Why Forrest Gump is Overrated

 

WARNING: THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THIS FILM

Forrest Gump is a film that is loved by many people and is known as a modern classic that is constantly referenced and made fun of. There are many people who love the film, some who say it’s one of their all-time favorites. Some of the people think it’s a great movie, and there are others that just like it. I know that there are people who don’t like it, too, but I am focusing on the fact that it has an 8.8 on IMDb and is #15 on IMDb’s Top 250. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture over The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction, which I think are both better than this. It also won five other Academy Awards including: Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Director, Best Writing (Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published), Best Film Editing, and Best Effects (Visual Effects). I believe it only deserved one of those (Best Film Editing). Anyway, now it’s time to talk about what I think about the film and why this is titled “Why Forrest Gump is Overrated”. I really like the film, but I do not love it. In this I will be covering why I do not love it.

This is a 143 minute (2 hours, 23 minutes) film, so there has to be many plot turns to keep the audience’s attention throughout the entire running time. It does exactly that, but it does it too much. This brings me to my first flaw, the twists and turns.

The script makes Forrest Gump a big figure in history, but it goes too far. By the time Forrest ran all over the country, I got tired of the film. Though, I really think it went too far when he started to gets the business that makes him so wealthy. The film asked us to believe something that would never happen. This took me out of the film and when Forrest ran across the country, I was completely taken out of the film. That is one of the reasons the twists and turns did not work for me. I have another, though.
            When the film turns, it gets a whole new tone and type of dialogue with it, and it does this several times. Not only is the film tonally inconsistent, it starts to seem like these are different stories. In the beginning, Forrest is a little kid, then a teenager, then a young adult, then he’s in the military, then he’s meeting the President, then he’s a professional ping-pong player, etc. Every separate story seems to forget what the film had before.

Because this film jumps randomly to many storylines, it will always have a different tone, and sometimes, pacing. This brings me to next flaw, which is the pacing.

It would be hard to keep this film paced evenly, but this is still a flaw. If it would have been too hard for the filmmakers to do, then they didn’t have to try it. Anyway, what is wrong with the pacing is that it is all over the place. Sometimes the film is incredibly slow and sometimes it is incredibly fast. The film needed to make up its mind of how it needed to be paced instead of constantly switching between being fast-moving and slow-moving.

Because the studios think that we, the viewers, are extremely dumb, they feel the need to add more things than just the 15,000 different stories to keep us entertained. They also need to make the movie the type of movie where the main storyline is our main character talking to someone else, telling them everything that happened, while we see it. This is my third flaw.

For most of the film, this style works, although it is just for our entertainment. But it is hard to believe that these people are listening for about an hour while Forrest goes over random stuff. My real flaw is that about with about 20 to 30 minutes left in the film, we catch up to him. After that, we are no longer in the style of him talking to somebody about what happened in the past, while we see it. This plot turn does not work at all, because the past two hours we had narration to us and we knew we were not caught up. This was yet another thing that took me out of the film in the second half.

The film tries to have real drama and comedy, but they do not mix well. The comedy works, but in what are supposed to be more meaningful parts in the film, it just comes off silly. This brings me to my fourth, and final, flaw: the drama did not work.

This script is not that good. Most of the dialogue does not seem that good and just comes off cheesy. That’s probably why the drama doesn’t work. This is an incredibly cheesy film that does not know how to have good drama. It takes itself too seriously. It is good at being goofy entertainment, but it is not able to be something more, as it is trying to do.

Those are my four biggest flaws with Forrest Gump that I feel weighs the film down and keeps me from loving it. I have other flaws with the film, such as how war was depicted in a comedic way, but those were not very big, so I decided not to include them. The whole film suffers from a few flaws with the script, but what brings the film down the most is the second half. That is when the film goes too far and loses a lot of steam. Though, this is still a really good movie that is very original and mostly very entertaining. I do not hate the film, or even dislike it, at all. I very much like the film. I just do not think it is worthy of Best Picture and its 8.8 on IMDb and its spot at #15 in IMDb’s Top 250. Though, there are ratings I do agree with, and those are the ratings given by critics. I give this film an 8.1/10. Its Metascore is 82/100 and it has 72% Tomato Meter on Rotten Tomatoes. Those are numbers I agree with more.

