Striving for the ultimate inner beauty can be deadly. Six gorgeous yet narcissistic women, driven by their superficial existence, are lured to the most prestigious underground yoga studio. Their desire for beauty holds no bonds and each will stop at nothing to achieve it. As they settle in the studio and begin their quest, strange and disturbing events start taking place. Girls start disappearing and it is evident there’s an evil presence among them. Their quest for beauty brought them to this haunted studio; their will to survive is the only thing that can get them out.
2009 – Certificate: Not Rated – Korean Film 5.5 out of 10
My campaign to get fit, live forever, save the planet and save money, literally took a giant step forward this week, when for four days in a row I walked to work and back, a total of nearly 20 miles! To celebrate this and mitigate the worrying fact that I may be turning into some sort of boring, fitness junkie, today I ordered a giant Indian takeaway for my dinner, complete with beer. Oh well, it’s back to the starting line next week. This film is about something not altogether dissimilar.
Like me, this movie is all about people who only care how they can use their looks to get on in life. Consequently, it’s hard to sympathise with them when they start to ‘disappear’. They’re simply obsessed with being bitchy in the way adults are and being more beautiful than anyone else. They can’t even follow the yoga teacher’s simple rules. It doesn’t help that all of them are already gorgeous looking anyway. It’s very much an ironic case of, tough, but you can’t have your cake and eat it. Outside of its six babes, this is a movie that looks good, in a gloomy, haunted house kind of way, but commits the number one sin for a horror; it’s simply not scary. After I’d watched it, I didn’t have any problems going to the toilet via the dark hall outside my living room. The best horrors can have me checking inside the shower and not turning my back on the bathroom door, ‘just in case’. Testing the lock on the front door and looking inside the wardrobe are not unheard of either. It’s passable as a film to spend an evening watching, but its lack of really scary stuff makes it quite boring at times.
Music. There isn’t much, although it’s so forgettable that I’ve forgotten about it already.
Recommend for yoga teachers, TV presenters, shopping-channel aficionados and consumers of vapid, shallow, corporate-sponsored glamour and beauty. Not recommended for yoga students.
No cats, chainsaws or decapitations.
Top badass moment? Near the end of the film, Hyo-jung is in a subway station, where she starts to see people she thinks are dead. The symbolism of it was all rather lost on me. However, at precisely 1:33:37 she lets out a wonderful, nine second long scream. A great bit of movie mini-magic, which therefore makes it badass. You’d never guess she had lungs that big.
Today the world woke up to the fact that however good Polish workers are, you wouldn’t want to employ one to fix your roof. This afternoon, England managed yet another lacklustre performance and gained a draw against Poland. However, the real highlight of the football coverage came yesterday, watching ITV’s commentary team, lead by Adrian Chiles, desperately trying to fill two and a half hours, sitting in a studio watching it raining outside. The highlight was Chiles’s genuine query to the rest of the team, “What’s the difference between heavy rain and a downpour?” It gave a whole new meaning to the word “inane”. Sadly, we were not treated to any great insight or wisdom on this matter either, which just goes to prove that men really can’t talk about anything other than football. Although it has to be said that a group of men employed to commentate on an international football match probably do represent the pinnacle of male development, so it’s hardly surprising that something as complex as the weather might elude them. I also enjoyed FIFAs attempts to entertain the crowd with its throw-back to the golden age of silent cinema; watching the referee regularly come out with a ball and then randomly throw it into the air and watch it land with a splash without bouncing, was a wonderful pastiche of the early greats, such as Charlie Chaplin Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. It was raining, the pitch was clearly getting more and more waterlogged, what did he expect to happen? (If he was an astronaut he’d be the one to go outside and take off his helmet, just to check that there really wasn’t any air there.) Not a smile did he flash either, not even for a moment; I couldn’t tell if he was totally raging inside at the futility of what he was being told to do, in front of millions of people, and getting soaked doing it, or he really was taking it very seriously. Jeez, he needs to lighten up a bit. He had all the demeanour of a detective investing a serious crime scene; which considering the nonsense with the automatically closing roof that they didn’t close, he sort of was. This film also features a number of serious crime scenes.
