And Soon the Darkness Review
Hello everybody! Yesterday I watched Karl's film And Soon the Darkness and posted a review in my LJ. everythingshiny suggested I post it here, so yeeeeah... Enjoy me tearing this film apart?
Ugh, this film. Just... don't bother. Please. Save yourself the hour and a half, especially if you just want to watch it for Karl Urban. Go watch Doom or Star Trek or anything else of his instead.
And hey, I'll save you from watching it. I'll outline it all here.
WARNING: If you don't want spoiled? Don't read. I basically summarize this, beginning to end, spoiling everything.
Ok, so I don't even know who this Amber Heard person is. Is she really famous? Is she on some teeny bopper show on the CW or something? Just curious because as the opening credits started, it said Co-Producer: Amber Heard and that sent up redflags. People like Drew Barrymore or Natalie Portman can produce films and star in them. Someone I've never even heard of before being a co-producer? Makes me feel like something's off with this film.
The first minute of this film? Torture porn. A tied up, screaming woman gets water tossed on her and whipped with this electrical thing until she passes out. I can't recall if her name's Camilla or Camille, but let's just say it's Camilla. She comes up later.
Right away we get our tropes with our leads. The pretty blonde has an ex-boyfriend who keeps calling her and she's contemplating taking him back even after he cheated on her. Her name's Steph.
The raven tressed Megan Fox wannabe is the token "slut" who puts a sticker on her passport so it reads "Assport" and tells an Argentinian woman "Ciao." Basically, a moron. We are meant to dislike her because she is sexually liberated and loudly sings "I Touch Myself" in a bar. Her name's Ellie, which is easy to remember because Steph said it every 30 seconds.
Karl Urban plays Michael, the mysterious American whom the trailer and marketing and synopsis wants us to know is mysterious. Steph thinks he's hot. Within a minute of seeing him, Ellie follows him to the men's room and stares at him while he's trying to take a piss. Just in case we didn't get it that Ellie is supposed to be the slut.
Anyway, fast forward. This Creepy Argentinian (who I will hereafter refer to as CA) is making eyes at Ellie, they make out, but then he gets a little too demanding and Steph grabs her away and to the safety of their room. Next day the girls miss the only bus out of there, and take their bikes out to do a little exploring. They get into a fight because Steph's mad Ellie went after Michael to the men's room to seduce him. Steph leaves Ellie there alone and heads off on her own. Ellie gets snatched by CA. Steph runs into Michael, who's worried when he sees she's not with Ellie. Steph goes back to look for Ellie and Michael follows her to help. Her bike's gone and they find her cell. Steph calls the police and Michael doesn't see what good that will do.
The policeman comes and has a permanent douche smirk affixed to his face. He says Ellie will come back on her own, and then he tells her she shouldn't have taken Michael as a lover because he has a terrible habit of misplacing his girlfriends. DING DING DING. I had Michael's role in this movie figured out right here. Are your spidey senses tingling?
Steph files a report with the cop, who sets off my spidey senses (more on him later), walks around the town trying to ask people about Ellie, and everyone ignores her and runs indoors, all creepy like. Then she spots the guy Ellie was with the night before, CA, and he runs. She then proceeds to do the stupidest thing ever and runs after him. At one point he slows down, turns, gives her a smartass smirk, then starts running again. At this point I'm yelling at my screen, "He's leading you away from everybody so he can abduct you, you fucking retard!" and I happened to have emails to answer so I minimized the window and let it play. She lost him somehow (I wasn't looking) and goes back to village, to find her bike's been trashed. Way to be a dumbass and leave your things alone. Gee, it would have been nice if you'd used your bike to catch up to that guy, huh?
