Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
January 10, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: The Devil Inside shocked everyone in the industry with a $34.7 million debut, quadrupling the studio's opening tracking estimate for the film. How did this happen?
Tim Briody: Audiences were ready for a new sensation, but with its F CinemaScore, The Devil Inside gave the box office a kick for one weekend, but as a long term solution for Hollywood's woes, it's not what you need.
Matthew Huntley: I don't think we can explain The Devil Inside's performances with any clear logic, but my theory would be that it's because audiences haven't been dished a horror movie for quite some time (The Darkest Hour doesn't really count since it was released amidst much more high-profile [and far superior] Christmas movies) and this one had a catchy trailer, at least catchy in the sense it suggested it could be creepy and entertaining, which turned out NOT to be the case. In any event, this is the first box-office anomaly of 2012 and although I'd be happier if the movie was good (it's not), at least ticket sales were up 30% from last year, so we're off to a promising start. Now if only the quality of movies was up just as much, then we'd be golden.
Brett Beach: (Note: There will be a spoiler towards the end of the third paragraph.) Exorcism movies in general, and now crossed for a second time in recent years (after The Last Exorcism) with the found footage/documentary format, continue to strike a chord. I can't profess to understand the chord, but I have read audience breakdowns that this and Last Exorcism attracted a higher percentage of Hispanic audiences than most horror movies, so perhaps the Catholicism drapings are a draw.
I will admit that I too found the lone trailer I saw (in front of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) to be well-presented and creepy, if filled with all the standard hallmarks of the genre established 40 years ago (female possession, contorted limbs, crawling on walls, etc), so perhaps it's time for a 28 Days Later revamp of the rules.
Having read about the howls of outrage of some audiences and the reason for said outrage, I would be pissed too if I plunked down $10 and the film ended by SPOILER directing me to a website. Umm, that's the exact inverse of what The Blair Witch Project employed to great effect in 1999 and I deem it a ridiculously cynical move, especially since the website apparently has nothing to offer. SPOILER END** Still, this is a Paranormal Activity size win for Paramount again, even if it makes audiences wary of the genre in the future, and I deem it the I Know What You Did Last Summer to Paranormal Activity's Scream.
Shalimar Sahota: It's like someone thought, "I know, let's mix The Last Exorcism with The Rite. We don't have to make it very well, so long as we got people screaming and stuff flying around, audiences will pay for it." Clearly, I don't think anyone expected *that* many people would go out of their way to pay for what looks like a cliché ridden horror movie. So long as it looks like it's going to make them jump more than the price of oil, and they don't have to think too much, I guess audiences just love their cheap scares. However, I'd prefer it if someone took the exorcism idea to the next level and deliver us a film where a demon is possesed by an angel.
Edwin Davies: It's got to the point where horror films live and die on the strength of their opening weekend, and the opening weekend depends on how good the trailer is. The trailer for The Devil Inside did a pretty effective job of selling the premise, crammed enough quick shocks in to get pulses running and generated a decent amount of interest in the process. More importantly, it was the first new film of the year and it opened without any competition. People getting back into the swing of things after the first week back at work/school probably felt like they needed to unwind with something stupid and The Devil Inside filled that role perfectly. It's going to crater spectacularly next week, but this pretty much confirms that if you make them cheaply and manage to hack together a decent trailer, it's pretty hard to go broke making trashy horror films.
Reagen Sulewski: I was apparently willing to give this more of a benefit of the doubt than most people, but not enough. Whatever we can know now about just how bad this film is, none of that mattered before opening weekend, and that was a great trailer. Legitimately unnerving. I'd assumed it would behave like the last fakumentary exorcism film, but instead it got treated more like Paranormal Activity. Horror fans are kind of mystifying, you know?
Max Braden: It was a decently creepy trailer, so I could see people heading out to see it to shake off that last bit of holiday craziness and settle into the new year with a horror flick. I wonder, too, if there was just enough time for Friday night crowds to report how bad it was, and Saturday crowds going to see it just to try and prove them wrong.
David Mumpower: If I'm a producer for The Darkest Hour, I walk up to every teen I see and slap them. Then, I ask "Why this and not that?" The Devil Inside feels like the movie theater equivalent of a flash mob. There was no ostensible selling point that distinguished it and even the studio felt that way about it. But school was back in session and everybody talked their tweeps into this being the weekend activity of choice. So, everybody snuck into an R-rated movie with the least thought out ending in recent memory. They have to keep that website active for decades to come. That strikes me as more busy work than anybody involved with the project wanted.
We do *not* grade on a curve.
Kim Hollis: The Devil Inside also joined a short list of a half dozen films to earn an "F" Cinemascore, along with previous F-scorers Solaris, Bug, Wolf Creek, Darkness and The Box. What's a film you think deserves an "F" Cinemascore, and why do you choose it?
Matthew Huntley: Wow, so many to choose from, including Radio Flyer, Big Daddy, Batman & Robin, Santa With Muscles, Your Highness, Green Hornet and Jack & Jill. But if I'm allowed to name only one, it would be Bad Boys II. To me, an "F" Cinemascore goes to movies with no concept of entertainment and whose material unjustly makes viewers angry and offended. Sure, movies can provoke anger and offensiveness, but they have to have an agenda. Bad Boys II doesn't have one, and it passes fomenting off as entertainment. It's so overblown, loud, incoherent, mean-spirited, homophobic, contrived and cruel that I hope it has its makers asking, "What were we thinking?" After the equally bloated Transformers movies, Michael Bay still owes us a compensation movie, if he's even capable of making one.
