Two recent viewings: "The Webmaster" and "The Stay Awake"

[Fearless Freep]

I know when I last mentioned these two movies as 'upcoming' I also mentioned "Rock And Roll Nightmare" (R&R N).  Truth is, I only skimmed R&R N.  It was a pretty silly low budget horror movie with sock puppet monsters. It seemed more a vanity or ego piece for the main actor (John Mickl Thor) who wrote it, produced it, was lead singer of the band, and got the heavy make-out shower scene with his girlfriend.  I think it was halfway intended to be a show-piece for the bands music; the sycophanatic 'manager' really pushed this into fantasy land..  The band was called "Tritonz" or something   in the credits, which I guess was supposed to be pronounced like "Titans" but with an 'r' and the 'z' for cool points or something.  But I couldn't get it out of my head to call them "Tri-tones" (ala.."Murph And The Magic Tones"..it's "Thor and Tri-Tones").  I did learn that Toronto is the art and music capital of the world

Anyway...

"The Stay Awake" - Wow!  This was..bad.  The basic premise is that some girls are having a 'stay awake' (stay up all night) at their school, to raise money for the school or something.  The festivities are interrupted by something scarying, and then killing off, the girls.  The "something" is the ghost/demon/bad breath/whatever of a convict executed years earlier.  Why he's back, terrorizing the girls, is never really explained.  

The basic premise seems very cookie cutter, like some parts were thrown in because, well, they belong in that genre. The obligatory boys show up, sneaking on to the grounds.  However they don't do much and all die very quickly so you are left wondering "what was the point?"  There's also an obligatory shower scene when the girls go to shower after a game of volley ball, but nothing is shown, if you know what I mean.  I'm not saying it's a requirement for T&A in this kind of movie, but it seemed akward to throw in a typical setup for that and have the movie wimp out.  (The scene served no purpose, other than padding out the running time)

One of biggest problems with this movie is simply that it's very boring and takes for*ever* to get moving.  It took about 45 minutes for anythong serious to actually happen.  Interspersed with a lot of false scares.  The false scares don't work like "the boy who cried wolf"  By the time he movie gets moving, you're already annoyed at it and not inclined to give it the suspension of belief and the charity needed to take it at it's own terms

And then there's our killer/demon/dead guy.  The reason it's hard to categorize is because, well...it kept changing. Sometimes you see the eyes and forward of a monster, sometimes you just see the executed killer with glowing eyes.  The method of killing is also pretty varied.  Sometimes it seems like the monster thing drags the victim to a toothy death; in one scene the victim is strangled with a fire hose.  I kept yelling in my mind "make up your mind, movie!  What are you trying to be!?!?"

The ending climax is drawn out too long and becomes fairly boring.  You know what's going to happen, but it takes so long and the path to get their is so repetive that you're just bored when it finally happens.  This pretty much sums up the whole movie.

The Webmaster - I actually liked this one so I have less to say about it, ironically.

The plot is that the future, a cyber-junkie known as "The Webmaster" (or "J.B.") is part of small group of guys who have top-level control over a large portion if the Internet.  Like any webmaster, his job is pretty much to keep things running, put the architecture in place, watch for potential intrusions,, that sorta stuff.  Now, one of the group is murdered (which J.B. witnesses on a hacked survellience camera) so he's often to discover who the killer is.  His life and persuit is complicated when one of the other group members ("Stoiss") notices that his money is being drained from his account.  Stoiss' problem and actually a plot problenm for the movie) is that he's paranoid and psychotc.  He grabs JB, stops his heart, and installs an artificial heart with a limited lifepan (35 hours) to force JB to find the person stealing his money.  JB finds the killer, but it turns out the killer wants JB to kill Stoiss (he's not interested, for personal reasons, but more practically, he needs the artifical heart removed)  The killer also wants JB dead as well, in order to take over the top level group on the net.  Incidetnally, Stoiss fears that JB might be the killer so to hamstring him a bit, he downloaded to disk and deleted JB's online alter-ego.  This protects Stoiss from JB, but also makes it almost impossible for JB to figure out who the real killer is (and where the security hole is that let the killer into the top level group unseen in the firt place)

Therein lies the fundamental flaw in the movie.  The movie has a certain amount of tension due to the conditions JB has to work under (35 hours to live, lack of online tools, etc..) that were put upon him by Stoiss.  This is only fueled by Stoiss general paranoia because nothing in the movie indictaes why Stoiss would distrust JB in the first place.   his works against Stoiss as well because if JB doesn't find the real intruder in the time allotted, he's dead, and Stoiss will still be losing money and in danger.  So most of the movie is driven by trhe fundamental irrational and self-defeating actions of one character.

Other than that, though, the film had a good feel to it.  It moved well, and I never said "gimmee a break!" about the computers or technology and their usage    The atmosphere had a very 'techno-dance-geek' feel that worked well.