Column: The thing in the gasoline
Horror movies and social commentary just don't go hand in hand.
Aug. 26, 2008
Most horror movies released lately have stupid, ham-fisted plots. At first I thought this was a recent development that started with "The Ring," but then I spent two seconds thinking about the 1963 film "The Birds" and remembered that horror movies have always had horrendously implausible plots.
The latest movie to follow in this great tradition is "Mirrors," which - if you can't deduce from the vague, enigmatic title - is about mirrors. It sounds like the second stupidest movie in theaters right now (behind "The House Bunny") and also unintentionally the funniest movie in theaters right now (ahead of "The House Bunny"). It seems to adhere to the same equation that all other terrible horror movies do, which is that taking something mundane from everyday life and making it seem scary makes for good cinema.
This is kind of true, except when the movie revolves around building fear of an object that no rational person could ever conjure up any degree of fear for, such as, let's say, mirrors. Luckily for everyone who wasted their time writing, directing and acting in "Mirrors," though, it doesn't even hold a candle to the frontrunner for stupidest horror movie of the year.
M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" is probably one of the most ridiculous ideas for a movie I've heard in years. If someone described the premise to me without any context, I would assume they were trying to be funny. But the best and worst part about it is this: the movie actually makes a clumsy attempt at vague social commentary.
The plot revolves around plants that are trying to kill humans because we've become a harmful parasite to the earth. I guess this is supposed to make us scared of global warming or say something meaningful about the state of our planet. With that in mind, I would like to thank M. Night Shyamalan for giving me a brilliant idea for a bone-chilling horror movie that will solve our global energy crisis by cramming a poorly crafted message down viewers' throats.
My upcoming Hollywood horror blockbuster is entitled "The Thing in the Gasoline," and it stars Sean Penn as a well intentioned but proud man who drives a Hummer everywhere he goes. One day, shortly after filling up at the pump, he begins to hear scary - some might even say bone-chilling - noises emanating from his gas tank. He tries to go about his daily routine uninhibited, but soon he glances in the mirror to see that there is a monster coming out of his gas tank. It forcefully thrusts a gangly, bone-chilling arm through the man's side window, grabbing him by the throat and murdering him in a way that is most bone-chilling indeed. After these bone-chilling events resonate across the world, people slowly but surely begin to realize that the only way to save their lives is to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels and explore possible energy alternatives that are safe for both people and the environment.
At first the masses are skeptical, but in an Oscar-worthy tour-de-force cameo, Al Gore comes before the world to deliver a bone-chilling televised speech about how he was right about the dangers of the non-renewable energy source that has enslaved us for so long. Finally everyone comes to praise Al Gore as the omniscient demigod he is, and the world is once again freed from the wrath of the gasoline-inhabiting monsters.
Everyone will leave the theater a little bit stupider than when they came in, but they won't mind, because they're the same people who already paid to see "Mirrors" and "The Happening."
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