One Star Classics

Now this is the type of movie One Star Classics was born to cover: An incredibly flawed, yet surprisingly clever sci-fi-esque movie which plays like a David Lynch directed episode of Twilight Zone. (As it turns out, Time Lapse actually was inspired by an episode of the epic show.)

The premise here is simple: Three friends discover a large camera is pointed at their living room from the neighbor’s apartment. The neighbor is missing, yet the camera keeps taking pictures at 8pm every night. To make it all just a pinch more weird, the photos are actually from 24 hours into the future.

Guess who decide to take advantage of these turns of events? And then guess who will find how one should not mess with the future? Yes, this is a true One Star Classic!

There are gleeful things happening here, and you’ll keep questioning them throughout: Does the camera have a mind of its own, one that sadistically starts torturing its users? Is placing perfect dog-race bets every day, expecting nobody to notice you’re doing so particularly smart? How can the kids stand in front of the camera, waiting for a new picture at 8pm when yesterday’s photo clearly showed them in their apartment? I mean, OK, there are plot-holes, but that’s OK. They don’t get in the way of the more mind-bending aspects of the film. Time Lapse could easily stand a second viewing.

The actors do a good job throughout, and particularly Danielle Panbaker (you know her from The Flash) puts in an excellent performance.

As these Twilight Zone things go, the ending has both twists and turns, and I was actually taken by surprise by it. I’m not 100% convinced it truly was logical, and that’s where the second viewing could come in. I wouldn’t be against watching Time Lapse again, just to prove it wrong. Spite-watching? I’m all for it.

Frankly, the incredibly generic cover art at Netflix made me skip past this movie repeatedly. That was a mistake—Time Lapse might have its issues, but at its heart, it’s an entertaining ride, one that gives your brain just a little bit of a slow powerwalk. Check it out, and then thank me for giving you this gift of ninety minutes not too far from three stops before heaven.

The Trailer

I was somewhat of a big-esque fan-ish of the Cube trilogy, and I take great pleasure in seeing the world-of-sci-fi embracing shapes as their raison d'être. I mean, where was there to go after cubes? God bless the marketing exec who took a look around the room and decided the ever-perplexing circle was what the kids wanted.

Snark aside; the premise of Circle is pretty sound, and the production value surrounding it (wa-hey!) is stylish and smartly designed for what I would assume would be a bottom-of-the-barrel budget. Here we have fifty people abducted by a UFO, where they wake up in a circle (get it?), standing inside individual circles (hence the name), where a Wheel of Fortune-like arrow goes around in a circle (this is a concept movie), killing whomever it stops on. The abductees quickly figure out they can vote for the next victim, and the question is, of course, who will be the last person standing. The kid? The pregnant lady? One of the thirty-four anonymous characters without any lines?

Yes, it’s pretty clear who will be the center (I swear to god I didn’t intend to write that) of the drama, and it’s actually pretty impressive how the writers and directors manage to juggle a good fifteen or so main characters. The actors might not be of Shakespearian quality, but they do a decent job with what I again would assume to be a limited amount of takes due to the movie’s budget. (Apparently Circle took years to film, so getting all these actors on set over that long of a span was no small feat.)

And the bargaining and factions created throughout the whole ordeal is of soap-opera proportions. You’ll find yourself picking sides, rooting for your favorites, and hating yourself for wanting to vote out the annoying eight-year old. (I mean, seriously… Though in the defense of the young actress, it must’ve been hard standing around sobbing for eighty-seven minutes.)

Who is left standing and how the individual gets there is all pretty clever, and the ending is, humongous flaw of logic aside, darkly funny.

Really, I like this movie. It’s obviously inspired by the original Cube, as more movies should be. Flawed-but-fun sci-fi thrillers is what the world needs more of, and hopefully Circle will have a sequel, one they logically should name and shape after Squircle.

PS! Circle, while not a Netflix exclusive, despite what its placement would indicate, went straight to VOD mid-October. I’m guessing this is what we’ll see a whole lot more of for these kind of movies, which is awesome. Now I never have to leave the house again!

The Trailer

It is, or at least should be, up for debate if Troll 2 objectively is, as many claim, the worst movie ever made. That it likely is the second most prolific god-awful movie out there (after Plan 9 from Outer Space) is pretty clear, and hell, if this is the place the children start their journey into misunderstood movie territory, then so be it.

