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The Final Girls:
This review isn't fair. I don't know if this movie is good or bad. I just know that it gave me something that I wasn't expecting, and in this case that's not a good thing. The Final Girls lured me in with a premise made specifically for me. A trope-biting horror-comedy about a girl who goes into the universe of a cult horror B-movie that her mom starred in, along with her four friends that exist mostly to be slashed. That's such a genius premise. I was expecting a witty and gory joyride that might make a few funny remarks about the nature of cult movies and might even have something meaningful worth saying about The Final Girl as a cliche. I got Wet Hot American Summer, but like there's a serial killer though. I love low budget horror-comedies, but at this point I think even I'm getting sick of them. Why does nobody want to take their scary movies seriously anymore? This is a comedy about horror first, a drama about a daughter meeting a younger form of her mother second, and a horror movie never.
It's barely even a comedy about horror, because it is so unfocused in what it wants to satirize. The movie within the movie is called Camp Bloodbath, an 80's slasher flick that is specifically a parody of the Friday the 13th movies, complete with a Kumbaya circle of summer camp counselors. It frequently ignores this fact to make comments on more modern horror movies, with halfhearted jump scares galore and even a completely out of place Purge reference. I can't tell if the jump scares were supposed to be funny or scary, but they were neither. The film also, I think unintentionally, abuses my most hated horror cliche that isn't shared by many people, the climactic fight scene in such a dark setting that you can't actually tell what happens. This is obnoxious. I prefer to actually see the victims get killed, and so the decision to use poor lightning and frantic cuts, even if I understand why. There is virtually no gore. This movie is rated PG-13, and I'm never one to talk about ratings making something better, but in order to effectively poke fun at R rated material, this probably should have been R rated. The rest of the jokes are quite unfunny, and even mean-spirited in some places. A cast of modern kids gets sucked into the world of an old movie, and as such the film spends time laughing at the old people for being old. Not knowing what an iPhone or internet is makes for poor humor, but there's an insulting sense of anything old being lame and terrible in the air. Ha, old people movies are way worse than new movies! In a more figurative sense, the jokes are slightly mean-spirited towards horror movies. That part is definitely more of an abstract interpretation than a direct statement by the writer, but there is a ton of evidence in favor of it. I think that a good parody needs thorough love, so that the people making the parody understand the subject enough to know what to comment on and like it enough to think like a genre fan. This film gave me the impression that Todd Strauss-Schulson has never watched a horror movie in full, or didn't like the one that he did. There's a difference between fun ribbing and mean jabs, and a lot of jokes fall definitively into the latter category. The character's don't go to a screening of a horror classic, they go to a cult movie classic. They only like Camp Bloodbath ironically, and even then only one of the main five teens actually wants to be there to watch the movie. It's as if by virtue of being new, Strauss thinks he is above the old films. Most of the other jokes are low hanging fruit. There was not a single joke that I couldn't have made myself. I saw every one coming because there were all obvious. There was nothing inventive, risky, or bold about any gag. I suppose one way in which it did accurately capture the spirit of bad horror movies is by letting me relive those seconds of boredom between an obvious setup and a lame scare, except the scares are replaced with bad punchlines, except for when the scare is the bad punchline. As such, none of the laughs come from the writing. The acting isn't enough to compensate but does get dangerously close at times. Angela Trimbur chews scenery with her mouth open, and Adam DeVine played the exact opposite of his Modern Family character. I enjoyed both of those things tremendously, but that might not have the same impact for others. Most of the main cast puts real effort into giving at least decent performances. Because that's just the type of movie this is, every actor other than Taissa Farmiga only gets one note to play, but the bit parts are well executed and Farmiga is fine considering the script she was handed.
