Review: Level 26: Dark Revelations – Anthony E. Zuiker with Duane Swierczynski

Level 26 #3

SYNOPSIS: In Dark Revelations, Steve Dark faces the most intricate, intense, and explosive case of his career. The killer calls himself Labyrinth, and the riddles, puzzles, and wordplay with which he announces his new targets have caused a worldwide media sensation. The case has already claimed a number of high profile individuals as victims-not to mention several government agencies, which have tried and failed to stop a growing global panic. But what point is Labyrinth trying to make? Who will be his next victim? It’s up to Dark to assemble a team from among the smoking rubble of the international crime-solving community, find Labyrinth wherever he may be, and put a stop to the mayhem, once and for all.

Can Steve Dark solve the biggest riddle of them all? Only time will tell. – via Goodreads

Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Ugh. Really now! This trilogy is just one of those that just disappoints at every turn. So far the best villain has been Sqweegel, from the first book, though a lot of things were just not right in that book. Then there was the sequel, which started with more potential and ended up being only slightly better than the first. Then there was this one, the final installment, and I was wondering if the game would be upped, if there would be a much more satisfying conclusion, some brilliant finale, something to tie up all the ten thousand loose ends dangling around all over. You can forget it. Really now. The villain was not difficult to guess, the ties linking everyone were not difficult to work out, so that left for a hollow experience. Not only that, this book becomes really repetitive and boring very quickly, so that ultimately this book feels like a really juvenile story because there is nothing that chills you or freaks you out, and the riddles are childish in nature. Then there is Steve Dark. This character, I tell you, not one that I enjoy. The sex again… Dark never initiates anything, but we are to believe that women are yanking their clothes off and throwing themselves at him at every single turn?! What are the writers trying to say with this, exactly? Like, meet him, fuck him, move on. It really pisses me off when you get that in a book, truly. It is annoying and crass and unnecessary in the novel. I have been waiting since the first book to hear what Dark would do when he found out about the Sqweegel DNA, and it turned out to be something that was overhyped and underwhelming. I did not watch the videos for this novel save the last, because the stupid book just ends and you have to go and watch the clip to see how it all really ends. You don’t even really need the clips to understand anything, but to have to watch a final one to end the story? Not cool. Defeats the point of a book. This book was just frustrating in the long run, running around in circles, flat and unappealing characters, a villain that had potential but didn’t work out too well by the end of it all, a writing style that certainly needs refinements, characters (Lisa Graysmith hem hem) just suddenly dropping away, though they were actual love interests… just a disappointing way to wrap things up. Really. At least it is all over now.

JB & The Chop Do: The Amityville Haunting (2011)

Amityville is still in full swing people! Hell yeah, you know it! We have been having a crazy party for weeks now every Friday, and it just keeps getting better. Can this franchise top itself? It it even possible? After last week’s awesome entry, could they keep going in a strong direction? Well, they’ve tried their hand at the old found footage thing. Yep. Found footage. True story! Well… what did we think about their found footage dabbling? Read on to find out!

SYNOPSIS: This movie is a ‘found-footage’ film about the Benson family who move in to the infamous house where the DeFeo family were murdered in the 1970s over 30 years earlier. Things start happening to anyone who visits this house, and whoever lives there. This is the footage retrieved from the camera. – via IMDB

Are you fucking joking? I mean really?! As if these movies weren’t offensive enough, we have stepped into found footage filming! I promise you! Found footage!!

This piece of crap movie starts with friends all banging in this Amityville house and then there is a family moving in.

From there, things get so much freaking worse. I kid you not. The lamest, stupidest, cheesiest deaths all start happening. Nobody can act to save their lives, and there was no creepy aspect to it. None whatsoever.

I always seem to get to the place in these ridiculous movies that I think there is no possible way they can get worse. I always think this. I am always wrong. This is by far one of the worst movies I have ever watched. And I am not even just saying that. I mean it. I just couldn’t buy into anything that went on. The characters were stupid, the movie was shot ridiculously, the dialogue was so faulty, everything was just fucking stupid and I hated every second of it. There was nothing to commend about it, either, nothing creepy, nothing that could mean anything.

