Whatever
you do, don't watch this video.
On July 7, 2000,
Scary Movie ushered in a new breed of spoof
movies. While it was a huge crowd pleaser, garnering $278 million worldwide, it
still wasn’t up to par with the likes of the ZAZ crew of brothers David and
Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams. Since the first
Scary Movie, there has
been a steady decline in quality. Not only did most critics hate
Scary
Movies 2,
3, and
4, we also had to suffer through the
succession of movies brought to us by Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg (
Date
Movie,
Epic Movie,
Meet the Spartans,
Disaster Movie,
Vampires Suck). Yes, the days of
Airplane!,
Top Secret!,
The Naked Guns and
Hot Shots! are truly over.
Now it seems that these films are being rightfully banished to the
direct-to-video dump where they belong. After having already suffered through
Supernatural Activity a mere two months ago, now
an even worse offender has been wrought in the form of
30 Nights of
Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
from the same man who “treated” us to
The 41-Year-Old-Virgin Who Knocked Up
Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It. Trust me when I say that the
films found within his titles are no more imaginative than that. Writer/director
Craig Moss is running with the Seltzer/Friedberg template that string a bunch
of movie/TV/commercial references together cobbled alongside fart, piss, and
dick jokes, thinking he’s got himself the funniest movie you’ll ever see. I
think not.
30 Nights begins with a
Storage Wars episode spoof now
called “Storage Battles,” wherein two sisters have just bought a storage unit
for $75. Inside they find Adele (Melissa Fosse-Dunne) playing a piano and a VHS
tape labeled “Found Footage.” The two sisters decide to watch the tape which
consists of a documentary about Dana (Kathryn Fiore) who is off to visit her
father Herb (French Stewart), who’s been locked up in the world’s best
psychiatric hospital located in Italy where the nurses include Mario and Luigi.
Herb has been locked away after being possessed and killing the entire cast of
The
Artist back in 1989. (See what kind of logic Moss thinks is funny?)
Dana moves on with her life and gets married on the
Bachelor to
Aaron (Flip Schultz), who has a kid of his own, Liz (Olivia Alexander). While
Dana and Aaron have a kid of their own, Liz grows up to be a lesbian goth
covered in piercings with a penchant for tattoos, posting selfshot nude pics
online, spying on her wood chopping Abe Lincoln (Ben Morrison) neighbor, who
takes date rape advice from their gay housekeeper Felipe (Arturo del Puerto) to
heart. Meanwhile, Dana and Aaron come to the conclusion their house is haunted
and call in the “Ghost Brothers” for help. But there’s not just bumps in the
night; Dana also becomes possessed and stands next to the bed filming Aaron
getting blowjobs from the family dog. Now it’s time to break out the big guns
and call in an exorcist (Danny Woodburn) to cleanse the house and save the
family.
Thank Jeebus we have Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg doing these films right
with
Shaun of the Dead and
Hot Fuzz. Even
Scary Movie 3
and
4 or
Superhero Movie show more wit and provide actual
laughs than anything found here. At the end of the film, one of the “Storage”
sisters calls the video they just watched (i.e. the entire movie), “the biggest
piece of crap video” she’s ever seen. And I’d have to agree. Just because you
can make a movie, doesn’t mean you should. Sorry Moss, there’s nothing here
that warrants even so much as a rental unless you want to stare at your screen
for 75 minutes (not counting end credits) waiting to even so much as smirk.
Some other jokes Moss thinks are funny: having a Steve Jobs lookalike holed up
in Liz’s room, and a woman dressed as a redneck man from a security company
called “Kaulk and Busch” who makes sexual advances on both Dana and Aaron. Not
to mention the movie’s inciting incident doesn’t even make sense. When you
spend more time pondering how the characters keep referencing
The Artist
from 1989 when it just came out last year, you’ve got yourself some bigger
issues.
The video quality is about what you’d expect from DVD. It’s anamorphic and
has an aspect ratio of 1.78 with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. The rear speakers
rarely come into use, aside from one scene where the baby has a party in the
house resulting in a neighbor being tasered. The only special features are a
Blu-ray vanity reel, a “Behind the Scenes” featurette, and some “Sneak Peeks”
for other, and far better, Fox releases such as
The League and the
Duplass Brothers’
The Do-Deca-Pentatholon. Skip the teaser for
Wrong
Turn 5. So as maligned we may be about the two spoof movies coming soon
via Hollywood –
A Haunted House opens this weekend and
Scary Movie
5 is set for April – I can only imagine that those will seem like comedic
masterpieces compared to what’s thrown at viewers during the entire runtime of
30
Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo, which is available now, so don’t even bother with this one.
Cover art and photos courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
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