In short: Dashcam (2021)

The height of the pandemic. Anti-vax conspiracy nonsense screeching, MAGA-hat-wearing “musician” and live streamer of crap Annie Hardy (Annie Hardy, who hopefully isn’t playing herself) decides to fly to Britain to torture her old bandmate/touring buddy Stretch (Amar Chadha-Patel) who, one supposes, has attempted to get as far away from her as possible, with a surprise visit.

Eventually, when Stretch’s girlfriend is fed up with her bullshit, Hardy ends up stealing his car and is very randomly (aka the plotting doesn’t give a crap about coherence) hired to transport a mysteriously ill woman somewhere. Demonic shenanigans, even more bad scatological rapping and much waving of the camera ensues.

I wasn’t quite as enamoured of Rob Savage’s first COVID POV horror piece Host as most people seem to have been, seeing it as a perfectly okay film whose main claim to fame was being exactly of its moment while lacking in any kind of substance worth mentioning or thinking about.

Dashcam on the other hand is one of the worst films I have seen in a long time, apparently made in the belief that having its audience spend an hour in the grating one-note presence of the worst person in the world egged on by a scrolling chat of trolls you’ll soon stop reading because it’s just monotonous (and if you want to read this crap, you know where to find it) is of some worth. Part of this…thing is probably meant as a satire on the real-world versions of people like Hardy, but it’s the sort of “satire” that stops at pointing out that somebody is horrible and then does nothing whatsoever with it. It’s also never, not for a single damn line, funny – most certainly not as funny as it clearly thinks it is.

Why is Annie so shitty? Why did she become this way? The film doesn’t know, doesn’t tell, doesn’t care, and instead repeats the same beats of crappy behaviour again and again and again ad nauseum, with no actual characterisation, character development or even vague sense of humanity included.

Watching a woman be a potty-mouthed shit for an hour is pretty grating, but it’s neither interesting nor insightful, nor does it for a movie make. Horrible person is horrible, news at eleven. Once the supernatural horror parts of the movie start, the film adds short bursts of blood and incessant blurry camera shaking most backyard filmmakers would find too excessive, improving exactly nothing.

At least this abomination is mercifully short – even shorter when one is wise enough to stop this garbage before Annie gets into another session of scatology during the ending credits. I can’t help but think this was made by people who a) believe they are much funnier than they actually are and b) hate anybody stupid enough to inflict this on themselves.

In short! Psycho Shark (2009)!

See Japanese gravure idols on a beach holiday! Watch them film each other with the shakiest hand-held camera that ever zoomed in on a pair of breasts! And another one and so on! Get a headache! Hear them shout things like "booby squeeze" and "sexy pose"! Watch them shower while wearing bikinis! Try to adjust your standards! Remember you always thought you didn't have any! Have an existential crisis!

Watch the girls watch another shaky videotape with bikini models on vacation! Enjoy the meta while your headache gets worse! Applaud the models' use of the fast forward button! Stare at a two person beach party! Have some more bikini showering with traumatic flashbacks! Or something! Listen to senseless blabbering! Doubt that you're up to watching this thing all the way through! Get another existential crisis! Miss out on more breast-zooming because you're crying! Rejoice at the words "the tape is almost out"! Look at those shark hunter feet and legs that won't be important later on! Decide that this might be directed by a Japanese Doris Wishman! Watch the awesome first murder as represented by some bubbles underwater and half a glass of cherry syrup! Mentally apologize to Ms Wishman!

Think about how short life is! Cry again! Be surprised by a sudden, moody four second shot of a shadowy guy standing in the ocean by night! Start to hope for a wereshark! Get the next pair of breasts thrown into your face a second later! Thrill to the astonishing shark attack dream sequence! Stare at that dark screen for a few seconds! Be glad about the respite from all the excitement! Watch a shakily shot psycho murder! Hope for more feet! Try to ignore the film's attempt at suddenly having a twisty plot! Succeed admirably! Brew yourself a nice cup of tea! Return and find yourself confronted with the best breast physic in volleyball videogames and some not entirely breast-related slow-motion! Try to ignore the film's permanent repetition of the same handful of scenes! Fail, as the film does at being a horror movie or a softcore concoction! Wonder about a flying digital mega shark even The Asylum would be ashamed of! Puzzle why this crap gets licensed while actual films are languishing in limbo! Oh bondage up yours!

 

Technorati-Markierungen: japanese movies,in short,utter crap,horror,exploitation

Yaarana (1981)

Kishan/Krishna/Krishen (Amitabh Bachchan) and Bishan/Bhutan/Bishen (Amjad Khan) have been special friends since they were wee little ones (badly) played by child actors. While Bishan is the son of a rich family, Kishan is the embodiment of the poor uneducated and stupid on the borderline of retarded but upright peasant. Some long-term money-stealing plans of Bishan's uncle (Jeevan) and the uncle's son Jaggu (Ranjeet) lead to Bishan being carted off (and I quote here) "aboard". At first I thought the slightly problematic subtitles here just had trouble discerning between "abroad" and "aboard" - later parts of the movie suggest to me that they actually put Bishan on a ship to get his higher education in a kind of swimming school of doom. Bishan, being as terribly in love with Kishan as he is, wants to take his friend with him, but proud Kishan thinks the son of a peasant should stay the son of a peasant and not get any education. Also, he promised his father something about the family farm that's neither explained nor makes sense in context.

Years later, when the two have grown into Amitabh and Amjad, Bishan finally succeeds to talk his friend into coming to the Big City with him. Bishan's plan is to use his money to make Kishan the biggest singing sensation of them all. After loads of the sort of wacky hijinx that wouldn't be out of place in a film with (please insert comedy actor even worse than Will Ferrell at your discretion), Kishan first annoying then totally charming the pants off his star teacher Komal (Neetu Singh), and other stuff too dire to mention, Bishan finally learns that he isn't all that rich anymore thanks to his uncle and co. making off with the family money. Of course, this is supposed to be an ode to friendship (on the borderline to slash), so Bishan takes out a mortgage on his house and his ship to finance Kishan's education, royally pissing off his wife who seems to think that he should try to take care of his son and her first (silly woman!).

As I may have mentioned before, Kishan is a complete idiot and only learns of his friend's own idiocy after his first big show in a gigantic stadium (that to me looked like a rather small gym like most schools should have), but makes up for that with more stupid melodrama than should be allowed, leading into even more melodrama, Mental Asylums, child kidnappings, amnesia, minor cries of "Nahiiiiiin!", fiendish plans that make neither sense nor are fun until the film finally, finally ends.

Don't let the decent IMDb rating fool you: this might very well be one of the worst Bollywood films you'll ever get to see. It's not that, say, the typical Ramsay Brothers film is so much higher in worthiness or technical accomplishment than Yaarana (although, really, it is), the problem is that those films are working hard at being fun, while Yaarana looks as if it was made during the shooting breaks of other, better films, for no discernible reason other than to trap the innocent viewer with the promise of Amitabh! Neetu! Amitabh ass-shaking like an idiot in a light-up suit! Dishoom Dishoom! Random appearances of other Bolly-favorites! etc while crushing her/his spirit under a bootheel of evil.

But it is a trap. The movie may contain these promising elements (yes, I find being crushed by a bootheel of evil promising; sue me), it might even be made by Rakesh Kumar who (as my co-watcher/co-torturee Beth assured me) has made much better films, but it slaughters all our hopes of any form of entertainment with a painful mixture of total randomness (in costume, choreography, music etc), unfunny humor that made me remember Dance of the Dead wistfully and a quite transcendent and quite surprising lack of any kind of charm.

I couldn't even begin to imagine what went wrong here during the production, I can only warn each and every potential viewer who might be drawn to Amitabh's light-up suit off: this is one of the least interesting, most annoying and dire pieces of crap I have ever seen.

And no, friends of the Z-movie, that's honestly not a recommendation this time.

 

Technorati-Tags: indian movies,bollywood,reviews,amitabh bachchan,amjad khan,neetu singh,rakesh kumar,comedy,melodrama,utter crap