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An error has ocurred. Please try againA few standard comments:
* For TV shows, specific season and episode info is in (brackets). A (**) means that the actress is controlled in multiple episodes. * Spoilers of all kind are listed below, so beware. * Teen characters are only counted if the actress portraying them was an adult at the time. * I tried to re-arrange in alphabetical order, but that only made things more scrambled, so I gave up.
Reviews
Christmas Wedding Planner (2017)
A shoutout to the plastic lobster, the most convincing actor in the entire movie
In a few days "Christmas Wedding Planner" will disappear from Netflix, perhaps never to return, its very existence passed on to future generations as a mere legend.
Those of us who were here to see it, though, know better. "It was real," we'll tell our grandchildren. "The bride became a bridesmaid on the day of her own cancelled wedding, and caught her own flower bouquet, and was happy about it!" The grandchildren will never believe it, of course.
"But," you'll say, "the two protagonists ordered penne pasta and lobster from the former star of a boy band (here you'll need to pause to explain the concept of a 'boy band'), and both dishes came out at the same time! And the lobster was just a shiny plastic prop that the cast tried to ignore!" And from there, the legend will only grow.
Some other shoutouts/legends in the making:
- The carved block of wood (here credited as "Celeste Desjardins") who responded to being accused of ruining an upcoming marriage by making a fart-smelling face and saying absolutely nothing, just the same as you or me;
- The (uncredited) reporter who dutifully continues to take "notes" as Emily's wedding falls apart in front of her (can't imagine what that story's going to look like);
- Melinda Shankar as the bridesmaid who gets possessed by the ghost of Kelly Kapoor from "The Office";
- Gabrielle Graham as the "clumsy bridesmaid" who is that exactly twice before being forgotten about;
- 23-year-old Jocelyn Hudon as "teenage Kelsey," because apparently hiring an actual teen to portray her in a pointless flashback was too much for the budget;
- Casting director Brigitte Kingsley, who is at least slightly better at starring in these movies than she is in choosing other people for them;
- The owner of the house that stood in for the bakery, the dress shop, Olivia's house, and quite possibly the church and restaurant, too.
And, of course, the awkward pauses.
And the Schrodinger's Cat paradox that is Jocelyn Hudon's Kelsey (she is simultaneously outraged and confused; the observer will only learn which when they turn on the TV)
And the wedding.
And the other wedding.
You were here, reader. You saw it. You watched it. Don't ever let the world forget.
Mystery Incorporated (2022)
A well-made and intriguing, if lackluster take on the Scooby Doo-niverse
Pros: Well made, especially for its budget; plenty of potential; modern aesthetics and sensibility; some good performances by cast.
Cons: Little menace or tension to be found in the pilot; some of the cast are way too old to be playing teens; inevitable rehash of 'supernatural high school' tropes; Scooby is largely irrelevant.
For what is, at its heart, a low-budget fan film of a children's cartoon, Mystery Incorporated looks good on the screen. Scenes are shot and lit well, the acting (while sometimes hit-or-miss) is professional, and the production hits all of the checkmarks necessary to air as a broadcast or cable series. The limited budget really only shows itself in the paucity of special effects and the lack of plentiful background extras in scenes that need them.
Content-wise, Mystery Incorporated eschews the original formula of "meddling kids/spooky house/old man in a mask" aesthetic in favor of a more 'Riverdale'-esque vibe in which teens act like (and are played by) 20-somethings while living in a superficially pleasant town where magic and supernatural evil lurk in the shadows.
Here, Fred (Elza) is ironically the only person who starts off believing in the supernatural (having witnessed something demonic murder his parents). Seeking answers, he partners up with Velma (Hutton), who gets to play both The Scully and The Willow here as she is a self-proclaimed Believer in Science who nevertheless also has access to a conveniently enormous collection of tomes about demons and monsters. Still off in their own corners are Daphne (Chancellor), a superficial socialite on the brink of developing a conscience; and Shaggy (Villain), a lonely pothead trying to shed his unwanted role of 'campus drug dealer.' Shaggy banters with Scooby, but Scooby doesn't talk back (at least not that we can hear).
With a low budget, it's perhaps a wise choice to not have any words come out of Scooby's mouth- I doubt it could have been pulled off convincingly- but it also robs the series of its traditional source of tension-relieving comic relief.
