Anthology Schmanthology: Fun Size Horror: Volume One (2015)

Fun Size Horror: Volume One (2015)
Various directors (20 short films)

I often have a hard time tackling anthology films. It is difficult for me to accept shifting directorial styles within what is supposed to be thought of as a conceptually bound set of films. This is especially true if there is a really strong short up front that makes me wish that the more substandard ones that follow didn't take the earlier film as an example. This is a ridiculous thought, of course, because these films are not (in the vast majority of cases) churned out on an assembly line, nor can quality – and especially an instant classic – be triggered automatically whenever one wishes. Even the greatest directors have their small (and sometimes major) misfires.

In recent years, the anthology flick has made a strong comeback with titles like The ABCs of Death and V/H/S becoming quite popular amongst the horror aficionados. None of the titles have really captured my attention thoroughly, but I chalk this up more to the hit-or-miss nature of these affairs than anything else. It's just the way things go. If you take any famous anthology series, such as The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, while there may have been a very high bar set for excellence in the series overall, every once in a while, you ran across an episode that was only so-so. This is true of most television series, but in a weekly series where the characters recur each episode, you can gloss over a dud episode a little easier than an anthology. In an anthology, each new film starts from square one and works forward, and usually has little or no connection to previous stories. It has to stand on its own, but it is still going to be identified with that which preceded it in the collection.

It is for this reason that I had to adopt a new strategy when watching anthologies. I couldn't just watch them straight through and let the entire piece wash over me, because in most cases, none of the films really have anything to do with the others. There might be an overarching theme that the producers draped over the proceedings to make it look as it there were a common theme, but I have to watch them as individual short films and judge them that way. It is much the same way that I watch collections of cartoons. It's not the collection that is important, but the individual films.

And so it shall be with the first volume of Fun Size Horror, a creepy little anthology that came out last year and which is playing currently on platforms like Hulu and Amazon for the Halloween season. No really big names in this, though favorites of mine like Lance Reddick and John Ennis do show up briefly, Fun Size Horror takes its name to heart, delivering chunks of dark devilry each no more than a few short minutes in length. Enough time to take a good, bloody bite and move on to the next one.

To stay true to my word, I am going to assign each short piece a temporary rating based on how it came off for me independent of the others. Then I will average out the ratings, and modify the result (only slightly) based on how all of the shorts played together as a collection. It might not seem fair since they don't seem designed to play off each other (and they aren't), but Fun Size Horror was released as a collection, so the final rating will be in how it played that way.

There are twenty shorts in this 85-minute feature:

When They Say You're Alone 
Dir.: Grant Olin
Rating: 6/9
Kind of a pretentious start, though I know these weren't planned to go in a certain order. This one certainly hits the "creepy" factor, as it would be hard for any of us to fall asleep if we knew for certain that things like this might occur when we were at our most vulnerable. I like director Grant Olin's (who did the animated opening for the collection as well) use of time lapse and the lack of any dialogue, and those strange sticky flowers are a nice detail. A nice way to tell a story with the briefest of information but still squeeze every inch out of the visuals. Very simple but effective.

Knock Knock
Dir.: Anthony Lund
Rating: 5/9
An asthmatic kid attempts to do battle with a monster in his closet but loses his sword on the way. This one is really built around its final shot, which is fine, I guess, but leaves the clip a little dull and a little standard. So much more could have been done with this and it left me pretty cold. Not bad, and fairly well shot... just generic.

Happy Birthday
Dir.: Erin Stegeman
Rating: 6/9
I am kind of wrestling with this one in my head. It's solid "sick" humor of the sort in which E.C. Comics specialized and its nice to see it practiced in these politically correct times. However, the "sick" punchline involves puppies, which does make Mr. Animal Rescue me a tad squeamish, so consider this a warning if you don't want to see such a joke taken a little too far. (Don't worry... as far as I know no actual puppies were harmed, but I would not be all that upset if I found out if a certain overly precocious child actor got really horrid nightmares from the experience.) There are a couple of dialogue lines and details in the party that do not ring true given the outcome, so it almost ruins the party for me upon reflection. It should be acknowledged, however, that they do go for the comically gruesome in this one, and I do appreciate that. (By the way, the dog that plays the "puppy" is almost a dead ringer for my beloved dog Trouble when I was a kid.)

