The Mentalist: I See Red People

Speculation (based on the season finale trailer) that may be considered spoilerish ahead…

I’m moist with anticipation for the season finale of The Mentalist. I’ve been waiting for another crack at that dastardly Do-No-Gooder, Red John, since the season one finale. You don’t even know how bad I want that bastard behind bars.

Or should I say… that BITCH.

And that’s where we get to the spoilerish speculation. I’ve had this theory since last season’s finale that Red John is a woman. In a The Usual Suspects style twist, I thought it would be revealed that Rosalind Harker is Red John.

If you’re rusty on your Mentalist history, the season one finale introduced Harker (Alicia Witt), a blind woman who had dated Red John. Of course her blindness makes her incapable of describing “him” physically. I was hoping it was all a ruse, that her blindness was a hoax so well done that she fooled even Patrick Jane. Who would expect the quiet, blind, pianist?

I started doubting my theory towards the end of season two. Worse, I started doubting that the show could resolve and/or develop the Red John situation to my satisfaction. I was worse than right. I was wrong.

I happened to catch the trailer for the season 2 finale, and it all fell into place. Remember last year when supposed psychic Kristina Frye (Leslie Hope) told Jane that his daughter died peacefully in her sleep? What at the time seemed like an attempt to give Jane some peace was actually an admission that she is the killer!

Need more proof?

• Last week, Hightower referred to Frye as “the blond”, and I immediately launched into a five minute tirade about her hair being far more red than blond, how dare she refer to it as blond, blah blah blah. Duh.
• She’s the only person that has come close to rivaling Jane’s intellect and cunning.
• Jane asked her out. Oh, the painful, painful irony.
• She’s been hiding in plain sight since early on, making her first appearance in the 7th episode, which is necessary for a satisfying reveal.
• Tim said, “Maybe she’s Red John,” during last week’s episode, but apparently I didn’t hear him. I was probably still ranting about her hair being red.

All of Red John’s accomplices so far have been women, which acts as both a misdirection (all of the accomplices refer to Red John as a man) and foreshadowing that Red John is actually female.

I am tempted to immediately drop to my knees in fealty to the almighty writers of The Mentalist, ye who have crafted such a kickass mystery and deftly written the subtle sleight-of-hand required to pull it off, but I don’t want to jinx it.

31 Days of Horror – October 6th – “The Last House on the Left”

“The Last House on the Left” opens with a long campy sequence that is reminiscent of “Happy Days” or even “Leave It to Beaver” in its quaint cheeriness.  Mom and Dad sit in the den and joke with their coming of age daughter about her upcoming birthday.  Life is simple.  Everyone is all smiles.  And then the lead character and her best friend get raped.  Yep.  That’s basically the summary of the first act.

Welcome Wes Craven to the big screen.

The forementioned daughter, Mari (Sandra Peabody), and her best friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) make a grave mistake on their way to a concert when they ask a stranger, Junior (Marc Sheffler), if he knows where to find some grass. He takes them to an apartment where they are immediately held against their will by two escaped convicts, Fred (Fred J. Lincoln) and Krug (David Hess) (those names sound familiar?), and their crew.  Phyllis is raped almost immediately.  The next morning the convicts load the girls into the trunk and take them on the road.  When the car breaks down they haul them into the woods for more torture and rape.  Their murders look inevitable.

Pretty bleak, eh?  Despite many production shortcomings, there are a lot of things that work really well here.  First of all, the torturers seem sadistic in a believable way, maybe partially because they are also pretty dumb, basically insensitive, rather than the super vindictive genius masterminds that we see in torture porn movies lately.  Krug and Fred work as villains because they are horrible but still somewhat subtle, and a scene of reflective remorse shows that they are ultimately still human.  On top of that, Craven’s directing goes over the top in a few scattered comedy scenes and grows subtle and careful during some of the most horrifying violent displays.  The first rape scene happens off screen, the camera slowly zooms in on Mari’s horrified face as she watches a man attack her friend.  One of the early torture scenes keeps cutting back to a music videoesque montage of the Mom and Dad in 70′s garb hamming it up as they bake a birthday cake for their daughter, which somehow heightens the creepiness of the whole thing.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 84 minutes

Directed by: Wes Craven

Written by: Wes Craven

Starring: Sandra Peabody, David Hess

Theatrical Release: 08/30/72

DVD Release: 05/12/09

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 65%

There’s a major shift for the final act, though, and the story almost does a 180 degree turn.  At this point, it becomes morally gray in a new way.  Those subtle displays of violence earlier turn more graphic.  And the movie doesn’t really tell you what to think of it all.

Craven’s debut (as both a director and writer) somehow succeeds at being disturbing and being ironically funny, sometimes achieving both within just seconds of each other.  Despite a very tight budget with a young, inexperienced cast and presumably production team, Craven keeps it entertaining and shows flashes of great instincts for what will really effect the audience. The slang, bell bottoms and acoustic rock soundtrack (actually written and performed by the actor that played Krug) gives “The Last House on the Left” an interesting 1970′s atmosphere that actually adds more than it detracts as far as dating the film.

