Worth Mentioning - What Could Go Wrong?

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. 

A Vacation without Clark, plus some horror and thrills.

CHRISTMAS VACATION 2: COUSIN EDDIE'S ISLAND ADVENTURE (2003)

After Christmas Vacation, Chevy Chase had his own pitch for a Griswold family sequel: Swiss Family Griswold, a play on the Swiss Family Robinson story that would find the Griswolds getting stranded on a deserted island. The producers decided to make Vegas Vacation instead - but six years later, they went ahead and made Swiss Family Griswold after all. They just didn't include Chevy Chase in it. Instead, they promoted Randy Quaid's character Eddie - a supporting character from Vacation, Christmas Vacation, and Vegas Vacation - into the lead. The audience loved Eddie in those movies, so they would love a movie where Eddie was the star, wouldn't they?

No, they wouldn't. Based on votes from viewers on IMDb, Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure rates a 2.7 out of 10. It's short, just 83 minutes, but those 83 minutes are tough to get through. The problem is, Eddie's idiot scrub act only works in moderation and when he has Chase's appalled Clark Griswold to bounce off of. The script written by Vacation franchise producer Matty Simmons didn't help matters, nor did the fact that Christmas Vacation 2 was a cheap TV movie and feels like one of the worst examples of a cheap TV movie.

The most interesting thing about this sequel is the fact that it actually allowed one of the Griswold kids to reach adulthood, finally - and they brought back Dana Barron, the original Audrey Griswold, to play the adult version of her character. Audrey lets the perpetually down-on-his-luck Eddie, his devoted wife Catherine (Miriam Flynn), and their latest kid Third (Jake Thomas), named Clark W. Griswold the Third in honor of their cousin, stay in her house... which doesn't work out well for the house, but does get her invited along when Eddie is awarded an all expense paid Christmas vacation on an island in the South Pacific. Audrey has just been dumped by "the love of her life", so she could use a vacation. Eddie's Uncle Nick (Ed Asner), is in the same boat; his 66 year old wife just ditched him for a 28 year old. Unfortunately for everybody, during the vacation they, along with their tour guide Muka Luka Miki (Sung Hi Lee), end up shipwrecked on a deserted island and have to survive off the land. But they make the most of it and put together their own little island Christmas. Heartwarming!

Randy Quaid, Miriam Flynn, and Dana Barron aren't the only actors who return from previous Vacation movies; they also made the surprising decision to bring back Eric Idle as the pleasant Englishman who was always being accidentally injured by Clark in European Vacation so he could be accidentally injured by Eddie.

Directed by Nick Marck, Christmas Vacation 2 tries to be Christmas fun and clearly wanted to be a good piece of entertainment for all ages. I can't bash it too much, because it seems like the filmmakers had good intentions. It just didn't work. I can even understand why they thought it would be a good idea to give Cousin Eddie his own spin-off, but it was a bad idea from the start. Chevy Chase wanted to do Swiss Family Griswold, but it was lucky for him that he missed out on it.

LAIR (2021)

There is a very intriguing idea at the core of writer/director Adam Ethan Crow’s supernatural horror movie Lair, but for me that idea wasn’t brought to the screen in the most interesting way possible. A substantial amount of the 99 minute running time had gone by before I was really drawn into the story – and getting through the first 20 minutes of the film was especially rough. That’s because we spend most of those minutes with a really repugnant character: fraudulent ghost hunter Steven Caramore, played by Corey Johnson in a way that makes sure this guy is as difficult to tolerate as possible. Caramore’s associate Ben Dollarhyde (Oded Fehr in a very brief appearance) has been jailed for murdering his family, and Dollarhyde claims he carried out the murders while under the influence of a demonic force unleashed by an artifact he and Caramore got their hands on during their ghost hunting scams.

There are plenty more artifacts where that one came from, so Caramore decides to conduct an experiment in hopes of proving that supernatural forces exist so he can help Dollarhyde avoid prison, and ideally profit from it as well. He has inherited a building in London, so he and his buddy Ola (Kashif O’Connor) put some hidden cameras and some allegedly cursed items in there, then rent the space to a family. From across the hall, Caramore watches the family’s every move, looking closely for any paranormal activity. Watching get all of this set up, I just felt that it would have been more interesting to learn about his voyeurism and the reason for it later in the film, instead of following him every step of the way.

We finally get to spend some time with other people when Maria Engel (Aislinn De’ath) moves into the building with her daughters Joey (Anya Newall) and Lilly (Lara Mount) and her girlfriend Carly Cortes (Alana Wallace). But watching this bunch isn’t a great relief, because you have to endure a lot of relationship drama between Maria and Carly. I was getting more desperate for evil spirits to show up than Caramore was. Thankfully, they finally arrive – and Caramore has unleashed something quite nasty on this family. Something that will outright murder people and leave blood splattered all over the place. That’s the kind of paranormal activity I like to see in movies, so this was when the movie finally engaged me.

The second half of Lair features enough horror and intense emotions (including some pay-off to all the relationship drama we had to watch), it gradually started to feel that sitting through the first half had been worth it. I was not getting much enjoyment out of the movie for a long stretch, then it shifted gears and when the end credits started rolling I felt like I had been adequately entertained.

As unpleasant as Caramore is to watch, Johnson plays the hell out of him, so I have to commend him for that. I can’t say I liked any of the characters in this movie, but they were all played well. This is the screen debut for Anya Newall, and she makes a strong impression as the teen heroine who butts heads with her parental figures in addition to having to deal with, and try to protect her little sister from, a murderous entity.

With some tweaks and re-structuring, Lair might have turned out better than it is, but the way Crow told his story worked out well enough in the end. It’s not a bad way to spend 99 minutes.

The Lair review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

SINISTER SEDUCTION (2019)

Between seasons of playing Robby Keene on the excellent series Cobra Kai, Tanner Buchanan starred in the less-than-excellent Lifetime thriller Sinister Seduction. Here, Buchanan plays mysterious new kid in town Dylan, who quickly befriends fellow high schooler Anthony Elliot (Sebastian Cabanas) after he breaks up an encounter between Anthony and a bully. What draws them even closer together is that they're both dealing with the recent losses of their fathers: Dylan's father committed suicide, and Anthony's father was murdered during a late night jog.

While Dylan and Anthony bond, Dylan ends up spending some time around the Elliot residence - and during that time, he embarks on a sexual relationship with Anthony's mother Sharon, played by Kristina Klebe of Dementia, Don't Kill It, The Last Heist, Tales of Halloween, Chillerama, and Halloween 2007. Here we have the sinister seduction of the title, as there is clearly something off about Dylan and he has entered the lives of Sharon and Anthony with some kind of dark motivation.

Directed by Damian Romay from a script by Christopher Retts, this movie is very much along the same lines as the average thriller that premieres on Lifetime. I've seen better, and I've seen much worse. It's pretty easy to figure out what's going on in the story, but Romay, Retts, and the cast are able to keep it interesting for the 88 minute duration. It definitely helped that I was already a fan of Buchanan and Klebe going into this, because I would have enjoyed the movie much less if there were different actors I wasn't familiar with in the roles of Dylan and Sharon. It was fun to see them interacting in a ridiculous movie like this.