Entity
Dir.: Matthew May
Rating: 4/9
A guy helps two girls move into a new place, but the lights are out. For whatever reason, they end up looking in the attic with flashlights and find a creepy doll. Soon, they hear a thump, and then weird stuff starts happening in quick order. The three actors actually aren't bad, and almost make you want to settle into a longer story with them, but then it is over before it even started. As for the scary stuff... move on, please. That aspect is not even worth further mentioning except to say it is thoroughly bland, though in line with current tastes. Tastes that are not mine at all, I'm afraid.

Bad Eggs
Dir.: Max Isaacson
Rating: 6/9
A very silly sight gag that kind of works, especially in the payoff of what comes out of where. Señor Wences-type humor taken to the Lovecraftian level (but, you know, without the ventriloquist in sight, thereby making it mere puppetry). It feels the sort of thing that might have shown up in something like Spike and Mike's back in the '80s if it had just been animated instead. Very slight and sophomoric, but I rather wish that I had thought of it.

The Screaming
Dir.: Dick Grunert
Rating: 5/9
I really hate the final shot on this one, but I am having a hard time discerning just why. I just know that I don't like it. Until then, this mostly dialogue-free quickie is based around the notion of a "chain" horror, that quickly seems to cascade closer and closer to the person perceiving a certain sound but trying to understand the possible (?) growing terror. It's an interesting concept that I wish were handled better in its closing.

Persephone
Dir.: Lisa J. Dooley
Rating: 6/9
On a personal level, I was instantly on a protective edge with this short because the title is also the name given by two of my friends to their recently born daughter. Strange how we react that way to something as simple as a name. And I haven't even met the baby yet. Outside of that, this is a mostly successful short that follows the efforts of a young woman to free herself of a coffin. She's not the Bride in Kill Bill, but she still has to figure a way out. But will it be enough if she does? A decent payoff and acting in this one.

Voice
Dir.: Mali Elfman
Rating: 3/9
Either this one is a clever spoof of a community theatre acting workshop or it's actually a short play developed in a community theatre acting workshop that was put onto film that never should have been. I am going with the latter scenario. Awful acting from the beginning took me straight out of the only barely interesting premise. I mean, really subpar "I don't know what to do with my hands" acting. This is a shame, because the director is the daughter of Danny Elfman (she also has a small role in Persephone and is a producer on other shorts), and one of the actresses is Diva Zappa. Because of these factors, I gave Voice another shot – and yet another shot – and it still came up short for me. Ugh. Easily my least favorite of the lot.

Somebody's Watching You
Dir.: Ben Rekhi
Rating: 4/9
A reality show with murderous consequences, from which we are always about fourteen seconds away in real life anyway. I was willing to go along with this for a little bit, however staid the idea already is to me. The forced drama does ring true to what we expect from such shows, but that doesn't mean that I want to see it replicated onscreen. Didn't want to see such phoniness the first time, why do I need to see someone double down on it in an even falser version? Drama, drama, drama, drama, drama... splat. Done.

Trust
Dir.: Jerry Pyle
Rating: 6/9
I was loving this short for the first five-sixths of it, and thought it was well shot and the reactions of the two actors to each other were divine. It was, to this point, the first time in the film where I was genuinely thinking that someone was on the way to a great short... but then the final gag failed me. It didn't kill the film, because I knew that was exactly where the film was meant to go from the start. I just wish it had cleverness to match the wit of the rest of the short to that point. A really nice try, though the final gag knocked my rating down a peg.