Anyway, back at the hotel, and sees Michael's hotel room door is open because the help was cleaning, but they aren't there now and they just left his door open. She goes in, rummages through his bag, and finds an orange and yellow bracelet that looked like the one Ellie had bought yesterday. She runs to the cop and tells him to question Michael. The cop douche smirks at her some more and says he will. My spidey senses start tingling about him even more. Steph sees the CA ride by on a scooter, so she steals the keys to the hotel owner's truck and follows to this really creepy wasteland area. She's walking around the deserted streets, and suddenly Michael appears!
She screams and runs, he chases her, OMG it's the scene from the trailer he's so mysterious, OMG, he grabs her, OMG he must be a crazy murderer, OMG, and then he's letting her go and saying he wouldn't hurt her and what the hell is wrong with her???
Steph pulls out the bracelet and wants to know where Ellie is. Now, at this point, I go, "Uhh, Ellie bought that yesterday from a street vendor in the village over from your hotel. Do you really think it's the only one in existence? Don't you think maybe, I dunno, Michael bought one there at one point?" Michael's upset that she went through his things and says it belongs to someone special to him. There go the spidey senses again! Have you figured it out?
He takes a picture out of his pocket and asks Steph to just look at it. It's a picture of him and a woman, and she's wearing the bracelet in the pic. How conveeeeeenient. He says her name is Camilla (A HA! KNEW IT!) and she's been missing for six months. He comes to this place often to look for her, because he's not leaving without her. Say it with me now, "D'AWWWWWW!"
Now comes stupidity. Michael says they have to find Ellie before dark, because she'll probably be moved then. Uhh, dude, do you still think your girlfriend's there after six months if you think Ellie will be moved tonight? Whatev. Logic has taken a backseat in this movie, because he suggests they split up to cover more ground, but they don't have to if she doesn't want to. But noooo, Steph is like, you're totally right. It is completely safe for me to wander around by myself here. So they split up. Soon though, the cop arrives and accuses Michael of stealing the truck Steph drove in. He makes Michael come with him and I channel Star Wars by going, "I have a bad feeling about this."
Steph finds Ellie tied up and at the mercy of CA, who was about to rape her when his cell rang. Steph manages to get Ellie free while he's distracted and they run. He chases, big running scene, he rounds a corner and Ellie smacks him in the head with a big log of wood. He goes down, covering his nose, and she wails on his shoulders with the log a few times, then she and Steph run.
Now, I'm not saying I could be perfectly rational in these girls' situation, but had a fucker kidnapped me and just tried to rape me? I don't care how traumatized I was, I'd beat that fucker until his skull caved in and I had brain all over the log. Seriously, Steph stands there and Ellie hits him several times on the shoulders, drops the log, and they run to the truck, which of course won't start. So CA follows them, surprise surprise, throws a fucking rock through the windshield, and the girls run out. They run like hell, he catches up, grabs Ellie, and in the struggle he throws her back where she splits her skull on an inconveniently placed rock and dies.
I repeat, she dies.
If she had beaten him to death with the log, she wouldn't have died, but nope, she's fucking dead.
As this is happening, the cop was driving up. Steph attacks CA as the cop car stops and Michael jumps out punching CA in the face and the cop puts a gun to CA's head, asking if he was the one who took Ellie. Steph confirms it and the cop tells her to wait in the cop car where it's safe.
She proceeds to do the dumbest thing ever, which is to get in the back seat of the car. You know, the part that you can't open from the inside. Once she's in, she finds Ellie's passport on the floor and the whole plan unravels.
Yep, the cop was working with CA the whole time. Somehow Michael gets the cop's gun away from them and demands to know where Camilla is. The cop says he's willing to take him to her, but he has to trade. Steph for Camilla. Michael is shocked, and here I used my movie trope knowledge to guess that he'd agree, but once he had Camilla, he'd try to save Steph too. That's how these movies work, right? Anyway, Steph can hear all this from the backseat. Michael agrees, then does the STUPIDEST THING EVER, which is to lower the gun, turn completely around to face Steph, exposing his back to the cop, and telling Steph, "I'm sorry."