Try as I might, I just can’t work up any real enthusiasm for this film. I feel it ought to be a lot better than it is, which just added to my disappointment. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but nothing really right with it either. It just kind of exists because “Scream” exists, a bit like the relationship between dead leaves in autumn and trees. It’s not really very scary, it’s not really very funny, it’s not really very gory and it’s not really very hip. It doesn’t help that I get “Scream” and “Scary Movie” mixed up in my head, so in my mind it’s become a sort of inoffensive Frankenstein film made up of several others; (let’s not forget the two further sequels to “Scream” and the three sequels to “Scary Movie”. That’s eight nearly identical films, so it’s no wonder I’m confused. Watching it felt like one of things you just have to do from time to time, not something to get worked up about or anything, but just something you do and not give much thought to, like going to the toilet I guess. What I did hate was that it was non-anamorphic, so with its widescreen aspect ratio I ended up watching a picture the size and shape of an enlarged match, without a head. God, I can’t be bothered with anymore thinking about this film right now.
Recommended for people who saw Scream, I guess.
No cats, decapitations or chainsaws.
Top badass moment? Whatever. It might as well be Cotton Weary finally getting what he wanted (greedy asshole) and becoming a sort of hero(ish). That’s badass(ish).
Striving for the ultimate inner beauty can be deadly. Six gorgeous yet narcissistic women, driven by their superficial existence, are lured to the most prestigious underground yoga studio. Their desire for beauty holds no bonds and each will stop at nothing to achieve it. As they settle in the studio and begin their quest, strange and disturbing events start taking place. Girls start disappearing and it is evident there’s an evil presence among them. Their quest for beauty brought them to this haunted studio; their will to survive is the only thing that can get them out.
Penny's Gallery
Saving the Planet – July 2010
worldofcactus.wordpress.com 
Scream 2: 3.0 Stars
1997 – Certificate: 18 – USA
Rating Details: Strong Bloody Violence
Try as I might, I just can’t work up any real enthusiasm for this film. I feel it ought to be a lot better than it is, which just added to my disappointment. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but nothing really right with it either. It just kind of exists because “Scream” exists, a bit like the relationship between dead leaves in autumn and trees. It’s not really very scary, it’s not really very funny, it’s not really very gory and it’s not really very hip. It doesn’t help that I get “Scream” and “Scary Movie” mixed up in my head, so in my mind it’s become a sort of inoffensive Frankenstein film made up of several others; (let’s not forget the two further sequels to “Scream” and the three sequels to “Scary Movie”. That’s eight nearly identical films, so it’s no wonder I’m confused. Watching it felt like one of things you just have to do from time to time, not something to get worked up about or anything, but just something you do and not give much thought to, like going to the toilet I guess. What I did hate was that it was non-anamorphic, so with its widescreen aspect ratio I ended up watching a picture the size and shape of an enlarged match, without a head. God, I can’t be bothered with anymore thinking about this film right now.
Recommended for people who saw Scream, I guess.
No cats, decapitations or chainsaws.
Top badass moment? Whatever. It might as well be Cotton Weary finally getting what he wanted (greedy asshole) and becoming a sort of hero(ish). That’s badass(ish).
Scream 2 at IMDB (6.0/10)
October 17, 2012 | Categories: The Thoughts of Cactus | Tags: 1997, Adrian Chiles, America, American Film, Buster Keaton, California, Charlie Chaplin, Close the Roof, Comedy, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, England Football Team, Football, Football Commentary, Franchise, Harold Lloyd, Heavy Rain, Horror, ITV, Jada Pinkett, Kevin Williamson, Liev Schreiber, Murder, Neve Campbell, Poland, Postponed, Santa Clarita, Scream, Scream 2, Sequel, Silent Movies, Stab, Trailer, US, USA, Waterlogged Pitch, Wes Craven, Woodsboro | Leave a comment