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Now, normally I'm a very nonviolent person. Despite what you may think of my reading or viewing habits, I normally go out of my way to avoid confrontation in real life. There is, however, one place in the world where this isn't true; the movie theatre. You probably could have guessed that from my review of the Kingdom. I don't know exactly why this is. Well, scratch that, I think I have a pretty good idea of why that is, actually.

I love going to movies. Movies are such a part of my life that seeing a movie in the theatre is almost like church. As technologically advanced as my living room setup gets, and as much as I enjoy lounging back on my couch while eating horribly fattening food, nothing beats being in the audience when the lights go down and the movie starts to roll. It can be magical, and it's always a good time for me. The movie may be utter shit, but that's not the point. The point is the shared experience. One of the best movie-going experiences in my life was Star Wars Episode One. I saw the very first showing in Alaska, and went right along with the crowd as they cheered. They cheered when the lights went down, they cheered when the Lucasfilm logo popped up, and they gave the opening title crawl a standing ovation! Everyone there was there to enjoy the film, and they completely gave themselves up to the joy of seeing this with a theatre full of like minded people. Of course, I went and saw it again with my family a week later, and I couldn't believe I'd been duped like that.

My point is, seeing a movie in the theatre is almost a sacred tradition with me, and I can't stand it when others don't give it the respect it deserves. Of course, I'm not alone in this; I'm probably the last blogger on earth to jump onto this bandwagon. People begin to treat the theatre as a large living room, talking on cell phones, talking to each other, and generally making an ass out of themselves and disturbing those few people left who seem to want to watch the movie.

Over the past couple years, my tolerance for this has dropped WAY off. I used to make do with passive-aggressive looks at the person behind me, hoping they would see my pointed stares and be shamed into silence. That never works. Now, though, I'm much more direct. If people don't shut up in the movie, I lean over and tell, not ask, them to politely shut up. If someone a few rows down won't stop playing with their cellphone, and the light keeps distracting me, I'll get up and go tell them. And, believe it or not, it works almost every time. I'd had a few sarcastic remarks, but they still shut up or put the cellphone away.

It's something I try and encourage my friends to do, because we need to reclaim our theatres. If movies are costing 10 bucks(more in other places, but in Alaska it's about 9.75 for a non-matinee show), why should we have to put up with distractions? For that matter, why would people pay 10 bucks a piece, and twice that probably when snacks are counted, to not watch the movie? Just tell them to shut up. Politely, though, that's probably a bit more unnerving to them.

[I have to mention this: either my spellcheck is getting stupider, or I'm actually getting a bit smarter. This post, and my last one, each had only one mispelling in it, and that was punctuation! Yay me!]

Tales From the Discount Bin: Death Sentence

Picking up a handful of months after the ending of Death Wish, and beginning in an entirely new locale, Death Sentence feels more like a continuing chapter than a standard cash-in sequel. In almost every way, this book is an extension of the first novel, both in events and concepts.

After Paul Benjamin's daughter, reduced to a catatonic state by the attack that started everything in the first novel, dies as an indirect result of that attack(the actual reasons are not very clear, and not explained in the book), he leaves New York and takes a job in Chicago. As one character points out, it's an odd choice; Chicago(at least at the time) has a higher crime rate than New York. Of course, we the reader understand that this suits Paul just fine, as it gives him ample opportunity to continue his nocturnal habit of gunning down criminals. And it isn't too long before he's back at it, buying a new gun and making plans and false identities before he even begins his job in Chicago. Paul is still meticulously careful about his crusade, using false names when he purchases his guns(which he buys across state lines), and renting an office in a rundown neighborhood as a safe house for his guns, so that if police ever do suspect him, they won't find any incriminating evidence in his apartment. But cracks are beginning to show, and things are starting to fall apart around him.

Paul befriends an attractive prosecuting attorney, initially as a way to have access to gossip about how the town's power structure and legal system works, but it isn't long before the relationship grows into something more. And it's this relationship, and the possibility of love for the first time since his family was murdered, that begins to chip away at Paul's resolve. Where once he was able to focus everything on his crusade, and bottle his emotions up, Paul now finds himself wounding instead of killing, and horrified at the spiralling chaos his vigilantism is inspiring. The crime rate may be going down, but more and more citizens are putting themselves in harms way to take the law into their own hands. Shopkeepers and old ladies are refusing to stand by as criminals mug them, and have taken to standing up to the thugs, often with fatal results. And somewhere out on the streets of Chicago is a copycat vigilante, something that doesn't seem to concern him until he begins to see the error of his own ways.