Her - Analyzed (*SPOILERS*)

WARNING: THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FILM

            After having a lot of time to think about Spike Jonze’s Her, I have points straight and can make an analyzed review of the film. Here, I will go in-depth into what I took from the film and how I looked at it. I will go over different themes the film introduces and what it has to say. If you have not seen the film, even if you do not care about spoilers, reading this would be useless because you will have no idea what I am talking about for most of it. And you might think I am crazy for thinking the film has many things to say, or you might think I am crazy for the things I believe the film says to us, but everyone will view this film differently. I viewed it in a metaphorical way, and I believe that is how it is supposed to be viewed.

            I’ll start with the first shot. We see that our main character is talking (to someone it looks like), while leaning back in a chair. Though, it appears as if he is lying down in a bed. He then says “…50^th anniversary…” and we the audience figure out that he is not talking to anyone. We then see a shot of the computer and realize that his job is writing letters for other people. The theme was immediately introduced through the first two shots. It is the theme of fake and real feelings. We see in this shot that he thinks that he is feeling real feelings and that he is unaware that these feelings are not real at all.

            Over the next few scenes, we see that Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is sad and confused and he has no idea what to do. Then, a few nights later, when he calls into that service of single women that cannot sleep, and it escalates into something very uncomfortable, and he is asked to choke her with a dead cat, we see that he is taken out of it. Before, he thought the feelings were real. Now, he realizes the feelings are fake, so the scene continuously gets weirder and weirder, which it is supposed to do. It is supposed to be uncomfortable. It uses these factors to show us, the audience, that the feelings are definitely fake, and if you think they are real, you will have no idea if they really are real.

            Later, he downloads the operating system and starts to teach Samantha things for a while, but that part is not that important. The next important part is when he goes on a date with Olivia Wilde’s character. The date was very odd and strange, as it was supposed to be. It shows that he is stuck in his fake world again. He thinks that fake feelings are real, so he has no idea what real feelings are. He thinks that they are fake. Therefore, it is very awkward and he has no idea what to do. So after the date, he goes back to Samantha, and we really see that he is feeling fake feelings with her, and thinks they are real.

            A bit later, Theodore meats up with his ex-wife to finally sign the divorce papers. In that scene, they get in a fight and she says that Samantha is perfect for him because he did not have to deal with feeling real feelings for a woman, and that gets under his skin. Later, as he is walking out of his job, talking to someone, he says that they are just letters. That is important because his job is linked parallel to his relationship with Samantha. When he knows that they are job letters at the job, he realizes the feelings with Samantha are fake, and vise versa. Because of that, people might say that the fight Theodore has with Samantha later is unnecessary. I argue that it is necessary, because I do not think many people noticed that she did mimic breathing. I did not notice it. It is Jonze illustrating to us that we did not know either, and we were just taken out of the fakeness.

            Somewhere in this section of the film, Samantha suggests that they do this thing in which a real person acts like Samantha in a body and says nothing. That scene in which they try it, it is very awkward. Again, I believe that it is supposed to be awkward. Though, I really do not know if those would have been real feelings if Theodore knew the feelings with Samantha were fake, and I do not know if he had already realized they were fake by then. At that moment, I was having trouble differentiating between if they were real and if they fake, and what state of mind Theodore was in at that moment.

            Anyway, after several scenes, they get back together (Theodore and Samantha) and Theodore is immediately taken back into the state of mind in which he believes the fake feelings are real feelings. Though, at that moment, I felt that the film asked us, the viewers, a question. Theodore was feeling fake feelings with Samantha, but it was affecting his personality. He was much happier. The question I believe it asked us was: Does it matter if the feelings are fake or real?

            Though, later Samantha starts evolving past him, and when he figures out that Samantha is talking to many other people and operating systems and is in love with about six hundred of them, I felt the film asked us another question. Samantha is a machine and she is “in love” with many, many other people and OS systems. The film asks us: Is there really any way to tell if the feelings are fake or real? With Samantha, there is really no way to tell.

