After receiving a sudden phone call, Julia Lund, a grad student working in the field of psychology, meets with an old acquaintance named Billy at an all-night diner. Once she has arrived, the two reminisce about night terrors that occurred frequently in their youth, and Billy confesses to an intense fear of darkness. Speculating that these panics are actually of supernatural origin, the troubled and frightened man commits suicide in front of Julia once the restaurant's lights begin to flicker. Though at first she is horrified, the young woman begins to realize that maybe her forgotten friend had the right to be afraid, and that perhaps what haunted them during yesteryears is coming back for her.
2002 was a fantastic year for fans of the more macabre side of cinema. Game changers like 28 Days Later, May, Ju-On, and The Ring shocked and creeped out audiences and critics alike. If you wanted pure popcorn entertainment, you also had projects like Eight Legged Freaks, Blade II, Cabin Fever, Dog Soldiers, Bubba Ho-Tep, and a truly extraordinary experience known as Shark Attack III to choose from. It was, to be as eloquent as I can, fucking fabulous. A tiny portion of these were spearheaded by filmmakers who had never received the praise that they were long overdue from mainstream audiences, and some were managed by newcomers who would go on to be given the title of "future genius." One of the former was named Robert Harmon, who helmed a little flick in the latter half of the 1980s called The Hitcher (which would suffer the remake treatment twenty years later), and would go on to direct nine films starring Tom Selleck as fictional police chief Jesse Stone. He was also lucky enough to have horror icon Wes Craven (R.I.P.) serve as an executive producer on his first new foray into terror in fifteen years: the ominously-titled They.
But does any of this matter? Well, I sure hope that it would have. Given that there is some royalty of sorts behind They, it's shocking to see that the end results are an ungodly dull, boring movie that just oozes missed potential. For starters, within the span of three years, there were several theatrical entries that dealt with similar subject matter, including Darkness Falls and Boogeyman. Mind you, those aren't particularly great either, but I'd be willing to bet that if I went back and re-watched what I remembered about those turds, I'd come out saying that at least their leads were able to feign interest in being on the set during production and the time for action. I haven't seen the television series based on Philip K. Dick's Minority Report, so I can't make a legitimate comparison between actress Laura Regan's role on that program and this one. That being said, she just looks and acts so disinterested throughout a good eighty percent of They, and the bizarro charisma being expelled from the Mia Farrow lookalike (if the Rosemary's Baby star had the physique of a twelve year old boy) makes for the closest to cinematic boredom that I've felt all year long. Christ, if you can't even make your screams sound genuine and not irksome, then why should I want to root for you as a "final girl?"
Anyways, I don't want to give the impression that all of They's faults lie with our lead heroine. Most of its problems come from a plodding pace and rushed third act. I've stated before that I have no problems with movies that are typically classified as "slow burns," but I'm willing to wait if the ultimate payoff is grandiose or at least memorable. I suppose that Harmon did that job well if your intention by the end was to utter the phrase "I somehow give less of a shit than I did before." Perhaps the biggest ball that was dropped came in the realm of the story to They itself. Had screenwriter Brendan Wood gotten his way, They was actually going to turn out as a completely different entity altogether. Wood's screenplay revolved around the same cast of characters dealing with unknown forces, though this time it was seeped in mechanical lore, with mankind being secretly controlled and assimilated by these beings for whenever their own bodies began to deteriorate. If you're scoffing at the entirety of that idea, that's fine. Still, the fact that Wood's name was kept on as a featured writer is astonishing, as they ditched his initial concept and it purportedly hired TEN WRITERS to rework it into whatever this thing is. Now this poor guy is stuck with most of the blame, and that just seems wholly unfair.
They was far more difficult to finish than it should have been. Its story has all the ability in the world to warrant a good discussion among purveyors of underrated motion pictures that were spat out during the start of the new millennium, but it drops the ball at nearly every opportunity that it has. People often deride and ridicule the restrictions of PG-13 horror movies, but we've seen that they can be done well when they're pushing the limits of the MPAA's rating system (Drag Me To Hell) or have a strong, unique story that unfolds rather well over time (The Sixth Sense). Had They been handled by Wes Craven himself a decade or so prior to this release date, I think it could have turned out to be rather creepy. Instead, we get a picture that I doubt anybody outside of the geekiest of geeks will remember a mere month after they've seen it, and will most likely find itself packaged together with other underwhelming titles on a dirt-cheap DVD collection that you can buy in bulk at your local Walmart (usually under the guise of "*insert number* films to terrify/spook/rattle you"). If you hate your wallet, They is available to purchase on DVD and Blu-Ray. If all that you hate is your free time, one can eyeball They for no extra charge on Amazon Prime and Netflix Instant Streaming.
Tomorrow, I attempt to sit through a supernatural production that has ties to one of the scariest human beings of the 1990s: Fred Durst.
*shudders*
No comments:
Post a Comment