love of technology as he worked his way into wiretapping. He worked undercover, befriending perceived bad guys like he was a regular Leonardo DiCaprio (I like to imagine him having to say, “I’m not the fuckin’ rat, okay?” at some point in his life) while tapping their phones, houses, offices, etc. Oh the stories he couldn’t tell me out of fear of repercussions, those stories and secrets are now lost to time.

You can understand my concern when I discovered him to be a reader. How I live my life, in comfort, and my bitching of fictional stories on a screen never felt important enough to share with a man who, in my perception, lived a life full of unimaginable and real hardships.

And yet, this hard-ass of a man never made me feel that way. He had a huge heart for his family and a great sense of humor. Due to the former I think he felt it his duty to encourage me to follow my dreams and to write. Due to the latter I believe he found actual connection to my writing because he saw his smartass ways in my words. Hell, he would even tell me, “That Jesse kid ain’t bad either”. And that’s probably the highest compliment he is capable of giving to non-kin.

I received nothing but positive feedback from this man that I respected and feared. And yet I never found the courage to sit down with him and interview him thoroughly. It was out of both of our comfort zones to have these real, intentional talks, even when we knew he was on death’s doormat. Everything I have written about him above was gathered slowly, over the course of 29 years as I would peel away at his stories.

Of course I was never good at telling him about my life either. One thing I never confessed to him was the impact he had on my love of movies. My papa loved keeping up with technology so he would always buy whatever was the hot, new thing. He would buy it as soon as possible, knowing the value was sure to go down, just to show that he could afford it and that he was hip enough to know what was going on.

This desire to burn money led to him purchasing a brand new DVD player at the beginning of the format’s craze. In addition he built a collection of DVDs that Blockbuster would have been jealous of. In fact, he lovingly called his office Blockbuster and would MAKE me borrow a handful of movies whenever I came over.

This is where I watched the classics. Spartacus, History of the World: Part I, Blazing Saddles, King Kong, Twelve Angry Men, Spaceballs. (Okay so lots of Mel Brooks, where do you think he and I developed our sense of humor?)

Much like his life, we never spoke about the movies. In fact he hardly even ever watched them with me. But that didn’t matter, he helped introduce me to what would turn into a passionate hobby and along the way he always encouraged me to write, to follow my dreams.

Recently I was digging through an old scrapbook that his mother, my great-grandmother, put together. The scrapbook followed Red’s career through newspaper articles. She would cut out any mention of him, his second wife (also a cop), or anything to do with his area of expertise. It was here I stumbled upon a film review of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller The Conversation. The story follows a surveillance expert named Harry Caul, played by Gene Hackman, who is focused on his craft and yet passive about the people’s lives he invades.

Being that my papa’s name was Henry, often called Harry (he had many nicknames) who later in life ran his own surveillance company outside of the police force, I immediately stopped skimming and read the review. Out of nowhere I then berated my poor sister, “DID THEY MAKE A MOVIE OUT OF HIS LIFE?”

Alas, Francis Ford Coppola did NOT write his masterpiece about my granddad. IMDb explicitly states that Harry Caul was inspired by a surveillance technology expert named Martin Kaiser. I suspect the clipping in the scrapbook was just an example of a mother trying to connect with her son by saving a review about a film he might like.

I will never know if my papa ever saw the movie that eerily echoes his life. Nevertheless, after a month of mourning I finally sat down to watch the film myself hoping to further understand a man that kept his secrets close.

The Conversation, cited as both Coppola’s and Hackman’s favorite film they were involved in, is a deep dive into the ethics of the world of surveillance right as technology was allowing the lines between privacy and publicity to be blurred. It’s a haunting reminder of the dangers of allowing technology, and even other people, into our lives. A fear that today, in 2019, is omnipresent as we surround ourselves with AI connected devices that run everything from our calendar to our homes.

It follows a determined man named Harry Caul, cited as the best surveillance man in the country. Caul keeps to himself in every aspect of his life. He shuts out his neighbors, his lovers, and even his most trusted employee. He is singularly focused on technology and getting the best quality of his recordings. He cares neither for the people he is spying nor their conversations saying, “All I want is a nice, fat recording.”

