Idle Hands

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Halloween 2017

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Screening Suggestions

This is one of those cases where I tend to go against the grain. If you pop over to Rotten Tomatoes to see what they have to say, you'll see a low and critical 16%. Take that however you might, but this is a title I don't think FULLY deserves the criticism it gets.

Anton (Devon Sawa) is a lazy stoner teenager who spends his days on the couch, watching TV and smoking weed. He also enjoys hanging out with his two best stoner buddies, Mick (Seth Green) and Pnub (Elden Henson, who you now know as Foggy of 'Daredevil'). When a series of murders occurs close to Halloween, Anton soon discovers through accidentally killing his mother, father and two best friends, that he's been the killer the whole time. He's managed without realizing it, because his hand is actually possessed by something evil.

Make no mistake, I'm not actually recommending this as a GOOD movie. I'm recommending it as something fun to watch for the Halloween season. One might wonder how I can recommend a stoner Halloween movie after my recent review of 'Halloweed'. Well, truth be told, this movie and I also have a bit of a history.

This was something I first watched when I rented it back at the turn of the century, in which case I was either 17 or 18 when I first saw it. This was also right around the time I was first dipping my toes into horror. It came along as one of the first real horror comedies that I can remember watching, and admittedly helped to really form my love of the mixed genre. Nowadays, I would place it on my list of guilty pleasures, being that it's fun, but it's definitely also stupid and goofy. It strikes you as the type of movie that's simply meant to be that way though. It makes no promises of being some brilliant execution of an original concept. It takes the idea, runs with it, and laughs the whole time. It's a funhouse of a movie, nothing much more.

This was also my first glimpse of the lovely Jessica Alba, who was still fairly new here. She was around, but this was arguably her breakout role, and she's pretty much been typecast as a sex symbol ever since. This isn't hard to believe considering her role here, which is admittedly pretty cringe worthy as far as her character goes - a very sexual teenager who is in skimpy clothing the entire time and has no real personality short of being able to write lyrics... I mean, ouch, but keep in mind I was 18ish when I first saw this. And me being a dude, you guys can probably figure out the rest of the reason I liked her so much.

So what about that "sexism" I brought up in my 'Halloweed' review then? There's a bit of a balance here. While Alba is playing a bimbo-ish character, she can still manage to hold her own when bad things are happening. There's also a black female character in this played by Vivica A. Fox doing the role of the Demon Hunter, coming to town to try to hung this hand down - aka, the actual hero of the story who plays in the background.

So, while it's nothing particularly brilliant, it's still a fun thing to watch just for the sake of Halloween. It's over the top gorey in parts, and isn't shy about making a bloody mess of things, but the comedy aspect has almost become a "so good it's bad" scenario. I'm not saying I would recommend this in the same way I would recommend something like 'Troll 2' or 'The Room'. But if you can manage to just ditch your brain for about an hour and a half of Halloween-related, mindless fun, this is a good title for that purpose.

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