While Death Wish was spare and neutral, choosing not to judge Paul's acts, there is no denying which side of the argument Death Sentence falls on. Brian Garfield was fairly public about his dismay over the violence in the Death Wish movie, so it's possible he wrote Death Sentence as a reaction to that, a clarification of his values and intentions. Almost every other chapter is a news story pulled from a(fictional) Chicago newspaper, recounting Paul's actions, and the ripple effect he creates. There are many points when characters will have heated debates over what should be done with our limping legal system, and Paul's own thoughts become particularly noxious. This book ups the body count significantly, and where the righteousness of the violence in Death Wish was rarely specifically questioned, it's obvious Paul is off his rocker here. It begins to be unclear as to whether or not to root for a man who guns down kids who steal a portable television from an apartment, or who prowls outside of the juvenile court house so that he can follow and murder teenagers who got off the hook. In Death Wish there was a sense that Paul really was helping, that although his actions were detestable, his heart was in the right place, and he really did make New York safer with his string of murders. In Death Sentence we're never certain that any of these people deserves it, and it becomes clear how Lone West Justice can slide easily into fascism.

All of this leads up to an uncertain Paul Benjamin trying to hang up his spurs, as it were, and a violent and bloody meeting with his copycat vigilante. It's a little too convenient the manner in which Paul finds his copycat, but the book seems aware of this and casts it's own doubts upon it. As a hard boiled thriller, Death Sentence may lack some of the straightforward punch of Death Wish, but it's still a fascinating character study. As much as the book focuses on Paul's own deteriorating mental state, it's much less interested in the personal cost of vigilantism than the social cost. It could almost be argued that Paul could go on indefinitely with no adverse effects to his own psyche, but what he inflicts on society is far more dangerous than the rising crime rates. All of this inside a gripping, action story that would entertain any fans of pulp fiction(the genre, not the movie, although movie fans may enjoy this too, they aren't mutually exclusive), with or without the social commentary.

I guess it's no surprise when I say I really enjoyed these books. I've looked over Brian Garfield's bibliography, and I'd like to see what else this man has accomplished, but his books sure sound unappealing to me. I did notice he wrote the book version of Hopscotch, and although I hear it is radically different from the movie, I'll probably slide that into the pile for later consumption.

Also, one final note: There's a movie version of Death Sentence in theatres at the moment, from the director of the original Saw. IMDB, and film posters, attribute the source novel to Brian Garfield, although I don't see how this is possible. The plot of the movie concerns Kevin Bacon killing his son's murderer, and attracting the attention of the large street gang whose member he killed. There's nothing even remotely like this in the novel, so I can only imagine they had the rights to the book, loved the name and the revenge theme, and tried to cash in on whatever clout the book has. Which I can't imagine would be that much, but who knows.

Up next: It looks like this will be Death Wish week(or, I dunno, couple of days at least), because the two books have prompted me to go and rent the movie and it's 4 sequels. I've made it through the first one so far, but will probably be writing about all of them at the same time. It may take me a few days to get to it, but it will most likely be before I finish my next book.

The next book is, as I said before, A Brand New World, by Ray Cummings.

The Kingdom

A curious incident happened right before the start of The Kingdom, the new Iraq-war themed movie starring Jamie Foxx & Jennifer Garner. The theatre was packed, and while I normally get to a movie 30-60 minutes early(depending on how busy I think it will be), I had carpooled with a friend who wouldn't leave until 15 minutes before the film was scheduled to start. So it was no surprise that there were no seats left, and when an employee came in telling people to scoot towards the middle, I jumped at an opening of two seats. As I walked into the aisle, a very large man and his girlfriend bounded up the stairs, pushed me aside, and jumped into the seats. A muttered 'asshole' on my part prompted this very large man to jump up and ask me if I wanted to say something to his face. Now, normally I'm a very passive guy, not prone to violence at all, but occasionally I'll just decide I don't want to put up with it anymore. This was a very large man, and perhaps I should pick my battles a little better. He went to the standard 'you wanna take this outside?' line, and I just said 'yeah, come on.' I mean, who actually gets into a fistfight over a theatre seat? But, he took me up on it, much to my chagrin. So I led him out into the lobby, and straight to the first theatre employee I could find. This prompted more blustery anger, and a promise to find me after the movie(he never did, of course). Probably I could have handled that a bit better, and certainly I knowingly egged him on a bit, but this sudden tendency to violence was a bit surprising to me, and actually speaks to the problems with this film in general.

