Don't Take the Ride, Burn The Ticket

The more observant among the audience may have noticed that Brian and I are something vaguely approaching movies buffs. We watch movies, by and large we like movies, but recently I feel a trend setting in. I'm talking about the gross squandering of potential. I know that this isn't really a new thing in cinema (I'm looking at you Uwe, your mother and I are very disappointed), but I feel like its getting worse and I'm not entirely sure its unintentional.

The most recent example of this for me was a movie called Banshee Chapter, and without getting too deep into spoiler territory, fuck this movie. The premise is actually good, and riding a bit of a gravy train right now. Its a (more) sinister exploration of the MKUltra experiments done during the cold war (given some of the stuff I've had to search for some my recent posts, bet your ass I'm on a list somewhere), and so it cashes in on the popularity of conspiracy movies lately. Here's the problem; its kinda fucking terrible. Putting aside the fetal dependence on jump-scares, there's a frankly fucking insulting low-rent Hunter S. Thompson character who, despite being one of the main characters, only really exists to justify the presence of Bad Drugs and drop a few poorly represented catchphrases.

On top of that, they can't seem to decide whether they're going for a shitty shaky-cam/pseudo-found footage thing or actually being a movie. There's an implied cameraman in that the camera itself seems to play a role on several occasions, but then again there totally isn't because its never spoken of. The camera behaves as though its being held by someone active in the movie (I wont be calling this a film) but that person never manifests, leaving the whole thing just looking brain-damaged. The casting was pretty terrible, but its essentially about people being mind-controlled so they kinda almost get away with it.

In all they failed their premise, and that's where my issue really comes in. It feels like so many of the terrible parts of this movie where an attempt to garner indie cred that it didn't need if it had just let the story do its thing. This movie is a grand example of what can go wrong when you try hedging your bets, a habit I'm increasingly afraid cinema wont be able to break.