The Lover
Dir.: Anisa Qureshi
Rating: 7/9
And then The Lover showed up next and showed 'em how its done. Probably the best composed cinematography of the lot thus far. A much better showcase for Mali Elfman, who is extremely effective and believable here as the spurned girlfriend who slightly self-destructively seeks to clear her life of all traces of her former lover. A really evocative character piece with a great ending.

The Creepy Fucking Kid in Apartment B
Dir.: Eric Pereira
Rating: 7/9
For the truly fun and original, turn to this one. The little psychic kid hanging around next door is indeed creepy, but not so creepy as what he portends. This is the first one that got a genuine "aha" moment out of me, though I wish the ultimate payoff were handled a little more deftly. It's another example of what used to be called "sick" humor, but the less said about the details, the better for your enjoyment.

A Dog and His Boy
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 5/9
When I saw the title, I immediately thought of Harlan Ellison's controversial short story (and its subsequent cult classic film) A Boy and His Dog. My first guess was that Mr. Pinheiro had not read Harlan Ellison, given that this short is similar in ultimate outcome, albeit without the post-apocalyptic trappings. Then my second guess is that Mr. Pinheiro was at least made aware of Ellison and his litigious tendencies, and so transposed the title elements thusly. But this film is not about Ellison at all. It's a tribute to an entirely different source, one that I won't reveal here. Does it work? Well, I have some serious problems with the hows and whys of what occurs late in the film, and how even the location plays into those hows and whys. On the tribute and black humor levels, it almost works. But not quite.

Quad
Dir.: Ali Presley Paras
Rating: 6/9
No, it's not about a slasher in a wheelchair who has a murderous mind-meld with his helper dog Rottweiler. Four characters and four camera angles. You would think four different POV, but you would be wrong... almost. A pretty inventive short, based around three friends watching a slasher flick – and a secretive love triangle to boot – while something is wandering about the house around them. Because I have been rewatching The Wild, Wild West series recently, the images of the split screens constantly changing and sometimes combining reminded me of that show's graphics for going to and coming back from commercials. A packed little film that is actually a nice addition to the slasher canon. I don't know if it would work as a longer film, but for an experiment, it's pretty cool.

Let Me Go
Dir.: Glen Murakami
Rating: 6/9
This one gets the Super Overly Arty award for this movie. Gorgeously shot, though the effect comes off suited more for a Chanel No. 5 ad than an horror anthology. I almost wish that this dialogue-free piece were done fully as a silent film of the old school, because some of its imagery is entirely suited to the style. It's a lovely piece, but it is as ethereal as its ghostly female lead, and wisps away from the mind in direct contrast to how she doesn't depart from the mind of her former lover.

Mother
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 7/9
Ooh, boy... I like this one. So, if you were expecting a baby, and the ultrasound revealed a whole bunch of spiders inside you instead, how do you think you would act? And what do you think would happen to your mate? That's what I thought. Very quick and very different, but the creepiest film in the entire bunch, especially if my wife were to have watched it (which she never would). Nice job, Mr. Pinheiro. (Don't worry, he's going to show up one more time here.)

Evil Voices Lie
Dir.: Grant Olin
Rating: 5/9
Someone watches a videotape of a man being interviewed who had been the captive of a famous serial killer. But something strange is happening during the tape. A very odd piece, and I honestly don't have much of an opinion on it. The film almost seems like it is a clip out of a longer piece, which may be its intent, but I don't really have an angle on this one. I may have to watch it again.

Paramnesia
Dir.: Michael May
Rating: 5/9
This one is far more ambitious but also more pretentious than director May's other short (Entity), and it is nicely shot for the most part. Once again, though, stiff acting undoes some of its effect, and there is just not enough here overall to really intrigue me.  

