Alternate title: "The Man Who Refused To Step On Cockroaches".
I don't know if there is a person on this planet (except for the handful of freaks to hold these awful insects as pets) who'd never step on a cockroach, even if he were surrounded and plagued by them day-in day-out. But this unexpected cockroach-tolerance - displayed by the protagonist - is the least of the movie's problems.
The first half-hour is fairly intriguing. Not much wasted screen-time on small-talk i.e. the usual boring introductory nonsense you get in 95% of horror films when little happens and characters utter mundane, meaningless (and unfunny) lines to each other. An unusual set-up too; it is unclear where the movie is heading with all this, and that's usually a good thing. (Turns out it was heading nowhere.)
Unfortunately, things start getting a little bit stupid after that. Firstly, the bartender (who looks vaguely like Greg Kinnear) doesn't go to the cops. Considering that he has good friends who are cops and who work nearby, this is fairly illogical. (Even his girlfriend later admonishes him for being reluctant about informing cops.) Nor is he in a rush to inform the phone's owner - one of his own customers - that the phone is in his possession. Then we have that silly, exaggerated scene in which he throws himself out of his car - and within seconds ten people are standing around him, filming him with mobile phones! Is this a comedy then? It wasn't until then.
Later that day the barkeep goes back to work, more-or-less as if not much had happened. The fact that he saw photos of severed heads? That he was told by anonymous people he "was chosen" for sacrifice? The fact that after this warning he had a vivid hallucination that made him throw out the phone and almost smash into a car - while thinking he was being attacked by cockroaches? He is way too chill. (His girl tells him later on that he is "too blasé" about all this, but we never find out why hence her comment is irrelevant.) Any person would have been freaking out, for days, if not weeks, months. But that's the problem with so many movies; they are not focused on keeping things even half-way realistic. This is doubly stupid, because this movie plays out as a half-drama, not as some generic formulaic teen horror - in which such idiotic characterization errors/inconsistencies are not only common but expected.
The barkeep is shown to be cunning (for example the way he figures out the password on the mysterious phone), and yet when the cops ask him for the license plate number of the car that's been following him, he stupidly responds with: "it begins with six", and without a trace of joking. The cops laugh, while the audience does a collective face-palm. So is he dumb or not? Well, he snorts cocaine, so it's probably the former.
Nevertheless, despite these minor irritations, by the time I reached the one-hour mark I was still wondering why the movie has such a low rating for a non-B-movie production. A 4.0 is fairly low for a horror film with a decent budget. (Especially since budget movies get automatically swarm-voted and fake-reviewed, more so than low-budget stinkers.) There was no obvious badness there. Not yet. This would change.
In the second hour, the movie still had plenty of mystery on its side, things were still interesting. And fairly dumb too. Despite witnessing so many weird things the night he dropped his girlfriend into the bathtub, things that would utterly freak out ANYBODY, he still had the motivation to call up his ex to find out why she told her new boyfriend about their little stint together. That'd be like being in a burning airplane, falling down rapidly while everyone around you was screaming - then deciding to phone up your girlfriend to ask her who won the Cup finale. Quite absurd. Relationship issues should be the last thing on anyone's mind while hell-demons from other dimensions are threatening to crush all of their teeth and lop off their head. It's called "emergency prioritizing". (Or at least that's how I decided to name it.)
Even sillier, the next morning instead of discussing Satan's hell-beasts and how to defend themselves from them, he calmly proposes to his girlfriend that they break up! I.e. yet more relationship nonsense, which is extremely irrelevant given their situation. It's as if this movie is desperately trying to play a romantic drama CONCURRENTLY with a hell-beast demon possession horror. Not doable. And why make that kind of movie anyway? That same day he pesters his ex, yet again, wanting to discuss relationship stuff. Did these demons possess him to become a yenta or to use his (empty) head as a vessel to enter the human realm in a weird cockroach-infested ritual? Which is it? It can't be both. Nora Roberts never had a supernatural satanic sub-plot. (Just guessing here, obviously.)
It's a pity that the film is so seriously hampered by these relationship scenes and the overall genre schizophrenia. I'd have cut them out, turn this into a proper horror film.
But wait, no. I'd still have an incomplete movie, because of those idiotic, confusing last few scenes which not only explain ZERO about what's been going on but muddle things even more. The utterly nonsensical dialog between the bartender and the Confederate thug is a scene that redefines "worthless".
This is Wikipedia's explanation: "Will (barkeep) realizes the higher being the kids summoned is inside Eric's wound. After calling Garrett again, which fills the room with the inhuman screeching, a swarm of cockroaches arrive. Will finally submits and starts to absorb the higher being in an attempt to become whole as cockroaches envelop the house." This summary is rubbish, and even if it weren't this "explanation" resolves nothing. Becoming whole? We knew he was an A-whole, but we never knew he was supposed to be whole, whatever that means.
What's with that Confederate flag crap, anyway? When will American movies finally stop insulting us with their cheap, filthy propaganda nonsense? The more they tell me to hate the Confederate flag the more I am liable to sympathize with its fans; they are just achieving the opposite with this kind of preaching, at least in my case.
Two points off for the silly ending that serves no purpose, except to tell us that the writer/director isn't competent enough to deliver a script without outside help. The movie is based on a novel; that book is either rubbish or has been butchered by a lame adaptation. Why do these millennial/Xer directors have to write as well as direct? This is just one of many reasons why (American) cinema has deteriorated so rapidly this century, this megalomania and exaggerated self-belief among so many writers and directors that they can do everything themselves. Becoming a respected "auteur" these days is a big hipster ambition, but only very few are capable of pulling it off with success. And I mean QUALITY success, not financial success.