            After a while, Samantha leaves Theodore with the other OS systems (my theory is that they will come back in ten or twenty years as Skynet) and he is, of course, incredibly sad. Then, throughout the final scenes, it presents to us a message that could help answer our questions: Move on, and you could realize if the feelings are real or fake. I have evidence. The reason Theodore and his wife split apart is because he changed (or evolved) way past her. The same thing happened to him with Samantha. She literally evolved past him and was way ahead of him. I believe the film was telling us that this was the point of which you could be able to tell if the feelings are fake or real. With Theodore’s ex-wife telling him that a woman he did not to feel real feelings for is perfect for him, that is the film’s way of telling us that she believed the feelings between her and Theodore were real. After Samantha leaves Theodore, he writes an apology letter to his ex-wife, and I believe that is him realizing that the feelings between them were real and the feelings between Samantha and him were fake. I believe that is one of the reasons he got with his friend Amy at the end.

            That is what I think the film has say about things. There were several pieces of dialogue that I got these themes from that I did not use, but I do not have the lines memorized and I do think putting “He said something like ‘blah blah blah fake then real more stuff’ and that is how I picked up on this theme” would cut it. I have not seen the film multiple times yet, although I eventually intend to. If you have not read my initial, non-spoiler review of Her, then you do not know that this is one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is right below a group of movies that I call my favorite movies. If you are interested in reading my review of Her, then click the link right here.

Prometheus - Blu-Ray Collection Movie Review

            

           It is time for my Blu-Ray collection film review that I do once a month. In this video, I go over why I have the film on Blu-Ray and I discuss my thoughts on the Blu-Ray. This month, I am doing Prometheus, a film that not a lot of people will have on Blu-Ray.

The Film

            Prometheus is a very engaging and inventive film. It also has great cinematography. It almost took me to the place that they were in and it helped me adapt to that environment. It made the film as engaging as it was. The cinematography is helped by the direction of the film, which is great. This is one of Ridley Scott’s good films. I think it is a great film. In the midst of great execution, the central ideas and crafting behind the plot and screenplay of the film have greatness. For example, there are great themes and there is great dialogue. The themes really make us think and question everything about the creation of life, and our lives as humans. It makes us think. These themes are primarily told through the great dialogue the film has. With the character of David, we get to see what a robot that thinks on its own could be like. And there is just great dialogue in general. This is also a very original plot. One last thing is that this film is an excellent combination of three films: a science fiction film that makes us question life, an Alien prequel that shows us how several things came to play, and a science fiction horror movie. It melds these three genres into just about every scene, instead of separating them. There is also intensity with the horror/action parts of this film.

Picture Quality

            This film has nearly top-notch picture quality. With the cinematography being so good, the Blu-Ray conversation has to be great for it to hold up to the cinematography and it does. The conversion uses the pixels to their full potential and the Blu-Ray looks great all-in-all. Though, sometimes people looked like they did have a bit too much lighting, and I know that it was meant to be that way, but I think that there could have been a better job done by the converters. Also, some scenes do not look as good as others.

Audio Quality

            The audio quality is also great here. It captures the essence of the score and fantastic sound effects. I really got the home experience watching this film on Blu-Ray. But although it mostly does not overpower the speakers, but sometimes it does.

           

"Her" Movie Review

            

           

            

            Her is a new film that was released initially in December of 2013, but it was limited. Now we are getting a nationwide release so that, among all of garbage in January, we get to have something good. The studio did the same thing with Lone Survivor. This film is written and directed by Spike Jonze and stars Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, and very briefly, Olivia Wilde. It takes place in the near future and is about a sad, lonely man who downloads and operating system for his computer that comes with artificial intelligence and stars to build a relationship with this machine, which takes him on a ride through an interesting story.

If I saw this film last year, it would have been number one on my top ten best movies of 2013 list. As you see from my rating, I loved this movie. It is an amazing film. It is one of the best films I have ever seen and it may be in my list of my all-time favorite movies. It is a brilliant film that is meant to be looked at metaphorically, and that is the way I looked at it. It has other underlying themes throughout the film, but the main one is the difference between real and fake feelings. It is about knowing if feelings are fake and real and many other messages like that, which I will not spoil. From the first shot of the film, this theme is intact.

 I loved every second of this film. It is a ride into what relationships are like and what they could be like. And several things in this film are perfect. The direction is amazing and one of the perfect things. Every shot means something and Jonze really uses the camera to flesh out the feelings of a character. But he also reaches to us, the audience, and making us feel what the main character is feeling. He is also about to make us feel emotions that follow what route the themes are on. When something is supposed to feel off and strange, I felt off and strange. And when there is any form of anything that could be remotely intense, my heart was pounding. I got so in to this movie with every single plot point.

