movie rant
Jul. 11th, 2021 07:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyWe'll circle back to the big 4-0 debacle later. Instead let's discuss one of the things that let me down for the birthday:
Fear Street 1994.
Before we get into spoiler territory, let me just say that I was always more of a Pike fangirl than a Stine fan, but I did appreciate having both options and the idea of Fear Street was fab. I will easily put the Cheerleaders trilogy above almost any of Pike's later stuff and sweet mother of fluff, I loved the art for a LOT of the earlier books even if the stories didn't always work for me. In my circles, Pike came out ahead by a large margin, but in general, I definitely remember Fear Street books circling way more. Possibly because there were just so many more of them but who knows. I definitely remember the book fair in 6th grade and how Prom Queen dominated it. You could buy temporary coolness when the book orders came in if you happened to have picked the right Stine book (didn't have to be Fear Street) and were open to letting people borrow it. It was a strange and wondrous time, truly.
So when I read they were doing a Fear Street trilogy, I was excited. And then scared.
I went cold turkey on Stine's stuff whenever he put out Superstitious, which was his adult book. I bought it and made it as far as the cat torture and then slammed the book closed and did not read another new Stine book again. A shame since I believe I was in a class where we had the entire period (an hour and a half) to read and I probably hit that scene ten minutes into class. Alas. I loved his absolute disdain for the idea that Harry Potter brought kids back to reading for the first time since, I dunno, Nancy Drew or something, because as we've just finished talking about, kids were reading the absolute fuck out of his Fear Street and Goosebumps books and anyone who tells you otherwise is either a liar, wrong, or happened to exist in a pocket of the world that wasn't part of the wave.
But Stine always worked best for me when he had limits as I am a wimp and I need limits to how gross something is going to get, okay? I liked horror movies in general and in theory til they all decided to go torture porn (no) and it's been awhile since I watched any because I also prefer to watch with someone and there's no one to watch them with anymore.
Still. FEAR STREET. On a budget that was meant to go to theaters, people! I wanted it to be good or so bad it circled back to good. Hell, anything but boring and I might be okay.
Oof.
Seriously, the spoilers are going to kick in right now.
R
i
g
h
t
N
o
w
.
The first part of the movie with the Fear Street books on prominent display just made me want crisp, new covers of the old books and also I wished we'd gotten the Cheerleaders arc as our movie, but I did cackle at the nod. Alas... the rest of the movie was bogged down by one very big problem:
I did not give a flying fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck about the final girls. We had five characters: Deena and her ex, Sam, Deena's brother Josh, and Deena's best friends Simon and Kate. We had two and a half personalities for the five of them, and if you watched the trailer at all you knew Sam was a girl and thus the freakin' lead-up to them revealing that was just painfully pointless. I can only assume that someone, somewhere, decided we absolutely could not have a bury your gays moment and this extended plot armor to Deena and Sam, and hey, don't kill the black kids, Josh got some plot armor, too, while Deena got a double dose. Alas, the two personalities were not given to Deena or Sam. Sam didn't even get a bit of personality to, while Deena did occasionally have moments of, I dunno, spitfire? Josh was meant to be the brains of how to make it out alive but I could never figure out how old he was supposed to be and this meant some of his scenes were... weird?
Seriously, I don't know if I'm just too old for this movie as all the kids felt REALLY young, or too old for horror (possible) or if the writers just dropped the fucking ball because Kate and Simon had personalities and they died (Kate's was especially gruesome) and I just did not fucking caaaaaaaaaare about Sam at all. I know horror movies hinge on people doing stupid ass shit but why, oh why, after going to the trouble of figuring out that the supernatural killers were coming after Sam's blood and making sure none of the others had a speck of it on them, did they abandon that idea and anoint themselves with it as they hid in the fucking grocery store? WHY. If the point was to keep the killers from zeroing in on Sam til Plan 2 was complete, why not just have her bleed on things and drop them around town? Why not head over to Sunnyvale where nothing bad ever happens and Sam fucking lived? WHY stay in the one town you KNOW is going to keep trying to kill you once you've gotten on its radar? If they hadn't had a ride, I'd accept that maaaaaaaaaybe. But they stole an ambulance and used it to get around allllllllllll night. So no. Head your ass out of town. Hell, try and get blocked by the undead horde. Have the car break down. Something. Jesus.
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd at the end we have to twist it so they didn't even really win because we gotta make sure people tune in the parts 2 and 3.
I hate it when the final girl(s) are just the weakest part of the entire movie and Sam, Sam was not worth dying over. Justice for Kate.
Oh, and the music choices and how they were used were um... why.
Fear Street 1994.
