In It Until the End

My dad and I always say the same thing when we sit down with a crappy low budget horror flick we have rented: "And if it's that bad we can always turn it off." We never end up turning it off. He may end up falling asleep and I may end up coming and going as I please, but we never turn it off.

I'll be honest. In my entire lifetime, I cannot remember turning a movie off because it was bad. I have sat through so many awful movies and not once have I left a movie theater and demanded my money back. (Even if I did ever leave, I wouldn't demand my money. I'm too nice.)

The closet I came to not seeing the end of a movie was actually a misjudgment of time. Coco and I were watching Art School Confidential. We thought we would have enough time to fit the whole movie in before she had to go to work, but we were wrong. When she returned from her shift, her mom had taken the movie back to the store. Months later, we ended up renting it again and actually watching the end. (Bit of a disappointing ending, but we did it.)

So, it's obvious I go out of my way to give a movie every single chance it has. It maybe be at the 100 minute mark on a 104 minute movie, but I'll still be thinking "It might redeem itself in those four minutes." It's weird since I'm so cynical and when I put that movie in, I say "If it's bad, I could turn it off."

I have a confession to make, though. Tonight, I actually did the unthinkable. I turned a movie off. Well, it wasn't just my decision. We did it democratically. We all voted to fast foward, see if there were any good bits, and then turned it off. We being my dad, Nica, Matt and I. The movie being The Donner Party. Not my choice at all. Dad picked it up because Crispin Glover was in it. Unfortunately, it stayed incrediably accurate to the real life story.

I was hoping that they would have taken some liberities... spice the dialogue up a little. Maybe thrown in some Donner zombies. Or a radioactive bear. I'm not picky. (That one made them laugh. At least the movie brought us some fun.) After about 18 minutes of agonizing set up, that's when we started searching for the parts where they ate people. Are we sick, or what?


(picture copyright Flash Games)

It does pain me to say that I didn't give this movie a chance, but even for me, it was boring. I do send my apologies to the members of the Donner Party. I'm sure you weren't expecting a boring movie to be made out of the horrible situation. You probably would have rathered some zombies too, I know. The sad thing is, there probably is a movie out there like that. What's even sadder is that I'm going to check into that.