Bitter
Dir.: Ned Ehrbar
Rating: 6/9
A comedy short that at first seems like it has a nice reference to Richard Bachman (i.e. Stephen King) when one character seems to mockingly curse another much larger character with the word "Thinner" at the very beginning of the film. Then we discover it is a battle of two witches who each use single (or near single) word curses ending in "-er" at each other: the title word "bitter," "liver," "Hitler," with generally comic results in most cases. My favorite is "The Millers" and then the other character discovers to her horror that her entire DVR is now filled with nothing but recordings of the movie "The Millers". (I guess somebody had it in for that film; I still haven't seen it, but I like the joke.) Very light but a nice tonic after so much darkness.

Mr. Hendrix
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 5/9
Another monster in the closet tale, this time with a scared kid who enlists his parents to check out the fiend. When the kid mentions that the boogeyman goes by the name Mr. Hendrix, this triggers bad memories for the father, who encounter the boogeyman in his youth. For me, this short is enhanced briefly by the presence of John Ennis (from Mr. Show) who plays the father's dad in a flashback, and the acting is solid throughout, even by the kid. But it is just too predictable a riff on previous work with the boogeyman character, including Stephen King's.

The Collection
Dir.: Josh C. Waller
Rating: 7/9
The director of Raze (the female fighting film, which I thought was a solid drive-in-style film, starring Zoe Bell) helms this short, which features Fringe's Lance Reddick as a professional photographer who has an agenda that goes beyond being merely sleazy. It turns out he has an antique camera that takes a "special kind of picture"... but what type of picture would that be? That's what innocent models with their eyes wide shut are for, silly... As far as a polished, finished piece goes, this one is aces.

And don't forget to sit through the credits...

Overall TC4P Rating: 6/9
The twenty films averaged out to 5.3 for me overall, but in discarding the films that I rated as "5", which is my middle rating, it turns out I enjoyed more of these films (11 films rated as "6" or "7") than I actively disliked (only 3 films rated as "3" or "4"). I am greatly surprised by this, as I honestly expected to dislike and even outright hate more of them. As a viewing experience, I have to rate this film a small success, and bump its rating up to a "6" overall, which is "good" on my personal ratings chart. I hope that Volume Two, which I will be reviewing in the coming weeks, will turn out so well.

RTJ

Recently Rated Movies: Catching Up with Christopher Lee (the actor, not my brother…) Pt. 7

After a solid month of Halloween-oriented posts, it is time to return to the regular departments on The Cinema 4 Pylon. This time, we have three more wildly diverse films featuring the late, great Christopher Lee, as I attempt to see as many titles in his filmography as possible. 

Sherlock Holmes and the Incident at Victoria Falls (1992)

Dir: Bill Corcoran

TC4P Rating: 5

Over 25 years after his first effort to portray the famed Sherlock Holmes on screen was basically squandered by a German movie studio, Christopher Lee got a second (and third) shot at wearing the deerstalker cap in a pair of films that played as television movies and then went straight to video. The first film, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady, reintroduces Lee as the detective and Patrick Macnee as his Watson, both in their older years. Macnee was also getting another shot at his role after previously playing the good doctor in Sherlock Holmes in New York, opposite a fairly miscast Roger Moore.

In the second film in this pair, Holmes and Watson take to the Dark Continent under the orders of King Edward (Joss Ackland) to secure the Star of Africa diamond. On this adventure, they will end up cavorting with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt (a pretty good Claude Akins). The film makes an attempt at incorporating a storyline involving the making of the footage that Roosevelt shot on his journeys through Africa in the early days of cinema. Naturally, the diamond gets stolen, and as bodies start piling up, Holmes and Watson need to come to the rescue (with just a little bit of help of ol' Teddy himself).

