my turkey day had more ghosts than yours
Nov. 26th, 2010 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyA couple of weeks ago work got in a bunch of previously viewed DVDs. Normally I tend to veer away from them because I'm a snob but when it's 4am and you've got another four hours to kill, you go through the used DVD bin, k?
Found a couple that I bought. Watched the one someone else wanted so I could lend it to them. Wind Chill. I'd never heard of it before. I figured how bad could a movie I'd never heard of be if it had Emily Blunt and George Clooney as a producer? The answer is... complicated for such a simple premise.
Girl needs a ride home to Delaware two days before Christmas. She uses the "ride board" at her college and ends up riding with a guy who, it turns out, has a serious thing for her. She's creeped out quite a bit by his awkwardness, but you don't feel too bad for her since she's a bit of a bitch. Seriously, he's awkward beyond belief. It says something about the actor that he manages to rally so well that by the end of the movie you've kind of got a thing for him. Go figure.
Anyway, after a brief stop at a gas station guy decides to take a shortcut after he's been told to stick to the highway, no less. Girl freaks out because a) what dumbass chooses the snow covered "short cut" over the safety of a highway and b) she's realized he's not who he claims to be. He knows what she looks like in her glasses despite the fact that she doesn't wear them out of her dorm (this is never actually explained. Creepy stalker stalks effectively?) and he's decidedly not from Delaware like he claims.
A car comes out of nowhere and runs them off the road. The crash kills their car and they're left in the middle of nowhere with no one to help them. Girl (no names, people) flips out and he confesses that he lives about ten minutes from school and he read her text messages when in class so that he could set it up to be her ride home. Like I said. Creeparific. She locks him out of the car and he walks back to the gas station.
Bad things ensue. While alone, she sees people out in the woods. We follow him briefly and realize he's definitely not quite right.
If you have any desire to see this flick without me totally spoiling it, you're gonna want to check out now.
So. Girl sees a guy with what appears to be wire around his ankles. When she touches him, she's shocked to the point that it burns her mitten clear through to skin. The fact that he spits an eel out makes some sort of sense, I suppose, since the general consensus is that he's been drowned. Girl sees creepy bald guys wandering through the woods. Guy finds their house. Much creepiness is had, but things get jumbled about the time the ghosts start to appear.
I don't have a problem with a stretch of road being haunted by someone, and the villain is presented perfectly well. (Bad cop does bad things.) I don't have a problem with these things being done in loops.
What does get me is that when the guy strikes out against the cop, he gets hurt and they're both immediately transported back to the car. Um, wha? But you go with it and hope it'll make sense towards the end.
It never... really does. He dies and some people seem to have a hard time figuring out when that is. Help finally comes, but we still have to figure things out and... I dunno. It's like someone woke up at the hour mark and realized they had to tie things up soon and things just get really crazy.
It doesn't help that with the radio going kooky I kept waiting for the Winchester boys to appear and fix things.
How did I never hear this before? I mean, yeah, sure, I didn't/don't really follow his solo career but still. You'd think somehow I'd have come across this before. (The song, not necessarily the video.)
Totally unrelated, but someone who shall remain nameless sent me on a bit of a "...dude, remember this song?" thing yesterday. (Happy friggin' Thanksgiving to you, too, dahling.) These little jaunts to the past are never complete until you hit upon Waking Up Beside You. And then I remember the incredible timing of getting a break-up album to come along at the exact same time I was having my heart shattered by someone who had their heart shattered by someone else. He's quoting these lyrics to me mere days after breaking my heart and the kicker is that we both know that for him, the pain is for someone else.
The secondary kicker is that I didn't tell him to fuck off and die. (I'd have been 16 at the time. Telling people to fuck off and die is pretty much the standard response, yes?)
Which isn't to say that Waking Up reminds me of him. That was saved for someone else. But I tend to forget how really good at finding all the sadder songs we used to be, and hell, still are when left unchecked. Except she went country and that's just plain cheating.