Handmade Awesomeness: Fall Premiere Edition

It’s Fall!  Crunchy leaves, apple cider, and best of all… our favorites tv shows are back!  Can you guess which returning series these handmade goods from Etsy.com represent?

The Acolytes: Underground Horror from Down Under

Part serial killer thriller, part good teens gone bad, Australian indie “Acolytes” is the kind of horror movie they should be making more of. I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to this genre, and I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Mark (Seb Gregory) wanders into the woods one day and spies a man burying something. He and his friends James (Josh Payne) and Chasely (Hannah Morgan Lawrence) decide to unearth the buried treasure, but instead of money, they discover the body of a young woman.

Here’s where the movie takes a turn for the “Kids do the darndest things when they find a body”, and I start wondering if I ever really want to procreate. Instead of reporting the body to the police, Mark and James cook up a scheme to find the murderer and blackmail him into killing an evil scumbag kiddie rapist (Michael Dorman) who has recently been released from prison. Schemes like this in thrillers never play out as planned, so things go from bad to worse pretty quickly for Mark, James, and Hannah.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 91 minutes

Directed by: Jon Hewitt

Written by: Shayne Armstrong, Shane Krause

Starring: Sebastian Gregory, Joshua Payne, Hannah Mangan Lawrence

Theatrical Release: 05/15/08

DVD Release: 07/28/09

Production Budget: $4 million

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 83%

With a small budget of only four million dollars, “Acolytes” has a great visual style and excellent performances by the cast, especially considering their age. Unlike most teen horror flicks, the characters in “Acolytes” are handled as real people instead of hash marks on a killer’s bed post.

You’ve probably seen movies that have one twist too many. The theatrical release of this movie has four or five too many- so many twists piled on top of one another is overkill and takes away from the overall impact. The ending is a bit of a cliché for a thriller, which is the biggest let down of all. (The DVD features two alternate endings.)

Overall, “Acolytes” is a movie I would certainly recommend to fans of the horror/thriller genre. It’s dark and disturbing and has just the right kind of jump-out-of-your-seat tension. The DVD became available in the U.S. today.

Dexter, Season 4 Trailer!

Here’s the trailer for Season 4 of Showtime’s Dexter that was screened at Comic-Con!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-rs5hQ6gpM

Horsemen: Ponyloaf.

Here’s a recipe for braised bullshit movie: one 12 oz. can of David Fincher’s “Se7en” (Up), one leg of “Silence of the Lambs“, and two squirts of pure Quaid sweat. (This recipe calls for Dennis. Randy is an acquired taste. Little gamey.)

Yep. “Horsemen” is a blatant “Se7en“/”The Silence of the Lambs” copycat. Their strategy was to not merely recycle that material… but to kick it up a notch by totally sucking. Quaid (Dennis. Randy wouldn’t touch this script with Gary Sinise’s sac.) stars as Aidan Breslin, a work-obsessed homicide detective slash crappy dad. We know he’s a crappy dad because his eldest son, Alex (Lou Taylor Pucci), harps on the subject every time he’s on screen. A 16 year old boy that insists on giving his dad lectures on parenting? Science fucking fiction. It’s so heavy handed it makes Queen Latifah’s meathooks look downright dainty.

In one scene, young Alex suggests the family go to a hockey game. Daddy Breslin responds as if he’s either never heard of the sport or the notion of spending time with his offspring has never occurred to him before. Immediately cut to the family decked out in matching Red Wings gear. Huh?

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 110 minutes

Directed by: Jonas Åkerlund

Written by: Dave Callaham

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Lou Taylor Pucci, Ziyi Zhang

Theatrical Release: 03/06/09

DVD Release: 07/14/09

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: N/A

Similar crappisms abound in “Horsemen“. I sense severe editing going on here. Several transitions left me feeling as if a whole chunk of movie had gone missing, which is often the case with straight to DVD turds.

Even Ziyi Zhang, who I’m a fan of, struggles. She is not nearly sinister enough to pull off the gloating female temptress the movie wants her to be. Her performance comes off as silly and a little embarrassing.

Plotwise, the movie is just as blah. Detective Breslin hunts a gruesome murderer. Eventually he realizes that this is not the work of one killer, but a kill group! Four, to be exact, each one representing a horseman of the apocalypse (rather than each murder representing one of the 7 deadly sins). Spooky, no? The actual murders lack believability and the quick discovery scenes don’t seem to give them the reverence such brutality would require – even the filmmakers aren’t buying it. We’ve seen it all before in “Se7en” and the dozens of movies that have already ripped it off. The biblical details are meaningless – a catchy name and an excuse for cryptic bible passages are all it really adds up to. Which is kind of how the whole movie feels. No substance and not even much style.

“Horsemen” fails on the very basic level of establishing a connection between the audience and the characters, rendering itself suspenseless. The movie could have almost saved itself (by a pussy hair) by following through with the final twist. Instead, it limps off with the cheesy, stupidly optimistic ending. Why? Movies like “The Descent” and “Se7en” resonate because they don’t go for the “things are finally starting to look up!” Hollywood ending. In the end, “Horsemen” failed to even successfully rip off its predecessors.