Abandoned movie – Riddick

Ten minutes in, the relentless animal death showed no signs of stopping. The fact that all the animals were obvious CGI didn’t make it any better.

Abandoned – The Twilight Zone (2019)

Normally “abandoned” blog entries are reserved for movies or maybe limited miniseries. But on this rare occasion, I’d like to state my reasons for giving up on Jordan Peele’s reheat of The Twilight Zone even though it’s a continuing series. I absolutely loved Get Out, and I found Us fascinating as well. But this Peele project is intensely terrible. The first episode – a stand-up comedian slowly erases his own life – was a one-joke production that proved far too predictable to sustain its running time. But no big deal. Rod Serling’s original run had its share of clunkers, too. And the second episode was “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet,” which I figured would be much better. Nope. Instead of an awesome, plane-destroying gremlin, we get a writer listening to a mysterious podcast predicting the disappearance of the flight he’s currently on. It felt like watching a movie called Godzilla only to have it turn out to be about a guy fixing a flat tire. Nor did it help that the podcast narration was supplied by the super annoying voice of Hardcore History’s Dan Carlin. If the second episode was enough to start Richard Matheson spinning in his grave, I was prepared to pursue the series no further.

Abandoned – Dragon Day

I had hopes that this prepper fantasy would be unintentionally funny. Perhaps if I’d seen it back in 2013 I might have walked away with a different impression (or at least been able to finish watching it). But after years of watching this racist insanity hold power in this country (with no end in sight), it was more than I could take.

Abandoned - Capone

This movie starts out in the last year of Al Capone’s life, in his post-gangster, post-prison decline in his mansion in Florida. I waited for 20 minutes or so for flashbacks, plot twists or any kind of distraction from the slow deterioration of a tertiary syph patient. Nope. They might just as easily have made a movie out of the first year of the notorious criminal’s life. It would have involved the same amount of lying around, inarticulate babbling and shitting himself. But at least a baby would have been cheaper than Tom Hardy.

Abandoned – Child’s Play (2019)

I love cats in general and orange cats in particular. So six minutes in when the family’s pet made its first appearance, I ran scrambling to the content advisory list on IMDb. Nope. Oh so much nope.

Abandoned – Storage 24

Dear bad British horror movie producers: thanks for getting the dog death out of the way in the first ten minutes. You saved me from sitting through the remaining 80.

Abandoned – Ghost From the Machine

The plot summary – guy tries to invent a machine to bring his parents back from the dead – sounded vaguely intriguing, but the actual movie is merely a mess of character-intensive, indie meandering. I even gave it an hour to see if it would eventually go anywhere. But then I had to pause it to deal with something else and couldn’t force myself to go back to it.

Abandoned – Howling 5: The Rebirth

If you’re gonna make a werewolf movie, you really ought to consider actually putting a werewolf or two in it. I waited patiently for half an hour before giving up.

Abandoned – Ancient Evil 2: Guardian of the Underworld

Like the worst parts of Clerks in some horrible over-blended crap smoothie with a monster movie that couldn’t meet even the minimal standards of SyFy. 17 minutes

Abandoned – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

For those who’ve read the novel, maybe this is a fun “hey, look who’s playing that character” experience. I haven’t read it, so for me it rapidly became an endurance exercise in watching men in meetings. If this had been about the machine parts industry or the insurance business rather than espionage, it would have been equally as boring but would at least never have made it to the screen. Somewhere around 20 minutes in, I decided I’d had enough of Gary Oldman staring into space.

Abandoned – Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire

If you went out to the Renaissance Festival, rounded up all the vampire-obsessed dumbasses you could find and physically forced them to make a movie, this is what you’d get. I was actually in the mood for a stupid sword and sorcery picture, and this was still more than I could take. 35 minutes

Abandoned – House of Fallen

Netflix Instant is so helpful. Thanks to its "recent activity" list, I can see that I gave up on this precisely 21 minutes and 31 seconds in. Sadly, the descriptions are less precise. The paragraph about this stinker made it sound like a horror anthology rather than the cheap-ass Prophecy rip in turned out to be.

Abandoned – Monster

Because a ripoff of Cloverfield was necessary for some reason. I struggled through it for 20 minutes or so hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever was destroying Tokyo, but the pointless, meandering script sucked so bad that even if the monster had turned out to be Godzilla in a hockey mask and Dracula cape flinging Phantasm balls at everyone, it still wouldn't have been worth it.

Abandoned – Chain Letter

The description said this was about some computer geeks who suffer the ill effects of failing to forward the title nuisance. So I figured maybe it wouldn't be part of the film industry's recent fascination with torture porn. It took roughly three minutes to figure out that I figured wrong.

Abandoned – The Last Airbender

Usually a kids' movie with a budget this big will throw in an element here and there to keep the grown-ups in the audience entertained as well. At least my oath to stop watching M. Night Shyamalan movies remains intact.

Abandoned – Dinner for Schmucks

Movie for jerks. Approximately half an hour

Abandoned – Witch's Sabbath

Because "Stripper's Sabbath" would have made less sense, though it would have been more honest. This was shaping up to be the most spectacularly boring use of bare boobs since Orgy of the Dead. Ten minutes

Abandoned – Bram Stoker's: To Die For

Because if Dracula was a woman and she lived in Los Angeles, that would definitely be original. Definitely. I made it 20 minutes or so before determining that the oddly-placed colon in the title wasn't going to be the movie's worst trespass against intelligence. And I should note that both this one and The Lost City were "quit" for us by Netflix, which took them off the instant view list before we could get around to finishing them.

Abandoned – The Lost City

Oh, Andy Garcia. The world barely needs the David Mamet we already have. We don't need you to ape his "style" with a star-infested version of the fall of Havana. 60 minutes

Abandoned – Red Hook

Wow. This really is a movie about a scavenger hunt. There's some serial killer nonsense stirred in, but otherwise ... well, let's just say I made it 50 minutes in just to make absolutely sure it wasn't going to turn into a twist on Lovecraft's "The Horror at Red Hook."