The camerawork looked pretty, but for the sake of nitpicking the colors looked too pretty. Everything in the 80s movie was way more vibrant than it should have been. 50's flashback scenes are shot in black and white. I would have expected the 80's scenes to have a weird filter that dulled colors in order to feel more realistic, while the real life scenes would be shot normally. Maybe the studio didn't think teens would pay attention if the colors weren't professionally polished, but it would have been a chance to make this film stand out. Other small things that bothered me were the inconsistency of the killer and how long the final joke was dragged out. It's established pretty early on that the killer is summoned by sexual acts. That's fine, but you need to stick to it so that your plot makes sense. The killer has absolutely no problem killing the new cast, who have no sexual activity in the universe of the movie and never provoke him. Or does he? This movie operates on Marvel rules. Most characters die once but are brought back later. Thomas Middleditch (Richard Hendricks on Silicon Valley, a fantastic actor who really should have been used more) dies three times. The end joke of the movie is what I expected. It's pretty obvious that through some contrived means, the killer isn't really dead. I don't want to get more specific than that to avoid spoiling the joke, but I correctly guessed the exact joke, as well as an alternate joke that would have been more creative and would have played directly off of previously established rules of the universe. Eventually you stop caring because the conclusion is too obvious.
So what did I like? The few jokes that restrained themselves specifically to the world of 80's slashers mostly worked. There's a John Carpenter imitator composing the score, and the characters know the killer is coming whenever they hear the first few notes of his theme. That's a clever plot device, and the score sounds good enough to stand on its own. The drama between Max and her mother is likewise limited in its screen time but usually very good when it does get a chance to come up. While not exploring the deeper meaning of any genre cliches, the film is interested in exploring the logistics of a person talking to a loved one as a character instead of the human being that they held such a close bond to. I think if the movie was just about that, it would be a better made and more enjoyable product, and it wouldn't feel like the bait-and-switch that I got out of it. I might be able to give it a recommendation if you're looking for a fun comedy to casually watch with friends and saw one of the Jason movies on HBO ten years ago, but if you're a horror fan you will probably not appreciate how little horror is involved, and if you're a veteran of horror trope comedies you will definitely have heard these jokes before. This is not a terrible movie, but unfortunately it is one without a lot of value to me.
The Final Girls:
This review isn't fair. I don't know if this movie is good or bad. I just know that it gave me something that I wasn't expecting, and in this case that's not a good thing. The Final Girls lured me in with a premise made specifically for me. A trope-biting horror-comedy about a girl who goes into the universe of a cult horror B-movie that her mom starred in, along with her four friends that exist mostly to be slashed. That's such a genius premise. I was expecting a witty and gory joyride that might make a few funny remarks about the nature of cult movies and might even have something meaningful worth saying about The Final Girl as a cliche. I got Wet Hot American Summer, but like there's a serial killer though. I love low budget horror-comedies, but at this point I think even I'm getting sick of them. Why does nobody want to take their scary movies seriously anymore? This is a comedy about horror first, a drama about a daughter meeting a younger form of her mother second, and a horror movie never.
