August01

BMN: I Know Who Killed Me

“We see bad movies so that we can truly appreciate the good ones.”

I apologize for not having a BMN review last week – we decided to treat ourselves to a preview showing of “Superbad” (and by all means, go see it when it comes out... hilarious). While it was nice to see a good movie for a change, it was almost torture to drag ourselves back to the theater for this week’s gem, “I Know What You Did Last Summer Who Killed Me.” Even though the film is only getting a 7% at Rotten Tomatoes, it was reviews like this that made us break the rules of Bad Movie Night and see this movie quick – as we feared another “Gigli,” where the movie barely lasted a week in circulation.

So could it be in the running for worst movie of 2007? Well, since I’ve already talked about how to successfully write/direct a crappy horror film (and still get it distributed), why not talk about something a little different? SPOILER ALERT (as if you’re really going to go see the film)

14 Ways To Successfully Write/Direct A Crappy Torture Porn (And Still Get It Distributed)

1. Show boobs in the first 30 seconds: If there’s one thing dudes love, it’s boobs. So let’s make them happy right off the bat. Show some stripers dancing around at the very first of the film and then sporadically throughout the rest of the movie. If you show enough of them, no guy will care how crappy your film is.
2. Give the torturer NO motive for killing: Since when do torturers have motives? This isn’t just another one of those Saw films... this is a torture porn, people! Those that torture do it out of love, not reason... or they do it because their best students stop playing piano. One of the two.
3. The torturer’s torture chamber MUST be creepy: Think of this as a secret lair. A secret lair for a torturer, that is! If I were a torturer, I’d want something in a basement with little, to no, light. Maybe a giant furnace for blowing glass. I’ll probably need an old school white ceramic tub, you know, so the super red blood of my victims stands out against the white tub in my low-light atmosphere. And to make sure this is the creepiest torture chamber ever, I’m going to hang about 40 prosthetic legs in the walkways.
4. Put as many non-plot points in the film as possible: We’re not writing a thriller, this is torture porn. Therefore, you should insert as many unnecessary plot points into the film as possible. How about a sexy young gardner that has GOD as a part of his license plate number? Or maybe a tall oafy-looking cop that never says anything but just stares? Maybe you could have a drug/gang banger on a bus whose tattoo comes to life while he cries? You see where I’m going right? Just mess with the audience, don’t worry about tying it all together.
5. Teenagers must freak their parents out somehow: This is a little play on words exercise. The genre is torture porn, right? So let’s torture a parent while the teenagers have sex upstairs. And get this, the parents can hear them! Genius.
6. Blow all your special effects budget on prosthetic limbs, not real ones: The key to any great horror/torture porn is great special effects. We want to see gore and blood... and lots of it. But here’s the key – don’t believe all the hype that says the best way to show gore is to not show it at all. That’s BS. Instead, show fingers and hands being cut off – no one’s done that before. Ready to take it to the next level? How about someone trying to sew their severed finger back on (don’t worry about explaining how the bone would heal) with black thread! Gross! But if you REALLY want to freak people out, spend your entire FX budget on robotic limbs!!! Oooooooo!
7. Mock the physically disabled: As a film maker, it’s your duty to take what we know as fact and throw it out the window. Like physical rehabilitation for patients with severed limbs. We all know in real life this could easily take months, if not years, to fully become used to walking on/using a new prosthetic limb. I implore you to make a mockery of this fact and have a patient be able to walk/use their new prosthetics in one day. Who’s bitching now, PETA!?!
8. Unnecessary foreshadowing is required: Again, just like the pointless plot points, we want to lead our audience down a dead-end path. Remember those prosthetic limbs we mentioned earlier? Good. Make mention that the (now-robotic) prosthetic limb will run out of battery if you don’t recharge it over night. The audience will wonder why you ever made that point when it doesn’t affect the outcome of the film. That’ll get them talking for sure.
9. Good thing Mulder and Scully aren’t real: It’s a well-known fact that any good serial killer/torture suspect will have the FBI hot on their trail. That being the case, we need to evolve the story somewhat, to ensure the fuzz has no clue what’s going on. Maybe a story about multiple personality... nah, too easy. How about stigmatic twins! If only the FBI knew about Ask.com (not Google, it’s not smart enough), they could’ve typed in “bleeding wounds unexplained” and came up with the twist ending, when really this is what you get as search results.
10. At least one character must be psychic: Since the FBI is all out of ideas on what the hell is going on, there needs to be at least one person who is psychic. That way when said character is showing off their writing skills, they can name their identical twin sister, whom they’ve never ever ever ever met, by name. And maybe they can be stigmatic twins, too!
11. One word – Owls: Need I say more? Well, I suppose I could explain why you need owls. NOT! Just put them in the film. No questions asked.
12. When in doubt, throw in the F-bomb: Always play to your audience. Teenagers say the word “fuck” all the time these days. Insert the word, even if it seems forced and unnatural, about 23 times. You can’t buy that kind of street cred.
13. The audience must laugh at the film: Inevitably, there will be those who will actually be excited and pay money to see your film. The goal is to berate them the entire length of the film with crap in hopes that, in the end, they’re laughing at how ludicris it is. Someone dying with an O face is a good way of making sure that happens.
14. Make sure your star is psycho in real life: When you know that your movie isn’t that great, but you still need to inject some buzz about the film, the easiest thing to do is find a star who’s a little nutty. Once that star is cast and the crap-film is in the can, you might notice that NO ONE wants to give interviews because they know it’s bad. No problem, just have said star go haywire the week before it opens. Instant success.

This is in no way a complete list on what you should do for box-office success, but it’ll get you started. Other things you may want to consider:

• Have characters leap to asinine conclusions
• Don’t worry about time continuity
• Introduce un-needed characters
• Confuse Scoot by using current pop culture icons

That about wraps it up. Yup, it very well could be the worst movie so far this year. Please don’t go see it. We need to stop Hollywood from making these pieces of crap. At least we got a nice new nickname for Lindsay out of it – Lindsay No-hand.

+ original post date: August 1, 2007 04:28 PM
+ categories: Bad Movie Night