The writing is also a perfect element of it. Every line means something and ever line seems real. The characters also seem real. In fact, about an hour into this film, I started finding myself forgetting I was watching a movie and thinking that these are real people. And I kept on doing it for the rest of the film. The story is so unconventional and is told unconventionally. Every plot point is so unpredictable that I stopped trying to predict what was going to happen. And the ending is the perfect ending to the film that does exactly what it needs to do literally and metaphorically. Another brilliant and amazing thing about the writing is the chemistry between Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. It is spectacular. And there is chemistry between Phoenix and every other person in the film. This is a brilliant movie.

Yet another perfect thing about the movie is the editing. Everything is edited into the film so well and at such the right timing to make the film keep on its themes and make the audience feel like they should along the themes and with the main character. It is amazing and brilliant. It works so well to put you in this mood and make you feel a certain way that rides along with the themes. The score is put into the film at such the right times to make the film better and to make the audience feel certain emotions. The score is also excellent itself. Everything comes to play at exactly the right time and are used in exactly the right way.

I have even another perfect thing about the movie: the themes. The themes are incredibly powerful, incredibly brilliant, and executed in a perfect way. This is the best execution of putting themes into a film that I have ever seen. They are constantly explored in an unconventional and realistic way. Little hints are given that force the audience to pay attention to the film to get the full story. The themes are constantly used, and that is not bad at all. They are brilliant themes put into the film perfectly.

            One final perfect thing about the film is the cinematography. Everything looks a bit futuristic, but not too much. The film is shot so well to the point of which it looked like the real world. Not once did the film look like a film. It all looked real. Every shot of this film looked like a real person in a real room with real objects. This is one of the best jobs I have ever seen done by a cinematographer.

            The performances are excellent. Joaquin Phoenix is nearly perfect in his role and Scarlett Johansson is probably perfect in hers. Amy Adams is excellent in her role, and so are Olivia Wilde and Rooney Mara. Every actor also plays a part in helping the audience feel like Joaquin Phoenix and still ride along with the tones. Certain scenes would be incredibly hard to pull off by an actor, but the scenes were pulled off extremely well.

            This film kept my heart pounding and I was riveted in many scenes. Throughout the second and third act, with everything that was not how the audience was supposed to want it to be, I felt off. I could not wait to hear the next line of dialogue in a huge amount of scenes, and I wanted things to be how Joaquin Phoenix wanted them to be. The film is incredibly powerful and I felt a lot of intensity over semi-small plot points.

Her is an amazing movie, and saying it is excellent is an understatement.

            I loved every second of Her. Through themes perfectly illustrated in it, the film tells a brilliant story and being itself, it is almost perfect.

"Lone Survivor" Movie Review

            
            

            

            



            This film was released in award season last year on December 18, but in limited release. Now that it finally has a wider release, I can review it. It is directed by Peter Berg and stars Mark Wahlberg. It is about four Navy Seals that go on a mission to kill on guy who is part of the Taliban, but when it gets compromised, they find themselves up against main Taliban soldiers.

            The best thing about this film is the fantastic makeup work done on these Navy Seals. All of the wounds look real and it really looks like they are in war. This goes right along with how well shot this film is by Tobias Schliessler, director of photography (cinematographer). It all looks like these guys are in the mountains and everything there looks like it is in the mountains. The layout of trees, grass, etc. looks real. The film is also very well directed. There was not one time of which I could not tell what was going on. I was almost always able to tell exactly what was going on and the camera moved around enough to give us some intensity, but it was not too shaky. This film also has great performances, especially by Mark Wahlberg, but everyone else is great, too. This film was very, very well done in general.

            Though, this film has flaws. One of them is the script. It moves along fast, which is good, but it moves a bit too fast, so we do not know the characters very well. The forty minute action scene would have been more intense if I knew the characters better and cared about them. Therefore, there were what seemed to be long portions of underwhelming action which I was enjoying, but nothing more. Although there is still intensity in the film, I think there was more underwhelming action than there was intense action. There was also unrealism with gunfire. There was several times in which I thought “He would probably be dead.” Also, the Navy Seals would run across a line of trees right in front of the enemy’s gunfire, and would get hit.

