The week-long vacation is over. Now, what? Of course, I need to get back to work—get back to reality. For a week, I was able to immerse myself into fiction, by watching and reading invented stories and imaginary tales. I watched FINAL DESTINATION 3, WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, and HOUSE OF 9. I also have finished another Mary Higgins Clark’s suspense novel titled ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE.
Those four fictional items were all about the same thing: DEATH. This is one word that I hate to talk about but I can’t avoid this theme whenever I read or watch fictional stuff.
FINAL DESTINATION 3 is just like the first and second parts. Well, a female character can predict the future. Actually, I don’t know if you can call that prediction. She felt what was going to happen, and she saw them in her mind. The problem in the plot, I think, is that she could only predict death and nothing else. Worse, it seems like all her friends died of accident, which she was able to predict but was not able to prevent from happening. Poor girl! Who would want to have that kind of gift?
Anyway, I didn’t like it. It’s violence and disgust for nothing. That’s all it is. Very impossible and unthinkable.
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS is somehow boring. The plot isn’t new nor magnificent. The suspense, however, is there. At least, it made me finish the story. What’
s amazing about this movie is that, I was fascinated with the setting – specifically the house. Imagine a house in the middle of bushes and trees in a mountainous area. It was so big, all walls are made of glasses. The lights turn on automatically as soon as someone steps in the room. The alarm system is something that I read being described in a Dan-Brown-kind of novels. It’s a state-of-the-art alarm system which is directly connected to police.
Anyway, the movie is about the struggle of a baby-sitter to save two kids while their parents are out one night. A serial killer was able to enter the house without the baby-sitter knowing it. The killer attemp
ted to scare the baby-sitter by calling on the phone and frightening her with his voice and threatening her and the children’s lives. The baby-sitter immediately called the police and with the police’s help, the baby-sitter found out that the call was coming from inside the house. That revelation made the baby-sitter become more afraid and paranoid. After quite long struggle with the killer, the police came. As usual, before they arrived, the killer was almost immovable. And so the two kids were saved by the young, coward-turned-brave baby-sitter.
The most ridicul
ous of all the films I’ve watched was HOUSE OF 9. It’s a frustrating film. It even reminded me of Pinoy Big Brother at first. The film is about a game that involves nine people who haven’t met each other. The
y were just abducted by unkown characters and were brought inside a big house with 75 cameras and several microphones which the nine people couldn’t see. They heard an unfamiliar voice for the first and last time. The voice told them what was going to happen. The voice said they were there merely for entertainment. They are nine but only one of them – whoever gets to leave the house alive -- is going to win 5 milion dollars. The nine people have different personalities – a priest, a dancer, a fashion designer, a rapper, a composer, a policeman, tennis player, etc.
Of course, with the intention of keeping themselves alive, they eventually killed each other. One of them, the dancer, who did not intentionally kill anyone, won. As soon as the eighth person died, a door opened for the dancer. She saw a big black bag, where, I supposed, the five-million-dollar reward was put. She
got the bag and kept walking. I thought, and the character also thought, that she could freely go home. To my dismay, she was just about to be locked for the rest of her life with her five million dollars. The story ended with the scene where there were four of five crazy-looking people, each holding a big black bag. Crazy ending! She’d rather die than spend useless life inside the house with her reward.
Have mercy on people. Why do all these movies talk about death? Final Destination 3 is about death that comes when you least expect it. When a Stranger Calls talks about death caused by greedy people. It tells you that your fear can either save you or kill you. Then the House of 9 tells you about death caused by prolonged suffering. Being crazy is just like dying. Being locked in a strange house is just like dying.
This thought leads me to another fiction from one of my favorite novelists – Mary Higgins Clark.
After death, some people believe, we go back to this planet in different form, and perhaps, with different purpose. We call that belief REINCARNATION. This is the theme of ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE. But, as expected of a mystery novel, death is also part of the game here. This is one mystery book I didn’t put down till I finished it. It was 9 p.m. on a Good Friday that I continued reading after I read the first 36 pages. And from that night, till 4 a.m. of a Black Saturday, I was in a different world. I was ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE world. I enjoyed reading the story, of course. I’ve always been fond of the way MHC develops characters. I couldn’t recall how many characters there are in this novel. But the author successfully weaved the characters and made each of them appear as the killer in the novel. In her novels, it is always easy to pinpoint at someone as the suspect. But in the end, just like her other novels, the one you least expect to kill is always the murderer. So, I was able to predict who the killer was, even before I read that part revealing who is who.
But I admittedly enjoyed the guessing game in the book. And I love the plot. Imagine a reincarnated serial killer who wanted to claim another three lives at Spring Lake, after taking three over a hundred years ago. The book was a page-turner, and it was, indeed, easy-to-read.
On the Street Where You Live is about a criminal defense lawyer’s journey to finding out who the murderer was at Spring Lake. There was a pattern in killing, and with the help of police investigators, the murderer was revealed. How can the main character, Emily Graham, not be involved when, the bones of someone killed over a hundred years ago and the fi
nger bone of a lady who was killed over four years ago, were found in her newly-bought Victorian house? And the person killed over a hundred years ago was her great grand aunt who just disappeared on a bright sunny day when she was nineteen. The latest target of the murderer was Emily so she had to fight for her life. Everyone, including the media people, believed that the murderer has reincarnated and wanted to do the same killings he made over a hundred years ago.
