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The Purge (2013)
Interesting premise? Definitely poor execution.
I really thought this might be a good movie. It has an interesting premise, unless you take 30 seconds to think it through. The government gives every citizen nearly full license to do whatever they want for 12 hours every year. I say nearly because there are "clear" restrictions set up in the movie by means of an emergency broadcast. They can't use certain weapons (Class 5 and higher, one would assume things like nukes or other similar WMDs) and can't harm "government officials of ranking 10", so one would assume the way higher-ups. The broadcast also mentioned all crime, including murder, being legal.
Pondering that can only bring you to one conclusion: how the hell does the entire country not fall apart? What sort of moron would think this is a good idea? Well, the creators of the film clearly thought people were stupid enough to buy into this, perhaps for some morbid curiosity crap... The problem is most people aren't going to go kill someone simply because it's suddenly legal. The film doesn't really err on the side of realistic. Sadly the premise tends to be heard as "MURDER LEGAL GO!"
Aside from the premise not holding up in reality, the rest of the movie was essentially a pieced-together horror/thriller that was never really horrifying or thrilling. I did not care about the main characters. They were a bunch of rich folks with their own silly problems and absolutely no depth. And of course, lets not forget the daughter who prances around in a catholic school girl outfit for the duration of the film.
This movie really wanted to capitalize on extreme close-ups and the brilliant scare tactic of hiding the villains behind people's enlarged heads. I eventually found myself counting down to the next "OMG HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU" moment and actually nailed most of them. It just wasn't scary. It is still possible to make someone jump out of their seat, and I don't mind having that happen. But when you can predict those moments, it ruins the experience. As for the psychological part, it didn't really work out, especially when you want the main characters to die anyway.
By the end, I was hoping someone would have just dropped a nuke right on this house, but sadly that would have been against the rules. I'll give them credit though, it's hard to find a film with a $3 million budget that does this well in the box office. But clearly this is only a sign of having a rather captivating premise marketed with a decent trailer.
I really hope Honest Trailers picks this movie up. They'd probably enjoy making another lens flare montage.
Bitten (2014)
Well, it was a good book...
This series is based on a book (series) by Canadian author Kelley Armstrong. Like many an urban fantasy tale, it was told in first person by the main character, Elena Michaels. And, like most urban fantasy brought to life, it has to be converted into third person. This is where most book-to-screen adaptations end up losing the meat of the original story. But alright, lets see what they got right.
Elena is a werewolf. Check. She's a journalist in Toronto. Wait, they already screwed up. In the show she's a model, I think? Her best friend in the werewolf world is Logan, a lawyer in LA. They got that wrong too; in the show, he's a psychologist? And apparently he also lives in Toronto and hangs out with Elena. Whatever, meaningless details at this point. So Elena is living with her boyfriend Philip, and we sort of meet his family. There's some werewolfy stuff in Toronto. All of that is close enough to the book.
We also meet a few other pack members. Oh yeah, there's this thing called the Pack. They're werewolves and basically control all of the territory in North America, leaving a few small sections to "mutts", which are non-Pack werewolves. So the leader, or Alpha, is Jeremy Danvers. His adopted son is Clayton (or Clay if you don't wanna get your ass kicked), who is indeed an anthropologist in the book and show, and the father/son duo of Antonio and Nick. Though I was sorta thrown at the point where we meet Nick. There's a lot of TV sex in this show.
So everyone in the pack is summoned home to deal with a murder thought to have been carried out by a mutt. Elena doesn't wanna go home because she's sort of estranged from the Pack and doesn't enjoy werewolf life, but Logan tries to convince her it's for the good of the Pack.
While this story is way more fun when told by Elena herself, it's always interesting to see a book brought to life on TV or film. The first episode didn't seem so bad, since I knew what was going on already, but I can see how this might not be a hook for those unfamiliar with Armstrong's novels. To them, definitely go read Bitten.
Hopefully this show will stay more canonish than something like Legend of the Seeker. And here's two thumbs up for not being Blood and Chocolate.