While Lee and Macnee are pretty decent in their roles as the aging heroes, and Incident at Victoria Falls is nowhere near as bad as Lee's first Holmes attempt (1962's Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, discussed briefly here), the direction by Bill Corcoran is fairly by the book and a little dull, and it is not surprising to learn that the series of films was stopped after this one. It's a shame they didn't attempt a regular TV series instead, with briefer episodes, so we might have gotten a little bit more of this combo and let them stretch into the roles a little bit. It's a shame we never got a good Holmes film with Lee in his prime, as he may have been terrific in the original stories. Sadly, we will never know for sure.

Mask of Murder (1985)
Dir: Arne Mattsson
TC4P Rating: 4

"Psychiatrists have already taken a good look at him, and they can't make up their minds whether his problem is in his head or his balls." - Chief Superintendent Jonathan Rich (Christopher Lee)

Some creep wearing a sack with holes cut in it and a lipstick mouth commits a series of grisly straight razor murders of female victims one day, but is soon trapped by the police, led by Christopher Lee and Rod Taylor. Holed up on a snowy farm, the killer injures Lee, but is shot to pieces and dies. And with his death goes the string of murders. Or does it? 

Mask of Murder is directed by Swedish film veteran Arne Mattsson, and was filmed in Uppsala, Sweden rather than the "small town in Canada - Nelson" it purports to be via a brief subtitle at the beginning of the film. If you are unaware (or don't care), Uppsala is the hometown of film giant Ingmar Bergman, though there is absolutely no relationship between his justly revered oeuvre and this cheap, savage film to have been made there. (A trivial note, and nothing more.)

The series of murders pick up again not long after, and the film goes to no real great lengths at all to hide who is behind them. I will leave that to the viewer to discover, but when you watch the film, there can be no other choice. In the meantime, we get a lot of relationship/adultery drama between Taylor and Valerie Perrine, who plays his wife. Perrine has the best role in the film, and while I am not really a fan of hers, I did enjoy her in this one. She and Lee seem to be the only ones really engaged in their roles.

Mask of Murder has some gory parts (and not really all that well turned) and it also features the requisite '80s softcore nudity and strip club scenes. The winter backdrop of the town is a nice change from most films of this type, and lends an extra layer of atmosphere, even if the actors need to wear an extra layer or two of clothing. The vibe in the murder scenes is a bit eerie, and from the opening sequence of murders we can tell this is not going to go the normal slasher movie route. But that doesn't mean it goes anywhere really remarkable either. It looks like a horror film, but actually gets bogged down in the sort of territory that you would have seen Andrew Stevens directing and starring in at the beginning of the '90s. (There is even cheesy synthesizer music playing over the love scenes.) If only Shannon Tweed would show up to make it all look a little nicer.


The Keeper (1976)
Dir: T.Y. Drake
TC4P Rating: 4

"Now, whatever you do, don't let him hypnotize you!"

The Keeper is by far the most interesting film of the three I am including in this post, and that is by a long shot. Let me warn you at the outset, it's not good -- in fact, it's the worst film of the three -- but also the most interesting and least dull of the lot.

Written and directed by T.Y. Drake (who used to perform on The Andy Williams Show as a Good Time Singer), this low-budget Canadian effort stars Christopher Lee as The Keeper, a mysterious figure who runs a mental institution in what we are told is British Columbia in 1947. There are half-hearted attempts to convince us that the film takes place 29 years before it was filmed: jazz on the soundtrack, a tough guy detective in a trenchcoat (believe it or not, the dick's name really is Dick, as in Richard "Dick" Driver), fast-paced tough guy talk, period cars, and most hilarious of all, a totally out-of-place shoeshine boy working on a mostly barren, leaf-strewn avenue who dispenses helpful advice (this kid seems to shine shoes all hours). But none of it works at all to take us out of whatever present we are in when we watch it.

Dick Driver is trying to get to the bottom of a mystery involving the wealthy patients being "kept" in the Keeper's asylum. "I'm only a custodial physician. Patients here call me the Keeper," insists the crippled, older man Lee portrays, but there is clearly something else at play here. His obsession with hypnotherapy may provide a clue, since he seems to be able to trick any visitors to the institution into being hypnotized before they leave. When visitors leave the institution, they seem to bite the dust, leaving large inheritances directly to their relatives inside the Keeper's institution.

