REVIEW: Return to the Blue Lagoon

If you ever thought to yourself, 'hey, I'd really like to feel like a creeper,' then you should sit down and watch Return to the Blue Lagoon.  Please know that I didn't seek this movie out for myself, and it cannot be considered film, but rather one hour and forty two minutes of mental sulphuric acid corroding your eyes and your soul.  This film is a sequel to The Blue Lagoon, a film that I haven't seen because, well, I guess I respect myself too much.

The plot of this film is a woman being set to sea with two little children after the boat she was travelling gets all infectious and coughing.  Instead of being on the boat and hoping to survive, I suppose the humane thing to do is put them in a life boat and let them slowly die of sunstroke and dehydration.  Luckily they find an uncharted island that is home to insane amounts of ready to be eaten fruit, more fresh water than could ever be used, and a raised, multi-storey bamboo house.  I'm guessing this was where the sexy teens from the first movie lived, and luckily they had access to cutting tools and unlimited cordage.

The woman raises the two children, and oh goodness me does this thing get creepy as anything.  I know that the ultimate purpose of this film is to show young teenage sexuality (because I guess that's a thing that people want to see, apparently), and seeing the mother talk to the two children about male and female body parts and all of that other stuff made me need to have a shower.  Watching it I know that the purpose is to groom the viewer into seeing the basis laid for the upcoming sensuality of this disgusting film, and seeing that play out with children on the screen is worse than swimming with candiru.  The two children are not related, thankfully.  They are, however, essentially raised as brother and sister, so when the dirty rat bastard of a brother secretly watches his half naked sister I can't help but curse the director, who will not be named because after this movie he deserves no fame.

Beside a brother/sister relationship turning sexual, this film is also creepy in the fact that this is happening when they are super young.  Lilli (Milla Jovovich) has her first period in the film, so we know she has got to be quite very early teens.  Knowing that the unnamed director thought that I would want to see such young brother/sister types getting all crazy sexy is straight up repugnant.  Richard (Brian Krause) seems oddly mature in his frame for such a young character, and it's not surprising to find out that the actor was over twenty years old.  The worst crime of this film is the fact that Jovovich is a few years shy of 18 and the unnamed director is fine with showing her breasts.  This is all just so creepy.  Also having having a sixteen year old making out with someone who is around twenty one just shouldn't happen.

So, I had lost a bet, and I watched it.  It was awful, and I hated almost every minute of it.  Thankfully this film held the best gunshot wounding ever to be seen in cinema, so it keeps from being a zero star film.

This was all torture and a time that made me despise myself, but I need to be honest.  I eat bad movies for breakfast.  I purposefully seek out negative film experiences, and so while this film actually had me wanting to tap out (something that almost never happens), I can still shrug it off and show he who made me watch it that not only can I take this punishment, but I can watch the awful Blue Lagoon: The Awakening starring the ever not good Brenton Thwaites.  That's right, Chris.  I watched this crap and then I double dipped on my own volition.  Whatever movie purgatory I may get marooned in, I am realizing that I can always stand swimming around in it long past getting pruny hands.  This doesn't mean that I can do this and respect myself.  I can't.  And I don't.

Rating - 0.5 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: It Follows

Set in a timeless world, It Follows is the sophomore feature film from director David Robert Mitchell.  The televisions are all CRT back and white, and very old movies are being viewed on them.  The cars are equally old, and yet the story still exists in the present (of future) because of a gadget that a character possesses.  It is quite interesting for the film to go that route, with even having a synth score, perhaps in a way to say that this story and its themes transcend generations.

Our main character, college student Jay (Maika Monroe) has a romantic physical encounter with her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary), only for it to turn dark.  Jay is tied up in a chair, in a decrepit building, and told that she now has an entity that will be pursuing her.  It can look like anybody.  It is slow because it walks.  It cannot be shaken, as it will never stop until it kills her.  She is told that Hugh has passed this evil onto her through intercourse.  All Jay needs to do is sleep with someone, and the evil will go after him.  The problem is that if it catches and kills a person, it will then go after the one who had passed it on.  If Jay gets caught, it will pursue Hugh again.  He tells Jay that she needs to pass it on and warn the person so they can pass it on.

The concept is very interesting.  Is Mitchell making a statement on casual or unprotected sex. saying that you are connected to everyone your partner has slept with?  It could be that David Robert Mitchell is saying that people need to be more careful about who they get in the sack with.  Allegorical or not, this is a tense film that creates a perpetual sense of fear in the viewer as you know that anyone in the background of a scene could be the evil that is coming to capture Jay.

Interestingly, it is set in Detroit, and uses the collapse of the city as a theme.  There are conversations between Jay and her friends that indicate the city itself is something that was misunderstood by their parents.  This could be a message that is furthered by Mitchell making sure that parents are almost completely absent.  It could be that this is playing on the fact that many slashers are just about the teens or young adults and the parents are always forgotten.  The way I look at it is that he is suggesting certain issues that people face are something that they believe they need to deal with on their own, and that the parents would not understand.

There is a great deal of suspicion that builds throughout the film.  We, like Jay, don't know what the evil will look like.  A lot of films want to have an iconic antagonist appearance.  That is not the case here.  There is no one true image of the entity, leaving Jay to be eternally scared.  It is quite a brilliant move from Mitchell.

Probably the best aspect of the film is the acting clinic that we get from Maika Monroe.  It Follows was her breakout performance.  The role is one that demands so many different emotions and moods, and Monroe handles them all.  The scares for the audience are tethered to what we see of Jay's experiences, and without such a talented lead it could have been a real letdown of a movie.

I've seen this film a few times now, and I still don't know where I stand on possible statements from Mitchell.  Perhaps there are none and I am just reading into things.  Regardless, seeing a movie that gets the brain flowing is always a fun endeavour.  With It Follows we have many different ways to look at what it is saying.  And, most importantly, we have a scary movie.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars