FINGERPRINTS (2006)
*
Please indulge me as I take the much-deserved piss…
Seriously, filmmakers of Fingerprints, as well as other recent B-horror releases (House of Wax remake comes immediately to mind): what is up with this need to develop character and back-story in movies where we’re clearly tuning in for anything but!?
Here’s a movie about a group of kids that die in a horrific bus crash, and the urban legend that develops over the years to follow: if you park at the site of the crash with your car in neutral, the ghosts of the dead kiddies push your car to safety!! Could have been really creepy shit!! And indeed, 55 minutes into this film - 55 minutes… - we get our first real creepy-dead-kid scare. It’s bloody and ghoulish and what I was hoping for - too bad about boring the shit out of me for almost a full hour with the recovering-from-drug-addiction-can-be-a-real-bitch and gee-boys-are-cute adventures of protagonist Melanie, who decides to uncover the mystery! of the crash.
Hey, did I mention she’s a recovering drug addict? Did I mention she thinks boys are cute? Because seriously, the writers want to make sure you got that down. Here is a girl who is recovering from drugs, and who thinks this one boy is really, really dreamy. Countless flashbacks and lingering shots are included just to make sure you’re on the same page. Countless. The tedium, people. By the time ol’ genre-staple Geoffrey Lewis delivers the standard I was there that cold night… confession, you don’t give a shit - you find yourself hungry for the comparatively rollicking post-bus crash adventures in The Sweet Hereafter instead.
I dug the terrifying oh my god they named their streets after the CHILDREN!! sequence. As Melanie runs in terror throughout her neighborhood, she stops quivering and wide-eyed at each street sign, as the camera hurls itself at them as if we are meant to piss our pants in fear at the sight of BILLY WAY!!
That doesn’t do it for you? Ok, try THIS one on for size - how’d you like JULIE WAY!? Huh? Yeah! Bet THAT one had you biting your fist in sheer visceral terror.
Oh, and get this - Fingerprints offers a two-for-one special! Not only is this a ghost story, but it’s a slasher flick as well! And screw Leatherface with his flesh-mask and chainsaw, and Jason with his hockey mask axe - this killer is dressed as a train conductor!, and wields a mesmerizing and gruesomely horrific weapon of evil - a TASER BATON!! Holy shit!!!!
Yeah, skip this one. Unless you’d like to watch Lou Diamond Phillips die a slow and painful death.
Comment:
