Sunday, July 24, 2011

Shadow Puppets, most cliched horror movie ever?

No, it's probably not but it really wanted to be.

Last night Ry and I watched Shadow Puppets on Hulu.  It was on a whim, we felt like watching a movie and I was dead from my workout anyway, so after we put Bear to bed we put on this film.  Actually, Ry picked it because we played a dungeons and dragons Halloween campaign with a similar plot line about 5 or 6 years back. 

So, we start out with a girl waking up in a room screaming.  She's about the worst actress I've ever seen in a horror movie, too, which says a lot, because I've seen a lot of horror movies and I've seen a lot of horrible actresses.  Her first five minutes of walking around like a freaking moron sum up her amazing acting abilities that you will see throughout the movie, as she is the lead.  Anyway, I'm not here to give you a play by play of the movie.  I'm here to give you a list of the cliches that were rampant in this movie.

List of cliches (not necessarily in order of appearance in movie) and be warned some of these are spoilers...:

-black chick is a bitch
-first black dude you meet is a maniac
-maniacal black dude ends up sobbing just because he freaked out because he was scared
-maniacal black dude dies first, and quickly
-main character is mostly clueless the whole time, even though she's a doctor which implies a certain amount of intelligence
-crazy white girl
-naked crazy white girl
-naked crazy white girl is a super model
-guy who looks like a nerd ends up being a computer programmer
-nerdy white guy hacks the computer system to escape
-crazy white girl dies in a swimming pool
-(supposedly) attractive white guy is the 'badass' of the group
-second black guy we find is a convict
-black convict guy isn't as bad of a guy as he acts
-black convict guy dies, too
-black convict guy isn't actually dead yet and helps save others before he dies for real
-attractive white guy is a lawyer
-attractive white guy is now a doctor
-attractive white guy is now a doctor who is the crazy bad guy (but not the monster)
-monster of movie starts out ambiguous but then they can't help themselves, they have to show it to you and it just looks cheesy.
-over explanation of the plot
-Monster was product of science gone wrong
-black chick dies in a stupid way
-nerd wins the day
-sunlight kills the monster
-white chicks scream when they wake up, always
-wearing only your under ware protects you from monsters


Okay, I know the last one isn't a cliche for horror movies but it seems to be true (mostly) so I added it in there. 

The movie wasn't horrible.  In fact, there were some interesting parts of it.  My problems with this movie are that:

A: don't over explain it.  Sometimes it's okay for people not to know what's going on, it makes it scarier that way. Once you really explained it, then explained it again just so you know the dumb ass doctor chick could understand it without making it look like you wanted us retards at home to really get it, it just got super cheesy and kinda ridiculous. 

B: It had the dumbest ending.  Stupid ending.  Worst ending ever.  Well, maybe not ever but pretty horrible ending.  Really?  Really. 

C:  So many horror movie cliches.  Ry and I spent time guessing what was going to happen because it was so cliched. 

Here's the trailer if you want to watch it.  It actually looks worse than the movie was...


 

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