Halloweenie Review: It Follows (2014)

October is Halloweenie month here at Flick Chicks, the month that Jenna and I put on our big girl pants and force ourselves to sit through a few horror movies. You can read more about it in our announcement post here, and get involved if you’d like!

So this is the first is a long line of horror movies that me and Allie have promised to watch for Halloweenie, this was no where near the scariest we are going to watch and yet there were were hiding behind cardigans, cushions, hoodies and cats! We gave ourselves a choice between It Follows, Unfriended and The Babadook, and It Follows was the winner!

It Follows centres around what we named a "supernatural STD". After a sexual encounter, Jay (Maika Monroe) starts seeing people following her that no one else can see and they are trying to kill her.  Should she pass it on or try to stop it?

This was not what I was expecting, I thought it was going to be a teen slasher movie, Scream 2.0 but this was completely different. It had more of an indie feel about it and focused on really slow build ups rather than cheap scare tactics to entertain. I read afterwards that the idea of 'it' walking towards the camera makes it feel like a scary dream when someone is following you but you can't get away.

Jump scares are what keeps me away from Horrors, and it's so cool that It Follows only really made me jump once. From memory someone threw a rock at a window? I jumped a mile. The only other time I jumped was when Jenna quite literally punched me in the arm for no reason. Cheers mate!

However, it was the lack of jump scares that had me nervous the entire time. Those slow shots of a window, or open door, had me holding my breath and squinting, waiting for something to jump at me. That suspence barely lets up, and when you do let your guard down, is the moment the movie strikes with something horrifying. I'm just amazed, still. Is this what it feels like to love a Horror movie?

The whole film has a dream vibe about it, everything was so slow and calm (but terrifying at the same time). It made mine and Allies freak outs about every bathroom mirror, windows with curtains and closet doors seem ridiculous as there was minimal big 'jumps'.  I do need someone to explain the swimming pool scene to me and how they came up with that plan? Why did they think it would work? It baffled me?

I have no idea how we are actually going to watch the real jumpy horrors after the state we were in after this. Allie kindly walked me to my car (because I had lots of stuff not because I was scared!!!) And the first person we saw we looked at each other and said "you can see him right" - crackpots! This part is true, whenever Jenna comes to my house she has enough stuff with her to move in with me for the week. I'd imagine we terrified that poor guy though, wondering if he was real or not!

I've spent every day since questioning anyone walking slowly, I feel the need to nudge someone nearby and ask them if they can see that person too.

Oh, and if you're looking for a second opinion, why not check out Courtney's review over at On The Screen Reviews. This was creepy timing, just as I'd finished polishing off this post, Courtney emailed me looking to join in on our 'Halloweenie' activity and sent me a link to her review of It Follows! Weeeeiiiiirrrrrrd! Thanks Courtney...now can anyone else see that person outside? No?

Review: Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Happy Independence Day, folks! There have been jokes made here in the UK about there being a huge rise in popularity for Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) after we voted to leave the EU. I don’t really know how to feel about contributing to that one...as both Jenna and I watched it at the cinema last week! So, if another sequel gets green-lit because of demand, I sincerely apologise. I’m not even sure if I’m apologising on behalf of Flick Chicks or the whole of the UK itself… both!

It’s been 20 years since the events that occurred in 1996, some people (including Former President Whitmore) are having odd dream visions about a circle, the lights have suddenly switched on in a crashed alien ship, and oddly, the Death Star/Pac Man is approaching the moon, where Liam Hemsworth and co have just avoided a mechanical disaster in a heroic scene not dissimilar to Captain America holding down a helicopter with his bare hands. Yeah, stupid and shit! Government are tougher this time, and order an attack on this intruding, spherical ship, which proves successful.

At this point, I’m calling a spoiler alert. There’s no way that we can try and seriously review this movie...all we can try and do is make sense of what actually happened.

I rewatched the original Independence Day the night before seeing this, and I genuinely didn’t remember it being so cheesy, and SO LONG. Although in the movie’s defense, I realise now I watched the extended cut. Still, it was good fun, and I mean, Will Smith punches an alien in the face, so there’s that.  This is one of my top films ever, I really do love it so I went into this one hopeful but realistic that it was not going to live up to the original.  I literally could not have been more right if I tried....

