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AMERICAN NIGHTMARE 2002
Written and Directed by Jon Keeyes.
Starring Debbie Rochon, Brandy Little, Johnny Sneed, Robert McCollum, Kristin McCollum, Heather Haase, Kenyon Holmes, Rebecca Stacey, Chris Ryan, Kimberly Grant, Hayden Tweedie, Scott Phillips, Brinke Stevens, Michael H. Price and Jessica Reed.
American Nightmare is supposed to be a suspenseful horror film. The only real emotion it provokes, however, is pity. Not self-pity because you watched such a cheap piece of crap, but actual pity. Not for the cast, because there are better actors out there who never get to be in any film, even a cheap piece of crap like this one. And not for the crew, because given the shoddy production values, all the folks who worked on this movie had to go back to their full time jobs in the food service industry when filming was complete. No, the person you feel sorry for when viewing American Nightmare is writer/director Jon Keeyes. That’s because you can’t help but imagine all the time and energy and struggle he put into making a film that does nothing but illustrate how absolutely talentless he is.
After a silly prologue that’s notable only for featuring the fakest looking punches outside of a 1953 pro wrestling match, we finally get to the main story that’s supposed to be about 7 friends confessing their fears to a radio DJ and then having a killer use those fears against them. I say supposed to be because only 4 of them actually confess their fears to the DJ and only two of them end up dying in a fashion vaguely related to their fears. One other character does die exactly in the way she was afraid of, but she never told the DJ about her phobia. It turns out the killer was in the same room with them, eavesdropping on their conversations, so the whole radio DJ thing was utterly unnecessary. Yeah, this is the sort of movie that’s so bad it doesn’t even bother to follow its own premise.
I’m not going to bother going into the plot of this thing. Suffice to say that it involves a murder who, in order to do everything she does, has to be super-fast, super-strong and possess the stealth abilities of a ninja. She plays a game of cat-and-mouse with her victims where both the cat and the mouse are mentally retarded. One character winds up in the midst of the world’s wussiest mosh pit. Another spends most of the film sitting in a coffee shop cruising internet chat rooms like a lonely pedophile. And, of course, the whole thing ends with a twist that’s supposed to make you wonder what it all meant. What you really wonder about is how much trouble it would be to track down Jon Keeyes and give him a tittie twister until her refunded the money you spent renting this DVD.
The acting on display here is not good at all. It’s like these performers signed up for the same acting class where the instructor was blind, deaf and talked with a lisp. One of these actors thought that someone in intense pain would look exactly like someone with the dry heaves. Another thought being afraid was the same thing as having an obstructed bowel. The movie is specifically set in Austin, Texas, yet only one member of the cast even attempts to pull off an appropriate accent and her dialect is about a steady as a drunk driver in the Daytona 500.
The camera work and dialog of American Nightmare is in fact worse than the performances, if you can believe that. The look of this film is 95% dollying the camera from one side of the set to the other, 3% panning the camera from one side to the other, 1% having close ups that are too far away and wide shots that are too close and 1% having something in the shot be out of focus. Based on this, neither the director nor the director of photography should be able to get jobs videotaping pet weddings. I have seen pet wedding videos that had more memorable dialog than this thing.
Now, two of the actresses do take their tops off, so I suppose American Nightmare has some value to desperately horny social misfits that have moral objections to hardcore pornography. But then watching this would just be enabling their dysfunction, so even they should find something better to do.
AMERICAN PSYCHO 2
Written by Alex Sanger and Karen Craig.
Directed by Morgan J. Freeman.
Starring Mila Kunis, William Shatner, Geraint Wyn-Davies, Robin Dunne, Lindy Boothe, Charles Officer and Kate Kelton.
I don’t care what the title says…this is NOT a sequel to American Psycho. This film is the most blatant example I’ve seen of a trend that’s become far too common. Mediocre or worse original scripts are having minor changes made to them and then are made into movies that are passed off as direct-to-DVD sequels of moderately popular films. It’s a questionable practice at best but in this case, it’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s not that American Psycho 2 isn’t as good as the movie it’s shamelessly latching onto, though it isn’t. It’s that this movie has different characters, a different setting, a different tone, a different style, a different moral and just about everything else that could be different. This isn’t a sequel. It’s a case of identity theft.
Rachel (Mila Kunis) is a sociopathic college student who wants to make it into the FBI. She’s decided her path to achieve that is to become the teaching assistant of Professor Starkman (William Shatner), a behavioral scientist who used to profile serial killers but now teaches classes. There are three students competing with Rachel for the TA position. Guess what happens to them? There’s also a psychiatrist named Daniels (Geraint Wyn-Davies) who is never anything but an extension of The Almighty Plot Hammer. A bunch of people get killed in completely unsurprising ways and then we get a big twist ending that is extremely stupid, even by the standards of direct-to-DVD movies.
American Psycho 2 sucks on just about all levels, but there are two I particularly want to address.
First, Mila Kunis can’t weigh much more than 100 pounds soaking wet. She is a very petite girl, yet this story treats her as a super-human killing machine. But, even with all the martial arts training in the world, tiny women are not capable of using their bare hands to effortlessly kill men 60 to 80 pounds heavier than they are. That’s not sexism. That’s physics. Most of the acts of violence, or even physical exertion, that Mila Kunis performs in this film are hilariously impossible. But unlike American Psycho, there’s never even a suggestion that these violent acts may be only fantasies.
Second, this film has virtually no graphic violence, almost no profanity, no nudity and is not only less provocative than American Psycho, this movie never even tries to be shocking in any way at all. American Psycho 2 is the closest thing to a G rated serial killer movie you’ll ever see. Why would anyone want to watch such a thing? Why would anyone want to make such a thing?
Please don’t be fooled with this film’s title. This is NOT a sequel to American Psycho. It is NOT any good. It does NOT even have a decent amount of gratuitous violence or naked flesh. Unless you’re erotically obsessed with one of the actors in this movie, I can’t think of one other reason why you would enjoy watching this. |