Then again, there's not much tension in Mystery Incorporated, nor is there much in the way of horror. The first ghost encountered (Miner 49er) is described by a character as "a really methed-out homeless guy" and is half as scary as one; his mayhem is largely limited to lunging at people and engaging in an unconvincing battle with Fred. A teaser at the end does seem to indicate that future villains will be a little more murderous and threatening, which is badly needed if this fan project is ever going to reach its full potential/number of proposed episodes.
Dracula: The Original Living Vampire (2022)
Toothless Mockbuster, Abysmal Acting
To even call it a mockbuster is probably generous. Even the bad special effects we normally expect from The Asylum are absent here. Gone, too, are any parts of the original Stoker novel that require shots on location (save for a standard-issue CGI 'castle'), and our small cast of under a dozen appear to be the only remaining people on Earth. "D:TOLV" manages to make Hallmark movies look positively lavish by comparison.
That tiny budget shows up here in spades, as the movie eagerly dives into all of the dullest (and cheapest to film) parts of the novel- people talking, people reading books, people squinting their eyes and furrowing their brows- while excising just about anything that would require any effort to film. Instead of a mockbuster, we get a low-rent "X-Files" knockoff with Val Helsing (Prouty) as skeptic Scully and Harker (Woodcock) as believer Mulder, skulking about and 'solving' the mystery. For some reason, Van Helsing and Harker's roles are reversed here compared to the novel- Harker is the vampire expert, not Van Helsing- not that it matters much, or makes anyone the slightest bit more interesting. Neither Prouty nor Woodcock have any other IMDB credits, and it shows in every scene they are in.
Meanwhile, Count Dracula- whose job here is to ramp up the tension and terror until the main characters catch up to what the audience already knows- spends most of the movie hanging out at Van Helsing's apartment, chatting up her pretty girlfriend Mina (Davies).
It's hard to express just how poorly this main(!) character is written, or how badly Jake Herbert (another first timer, coming to us from "Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star") portrays him. He is quite possibly the least menacing, least scary, least interesting Dracula to ever be committed to film, a dull bore who fails to do anything with the few scraps the terrible script assigns to him. His interactions with supposed long-lost love Mina have the chemistry and passion of an insurance agent and her client, chatting in the former's suburban office about deductibles. Aside from an opening scene where he beds Lucy and bites her, he's a nonentity in the horror department.
Speaking of which, poor Lucy (Ana Ilic) gets the short end of the stake here as well. Instead of being the murdered best friend whose death, terrifying resurrection, and tragic end make the menace of Dracula personal to the heroes, she's reduced to a random crime scene victim, whose rebirth as a vampire goes practically unnoticed, and whose quick death is immediately forgotten (side note... these characters apparently inhabit a world in which the human heart is located where the liver should be, as every stake seems to land squarely in the center of a vampire's torso).
In the end, because D:TOLV is dedicated to finding the cheapest and laziest solution to everything, our dollar store Dracula is dispatched after he falls for an obvious ruse by Mina, completely ignoring the stake she's very obviously hiding behind her back until he gets it through the liver- er, heart- and dies. Everyone lives happily ever after until the movie remembers, at the very last moment, that it is supposed to be a Morbius mockbuster; Van Helsing is accordingly transformed into a vampire (after being bitten in the shoulder, vampires apparently being zombies in this world). Like everything else in this movie, it's handled without any effort, emotion, or acting ability; Prouty simply stares into a mirror as her reflection fades away, with nary a shrug. The end. Thankfully.
Tl;dr: A terrible movie, cast with people with zero acting experience (Packer is the only cast member with any other roles), directed by a stock Asylum director, filmed somewhere in Eastern Europe on a Trabant budget, covering only the cheapest and dullest parts of Stoker's novel.
Hypnotic (2021)
A Cable TV Movie of the Week
From its Pacific Northwest setting, to its woman-in-peril-thriller plot, this is a Lifetime-style production dressed up with better sets and a more capable cast. They do the best they can with the paper-thin plot, along with its many holes and cliches, but there's nothing new to see here.
Jenn (Siegel) is your run-of-the-mill thirty-something who seeks help from Dr. Meade (O'Mara), a hypnotherapist. The plot is presented to the viewer as a mystery even though it's pretty obvious from the start what Meade is up to and how he is doing it (hint, the movie's title is "Hypnotic"), so there's little tension or drive to the story. Instead, we have to wait for the main characters to catch up to us before the movie lumbers to a predictable conclusion.
Bonus cheese points for: secret tape recording, instant (and comprehensive) Internet researching, secret pasts, O'Mara's occasional camera-mugging, and cannon fodder besties.