Thursday, April 30, 2009
Crappy movie reviews Thursday: Joseph Clark's Massacre (2002)
Jeff (Joseph Clark) plans a weekend camping trip with his "friends" to help him get away and make sense of his problems, little does he know that the rest of his friends have similar problems. Jeff ends up freaking out (for no reason) and slaughters everyone one at a time. When none of the deaths make sense to him or his last remaining friend he then realizes a terrifying fact as his friend tells him exactly what has been happening.
The story was about the only entertaining and redeeming thing about this movie. The story was interesting, and if the directing and acting could have followed suit the movie would have been pretty good. Some of the deaths were good as well. The twist ending was mildly clever, but the build up for it was horrible. The movie made absolutely no sense, and it really made you drift off and not pay attention so the twist ending may have went over many people's heads.
The acting was atrocious. The directing, photography and CGI weren't any better. The CGI was incredibly laughable and not done well at all. The DVD sleeve mentioned that the cast was "beautiful models", in reality one was good looking, the others were hagged out and the guys were closer to being red necks. The alternate title of the movie is "Bikini Party Massacre", but there wasn't really much bikini or party.
I really didn't expect much at all from this film. I bought it used for $2.49 and figured it had about a 30% chance of being good. I was wrong, while it was not horrible, it was put together well and a solid independent movie. I knew it was going to be a bad movie from the start when everything (including the bad CGI and acting) was making me laugh. Nothing other than the story actually delivered, and the movie fell flat with me. There was no gratuitous nudity which may have made the movie a bit better (yeah, it was that bad).
When it came time for the blood, the blood was well done, but the kills were sillified (I know, making up words again) when they actually had to use shitty CGI. I hate CGI, but I absolutely detest CGI when it can't be done correctly, and if your budget can't afford real make-up effects it can't afford CGI, SO DON'T USE IT!.
Amen to that. There is some amazing CG, but a lot is just plain terrible. I work as a prosthetic makeup artist, and I hate to see bad CG be used where I know a perfectly good live action effect could be used.
ReplyDeleteLook at the Mummy 2- basically 'Stephen Sommers and ILM sitting in a tree, r-e-n-d-e-r-i-n-g'.