Wild Eyed and Wicked

I used to be the horror movie queen. At one time there were over six hundred people on the Horror E-mail List that I maintained, and I could watch anything. I watched a lot of horror movies. These days the scariest thing I’ve watched in a while is the opening credits sequence to Deadpool and Wolverine, and that’s more gory than anything else. So I decided to test myself and pick a newish horror film and see if I could handle it.

Lucky for me, I picked this movie. My aged grandmother could watch this while knitting in her rocking chair and not be bothered. Well, she may have grumbled about the two girls kissing, but that’s a whole other issue.

The movie begins with a cute mom reading bedtime stories to her young daughter. They’re old stories, so not as diluted as the modern scary tales, but the kid loves it. Then there is a sound, the kid grabs up her wooden sword and shield and goes outside just in time to see her mom shoot herself in the head. Relax, that’s in the first two minutes and sets up the rest of the plot. What little there is of it. Years later she’s a fencing instructor, good with a sword, and has awful nightmares from her childhood trauma. She does communicate to her girlfriend that she shouldn’t be slept with out of fear of injury. This is when I knew the writers are worthless. They’ve had sixteen dates and haven’t done the deed yet. Pulease. They would have been U-Hauled and living in a suburban paradise after sixteen dates. So Lily goes home to clueless dad and the two spend most of the movie verbally sparring and not really saying much of note to the plot.

This film is dull as dirt. The dad is well played, but the woman playing Lily is a bit of a cypher, because:
THE MOVIE IS TOO DARK.*

She may have been turning in an Oscar worthy performance (doubtful), but even in broad daylight the director manages to hide her face with massive backlighting, and when it’s not daylight everything is dingy and full of shadows. From my notes: “They have lamps, overhead lights, electric, but she uses a cell phone flashlight to check the house?” When the action goes into a dark space? Time to pull up Candy Crush because all you have is sound until daylight. And the subtitles were stupid.

Occasionally the filmmakers would try to ramp up the spooky with music, which the subtitle said were “eerie”. It wasn’t. Lily donned metal armor to fight. It was jousting armor. She’s good on a horse and rode it into the woods at night. Stupid. She practices with a broadsword and used it like a fencing foil. Dumb.
There was a nice Poltergeist moment, and a nifty bit of cell phone trickery which I appreciated, but it was way too little, way too late. In the climactic fight scene there was a lot of darkness, some clanging (I assume of the sword and armor), and shaky handheld camera further obscuring the action.

The movie is a mess, it’s slow, it’s often dumb and the plot is tenuous at the best of times. Sixteen dates? smh Will this give me the courage to try more horror movies? Maybe. They’re not all this bad these days. I’ve seen Sinners, and that’s amazing, so I’m going to chalk this up to someone who talks a good game but makes lame movies. If you’re in the mood to watch this while rocking in your chair knitting sweaters, go for it.

LINKS:

• Wild Eyed and Wicked – IMDB
• Note: Movie website seems to no longer exist.

CFR: In Addition

*THE MOVIE IS TOO DARK.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!! I read that above reference sentence and thought “Last Season of Game Of Thrones Strikes Again!”

Sorry Cranky. Sorry to laugh at your minutes lost watching this movie. You took one for the site and I am grateful. Next time, friend.

Or start knitting. 😉