That Awkward Moment: That sinking feeling

That Awkward Moment (2014) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rating: R, for relentless profanity and sexual candor, and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

If writer/director Tom Gormican’s loathsome little flick reflects Generation Y dating practices to even the slightest degree, I sure feel sorry for Millennial women.

Jason (Zac Efron) blows his first encounter with Ellie (Imogen Poots) by incorrectly
assuming that she's a hooker (merely one of this inept film's many ham-fisted plot
complications). Although she quite reasonably takes offense at this weird
accusation, she nonetheless agrees to a second date. Yeah, right...

The misleading publicity push notwithstanding, Gormican’s film isn’t the slightest bit funny; it’s merely vulgar and morally repugnant. And that Gormican thinks it should be funny is even worse.

That Awkward Moment is precisely the sort of cinematic bomb one expects to be dropped during the January doldrums.

Gormican has no previous credits, save as one of the countless co-producers on last year’s Movie 43, which sank without a trace. I can’t imagine how he secured financing for this misogynistic twaddle, nor do I wish to meet the studio producer(s) who somehow saw merit in his script.

On one level, this clumsy mess is merely another entry in the arrested-adolescent-males-behaving-badly sub-genre typified by high-profile comedies such as the Hangover series, last summer’s This Is the End and any Will Ferrell project. But Gormican’s film isn’t even good enough to be that bad; his dialogue is strictly from hunger, and he has a terrible sense of pacing and narrative flow.

One must be wary of any movie that opens as its main character questions his current “predicament” via a profanity-laced voiceover; it’s a sure sign of very bad things to come ... and Gormican quickly lives down to worst expectations.

That Awkward Moment is particularly abhorrent, however, because unlike the other comedies cited above — which have nothing beyond crude slapstick nonsense on their agendas — Gormican apparently wishes to extract a gentler romantic comedy, complete with hearts-and-flowers conclusion, from a storyline that can’t begin to support such an outcome.

Rewarding this narrative’s three losers for their reprehensible behavior isn’t merely artistically suspect; it’s insulting to every woman of any age who foolishly wanders into this flick.

Evil Dead: Utterly lifeless

Evil Dead (2013) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rating: R, for profanity, strong bloody violence and relentless gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.5.13

Teaser posters for Evil Dead insist that it’s “the most terrifying film you will ever experience.”

Bold words, and an audacious claim.

When their attempt at do-it-yourself drug rehab goes awry, our gaggle of nitwits — from
left, David (Shiloh Fernandez), Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) — can't
understand how their off-camera patient, Mia, suddenly seems able to contort her face
and body in decidedly inhuman ways. As the saying goes, characters this clueless
deserve whatever awaits them ... which, in each case, ain't pretty.

And complete nonsense, as well. This pallid remake isn’t the slightest bit scary. It is, instead, little more than a gross, predictable and thoroughly derivative splatter-fest in a horror sub-category that needs to be retired, for at least a decade, in the wake of last year’s vastly superior The Cabin in the Woods.

It’s hard to believe that the idiots populating this storyline — five clueless twentysomethings who obviously don’t share a single brain cell between them — were co-concocted by Diablo Cody, who won a well-deserved Academy Award for scripting 2007’s smart, sassy and savvy Juno.

Then again, Cody similarly insulted viewer intelligence with 2009’s Jennifer’s Body, so it would seem she has a blind spot when it comes to well-executed horror. As in, she couldn’t write the genre to save her career.

But getting back to that boast about “terrifying.”

No less an authority than Stephen King — who knows a thing or two about scary stuff — made the following astute observation in his 1981 nonfiction book, Danse Macabre:

I recognize terror as the finest emotion, and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

It’s an important distinction. A truly “scary” movie is one that lingers: that sends you home as a quivering mass of goose-flesh, unwilling to turn off the lights and go to bed, unwilling even to hide beneath the covers, for fear of what might stare back when you finally surface to peer around the room. that's “scary.”

King may settle for gross-out, but he always tries for genuine terror; as a longtime reader, I can attest to this.

Far too many of today’s horror filmmakers, in stark contrast, obviously can’t be bothered to try for anything as noble as terror. It’s much too easy to sever limbs, spew bile and toss buckets of blood at the camera lens. As for character development or logical behavior, they’re obviously inconsequential distractions.