In an attempt to better my writing ability, I am taking up the advice of most successful, published authors out there (save for you Dean Koontz. I don’t like you.) and writing in a semi-regular fashion. Sure, some out there will tell you to hammer out like 10,000 words a day or write for 12 hours or lay a golden goose egg but I just don’t see how I can do that. Instead, I am going to attempt to write at least an article once a week.
In the spirit of watching a movie every week and telling everyone how wonderful (or not) it was, I decided to post another review this week! Hooray!
Last night I was set to watch “Mulholland Drive” and enjoy the wonderfulness that is almost anything David Lynch directs. (I actually wasn’t that big a fan of “Blue Velvet”. Sorry Dennis Hopper.) However, as I was getting ready to queue it up, the little voice in the back of my mind whispered something like: “Hey, check and see what new movies Netflix has added. Maybe something better is playing. BETTER!” And like the easily distracted, fickle person that I am, I went to the new listings. Oh boy, did I stumble upon a gem of a film…
The premise of “Dead Tone” sounded straight-forward and simple enough. Punk kids make prank calls, one goes awry and horror ensues. I was thinking to myself, “Hey Corey, maybe this could flash you back to those times when you’d make prank calls with Kylie, only without the psycho murder popping out of your closet with a hatchet and killing you and everyone you love and care for”. Needless to say, I was totally sold on that idea.
Let me stop real quick like to warn you beforehand that this review does contain spoilers. I want to spoil this movie so you don’t have to experience the awfulness that this movie was. Is. Whatever.
So. The movie opens with this group of children having a sleep over. One of them suggests a game to play involving a cordless phone, random numbers and being generally kid-stupid. Also, it is the middle of the night. So they take turn making prank calls, saying silly, immature little kid things. Finally, one of them (a dorky kid with glasses) gets up to put a stop to their revelries. Naturally his twin, but less dorky looking, brother threatens to beat him up if he tells. Well, he is saved from having to make that call because their father comes in to check on them and naturally they quickly pretend to sleep (or maybe they really were asleep) and he takes the phone off from the floor, where it had been left on.
After he leaves we learn that he has a bunch of people in another room smoking and drinking and generally having a Mad Men of a good time. Some undetermined amount of time passes and one of the boys wakes up. The phone is ringing. The adults are pretty much passed out in the room next door. So the geeky brother goes to pick up the phone and as he answers it, a scary voice comes over the phone taunting him about how it isn’t nice to make prank calls. And then suddenly the person the voice belongs to just bursts from the closet door, hatchet in hand, and proceeds to viciously murder EVERYONE in the house except for the children. Finally! Someone DID think of the children!
The killer did a number on the adults in a way that might even get Lizzie Borden jealous if she were, you know, still alive. A detective (played by the only actor I recognized and knew by name, Rutger Hauer) arrives at the scene and exchanges some really, really, REALLY bad “witty” dialogue with a street cop.
Flash forward ten years and we learn that all the kids were adopted and renamed and spread out over the country. Well, mostly. A few of them remained close after the brutal encounter, grew up normal and went to college. That just goes to show you that if a 10 year old can overcome the vicious murder and slaughter of an entire house full of adults and loved ones, then what can’t one overcome? So everyone needs to stop their whining and get over it already.
To spare the stupid details of this horribly acted, worse written and crappily editied movie, I’ll skip to the end. Basically, someone is going around killing all the kids responsible for the prank calls that happened 10 years prior. Cue a sex-filled, booze-fueled party in a secluded mansion on a top of a hill owned by a total prick of a college kid. Some stuff happens at the house, mainly TNA nonsense and the killer arrives and basically kills EVERY SINGLE PERSON. Yes. Everyone in this movie dies. Including the detective and his Asian lady partner.
In the final twist of the movie, when we learn the identity of said killer. It turns out that the killer this go round is the geeky brother who wanted to pull the plug on the whole prank call operation back before their parents were all axed up. So to help him do this, he had some mental patient he was housed with during recovery (looks like I was slightly mistaken about not everyone turning out okay) kill people too. At the end, when he has the last two victims cornered in a room, he decides to kill his partner and repeatedly stabs him in the chest and I think the throat.
Then, in a final twist of fate, as the psycho twin brother is struggling on the floor with one of his intended victims, the detective bursts through the door. And, seeing a black man with a knife, shoots him and kills him dead. And as the real killer lies on the floor, panting and all out of breath from his crazy killing spree, his mental health patient friend somehow returns to the land of the living, grabs the axe and takes a swing at the two cops hovering over the out of breath killer. And cue credits.
As I was watching this movie I was making mental notes about what I would say when I sat down to write the review. Alas, I have forgotten most of the little quips. To boil it down, this movie was marred by one teen-slasher cliché after another. There was a scene where this guy, in a Jacuzzi, was getting himself some oral attention by his lady friend. As she was diving deep, one of the killers came up from behind as he put his other head back and lopped it off. Naturally it caused for quite the scene when the girl comes up for air.
I don’t even want to talk about this movie anymore. It was just horrible. Watch it with friends after a night of heavy drinking and pot smoking. That makes almost anything entertaining. Almost.
For next week I’m going to go back to the year 2004. What am I doing there you might wonder? Who knows! Check back next week and find out!
