Stop the sequels. I mean it. Stop...And stop remaking & rebooting stuff too.

I'm bored and wanted to write something so...this is that something.

So I was having a look at horror films coming up this year because that's my shit, I love horror because since I was traumatised as a child, I was desensitised to fear to come from an onscreen villain. I wouldn't advise all children do this, hell even any children. Back to the point, I love horror films and I always get excited when I see one advertised, ones that looked insanely good that more than lived up to expectations were Split (yes it is classed as a horror, I double checked it) and Get Out. However, while looking online at films that are coming...there's more sequels and reboots than there is originality which personally, I think defeats the point of true horror. If we keep seeing the same thing and don't get introduced to new concepts we're going to laugh rather than be scared. Look at the Paranormal Activity series, everyone thought that shit was scary when the first one came out, now look at it, 6 fucking films in and nobody cares about it anymore because it's lost its fear factor. Hell, it's even taken some of the life from the found footage genre because it all just looks and does the same thing now.

While on my search, do you wanna know how many sequels and reboots I saw? Well, you've read this far so I'm gonna tell you whether you wanna know or not: 25! Twenty fucking five. and I went through every list on the first page of google search, I looked at every single thing. Some are reboots, fair enough whatever, but most are sequels and a good chunk of them aren't even fucking warranted. Who's the shit who keeps begging for more Wrong Turn films? Who?! Show yourself. I can't get too angry, everyone has that one stupid thing they enjoy and judging by the stupidity of the human race lately I suppose it's not that far-fetched that people want more Wrong Turn films. But fuck me, why? If anyone reading this actually likes those films hit me up and let me know why ok? I just want to know the appeal.

So while I'm here, I'm gonna share with you what I found and what I think about it summed up in a short sentence or two. It's also not gonna be in any specific order, just the order that I found them in.

Already released

• Rings. I didn't see it, I had no interest in it, I barely have any interest in the original. It's on this list because it's a reboot.
• Alien: Covenant. This sucked, like...really sucked. It was boring, barely followed through on its ideas, had a criminal underuse of James Franco, pulled the dumbest twist right out of its arse. The "twist" wasn't even good, you could see it coming. It would have been better if they just didn't bother and let us think that's where it was going but...not go there if you get what I mean. It was just a pretty wank film in all honesty.
• Kong: Skull Island. I think Ben and I were gonna see this but we went for something else....Not sure. It did look pretty good though.
• Resident Evil: Vendetta. How many of these are there? Hold on. 6 or 7 I think. Why? Wasn't the last one called The Final Chapter? Shouldn't that mean it's the last one? Damn, ya'll are money hungry.

