Disappointing
I'm having disappointing experiences these last couple of days.
First, I'm not a huge horror movie fan, but every now and then I get in the mood. And I had heard a lot about The Descent. So I looked it up, and it was about a bunch of women, so I figured why not.
The good:
-It is all about women. Seriously, there's one guy in it for about 2 minutes at the beginning, and he dies. The rest is about a group of good friends going on a trip together.
-The woman are competent and not overly sexualized. At the most revealing, a couple of them end up in wet tank tops, but it makes sense in context and isn't played to be hot at all.
The bad:
-I say they're competent, and that's because they know what they're doing in terms of cave diving, and for the most part they do a passable job keeping their wits about them after they start being attacked. But there are also a few really, really stupid things they do that made me want to bang my head on something. Like, at one point, the mother/daughter pair had just figured out that the creatures are totally blind and hunt by sound. So when they start moving on, the mom is looking around corners first to make sure they don't literally walk into one, and does so by jumping out and making noise. Now, the jumping thing I can actually kind of understand. Knowing the creepy monsters can't see you doesn't mean it's fun to stand in front of one, and I could see needing to just make yourself do it, but why make the little yelpy noise? You literally just two seconds ago figure out that's how they find you and kill you!
-The villainizing of Juno. Look, I get it, she's not the nicest girl ever. She was having an affair with her friend's husband, she led her friends into an unexplored cave without telling them. I get it, she screwed up and they wouldn't have gotten into the whole mess if it weren't for her. Something Juno seems very aware of. And then she stabbed Beth. It wasn't her fault. She had just fought off and killed a monster! And then Beth shows up directly behind her and Juno thinks she's being attacked again. It's dark, she's scared, she's full of adrenaline. It's a mistake and she's horrified. What she did next was wrong. Leaving Beth to die alone was cowardly. But it's not like when Holly broke her leg. It's not like she could have saved Beth at that point. She should have stayed with her or put her out of her misery, but Beth was going to die and Juno freaked the fuck out and ran. Nothing to be proud of, but not evil. And again with not telling anyone how Beth died. Who wants to admit that they just killed a friend? It's wrong, but it's understandable.
The bottom line is, while Juno's actions aren't honorable, in no fucking way do they justify Sarah stabbing her in the leg and leaving her behind to save herself. That was a deliberate choice to hurt someone and leave them to die, leave them as bait. Fuck Sarah! Juno was, IMO, 10 times more interesting a character because of how fucked up she was, and I had no sympathy for Sarah at that point. Fine, she's fucked up, she ruined your life, don't send her birthday cards anymore. But don't fucking murder her deliberately when she's done nothing to deliberately hurt anyone.
Seriously, Juno and her pickax are the best part of The Descent. Also, apparently this is the same chick from Jeremiah Crichton. Lol.
OK, then the other thing. Practical Magic has long been one of my go to feel good movies. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure, as it really does have a lot of plot holes if you look at it too hard, but it's so much fun. And so I decided to finally read the book. I figured, maybe the book will fill in some of those holes.
I admit I'm not very far into the book yet. Maybe...50 pages? And I'm already so disappointed it hurts. Maybe it'll get better as it goes on, but I don't think that'll make up for it. Everything I love about the movie is opposite here. In the movie, I love the relationships between all the women. They're family and of course they fight, but you know that Sally and Gillian and the Aunts all love each other dearly. In the book, they're kind of awful to each other. And the aunts seem just kind of awful in general. There are similarities between the Aunts of the book and the Aunts of the movie, but the book Aunts just seem mean spirited in a way the movie Aunts aren't.
And then there's Sally. In the movie, Sally wants to be normal. Mostly meaning Sally wants to not have everyone in town treat her like a pariah. While the aunts point out that being 'normal' takes less courage than being true to yourself, they ultimately want her to be happy. The way they go about making that happen is wrong and invasive, but their hearts are in the right place. They give her what she wants. In the book Sally is a very responsible, stay at home type, and she is constantly told that she needs to go out and live her life, that there's something wrong with staying home on the weekends to read a book. As someone who prefers to stay home on the weekends, fuck off Practical Magic.
Just...ugh. I feel like I need to keep reading to see if it gets any closer to the movie, but it's hitting so many of my buttons in a bad way. The movie is a romance that manages to be so much about women's relationships with each other despite the plot being driven by Gillian and Sally's love lives. So far the book just seems to be about being happy when you get a guy.
