Fresh off her wave of Hunger Games fame, actress and all around Emma Stone carbon copy Jennifer Lawrence went straight from Sci-Fi to horror in this 2012 box office question mark. People hit the seats as the film’s almost $7 million budget raked in over $44 million – but that is one of the few good things that is to be said about this film. After gaining a whopping 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, this ‘horror’ can be described as a weak thriller at best.
Even so, I have always had a soft spot for this movie for one simple reason – its potential. With a semi-strong cast consisting of Max Thieriot, Elisabeth Shue and Lawrence herself and a fairly strong plot, this movie could have been the smash hit of the summer. Sadly it was let down by lackluster writing, questionable directing and a heavy reliance on the audience’s ability to detect subtle almost hidden clues scattered throughout the movie. I was pretty disappointed when I saw this movie, specifically in Thieriot. From his performance as Norman Bates’ brother in Bates Motel, you would think this kind of plot would be his niche. Sadly, it was not.
The movie begins like any other cliched ‘horror’ (and yes I’m keeping horror in quotes), with a family moving into a new house in a small town. Mother daughter duo Sarah and Elissa are greeted with the fun story of a massacre having took place years earlier in a neighboring house. The sole survivor just so happens to be quiet brooding hot boy (Ryan). Ryan is basically the town’s pariah, being bullied and hated by every citizen of this tiny place except for what seems like the only police officer and Elissa herself.
Elissa is barred by her mother from seeing Ryan and in true teenager form she ignores this and instead begins a timid and slightly odd relationship with the boy she’s had about three conversations with. They talk about music and she asks intrusive questions about his family life and somehow they work. Ryan tells Elissa a confusing story of how he caused his sister Carrie-Ann to have brain damage by letting her fall off a swing while their parents were high on the front porch, which gave her severe anger issues and led to the murder. Simple enough, but the awkward delivery of the story gives no emotion or believability to the story, already making you question his character.
A large part of this movie’s awkward plot twist is scenes that the audience are shown but Elissa is not. We learn that Carrie-Ann did not run off into the woods like once we thought, but instead is being cared for in the basement by Ryan – strapped to a chair and screaming for her life. One night while Ryan is distracted, she manages to escape, running off into the woods and towards freedom. In a dark and downright confusing scene that I had to watch twice, Ryan catches her and somehow accidentally snaps her neck while trying to stop her from screaming. He disposes of the body and goes into a local diner, speaking to a smiling and therefore sweet and innocent waitress.
Later, all the drama surrounding the much anticipated Battle of The Bands leads to a bunch of random highschoolers destroying Ryan’s car when he comes to support Elissa. After injuring a student, Ryan runs off into the night. Elissa goes to where you would assume he was – his own house – to find it on fire. For some reason in the four years since the ‘accident’ they decided that this night in particular was ripe for setting fire to his kitchen. Elissa stops the fire and decides to snoop around his house. She looks in the rubbish and finds a box of tampons – a bit odd yes, but he could have a girlfriend or just be really bad at taking out the trash.
She continues her snooping and finds the very well hidden basement room where ‘Carrie-Ann’ has been kept. She unlocks it to find the waitress now disguised as Carrie-Ann strapped to a chair. She screams and freaks out, attacking Elissa but thankfully, good old Ryan comes to the rescue! He restrains the Carrie-Ann wannabe and tells Elissa to get out, who goes upstairs and finds vital information in the form of contact lenses and a wallet. In true Jennifer Lawrence fashion, she has an awkward, almost painful moment of trying to casually say she has to leave, before doing what many of the audience members wanted to do to her character at that point of the movie – he knocked her unconscious.
What follows is a painful and long sequence of stabbing, attempted escaping, thinking you’re home free and screaming. The sequence itself is likely where the title of horror comes from but with one lackluster jump scare and minimal blood, it comes across as weak at best. At this point you find yourself waiting for the movie to finish in the obvious way it is going to finish and thankfully it does. Mom comes to the rescue and in the most unrealistic part of the entire film, Sarah does not immediately break into a rant of ‘I told you so’.
Time skips forward and Sarah and Elissa are thick as thieves once more, moving away from the weird ass city they occupied for barely three months. In a badly done and awkward sequence we see a young Ryan in a dress being called Carrie Ann and being backhanded when he wants to be called Ryan. What could have been a really cool plot of split personality disorder Ryan with Carrie-Ann in him was instead a weird forced cross dressing experience that didn’t add to the plot or say much more about Ryan’s character as a whole.
While not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, it’s truly disappointing because it could have been truly scary and a real psychological horror movie, but instead flopped like a dead fish trying to get me to feel scared of a Teen Rom Com wet dream.
KEY WORD; Awkward.
RATING;
Plot; 5/10
Execution; 3/10
Acting; 4/10
Cinematography; 3/10
Plot Twist; 4/10
TOTAL; 19/50 aka 38%
Movie Madness 