Really Awful Movies

Our site’s 5-star rating system can accommodate films that are half-good. Death Wish II is one such film. Of course, that’s an either/or proposition. The film’s half bad too, but nowhere near terrible enough to warrant Ebert’s zero star take.

That being said, this sequel is moored to a classic, damn-near impossible to judge as standalone art given its predecessor.

Death Wish the First ends with Paul Kersey laying low and decamping to Chicago after his 9-kill performance in The Five Boroughs. However, that urban environment there too closely matches that of New York City.

Ergo, we get “he worked in Chicago awhile…” as the lazy, cynical and tepid exposition for Kersey’s developer business (and Kersey) ending up in Los Angeles.

He is apparently the unluckiest man in the world. In the first film, his wife is murdered and his daughter sexually assaulted and deathly traumatized. Now, Kersey’s fresh start in La-La Land is not too fresh at all. On a lovely boardwalk stroll, he’s infantilizing his inexplicably still-mute daughter with ice cream (who is far too old to be electively mute), when all of a sudden, a gang of muggers grab his wallet.

With his address, they’re able to terrorize Kersey where he lives. His housekeeper is brutally attacked and left for dead and his daughter is impaled on a fence escaping the clutches of the violent gang. (Don’t you hate it when that happens?)

What’s a guy to do? Why, get his piece and take out various members of LA’s criminal underworld under the cover of darkness. A graying Batman with a mustache and a dark toque.

It’s Detective Ochoa from the NYPD (and the first film) whose appearance really sinks this one. Still determined to bring the “goddamn vigilante” to justice, he snorts into his handkerchief while tailing Kersey.

And what we’re left with is what Ebert (rightly) called “underplotted.”

Asking none of the moral or ethical questions of that first film though, this one accepts out and out consequentialism. And what scraps remain include a few decent action sequences (including Laurence Fishburne getting blasted right through his ghetto blaster) and some good sleazy atmosphere.

Kersey asks at one point, “You believe in Jesus? You’re gonna need him.”

But nobody is redeemed here.

**1/2 (out of 5)

[CHECK OUT OUR DISCUSSION OF DEATH WISH 3 here]

What to do with a body is the quintessential noir set-up. Hitchcock played it for gallows humor in The Trouble with Harry, but it’s a real genre-crosser, a moral and ethical conundrum that greases the wheels of any plot.

Enter Dark Cove, a BC-lensed micro-budget horror that powers out of the gate with just such a scenario.

Then it promptly backpedals, going back in time to see how the body disposal stuff all came about, before revving up to a stellar conclusion.

Five friends drive out to an oceanside campsite to commune with nature, that is to say, ingest as much beer, weed and mushrooms as the human liver can metabolize, or “metastasize” (sic) as the brains of the group puts it. These are the first items in the laundry list of provisions as they’re loading up their crossover.

There are two alphas, two cuties, and naturally, the resident horndog Joey. In this case, he sets a new low for horror movie innuendos, asking one of the women if she’d like some “fell*tio dessert” and explaining the particulars of an Eiffel Tower. (Just like the practice that originates out of the city of Cleveland…let’s just say you don’t wanna know.) If that wasn’t enough, his exhausting bawdy talk turns to, of all things, admitting to rubbing one out on a Greyhound bus. (Where’s Vincent Li when you need him? That’s a joke Canadians may or may not appreciate.)

Dark Cove features a backed up outhouse of pop culture effluent as well, from Oasis to Lil’ Wayne, Alanis, Keith Urban, Flea and Nirvana…all shoved into the first ten minutes…and also an overabundance of extraordinarily obvious soundtrack choices, one of which, a song that includes the refrain “we’re going to the ocean to see our friends…” What, was the ditty, “we’re going to drink beer in the woods” already taken?

We’ve talked about the importance of “place settings” in horror, setting the table for an audience to invest in the characters. It’s to the filmmaker’s credit that after failing this so miserably, the annoying personalities endurance test is redeemed by some choice action, setups and visuals. And all for $30,000.

Dark_cove_movie — Ty Stokoe as Chase, a hulking Aussie surfer

The wasted campers bemoan their wasted lives, with nothing to show for their degrees except dead-end restaurant work and brain-dead banter.

The campers then cross paths with three Aussies who are firing off fireworks deep in the BC bush.

This is welcome relief from the double entendre doubling down, and this is where the film comes alive. There’s actually a quite touching scene when the two nationalities bond over what is a pretty darn catchy campfire song.

One of the Aussies, Dean, has drawn the eye of a post break-up Lacey. The two get hot and heavy back in her tent, but when he won’t take no for an answer, the Canadians rush in and beat him to a bloody pulp — he convulses, bubbles from the mouth and expires, leaving a lot of explaining and extemporaneous lying to do, both to the guys from Down Under, and to the forest ranger.

Because of inane innuendos that should’ve been dialed back by half, Dark Cove is not wholly commendable despite undeniable visual style and neat plotting.

*** (out of 5)

[For those interested in horror films featuring Australian surfers, see Caught Inside]