Maybe not even horror fans can stomach this
Bobby Campo stars in "The Final Destination." What a very proud day for him. Image from www.collider.com.
Horror movie lovers might be pleased with the new offerings available this weekend at the box office, but they will be the only ones. Movie critics certainly are not impressed. People who take out faxless payday loans in Bloomington to see either of the two new horror movies might have a screw loose.
Widespread releases this weekend include two horror movie sequels, “Halloween 2″ and “The Final Destination.” Some people choose to refer to the latter as “Final Destination 4,” even though the movie’s title is so clearly different from the first installation of this horrible — I mean horror — series by the word “the.” What were these people thinking? I think a better title would be “A More Finaler Destination,” so as to connote the intelligence level of the film.
I’m sure no one wants to hear more about my opinion on the ” The Final Destination,” but how about this guy’s?
Mike Scott, Times-Picayune
There are chiefly two kinds of people who will show up to see “The Final Destination” when it opens today (Aug. 28). First, there are those who were extras, or know people who were extras, when the horror sequel shot in town last summer, and who are dying to see a familiar face onscreen.
Then there are those who are dying to see those people dying, via decapitation, dismemberment, disembowelment, extrusion through a fence or varied other forms of creative carnage. … “The Final Destination” has little more to offer. The characters aren’t fully formed enough to care about, the humor is baseball-bat dull, and the story – such as it is – is never treated as anything more than a half-hearted means to get the audiences from one spectacular snuffing to the next.
‘Halloween 2′
Yes, it’s true, “Halloween 2″ has come out before — almost 30 years ago. So that would make this “Halloween 2 2″ or perhaps “Halloween 2 the Second.” But I guess these filmmakers aren’t into mocking themselves. At least not in their movie titles.
However, I have found someone else to mock this movie for them.
Peter Sobczynski, eFilmCritic
Whether you look upon it as a remake of a sequel or a sequel to a remake, Rob Zombie’s “Halloween II,” the continuation of his ugly, unnecessary and presumably profitable re-imagining of John Carpenter’s horror classic, is a repellent and incompetent monstrosity that should put to rest for good the weirdly persistent rumor that he has even a shred of talent as a filmmaker.
This time around, he retains all the elements that didn’t work the first time around (unlikable characters, self-conscious cameo appearances from cult personalities such as Margot Kidder, Howard Hessmann, Caroline Williams and yes, Weird Al Yankovic, murder sequences that are more interested in ramping up the sadism than in trying to create any actual suspense or terror and a grimy visual aesthetic that makes it look as if every scene was shot in a filthy gas station toilet) and then lards his bare-bones story.
Having somehow not died at the end of the first film, Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) returns to Haddonfield one year later to hunt down traumatized sister Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) and anyone who happens to walk into his limited field of vision — with mystical visions of Michael being guided by the spirits of his dead mother (Sherri Moon Zombie) and his younger self that seem to have been included solely to allow the stunningly untalented Mrs. Zombie to continue to appear in it.
