So Blumhouse recently dropped three new horror flicks
directly to Netflix – Visions, The Veil, and Curve. This, of course, did not bode well for the quality of the
films (you don't quietly drop a movie on Netflix if it's a real winner), but because they featured some bigger names – Jessica Alba, Thomas Jane,
and Isla Fischer, to name a few – I was intrigued. At least the production
value would be good, I figured. How bad could they really be?
Varying degrees of bad, is the answer. But all bad.
Thus, I decided to rank the films in order of Least Worst to
Most Worst for your pleasure (and no, I don’t care about the grammar of my
chosen title). You might thank me for saving you from wasting nearly five hours
of your life – or closer to seven if, like me, you have to sit through one of
the movies a harrowing second time in order to get half a grip on what’s going
on. Luckily, only one of these movies even broke the 90-minute mark, so my
sanity is still mostly intact. On the other hand, you might be smarter than me
and realize that there’s not any point in even reading about mediocre horror
churned out like so much sausage… but what are horror fans if not gluttons for
punishment? I sat through a Saw movie
every year for seven years, in theaters,
“because it’s tradition.” Non-horror fans don’t know from pain.
So I've ranked them here, along with a handy little barometer for those looking for something to watch during this weekend's impending Snowmaggedon. Follow my advice at your own risk...
Least Worst: Visions
 |
Seriously, doesn't she look adorable even while acting terrified of benign objects? |
Isla Fisher plays a pregnant woman who moves to a vineyard
with her husband to start a New Life (let’s start a bingo board of all the
clichés right now). She’s recovering from a Traumatic Incident, is recently off
painkillers (For the Baby), and there’s a Creepy Old House on the property
that’s been Abandoned For Years. She starts seeing Visions, but are they just a
product of her traumatized mind, or are they real?
…From the setup alone, you can probably imagine all of the two ways this thing can go. And that’s the movie’s main problem; it’s
incredibly generic, from the spooky fog floating outside the window, to the menacing
hooded figure that only the main character seems to see, to the incredibly
obvious villain. There are hints of Rosemary’s
Baby and Inside here, but that
only makes it worse because those comparisons are so unbelievably out of this movie’s
league. It’s an inoffensive unthrilling thriller that would be well suited to
the Lifetime channel.
The Worst Things
About This Movie: The fact that we see the villain coming from a mile away.
The blandness of everything. The fact that a major "scare" involves a mannequin.
The Least Worst
Things About This Movie: Isla Fisher looking adorably pregnant while
running around screaming. The vineyard setting is nice.
Who Should Watch This Movie During the Storm: People who will spend all day cozy on the couch with some hot chocolate and want a "scary" movie that won't startle them out of their comfortable existence.
Medium Worst: Curve
 |
This is what indifference looks like, people. |
I was convinced that this would be my favorite of the three,
since I have a curiously strong affinity for both wilderness survival horror
and single-setting horror movies. Unfortunately, Curve turned out to be more 247
Degrees than The Ruins. (What? The Ruins is my favorite single setting
horror film, bar none.) Okay, it wasn’t as bad as 247 Degrees, but it was pretty dull. Julianne Hough plays a
bride-to-be taking a little road trip while contemplating breaking up with her
fiancé. There’s a lot of exposition and sad music, which does little to make
you care about the character’s situation or raise the stakes, until she offers
a ride to a handsome stranger (who, obviously, turns out to be nuts – which,
really… is The Hitcher not yet
ingrained into our society’s collective psyche?). They end up getting in a car
accident and Hough spends most of the movie trapped in the car, where her
greatest adversary is a rat.
That pretty much sums up why this movie isn’t very good.
Yes, there’s a psycho killer outside of the car, but he doesn’t really do anything other than occasionally
taunt Hough and then walk away for long stretches of time. There is a pretty
good bit with a flood, but the last part of the movie feels tacked-on and out
of place, like it’s two different stories. They could have raised the stakes
with the wilderness stuff and avoided a lot of the “crazy killer” clichés.
The Worst Things
About This Movie: The movie fails to use the wilderness as an enemy as
effectively as it could have, and Teddy Sears makes for a subpar replacement
villain with all his scenery-chewing.
The Least Worst
Things About This Movie: Per usual, Julianne Hough is pretty
middle-of-the-road acting-wise, but she’s likeable enough. There are worse things
you could watch while folding laundry.
Who Should Watch This Movie During the Storm: Those of us who will spend all day grumbling about shoveling our sidewalk and car out of the snow, and need to realize that a lot of people have it worse than us right now.
Most Worst: The Veil
 |
No one saw this coming? Really?? |
Oh, boy. This movie. I’m not even entirely sure what to say
about it, because while the first two films are just annoyingly generic, this one
was… something else. Sadly for me, this is the only film of the three that was
more than an hour and a half (93 minutes), and those extra three minutes felt much, much longer than
they should have. I’m still not certain if The
Veil was as nonsensical as I think it was, or if it was just so bad that I
couldn’t focus on it long enough to keep up with what was going on. I actually
sat through it twice, hoping that
would help, but I think it only made me hate it more and understand it less.
The Veil is about
the mass suicide of a Jonestown-like cult, with Thomas Jane playing the leader
of The Church of Heaven’s Veil, Jim Jacobs – because they needed to make it
just that obvious. Lily Rabe plays Sarah Hope, the lone survivor of the mass
suicide, and Jessica Alba is the documentarian trying to uncover the “real”
story. What ensues is far too many minutes of running around in the dark, flashbacks
and videotapes of the cult performing hackneyed rituals, and way, way, way too
much of Thomas Jane shouting out religious platitudes like an auctioneer on
speed. I assume he was going for “mysteriously charismatic cult leader,” but he
comes off like a crazed villain the entire time, and it’s impossible to
understand why people would listen to him long enough to decide that killing
themselves was an a-okay plan.
There’s also a ton of back-and-forth between time periods through
videotapes, flashbacks, and actual time travel, and it’s just a total mess. Add
in Jessica Alba being a pretty shitty crier and some truly illogical leaps, and
you’ve got a movie that even Lily Rabe can’t save. I really hated this movie, y’all.
The Worst Things
About This Movie: Thomas Jane’s interpretation of “charisma.” Jessica Alba
and her crocodile tears.
The Least Worst
Things About This Movie: Literally nothing.
Who Should Watch This Movie During the Storm: Stir-crazy people you want to push over the edge, you malicious bastard.
And that's that. Hopefully you've learned something. I'm off to contemplate my life choices now.