So, yeah. I spent my Thanksgiving watching a ghost story movie, looking at random graves via the Nameless One, watching Xena videos set to an assortment of songs (she was on an Ares bender again), and oh yeah, some Stabbing Westward. Good, good times, yes?
Found a couple that I bought. Watched the one someone else wanted so I could lend it to them. Wind Chill. I'd never heard of it before. I figured how bad could a movie I'd never heard of be if it had Emily Blunt and George Clooney as a producer? The answer is... complicated for such a simple premise.
Girl needs a ride home to Delaware two days before Christmas. She uses the "ride board" at her college and ends up riding with a guy who, it turns out, has a serious thing for her. She's creeped out quite a bit by his awkwardness, but you don't feel too bad for her since she's a bit of a bitch. Seriously, he's awkward beyond belief. It says something about the actor that he manages to rally so well that by the end of the movie you've kind of got a thing for him. Go figure.
Anyway, after a brief stop at a gas station guy decides to take a shortcut after he's been told to stick to the highway, no less. Girl freaks out because a) what dumbass chooses the snow covered "short cut" over the safety of a highway and b) she's realized he's not who he claims to be. He knows what she looks like in her glasses despite the fact that she doesn't wear them out of her dorm (this is never actually explained. Creepy stalker stalks effectively?) and he's decidedly not from Delaware like he claims.
A car comes out of nowhere and runs them off the road. The crash kills their car and they're left in the middle of nowhere with no one to help them. Girl (no names, people) flips out and he confesses that he lives about ten minutes from school and he read her text messages when in class so that he could set it up to be her ride home. Like I said. Creeparific. She locks him out of the car and he walks back to the gas station.
Bad things ensue. While alone, she sees people out in the woods. We follow him briefly and realize he's definitely not quite right.
If you have any desire to see this flick without me totally spoiling it, you're gonna want to check out now.
So. Girl sees a guy with what appears to be wire around his ankles. When she touches him, she's shocked to the point that it burns her mitten clear through to skin. The fact that he spits an eel out makes some sort of sense, I suppose, since the general consensus is that he's been drowned. Girl sees creepy bald guys wandering through the woods. Guy finds their house. Much creepiness is had, but things get jumbled about the time the ghosts start to appear.
I don't have a problem with a stretch of road being haunted by someone, and the villain is presented perfectly well. (Bad cop does bad things.) I don't have a problem with these things being done in loops.
What does get me is that when the guy strikes out against the cop, he gets hurt and they're both immediately transported back to the car. Um, wha? But you go with it and hope it'll make sense towards the end.
It never... really does. He dies and some people seem to have a hard time figuring out when that is. Help finally comes, but we still have to figure things out and... I dunno. It's like someone woke up at the hour mark and realized they had to tie things up soon and things just get really crazy.
It doesn't help that with the radio going kooky I kept waiting for the Winchester boys to appear and fix things.
How did I never hear this before? I mean, yeah, sure, I didn't/don't really follow his solo career but still. You'd think somehow I'd have come across this before. (The song, not necessarily the video.)
Totally unrelated, but someone who shall remain nameless sent me on a bit of a "...dude, remember this song?" thing yesterday. (Happy friggin' Thanksgiving to you, too, dahling.) These little jaunts to the past are never complete until you hit upon Waking Up Beside You. And then I remember the incredible timing of getting a break-up album to come along at the exact same time I was having my heart shattered by someone who had their heart shattered by someone else. He's quoting these lyrics to me mere days after breaking my heart and the kicker is that we both know that for him, the pain is for someone else.
The secondary kicker is that I didn't tell him to fuck off and die. (I'd have been 16 at the time. Telling people to fuck off and die is pretty much the standard response, yes?)
Which isn't to say that Waking Up reminds me of him. That was saved for someone else. But I tend to forget how really good at finding all the sadder songs we used to be, and hell, still are when left unchecked. Except she went country and that's just plain cheating.
So, yeah. I spent my Thanksgiving watching a ghost story movie, looking at random graves via the Nameless One, watching Xena videos set to an assortment of songs (she was on an Ares bender again), and oh yeah, some Stabbing Westward. Good, good times, yes?