His desire to separate himself from his subjects stems from an incident in his past. Specifically, his role in a job that ended with a murder of three people. As a devout Catholic his guilt is amplified and his way of dealing with the guilt is by focusing on his work.

As he focuses more and more on getting an accurate and clear recording for his current job, the guilt overwhelms him as he realizes this is another recording that could end with murder. He ends up confronting the person who hired him, as much as the meek mild Harry Caul can confront someone. The end of the film follows Harry as he attempts to save the people he has helped put in danger.

The film is a masterpiece and holds up as such. The themes of the dangers and paranoia of surveillance are as prevalent as ever. And Hackman as a passive, helpless man who is just doing his job is haunting and unforgettable. Plus Harrison Ford is there and he brought cookies.

Most importantly, to myself, the film gave me a theoretical view into my papa’s life. It reminded me of stories he told me in the past that I had long forgotten. Particularly a lighter, albeit unethical, scene that saw a bunch of surveillance experts out on the town, drinking and having a good time offering to pick locks to impress a girl and using their surveillance power to look up the name and address of a reckless driver on the road just to freak him out. That scene gave me possible insight into the youth of a man I have only ever known to be an old man.

It helped me understand why he was so secretive about what he did. Whether it was shame or fear or just a desire to not bring up old demons, the man had a lot going on that I would never be able to understand.

It also confirmed what my sister and I would always joke about. Growing up we always accused him of tapping our phones much like the accusation of Harry’s lover Ann, “sometimes I even think you’re listening to me on the telephone”, she says laughing, “It just feels like you’re there”. Of course my papa always denied this but he seemingly always knew what was going on in our lives. Maybe he was just paying attention to his young grandchildren, using our parents to catch up on our lives to impress/spook us. Or maybe he was listening to every inane conversation, unable to break old habits.

I miss him dearly every day but his impact still lives on. Every time I sit down to watch a movie or write a post, I will remember his encouragement and, most importantly, his willingness to read and to listen.

 

 

 

 

Let’s Talk About, Going to the Movies

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Kevin: Jesse, a good chunk of our friendship has revolved around hanging out at places that serve to be distractions, that is, entertaining distractions. We probably didn’t speak a word to each other, outside of hushed voices, in person from the years 2008-2013 because we would only hang out at the movie theater. Sometimes I wonder if we were forced to speak with each other away from a dark, quiet room if we would straight-up hate each other and not get along.

Okay, probably not, our friendship has survived my move to the east coast so I imagine if we truly hated each other, we wouldn’t text every day. Nevertheless going to the movies with friends is a rite of passage for us American folk. Typically the cinema is one of the first places preteens and teens gather to socialize away from their parents. It’s where first dates happen and birthday parties are held where inside jokes and memories are formed.

Just off the top of my head I have numerous significant memories at the theaters. I remember my father taking me to The Phantom Menace hoping I would get the Star Wars bug (I did). I remember begging my parents to let me invite two of my friends to see Kung Pow: Enter the Fist for my 12th birthday (you’re welcome Eric Brown and Jeffrey Whatever-your-last-name-was). I remember sneaking into The Hangover with my eventual wife because we were waiting for Up to start next door, and I remember regretting leaving the former for the latter. I remember watching the first Avengers with you and a handful of our friends, blown away at the culmination of five years worth of movies (ha, so naive).

Since my movie theater experience growing up was always a social activity, I saw my theater attendance drop as I graduated college and moved away from my family and friends. But now, as I approach my thirties, I have found myself in a movie theater renaissance. I have discovered the magic of going to a movie theater alone where I can take up extra room, not worry about if my friends are enjoying the experience and I can arrive whenever I want. In the past year I’ve experimented with Moviepass, which allowed me to see a few gems but mostly just stole my money and I’ve memorized the discounted days at different chains. Overall I’ve paid, probably, way too much money to sit in a dark room with a giant screen for movies I loved, movies I hated and movies that made me say, “what the fuck?”.

It’s been a great ride for me, I’ve rediscovered the benefits of a theater, mostly that it allows me to actually focus on the movie instead of get distracted by my phone or the dishes that need to be done.

I bring all this up because you recently wrote about how you paid roughly $200 (might be an exaggeration) to stream a movie instead of support your local theater. What do you have to say for yourself? And how would you explain yourself to 22-year-old Jesse?

