We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
WE SUMMON THE DARKNESS (2019)
It's 1988 and a Satanic cult appears to be killing their way through America's heartland; groups of people keep turning up brutally murdered, with Satanic symbols drawn near the bodies. There have been eighteen victims so far. But that's not stopping Indiana youths Alexis (Alexandra Daddario), Val (Maddie Hasson), and Beverly (Amy Forsyth) from heading out to see a rock concert. Nor does it stop them from befriending three local musicians - Keean Johnson as Mark, Logan Miller as Kovacs, and Austin Swift as Ivan - at that concert, and then inviting them to a private party at the fancy estate Alexis's family owns.
This is a horror movie, so we know things are going to go terribly wrong once these six young people get to that estate. And they certainly do go terribly wrong. A lot of blood is spilled on that property, and not everyone - if anyone - is going to make it through the night alive. But director Marc Meyers and screenwriter Alan Trezza spend some time letting us get to know the characters, to like most of them, and to enjoy their banter, all while we're wondering just what's going to happen. And just how bad it's going to be for the characters we like when things do take a turn for the worse. To the credit of the director and the writer, what's going on in We Summon the Darkness (that's what the cult is said to call itself) is probably not exactly what any viewer will go into this expecting.
Meyers assembled a great cast for his film. Each actor plays their character perfectly, and when the violence begins I was rooting for several of them to get through this situation. I especially hoped that Kovacs would be okay, and that Beverly would be able to get some good use out of the outboard boat motor she decides to carry around as a weapon to use to defend herself from attackers. I'm not going to say whether or not my hopes came true, but that was part of the fun of watching We Summon the Darkness.
Another notable cast member is Johnny Knoxville, who plays it mostly serious in his brief appearances as John Henry Butler, a televangelist who denounces the Satanic activity spreading across America.
We Summon the Darkness is a good time, I really enjoyed sitting through this movie's 91 minutes of laughs, bloodshed, and insanity.
COBRA KAI: SEASON ONE (2018)
Back in 2007, William Zabka - the actor known as "the bully of the '80s" because he was cast as such characters multiple times, most notably in the original The Karate Kid - directed and starred in a music video for the song "Sweep the Leg" by No More Kings. Since the song revisits the ending of The Karate Kid from the perspective of Zabka's character Johnny Lawrence, he was the perfect choice to make the video, and he brought back several Karate Kid cast members to be in it with him, including Ralph Macchio, the actor who played the Karate Kid himself, our hero and Johnny's rival Daniel LaRusso. It was a lot of fun to see these cast members reunite more than twenty years after The Karate Kid, especially for something that paid direct homage to the movie they worked together on... And for a long time, it looked like "Sweep the Leg" was the only Karate Kid reunion we'd ever get. There was no way there'd be another movie with this cast, especially since a Karate Kid remake went into production soon after.
But then, ten years after "Sweep the Leg", it was announced that Zabka and Macchio would be starring in a "TV series sequel" to The Karate Kid, reprising the roles of Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso. At that point, I have to admit, I did not have much faith that this show, which would be called Cobra Kai after the dojo where Johnny was taught karate, was going to be a worthy follow-up. It was coming from the makers of the Harold and Kumar movies, so I figured it was going to be full of comedy that wasn't fitting for The Karate Kid, and I was concerned that it was going to push the theory that Daniel was actually the bully in the original movie. That's something somebody came up with for a tongue-in-cheek YouTube video and some viewers seem to have gone along with it being truth, I have to assume without going back and watching The Karate Kid, where Johnny was clearly the bully.
I was curious enough about Cobra Kai that I still checked it out as soon as it was available to watch on YouTube Red, but I was trepidatious when it started. Thankfully, it quickly became clear that I had nothing to worry about. This show is the best, most respectful follow-up to The Karate Kid that we ever could have hoped for. Yes, the Harold and Kumar team (Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald) did bring more of a comedic tone to it than the Karate Kid films had, but the comedy works, it doesn't make a mockery of the franchise, and the show also knows when to get serious. The "Daniel was the bully" theory does get presented here, but it comes from Johnny, and is told to a character who doesn't know any better. It's not the foundation of the show, since it's not accurate. The events of all three Karate Kid movies Macchio starred in are taken into account (the only nitpick is that the apartment building Daniel lived in is still standing, when it looked like it was in the process of being demolished in The Karate Kid Part III) and referenced, and an appropriately huge amount of respect is shown toward Daniel's late sensei Mr. Miyagi and the actor who brought Miyagi to life, Pat Morita.
Cobra Kai is really able to exist because, even though Johnny Lawrence caused a lot of trouble for Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid, we also saw in that film that he wasn't just a one-note bully. As Miyagi said, there's no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher. Johnny's problems were rooted in the teachings of his sensei John Kreese, and in the climactic tournament we saw that Johnny and some Cobra Kai teammates didn't agree with the things Kreese was telling them to do in their matches with Daniel. Even when Johnny was beaten in the end, he told Daniel "You're alright, LaRusso" while handing him his trophy. He could be a jerk, but he also had some depth. And then the beginning of The Karate Kid Part II showed Kreese smashing Johnny's own trophy and putting the kid in a headlock for losing the tournament, stirring up even more sympathy for him. So going into this show, we know Johnny isn't an entirely bad guy, and we know we're not watching a straightforward villain in the first episode, which is shown from his perspective.
