“Unfortunately, this movie could not be released under its original title: The (Cock) Ring.
Pretty to look at, nice soundtrack, good premise, but we never really escape the what do we do? phase of the plot. Definitely feels like it was created with a premise in mind and ended on that kind of ambiguity that’s more dissatisfying than spooky.
I like it less the more I think about it.
Why did we have a character keeping his plans a big secret with the classic Do you trust me? Why would the other characters need to trust him, he could just tell them what’s going on?
Why would any of them think this plan would work? This is something that could’ve been laid in a la Nancy pulling Freddy’s hat into the real world, which indicated to her a potential option. But this movie gives me no reason to think this will be different. Why not fire or, I don’t know, garlic powder? Hit it with a car? Knock it off a tall building? Trick it into a space capsule set to launch? Trap it in a ship about to be scuttled?
I don’t want to make like I hated it or think it’s terrible, it just does a couple things that I don’t like, especially in movies that people like to talk about as being thought-provoking. If you want to have huge plot holes in a movie about a lady stuck in her basement and being chased by pissed off gators, I’m all for it. But nobody is going to overanalyze the gender politics on that one.
I’m sure much hay was made about sexual politics, feminism, Oedipal complexes, consent, AIDS, and even some gentrification/Detroit stuff thrown in there alongside some millennials living at home stuff, but I’m not so certain this movie has so much to say on these topics as opposed to just mentioning their existence.
The most interesting thing I think this movie does is making sex and nudity in a horror movie no fun, and certainly someone at, I don’t know, Jezebel? Is that a place still? Certainly someone over there wrote an essay about that by now.
Which is why this one doesn’t all the way work for me. It’s not quite silly enough to be a Nightmare on Elm Street, not explicit enough to be an US. It’s somewhere in the middle.
Now I’m off to see whether there’s really an ereader that looks like a clamshell, kinda like a birth control holder?! Holy shit, get Jezebel on the phone!”