The cop, of course takes out a hidden gun, Steph's screaming at Michael to warn him, annnnd Michael is shot in the back.
That's it. Michael's dead.
AWHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU?
I just... I don't... what? At this point, I'm so confused. His storyline wasn't resolved. What the hell.
So I come up with a new idea. Steph will be taken to where Camilla is, and together they'll escape. Because why have this storyline if it's left unresolved?
Steph's taken on a boat to meet her buyer, because in case you haven't guessed yet, the cop and CA are in the human trafficking business and they kidnap women to be sex slaves.
But Steph throws a net on CA and shoves him overboard. He gets caught up in the net and the net gets caught in the boat motor. The boat stops, he drowns, and Steph jumps off, swimming to shore. The cop follows and riiiiiight onshore is her buyer, waiting. She kicks him in the nads, elbows the cop and runs off. Blah blah blah, she's chased onto a houseboat, cop's got a shotgun, she grabs a knife, stabs him in the thigh and gets the gun, pointing at him. He tells her to give him the gun, and she pauses.
Let me type that again. SHE PAUSES. Allowing him more time to demand she give him the gun. I am screaming at my computer screen, "Shoot the fucker! Shoot the fucker! SHOOT THE FUCKER!" Oh, I mean, he only abducted your friend, inadvertently caused her death, kidnapped you, tried to sell you as a sex slave, and then came after you with a shotgun, but let's fucking pause and think about this! She FINALLY gets her head out of her ass when he yells at her to give him the gun for like, the fifth time, and she shoots him.
Then she's walking back to the village and some other kind of Argentinian cops, who have a woman with them and can therefore be trusted, pick her up.
Roll credits.
Wait, what? What the fuck about Camilla? Will these cops be able to find her? With both CA and the cop dead, will she starve in her prison cell? WHAT THE FUCK, MOVIE? WHAT THE FUCK.
So yeah, there you have it. A movie where two people would still be alive if they hadn't of been idiots. And a girl who wouldn't have been traumatized if she'd not been an idiot.
There, I saved you and hour and a half of your lives. You're welcome.
Ugh, this film. Just... don't bother. Please. Save yourself the hour and a half, especially if you just want to watch it for Karl Urban. Go watch Doom or Star Trek or anything else of his instead.
And hey, I'll save you from watching it. I'll outline it all here.
WARNING: If you don't want spoiled? Don't read. I basically summarize this, beginning to end, spoiling everything.
Ok, so I don't even know who this Amber Heard person is. Is she really famous? Is she on some teeny bopper show on the CW or something? Just curious because as the opening credits started, it said Co-Producer: Amber Heard and that sent up redflags. People like Drew Barrymore or Natalie Portman can produce films and star in them. Someone I've never even heard of before being a co-producer? Makes me feel like something's off with this film.
The first minute of this film? Torture porn. A tied up, screaming woman gets water tossed on her and whipped with this electrical thing until she passes out. I can't recall if her name's Camilla or Camille, but let's just say it's Camilla. She comes up later.
Right away we get our tropes with our leads. The pretty blonde has an ex-boyfriend who keeps calling her and she's contemplating taking him back even after he cheated on her. Her name's Steph.
The raven tressed Megan Fox wannabe is the token "slut" who puts a sticker on her passport so it reads "Assport" and tells an Argentinian woman "Ciao." Basically, a moron. We are meant to dislike her because she is sexually liberated and loudly sings "I Touch Myself" in a bar. Her name's Ellie, which is easy to remember because Steph said it every 30 seconds.
Karl Urban plays Michael, the mysterious American whom the trailer and marketing and synopsis wants us to know is mysterious. Steph thinks he's hot. Within a minute of seeing him, Ellie follows him to the men's room and stares at him while he's trying to take a piss. Just in case we didn't get it that Ellie is supposed to be the slut.