The Kingdom, directed with endless shaky handycams by former Chicago Hope actor Peter Berg, opens with a striking credits sequence in which a timeline is set for the nation of Saudi Arabia. Starting in 1932(a year before oil was discovered), and tracking America's involvement with the nation through drawings with thick black lines that the 'camera' is constantly moving around and through as they, and the dates, move forward. Over this we get occasional audio culled from documentaries and talking head news reports. A graph showing America's oil consumption compared to the rest of the world becomes a silhouette of the Twin Towers, and as a plane flies towards them the screen goes black, coming back on more scattered images of a post 9/11 world. One speaker laments that Osama, through his use of Saudi extremists in these attacks, has made the nation of Saudi Arabia as a whole an enemy in the eyes of most Americans, when we have been allies for so long. This sequence sets up a movie that will be rife with political subtext, a message movie if ever there was one. Unfortunately that movie is not The Kingdom.

After setting up in the opening sequence how Saudi Arabia is not the enemy, the movie seems to lose that faith, and in fact every Saudi is a potential, and likely, killer. The uniformed Saudis are seen as strict, prone to torture(all except for our hero, Faris, played by Ashraf Barhom), and basically either inept or uncaring about a suicide bombing that kills several hundred American men, women and children. They aren't monsters, but they are apathetic about what they see as a corrupting influence on their soil, and not inclined to hunt too seriously for the perpetrators of this heinous act. On the other side of the coin are the civilians, who all seem to be gunmen waiting for the opportunity to strike out at Americans(and, in one scene, that's just what they are). Surprisingly, especially after that credits sequence, the movie loses all interest in politics, or message. Making a movie purely for entertainment, not for political reasons, is nothing to be ashamed of, and anyone looking to a movie for insightful, informed opinions on the 'war on terror' are looking in the wrong place. Still, it's a bit jarring that the movie seems to have no political point of view. To take something this current, where people are dieing every day, and just the merest mention of the subject is enough to draw even the quietest person into a heated debate, and then to completely ignore politics or higher meaning seems a bit... opportunistic.

Instead of politics the movie aims for compassion, trying to show the human side of this war by teaming four FBI agents with a Saudi military man, Colonel Faris Al Ghazi, who appears to be the only Saudi in the film who has misgivings about the violence in his country. This movie tugs at the hearts strings, with scenes where American agents, fresh from killing family members in front of children, win back the hearts of the people by giving those same children a lollipop. 'Sorry I just shot your brother and grandfather to death, but here, have some hard candy. We cool?' This is also a film where action sequences and killings end with a joke and a hearty laugh from the audience. The film features a musical montage of understanding, where the daily life of Saudis is shown cross-cut between images of the American agents going about their investigation. The problem is, this film doesn't have the conviction to reach what it's aiming for. No attempt is made to explain, explore or understand the Saudi Arabian culture. We see endless shots of people stopping to pray at various times of the day, but no effort to support the central idea that 'we are actually all the same creature.'

There is one successful, tense sequence near the end of the film where our heroes, en route to the airport, are ambushed by terrorists, and Agent Leavitt(Jason Bateman) is drawn from the car and thrown into the back of a black SUV. This begins a lengthy chase scene, where the group must race through mazes of streets, and then mazes of dilapidated apartments, hunting for Leavitt before he is beheaded on video for a terrorist website. The tension is undercut slightly by the repeated use of handheld cameras. Normally, I love handheld video. I like the way it looks and think it can be quite an effective style, but this movie continually overdoes it. I didn't get nauseous, but I did get a slight headache when the film would always cut away just before the camera came into focus. Trying to make out whats going on onscreen is sometimes an impossible feat.

In the end, the point of this film, the 'message', if you will, seems to be that we CAN all get along. Americans and Saudis CAN overcome their differences and coexist in harmony, so long as we can just get together and kill a bunch of people. Actually, this may be true, and certainly it's worked in the past. It worked at Salem, when all those people came together to burn witches, it worked for the Aztecs with their ritual sacrifices, and hell, it worked for Hitler when he united Germany against the Jews. The problem is that now we understand that our enemy are humans too, with families and jobs, hopes and dreams. The enemy may hate us, but they've been given a tainted image of America, what with the constant meddling from oil companies, and the propaganda news reports. Some of us may hate Saudis, but we have a tainted image formed from propaganda news reports and faulty 9/11 connections. The average man on the street these days is aware of this problem, and we find it hard to categorically condemn an entire people. This idea, instead of uniting us, actually divides us further.

The movie is probably not as insidious as all that, and certainly the audience I was with enjoyed it quite a bit more than I did. Chances are most people will enjoy this more than I did, but I was just confused. What was the point of this film? Why set up a political hot button issue and then ignore politics all together? The movie attempts to gain focus at the end with a coda that implies the violence will never end because both sides jump to bloodthirsty anger faster than they turn to discourse and discussion. Just like that man in the theatre. So maybe this movie is more prescient than I thought, but it's still a muddled, unlikable message.

Tales From the Discount Bin: Death Wish

Have I said yet how much I'm enjoying this little book project? Every day I'm tempted to run down to another used book store and find some new, forgotten gems. It's quite addictive, and I find myself reading quite a few more books than I used to. I normally average a book a month, since I have to find time between work, child and movies. Of course, most books I read are a bit lengthier than the ones I've been reading recently(which average out to under 200 pages each), and, not to be judgemental, they tend to be of higher-brow fare. But there's something enjoyable about these books, this opportunity to read a novel without putting quite so much thought and effort into it. I know that sounds like an insult, but I don't mean it to be. The connecting thread through all the books I've read in this vein so far is the way they couch their social commentary in rip-roaring good stories. Actually, that might be a generality that's undeserved: Gloryhole Murders was neither a rip-roaring story, or full of relevant social commentary. However, with Ballad of Beta-2, and especially today's book, Death Wish, the stories are entertaining, fast paced, and fairly straightforward. There's more there beneath the surface, but it isn't hammered into your head, and it's only there if you want to see it.

The story of Death Wish is pretty well known by now, and it's become something of a cliche for exploitative action films looking for an air of respectability or artiness. Paul Benjamin is a liberal whose wife and daughter are attacked in a home-invasion mugging. His wife dies and his daughter becomes a catatonic mess. Eyes opened to the rampant crime in New York City, Paul buys a gun and begins to stalk to streets at night, looking for criminals, any criminals, to punish. Paul never finds the kids who killed his wife, and in fact the book seems to treat that idea as the height of preposterousness. In a city that large, with that many crimes committed every day, what are the odds he'll run across the exact three who attacked his wife?

The book tells us Paul is/was a liberal, although that's never really supported by the text. Paul lives in a rich neighborhood, and works as an accountant who enjoys finding ways to make sure rich people keep as much of their money as possible. We're told he's a liberal because he does things like avoid using the N word. It's true he seems a bit more compassionate in the beginning of the book than he does by the end, but I might not go so far as to call him a liberal. Still, politics are beside the point, and only worth noting when looking for a selling point; Liberal loses wife, becomes gun-toting vigilante! The real focus of this book is how a rising crime rate, how personal violence, can shatter anyone's world and alter their convictions.

Following the attack, Paul is nearly catatonic himself, puttering around his apartment alone, cut off from his daughter(his son-in-law and his daughter's psychiatrists suggest he limit contact while she recovers), alone for the first time in decades, he is undone as much by the sense of life utterly changing as he his by the love of his deceased wife. The changes in his outlook are subtle at first; he begins noticing kids on the street, imagining them as drug addicts or muggers when often they turn out to be nothing of the sort. His fear turns to outrage at a world where people put up with the concessions they have to make to security; double locks on doors, security cameras, and not walking after dark. Eventually Paul's loneliness gets the better of him, and he heads out to a bar, thinking of meeting a woman, but really just looking for a way out of his apartment. A little drunk, and in a new neighborhood, Paul is accosted by a would-be mugger, a young kid who he scares off with a scream and a wild swing. That night Paul has his first good rest in months, and spends the next day in a haze of almost sexual euphoria.

