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Nurse Betty (2000) Neil LaBute

February 15th 2025

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House of Darkness (Neil LaBute, 2022).

#house of darkness #neil labute #justin long #kate bosworth

Bad Horror Movie of the day: The Wicker Man (2006)

Californian police officer Edward Malus has separated from his ex-fiancée some time ago, but when she brings news that her daughter has gone missing, he takes the case. Thus, he embarks in an investigation to this island famous for its honey, where the girl was last seen, and a suspicious neo-pagan cult lead by women governs the land. Near Seattle. Uh...

Aka, the stupid, illogical remake of the masterpiece that is the 1973 original. Cutting the folk music is probably the least of the problems here: the story gets convoluted, over the top and involves such radical leaps of logic the questionable attempt at tackling the subject gender roles pales to the sheer amount of idiocy packed in 102 minutes. Every and all changes to the original just make the story make less sense; a pagan island near England works quite well culturally speaking. Near Seattle... not so much. And trying to "punch up" the kidnapping fake out by making the girl related to the Police officer just adds pointless complexity.

But that's not what made this movie worth watching. Oh no. Whoever cast Nicolas Cage on the lead role was doing the world a service, just not for the reason they were thinking. He brings the ham, the cheese and the laughs. And the heat too. Seeing an incompetent police officer with no chill get into a fistfight with inn maids shouldn't be funny and yet here we are, which says a lot since that's far from the most absurd thing to happen in the film.

I could go on about the details as to how it fails to grasp the mechanics of horror and plain basic storytelling, how it's attempts at cleverness feel insultingly on the nose, or how it might have had a shot to frighten people with bee allergies if it wasn't for the fact those animals don't behave like a liquid. But let's just put it like this: when people remember the emotional peaks of your horror film with laughter instead of dread... you fucked up.