Before we get into spoiler territory, let me just say that I was always more of a Pike fangirl than a Stine fan, but I did appreciate having both options and the idea of Fear Street was fab. I will easily put the Cheerleaders trilogy above almost any of Pike's later stuff and sweet mother of fluff, I loved the art for a LOT of the earlier books even if the stories didn't always work for me. In my circles, Pike came out ahead by a large margin, but in general, I definitely remember Fear Street books circling way more. Possibly because there were just so many more of them but who knows. I definitely remember the book fair in 6th grade and how Prom Queen dominated it. You could buy temporary coolness when the book orders came in if you happened to have picked the right Stine book (didn't have to be Fear Street) and were open to letting people borrow it. It was a strange and wondrous time, truly.
So when I read they were doing a Fear Street trilogy, I was excited. And then scared.
I went cold turkey on Stine's stuff whenever he put out Superstitious, which was his adult book. I bought it and made it as far as the cat torture and then slammed the book closed and did not read another new Stine book again. A shame since I believe I was in a class where we had the entire period (an hour and a half) to read and I probably hit that scene ten minutes into class. Alas. I loved his absolute disdain for the idea that Harry Potter brought kids back to reading for the first time since, I dunno, Nancy Drew or something, because as we've just finished talking about, kids were reading the absolute fuck out of his Fear Street and Goosebumps books and anyone who tells you otherwise is either a liar, wrong, or happened to exist in a pocket of the world that wasn't part of the wave.
But Stine always worked best for me when he had limits as I am a wimp and I need limits to how gross something is going to get, okay? I liked horror movies in general and in theory til they all decided to go torture porn (no) and it's been awhile since I watched any because I also prefer to watch with someone and there's no one to watch them with anymore.
Still. FEAR STREET. On a budget that was meant to go to theaters, people! I wanted it to be good or so bad it circled back to good. Hell, anything but boring and I might be okay.
Oof.
Seriously, the spoilers are going to kick in right now.
R
i
g
h
t
N
o
w
.
The first part of the movie with the Fear Street books on prominent display just made me want crisp, new covers of the old books and also I wished we'd gotten the Cheerleaders arc as our movie, but I did cackle at the nod. Alas... the rest of the movie was bogged down by one very big problem:
I did not give a flying fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck about the final girls. We had five characters: Deena and her ex, Sam, Deena's brother Josh, and Deena's best friends Simon and Kate. We had two and a half personalities for the five of them, and if you watched the trailer at all you knew Sam was a girl and thus the freakin' lead-up to them revealing that was just painfully pointless. I can only assume that someone, somewhere, decided we absolutely could not have a bury your gays moment and this extended plot armor to Deena and Sam, and hey, don't kill the black kids, Josh got some plot armor, too, while Deena got a double dose. Alas, the two personalities were not given to Deena or Sam. Sam didn't even get a bit of personality to, while Deena did occasionally have moments of, I dunno, spitfire? Josh was meant to be the brains of how to make it out alive but I could never figure out how old he was supposed to be and this meant some of his scenes were... weird?
Seriously, I don't know if I'm just too old for this movie as all the kids felt REALLY young, or too old for horror (possible) or if the writers just dropped the fucking ball because Kate and Simon had personalities and they died (Kate's was especially gruesome) and I just did not fucking caaaaaaaaaare about Sam at all. I know horror movies hinge on people doing stupid ass shit but why, oh why, after going to the trouble of figuring out that the supernatural killers were coming after Sam's blood and making sure none of the others had a speck of it on them, did they abandon that idea and anoint themselves with it as they hid in the fucking grocery store? WHY. If the point was to keep the killers from zeroing in on Sam til Plan 2 was complete, why not just have her bleed on things and drop them around town? Why not head over to Sunnyvale where nothing bad ever happens and Sam fucking lived? WHY stay in the one town you KNOW is going to keep trying to kill you once you've gotten on its radar? If they hadn't had a ride, I'd accept that maaaaaaaaaybe. But they stole an ambulance and used it to get around allllllllllll night. So no. Head your ass out of town. Hell, try and get blocked by the undead horde. Have the car break down. Something. Jesus.
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd at the end we have to twist it so they didn't even really win because we gotta make sure people tune in the parts 2 and 3.
I hate it when the final girl(s) are just the weakest part of the entire movie and Sam, Sam was not worth dying over. Justice for Kate.
Oh, and the music choices and how they were used were um... why.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-07-23 11:46 am (UTC)I can't be sure that a good chunk of my annoyance for the movie isn't due to them offing Kate. :P For Simon I found him annoying for most of the movie and by the end I'd warmed up to him. If they'd killed him sooner, I don't think I'd have been as annoyed, but maybe since the line about him working there to take care of his family managed to actually land.
If we'd gotten a little more Deena not focused on Sam time (which we kinda do in the third), I'd like her more. Or maybe I'd have liked her more if Sam were more interesting. Something, movie. Just gimme something.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-07-23 05:14 pm (UTC)Haven't watched 1666 yet, but soon!