The camera being ever present was not realistically explained at all (which I know is common to most found footage movies) but hell. This one… I just… and that dad was a prick on top of it all. His family was pretty terrified of him, and that nobody addressed that is beyond me. Abusive twat. Plus he went cuckoo in the end. Totally batshit crazy.

Alos, they are calling this house the Amityville house. Is this where we have gotten? After all this time?

Hold the phones kids! Apparently DeFeo didn’t kill anyone and someone else did and that someone else is like.. tiny and I just don’t even know how we got to this dark and evil place. How the fuck could these movies get any worse that they already were?!

Confession Time:

1 hours 23 minutes took me 6 hours to watch. I am the fucking master of all procrastinators.

I hated it.

I FUCKING HATED IT.

This goddamned movie sucked the most balls out of anything I think I have ever seen. Some puke family buys “the Amityville house” from the original even though it’s been destroyed in all of the sequels. This bag of puke films the entire thing and we have to see his bag of puke face way too many fucking times:

Being found footage, the cocksucking camera glistens and statics and puke shit ghosts appear. See this next picture?

That’s allegedly the ghost of the kid who killed everyone in the first one except he’s like, eight.  Apparently he’s haunting the house and causing workers and real estate people to die. He also eats the daughter’s cereal and stands there by the fucking door. At one point the dad gets mad and starts punching the air where he thinks the ghost is. It’s the fucking stupidest thing I have ever seen and I wanted to take a fat shit on this movie but I was watching it on my computer and didn’t want to soil my brand new monitor.

I hated everything about this movie: the puke acting, the puke found footage, the puke Amityville house with it’s fancy new appliances and wood floors, the puke ghosts, the puke ending and the puke puke I puked while watching this puke. FUCK YOU, movie!

JB & The Chop Do: Amityville 3-D (1983)

In what will surely become a hotly contested and polarizing debate, today we present the abysmal Amityville 3D (sometimes tagged with “The Demon”). I thought this movies was going OK until we got to the last act when I almost croaked out of unbelief. WHAT. THE. FUCK? Who thought that was OK?? ARGGGGGGGGH! My part contains spoilers if you feel like watching this….

SYNOPSIS: A reporter moves into the ominous Long Island house to debunk it of the recent supernatural events and becomes besieged by the evil manifestations which are connected to a hell-spawn demon lurking in the basement. – via IMDB

By now we all know how much Sweet, Tiny JB hated Amityville 2 but I still contend that it’s better than this turd. This thing starts off with a couple of dopes researching the murder house in question. While the copy I watched was NOT 3-D, the 3-D effects were absolutely HORRIBLE looking and I questioned the 80s for ever existing. Anyway – these two dopes debunk the house for being stupid and eliciting fear for money and then they shoo everyone out of the house by opening their overcoats and exposing their floppy dongs.  Then, the guy who looks like Will Farrell’s dad BUYS the house for dirt cheap and tells his old lady ” We bought the house, not the ghosts, Sugarlips.”

Soon, Meg Ryan and the chick from Full House come calling – playing the daughter to whatshisface and her bestie friend.  They’re cute and, according to fashion at the time, they wear their Guess? jeans up over their belly buttons and say things like “Rad!” and “This is fresh!” and “Bitchin’!”

After a typical series of scenes involving fucking flies and a giant hole in the ground that goes to hell that no one has ever sealed up, Ryan wonders what it would be like to have sex with a ghost and then they do some Ouija conjuring.

Eventually, the pervert flasher gets trapped in an elevator, there’s more flies and dripping blood and then, just when you think “I guess this is going OK, I wonder how I’ll review this,” the daughter drowns out in the lake and comes back to Earth as this:

“RAAAAAAAH RAAAAAAAAHHR RAAAAAAHHHHHHHRRRRRRRR!!” She says with light coming out of her mouth. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHR RAAAAAAAAHHHHHHR!!”

So she kills the one pervert guy and the other guy and his squeeze escape and the fucking house explodes to smithereens so there can be NO MORE SEQUELS. Because the house exploded in fiery 3-D flames they can’t possibly have an estate auction selling off the possessions of the family that lived in it prior, before it went to auction. Right? It EXPLODED.

Elsewhere, Margot Kidder shits herself in disgust after viewing this…..

I totally hated this movie and I totally hate this foreign poster for it:

Now, I know that this is one sorry little film for the Chop, but let me just tell you, after the fuck up that was Amityville II: The Possession, this was just amazing by comparison, yet still a pretty stupid film. Like I said, Shitfest Fridays for quite some time to come.