Anyway, fast forward. This Creepy Argentinian (who I will hereafter refer to as CA) is making eyes at Ellie, they make out, but then he gets a little too demanding and Steph grabs her away and to the safety of their room. Next day the girls miss the only bus out of there, and take their bikes out to do a little exploring. They get into a fight because Steph's mad Ellie went after Michael to the men's room to seduce him. Steph leaves Ellie there alone and heads off on her own. Ellie gets snatched by CA. Steph runs into Michael, who's worried when he sees she's not with Ellie. Steph goes back to look for Ellie and Michael follows her to help. Her bike's gone and they find her cell. Steph calls the police and Michael doesn't see what good that will do.
The policeman comes and has a permanent douche smirk affixed to his face. He says Ellie will come back on her own, and then he tells her she shouldn't have taken Michael as a lover because he has a terrible habit of misplacing his girlfriends. DING DING DING. I had Michael's role in this movie figured out right here. Are your spidey senses tingling?
Steph files a report with the cop, who sets off my spidey senses (more on him later), walks around the town trying to ask people about Ellie, and everyone ignores her and runs indoors, all creepy like. Then she spots the guy Ellie was with the night before, CA, and he runs. She then proceeds to do the stupidest thing ever and runs after him. At one point he slows down, turns, gives her a smartass smirk, then starts running again. At this point I'm yelling at my screen, "He's leading you away from everybody so he can abduct you, you fucking retard!" and I happened to have emails to answer so I minimized the window and let it play. She lost him somehow (I wasn't looking) and goes back to village, to find her bike's been trashed. Way to be a dumbass and leave your things alone. Gee, it would have been nice if you'd used your bike to catch up to that guy, huh?
Anyway, back at the hotel, and sees Michael's hotel room door is open because the help was cleaning, but they aren't there now and they just left his door open. She goes in, rummages through his bag, and finds an orange and yellow bracelet that looked like the one Ellie had bought yesterday. She runs to the cop and tells him to question Michael. The cop douche smirks at her some more and says he will. My spidey senses start tingling about him even more. Steph sees the CA ride by on a scooter, so she steals the keys to the hotel owner's truck and follows to this really creepy wasteland area. She's walking around the deserted streets, and suddenly Michael appears!
She screams and runs, he chases her, OMG it's the scene from the trailer he's so mysterious, OMG, he grabs her, OMG he must be a crazy murderer, OMG, and then he's letting her go and saying he wouldn't hurt her and what the hell is wrong with her???
Steph pulls out the bracelet and wants to know where Ellie is. Now, at this point, I go, "Uhh, Ellie bought that yesterday from a street vendor in the village over from your hotel. Do you really think it's the only one in existence? Don't you think maybe, I dunno, Michael bought one there at one point?" Michael's upset that she went through his things and says it belongs to someone special to him. There go the spidey senses again! Have you figured it out?
He takes a picture out of his pocket and asks Steph to just look at it. It's a picture of him and a woman, and she's wearing the bracelet in the pic. How conveeeeeenient. He says her name is Camilla (A HA! KNEW IT!) and she's been missing for six months. He comes to this place often to look for her, because he's not leaving without her. Say it with me now, "D'AWWWWWW!"
Now comes stupidity. Michael says they have to find Ellie before dark, because she'll probably be moved then. Uhh, dude, do you still think your girlfriend's there after six months if you think Ellie will be moved tonight? Whatev. Logic has taken a backseat in this movie, because he suggests they split up to cover more ground, but they don't have to if she doesn't want to. But noooo, Steph is like, you're totally right. It is completely safe for me to wander around by myself here. So they split up. Soon though, the cop arrives and accuses Michael of stealing the truck Steph drove in. He makes Michael come with him and I channel Star Wars by going, "I have a bad feeling about this."
Steph finds Ellie tied up and at the mercy of CA, who was about to rape her when his cell rang. Steph manages to get Ellie free while he's distracted and they run. He chases, big running scene, he rounds a corner and Ellie smacks him in the head with a big log of wood. He goes down, covering his nose, and she wails on his shoulders with the log a few times, then she and Steph run.