Sequels

• Halloween: The Night Evil Died. While looking this up, it seems as though it's not a corporate thing, more a fan film. I looked up a trailer and there wasn't one. Just gonna have to take this with a grain of salt, but there is a Twitter page for it, an IMDb page and an Indiegogo fundraising page describing this as a film "By fans, for fans." So hopefully it's good. If you want more info then go and look it up. 
• Children of the Corn: Runaway. If you haven't seen the first one, go look it up, it's a Stephen King short story and it's such a strange choice yet...it's just golden. It's not good by any means but it's golden. So looking at this title I have mixed feelings, they could modern horror all over it (jumpscares, complicated plot, no Issac, gore) and that won't be good but you never know. It could be campy and fun and all that, so I'm holding out hope.
• Jeepers Creepers 3: Cathedral. According to the Wikipedia article, this film takes place between the first and second film. I fucking hate "midquels" There's no point. You can't have a sequel then have an idea for before the sequel but after the original. Focus on your future, not your past. That's all I've got to say on the matter.
• Wrong Turn 7. Nobody asked for this. Why is it happening? Upon further investigation, it seems like this is a hoax, yet some other articles are saying it's already started filming and is due for a release this year. I don't know and I don't care about it. If you wanna know more look it for yourself. This series is shit and gets worse with every instalment. 
• Jigsaw. Previously titled Saw Legacy. I don't know what's going to happen with this, this could be a prequel considering it looks like Tobin Bell (John Kramer aka Jigsaw) might be a part of it, but then again they could just bring the very long dead (technically not) killer back to life and fuck with it. Maybe he had a sperm sample somewhere and one of his followers impregnated herself and it's his kid that's doing this. That'd be a cool angle to come from. Looking at the plot synopsis on IMDb it seems as though it's someone mimicking the murders, or Kramer is back and on the kill again. With a series seemingly grounded in a reality similar to ours ie: dead people don't come back to life, it seems a bit silly to bring the dead back to life. We'll just have to see.
• Insidious: Chapter 4. While looking this up properly, it seems as though the internet doesn't know when this is happening, only that it is. an IMDb article says 2018 but when you type into the search bar "Insidious 4 release date" you get 3 November 2017. After looking at a couple of articles it seems as though Google is wrong. This is being released in January of 2018. Sorry to have wasted your time but it was originally scheduled for 2017 so it's staying on the list.
• Chucky 7: Cult of Chucky. Can we just leave this doll be? Didn't the series get so stupid it started parodying itself like the Elm Street series? I hope this stays silly though because an attempt to "toughen up" this series seems a little redundant at this point.
• Annabelle 2: Creation. Didn't we get this dolls origin story in the last one? Why add on yet another origin story onto it? There's no point but you know my dumb ass is gonna see this because I already saw the first one. 
• Underworld: Blood Wars. I have literally no idea about this series except that this will be the 6th. Is it not time to stop? 
• Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon. I don't know a single thing about the original film, but fuck, when this is out I'm gonna find it and watch the hell out of it just because of the title. 
• Sharknado 5: Global Swarming. I only know about this because Ben loves this series, and I can't blame him really because I kind of love the first Sharknado film. It's so weird how this has become a thing considering it's so shit but maybe that's why it's a thing. Either way, it's set for a summer release this year.

Reboots / Remakes.

• Puppet Master: The littlest Reich. This is apparently a big series, yet it's not talked about like all the other big series. That means one of two things, it's low budget underrated brilliance, or it's crap. I don't know, I've never seen any of them so I can't comment. 
• Hellraiser: Judgement.  This is a pretty interesting one, personally, I've only ever been interested in Hellraiser because of the makeup. I've never seen any of the films but I've watched documentaries talking about the making of these films and it looks pretty good, maybe I'll actually watch the series before this comes out.
• IT. I'm both glad and exhausted by this one. It's going to be a two-part thing which...if you've seen the mini-series/film or even looked at a copy of the book then you'll know that splitting this into two parts is a good idea. However, this isn't going to have my beloved Tim Curry in it and I just pray that Bill Skarsgård doesn't try to copy Curry's version of Pennywise and instead does his own thing and makes this version of the character his own. I'm already down for this to at least see what they do with it.
• Day of the dead. A remake of George A Romero's zombie film probably update for a 2017 audience rather than a timeless purpose? No thanks, but we'll see how it goes.

There are a few other reboots such as Flatliners, Manic Cop, Tower of Terror, Suspiria and Re-animator: evolution but I've neither seen nor heard of those films and didn't feel like repeating myself.

The true horror seems to be a fear of something new, but with new content that's out like Split, Get Out, The Belko Experiment and the few others we've been treated to, maybe audiences will be more open to putting money into something new rather than something they're comfortable with. Hell, didn't our parents always tell us we're not gonna get anywhere if we stay in our comfort zones? Why aren't we listening to that? Because we've gotten way too comfortable in our comfort zones and we need something to kick us out of that mindset.

I also understand that filmmaking is a business and a new idea is always a risk but...isn't it worth the risk to challenge your audience with new and possibly uncomfortable ideas rather than just spoon feeding us the same thing over and over again because you know it's gonna bring in the big money? You'd get tired of chicken for every meal of the day, at some point you'd start to feel sick from it, maybe even start to hate it, forcing you to withdraw from chicken altogether meaning the chicken industry will lose out. You don't want that do you Hollywood? Do you guys even care? Probably not because you're getting paid to make these things which is sad because big companies can afford to take risks, in fact, it's healthy to take risks and possibly fail. You can grow past it, I promise. If you can't do that then please, at least for every reboot or sequel or prequel or fucking midquel, can we have something new just so that we have a choice to expand our minds? 