It's barely even a comedy about horror, because it is so unfocused in what it wants to satirize. The movie within the movie is called Camp Bloodbath, an 80's slasher flick that is specifically a parody of the Friday the 13th movies, complete with a Kumbaya circle of summer camp counselors. It frequently ignores this fact to make comments on more modern horror movies, with halfhearted jump scares galore and even a completely out of place Purge reference. I can't tell if the jump scares were supposed to be funny or scary, but they were neither. The film also, I think unintentionally, abuses my most hated horror cliche that isn't shared by many people, the climactic fight scene in such a dark setting that you can't actually tell what happens. This is obnoxious. I prefer to actually see the victims get killed, and so the decision to use poor lightning and frantic cuts, even if I understand why. There is virtually no gore. This movie is rated PG-13, and I'm never one to talk about ratings making something better, but in order to effectively poke fun at R rated material, this probably should have been R rated. The rest of the jokes are quite unfunny, and even mean-spirited in some places. A cast of modern kids gets sucked into the world of an old movie, and as such the film spends time laughing at the old people for being old. Not knowing what an iPhone or internet is makes for poor humor, but there's an insulting sense of anything old being lame and terrible in the air. Ha, old people movies are way worse than new movies! In a more figurative sense, the jokes are slightly mean-spirited towards horror movies. That part is definitely more of an abstract interpretation than a direct statement by the writer, but there is a ton of evidence in favor of it. I think that a good parody needs thorough love, so that the people making the parody understand the subject enough to know what to comment on and like it enough to think like a genre fan. This film gave me the impression that Todd Strauss-Schulson has never watched a horror movie in full, or didn't like the one that he did. There's a difference between fun ribbing and mean jabs, and a lot of jokes fall definitively into the latter category. The character's don't go to a screening of a horror classic, they go to a cult movie classic. They only like Camp Bloodbath ironically, and even then only one of the main five teens actually wants to be there to watch the movie. It's as if by virtue of being new, Strauss thinks he is above the old films. Most of the other jokes are low hanging fruit. There was not a single joke that I couldn't have made myself. I saw every one coming because there were all obvious. There was nothing inventive, risky, or bold about any gag. I suppose one way in which it did accurately capture the spirit of bad horror movies is by letting me relive those seconds of boredom between an obvious setup and a lame scare, except the scares are replaced with bad punchlines, except for when the scare is the bad punchline. As such, none of the laughs come from the writing. The acting isn't enough to compensate but does get dangerously close at times. Angela Trimbur chews scenery with her mouth open, and Adam DeVine played the exact opposite of his Modern Family character. I enjoyed both of those things tremendously, but that might not have the same impact for others. Most of the main cast puts real effort into giving at least decent performances. Because that's just the type of movie this is, every actor other than Taissa Farmiga only gets one note to play, but the bit parts are well executed and Farmiga is fine considering the script she was handed.
The camerawork looked pretty, but for the sake of nitpicking the colors looked too pretty. Everything in the 80s movie was way more vibrant than it should have been. 50's flashback scenes are shot in black and white. I would have expected the 80's scenes to have a weird filter that dulled colors in order to feel more realistic, while the real life scenes would be shot normally. Maybe the studio didn't think teens would pay attention if the colors weren't professionally polished, but it would have been a chance to make this film stand out. Other small things that bothered me were the inconsistency of the killer and how long the final joke was dragged out. It's established pretty early on that the killer is summoned by sexual acts. That's fine, but you need to stick to it so that your plot makes sense. The killer has absolutely no problem killing the new cast, who have no sexual activity in the universe of the movie and never provoke him. Or does he? This movie operates on Marvel rules. Most characters die once but are brought back later. Thomas Middleditch (Richard Hendricks on Silicon Valley, a fantastic actor who really should have been used more) dies three times. The end joke of the movie is what I expected. It's pretty obvious that through some contrived means, the killer isn't really dead. I don't want to get more specific than that to avoid spoiling the joke, but I correctly guessed the exact joke, as well as an alternate joke that would have been more creative and would have played directly off of previously established rules of the universe. Eventually you stop caring because the conclusion is too obvious.
So what did I like? The few jokes that restrained themselves specifically to the world of 80's slashers mostly worked. There's a John Carpenter imitator composing the score, and the characters know the killer is coming whenever they hear the first few notes of his theme. That's a clever plot device, and the score sounds good enough to stand on its own. The drama between Max and her mother is likewise limited in its screen time but usually very good when it does get a chance to come up. While not exploring the deeper meaning of any genre cliches, the film is interested in exploring the logistics of a person talking to a loved one as a character instead of the human being that they held such a close bond to. I think if the movie was just about that, it would be a better made and more enjoyable product, and it wouldn't feel like the bait-and-switch that I got out of it. I might be able to give it a recommendation if you're looking for a fun comedy to casually watch with friends and saw one of the Jason movies on HBO ten years ago, but if you're a horror fan you will probably not appreciate how little horror is involved, and if you're a veteran of horror trope comedies you will definitely have heard these jokes before. This is not a terrible movie, but unfortunately it is one without a lot of value to me.