And of course there are so many things wrong with Troll 2 that it truly is a laugh-out-loud movie. I’m not talking a detached, ironic kind of funny; I’m talking bona fide hilarous. Just the foundation of the thing is amazing—the number "2" in the title aside, Troll 2 is not a sequel to Troll, and the title is simply a marketing ploy by some clever Italians. (Not unlike Zombie 2, though that is not an awful film. If you’re wondering about the many unrelated Italian sequels out there, it simply comes down to their lax trademark system.)

Said Italians didn’t speak English particularly well either, making the script nonsensical. Many know the rather literal «you can’t piss on hospitality» line, but at least that makes some sort of sense, unlike large chunks of dialogue often stringed together with random English words. (Apparently the actors—community-theater grade at best, all who had auditioned for bit parts—were repeatedly shut down when trying to convince director Claudio Fragasso of the many futilities of direct translations.)

I mean, my god, there really is nothing good about Troll 2. This is a movie where the goblins—they are never referred to as trolls—eat humans, an idea based on the screenwriter being «pissed off» (direct quote) by her friends becoming vegetarians. Not exactly a solid foundation for a film.

More importantly, though… While Troll 2 is its own movie, it is also a warning about what will come 26 years after its release. Right now, the filming of Suicide Squad has just wrapped up, and much has been made of Jared Leto’s Joker promo picture…

Clockwise from top left: Capture from Troll 2; Jared Leto promo image from Suicide Squad; evil witch from Troll 2; original image from Killing Joke. Say what you want, but I think Leto looks awesome in the equally awesome Suicide Squad trailer.

We’ll see how that all works out, but in the meantime, you might as well sit through Troll 2 a few times. I can guarantee you it never gets boring.

The Trailer

Most One Star Classics recommendations are usually qualified with variations of if, unless, expect, and it actually kinda sucks. This is not the case with Oculus. I don’t entirely remember where One Star Classics Editorial Board read about its awesomeness-ish, but the source was at least semi-credible.

Oculus is part of the recent new-wave of horror movies. Examples of earlier waves would be early-eighties slasher, the mid-nineties teen screams, and the mid-aughties «torture porns». The current crop is usually lower-budget indie films from auteurs who put a lot of emphasis on style and atmosphere. Dario Argento-esque if you like, just less Italian.

It Follows has really been the poster-child of the recent films. It’s a strange, good-looking movie, with a superb-and-a-half soundtrack from Disasterpiece. Oculus, meanwhile, is possibly a good runner-up. It has gotten little exposure compared to It Follows—which has easily achieved broader cult status, and analysis from Quentin Tarantino—but will likely gain some more attention now that it has hit this site is on Netflix. Oculus might look like a recyclable horror movie for anyone who browse through Netflix’s recommendations, but there is a lot more to it than the generic poster-art reveals.

There’s really not one single thing I could point out as being downright flawed here. I mean, maybe the first 20 minutes, but that is all straightened out with a two minute monologue later, so I’m willing to forget about it. The rest is… solid. Like, good workmanship. Acting is professional, the filming is adept, and the story is slick. None of those adjectives are impeccable, I suppose, but add them all up, and you have a movie that is well worth watching. Better than 97% of Netflix in that sense.

Oculus is a haunted mirror movie—people who own the mirror are killed by it and yada, yada, yada—and if I was to compare it to anything, both Poltergeist and the original 1950's Haunting come to mind. The story is sorta predictable, I guess, but a big part of what works are the two mirrored stories. How they join up in the end, and how they are pulled together by some excellent acting from Karen Gillian and Annalise Basso (not to mention Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff)… I mean, it might not be Shakespeare, but Oculus keeps you entertained throughout, all with an uneasy feel to it. Hell, even the ghosts-from-mirrors-past don’t look sterotypical.

Force me to describe the movie with one word, and I’d go with enjoyable. (Which probably says more about me than the movie.)

The only reason I really am writing about the film is that it would be easy to skip on Netflix, and that would just be a little bit sad. Oculus is not a fantastic movie, but it really should be watched, at the very least if you enjoy slow foreboding creepiness. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people will get a career-boost based on their work in Oculus, and good on them. They deserve it. And you, as one of the three people who read this, owe it to yourself and them to watch it, too.

The Trailer