We know where things go from here. Paul buys a gun and begins trolling the streets, setting traps for criminals and killing them all. He's surprisingly level headed about this, and the book is careful not to paint him as a psychopath, to point out how reasonable and logical he's being in his quest. This isn't vengeance(so he says, but of course we know better), and this isn't an obsession, this is something he feels needs to be done. As the cops catch on that the string of murders has a common thread, the papers pick up the vigilante angle and Paul becomes a shadowy cult hero, and even the people who disagree with him seem to secretly sympathize. And why wouldn't they? The lone hero, riding out to save the innocent townsfolk from the villainous black hats, it's a myth repeated in every culture and every era, and would certainly resonate in a time and place where crime has reached almost epic proportions.

The book was a fun, quick read. Very straightforward, with very concise, direct language. It takes awhile to get some steam, but the book barrels along through the latter half towards a conclusion that, while chilling, is a little spare. I actually checked my copy to make sure no pages were missing. There's a nice little moment there, and it definitely fits as a finale, but the writing style seemed to leave it hanging, like there was a lot more to come. Add to that the MANY loose threads, and it was a bit of a letdown. However, I did discover the sequel book, Death Sentence, which picks up shortly after Death Wish and seems to tie up some of those loose ends. I'm only a short way into it, but I'll be writing about that in more detail when I finish it.

I was surprised at how little moralizing there was in this book, how it never really explained it's political implications or chose a side in the debate over whether or not vigilantism works. That's not to say it's ignorant of those sides, it just leaves the decision up to you, the reader. Obviously the implication is that Paul Benjamin is losing his mind, destroying himself in order to avenge the crimes he sees. And the idea of vigilantism is extreme, and deplorable, but the book never states that outright. Some characters may voice concern, but the tone of the book is very neutral. It's entirely plausible to read this book and come out thinking that a vigilante approach to crime is a great idea. It's that grey area that I enjoy; the idea that the reader should be intelligent enough to make up his own mind. Of course, above that the book is a great, tense read, but it's nice finding the substance beneath the style.

Next week(or whenever I finish the book, so probably a day or two), Death Sentence.

After that, Ray Cummings' 1928, Planet-in-Peril epic Brand New World.

And after that, I'm not sure. I've got a sizable stack of promising sounding sci-fi, but I may take a break for some non-bargain bin reading.

Spout #5: LOL

It's taken me awhile to write the review for LOL, mainly because I keep trying to think of good things to say about this movie. I'm feeling a bit like the lone dissenter here, the only person out there who didn't love this film. I've gone and read some reviews, and I've read up a bit on this 'mumblecore' movement I keep hearing about, hoping to find some explanation, something to tell me what I was missing. But no, nothing worked. Put me in the 'don't get it' category. That's not to say I don't understand the film itself, I do, it's nothing if not painfully obvious about it's intentions. I just don't understand the growing cult surrounding this and other movies that fall under the mumblecore umbrella. But let's focus on LOL for now.

The film follows three friends and their inability to engage people(or, more specifically, women) without the aid of their various technological gadgets. Alex is a musician who seems unable or unwilling to realize that the random woman he's been emailing at a porn site probably isn't really attracted to him. So deluded and self involved is he that when an actual flesh and blood girl flirts with him, all he can think to do is lie to her, convince her that he's going on tour and needs a ride from Chicago to St. Louis. Once there, she puts him up at her parents house, and is obviously willing to share her bed, yet he spends the entire night on her mothers computer, checking his email obsessively for a reply from the aforementioned porn star, holding out hope that she likes him somehow more than every other random, anonymous man watching her take her clothes off and sending her love letters. It seems like common sense to me that someone charging you for their time probably isn't that into you, but apparently Alex missed that lesson.

It's hard to decide whether or not this is the biggest example of douchebaggery in the film, as his friends are all just as clueless when it comes to the opposite sex. Tim(played by the film's director, Joe Swanberg) spends every moment with his girlfriend either on his cell phone or laptop, at one point even chatting online with his friend, who is sitting on the couch with him, while his girlfriend fumes between them. He seems completely aware of how angry this makes her, and sees that this is driving her away from him and towards other men, but really doesn't seem to care much, asking if she can wait 20 minutes before they finish having sex so he can work on his computer. Chris, visiting from out of town and away from his girlfriend, passive aggressively goads his girlfriend into sending him nude photos, and then berates her for not making them sexy enough(completely not true, I don't know what he was looking at). Later he tries to coerce her into having phone sex with him, and when she expresses discomfort, insults her and dramatically declares their sex life dead, ignoring her personal problems to flirt with random women while she apparently has a breakdown back at home.

