Simon Says (2006) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: Simon Says (2006) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Monday, June 01, 2009 @ 00:05:00 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

Simon Says is the story of twin brothers, one brutal and the other semi-retarded, who kill their parents when they're teenagers, and then grow up and end up running a small, understocked general store in what's about the only building in a small town in the woods where unsuspecting campers are killed by them one by one.

That's simple isn't it? In fact, this film would have been better suited by the title Simple Simon than by Simon Says. Why? Because "simple" is about the level of intelligence you'd have to have to actually like this film. If you're any smarter than that, you're probably going to hate it, and here's why...

This film has some major problems, the biggest of which is Crispin Glover. *GASP!* you say! How can you not like Crispin Glover?!?! Well, it was easy. He played the twin brothers Simon and Stanley and spent the whole film acting and talking like a retarded, homicidal Foghorn Leghorn. Seriously, the THICK and slow southern accent he used for the character was just insanely annoying. Not only that, but the whole concept of the film and how he kept killing people with pickaxes and these elaborate machines that threw them all over the place...my god it was stupid!

So take that and add it to a group of five cardboard cutout stereotype teenagers. Don't believe me? Here, I'll list them:

The jock with loose morals who's dating the normal girl.
The happy, guitar playing pothead.
The normal but not overly bright girl you expect to live.
The slutty girl who's friends with the normal girl and wants to have sex with her jock boyfriend.
The rich, smart girl who would have rather they had gone to her parent's vacation home.

Sound familiar? You could be drunk, stoned and have an open head wound and still come up with two dimensional characters like that in your sleep. They don't even have the benefit of being hard to kill. In fact, they're pretty easy. The ONLY decent thing in this movie is the way some of the people are killed, which in a few instances was pretty creative, but most of the killings involving the machines were just a huge fail because it was so utterly unrealistic. Stanley was even controlling the pick throwing machines from some central machine with a sight on it. Again...stupid, and not only stupid, but it made no damn sense with relation to where he'd have to be to do that and where his victims were. The whole thing was just ridiculous.

Technically, the movie was otherwise ok I guess. The acting was good, except for Crispin Glover, the pacing was ok (even though I just wanted the damn thing to be over), and the look of the film was quite good except for a few crappy looking CGI effects (like when the stoner gets burned). The camera work was excellent and the setting of the film was quite nice. Unfamiliar forested areas often make for tense, as well as beautiful settings and are often a nice contrast to the gore that's being splattered all over the place.

The end made even less sense than the rest of the film. The normal girl plants a cleaver right into Stanley's skull, and she thinks he's dead. She looks away for a second, and when she looks back he's not only gone, but manages to grab her from behind. Now #1, how the HELL did he survive a cleaver planted in his skull, and #2, how the HELL did he not only move away, but manage to get behind the girl without her hearing anything? That's how stupid this film was.

Now, I'm going to do something here I don't normally do. I'm going to take issue with some quotes from other reviewers on the sleeve the screener was sent to me in. I wouldn't normally do this, but in this case, I just have to. What follows are the quotes with my comments after.

Quote: "The best horror film of 2009!" - Stuart Alson - Independent Film Quarterly

My comment: First off, it's only June. How can this be the best horror film of 2009? Not only has there been WAY better stuff out already, Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell as an example, but there are others coming out all the time! It's a ridiculous statement to make, and even if they meant, "The best horror film so far in 2009!" it still doesn't wash...at all.

Quote: "As fun as Evil Dead II" - Augustus Gloop - Ain't It Cool News

My comment: Is there anyone who actually takes anything seriously that Ain't It Cool News says anymore? There's been rumors flying around for years about Harry Knowles being paid off or taking bribes for good reviews. I'm not going to comment on the validity of those claims since I have no first hand knowledge, but there have been so many rumors about it that I personally couldn't take anything on that site seriously simply because, for me, any opinions expressed in their reviews would always have a cloud of suspicion over them.

To be fair to "Augustus" though, I have to say that this quote is incomplete. The actual quote on the site starts with the words "For me, this was" and completes with "and I think if it is picked up and publicized, it could be a very big hit." Now if you put the quote in context, he's just saying the film was good for him personally and to him it was as fun as Evil Dead II, which is an acceptable statement to make if that's how he really felt about it. I don't agree with it, but he's as entitled to his opinion as anyone. However, the quote, taken out of context on the back cover of this screener, makes it sound like anyone who loved Evil Dead II is going to love this film as well, which is not even remotely true, and in a way, does a disservice to "Agustus" because it makes it sound like he's definitively saying that, as a state of fact, this film is as fun as Evil Dead II, when all he was really doing was expressing his personal opinion about it, which again, as a reviewer he's welcome to, but it's also one that I happen to disagree with wholeheartedly.

You should always be wary of the quotes used on DVD covers. Sometimes, a company will take a movie that it knows sucks and take a small snippet or even a single word from a review to make it sound like the reviewer liked it better than they did just to encourage people to buy the DVD.

Now I'm not paid by them or anything else, but I'm going to take a minute to endorse Netflix here, since Netflix has been the best thing to come along for the DVD consumer...ever! For a small amount of money per month, you can have films like this one sent to your house so you can check them out for yourself before you decide to buy them or not. There's been a lot of films that I got from Netflix that I ran to my computer and ordered right after I saw them, and there's also been a lot of really crappy films that I might have bought if I didn't have a Netflix account and didn't have that chance to see it before I actually bought a copy, which did happen to me quite often before I got Netflix. Netflix has saved me way more money than I've ever spent on the service, just because it allowed me to avoid movies I might have otherwise bought. This film is a perfect example of a Netflix movie. If you already have a Netflix account, you can have it sent to you and check it out. If you hate it, no harm, no foul...just send it back, give it a bad rating and wait for the next film in your queue. If you actually like the film enough to buy it, you can go ahead and buy it, but I doubt many of you will feel that way after seeing it. Slick packaging and out of context quotes has convinced many a DVD consumer to buy crappy movies...including me, and it really sucks when that happens. Fortunately, Netflix has saved me, and many others from those unfortunate purchases.

It's not often I come across a film that did as little for me as this one did, but if you want to check it out for yourself, the DVD is due out on the 23rd of June. You can buy it from Amazon and other DVD outlets, or you can Netflix it, which I highly recommend if you're really itching to suffer through this thing. Is this the most horrible movie I've ever seen? Not by a country mile. I've seen and reviewed films that make this film look like Oscar material, however, I can safely say that this is not one I'll ever be watching again.