And so we get wild, psychedelic scenes of never-ending spirals, flashing lights, and images of attacking dogs, spinning watches, and subliminal spiders, as the Keeper tries to control his subjects to his truly undisguised nefarious ends. Practically everyone in the film undergoes hypnosis at some point, and with everybody under his influence, it would take a major misstep for the Keeper to be brought down. Hmmm... I wonder what it will be?

We also get the bumbling interference of a police inspector, who besides getting tripped up by some mild slapstick, also gets hypnotized into thinking he is a choo-choo train, which is the most over-the-top sequence in the film (at least until the final shot of Lee at film's end). Though the actor (his name is unimportant) looks more like Harold Peary, who played the Great Gildersleeve, the police inspector kept reminding me of classic porn star John Leslie throughout the film. It was probably the weird mustache he wears that did it, as it is similar to the one that Leslie wore in a number of films. It's strange that I made this connection, because my mind created another link to '70s porn when I heard the private eye's name was Dick Driver. I could not help thinking that with a slight change in location, this script, inane as it is, could have been used in a Johnny Wadd film.

Now there's a job offer Christopher Lee probably would not have accepted in his very prolific decade of the 1970s.

Thankfully, She Is Not the FINAL Final Girl…

Final Girl (2015)
Dir: Tyler Shields
TC4P Rating: 4/9

I first heard that a film bearing the title "Final Girl" was in production a few years ago. The slightest research finds press releases from 2012 that hit the internet announcing such a project, and that jibes with my general memory. I thought at the time that if the film held tight to the implications of such a title -- that of a genre effort commenting on the post-ironic notion of a "final" surviving heroine amidst serial killer carnage -- that the film could prove most interesting, or at least fun. 

And then Final Girl, at least in my encounters online, laid low for a good while. As a result, it went off my radar to a degree, but every now and then I would get around to checking IMDb for a status update on the project. Each check-in would bring added confusion. Yes, Final Girl was still being made, but filming was just now getting underway. The movie was completed, but now there is another production called The Final Girls being planned. Final Girl was set to come out, but then no, it's not. The Final Girls is in production, but why hasn't Final Girl come out? Has it been shelved? How bad is it? Then, Final Girl was set to come later in 2015 on DVD and online. But, suddenly The Final Girls was coming out on both platforms as well? I gotta sit down...

Adding more confusion was the fact that one actor, Alexander Ludwig, stars as one of the male leads in both films. Different producers, directors and writers... same guy in both films with very similar titles (but not necessarily themes). Then came news of a television show in production for fall 2015 called Scream Queens, which also features Oscar-winning actress Abigail Breslin, who just so happens to be the star of Final Girl, the film starting all of this. What was going on? Had the universe imploded?

I will get to the other projects later this month. I won't see The Final Girls until later this week, and I am giving Scream Queens a couple more episodes to play out some storylines, before I tackle reviewing them. But I have now seen the first of the films, Final Girl, and you don't have to get too far into the film to see what the delay was. I can now readily admit that I should never have gotten excited for the project in the first place. I wouldn't go so far as to say the film should have been shelved permanently, for I feel any movie production should get a chance to either find its audience or repel it. I am a big one for film "closure," that satisfying sense one gets in accomplishing lists of films, or at least getting to say, "Seen it. Seen it. Seen it. Gotta see it. Seen it," as you run your eyes or index finger down a series of titles. Not getting to at least pay a single visit to Final Girl would be a curse upon my personal methods.