Anyway, that's it, I'm gonna watch Death Becomes Her because it's damn good, peace out and I'll see you on Tuesday.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about the films listed. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like the idea of the films listed then go and support its creators by buying tickets to see the films in cinemas or the DVD or Bluray when they're available for home release.

Smiley

If there is a God, let him kill me now, for I have seen the worst in humanity and no longer wish to be a part of it.

Director: Michael J. Gallagher
Writers: Glasgow Phillips (Screenplay and Story)
                Michael J. Gallagher (Screenplay)
                Ezra Cooperstein (Story)

There are only a certain amount of times a person can say "that's stupid" and "stop it" and "I hate this fucking movie". I hate this film because it's stupid, the rules don't make sense, the "twist" ending makes no sense, the main character is impossibly stupid and hateable, it's boring, it drags on and on and on and on and won't fucking end, it gave me a headache and committed the worst crime it could as a psychological slasher - it wasn't scary. I have a headache from internally screaming at this film, from digging my nails into my head in frustration. I can't promise a short review, or a long review or even a coherent review. Know what? I'm not even sure I can promise a review. What I can promise, is a rant. A rant I have given, in part, to the people I was talking to while watching this film. So I'm going to take a deep breath, take a painkiller and get into this shit.

Let's discuss our lovely leading lady Ashley (Caitlin Gerard). I despise this character as much as a human can, maybe more. She is an idiot. I don't mean in the sense that she's just a ditzy blonde, oh no, she's fucking gone. She has no brain cells. I'm amazed she got into college. Then again with the state of the American education system and them letting in someone who wrote #BlackLivesMatter over and over as their entry essay...it's no surprise this character was let into higher education. Fuck. Ok, so how is she an idiot? Maybe she isn't academically thick because we only see her in one class and that's a science class where it's just conversation between Mark (Toby Turner) and the professor (Roger Bart) with the occasional bit of nonsense from Ashley which somehow relates to her science class. I'm not sure how academically intelligent she is, but I know for a fact she's a total social idiot. She took one puff on weed and went about acting like she was high off her head, even going as far as to say Quote: "I think I'm high off your marijuana." She had no idea what 4Chan was, and I get that this was back in 2012 but...I knew what 4Chan was back in 2012 and I was 15, this girl is at least 18 and don't come for me saying "oh maybe she wasn't into the internet all that much" bitch neither was I and I knew it wasn't a fucking Asian dating site. Fuck off. And later in the film she's speaking to her psychiatrist and tells her she stopped taking her Lithium for Bipolar Disorder because, Quote: "It made me fat and stupid." Oh but you see, that's ok because she was monitored by her doctor and came off gradually rather than just outright stopping. What got me so angry about this is she stopped taking her medication for one of the stupidest reasons ever. Weight gain comes as a side effect of a lot of medication and if that medication works it's down to you to deal with the side effects. If your medication is making you gain a little weight then change your eating habits to work with the medication, don't fucking drop it because of a little bit of weight gain. On the flip side of that if it's uncontrollable then you should speak to a doctor about it to see if they can change the medication so you don't run into some other health issues that relate to weight gain. Common sense. I don't know whether this character was written as an idiot blonde to continue the "blonde girls are stupid and only care about their looks" stereotype or they thought their audience was so stupid they needed someone to relate to? I understand that some people may not have known what 4Chan was but you didn't need to get out that bit of information so fucking clumsily and make your character look so stupid.

Speaking of stupid, wanna know the rules for Smiley to work? It's essentially like Bloody Mary where you say her name three times and she appears except with this, you're online and type to your video chat partner "I did it for the lulz" three times. I'm gonna rip into that soon. Now, just typing "I did it for the lulz" three times won't do it. You have to really want to kill the video chat partner, and you have to picture smiley killing the person you're video chatting with or else Smiley won't show up and kill them. Got it? Simple enough right? Would be if it wasn't so fucking dumb. "I did it for the lulz"? Fuck is that? I know 2012 was the year of classic memes and Lolcats were everywhere and the letter s was always replaced with the letter z BUT was it really necessary to change the o to u? Ya made the meme worse and watching this in 2017 makes this dead meme even more dead and it really fucking hurts.

Wanna know what else fucking hurts? The fucking ending to this film. It's BS twist. I'm not gonna give spoilers because this film was already ruined by being fucking made. We see that Smiley has killed Ashley and as she hits the ground, the film cuts to the professor discussing, humanity, morality and the light and dark side of life and what keeps us from doing bad shit just because we can. I think that's meant to summarise the ideas of the film? I don't know I was just waiting for this to be fucking over. It wasn't over. There were 10 minutes left and I figured "I've come this far, might as well suffer some more." And suffer I did because it's revealed that Smiley is actually a group of people who Ashley met at the party at the beginning of the film and they all discuss what a great thing they've created and how funny it is that they've killed her and how Smiley is fake. My question is this: if Smiley is fake then how is it possible for him to appear in the opening kill if the girl didn't even know what the urban legend of Smiley was until her little sister told her about it? But then the film pulls a double twist and it turns out that the fake Smiley's are actually imitating the real supernatural entity that's real and I just don't see the fucking point in that. It's so fucking stupid. Leave it at him being real. Who even cares? Me apparently but who else cares? Also. Why the fuck were they just going after this one girl? What was the point? This question is even asked by her friend, Proxy (Melanie Papila)....what a fucking stupid name...at the end of the movie. Yeah she actually says Quote: "why were we doing this?" for Zane (Andrew James Allen) to reply to her by typing "I did it for the lulz" 3 times which brings in the reveal that Smiley is real and kills her and I swear to God...I just can't deal with this fucking stupid ass movie.

This movie is stupid.
This movie is bad.
This movie isn't scary.
This movie is an hour and a half long and fucked if it feels like that.
This movie is boring.
This movie is one of the worst things I've ever seen.
I hate this fucking movie.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense or is too rambly or I've gone over the same point over and over or this is just terrible but fuckkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate this fucking thing. I just had to get this out of my system. The only redemption is that a good chunk of the cast and crew went on to do better things and can look back on this as a sign that no matter what happens in their career, they could do worse. That's it for now. I'm off to shove a pen up my nose and smash my head on a desk. Peace.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you enjoy this film and let's be real you're not a big group but bless you regardless of your taste in cinema, then go support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray (if it's even on Bluray).

Disney and The Gay Agenda - Part 2

DON'T READ IF YA DON'T WANT SPOILERS

Alright so, you remember how a few weeks ago people were kicking off about LeFou, the absolute main icon of Disney's wholesome values that cannot ever be touched, was going to be a gay character? Of course you do. Do you remember my last post about this where I was saying that it doesn't even matter unless it damages the film itself? No? Go read it then come back here.

https://somegirltalksaboutmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/disney-gay-agenda.html
(Also go look at my review for the film https://somegirltalksaboutmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/beauty-beast-2017.html )

You read it? Good, we can continue. You wanna know how changing the very core of Disney from a straight man to a gay man went? It barely fucking did anything. LeFou (Josh Gad) showed the same blatant signs of attraction that the cartoon did but in a different and very slightly more obvious way. There were scenes in which LeFou quite literally copied Gaston (Luke Evans) and it's in a way cute, in another way funny and in another kinda creepy. But you know what those lists say; if you want your crush to notice you, copy some of the little things they do to get their attention. This, of course, didn't work for poor little LeFou, then he sticks up for Gaston in the bar when Maurice (Kevin Klein) accuses him of attempted murder. LeFou then breaks into well-known song Gaston and yes, that is the name of the song, I looked it up on about 4 different sites. During this song, LeFou shows his affection toward Gaston and this is the biggest clue that this character is probably in the closet, and this is probably the start of the whole "LEFOU IS GAY LIGHT THE PITCHFORKS" thing. The rest of his scenes essentially follow the original story.

