Coming to DVD Tuesday, June 23rd
Cast:
Crispin Glover as Simon
Margo Harshman as Kate
Greg Cipes as Zack
Carrie Finklea as Vicky
Kelly Vitz as Ashley
Blake Lively as Jenny
Directed by: William Dear
Review:
I don’t understand the appeal of Crispin Glover as the big, bad villain in horror films.
Sure, the dude in real life has more than a few screws loose and, yes, he went wacko on David Letterman a few times, and yes, in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter he showed off some sweet dance moves, but does George McFly really strike you as the unstoppable serial killer/mentally deranged type?
I dunno, just doesn’t work for me in Simon Says, in particular. Now, his turn in Wizard of Gore was much better but there he wasn’t so prominent in the film (only in the gory magician moments) and the focus of the story wasn’t so much on him as it was on other characters. He was there as the butcher rather than the hunter and constant talker as is here in Simon Says.
Actually, Glover pretty much ruins the film. Cause otherwise it might have been something pretty good. There’s a good looking cast, there’s plenty of gore, there’s desperation at every turn and plenty of victims (for better or worse) and some general tense moments.
Not that Simon Says is a smart or inventive slasher horror movie. Because it isn’t. There isn’t anything new or different here that you haven’t seen in a dozen other films where twenty-somethings are butchered by a maniacal killer. That’s the plot by the way, there’s nothing more to it.
Oh sure, they try to be different. Simon (Glover) having grown up in the backwoods uses his knowledge to lay traps throughout the woods just in case some campers (or randomly placed paintballers) decide to come his way. But these traps are so completely ludicrous that you can’t help but laugh every time you see them. These consist of devices that toss a thousand pick axes through the air but never seem to hit anyone until they stop moving â that’s the key, never stop moving! Or super-fast ginormous spinning blades straight out of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that conveniently take out whatever random person happens to be walking by.
Now, again, just from a let’s-kill-as-many-people-as-possible-with-plenty-of-gore perspective this would be fine. It doesn’t profess itself to be Citizen Kane. But there’s the performance of Glover. Every other word out of his mouth is “Simon Says” and half the time he’s in such a weird voice style you have to turn the volume up real loud to actually hear what the hell he’s saying. That’s, of course, in-between him yelling at the top of his lungs all the time or making extremely lame one-liners such as hanging a chick and telling her to “hang out” or having the pot smoker “take a hit,” and by doing so punches him in the stomach. These barely worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day, they don’t work here.
I’ll say this…Lionsgate is great at transferring these films to DVD. The picture quality probably to begin with wasn’t that great but on DVD it actually looks pretty good with only a semblance of the quality it probably originally had. And the anamorphic widescreen presentation is a nice treat as well.
So there are positives to Simon Says – the gore, the picture quality, hot chicks running around in skimpy outfits â if only they had gotten another lead actor for the serial killer part or re-written his character to be so much less maddening then he actually is. Even then it’d still be a brainless gorefest, but it’d be less annoying brainless gorefest.
Oh and for those that are expecting to see Blake Lively (from Gossip Girl) as she is touted all over the film as a “star.” She and her sister, Lori Lively, appear in the last five minutes of the movie.
