Movie Review He Went That Way

He Went That Way (2024) 

Directed by Jeffrey Darling 

Written by Evan M. Weiner

Starring Jacob Elordi, Zachary Quinto, Chimpanzee 

Release Date January 5th, 2023 

Published January 7th, 2023 

He Went That Way is a deeply misguided movie. Despite a unique true story basis, the movie cannot figure out what it wants to be. Is it a thriller? Is it a road movie? Is it a thrilling road movie? It's deeply unclear and wildly strange but not in a very interesting way. The film stars of the moment star Jacob Elordi as a serial murderer and Zachary Quinto as the trainer of a world-famous chimpanzee named Spanky. No, I didn't make that up, that's the actual character dynamic. A road movie featuring a serial murderer, an animal trainer, and a chimpanzee. Ugh!

Jim Goodwin (Quinto) is slowly losing everything. His marriage is struggling, he and his chimpanzee, Spanky, have lost their television show, and now he's on the road and possibly having to beg someone who owes him money to finally pay him. With his vehicle breaking down, Jim stops at a gas station. There, he meets Bobby Falls (Jacob Elordi), a drifter thumbing a ride on Route 66. Jim offers to take him as far as Chicago, Jim's destination, and they hit the road. 

On their first stop, a roadside motel, Bobby reveals that he's carrying a gun. He threatens Jim, steals his wallet and ring, and demands that Jim take him to Michigan where Bobby claims he has a girl waiting for him. In flashbacks following this scene, we see flashes of some of the murders Bobby has committed. He's murdered several people since coming back from, what we assume is Vietnam, though the movie isn't clear about this idea. The film actually opens with Bobby dumping a dead body out of a car, unrelated to anything to do with Jim and Spanky. 

And from there, Jim spends several days trying to convince Bobby not to kill him and, perhaps return his wallet and pinky ring. Jim also has the tricky task of keeping Bobby from killing the people that they meet along their way, including a pair of teenage girls that Jim picks up for them by introducing them to Spanky the Chimp. This could work, I guess, as a story, if it were played as wildly absurd but Quinto and Elordi play these scenes completely straight and the direction is basic and adds nothing stylistically to underline how bizarre this story is. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Weak Layers

Weak Layers (2024) 

Directed by Katie Burrell

Written by Katie Burrell, Andrew Ladd 

Starring Katie Burrell, Jadyn Wong, Chelsea Conwright, Evan Jonigkeit 

Release Day January 5th, 2024

Published January 5th, 2025 

Weak Layers is a throwback to a time in the 1980s and 90s when comedies set on ski slopes became a mildly popular sub-genre. These movies were all the same formula, a group of slobs battling a group of snobs. The slobs throw wild, over the top parties filled with drugs, booze, nudity, and associated debauchery, before having to learn a valuable lesson that leads to them to clean up their act just long enough to win, or come close to winning, a big skiing competition. The only notable differences in these comedies was whether or not they featured just skiing or skiing and snowboarding. 

It's been a few years since we've seen one of these skiing comedies like Ski School, Aspen Extreme, or Snowboard Academy. As terrible as these movies often were, there was a particular charm to them. Skiing comedies, like the similar sub-genre of Summer Camp movies, think Meatballs, have a breezy, silly, dopey quality that made them very easy to watch. Weak Layers does well in recapturing the silly, stupid, easy to watch qualities of the classic ski-comedy. 

Weak Layers was co-written and directed by Katie Burrell who also stars in the movie as Cleo, a wannabe film director, killing time drinking, partying and skiing. Cleo shares an apartment with her two closest friends, Lucy (Jadyn Wong), and former Olympic skier, Tina (Chelsea Conwright). When the trio parties just a little too hard and end up trashing their apartment, they're forced to live in a friends van while they seek a new place to live and party. 

The trios best bet for getting the money together for a place to live is a longshot. Cleo's video of her friends partying and skiing has recently gone viral and earned her the chance to submit a short documentary to a contest with a $10,000 grand prize. To win, she and her friends will have to clean up their acts and do some of the best skiing of their lives while Cleo captures it all on camera and turns it into an award winning skiing movie. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90s The Unborn

The Unborn (1991) 

Directed by Rodman Flender 

Written by John Brancato, Michael Ferris

Starring Brooke Adams, Jeff Hayenga, K Callan, Kathy Griffin, Lisa Kudrow 

Release Date March 29th, 1991 

Box Office Gross $1.15 million dollars 

The Unborn is part of a special subgenre of 90s horror, the laughable kind. Okay, fine, it's also a movie that wants to tap into the fears inherent in struggling to become a new parent and bring life into the world, but the film is truly laughable in that effort. Goofy special effect babies, over the top, shrill performances, and artless direction render The Unborn part of the Corman Classics, a group of cheap, often quite terrible films that Roger Corman artlessly pumped out of his mass manufactured movie company. While Corman's legend has earned a reappraisal for the careers he helped to launch, we should not forget the huckster Corman was at heart, a salesman crafting and selling faulty products at low, low prices. 

Poor dewy-eyed Brooke Adams has the thankless task of playing the lead role in The Unborn. Adams plays Virginia, a children's book author who has been trying for several years to have a child with her milquetoast hubby, Brad, offering bland support and dodging any blame for their failure to conceive. In a desperate, last-ditch effort, the couple has agreed to see an experimental doctor with a new scientific approach to helping couples conceive. The new method is terrifying and painful involving a dark operating room and large needles. The production design is cheap but the lack of lights, at the very least, does create a sense of the unnatural. 

The special new doctor is Dr. Richard Meyerling (James Karen), a man who has worked miracles for other families, though the nature of these miracles are slowly coming to light. In fact, the family that recommended that Virginia see Dr. Meyerling suffers a tragedy when the daughter born from Dr. Meyerling's experimental procedures begins showing sociopathic tendencies that end with her murdering her little brother while he slept. Other women have ended up before their baby is born and one woman, a new friend of Virgina's, ends up in a coma. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media