Funny, but the murderer was the first person Emily met when she was making her final decision on purchasing her ancestors’ house --- the real estate attorney who voluntarily told his stories about himself, except for a secret he has been keeping about his being a juvenile delinquent.
pix fr filmforce.ign.com; www.empiremovies.com
www.beyondhollywood.com; divx.org.ua
www.movies.yahoo.com; www.simonsays.com
Those four fictional items were all about the same thing: DEATH. This is one word that I hate to talk about but I can’t avoid this theme whenever I read or watch fictional stuff.
FINAL DESTINATION 3 is just like the first and second parts. Well, a female character can predict the future. Actually, I don’t know if you can call that prediction. She felt what was going to happen, and she saw them in her mind. The problem in the plot, I think, is that she could only predict death and nothing else. Worse, it seems like all her friends died of accident, which she was able to predict but was not able to prevent from happening. Poor girl! Who would want to have that kind of gift?
Anyway, I didn’t like it. It’s violence and disgust for nothing. That’s all it is. Very impossible and unthinkable.
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS is somehow boring. The plot isn’t new nor magnificent. The suspense, however, is there. At least, it made me finish the story. What’
s amazing about this movie is that, I was fascinated with the setting – specifically the house. Imagine a house in the middle of bushes and trees in a mountainous area. It was so big, all walls are made of glasses. The lights turn on automatically as soon as someone steps in the room. The alarm system is something that I read being described in a Dan-Brown-kind of novels. It’s a state-of-the-art alarm system which is directly connected to police.Anyway, the movie is about the struggle of a baby-sitter to save two kids while their parents are out one night. A serial killer was able to enter the house without the baby-sitter knowing it. The killer attemp
ted to scare the baby-sitter by calling on the phone and frightening her with his voice and threatening her and the children’s lives. The baby-sitter immediately called the police and with the police’s help, the baby-sitter found out that the call was coming from inside the house. That revelation made the baby-sitter become more afraid and paranoid. After quite long struggle with the killer, the police came. As usual, before they arrived, the killer was almost immovable. And so the two kids were saved by the young, coward-turned-brave baby-sitter.The most ridicul
ous of all the films I’ve watched was HOUSE OF 9. It’s a frustrating film. It even reminded me of Pinoy Big Brother at first. The film is about a game that involves nine people who haven’t met each other. The
y were just abducted by unkown characters and were brought inside a big house with 75 cameras and several microphones which the nine people couldn’t see. They heard an unfamiliar voice for the first and last time. The voice told them what was going to happen. The voice said they were there merely for entertainment. They are nine but only one of them – whoever gets to leave the house alive -- is going to win 5 milion dollars. The nine people have different personalities – a priest, a dancer, a fashion designer, a rapper, a composer, a policeman, tennis player, etc.Of course, with the intention of keeping themselves alive, they eventually killed each other. One of them, the dancer, who did not intentionally kill anyone, won. As soon as the eighth person died, a door opened for the dancer. She saw a big black bag, where, I supposed, the five-million-dollar reward was put. She
got the bag and kept walking. I thought, and the character also thought, that she could freely go home. To my dismay, she was just about to be locked for the rest of her life with her five million dollars. The story ended with the scene where there were four of five crazy-looking people, each holding a big black bag. Crazy ending! She’d rather die than spend useless life inside the house with her reward. Have mercy on people. Why do all these movies talk about death? Final Destination 3 is about death that comes when you least expect it. When a Stranger Calls talks about death caused by greedy people. It tells you that your fear can either save you or kill you. Then the House of 9 tells you about death caused by prolonged suffering. Being crazy is just like dying. Being locked in a strange house is just like dying.
This thought leads me to another fiction from one of my favorite novelists – Mary Higgins Clark.
After death, some people believe, we go back to this planet in different form, and perhaps, with different purpose. We call that belief REINCARNATION. This is the theme of ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE. But, as expected of a mystery novel, death is also part of the game here. This is one mystery book I didn’t put down till I finished it. It was 9 p.m. on a Good Friday that I continued reading after I read the first 36 pages. And from that night, till 4 a.m. of a Black Saturday, I was in a different world. I was ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE world. I enjoyed reading the story, of course. I’ve always been fond of the way MHC develops characters. I couldn’t recall how many characters there are in this novel. But the author successfully weaved the characters and made each of them appear as the killer in the novel. In her novels, it is always easy to pinpoint at someone as the suspect. But in the end, just like her other novels, the one you least expect to kill is always the murderer. So, I was able to predict who the killer was, even before I read that part revealing who is who.
But I admittedly enjoyed the guessing game in the book. And I love the plot. Imagine a reincarnated serial killer who wanted to claim another three lives at Spring Lake, after taking three over a hundred years ago. The book was a page-turner, and it was, indeed, easy-to-read.
On the Street Where You Live is about a criminal defense lawyer’s journey to finding out who the murderer was at Spring Lake. There was a pattern in killing, and with the help of police investigators, the murderer was revealed. How can the main character, Emily Graham, not be involved when, the bones of someone killed over a hundred years ago and the fi
nger bone of a lady who was killed over four years ago, were found in her newly-bought Victorian house? And the person killed over a hundred years ago was her great grand aunt who just disappeared on a bright sunny day when she was nineteen. The latest target of the murderer was Emily so she had to fight for her life. Everyone, including the media people, believed that the murderer has reincarnated and wanted to do the same killings he made over a hundred years ago. Funny, but the murderer was the first person Emily met when she was making her final decision on purchasing her ancestors’ house --- the real estate attorney who voluntarily told his stories about himself, except for a secret he has been keeping about his being a juvenile delinquent.
pix fr filmforce.ign.com; www.empiremovies.com
www.beyondhollywood.com; divx.org.ua
www.movies.yahoo.com; www.simonsays.com
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