2018 Films: #18. 14 Cameras

OnDemand viewing on August 17th in Chicago, IL. The sequel to 2015's 13 Cameras sees Gerald (Neville Archambault) up to his old tricks of peeping in on unsuspecting young women. This time around he rents a property to a family that is on vacation with their 20ish year old nubile daughter and her equally nubile friend.

Also back is Claire (Brianne Moncrief), the pregnant woman from the last picture. Gerald keeps her in a home made underground dungeon. Gerald is actually raising her son and seems to be doing a decent job considering Gerald doesn't speak much and is always running around installing cameras or streaming his footage to the creepazoids on the dark web.

Things in the vacation rental start off slow with the two young women, Molly and Danielle (Brytnee Ratledge and Amber Midthunder), with some shower and pool stuff. It then escalates from Gerald stealing panties for a customer to a customer actually paying to have Gerald help kidnap the girls. Suffice to say that the night of the kidnapping is the big climax. Gerald has a change of heart and kills the kidnapper, his "son" rescues Claire, Gerald ends up kidnapping Danielle but she escapes with Claire and they run over Gerald making their getaway.

Victor Zarcoff returns to write the film having relinquished directorial duties to Seth Fuller and Scott Hussion. The picture isn't really very good, hence the 13% Rotten Tomatoes rating. There's too much going on. What made 13 Cameras work was it's simplicity. The filmmakers try to take it up too many notches and it fails. During the epilogue, cops reveal that Gerald owns all the properties that he had cameras in. They guy had money coming in from the properties and from his customers from the dark web. He really didn't need to kidnap and kill anymore. Gerald also has mad coding skills, is good with tools, technology and web design. He could easily get a good paying job with a cable company. Not the most friendly guy sure but definitely skilled. I also don't believe that he would have raised a child either. Plus, the sequel is two years removed from the original and the boy is 10 years old. I felt that the connections to the first film, Claire and her son, weren't really necessary. I mean, it was creepy that he bathed Claire but it didn't add anything, it just padded the run time. We know that Gerald is a really creepy guy.

It's also difficult to believe that the police didn't sniff around a bit more after all the people went missing from the first film. Gerald kidnaps a girl after she discovers him in her apartment and no one ever comes looking for her. Cops would have come to him since he was a landlord if they figured out at the end of the film that he owned the properties. It was too much of a stretch. In the end, the film was too unbelievable and seemed boring, even with a 90 minute run time. The tension from 13 Cameras didn't translate to the sequel. Skip it. 

2018 Films: #17. Tau

Netflix original viewed on August 15th in Winston-Salem, NC. This sci-fi thriller is directed by Federico D'Alessandro and stars Maika Monroe, Ed Skrein and Gary Oldman.

Monroe plays Julia, a street smart thief who rips off club goers. After a night of pilfering she is kidnapped and wakes up in a dungeon with two other people. She's also got a weird implant in the back of her neck to boot. Julia is subjected to some torture but manages to escape but before she can breath fresh air, a robot kills her cell mates and she is captured. She's kept alive probably because she's a young, good looking blonde woman. Given.

It turns out her captor, Alex (Skrein), is an Elon Musk type rich guy with a penchant for kidnapping people who won't be missed in order to run experiments on them in hopes that he can development artificial intelligence with a conscience. Or something to that affect. Alex has created an AI life form called TAU (voiced by Oldman) that runs his household. TAU is Alex's obedient servant. Alex has TAU administer psych tests to Julia but Julia realizes there might be a bit more to TAU and she befriends him.

The night before Alex's new creation is to be unveiled for his investors, things go awry as Julia plans her final escape.

This film received a 20% Rotten Tomatoes score and that might seem a bit harsh. This wasn't a very good film but there wasn't a lot of originality. It has aspects of Ex Machina, Saw and The Demon Seed. I also found it hard to believe that Alex, a really rich guy, takes the time to kidnap his subjects. He could easily farm that stuff out. The guy has no social skills but he's a real good kidnapper. It was also obvious that Julia was going to befriend TAU. Alex was a real jerk to TAU and kept him isolated from the world. Julia promised to "teach him about the world" and of course TAU digs it. Much like Frankenstein's monster, TAU turns on his master. There wasn't much tension or drama in this film. Skip it.

The Attorney General's Religious Police Force

So it came out that the U.S. Attorney General and living old timey southern racist trope Jeff Sessions announced that the Department of Justice is forming a "religious police force." It's technical name is religious liberty task force and it's mission will be to do things like going after the Johnson Amendment. According to a Vox article, Sessions new religious police will keep secularists like the Southern Poverty Law Center in line and keep them from calling the evangelical Christian Family Research Council a hate group. On a historical note, evangelicals got into politics by setting up "segregation academies" in the wake of Brown v. Board of Ed but the IRS said they would have to give up their tax exempt status if they discriminated so they fought back. So racism is their core foundation, I can't imagine why the SPLC would consider CFRC a hate group with a history like that. Go figure. The history is there, check it out for yourself.

Since Sessions is a card carrying homophobe and the person heading up the task force defended supporters of a 2008 California ballot measure that banned same sex marriage. Real open minded people. So who do you think Sessions' new task force will target first? Another baker who doesn't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding? How about a vendor that isn't too keen on a racially mixed marriage like a black man and a white woman because that doesn't mix with his religious beliefs? Or how about stuff like this...

They also don't want black people around either. 

Defend racism and intolerance. That's what Jesus was all about right? You know who else has a religious police? If you guessed ISIS or the Taliban the you'd be right.

Someone may say, "DJ B-Clear, how can you say that task force is like ISIS or the Taliban? Those groups kill people. This group is just protecting people's rights!" This group is not going to go after Neo Nazis for being anti-Semites, it will be just the opposite. Sessions, Trump, Fox News and the rest of the Republican Party have been for years selling the notion that only Christians are discriminated against. I am surprised that we have not run out of lumber with all the Republicans/Evangelicals nailing themselves to the cross as victims of whatever insult they perceive. We have not needed something like this in our country's history but now we need one.

The Religious Liberty Task Force probably won't gather people in the town square to be stoned to death, but they will stand for racism and intolerance. I like the separation of church and state. My hope is that this idea goes the way of the ridiculous national voter fraud commission.