Jesse: The funny thing is that streaming instead of supporting became a trend when I was around the age of 22. I’d probably just tell myself, “Hey man, that new thing you discovered? It ain’t going away anytime soon… also, you’ll meet the love of your life in about five years, so you can save all that money you were going to spend on other girls.”

Fair or not, I partially blame you for the decline of my theater attendance. None of our friends in Denver go to the movies anymore, save for our buddy Michael McManus, who is free once every two months (you have a good reason, Michael, I’m just making a point). If you hadn’t moved to the other side of the country, I’d undoubtedly be going more often. But it’s not all your fault Kevin. The truth is I’m reluctant to fork over the money for anything other than a Marvel or Star Wars movie. Does that make me cheap? Am I lazy for not taking a page out of your book and seeking out the discount theaters? Probably a little of both.

So go ahead man. Tell me how crazy I am to co-manage a film blog with you and not watch more movies the way they were meant to be seen.

Kevin: In your defense you do spend the majority of your budget on purchasing things called ‘DVDs’. Which I guess is some sort of physical disc that you can use to magically watch movies? So you get a pass.

You also get a pass because it is actually kind of ridiculous to go to a movie theater these days. It’s expensive unless you do your diligence and aim for discounts. For the price of one movie you can subscribe to Netflix or Hulu or Disney Takes Over the World (I think that’s the name of their new service right?) or any of the seemingly endless streaming options. Plus when you get to the movies they gouge you for a bucket of butter (with some popcorn thrown in). And on top of that they make you sit through OVER 20 minutes of previews. I get annoyed at a five second ad before a YouTube video, how do I handle 20 minutes of ads for movies I probably have little desire to see?

Besides that, I live in NYC now which means everyone claps at the end of every movie. Apparently that’s a thing here. I’ve been to five or six movies of all different genre types and the only similarity they shared was people clapping at the end. This confounds me Jesse, confounds! I’ve never seen you clap at the end of a movie so you’re with me on this right?

Jesse: I’m totally with you. It’s one of those weird things that people do because they want to acknowledge how they’re feeling, even though the actors and filmmakers aren’t there to hear them. You see a similar reaction from sports fans who yell at their team as they watch the game on TV. Of course, I am guilty of the latter, so what do I know? I would assume that New Yorkers always clap because as with all things, they are a little more vocal about expressing their opinions.

And maybe that’s part of the appeal of going to the theater. You visit or move to a new city and want to take in something familiar, but view it in a different light. If a crowd is respectful, they can elevate and alter the movie going experience in a way that can’t be replicated at home.

So what say you Kevin? Have the New York theaters given you a new experience, or do you just wish they would stop applauding?

Kevin: First of all, clapping at the TV for a sports game is something different, there’s randomness involved in the live spectacle for a non-scripted sports event (sorry WWE), anything can happen and the story is literally unfolding before you so it makes sense to get caught up in the spectacle. But with movies everything is scripted so I don’t feel the need to cheer because every moment is intentional and planned out. Even if the filmmakers plan it out so you do cheer just feels inorganic.

The same can be said at a play or musical but those performances are live and the actors can actually hear you and bask in the adoration. Brad Pitt can’t hear you when you cheer him on as he (removed for spoilers because Jesse still hasn’t seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) or when he (again removed for spoilers because Jesse hates the theater experience now).

But to me there is something special about going to the theater no matter where I’m at. For you the something special experience is still buying physical copies. Neither of us can explain it but it’s probably due to a combination of nostalgia and other strange psychological factors (our mutual friend Michael likens my enjoyment of the theater to the theory that we secretly desire to be back in our mother’s womb, Michael is a weird dude).

The New York theaters have only validated by enjoyment. I’ve gone to a movie here because the humidity in July was too much to handle and I needed to be in a cool room for a couple of hours. I’ve gone to escape the endless crowds only to learn that the same endless crowds end up filling entire theaters for nearly every showing. I’ve made new friends and we met up for a movie. I’ve made small talk with other movie goers who enjoy going alone. I’ve heard clapping, screams, and laughter. I even witnessed someone stand up and tell a person they’re an asshole for eating their popcorn too loudly.

The New York theater experience is just like the rest of New York, it’s typically loud, dirty, and crowded and it often ends with a great story to tell later. But as unique as it is I find myself coming back not because it’s new but because it’s familiar. And it offers what every theater in my life has offered, an escape from the outside world and into one full of endless possibilities.

The Shallows: Bought It Before I Watched It

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Here is a well-known, irrefutable fact about myself: I am old.

Now you might be thinking, “But Jesse, you’re only 29! You’re still a young man,” and that’s exactly what you would think given my age and appearance, but that’s without taking the following into account: I listen to a ton of classic rock, I still pay for cable, I try to avoid long lines and crowds, I’m just as content with a quiet night inside as I am going out and doing something fun, and I still buy physical copies of movies.

That’s right, every single movie I own is perched upon a bookshelf in my guest room. Whenever I have to move (which thankfully isn’t very often), I have to take them down, pack them up and put them all back up again when I get to my new place. That probably sounds awful to you, which is why most people who still collect movies (instead of just streaming everything) opt for digital copies, so they don’t have to deal with all of the clutter. Marie Kondo would definitely prefer the latter approach.

And I wish I could tell you that I have a bulletproof reason for buying and storing all of these optical discs, like that they provide me with superior audio and video quality (which is somewhat true) or that I don’t like relying on the internet to have access to good movies (for the two times a year that my internet doesn’t work), but maybe it just brings me to joy to see all those plastic cases twinkling at me from their respective positions on my shelf.

If you think that sounds crazy, then this little nugget will really blow your mind: I will sometimes buy movies that I haven’t even SEEN yet. Now in my defense, I do look at the reviews for a film to determine how well it was received and if it might be unique, but that’s still weird, right? Why pay money to own something that I’m not even sure I’ll enjoy?

I won’t even attempt to come up with a good answer for that question, but what I am going to attempt to do is start a series of posts where I watch a movie that I bought without seeing it first, and then write about whether I regret it or not. I’ll even do a mock interview of myself. We’ll see if I regret that.

First up, The Shallows.

Why did I buy The Shallows?

You can count the number of good shark movies on one hand, or maybe even one finger. On a side note, I bet you thought my answer was going to be, “Blake Lively in a bikini.” Get your mind out of the gutter, pervs.

Really, people are expected to believe that?

Hey, I love Jaws. It’s one of the greatest feats in film history and the piece of cinema that put Steven Spielberg on the map. I loathe virtually every other shark movie I’ve seen, although I do respect the Sharknado franchise for fully embracing its own ridiculousness and just running with it (they released a sixth one just last year!). The point is, I wanted to believe that The Shallows brought the survival horror element of Jaws without the stupidity of all its sequels, so I took the plunge… erm, the dive.

Alright alright, so what did you think?

Much to my relief, The Shallows is a perfectly watchable summertime horror flick. Lively makes for a compelling lead, as she’s proven in some of her more recent work, and the great white shark is a force of nature that lays waste to anyone stupid enough to be in the water (basically everyone). I don’t think a bigger boat would’ve helped Lively in this one, or a bigger surfboard for that matter (unless the Silver Surfer let her borrow his and she could just fly out of there). Director Jaume Collet-Serra tried his hand at horror previously, including the graphic 2005 remake of House of Wax, but he seems to have tightened the reigns a little bit here by favoring suspense over gore. The mere threat of the shark is equally as imposing as when it’s actually chowing down on something, which I found rather effective.

He also found a pretty clever way to visualize Lively’s smartphone on the screen, which is something we’re seeing more and more of in film with things like texting and Facetime.

Do you think you’ll come back to it again?

I’m sure I will someday, but it was brutal to watch by myself (my fault for putting on a scary movie while I was home alone). My fiance also hates survival horror, so the chances of getting her to sit through it someday are between slim to none. Maybe I can convince Kevin to fly back from New York for it? You never know.

Moment of truth… do you regret purchasing it?

Thankfully, no. While it’s certainly not on the level of Jaws, all I wanted was something to shock me, awe me and make me scared to get in the water. You can check all three boxes for The Shallows. On top of that, there is a seagull in this movie named Steven Seagull. How could I ever regret buying a film that features a bird named after a 90’s action star?

What’s next in this series?

Good question. Kevin has been badgering me to watch Enemy and Sorry to Bother You, so probably one of those two. Stay tuned!