oh man the movie starts out with the perfect example of obnoxiously expository dialogue like hello person I have been spending probably days with venturing into the jungle here is the complete explanation of everything I am doing right now and why
"she's giving me trouble" [immediately opens coat to show off pregnant belly] oh holy fuck this is a film for adult 2 year olds I'm so excited for how dumb this could get
finally we have the marvel cinematic universe version of "I don't want to cure cancer I want to create dinosaurs" and we're not even 5 minutes in. GOD BLESS
ok yes I think it is safe to say that this movie's concept of "setup and payoff" exists somewhere between a game of peek-a-boo and a slot machine
when dakota fanning was bitten by a nuclear car accident she gained the ability to hallucinate like a spider
going to ask "did I die" any time i come back into consciousness from now on
I need you to understand that up until this point the storytelling has been something like one character saying to another "look at that gun on the mantlepiece" and then everyone looks at the gun and then suddenly the terminator appears and picks up the gun and fires it at everyone in the scene killing them. I need you to understand that everything before that previous post was written as if checkov were creating a play for a community that had no concept of object permanence and also were extremely aware of the lore surrounding the terminator
like this is not a movie that is interested in subtlety, which is what makes the moments where the story isn't explained to within an inch of its life, like the car wreck scene, all the more incomprehensible
shout out to all the dudes who experience a dream every night that seems almost like a premonition of their own death
the ADR on this is absolutely incredible by the way. the movie sounds like the equivalent of greenscreen everything
"my mom said the crusts [of sandwiches] would make my hair grow curly" what the hell is any of this moment-to-moment dialogue. what in the hell kind of life experience do you have to have to write dialogue like this
oh man it gets betterworse. it's time to play "guess the baby's name", the thing everyone does at every baby shower ever.
this movie feels like manic psychosis
there are a lot of car crashes. this movie really needs you to understand that shattered auto glass looks like one of those spidered webbs
"I hate to break it to you scrooge but you can't change anything" (she says while watching A Christmas Carol)
OK now I really do think this movie is a prank on people who watch superhero films. I almost wish I had a resetera account still because I want to post about this movie on there
you know how patrick in spongebob was usually portrayed as almost life-threateningly dumb except when it would be funny for him to be absurdly savvy and informed? that's sort of like how this movie is written like it seems to be smart enough to realize exactly how stupid it is.
to put it more concretely, you know how the game of thrones showrunners said something like "themes are for eight-grade book reports?" well this film might think the same thing but also is working from the understanding that their target audience is at least emotionally/intellectually no more than 15 years old, so the themes are there and laid out in two-sentence paragraphed in size-16 font, double-spaced to make sure it fills up the whole page
you know that joke the really smug superhero fans go into about how these sorts of stories are the modern day equivalent of things like greek myth and public folklore? this is of course an absurd notion due to the way the stories and characters are under strict corporate control.
however this movie does have a major character who receives a prophecy of his own doom as if from the gods and then goes out to try to prevent the prophecy in a way that makes its own fulfillment inevitable
and this is sort of what I mean when I say this film is both incredibly dumb and yet seems oddly intelligent
critical support for [checks google] ezekiel sims in his mission to take out several nypd officers
our heroine attempts to deal with being accused of abducting three teenage girls by abducting three teenage girls
SOON
it was like a spider...person" THEY SAID THE SECRET PHRASE
[homer simpson spider-pig blingee gif]
sorry trying to make this thread more organized because I'm being a bit careless by which posts I attach to. trying to make this a madam web masterpost
oh right this is supposed to be set when martha stewart was in prison
about 10 miles away from where I lived at the time for the record
none of the teens are making a reference to how they're in a situation almost like in that book their dad's been reading, "a walk in the woods". immersion ruined
one of those news stories I missed but my folks were talking about this weekend when we were together was that one guy who ran his car off a cliff with his whole family in it because he was driving recklessly because he thought his daughter was being trafficked anyway this movie feels like trying to recount news reports about that while on haullucinogens
every time they call adam scott "ben" I think "ah yes because this is part of the parks and rec cinematic universe"
supposedly stealing a spider curses you. no idea if this means our lead's mother would have been cursed for taking a spider for research purposes
I am slightly surprised that nobody has actually said the direct quote of "you have a sixth-sense, like the sense of a spider". they've come a bit close.
they DID just say "when you take the responsibility, great power will come" so I am particularly disappointed that such a direct quote is not a thing that has happened
jpbrammer is right. at seemingly any moment in this film a car is either getting stolen or crashing
I like the strategy of "everyone except the pregnant woman gets in the ambulance" real smart decision-making here
More plot than you might think in this movie is similar to an nsfw webtoon on lezhin whose name, ms mystic, I had trouble remembering because it's just similar enough to make my brain struggle to differentiate it
anyway I don't think ms mystic is very good, and I think this movie exists, as others have been saying, outside of a good/bad dichotomy. it is neither; what it IS is a necessary cultural artifact of our era
well that's the entire movie, folks. my wife caught about half of it and she's mad about every aesthetic and pacing choice, right down to being confused about the cranberries song in the credits. she's like "is this just because everybody making movies is a 90s kid now. why do they do this."
also her words were "who thought this was a good idea. it makes no sense. and that's why it flopped". this movie exists outside of taste, market forces, good ideas, algorithms, possibly even time and space.
one last post coming after this one folks
liveblog finished. pray for me.
I stand by my previous statement that this is less "a movie" and more "what manic psychosis looks like"
My wife wasn't feeling great so we decided to go to Applebee's since it's late and we live near one. They're playing Toxic, because the world is absurd and life is just an opportunity for us to inflict harm upon ourselves
