261 days of Horror, Day 8: Venom
Jan. 10th, 2007 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiVenom. 2005. Directed by Jim Gillespie. Written by Flint Dille, John Zuur Platten, and Brandon Boyce. Released by Dimension Films.
No, this movie is not about Eddie Brock, Spider-man’s worst enemy*. It’s about venomous voodoo snakes that can be used to inject evil souls into others, thus turning them into mediocre serial killers. It’s got everything you could possibly want in a movie, as long as none of sex, gore, characterization, plot, or dialogue matter to you. Actually, this pretty much just caters to the small crowd of folks who will see any movie with a tiny and meaningless Method Man cameo.
We start by meeting most of the town’s future victims at a small-town drive-thru somewhere in Louisiana. There’s the obvious Final Girl, currently mopey because her boyfriend dumped her when she decided she was going to Harvard instead of going to a local school. There’s her ex, mopey because he didn’t realize that dumping her would make her angry. There’s a pair of party girls, one of whom is a shoplifter. There’s the hot best friend of Final Girl, the angsty best friend of Angst Boy, and the male friend of dubious sexuality. I’d tell you their names, but they really don’t matter. There’s also Voodoo Granddaughter, who is the granddaughter of the Voodoo priestess (and a dishwasher at the drive-thru).
We also meet Ray, the creepy-looking gas-station attendant who’s the father of Angst Boy’s best friend (and by “father,” I mean “sperm donor,” as Ray hasn’t taken any responsibility for him) and the Voodoo Priestess, packing her snakes into a car.
After the drive-thru closes, Angst Boy drives after Final Girl (who was commuting by bicycle), and confronts her about Harvard. After a few minutes of angst, Ray stops by and chews out Angst Boy over parking his car in the middle of the road. Sure enough, Voodoo Priestess drives by and ends up swerving her car into the lake. When Ray attempts to save her, a bunch of venomous snakes escape from a bag in the car and bite him to death.
I want to pause at this point to note that at no point does anyone say, “It’s a Shame about Ray.”
Anyway, Ray is taken the morgue. Voodoo Granddaughter, on hearing about the snakes, freaks out and heads to Grandma’s house. Everyone else goes their separate ways.
Overnight, Ray, now possessed by the spirits of some nasty killers, wakes up and kills the coroner and Method Man (who spends about ten minutes in this movie as whatever passes for local law enforcement). He also takes back his truck.
The next day, Shoplifter and her buddy decide to head to a mall, and stop at Ray’s gas station en route (because everything there is free, naturally, what with the proprietor being dead). While Shoplifter rifles through the cash register, Shoplifter’s Best Friend heads to the back of the garage to find a bathroom, and she is never seen alive again.
Incidentally, Shoplifter’s Best Friend is the fourth straight black character to die (out of a total of five in both the movie and the town). I honestly don’t know if there was anything intentional here, but it does strike me as a little odd.
Getting back to the plot, Shoplifter searches for her best friend, and eventually finds her body strung up in the garage. Soon enough, Ray dispatches Shoplifter, using a combination of an auto life, a sandblaster, and a lot of luck.
We get a wee bit more character development, and then Final Girl and a bunch of her friends decide to check in on Voodoo Granddaughter. They get a little bit of exposition (we learn that Voodoo Priestess would take the souls of the nastiest killers around and store them in snakes, because, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time), and we also learn that the house has a spell on it, and evil can’t enter without a search warrant****.
Just as the friends are leaving to go warn folks about Ray, guess who shows up? The kids run back inside, but Ray stabs Possibly Gay Guy in the foot (going right through the porch steps), and then kills him after the others have gotten to safety.
The safety of the house doesn’t last long, as Ray soon uses a metal chain to drag his son out of the house (eventually stabbing him), and later comes up with the novel idea of using the tow truck to tear down a wall of the house and pull out some more victims (including Voodoo Granddaughter).
Eventually, we’re down to Angst Boy, Final Girl, and Hot Best Friend, the latter of whom gets killed when Ray (driving his pick-up) grabs her out of the car, and both the car and the pickup truck drive with her stuck between them. Alas, this makes it very hard for her to avoid obstacles.
Our final two do the usual running around and hiding bit, and eventually both end up hiding out in the mausoleum that Ray is using as a hiding space*****. To hide from Ray, they jump into a large sarcophagus and pretend to be two more of Ray’s victims. Ray somehow figures out that Angst Boy is there (but not Final Girl), and stabs him in the head right in front of Final Girl.
Final Girl eventually has the usual run-and-fight confrontation with Ray, which eventually ends with Ray dying on top of his pickup truck. But wait! Out of the dead body come the snakes! Even though the snakes that bit Ray were never inside him! And they lunge towards the camera! Oh no!
Technically, Venom doesn’t suck any more than Scarecrow Gone Wild. But theatrical releases that suck this much have fewer excuses than straight-to-video crap. Jim Gillespie (who pioneered the groundbreaking cinematic technique of holding a camera in the air pointing straight down Jennifer Love Hewett’s cleavage in I Know What You Did Last Summer) walks through the motions here. He's not helped by a cast of nigh-talentless mediocrities (including Jonathan Jackson, the guy who was deemed too wooden an actor to play Anakin Skywalker). The screenwriters include two folks who have focused mostly on videogame scripts, as well as Brandon “Wicker Park” Boyce, presumably brought in as a script doctor******.
Overall, avoid this one. Nothing worth seeing here.
*Except for those issues in which Venom was a hero**
**And yes, I know that Scorpion is now Venom***.
***And I also know that The Green Goblin is technically Spidey’s worst enemy, okay? Although I'd suggest that, in light of the job he's done on the book, J. Michael Straczynski is a close second.