Final Girl employs the now popular term derived from horror films, but is itself not even close to belonging to that genre. It plays on elements from horror, but barely touches on them, and is far more content splitting itself between the action, revenge, and thriller genres at fairly equal levels. The chief problem is that it never really commits to any of them, and the film feels sloppier for it. A film done in such a way can have a ragged charm, especially if it sticks to maintaining a comic tone, but Final Girl has little in the way of any charm at all.

The plot concerns Veronica (Breslin), whose parents died when she was a young girl, and who is adopted by a man named William (Wes Bentley). Having seen his wife and child murdered years earlier, he raises Veronica to become his weapon of revenge upon those who would commit such crimes. After twelve years and a final test involving a drug combination that allows Veronica to confront her core fear (that of failing William so that he must kill her), William gives her a first mission. 

Women are disappearing in a small town, and there is a quartet of young men responsible: leader Jamison (played by Ludwig), Nelson, Shane, and Daniel, four fratboy types who dress perfectly in suits, pick up a blonde girl at a local diner, drive her out to the woods, and then make her run for her life while they hunt down and murder her. (They never stoop to raping their victims, because sexual assault makes it hard for the girls to run properly.) Of course, police investigation is non-existent (the number of victims is cited variously as eleven or 21, so you'd think that would get something started). After so many blonde women in the town have disappeared, I would hope that every remaining blonde would have gone back to their natural hair color or simply hidden under wigs. Veronica sets herself up as the next victim, and the remainder of the film is how she deals with the four murdering assholes.

I will go no further with plot details so as not to spoil anything for those who do wish to view the film as I did. But it will not ruin the rest of the movie to say that one of the chief failings of the film is in establishing that it takes place anywhere believable. I guess the film is supposed to be in the late 1950s owing to the cars, fashion, and music, but simply using an old diner as your one solid set design (apart from the campfire couches in the forest) really did not make me believe in the story any more. Having one of the frat jerks dancing and lip-syncing (badly) to rockabilly music while he combs his hair in celebratory foreplay over getting to kill another girl that evening only brought me sincere doubts that the actor had ever heard that type of music before.

The mailbox baseball game the boys play with Veronica as they drive about only points out how ill-conceived the film is. After watching one of the boys use a baseball bat to demolish, in succession, a mailbox and a signpost on the side of the road, Veronica is given her turn. Her first attempt is meant to look weak (she is now a trained assassin... supposedly), but her second attempt totally smashes the sign to pieces and impresses the boys greatly. The problem is that Breslin seems to have Muppet arms in this film, and her second swing has no greater power to it than the first one -- in fact, neither appears to even be actual swings, but just mere placements of the bat out of the window. In real life, her attempts would either have her ending up with broken wrists, having the bat ripped out of her hands, or both. I know it is not really fair to compare movie actions to real life ones, or all films would die ignoble deaths, but in this case, it just emphasized how little the makers considered many of the details in their film.

I am fine with Breslin's acting in this film; it is in her physical performance where she seems just so wrong for the piece. There is just no force at all behind the blows she is pretending to give, and so her action scenes (and the second half of the film is filled with them; luckily, her stunt double is far more convincing) just all fall so flat. The back half is supposed to be especially darkly comic, with the boys engaging Veronica in a too drawn-out game of Truth or Dare, but it is merely dull and obvious. Final Girl also relies too heavily on the use of the hallucinations of the drug combo that William not only uses on Veronica, but with which he also supplies her as one of her weapons (but not a gun, no... runs out of bullets, so what good could it be?) The hallucinatory scenes could have proven interesting and fun, if it wasn't clear from the rest of the film that they would come off as forced as everything else.

I cannot say that I am disappointed in Final Girl. It is pretty much what I was expecting, so I guess it was more the concept I was initially excited about when I first heard the title. There was potential in this film, and early on, with the odd relationship between Veronica and William, I thought Final Girl might have gone further abroad in the sense of genuine grindhouse thrills, taking a simple revenge setup and getting crazy with it. That the film is more content with staying tame enough to play on the Family Channel shows you that the wrong people were at the controls.