First, I'm not a huge horror movie fan, but every now and then I get in the mood. And I had heard a lot about The Descent. So I looked it up, and it was about a bunch of women, so I figured why not.
The good:
-It is all about women. Seriously, there's one guy in it for about 2 minutes at the beginning, and he dies. The rest is about a group of good friends going on a trip together.
-The woman are competent and not overly sexualized. At the most revealing, a couple of them end up in wet tank tops, but it makes sense in context and isn't played to be hot at all.
The bad:
-I say they're competent, and that's because they know what they're doing in terms of cave diving, and for the most part they do a passable job keeping their wits about them after they start being attacked. But there are also a few really, really stupid things they do that made me want to bang my head on something. Like, at one point, the mother/daughter pair had just figured out that the creatures are totally blind and hunt by sound. So when they start moving on, the mom is looking around corners first to make sure they don't literally walk into one, and does so by jumping out and making noise. Now, the jumping thing I can actually kind of understand. Knowing the creepy monsters can't see you doesn't mean it's fun to stand in front of one, and I could see needing to just make yourself do it, but why make the little yelpy noise? You literally just two seconds ago figure out that's how they find you and kill you!
-The villainizing of Juno. Look, I get it, she's not the nicest girl ever. She was having an affair with her friend's husband, she led her friends into an unexplored cave without telling them. I get it, she screwed up and they wouldn't have gotten into the whole mess if it weren't for her. Something Juno seems very aware of. And then she stabbed Beth. It wasn't her fault. She had just fought off and killed a monster! And then Beth shows up directly behind her and Juno thinks she's being attacked again. It's dark, she's scared, she's full of adrenaline. It's a mistake and she's horrified. What she did next was wrong. Leaving Beth to die alone was cowardly. But it's not like when Holly broke her leg. It's not like she could have saved Beth at that point. She should have stayed with her or put her out of her misery, but Beth was going to die and Juno freaked the fuck out and ran. Nothing to be proud of, but not evil. And again with not telling anyone how Beth died. Who wants to admit that they just killed a friend? It's wrong, but it's understandable.
The bottom line is, while Juno's actions aren't honorable, in no fucking way do they justify Sarah stabbing her in the leg and leaving her behind to save herself. That was a deliberate choice to hurt someone and leave them to die, leave them as bait. Fuck Sarah! Juno was, IMO, 10 times more interesting a character because of how fucked up she was, and I had no sympathy for Sarah at that point. Fine, she's fucked up, she ruined your life, don't send her birthday cards anymore. But don't fucking murder her deliberately when she's done nothing to deliberately hurt anyone.
Seriously, Juno and her pickax are the best part of The Descent. Also, apparently this is the same chick from Jeremiah Crichton. Lol.
OK, then the other thing. Practical Magic has long been one of my go to feel good movies. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure, as it really does have a lot of plot holes if you look at it too hard, but it's so much fun. And so I decided to finally read the book. I figured, maybe the book will fill in some of those holes.
I admit I'm not very far into the book yet. Maybe...50 pages? And I'm already so disappointed it hurts. Maybe it'll get better as it goes on, but I don't think that'll make up for it. Everything I love about the movie is opposite here. In the movie, I love the relationships between all the women. They're family and of course they fight, but you know that Sally and Gillian and the Aunts all love each other dearly. In the book, they're kind of awful to each other. And the aunts seem just kind of awful in general. There are similarities between the Aunts of the book and the Aunts of the movie, but the book Aunts just seem mean spirited in a way the movie Aunts aren't.
And then there's Sally. In the movie, Sally wants to be normal. Mostly meaning Sally wants to not have everyone in town treat her like a pariah. While the aunts point out that being 'normal' takes less courage than being true to yourself, they ultimately want her to be happy. The way they go about making that happen is wrong and invasive, but their hearts are in the right place. They give her what she wants. In the book Sally is a very responsible, stay at home type, and she is constantly told that she needs to go out and live her life, that there's something wrong with staying home on the weekends to read a book. As someone who prefers to stay home on the weekends, fuck off Practical Magic.
Just...ugh. I feel like I need to keep reading to see if it gets any closer to the movie, but it's hitting so many of my buttons in a bad way. The movie is a romance that manages to be so much about women's relationships with each other despite the plot being driven by Gillian and Sally's love lives. So far the book just seems to be about being happy when you get a guy.