Brett Beach: I have to list two, if only because they are for completely different reasons.
Patch Adams - for being so emotionally fraudulent and cynical, I was crying tears of rage back in 1998 (I refer specifically to the butterfly, although Robin Williams wearing a clown nose for the kiddies in the cancer ward is a close second).
Beverly Hills Cop III - which I only saw recently for the first time, for being contemptuous of its audience, horribly cruel and violent, tone-deaf to such a degree I wondered if the entire film was meant to be satire and for being the worst film by a spotty director who has nonetheless directed several genre classics (John Landis).
Edwin Davies: Easy; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Crass, moronic, racist, sexist, incoherent and just plain boring, this is the very antithesis of what action cinema should be. It's just a series of weightless, incompetent setpieces strung together with no sense of rhythm and flow to them, making it impossible to give a damn about anything that happens, and whenever anything does happen it usually ends after about 30 seconds. Not only that, but it's two and a half hours long. I don't care if a film's terrible, but it should at least have the decency to be short.
Incidentally, of those F-scorers, Solaris, Bug and Wolf Creek are all good to very good films, they're just really, really uncompromising in very different ways. Anyone who hasn't seen them should check them out. Bug's probably the best of the three since it unites the weather mountain face of Michael Shannon with the director of The Exorcist.
Reagen Sulewski: If I'm limiting myself to major studio big-time releases (and excluding the easy targets of Uwe Boll films), probably the most incompetent film I've ever seen was last year's Jonah Hex, which I'm not convinced was actually finished. Last year was a banner year for this, too, as Sex and the City 2 was the most morally repellent film I've ever seen. As far as completely unpleasant experiences in the theater, that title probably goes to Stigmata, which gave me a headache and made no sense.
I'll also stick up for Solaris, which is a beautiful film, but not really anyone's idea of a good time, you know?
Bruce Hall: Two of my most hated blockbusters of all time - Armageddon and Independence Day. Box office aside, both movies were little more than a string of lowest common denominator action clichés and disaster movie tropes arranged in convenient checklist form. Despite having different creative teams, their screenplays may well have fallen out of the same vending machine.
Cherished landmarks destroyed, gruff reluctant hero, superfluous love interest/hooker with a heart of gold, wacky unstable sidekick, rampant jingoism, everything in the world is filled with napalm, needlessly convoluted subplots, script made from refrigerator magnets...I couldn't even bring myself to just have fun and enjoy the effects. Would that I were as simple as a housecat and easily distracted by bright lights and shiny things, but alas...no.
Max Braden: Reagen is stealing my answers. The first title to always pop into my head for this kind of question is National Lampoon's Last Resort (Corey Haim and Corey Feldman, 1994) because of the "we don't care, we don't have to" phone company mentality disrespect of themselves and the audience. These days you can swing a cat and hit any of the many straight to video titles starring Billy Zane, Michael Madsen, Val Kilmer, Christian Slater, Wesley Snipes, or Cuba Gooding Jr. and come up with a suitable answer, usually because the budgets are so low they can only afford to hire writers who are used to stories with the kind of depth and sophistication you'd find in a peep show.
But to pick from wide releases, just this past year I would give the big F to Sucker Punch. Here was a concept that worked brilliantly in trailer form because of its vignette format and wild fantasy-setting action pieces. It appeared to be just the kind of popcorn movie that's made for the big screen. But what worked in short form was *awful* in feature-length form. It amounted to first-person-shooter video-gamer porn. Just put some hot girls in hot clothes, give them some guns, and let them go to town on a random generator of villains, and it'll be pure gold! It was pure crap. Pretty cinematography can't save a movie by itself.
Kim Hollis: First off, I add my voice to the support of Solaris. Secondly, I agree on Bad Boys II. That is a horrible, horrible movie with no redeeming qualities. With regard to Transformers, I've miraculously avoided the third film, but I think the second one is just as deserving of scorn as Edwin mentions. It's all explosions, humping (both dogs and robots) and weird drug induced hazes.
But I won't just bash Michael Bay (though this topic has sort of turned into that). A movie I think deserves an "F" is Ron Howard's The Grinch, because it just...I don't know. It disgusted me. Here's a movie that purports to moralize against commercializing Christmas all while it's doing exactly that. Just, yuck.
David Mumpower: I thought that Sex and the City 2 was tolerable compared to the original, a cinematic abomination. I also think a body of work award is in order along the lines of Tyler Perry's Madea Gets an F Cinemascore. And obviously I am not going to pass on an opportunity to remind Uwe Boll how much I hate his guts for Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne et al. Some other titles that bear mention are Catwoman, Along Came Polly, The Happening, The Love Guru, MacGruber, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (a cinematic abomination), Year One, Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, Ultraviolet (why Milla why?) and all of those cheap-ass parody movies like Date Movie and Epic Movie.