(SPOILER ALERT! The following list is going to ruin several movies, so if you’ve yet to watch any of the following, consider yourself warned.)
You sit down to watch a new movie. Maybe you’re in the theater after weeks or months of anticipation. Maybe you’re at a friend’s house, just hoping to have a good time. Either way, you go into the film with hope.
And, at first, it seems you’ve chosen a winner. The opening scene is a solid banger, only whetting your appetite for more. You settle back in your seat with a grin.
But then that grin slowly – or perhaps not so slowly – begins to fade. With each consecutive scene, a pit in your stomach grows. How could something open with such promise, such fun, only to lose the plot completely before the halfway mark?
Isn’t that just the worst? It’s almost better when a movie stinks from start to finish; at least then you don’t feel so cheated and betrayed.
This week, I’m looking back over a few of the films that disappointed us the most. The ones that had a solid concept, or a great cast, or managed to do a couple of really sweet sequences, only to fall apart like a cake in the rain. And let’s start with the personal disappointment that I’ll carry to the grave:
1. “Ghost Ship” (2002)
In the opening to this supernatural schlocker about marine salvagers vs. a cursed ship, we see a fancy party (circa 1962) in full swing on the deck of the cruise ship MS Antonia Graza. A young girl dances with the grizzled captain, and a femme fatale chanteuse croons “Senza Fine.”
All is glitzy and gay – until an unseen saboteur triggers a tension wire that whips through the crowd, bisecting everyone but the little girl in one of the most shocking, gory intros yet. We see everyone fall to literal pieces, frantically trying to put their ruined bodies back together, as the girl screams. It’s a sequence that’s absolutely burned into my brain.
With such a brutal tone at the outset, you’d expect the rest of the film to be as visceral and horrific. But sadly, no. The next hour and a half of “Ghost Ship” plods in comparison, meandering with dull tension that never reaches that exquisite peak again. The ensemble cast (which includes personal fave Karl Urban) is absolutely wasted.
2. “Cowboys & Aliens” (2011)
Look: I love me some cross-genre weirdness. Sci-fi Western is a particularly great mashup (see: “Firefly,” “Trigun,” “Westworld”). When the buzz first started for the appropriately named “Cowboys & Aliens,” I was pumped. And when the star-studded cast, which includes Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Clancy Brown, Paul Dano and Sam Rockwell, was announced I was downright giddy.
And the movie starts strong: We meet an amnesiac outlaw wandering the desert, wounded and confused and wearing a peculiar metal bracelet. He reaches a classic Old West town and is tended to by the people before he’s recognized as the infamous Jake Lonergan and arrested. Then, as he’s about to be transported to jail, an alien ship appears and attacks, and his bracelet transforms into a weapon that allows him to shoot the ship down.
Unfortunately, once Jake recovers his memories and the mystery disappears, the film becomes surprisingly lackluster. There’s alien vivisection and twist reveals and explosive fights, but it never feels more than by-the-numbers. There’s just a lack of magic, and Craig’s inconsistent accent is sadly distracting. Overall, it feels like the movie didn’t quite know what it wanted to be, and sways too much in one direction (Western) or the other (Sci-fi).
3. “28 Weeks Later” (2007)
“28 Days Later” remains one of the greatest zombie movies ever made. And while it most certainly did not need a sequel, I was optimistic when “28 Weeks” was released.
The story starts in a small, dark cottage outside London. Married couple Don and Alice are hiding from the vicious Infected with four others. There’s a sudden pounding at the door, and a young boy begs to be let inside.
Despite Don’s misgivings, Alice lets the boy in – only to realize that a vast swarm of the Infected have followed the kid, leading to a frantic run through the house and out onto the roof, revealing that it’s not the dead of night, as we initially thought, but a cheerfully bright midday.
That abrupt shift from breathless darkness to brilliant sunlight is a shock to the senses, adding to the nightmarish intensity of Don’s flight onto a small boat. The frantic man abandons his wife and the other survivors and flees across the water, leaving them to be ripped apart by the zombies.
It’s a heck of an introduction, which makes the rest of the movie pale in comparison. Turns out Alice didn’t die thanks to a natural resistance to the Rage virus, but her reunion with Don leads to him becoming infected and then chasing their children through London in a way that baffles all logic. It’s even more of a letdown considering how great “28 Days” was.
4. “Dawn of the Dead” (2004)
Speaking of zombies: This remake from Zach Snyder ultimately missed the mark in a lot of ways, casting off the social commentary that made the original Romero film such a timeless classic in favor of Super Fast Zombies. But it sure did have a helluva opening.
Nurse Ana is exhausted after a long shift. She and husband Luis are asleep in bed when a sudden sound wakes them, and they see a young girl from next door standing down the hall.
Suddenly, the girl attacks and kills Luis, instantly turning him. Ana flees from her undead husband and out into a daylit neighborhood that’s gone mad, full of screaming and blood, managing to escape in a car before crashing and passing out. Cue the opening credits, a montage of violence and story-establishing zombie clips set to Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around.”
It’s too bad the rest of the film relies more on gross-out gore and characters behaving stupidly to forward the story, given how taut and terrifying that opening is. (This also is true of Snyder’s most recent zombie flick, “Army of the Dead,” which had a superb set of action-packed opening credits that established – then killed – characters vastly more likable than the ones we actually follow the rest of the movie.)
5. “Mortal Kombat” (2021)
I’ll readily admit the original “Mortal Kombat” film from 1995 isn’t a good movie. But it is a vastly entertaining one and holds a special place in my heart. So when they announced a reboot to the film franchise, I was cautiously hopeful. Just so long as they had some neat fight choreography and special effects, I’d probably enjoy it.
And the first sequence, where assassin Bi-Han (soon to be known as Sub-Zero) and his men attack Hanzo Hasashi’s clan in 17th century Japan was boss. Hiroyuki Sanada (Hanzo) is one of the coolest martial artists alive; seeing him fight as a samurai soon to be turned into the infamous Scorpion was fantastic.
Sadly, the rest of the movie felt overly cluttered with characters, most of whom weren’t developed or likable, and the only other solid bit of entertainment was when the resurrected Scorpion took on Sub-Zero again in the climactic fight. Which proves that when you’ve got an ace like Sanada, you have to use him as much as you can. Why hide that light under a bushel of less talented actors?
ANGIE BARRY is a contributing columnist for Shaw Media. To suggest future topics for The B-List, which covers topics in pop culture, history and literature, contact her at newsroom@mywebtimes.com.