GRIM REAPER (2007) (a review)

GRIM REAPER (2007) (a review)

Lame. How's that for a to-the-point review?

The story: a girl is hit by a car and begins having weird visions. She ends up in a mental hospital where she and five others see visions of the Grim Reaper (aka Death) coming for them. So now as her boyfriend is trying to save her, she must find a way to stop death. And the head of the mental facility is in on it too.

Like I said: lame. My synopsis actually sounds better than it is. The "death coming for them" is like a weak version of FINAL DESTINATION or NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. The mental facility conspiracy might have been okay, but ends up being stupid. Nothing goes anywhere. It's just a bunch of running around.

*** AVOID ***

So, let's talk horror. Now I writer, watch and read a lot of horror so this is something I'm always always thinking about. And the first question I usually think is "Why do so many horror movies suck?" And I don't mean they are just kind of bad, I mean really, really, really suck. And the answer is incredibly simple.

They aren't scary.

Not only are they not actually scary, but they aren't even kind of scary. They aren't even sort of scary. Sure, they probably do the jump-kill (you know, where a character is wandering around and we know the bad guy is around but not quite where and sudden he/she/it jumps out and kills the character, trying to get the audience to jump a bit...you know, the jump-kill) but there is nothing in the story itself that is scary. Now good horror movies work because they get under your skin, and they usually do it in a few different ways. Let's take HALLOWEEN (the original, not that Rob Zombie crap) -- of course you have Michael Myers, who killed his sister and is played up as a boogeyman. We have Laurie being followed and stalked by this guy. We have the psychiatrist and the shariff trying to find him, knowing he is out there and helpless to stop him. And we have all that stuff about the dance. Why is the dance important? Because all the boogeyman/Michael Myers stuff isn't real. It's whacked out movie stuff. But then there's this element of Laurie having no one while her friends have boyfriends, of her being the girl who sits home alone, and then this stuff about she likes a guy and maybe he likes her blah blah blah. That's real. That insecurity, that not wanting to be alone, that isolation when your friends are off having fun while you sit home babysitting. That is real and that can get under your skin. It might not be scary, but it is pre-scary. It is priming the emotional pump that will be elevated again and again as Michael closes in on her.

Now a bad horror movie doesn't have any of that. A bad horror movie thinks Michael Myers is scary by himself, so they have a bunch of kids who are annoying and then they kill them off. And the movie might be kind of fun (like FRIDAY THE 13TH: JASON TAKES MANHATTEN) but it won't ever, ever be scary.

What you need to do is find something real, something that people worry about, something people would hope never happens to them. It doesn't have to be life or death. It can be parents having to tell a child they are getting a divorce. It can be failing a driver's test. It can be losing something important. Start with that, get people anxious, then build in the big horror element -- the guy with knives or machete or whatever.

But remember: good horror works on a few different levels. If all you have if a bad guy killing good guys, then you don't have a horror movie. What you have is probably just something really lame.

This movie was.