Saturday, August 17, 2019

Post 183: QD: "What was a fantastic movie ruined by its ridiculous plot twist?"


There are two in particular that come to mind when I see this question. I don’t know if I would necessarily classify these as fantastic movies, but I did enjoy them up until the plot twist.

The first would be Signs. It was creepy and suspenseful. I was super sad that the dogs died. I mean, did it really add anything to have the dogs die? Did it add anything for the dogs to be in the movie, besides them barking at things outside which a motion detector alarm or light could have done? That’s a whole other tangent. The thing that got me was the stupid water glasses. Why would these aliens invade our planet, which is mostly made up of water, if they were like deadly allergic to water? Are you telling me these things invaded all around the same time and it didn’t happen to be raining anywhere? Anywhere at all? Not even Seattle or London?

Are islands safe? Would they even go to Hawaii when it is so close to the beach? Is it only fresh water that is an issue or is it all water? Is the tap water really that dangerous? Is it her spit that makes the water dangerous?

And what a perfect scenario that we get a dad who never does dishes, lets his daughter take one sip from a glass and then leaves it somewhere, and just buys more glasses when they end up with thirty different used glasses all around the house. There were dozens of glasses everywhere. Who even owns that many glasses? How long have they been accumulating? Why didn’t he ever do the dishes when basically every flat service in the house was covered in dirty water glasses? Why didn’t he just start getting paper/disposable cups knowing that she did this?

It would have made more sense if she had gone to the fair and played the goldfish game and just had like dozens of fishbowls everywhere than him just letting all those water glasses accumulate. Or even Diet Cokes. Cans of Diet coke that she only took one sip off, because then it is still messy but it isn’t literally like he has to go out and keep buying water glasses instead of just washing them. And then it could even be explained as the chemicals in the Coke being what is harmful, not just water. Which would make the aliens coming to a planet of water seem less ridiculous.

Why was there even an alien in the house? For creatures that seemed to figure out space travel, it seems pretty stupid for them to come to a planet with so much water and to just be hanging out in a house filled with water. You didn’t even really need the dad to attack the alien, all you needed was an earthquake to cause all the glasses to fall on him or a rain shower outside and that would have done the trick.

Why was there only one alien in and around the house when he came upstairs? Did he just get left behind? Were they trying to be sneaky and he was there to trick them that it was okay to come up? If the aliens did land on Earth, decide there was too much water, and plan to leave then why were they there so long? If it was a mission of exploration, why send so many ships at the same time rather than one or two at a time to investigate?

I mean, the ending scene seemed so forced and so drawn out that it just gave me time to go back and question everything that I had let slide for the sake of suspense. I would have rather it have a non-ending with it just going to a black screen as they sleep in the basement or, if a happy ending was required, them hearing noises/gun shots/etc. from upstairs and then they hear people shooting and it ends with like some sort of military rescue as they get rushed out of the house. Really there are so many things that would have been better than the plot convenience that took place.

The second movie is It. The original It. I remember watching it when I was like 12-13 and being terrified. When he came out of the book, that was so creepy. As was the general clown thing. But then when he took form and he was just a big spider. That was so much less terrifying I actually started laughing. For the entire movie it was this interdimensional killer clown thing that primarily targeted kids and that could get into anywhere from anywhere. I mean, sure you can lock your doors and windows but he might just pull a scene from The Ring and step out of your TV. No one was safe anywhere.

And then…big, fake looking spider thing that they kill with sticks. There are scarier things living in Australia than what this thing became. Fluffy from Harry Potter looked like more of a threat that it did. As did the scorpion from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. And for a movie that had such terrifyingly drawn out scenes of horror, the “beat it with sticks” scene was relatively short. It was kind of underwhelming really.  

I haven’t read the book, but from what I have read online about it, I believe what the plot was that he was demon that could cross into different dimensions and when he was in our dimension that was his physical form, but his physical form changes in different dimensions. Or something like that. But he seemed to be pretty adept at killing without turning into big bug and if becoming big bug makes him more killable, it seems like a stupid move.

Though, to be fair, I think the main reason why this plot twist was such a flop for me was because of the special effects (or rather the lack of them). It looked like a cheap Halloween decoration and as they “fought” it, it didn’t really move at all. I mean, it really looked like a prop and it broke the immersion.

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