The Monkey's Paw (2013)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Just perfect...

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This is another "Be Careful What You Wish For..." movie. When Gillespie (Kelly) is fired from his job at the packing plant he besides to have his revenge on those he thought responsible. So, that night at the bar, he entices Jake (Thomason) over and proceeds to tell him the story of the monkey's paw, which is sitting on the table. Thinking it all to be a joke, he makes a wish to have the car in front of the bar. Gillespie hands over the withered paw and says it now belongs to him. When Jake and Cobb (Lang) leave at the end of the night the car is in the parking lot... alone... unlocked... keys in the ignition... On the joyride, Jake swerves to miss a crocodile in the road and crashes into a tree. Cobb is thrown through the windscreen and dies minutes later. Shocked and afraid, Jake quickly wishes that Cobb wasn't dead... and this is where the fun starts.Of course, there are only three wishes so with only one left Jake will have to be very careful about how he words his last wish.I admit to hoping this would be along The Wishmaster lines but sadly it wasn't... and it wasn't as good either. Though what this story had was lashings of realism, which created an environment for the curse to run riot in. You have a business that's not doing so well. A boss and husband who sleeps around. A wife who knows something is wrong and wishes for her younger years and her love of that time. A man complacent with his life, though he believes there's no prospects or advancement, life will be like this until he dies. A man who's been through a lot and is in love with a woman who hates him and won't let him see his son. All of this anchors the viewer in the here and now and gives them enough drama to keep them interested.Add to this the element of horror, the supernatural, and murder and you have a good film. Simmons does an admirable job with the direction and has a surprisingly subtle hand with using light to create the right atmosphere at the right time. There are some really nice iconic and powerful part silhouettes, which he uses to create tension and suspense. The pace, on the whole, is brilliant. He keeps it at a slow crawl, which allows him to create a shiver of anticipation under your skin... though, at times it can be too slow. For example, the beginning sequence at the plant. Most of this isn't required. I know it's there so the audience can meet the characters, however, it felt overstretched. There's also a few scenes which are kind of superfluous, like the opening scene. This is then retold in greater detail by Gillespie at the bar. To be honest, it's not even a hook to draw viewers into the film. However, I did like the fact that Simmons cut away from some of the goriest parts of the film, letting the viewers imagination fill in the messy bits.The acting is above average, though there are times when things get a little messy. The worst being the ambulance scene at the climax of the film. Thomason just can't seem to get afraid, anxious, and scared quite right and opts to shout and thrash about. It's both Kelly and Lang who add power to the cast and film. Lang is so good as the resurrected and murderous Cobb. While Kelly does an ordinary Joe so well. There's not one scene these two are in that even comes close to bad. It's a shame that Dutton, who plays detective Margolis, isn't around a little more either.I'd recommend this to horror lovers who like their macabre curses and evil manipulated wishes gone awry. I will only be too happy to watch this film again, though it might take me a couple of years.

Last week I did a review of Brett Simmon's new direction Animal. I mentioned that he had previously done a film with this production company, which according to critics wasn't the best film either. Well I gave the film a go at proving them wrong. It was made by Chiller Films and was released not long ago. It's genre? The one that seems to go hand in hand with the director. Horror. Monkey's Paw had a lot of the same going for it as Animal, but I'd be hard pressed to call any of it positive. While it's true that the story isn't about a wild beast, but an ancient horror legend, we end up with a zombie story, with a dash of voodoo, and a pinch of modern day America. The problem with stories like this is that they are cliché and not really all that interesting. The story: The film centers on Jake Tilton, who acquires a mystical "monkey's paw" talisman that grants its possessor three wishes. Jake finds his world turned upside down after his first two wishes result in co-worker Tony Cobb being resurrected from the dead. As Cobb pressures Jake into using the final wish to reunite Cobb with his son, his intimidation quickly escalates into relentless murder-- forcing Jake to outwit his psychotic friend and save his remaining loved ones. First off granting wishes, voodoo story is a little overused, there have been oodles of films about this topic and if that's all they were about they didn't really stand out of the crowd. The whole story and atmosphere would work great in say a Tales from the Crypt episode, but not in a feature film. Plus the film has a bunch of things wrong with it too. First off it's so TV movie. It's not really that it's just reminds me of one and the script helped in that department. Not to mention that it's so riddled with logical holes it's Swiss cheese. Sometimes they were made out of stupidity, sometimes it just seemed they weren't really paying attention. The next problem is something I spoke about in relation to Animal too – though it was a lot more annoying in that film – is the fact that there is no blood. Yeah you can make a case for that not being too important and it really isn't if the film has something else going for it, if it has squat? Then at least it could be bloody no? Unfortunately it's sorely lacking here. The one positive thing are the actors, who did a solid job, other than that I don't really have anything good to say about it. It seems like this production company is predominantly going for broke in horror stories that can be easily shown on TV. But then I kind of don't get how come they don't just make films for the SCI-FI Channel. All in all the director Brett Simmons was true to himself. Animal was a kind of pointless, but watchable once, mediocre horror and so was Monkey's Paw. I think the whole thing took a left turn at Albuquerque when they picked out the basic story. Sure that makes it hard to go anywhere good, so then why the hell make the film? 2/10 https://www.youtube.com/user/Videodromeblog

I'm a huge fan of Horror and am always searching for a well made, well acted story, even if it does follow the same tropes. This is a classic "be careful what you wish for" story. A man receives a Monkey's Paw from a fellow co-worker and is granted three wishes. His first wish is selfish, and results in an accident that makes his second wish unavoidable. That is when the fun starts. Stephen Lang makes this movie. He was interesting and engaging in Avatar, but this performance was emotional, visceral, and thoroughly entertaining. C.J. Thomason left me scratching my head as the lead character, but he was just good enough to not ruin the story. I definitely went into this without any expectations and though the story is not new, and the characters did do some dumb things with stilted dialogue at times, I think the very interesting setting and the performance by Lang makes it worth watching.

I have to say that this movie did go further than I would have anticipated. Though it is flawed by the general clichés, I think there is actually a clever mini-plot behind it.Even though Voodoo is a religion that celebrates life and death and has very little to do with black magic and considering that you can't revive a dead guy even if you had a mountain of monkeys with 4 paws, the movie leaves an open alternative. And that is: that actually everything was a coincidence, but the paw played the part of not bringing luck. In the end, maybe Cobb didn't die in the crash (or maybe just clinically died for a brief moment) and just went insane from the head injuries and the car may have just been abandon by a run away guy. There is no clear evidence of magic but maybe just psychical influence.I liked how the story was twisted here and there, characters were OK developed and the action moved relatively fast paced with the events. I give it 7/10 cause with a better cast and more time to shape the plot better would have made this movie a great classic.