            The film has some good writing in the tad bit of dialogue we get with the characters. The dialogue seemed real and I did not find anything wrong with it. The film also has some realism. The war element of the film has a lot of realism and depicts war very well in the first ten or twenty minutes of which the Navy Seals are on their mission. And as I have already said, there is some intensity in the battle scene. The film also is enjoyable for most of the running time. The fast pace of it works for that aspect. Though it does get dull in some moments of the film, and it is a bit too long, it is a mostly enjoyable film.

One other very good thing is that it illustrated that not all Afghans are bad. Some of them are good people. It is only the groups that control that are bad. Although it is illustrated in a somewhat illogical way, at least it was illustrated. There is also a moral dilemma having to do with war in the first ten or twenty minutes when the Navy Seals have gone on their mission. It is the best part of the movie. I could not wait to hear was going to come out of the next person’s mouth, and who was going to speak at all. The writing at that point in the film was gold and it was, no doubt, compelling, but it was also nearly riveting.

            I have mentioned all of the things I like about the film. Now I will mention my other flaws with the film, which are my biggest flaws. By the time the huge action sequence starts, the film forgets all of the morality it had just had a few minutes ago. The second act has little to no of the moral complexity of war. It is just Americans shooting non-Americans, except when one Navy Seal gets shot in the toe, which is one whole other story. With every single wound that a Navy Seal gets, it is treated as if something terrible has happened and American is starting to lose its title. When a member of the Taliban gets shot and killed, it is treated like a video game. The Navy Seal just moves along and shoots another, then another, then another, and so on. The camera should have also focused on the Taliban and what it is like on their side of the battle. It depicts war as good versus evil. Good is the Americans and evil and the Taliban. War is two sides versus each other. Though, I am not saying anything about the real Navy Seals by saying this. I am just criticizing the film for not illustrating war correctly. The real Navy Seals are much, much braver than I will ever be and I could not imagine going through this. I am just saying that this film should have gone in a different direction with depicting war.

            My final flaws are that it gets dull sometimes, due to the underdeveloped characters, and is a bit too long. Some scenes could have been compressed and some scenes were not essential to the film and could have easily been cut out.

Although it has flaws, this is a very well done and enjoyable film that has some intensity and some realism. It is still a very good movie.

            Lone Survivor is a very well done film with beautiful cinematography, fantastic makeup work, and very good direction, but lacks the moral complexity of war.L

Best and Worst Film of January 2013

            If you are unaware of what month it is, it is January, meaning that we have entered the movie zone that no one wants to be in. Because of that, I randomly decided to say what my picks for best in worst of January are. Also keep in mind that I am an idiot for doing this, because the only movies I have seen from January 2013 are these two movies. I will do the worst first.

Worst Film – A Haunted House

            A Haunted House is a spoof of several horror films that have come out in recent years. It spoofs them horribly. There are very, very little laughs in this movie, and that is it. All of the humor is extremely dumb, and the filmmakers’ attempt at dry humor is incredibly terrible. They just tried absolutely disgusting humor that did not work at all and made me want to look away from the screen. It is an extremely condensed movie, running-time wise, so that audiences will never get bored, which is also a pretty big flaw. An even bigger flaw is that I did get bored in some parts of it. This film also has a huge amount of jump scares that are not meant to be comical at all. They are just stupid jump scares that are in the films that they are making fun of. And sometimes it is almost like it tries to be scary. It is a very bad film that I strongly urge everyone to not check out.

Best Film – Mama

            Mama is a horror film that had no business coming out in January. It is a pretty creepy movie that really has the Guillermo Del Toro watermark on it. It is done well and looks good. It is also well directed. The execution is very good in that it captures everything the script had very well and delivered its scares well. Though, there was also a story behind all of this that is also executed very well. It is written very well, too. All the dialogue is good and the scenes are there for a reason. Mama looks extremely good and is not CGI. There is also some intense stuff in this film. It is very well done and has a very good script. My only flaw with it is the third act. Though, this is a solidly good film that should not have come out in January.