I don't know if there is a person on this planet (except for the handful of freaks to hold these awful insects as pets) who'd never step on a cockroach, even if he were surrounded and plagued by them day-in day-out. But this unexpected cockroach-tolerance - displayed by the protagonist - is the least of the movie's problems.
The first half-hour is fairly intriguing. Not much wasted screen-time on small-talk i.e. the usual boring introductory nonsense you get in 95% of horror films when little happens and characters utter mundane, meaningless (and unfunny) lines to each other. An unusual set-up too; it is unclear where the movie is heading with all this, and that's usually a good thing. (Turns out it was heading nowhere.)
Unfortunately, things start getting a little bit stupid after that. Firstly, the bartender (who looks vaguely like Greg Kinnear) doesn't go to the cops. Considering that he has good friends who are cops and who work nearby, this is fairly illogical. (Even his girlfriend later admonishes him for being reluctant about informing cops.) Nor is he in a rush to inform the phone's owner - one of his own customers - that the phone is in his possession. Then we have that silly, exaggerated scene in which he throws himself out of his car - and within seconds ten people are standing around him, filming him with mobile phones! Is this a comedy then? It wasn't until then.
Later that day the barkeep goes back to work, more-or-less as if not much had happened. The fact that he saw photos of severed heads? That he was told by anonymous people he "was chosen" for sacrifice? The fact that after this warning he had a vivid hallucination that made him throw out the phone and almost smash into a car - while thinking he was being attacked by cockroaches? He is way too chill. (His girl tells him later on that he is "too blasé" about all this, but we never find out why hence her comment is irrelevant.) Any person would have been freaking out, for days, if not weeks, months. But that's the problem with so many movies; they are not focused on keeping things even half-way realistic. This is doubly stupid, because this movie plays out as a half-drama, not as some generic formulaic teen horror - in which such idiotic characterization errors/inconsistencies are not only common but expected.
The barkeep is shown to be cunning (for example the way he figures out the password on the mysterious phone), and yet when the cops ask him for the license plate number of the car that's been following him, he stupidly responds with: "it begins with six", and without a trace of joking. The cops laugh, while the audience does a collective face-palm. So is he dumb or not? Well, he snorts cocaine, so it's probably the former.
Nevertheless, despite these minor irritations, by the time I reached the one-hour mark I was still wondering why the movie has such a low rating for a non-B-movie production. A 4.0 is fairly low for a horror film with a decent budget. (Especially since budget movies get automatically swarm-voted and fake-reviewed, more so than low-budget stinkers.) There was no obvious badness there. Not yet. This would change.
In the second hour, the movie still had plenty of mystery on its side, things were still interesting. And fairly dumb too. Despite witnessing so many weird things the night he dropped his girlfriend into the bathtub, things that would utterly freak out ANYBODY, he still had the motivation to call up his ex to find out why she told her new boyfriend about their little stint together. That'd be like being in a burning airplane, falling down rapidly while everyone around you was screaming - then deciding to phone up your girlfriend to ask her who won the Cup finale. Quite absurd. Relationship issues should be the last thing on anyone's mind while hell-demons from other dimensions are threatening to crush all of their teeth and lop off their head. It's called "emergency prioritizing". (Or at least that's how I decided to name it.)
Even sillier, the next morning instead of discussing Satan's hell-beasts and how to defend themselves from them, he calmly proposes to his girlfriend that they break up! I.e. yet more relationship nonsense, which is extremely irrelevant given their situation. It's as if this movie is desperately trying to play a romantic drama CONCURRENTLY with a hell-beast demon possession horror. Not doable. And why make that kind of movie anyway? That same day he pesters his ex, yet again, wanting to discuss relationship stuff. Did these demons possess him to become a yenta or to use his (empty) head as a vessel to enter the human realm in a weird cockroach-infested ritual? Which is it? It can't be both. Nora Roberts never had a supernatural satanic sub-plot. (Just guessing here, obviously.)
It's a pity that the film is so seriously hampered by these relationship scenes and the overall genre schizophrenia. I'd have cut them out, turn this into a proper horror film.
But wait, no. I'd still have an incomplete movie, because of those idiotic, confusing last few scenes which not only explain ZERO about what's been going on but muddle things even more. The utterly nonsensical dialog between the bartender and the Confederate thug is a scene that redefines "worthless".
This is Wikipedia's explanation: "Will (barkeep) realizes the higher being the kids summoned is inside Eric's wound. After calling Garrett again, which fills the room with the inhuman screeching, a swarm of cockroaches arrive. Will finally submits and starts to absorb the higher being in an attempt to become whole as cockroaches envelop the house." This summary is rubbish, and even if it weren't this "explanation" resolves nothing. Becoming whole? We knew he was an A-whole, but we never knew he was supposed to be whole, whatever that means.
What's with that Confederate flag crap, anyway? When will American movies finally stop insulting us with their cheap, filthy propaganda nonsense? The more they tell me to hate the Confederate flag the more I am liable to sympathize with its fans; they are just achieving the opposite with this kind of preaching, at least in my case.
Two points off for the silly ending that serves no purpose, except to tell us that the writer/director isn't competent enough to deliver a script without outside help. The movie is based on a novel; that book is either rubbish or has been butchered by a lame adaptation. Why do these millennial/Xer directors have to write as well as direct? This is just one of many reasons why (American) cinema has deteriorated so rapidly this century, this megalomania and exaggerated self-belief among so many writers and directors that they can do everything themselves. Becoming a respected "auteur" these days is a big hipster ambition, but only very few are capable of pulling it off with success. And I mean QUALITY success, not financial success.