Now, it's not the filmmakers job to create likable characters; plenty of great films have been made about unlikable assholes. Neither is it the filmmakers job to make the film enlightening OR entertaining. But I will argue that it is the filmmakers job to at least provide an audience with one of those three things. So obviously the characters are jerks, but is the film entertaining?

Decidedly not. The only reason I didn't stop this movie halfway through was my desire to see the entire thing before reviewing it, and a growing lethargy that seeped out of my TV screen. As the film dragged on my limbs became heavier and my brain moved slower so that I just couldn't bring myself to get up and turn off the TV. It was easier to keep watching than to stop and get off the couch. How about enlightening, was it at least that? Well, maybe if you were a self involved teenager, I could see how this would seem earth shatteringly relevant.

It's the god-given right of every person between their teenage years and mid-twenties to be a conceited, narcissistic jerk. It's expected, and socially acceptable, even. But to take this navel gazing and build a film 'movement' around it is a bit much. What am I supposed to learn from LOL? That twenty-something hipsters are socially inept egotistical morons? Is that really a revelation? EVERYONE is like that at a certain age. In actuality, and to be fair to the film, the real message here is something about how computers are getting in the way of real human contact. That's fair. However, this is also nothing new, and a bit false. Socially awkward, self involved people have existed for... well... ever, long before the Internet came around. The only difference is that now instead of comic books, or D&D, these same people spend their time online, where sites like Myspace and Facebook can let them feel social without the pesky 'interacting with people' thing.

I'm probably being a bit too hard on this film, and I feel bad trashing something that was obviously cobbled together by friends doing things they enjoy. The film does try to say something, it does attempt to be relevant and meaningful, and that's a lot more than many more polished, professional films accomplish, but it still struck a false note with me. But then, as you've probably gathered, I am not the target audience for this film. This is probably right up the alley for anyone who loved Four Eyed Monsters(look closely and you'll see Arin and Susan from that film in some of Alex's musical montages), but where that film had an underlying sweetness and nifty visual style to dilute the navel-gazing, LOL is nothing but narcissistic reflections put on screen, trying to pass itself off as a raw and honest exploration of what it's like to live in the digital age.

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Caught an episode of Ebert and Roeper this weekend, something I've gotten out of the habit of doing since Ebert took his medical leave. Roeper is annoying enough, but when he's paired with 'celebrity' guests and mediocre filmmakers, the sycophantic attitude and ill-defined criticisms are just too much to bear. So it's been awhile, and it took me a few moments to notice something was missing; the Thumbs.

Roger Ebert, left without speech after salivary cancer, owns the copyright to the use of the thumbs up/down gimmick, along with Siskel's widow. Disney and Ebert are in contract negotiations, and when the negotiations stalled, Disney yanked the Thumbs from the show, putting out a press release stating it was Ebert's decision. Ebert used his website(on which he's been reviewing movies again, thankfully) to state that he had allowed Disney the use of the Thumbs as a sign of good faith. I'm not sure what this means for the future of the show, although I can't imagine Disney firing Ebert from the show(Ebert does expect his voice to return as he heals).

Part of the reason I think his job is secure is the fact that Roeper just needs someone to slap him around every once in awhile. And on that matter, they may have finally found the perfect guest host, someone willing to loudly, jovially and vehemently disagree with Roeper, and openly mock is silly, silly opinons. Robert Wilonsky is a film critic I've never heard of before, although I've since read a few of his reviews online(there's a few available here). I can't honestly say whether or not I agree with his opinions, because I haven't seen any of the films he discussed, although I'd like to think he's woefully off the mark with his negative review of Across the Universe, a film I've been anticipating for awhile. I see he's been the gues for awhile, and he'll still be here next week, so I think I may start watching Ebert and Roeper again. Still, good critic or no, Wilonsky is the shot in the arm this show needs while it awaits the inevitable, glorious return of Ebert.

Dead Silence: D.O.A.