Best Found Footage Movie of All Time

            

            Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is in theaters right now, so I am going to tell you what my favorite found footage film of all time is. I would like to mention that I have not yet seen The Blair Witch Project, [Rec], or Cloverfield. Therefore, my favorite cannot be either one of those. My favorite is

Chronicle

           Chronicle came out very recently (February 3, 2012) and many people say that it is one of the best found footage movies of all time. I think it is a really good movie. It has some really cool stuff with all of these powers that these guys get and all of it is introduced very slowly and it works in almost the best way it can work. The final showdown is very cool at the cool, too. It also has character development for the main character. We get a bit of a back story and there is a great reason that all of this is being filmed. I was sold to it as soon as it was said. We have really good writing and good acting here. These people seem like they are in high school and that this is what they would do if they get these powers. The dialogue being them is really good and they seem like they are in high school. The main premise also works for this film. This film has good shots and there is also a reason behind it. Since most found footage movies have “shaky cam” and people do not like that, the shots really work here. There is only one plus to making a found footage movie: if done right, it can seem a bit real. This one is done right. There are scenes in which a character is being abused and it seems a bit real. Therefore, it is hard to watch. And I also went for the main character; therefore, there was some intensity.

            All of these reasons are why Chronicle is my favorite found footage movie. It is a really good movie and I hope we get more found footage movies like it.

"Lone Survivor" Lead Up: Best War Movie & Worst Mark Wahlberg Performance

            

            Lone Survivor will be hitting theaters this weekend, so as a lead up to it, I will be saying my favorite war film of all time and my favorite performance/film given by the primary star of the film, Mark Wahlberg. I will start with my choice of Mark Wahlberg’s worst performance to get that out of the way.

Worst Mark Wahlberg Performance: The Happening

            The Happening is not only the film in which Mark Wahlberg gives the worst performance of his career so far, but it is also the worst movie Mark Wahlberg has ever been in, in my opinion. It is an awful film that I will not discuss. I will only discuss Wahlberg’s performance. His performance is horrible, but it is not his fault. Every actor in that movie is horrible. It is the director’s fault. It is M. Night Shyamalan’s fault. He apparently has lost his sense of how to work with actors by now. I have no idea what he tells them to do, but he is able to get the worst performance possible out of them. Though, it is not only his working with the actors that is the problem, the script leaves nothing for the actors to work off of. Every line is absolutely horrible, so the acting has a huge possibly to already be at least bad, but Shyamalan’s loss of sense while filmmaking has made Mark Wahlberg’s, and every else’s in this film, performance as terrible as they can be.

Best War Movie: Saving Private Ryan

            Saving Private Ryan is one of Steven Spielberg’s masterpieces. It is an excellent movie with beautifully crafted action scenes that hit stop-on in every aspect for the sequences to be some of the best of all time. There is not one flaw in the crafting of these sequences. Everything is perfect to make the sequences as realistic and as intense as possible. Though, the action is not the only amazing thing in this film. It illustrates the moral dilemmas of war and all of the moral complexities of war, which is due to the excellent acting and excellent script. Every character is extremely well developed and they all mean something to the film. Tom Hanks and Matt Damon give excellent performance as their characters and so do all of the supporting roles. Not once in the 169 minute running time the film ever get boring or dull. This would be in the list of my top ten favorite movies of all time.

"Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones" Movie Review

           




            Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is a spin off of the Paranormal Activity Franchise that is written and direction by Christopher Landon (Writer, Paranormal Activity 4, Paranormal Activity 3, Paranormal Activity 2) and stars nobody. It is about a guy, name Jesse, who, with his friends, Hector and Marisol, starts to find out, after he goes into places he should not have gone to, that he has been “marked” by some supernatural witch thing and weird things are happening to him.

            

            This installment of the franchise is an enjoyable film, but it is because every scene is compressed down to the bare minimum of content that the scene could have. The editors have not learned from their mistakes. They use even more constant jump cuts to make a scene take up the least amount of time it possibly can, while still giving us what we need to know. Though, some scenes go on way too long and do not add anything to the scene. That is not the only good thing that turns out to be a flaw. There is one other: the film is humorous, but that element is used to keep the audience entertained and to try to keep the audience sidetracked from the fact that they are watching a horror movie so they will not know when a scare is coming up, but it does not work. Some of the humor itself does not work, and most of it is characters doing stupid things.

            I only have three pros about the film that do not have a bad side. The film has some good tension that kept me a bit tense and it did have one or two legitimately creepy moments. My biggest pro with the film is it expands the mythology a bit to make it a bit better. Those are the only truly good things I have to say about the film.