What I remember next is marvelling at just how far technology seems to have advanced in just 20 years. Flying vehicles was one thing, and okay, maybe we got the technology plans from the alien ships in the 90’s, but wait a second. Did Liam Hemsworth just fly that ship-with-arms from the Moon to Earth to pick up Jeff Goldblum, and then take him back to the Moon in about 20 minutes? I’m no astronaut but doesn’t it take a couple of days at least for a one way trip? This whole film was one day...ONE DAY!!!  I looked at Allie completely flabbergasted when the sun was setting at the end of the LONGEST DAY IN HUMAN HISTORY!!!  Bearing in mind, the countless trips to the moon, Africa and what I thought was Bolivia but turned out to the salt flats in Nevada!!  The freaking moon people!

I have to mention this because it has been driving me bonkers, when the film started there was a female voice over describing what the world was like 20 years on from the 1996 attacks.  I thought some of things she said were really odd, such as 'we can now travel really fast....' It seems that entire voice-over was  justification for all the random shit they were about to play out in their movie - 'Hey, we have alien technology so we can live on the moon now!'  AND how did we afford all this stuff, how can we suddenly afford to live on the moon, is it a shared cost now that all the countries are friends and there is no war.  Is the money allocated for defense against other countries now going towards defense against aliens?!  

So, most of the original cast is back (which I gotta admit, is pretty darn cool) apart from Will Smith, because of the salary he demanded. I guess the team took it to heart and decided to kill Earth’s best pilot in a test flight...which is kind of a lame way to go. Instead we get Jessie T. Usher, playing his Son, giving us the ultimate bro combo. Or not. Because Hemsworth tried to kill him. Not cool. Also not cool? Getting punched in the face in the middle of a cafeteria whilst your buddy steals your Moon Milk.  Moon Milk, fecking Moon Milk - that actually happened?!  This was my turn to laugh until I cried which in turn became just plain crying!

I'm still annoyed that they didn't use the original actors to play Dillon and Patty when they scraped the barrel for Vivica A. Fox for a 2 minutes cameo.  I remember watching the original Independence day and really buying into the characters, willing them to survive and even crying when they didn't.  At countless points in this one, I was willing them to be killed so I didn't have to listen to anymore awful one-liners.

After this I kind of just zoned out and had a bit of fun noticing all of the iconic scenes from the original which were basically copied for the sake of nostalgia. Morale boosting speech? Check. Alien choke slam into a foggy window? Check. The President deciding ‘f this’ and getting into a jet to save the day? Check. And then Liam Hemsworth punched an alien in the face and I lost it. I didn’t even see what happened next, I was crying.

Why did they try to recreate iconic scenes from the first one and recreate them badly.  One of the most remembered scenes from the original was the blue light shining down on the White House and kaboom!  In this one they decided to turn the whole of London upside down, they went bigger but not better!

Then of course we have the final scene, Earth’s last ditch attempt at saving itself from extinction, which of course fails, because inside that Queen ship is an alien the size of a skyscraper, inside another alien body, with it’s own shield. Oh snap. Fear not, the boys are here to save the day, whilst the two Levinson’s are navigating a school bus full of kids around the alien's legs and HOLD UP. Was that a Jurassic Park reference with the side mirror right there?!  This was the best scene of the whole film.

You’ve at least got to give the movie points for the visuals though, because they were pretty amazing. I’d like to know what this would have been like in IMAX, but I’m not sure I’ll ever want to see it again. It’s amazing how a movie like this can actually be quite boring in places. It falls just too far on the bad side to be classed as a ‘so bad it’s good’ movie for me, which is a shame. My only regret is that Jenna and I saw this at the cinema, so had to mock it in whispers rather than just screaming at the TV and inadvertently throwing Chinese food around the living room.

This really was a 'from the makers of Sharknado' situation where we just wanted to whinge and moan about the whole thing to try and make it enjoyable.  For me it was a collection of poor and cheesy one-liners put together to create something horrific!  I read something in another review which rang so true, this film is like a collection of scenes from action movie trailers put together.  The only thing I liked about this was Jeff Goldblum.