Weekend movies.

This weekend we watched Paranormal Activity, Shutter Island and The Crazies.
We started with Paranormal Activity.  I told my husband before the movie started I didn't think he would like it and I was absolutely right.  He likes movies where stuff happens.  He's not really concerned about the script or acting.  He really just prefers running, punching, kicking and stuff that blows up.  I'm simplifying a bit, he has some standards but he definitely has action movie lover leanings. 

Here's a hint about movies like Paranormal Activity.  It's one of those movies that pretends it is footage that is found "after the fact".  The appeal of these movies is that the filmmakers fabricated a real-life setting and made some crazy situations to occur within them.  The viewer gets a peeping tom view of "real people" in fucked up situations and that makes it seem like it's more plausible that it could happen to the viewer.  The viewer always expects that will be great fun sort of voyeuristic.  The problem with these movies for most scary moviegoers is that situations that are plausible aren't very scary to watch but are scary to experience and these movies don't recreate the feeling of a haunted house.  The situations that viewers find scary in films are mostly suspenseful because the viewer really has no idea how the character is going to get out of some situation where said character is clearly doomed only to get out of it in an implausible nature that the viewer couldn't have thought of. 

First of all in these after the fact movies, they aim to look like real life so the characters can't get in a bunch doomed situations until the very end of the movie where they are actually doomed.  Until then the filmmaker has to keep the character fairly safe throughout the bulk of the movie because the situations have to be mostly believable.  Which is the complaint that people have of these movies, nothing happens!

While nothing really happens until the film's end, I liked it. 

It starts off sort of slow but I appreciated the plot development in the end.  Katie and Micah did a good job of creating a couple that shared a life together and they displayed the emotions of their respective characters well. I thought the plot was interesting enough. 

In order for people to enjoy this film one must let go of their expectations of what the trailer propagates and take it for what it is.

Second, we watched The Crazies.  I can't tell you much because we didn't finish it.  Neither of us liked it. 
Basically the town goes crazy and starts killing everyone.  I don't know how much of it we watched but it was too much.

It started off on the wrong foot.  My first complaint is that pretty much as soon as the movie begins it goes right into the crazy.  I would have liked to see how normal the town was before people started to go nuts, but it was just crazy things happening with no explanation.  I wouldn't mind this except that I had no idea who the characters were thus I didn't care what was happening to them.  The filmmakers did not create an identity to make the characters feel real to me.  

It was kind of like when your friend comes to you and says they had the weirdest dream last night and you hope that it ends there but unfortunately they tell you what happened during the dream.  And you don't care because the dream is about as far from reality as you can get but your friend thinks it is so interesting.  So you just wait until they start talking and say, "Wow, that's crazy!" and hope that they don't quiz you about it later.  Yeah it was like that, except no one in this movie was in my friend so I just turned it off.   

The third movie we watched my my weekend favorite.  We watched Shutter Island.  I thought it was pretty good. 

It is one of those movies where tragically nothing is ever what it seems.  The movie was paced perfectly to keep me wondering and intrigued in all the right places.