Now, I'm not saying I could be perfectly rational in these girls' situation, but had a fucker kidnapped me and just tried to rape me? I don't care how traumatized I was, I'd beat that fucker until his skull caved in and I had brain all over the log. Seriously, Steph stands there and Ellie hits him several times on the shoulders, drops the log, and they run to the truck, which of course won't start. So CA follows them, surprise surprise, throws a fucking rock through the windshield, and the girls run out. They run like hell, he catches up, grabs Ellie, and in the struggle he throws her back where she splits her skull on an inconveniently placed rock and dies.
I repeat, she dies.
If she had beaten him to death with the log, she wouldn't have died, but nope, she's fucking dead.
As this is happening, the cop was driving up. Steph attacks CA as the cop car stops and Michael jumps out punching CA in the face and the cop puts a gun to CA's head, asking if he was the one who took Ellie. Steph confirms it and the cop tells her to wait in the cop car where it's safe.
She proceeds to do the dumbest thing ever, which is to get in the back seat of the car. You know, the part that you can't open from the inside. Once she's in, she finds Ellie's passport on the floor and the whole plan unravels.
Yep, the cop was working with CA the whole time. Somehow Michael gets the cop's gun away from them and demands to know where Camilla is. The cop says he's willing to take him to her, but he has to trade. Steph for Camilla. Michael is shocked, and here I used my movie trope knowledge to guess that he'd agree, but once he had Camilla, he'd try to save Steph too. That's how these movies work, right? Anyway, Steph can hear all this from the backseat. Michael agrees, then does the STUPIDEST THING EVER, which is to lower the gun, turn completely around to face Steph, exposing his back to the cop, and telling Steph, "I'm sorry."
The cop, of course takes out a hidden gun, Steph's screaming at Michael to warn him, annnnd Michael is shot in the back.
That's it. Michael's dead.
AWHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU?
I just... I don't... what? At this point, I'm so confused. His storyline wasn't resolved. What the hell.
So I come up with a new idea. Steph will be taken to where Camilla is, and together they'll escape. Because why have this storyline if it's left unresolved?
Steph's taken on a boat to meet her buyer, because in case you haven't guessed yet, the cop and CA are in the human trafficking business and they kidnap women to be sex slaves.
But Steph throws a net on CA and shoves him overboard. He gets caught up in the net and the net gets caught in the boat motor. The boat stops, he drowns, and Steph jumps off, swimming to shore. The cop follows and riiiiiight onshore is her buyer, waiting. She kicks him in the nads, elbows the cop and runs off. Blah blah blah, she's chased onto a houseboat, cop's got a shotgun, she grabs a knife, stabs him in the thigh and gets the gun, pointing at him. He tells her to give him the gun, and she pauses.
Let me type that again. SHE PAUSES. Allowing him more time to demand she give him the gun. I am screaming at my computer screen, "Shoot the fucker! Shoot the fucker! SHOOT THE FUCKER!" Oh, I mean, he only abducted your friend, inadvertently caused her death, kidnapped you, tried to sell you as a sex slave, and then came after you with a shotgun, but let's fucking pause and think about this! She FINALLY gets her head out of her ass when he yells at her to give him the gun for like, the fifth time, and she shoots him.
Then she's walking back to the village and some other kind of Argentinian cops, who have a woman with them and can therefore be trusted, pick her up.
Roll credits.
Wait, what? What the fuck about Camilla? Will these cops be able to find her? With both CA and the cop dead, will she starve in her prison cell? WHAT THE FUCK, MOVIE? WHAT THE FUCK.
So yeah, there you have it. A movie where two people would still be alive if they hadn't of been idiots. And a girl who wouldn't have been traumatized if she'd not been an idiot.
There, I saved you and hour and a half of your lives. You're welcome.