I’m reposting this old thing because I just watched it again so I could be thorough and watched the sequel and we might as well keep things orderly plus we can see how far or worse I’ve become as a writer since early 2021. SPOILER: I’m not any better now.

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** THIS POST IS LIKELY TO INCLUDE A STILL FROM WHAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE CONSIDERED A GRUESOME SCENE FROM THIS MOVIE **

To set this up I should remark that I really like Kevin James, for the most part anyway. His roles in his Adam Sandler movies are pretty stupid but so are Adam Sandler’s movies – lords of the west save me but I really liked Hubie Halloween for some fucking reason. I also have an affection for Lulu Wilson although I only think I’ve seen her in two of Mike Flanagan’s things and I really love most of Mike Flanagan’s things (Dear Doctor Sleep, I love you). When I first saw the trailer floating around for this I thought “Kevin James, huh?? In a horror movie, huh?? Lulu Wilson? Isn’t she the little girl in Hill House?? HMMMMM… I’m listening… six bucks??? Hmmmm… Joel McHale?? Pass.” So I waited and forgot about this until it rolled around for free and then I TOOK THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME AND JUMPED OFF THE CLIFFS OF RIO AND SWAM WITH THE SHARKS AND PASSED OUT BEER TO THE HOMELESS IN COZUMEL AND FREED THE SCOTS OF THEIR ENGLISH OPPRESSION AND SOLVED THE OUMUAMUA MYSTERY AND WATCHED THIS AND IT WAS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE AND THE BUTTERFLIES LANDED ON MY SHOULDERS AND XANTHER SAVED THAT CAT (if you get that reference I may, indeed, worship you) AND I COULD FINALLY SEE CLEARLY OUT OF MY RIGHT EYE AGAIN AND GOD DAMN NOTHING COULD GET ANY FINER!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO SHIT!!!!!!

Well, some of that may or may not have happened and the jury is still out on Xanther and the cat and – this movie totally sucked it. I can’t say I was disappointed because I wasn’t appointed in the first place (wait, what?) but – sheesh, this really felt like a chore and, double sheesh, I think some of the things they were going for to try and get you in the horror mood were, well, SMIRK and LOL unintentional.

Lulu, you see, is a young girl whose momma died and her dad just wants to reconcile things out at their always fresh and clean cabin in the woods. The King of Queens is a bald and bearded Nazi with a swastika tattooed on his head for good and blatant measure who just wants to get out of prison and reconcile himself with some sort of medallion that is inexplicably concealed in the basement of Joel McHale’s always clean and fresh cabin out in the woods. For reals – it’s never explained why that thing is stored there. The people who put this together try and do a clever job of showing the family of the shitty, bratty kid and the family of the murderous, tattooed Nazis converging on this epicenter of the known universe but – while it’s neat – I’m pretty sure we’ve seen this trick before so it kind of got old on me after thirty minutes or so.

After a paragraph break, I feel like I should mention that kids who act like Becky does in the beginning of (and most of) this movie are one of the reasons I never really, really wanted to produce any of my own (although, regarding reasons, there are many) and if I was the director of this I would probably have looked at the casting sheet at the beginning of this whole thing, went to my trailer and had some morning Scotches, went back to the producers and asked, “You got me Kevin James for this role?”. The only comedian I think that might possibly be worse is – oh, I don’t know – Steve Martin, maybe? (I don’t really do much comedy so I don’t know many modern stand-up folks.) (I think Kevin Hart is hilarious but he probably wouldn’t work as a white Nazi.)

Take, for instance, this sequence where *ALERT* *ALERT* he gets his eye poked out.

With it dangling out of his head (above) he races to the kitchen for some help from the guy – in a hostile hostage situation, eating a sandwich- for something along these lines:

James: Cut it off!! Cut it off, Hammond!! Wait, are you eating a sandwich??
Hammond: What, boss? I was, you know, like, you know, hungry.
James: Cut it! Cut it!
Hammond finds some sort of dull scissors in the kitchen drawer (about the size of toenail clippers): SNIP SNIP Eyeball tether fails to sever
James: Are you kidding me?
James grabs a knife. SAW SAW Eyeball plops into kitchen sink

The next time we see him, his head is wrapped with – maybe – the elastic strap from his underwear.

The way my brains work, the next bunch of the movie I can’t stop fidgeting on how is his underwear staying up and what happens if he farts and poops a little and then I remember that – oh yeah – he was wearing some sort of prison guard uniform earlier and wait, how did that fit him and, wait, how did that one guy believe he was a prison guard with that fucking tattoo and wait, where did he get that hoodie and wait, what the fuck, why is that medal buried in cinder blocks below the cabin and wait, I can barely keep my own back patio clean, how is this fucking place so dirt and spider free and wait, this character’s name is really “Apex” and wait, they’ve been in jail together for EIGHTEEN YEARS and now they decide to break out and somehow that fucking thing has been in that basement all that time and if he poops himself with no underwear that thing is going to get REALLY FUCKING itchy back there and – OH JESUS CHRIST what did they really just try and do with that lawnmower. OH GOD DAMN.

I think, by now, the folks who look at this place know that I do try and give people the benefit of the doubt and hope that at least they tried and, I guess they might have here but something went wrong. Maybe I just didn’t try hard enough and it’s all my fault but, I can’t pass this off as some of the good shit. Hey – you know what? Like this – say you’ve been drinking Hurricanes all day in the French Quarter and it’s 100 degrees outside with 150% humidity and you’re walking down Bourbon Street and some dude whispers “?coke?” and your friend hears it so you guys try a little in the alley and it’s righteous and you go get some cash from an ATM that charges some sort of 20 dollar fee and you buy the bag and you get back to the hotel to do some and it turns out it’s fucking baking powder despite the sample you tried out in the fucking humidity on the Mississippi River with the pelicans and the alligators?

That’s almost exactly what happened here but that might be too long of a tab name for the filing cabinet.

Filed under: CRAP