Suburban Gothic

Kat Dennings will probably always be an underrated actress until she gets the "it" role she needs. Until then she will do bad movies like this, but she has enough star power to get people to see it. All that aside, the main character is so irritating I wanted to punch him in the face every time he opened his mouth, except one scene.

"Ok, I'll look into his work. What's your favorite movie of his?" "Running out of Bullets" "I'll watch that one first."

Also, John Waters is Jesus Christ, so it's a must watch. But overall it was a pretty lame movie.

More of a cultural study about being a millennial than an actual movie. Kat Denning has a lot of tattoos, the male lead - Matthew Gray Gubler (maybe change that for Hollywood, dude) is unemployed, lives with his parents and is looking for his "purpose" and a few mumbled jokes are passed around. The plot, such as it is, deals with a fairly routine ghost story that our digital native heroes must release from torment by solving a mystery. In other words, if you have seen an episode of Scooby Doo, you've basically seen the film. However, it is somewhat entertaining. In short, if you can watch it on cable and can't anything better, maybe give it a try.

Matthew Gray Gubler from the television crime series Criminal Minds gets to let loose in this comedy-horror movie. At the same time, Ray Wise from the classic Twin Peaks television series (1990) also gets to expand on his former character again as the father figure, this time as Gubler's character's dad. What sets this rather conventional movie apart from other comedy-horrors is the script which delightfully expands and enhances those stylistic characters of Gubler and Wise and transforms them into a comedic parody upon which both actors take to their roles with a feverish outpouring of electric sophisticated humor. At the same time, the script at a few points seems to cross the line of parody and seemingly endless excessive mimicry making the movie almost overly burdened with pretentious acting (possibly the fault of the movie's director). The movie also sharply turns pretty dark later in the movie straining the carefully crafted balance of the tone of the movie. Nevertheless, Suburban Gothic offers an entertaining spark to the comedy-horror genre, making it rise above the many mass of ordinary movie titles.

Matthew Gray Gubler is perfect in this. Ray Wise is at his best. Kat Dennings is underutilized, though. She has great comedic timing and presence and is not given enough of it to perform. The editing could have been tighter, giving it more flow. But I like that this movie is exactly what it wants to be and is unapologetic about it.

If you like quirky movies, this is for you. If you like your horror straight, best to skip this one.

I first saw Excision, and was kind of intrigued by it, so I checked out Bates Jr newest movie, which is this one, Suburban Gothic.

Now, this is a pretty strange movie. It seems like it can't quite decide what it is. It has quite a lot of weird comedy, or at least I think it is supposed to be funny, it didn't really hit home for me. The comedic timing seems way off a lot of the time, with a lot of wasted potential. Maybe I just didn't get it.

But this is not just a comedy, it is a horror comedy. Horror comedies are my favorite genre, nothing beats horror comedy if done right. Anyway, some of the scary scenes in this movie are actually quite creepy. But I think they drown in the weirdness of the rest of the movie.

We get a tiny bit of Jeffrey Combs, that's always nice, also a small cameo from John Waters. The father is kind of cool, and the main guy is weird, but OK.

To sum up: kooky movie, weird humor which I didn't really find very funny (let it be said: I'm a tough crowd, laughter wise), some creepy scenes, very simple story. OK.