However, during the fight scene at the end, he gets flattened by a table, it's not the lovely dog/footstool table, it's just a coffee table that comes out for the fight. He pleads Gaston for help but, Gaston being the dick he always was, leaves him in pursuit of the Beast. Later during the fight, Mrs Potts sees Mr Potts, a man I never knew existed in the original movie. I guess he had to exist in some way for Chip to be born but, it's just weird to see him. Back to the point, though. Mrs Potts sees her estranged husband and falls, as she's falling, you almost think she's going to smash into pieces on the floor, but you see her get caught. Who catches her? Your favourite french fool, LeFou. Mrs Potts asks why he caught her and isn't he on the other side? He replies that he and Gaston are going through a rough patch like someone would say if they're in a fight with their partner. Mrs Potts then goes on to say something along the lines of either "You don't need him love" or  "you can do better love" or maybe both, it's been 2 days since I watched it and I can't remember every line spoken. Sue me. Also, during this fight scene, Madame Garderobe (Audra McDonald) clothes three men, I'm not even joking she showers them in clothes and they come out fully done up, makeup and wigs and gorgeous dresses. Two of these men scream in terror and run out but one of them just smiles and looks so happy and just walks away. It's a cute moment and at the time it looks like a silly throwaway joke or something but it goes somewhere.

Now then, you'll notice there's nothing particularly gay about any of this. I've described a pretty camp character and crossdresser. That can't be it, right? There was such a build-up, where's the butt plugs? The anal beads? The dildo-headed, leather gimp suits? Where's even the tiniest gay moment? You wanna know where it is? Right at the very end and lasts less than a second. Literally. After everyone gets returned to their human form there's the final reprise of Tale as old as time and everyone is having fun in the ballroom dancing, and loving life. There's a shot of LeFou dancing with a young woman and it cuts away to someone else dancing or Emma Thompson singing. Again I'm not sure, I barely remember the details shot by shot. It then cuts back to LeFou dancing with this woman, he then pushes her aside and starts dancing with the man from earlier who was happy in the dress. There's your gay moment guys. LeFou dances with a guy. We're off to hell guys, we watched the gayest thing two men can do together. Dance.

I'm not even joking, that was the "exclusively gay moment". So...did it matter? No. Why was there such a hype over it to the point where I was expecting anal beads and dildo-headed gimp suits? Personally, I think the creators knew that controversy sells and that they didn't have enough confidence in their product. This was simply a marketing ploy and a cheap one at that. I can't lie, I'm hurt by this. Why couldn't the creators go balls to the wall and have him actually explore his sexuality rather than be overly affectionate toward Gaston. Seeing a character just explore who they are would be nice at least but this whole thing just seemed like such a last minute thing that you wonder what even triggered the need to put it in.

Personally, I think it was the desperate need for representation of everyone that some people have these days. People want more women, gay people, trans people and ethnic people represented in film, and that's understandable, but why put these characters in these films just for the sake of representation? If you're just throwing these characters in without thought, for a controversy storm to start up and bring in an audience that...considering that this is A) a Disney product B) a remake of a perfect piece of film and C) a big thing because of the cast they managed to get, there really is no need to create such a storm. This really does show the confidence the makers had in this film. They knew that no matter what, this was going to be a bad film compared to this first one and they had to do whatever they could to get butts into seats. Like I said, this is an iconic property and the film would have been the exact same without it.

I really don't know what else to say about it, there was no need to put in an "exclusively gay moment" that didn't even exist. I'm offended because they had a great shot at a character exploring their sexuality to normalise it for kids and they bitched out of it. It would have been nice to have this little side plot with LeFou rather than filling our time with 4 pointless songs that stopped the film or the unnecessary exposition with Belle's mother dying of plague (don't come at me, you had a spoiler warning). This could have at least made the film it's own thing. In that respect, the Cinderella remake was better because at least it tried to be its own thing. It made the product worse in doing so but at least they tried. With this? It's a shot for shot remake of the cartoon with more exposition that just stops the film. That doesn't change my opinion on it, I do still like the film, I went in with low expectations and they were met, that's all I asked for with this remake.

I know that this is all over the place and honestly...this whole thing was kind of all over the place, there was no need for a petition to be made before anybody saw it. There was no need for anyone to ban this from their theatre before they even saw it. There was no need to cause a media storm over nothing. I hope someone from Disney or someone in film at least, sees this and the many other peoples complaints about there not being a gay moment and I hope they take it on board and think about what they're going to do and why they're going to do it. I'm so sick of thing just being shoehorned into films just for the sake of advertisement. Do it because the story needs it or you feel it's something that needs to be talked about. All it says about you is that you're not confident in your work if you have to either shoehorn something in *cough cough female ghostbusters* or just flat out lie to your audience.

I'm pissy about this, peace out and have a good day guys.