When this show catches up with Daniel and Johnny, we find that they have basically switched places in life. Back in high school, Johnny was the kid from the well-off family who attended events at the local social club, while Daniel was the lower class kid who had just arrived in California from New Jersey. Now Daniel is the wealthy one, since he owns the LaRusso Luxury Motors car dealerships. He has a nice house, and a rather happy life with his family; wife Amanda (Courtney Henggeler), teenage daughter Samantha (Mary Mouser), and son Anthony (Griffin Santopietro) - with Anthony being something of a low-key nightmare, but he only shows up for scenes where his bad behavior adds in some humor. Meanwhile, we learn that Johnny's wealth came from his stepdad, and when his mom died he left that life behind. He lives in a small apartment and installs TVs that are much better than the one he has at home. At least, that's his job for a few minutes of the show, before he gets fired.
The story really gets rolling when Johnny is trying to enjoy his dinner, a slice of convenience store pizza, and sees his new neighbor - teenager Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) - being bullied outside the store by a group of teen douchebags led by Kyler (Joe Seo). When the teens bump into his Firebird, Johnny gets involved and puts the karate he learned in his younger days to use... then he gets arrested for beating up a bunch of teenagers, even though they deserved it. This means he has to deal with his very unpleasant stepfather Sid (Edward Asner), because the old man bails him out. Johnny's life continues to crumble when a carload of teens - including Samantha - crash into his Firebird and he has to take it to LaRusso Motors for repairs, where he encounters Daniel. It's made very clear that Johnny is haunted by the things that happened to him in the '80s, that his life was at its peak before Daniel came along. Down and out, he has an epiphany: he decides to open his own dojo and revive Cobra Kai, which has been dead since 1985.
Of course, that decision doesn't go over well with Daniel, who does everything he can to try to shut Johnny's dojo down. Even though his life has gone very well, we can see that he is still traumatized from what Cobra Kai put him through in the '80s. Eventually, he'll remember a lesson Mr. Miyagi taught him, that life needs balance. If Johnny is going to bring Cobra Kai back into the world, Daniel is going to open a dojo of his own. Miyagi-do.
For fans of the original films, there is a heavy focus on Johnny and Daniel. They are the stars of the show. But the story is expanded, and younger viewers are appealed to, by also giving attention to the drama going on in the lives of the teenage characters. Miguel is drawn to Johnny because he doesn't have a father figure in his life, and because he wants to learn how to defend himself against bullies like Kyler. Miguel develops a crush on Samantha, who is dating Kyler at first, but then their potential relationship is jeopardized by the fact that Samantha's father and Miguel's sensei don't like each other. We meet more teen characters, like Miguel's friends Demetri (Gianni DeCenzo) and Eli (Jacob Bertrand) - who undergoes a major transformation by the end of the season; Samantha's former best friend Aisha (Nichole Brown); Samantha's new, bad influence friends Moon (Hannah Kepple) and Yasmine (Annalisa Cochrane). Samantha's social status changes, bullied kids stand up to bullies, and Kyler is replaced in the love triangle with Miguel and Samantha by Robby (Tanner Buchanan), a kid Daniel does come to like and care about over the course of the season.
Daniel isn't the only one who has children. Robby is Johnny's son, although Johnny hasn't had much to do with him during his life, leaving him to be raised by his troubled mother Shannon (Diora Baird). Robby starts out as a shady, criminal character who takes a job at the LaRusso car dealership just to spite his dad, but then evolves into a better person when Daniel takes him under his wing and starts teaching him karate. Meanwhile, Johnny is inadvertently a corrupting influence on the students at Cobra Kai, including Miguel. Miguel changes over the season as well, going from a sweet, dorky kid to someone fueled by anger and bitterness.
This show manages to make us root for Johnny as he's trying to open his dojo and Daniel is trying to shut it down, because we can see that his heart is in the right place. Sure, Johnny is stuck in an '80s mindset that makes a lot of what he says and does inappropriate, but he has some heart in there. He may be upset that his first wave of students are a bunch of losers and nerds, but he also remembers that he was a loser before he joined Cobra Kai, and he realizes that he can improve the lives of these kids. Problem is, the lessons John Kreese taught him are still the wrong lessons to be taught, and while Johnny thinks he's doing a good thing, he's actually leading these kids into bad behavior. By the finale, he's the good guy powerlessly watching his students act like a bunch of mini-Kreeses.
Cobra Kai is actually a brilliant, highly entertaining continuation of the Karate Kid franchise. And it's really no surprise that season one works so well when you take into account that it mirrors the original Karate Kid in a lot of ways. There are a lot of callbacks throughout, and the season even builds up to a tournament where the students of Cobra Kai take on the one student of Miyagi-do. My favorite moments in the season are between Johnny and Daniel, as it's great to see these two interact again after decades - especially in the episode where they stop antagonizing each other for a few minutes so they can reminisce about the '80s, particularly about the girl they fought over in high school, Ali Mills. They even check out Ali's Facebook page, and bash her husband for no reason other than jealousy. That's great stuff for someone who has been familiar with these characters for over thirty years, but the show also makes me care about the new characters, especially Miguel, Samantha, and Robby. I hope for the best for them, and hate to see it when bad things happen to them, or they make bad decisions for themselves.
I wasn't sure about this show when it was announced, but it has become one of my all-time favorites.
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