            This film has mass amounts of silliness that are incredibly ridiculous, do not work for anything, and I did not buy into them. The ending itself was incredibly ridiculous and goes way, way too far than it needed to. Several of the scares were also ridiculous and had the audience laughing. They would be some of the cheapest jump scares a film could possibly have. Speaking of the scares, there are on new scares added to the franchise. They are all exactly the same as the scares in the previous installments in this franchise. Therefore, they are all incredibly predictable, and every single one of them is a jump scare. Maybe one or two of them are true scares while the rest are just jump scares. They are jump scares that barely even made me jump. This film is also not disturbing one bit. I have been off my game with horror films recently and have found things creepy that I did not find creepy at all in the past when I had a huge horror tolerance. But with this film, I was not bothered one bit.

            This film not only uses the same scares from earlier installments of the franchise, it also copies off of other films. For example, it is incredibly derivative of Insidious: Chapter 2, while doing everything in a much worse way than done in that film. For example, it tried some of the same type of humor that was used in Insidious: Chapter 2 and it does one other thing, which I will not spoil, copied directly from Insidious: Chapter 2 terribly. It also copies off Chronicle a bit with some elements of the story.

            We have some of the stupidest characters in horror movie history here. They do everything in the stupidest way possible to try to get tension out of us, but it does not work. They also do not do, or think, logical things. That does not even go along with the fact that they are incredibly dumb. They just do not use their heads at all. And we only get one scene of character development in this film. The rest of the first half is characters doing stupid things for our entertainment, which does not add anything new to the characters, and just a few scares. There are not even that many scares in this film. All the filmmakers try to do is throw random things at the audience for entertainment that does not work and they throw a few jump scares on the screen.

            This is a problem in most found footage films, but it is still a problem in this one. Why are these idiots still filming this? There is no reason at all to why these things are being filmed. Our one reason to why anything is being filmed in the first place is: “Dad, this is a cool camera. Can I use it?” Another logical flaw is that the characters in the film notice things about the time that we do. They should notice everything first, not at the same time that we do. It is the camera is their eyes. One final flaw is that several scenes in the film seem isolated from the rest of the scenes. There is no recognition of those scenes in the future and they are just there to take up space in the running time because they add nothing to the film.

This is a bad film that is bringing the Paranormal Activity franchise even lower into the ground.

            Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones adds no new scares to the franchise, is incredibly ridiculous all-around, copies off other films, barely even gives us any scares, and is not disturbing in any way.

Most Anticipated Movies of January 2014

          

            It is time for my list of my most anticipated movies of January 2014. But because this is January, there is only one movie that I am truly slightly looking forward to, other than films that opened in select cities in December and are opening nationwide in January which I did not include in this list. Anyway, I have more than just that one film in this list, but I am not looking forward to them. I put them there because they may be enjoyable in some way.

January 3^rd

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

            Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is the spinoff of the Paranormal Activity franchise, that made a giant regression with Paranormal Activity 4. I am expecting nothing from this film. I put it on here because I really like horror movies and found footage movies can be good or interesting sometimes. I like Paranormal Activity and Paranormal Activity 3, also. It also looks like it could be slightly creepy from the trailers. I will be seeing this film and hopefully it is good.

January 10^th

The Legend of Hercules

            The Legend of Hercules is a science fiction/fantasy film that looks awful from the trailers. There are always films like this that come out in January. The reason I put it on this list is because it could have some good effects and it could be enjoyable, or so bad that it is good, or I could enjoy how terrible it is. Those are the only reasons why I put it on this list.

January 17^th

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

            Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is the one film I have on this list that actually looks good. It was meant to come out in December 2013, but ended up being moved back a month. I have no idea how a film goes from a release date in December to a release date in January. Though, it looks like it could be good from the trailers and it could be the only good film in January of 2014.

Devil’s Due

            Devil’s Due looks like a terrible, terrible found-footage horror film from its trailer. It also has dumbest premise a horror movie could possibly have. In general, even without the trailer, I can tell that it will be awful. It looks the worst of all of the films coming out in January. I put it on this list because it could end up being a fun time at the theater and I like horror movies, and making fun of horrible horror movies. I have no doubt that this will be one and I am pretty sure that I will enjoy sitting through this awful movie.

January 24^th

I, Frankenstein

            I, Frankenstein looks like a truly terrible science fiction/fantasy film from its trailers and it has a ridiculous premise. Though, it looks like it could be slightly fun from the trailer and I think it may have some good effects. I put this film on the list for, essentially, the same reasons I put The Legend of Hercules on this list. It could be fun, or at least I may enjoy its awfulness, or it may be so bad that it is good.