****Okay, it can’t enter even with a search warrant.
*****Yes, he hangs out at his garage and at the cemetery. Everyone needs a backup hideout.
******Consider this malpractice.
No, this movie is not about Eddie Brock, Spider-man’s worst enemy*. It’s about venomous voodoo snakes that can be used to inject evil souls into others, thus turning them into mediocre serial killers. It’s got everything you could possibly want in a movie, as long as none of sex, gore, characterization, plot, or dialogue matter to you. Actually, this pretty much just caters to the small crowd of folks who will see any movie with a tiny and meaningless Method Man cameo.
We start by meeting most of the town’s future victims at a small-town drive-thru somewhere in Louisiana. There’s the obvious Final Girl, currently mopey because her boyfriend dumped her when she decided she was going to Harvard instead of going to a local school. There’s her ex, mopey because he didn’t realize that dumping her would make her angry. There’s a pair of party girls, one of whom is a shoplifter. There’s the hot best friend of Final Girl, the angsty best friend of Angst Boy, and the male friend of dubious sexuality. I’d tell you their names, but they really don’t matter. There’s also Voodoo Granddaughter, who is the granddaughter of the Voodoo priestess (and a dishwasher at the drive-thru).
We also meet Ray, the creepy-looking gas-station attendant who’s the father of Angst Boy’s best friend (and by “father,” I mean “sperm donor,” as Ray hasn’t taken any responsibility for him) and the Voodoo Priestess, packing her snakes into a car.
After the drive-thru closes, Angst Boy drives after Final Girl (who was commuting by bicycle), and confronts her about Harvard. After a few minutes of angst, Ray stops by and chews out Angst Boy over parking his car in the middle of the road. Sure enough, Voodoo Priestess drives by and ends up swerving her car into the lake. When Ray attempts to save her, a bunch of venomous snakes escape from a bag in the car and bite him to death.
I want to pause at this point to note that at no point does anyone say, “It’s a Shame about Ray.”
Anyway, Ray is taken the morgue. Voodoo Granddaughter, on hearing about the snakes, freaks out and heads to Grandma’s house. Everyone else goes their separate ways.
Overnight, Ray, now possessed by the spirits of some nasty killers, wakes up and kills the coroner and Method Man (who spends about ten minutes in this movie as whatever passes for local law enforcement). He also takes back his truck.
The next day, Shoplifter and her buddy decide to head to a mall, and stop at Ray’s gas station en route (because everything there is free, naturally, what with the proprietor being dead). While Shoplifter rifles through the cash register, Shoplifter’s Best Friend heads to the back of the garage to find a bathroom, and she is never seen alive again.
Incidentally, Shoplifter’s Best Friend is the fourth straight black character to die (out of a total of five in both the movie and the town). I honestly don’t know if there was anything intentional here, but it does strike me as a little odd.
Getting back to the plot, Shoplifter searches for her best friend, and eventually finds her body strung up in the garage. Soon enough, Ray dispatches Shoplifter, using a combination of an auto life, a sandblaster, and a lot of luck.
We get a wee bit more character development, and then Final Girl and a bunch of her friends decide to check in on Voodoo Granddaughter. They get a little bit of exposition (we learn that Voodoo Priestess would take the souls of the nastiest killers around and store them in snakes, because, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time), and we also learn that the house has a spell on it, and evil can’t enter without a search warrant****.
Just as the friends are leaving to go warn folks about Ray, guess who shows up? The kids run back inside, but Ray stabs Possibly Gay Guy in the foot (going right through the porch steps), and then kills him after the others have gotten to safety.
The safety of the house doesn’t last long, as Ray soon uses a metal chain to drag his son out of the house (eventually stabbing him), and later comes up with the novel idea of using the tow truck to tear down a wall of the house and pull out some more victims (including Voodoo Granddaughter).
Eventually, we’re down to Angst Boy, Final Girl, and Hot Best Friend, the latter of whom gets killed when Ray (driving his pick-up) grabs her out of the car, and both the car and the pickup truck drive with her stuck between them. Alas, this makes it very hard for her to avoid obstacles.
Our final two do the usual running around and hiding bit, and eventually both end up hiding out in the mausoleum that Ray is using as a hiding space*****. To hide from Ray, they jump into a large sarcophagus and pretend to be two more of Ray’s victims. Ray somehow figures out that Angst Boy is there (but not Final Girl), and stabs him in the head right in front of Final Girl.
Final Girl eventually has the usual run-and-fight confrontation with Ray, which eventually ends with Ray dying on top of his pickup truck. But wait! Out of the dead body come the snakes! Even though the snakes that bit Ray were never inside him! And they lunge towards the camera! Oh no!
Technically, Venom doesn’t suck any more than Scarecrow Gone Wild. But theatrical releases that suck this much have fewer excuses than straight-to-video crap. Jim Gillespie (who pioneered the groundbreaking cinematic technique of holding a camera in the air pointing straight down Jennifer Love Hewett’s cleavage in I Know What You Did Last Summer) walks through the motions here. He's not helped by a cast of nigh-talentless mediocrities (including Jonathan Jackson, the guy who was deemed too wooden an actor to play Anakin Skywalker). The screenwriters include two folks who have focused mostly on videogame scripts, as well as Brandon “Wicker Park” Boyce, presumably brought in as a script doctor******.
Overall, avoid this one. Nothing worth seeing here.
*Except for those issues in which Venom was a hero**
**And yes, I know that Scorpion is now Venom***.
***And I also know that The Green Goblin is technically Spidey’s worst enemy, okay? Although I'd suggest that, in light of the job he's done on the book, J. Michael Straczynski is a close second.
****Okay, it can’t enter even with a search warrant.
*****Yes, he hangs out at his garage and at the cemetery. Everyone needs a backup hideout.
******Consider this malpractice.