The story was weak and all over the show. That is undeniable. It’s a train wreck that just goes on and on and on, and even though you can totally see what it happening, it does nothing to allay the pain and suffering you are experiencing while watching. Dramatic, I know, but oh so damn true.

The acting was just… bad, but it is still better than what comes in the later ones (I swear, just as you think they can’t get worse… they just… oh man…). The music was ridiculous, and the story went from trundling along to rocketing into some crazy shit: people burning in cars, drowning, walking through the house, the whole toot. Because it can. Just go ahead and do what you want, it all makes perfect sense!

Apparently this was the start of the whole “evil leaves the house” thing, because guess what? An elevator tried to kill someone! AND NOT EVEN IN THE VICINITY OF THE HOUSE!!!!

I want to talk about the crazy shit that finally came to pass as the end because it was the biggest what the fuck moment for the movie. I mean this genuinely and sincerely because I have no fucking clue what the hell that was all about… we had flying fish, crazy Freddy vs Jason water hopping moments (though really not done well), a house that went crazy, people in mourning being all different, a house that would not free them, film cameras up the wazoo and people everywhere and people dying and some fish monster and fuck, I just laughed. And laughed some more. Because the movie was taking itself so seriously the whole time and then devolved into this as an ending? What the heck happened?!

I know that this was like… 3-D and all for it’s time, and the poster is right… we, the viewers, are the victims. It was a bit of a misison, but I made it… though you never think that finish line is in sight. So after all that ludicrous fish-flying stuff is going on and you have no idea if the end is in sight, just when you think you cannot take but even a second more, there is this crackpot crazy explosion. Whoosh. Big. BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND.

Oh my goodness, we have like… another nine or ten to watch, right?! I swear, every time I check out Wikipedia, there is another entry. True story. I just checked now and guess what? Another two on the list!!!!! OH HAPPY DAYS!!!

PS: It was an absolute nightmare to find gifs for this, so I would like to thank Televandalist for the gifs!

Review: New Moon – Stephenie Meyer

Twilight #2

Bella Swan is being all moody and sour with her sparkling vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen on her birthday and is still miffed that he won’t turn her. His brother Jasper tries to eat her, and the Cullens move away. Nasty breakup ensues between Bella and Edward, she spirals into a deep depression like her family has been massacred, not like she has lost her boyfriend whom she has only been with for a few months. Months of obsession and depression after all that, eventually she starts hanging out with Jacob Black, an old friend. They get very close. He is in love with her, she cannot think further than Edward, but has no qualms crushing Jacob’s heart. Eventually Jacob goes on the fritz and she gets sour that he, too, would leave her. Turns out he is actually a werewolf (seriously). Huge misunderstanding at the end causes Edward to try out a suicide mission, and Bella runs with his sister Alice to stop it. Seems they just go back to normal, doesn’t matter about Jacob anymore, who is bitter because the Cullens are his tribe’s sworn enemy and he is in love with Bella, who loves his natural enemy, and he is a werewolf and has to protect his people from them.

Blah, blah, blah. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Moan, moan, moan. Me, me, me. Turn me, turn me, turn me. CRY CRY CRY. Breakup ensues. Depression. Mope, mope, mope. Edward, Edward, Edward. Longing. Suffering. Torture. Pain. CRY CRY CRY. Selfish up the wazoo. Bad writing. Descend on Jacob Black. Use him. Use him some more. Tug at his heart strings. Vampires, werewolves, panic. Edward, Edward, Edward. Mess Jacob around some more. CRY CRY CRY. Betrayal when Jacob has personal issues to deal with that don’t involve her. Sulk, sulk, sulk. More bad writing. Do some stupid stuff. More me, me, me. More moan, bitch, sulk, cry. Obsession, obsession, obsession. Depressed. Suicidal thoughts (because all these books seems to highlight is that losing a love is worth popping yourself over – especially after a few months). Bad writing. Romeo and Juliet references for Africa. CRY CRY CRY. Panic, panic, panic. Discard Jacob. Run to Edward. Edward, Edward, Edward. Obsession. Unhealthy. Unhealthy. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Fuck it. I will never get any part of my life back over this.