Fish and Cherries Productions

Just under the wire, let’s look at the next of what will hopefully be the very long Jordan Peele oeuvre.

Us

Yikes, these last few weeks have not been kind to me. Still, never let it be said that I’m not a man of my word. Now let’s nail a current movie and a film of yesteryear in one shot.

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
Winchester

I know a lot of you might be looking at the title of the movie below and saying, “Really? Really?? That movie came out last year. Can that really be called a classic?” Well, my young fisherman, apart from the fact that Reel Snippet Classics are just my blanket term for anything I review that’s not in theaters, any movie that has a DVD life can be a classic of some kind. A classic masterpiece, a cult classic, a classic disaster, you get the idea. Now that that’s settled, let’s take a look at the horrors of cyberbullying.

Unfriended

Hmmm… could have sworn there was something else coming out today…

Five Nights at Freddy’s. This game series has been sweeping the internet for the past year and earning a reputation as both a nightmare factory and a perfect laxative to those who play it. If you’re not into gaming, avoided the craze, or have been living under some kind of rock, let me explain the premise. The Five Nights at Freddy’s series casts you as a security guard working the night shift at a low quality children’s restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza (the internet refers to this type of establishment as Suck E. Cheese’s). Unfortunately, for some reason or another, the extremely creepy sideshow animatronics are out to kill you, so your goal is to monitor them on your security camera display to keep track of their locations, make sure that they don’t get into your decidedly unsecure security room, and survive until 6 AM… then do it for four more nights to increasing difficulty. The really amazing thing about these games is how different they are from other games. There’s no moving about the pizzeria or weapons to defend yourself with, just you inside the security room. What this does is deliver a great sense of claustrophobia and helplessness, making you raw to the scares of the stalking animatronics. The fact that it was able to deliver such an experience with a limited budget and crew, just like the first Paranormal Activity, makes it all the more impressive. So suffice to say, it’s a fun fright fest for those brave enough to try and survive the nights.

But is that all it is? A lot of YouTube personalities have certainly shown us the scares and even profited off of them, but several eagle-eyed players have noticed that there is a narrative in the background. Those who piece it together reveal a tale of sorrow, murder, and restless haunting, yet there are quite a few details that are left ambiguous enough to have devoted fans guessing and piecing together theories about the truth behind the terror. After watching Markiplier play through all three games (which you should all totally do because Markiplier is one sexy human being as well as an amusing one) and looking around the internet, I’ve come up with my own theory which I think holds up really well. Sit back, grab a slice of pizza, and let me tell you a terrifying tale.

The full story lies this way.

Annabelle took the creepiness of The Conjuring and takes it up to eleven. Apart from the jump scares and creepy imagery, this film introduces a huge amount of psychological horror that I don’t think was as prominent in the first film. MILD SPOILER WARNING FOR THE NEXT SENTENCE!! I’m not used to actually seeing the monster in horror films like these, but here it was really effective due to the creepy atmosphere and the demon’s design. SPOILER OVER!! Gone also are the unfortunate implications that were present in The Conjuring (see my Reel Snippet on that for details), which is a huge relief because I thought they were going down a similar route. Thankfully, I was wrong.

However, for every two steps forward, there’s a noticeable step back. The two main characters are the blandest pieces of wonderbread I’ve ever seen in a horror movie. Nothing about them or their lives interested me and the only reason I was invested with them was because they were being haunted. On top of that, the technical aspects of the spirit hunting are gone (again, see me review of The Conjuring) and replaced with the arbitrary skepticism from one of the characters when they simply refuse to believe there’s something supernatural and they just attribute it to the other person being mentally ill or seeking attention and FOR THE LOVE OF CRAP, CAN WE JUST LET THAT HORROR TROPE DIE?! It always comes off like the writers ran out of ideas and needed something to fill in the running time rather than trying to be clever. These two things were pretty serious gripes for me and I was very close to writing this movie off in the beginning, but the terror was so intense that it swept away the majority of my issues. I guess if those faults are harsh deal-breakers for you, you probably won’t enjoy this as much. But I think the horror more than makes up for it.

Seriously, though, who would want to buy a doll that creepy to begin with?

Insidious: Chapter 2 managed to be scary on many levels as opposed to simply relying on jump scares and gore. I will admit that I haven’t seen the first Insidious, which is probably why I felt the characters felt flat, but I am now curious to see it. The film held up incredibly well under its internal logic and managed to throw a few twists and clever bits of foreshadowing. More importantly, the characters were all incredibly consistent, even the villains/monsters who managed to have clear motivations and characters without being overly sympathetic. That said, it will probably leave you terrified, so if you’re not a fan of being scared, you might want to skip this one. But for me, it was a great way to celebrate Friday the 13th.

And the radio said, “No Ronin, you are the demons.” And then Ronin became a zombie.