When I was a teenager, still in high school, and living with my mom, brother and sister, I found a doll in my room. A creepy little thing, about a foot tall, dressed in a parka made of real fur, and old. Not ancient, but definitely made before I was born, and in almost pristine condition. I found this doll, unexpectedly, on my bed one day after school. My siblings were not allowed in my room, but still I assumed it was one of theirs. My sister was the obvious choice, so I left it in her room. The next day the doll was back. My brother, much younger than I, was still at the age where playing with dolls(or stuffed animals, more likely), was not considered odd, so I put it in his room. I assumed the dolls return to my room was because my sister was saying 'its not mine!' But the next day the doll was back. Laying on the floor, staring up at my bedroom door. Now I assumed someone was fucking with me.

I began leaving the doll hidden in my siblings' closets, but it would always end up back in my room. One day, when I was home alone(my brother and sister still at daycare, and I was only recently home from school), I turned around to find the doll sitting on the floor behind me, when it had been absent moments before. I took this as a sign, and figured if the doll was going to keep coming back to me, I may as well accept it. The doll was allowed in my room, and was left undisturbed. Out of a sense of superstition I even afforded it some respect, and would always set it down rather than drop it or toss it, and it would usually reside on the couch in my bedroom, sitting up rather than laying askew.

One day, maybe 6 months to a year later, a friend was coming to stay the night and watch movies. Cleaning up, I put the doll on the couch in my room, against the armrest. When my friend arrived he took everything from the couch and piled it on the floor. Going over to the pile to sort it out, I noticed the doll was missing. "Hey, where'd you put that doll that was on the couch?" I asked. "What doll?" was his response. "Everything from the couch is in that pile." But the doll was gone, and I never saw it again.

Everything in that story is completely true, and I tell so that you will understand why I tend to give scary doll movies the benefit of a doubt, and I don't just assume they have to be silly. Yes, I always wonder why the characters in these films don't just kick the damned thing across the room, or stomp on it's head, but I'm also sympathetic to the idea that dolls can be creepy. Especially the ones that aim for a distorted human realism in their design. This story is also told so that you will believe me, utterly, when I say that Dead Silence is a complete and total piece of crap. In fact, if you got totally wasted one night and decided to make a horror movie with your sisters My Little Pony dolls, and left the lens cap on the camera, it would still have a shot at being a better, scarier film than Dead Silence.

Dead Silence falls into that no-mans-land of bad movies that are completely awful, but not quite horrible enough to be worth a campy good time. And the final kick in the shins is that it had promise, it had potential, it could have easily gone either way(scary or silly) and been a complete success. The beginning of this film got my hopes up, and I expected to at least enjoy myself when I saw the original Universal logo pop up, with some moody music beneath it. I still held out hope when the completely unnecessary title card(ala old silent films, natch) came up. But then the movie abandoned all attempts at fun and decided to go for a mood more familiar to the people who created the Saw franchise; unrelenting gloom and endless grey filters that have been popular in horror films aiming for class and respect ever since Seven. Donnie Wahlberg is almost amusing, with his world-weary detective who has a ridiculously over-zealous interest in our hero's life, and never goes anywhere without his electric razor(every scene he's in, almost, involve him shaving nonchalantly before beginning his questioning). He's like a slimy, unconvincing version of Columbo. Or at least that's what I imagine they were going for.

So, with humor no longer an option(or, as in Wahlberg's case, so inept that it can't be counted and is easily missed), the filmmakers opt for straight-up horror. And fail miserably. The central conceit is a intriguing, however, which only makes this missed opportunity all the more painful. When the evil doll-spirit is about to strike, all ambient sounds go away. Radios fade, the wind through the trees no longer whistles, and birds stop chirping. All you can hear are the sounds you make yourself, and if you scream, the spirit kills you, removing your tongue(In the realm of specific action inspired murders, this is pretty easy to avoid, and should result in a large amount of survivors). This setup almost reaches scary, before they end the scene with either a false scare or a gory murder. And on the subject of these murders, I'm still a little unclear as to what the actual story behind them is. It involves an old woman killed by the people of a small town(shades of Freddy Krueger), her 108 dolls, and a MacGuffin that is practically staring you in the face and shouting 'here I am, the obligatory twist ending!' from the first 15 minutes of the film on. Hint, for those who care; pay attention to character names.

Normally I don't tell people to stay away from a film, and in fact I've only ever done it once or twice in my life. Even if a movie is horrible, I still tend to find the experience worthwhile. But I doubt anyone out there is quite as forgiving. In my case, the viewing got this blog post, and I was 2 hours older at the end of the film. I have suffered so that you don't have to.