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They (PG-13)
Rating: B-
I love scary movies-- always have and always will. When done correctly, a scary movie can affect you in such a way that you can't help but walk out of the theater with a slight jitter and make a few not-so-casual looks over your shoulder as you walk to you car. This kind of movie has the potential to keep you up at night, thinking about what you saw, imagining how you would react if YOU were faced with the same supernatural menace. However, when a scary movie is done incorrectly, and thus trips on its first step forward, it becomes little more than a B movie joke- the kind you watch with a whole bunch of intoxicated people so you can mercilessly make fun of it. Lately it seems that most "scary movies" have fallen into this latter category (i.e., Ghost Ship, Halloween H2O, and Jason X). The reason that most of the potential is sucked from these horror movies is rather simple- so simple in fact, it surprises me that writers still make the same stupid mistakes. Reviewing Wes Craven's They is a good opportunity for me to about scary movies in general, because while it does avoid some of the usual pitfalls, it still sucks wind in the long run.

  Let me first say that no matter how hard I try, there is no way to keep this review from being tainted. It's infinitely difficult to lose yourself in a horror movie (a prerequisite for fully enjoying this kind of film) when you have 17 ill-mannered, disrespectful, loud-mouthed teenage shits sitting three rows in front of you, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs, calling each other on their myriad cell phones, and getting up to run across the theater so that they can spend five minutes sitting with each of their 16 other friends. This one kid sitting two rows in front of us literally stood up in the middle of the row, turned around, and proceeded to talk to one of his asshole friends behind him. He just sat there, totally oblivious that his worthless waste of oxygen existence was blocking about half the people in the theater. If I hadn't been so focused on enjoying what little of the movie I could actually watch, God help me, I would've walked up to him, jammed my car key in his right eye socket, ripped off his lower jaw, and beat those two obnoxious bitches next to him with the bone; after which I would take each kid's cell phone and impale them through the throat with it, fixating them to their seats, so that they could no longer speak OR thrash around like the little disrespectful dickheads they were. I FUCKING HATE TEENAGERS. If I only get one present this Christmas, it's that every one of those kids spends their holiday season in the hospital. Santa, you had better be taking notes, damn you.

  They is kind of a mediocre movie, to say the least. While it does have a few startling parts, they are unfortunately too far apart, and the lapses in between are filled with the same old clichéd crap that has made all the other crappy horror movies SUCK. Honestly, I'm just about friggin' tired of watching a movie with a group of young adults facing adversity in the form of some demon or similar abomination, only to have them die one by one until the end of the movie due to their overt stupidity. Of course, one of the characters has somehow figured out what the hell is going on and, of course, no one believes him; that is, until the same shit begins to happen to everyone else. And then the rest of the movie is spent depicting stupid people doing stupid things in stupid situations.
Horror movie requisite #1: There is always one character that knows a way to save the world right from the start, but no one will listen, and thus the viewer must put up with an extra 90 minutes of pure inanity.


  The whole movie, as already stated, revolves around watching four actors (whose names are as irrelevant as their careers) get finished off one at a time by these strange spider-like CG monsters that hide in your closet and scream a lot. These creatures (which you rarely ever see clearly) are apparently beasts from each character's childhood "night terrors" who have returned 17 years later to give that killing thing another shot. Obviously, kids are much more adroit at fighting off minions of Hell than older people, so rest assured this motley group of young adults will receive absolutely no mercy.
Horror movie requisite #2: Demons are sentient beings that take it easy on children but put out all the stops on killing adults.


  Something I did not understand about this movie: You find out very early on that these night terror beasts are afraid of the light, which why they only attack at night and in poorly lit, creepy places that people shouldn't be in the first place, like dark subways and decrepit apartments. And since all the main characters are completely aware of this important piece of hellspawn trivia, WHY THE HELL DO THEY SIT AROUND IN DARK APARTMENTS AND CRAWL AROUND IN DARK AIR VENTS?? Why make it any easier for the demons to get you? And why in the FUCK do directors still make their characters walk around dark corners and into dark rooms while looking the other way?? No chance something wickedly evil will jump out at them then. Nope, not at all. Dipshits!
Horror movie requisite #3: Main actors and actresses must surpass their own usual stupidity by willingly putting themselves in places and situations that make it as easy as possible for the monsters to kill them.


  As a side note, I have to admit that They would have been a much much better movie had it thrown in some nudity and violence and been slapped with an R rating. I could tell at one point that director Robert Harmon truly wanted to give moviegoers an eyeful of big breasts or worse, but for some reason that idea was castrated along with the concept of lots of onscreen blood. Seriously, it's just not a horror movie without copious amounts of blood or gratuitous nudity. Wes Craven might as well have just reneged on producing the movie, handed the job over to Darla K. Anderson, and called the movie Monsters, Inc. 2: Eaters of the Flesh.
Horror movie requisite #4: REAL horror movies have lots of blood or frontal female nudity, or both.   (Better with both)


  Mixing together the good with the bad, They turns out to be pretty stale. Although I laughed heartily at the enjoyable ending, the rest of the film had me shaking like a timid little schoolgirl. Not from the sheer thrill of being scared mind you, but rather from the 300-decibel sound waves that repeatedly ripped through the theater like overwhelming nuclear blasts. Perhaps the creators felt that loud debilitating sound would augment the scare factor of this movie. They may have been right. Now that I think about it, the only truly scary thing about this movie was considering how much damage the sound was doing to my permanent hearing. If you walked into this film a deaf man, you would probably not be scared at all.

  You know, I really thought that after seeing this movie, I would be so unsettled that I would return home and shut all my closet doors securely before pulling the covers over my head and dreaming of evil, bloodthirsty spider shadows ripping out my intestines.

  I dreamt of Iron Chef instead.