Reaction & Review | The Item

 

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a horror movie from 1999. That movie is "The Item".

Now, I don't really know a whole lot about this movie. I know that the plot has something to do involving a box that 4 felons are trying to keep guarded for 24 hours. And this box, apparently, has some sort of an evil creature inside of it. So these felons open it out of sheer curiosity, and all hell breaks loose. How exactly, I don't know at this time. So overall, this plot sounds a little bit stupid to me.

But that's not what really peeked my interest about this movie. What peeked my interest was the reception it got. A lot of people who have seen this movie often regard it as one of the worst movies ever made. And I take these claims with a grain of salt. You see, over the years, I have seen people give out this same, tired claim for many different movies for many different reasons. A few good examples of that would be "The Room". Some people claim that movie to be hilariously awful. Personally, I thought it was just stupid in general, and the people who kept quoting that stupid thing made it a little bit worse. Another example would be "Foodfight!", in which most people trashed that thing for it's terrible animation and the way it looked, especially for a movie that had a $60 million dollar budget. Even though most people don't even bother to go into detail as to WHY it looked like that. Basically, it was a movie that was remade twice because of tech issues and hacked computers, thus was the reason for the expanded budget. But most people don't bother to mention that, because they wanted to throw that lazy title of "worst movie ever" towards that thing. Speaking of which, one more example I want to give out was the 2019 movie "Cats". From what I heard, the only reason why it was given the title of "worst movie ever" was because there was nothing else that was considered bad that came out that year, and they decided to throw that stupid title onto "Cats" because it was considered an easy target for them. Which further proved my point that most retards are lazy whenever they decide to jump on the "worst movie ever" bandwagon.

So, all of those examples I gave out had some reason or another to be considered the "worst movie ever" made. But the difference between those movies, and the one I'm covering tonight, is that most people don't really go into a lot of detail as to why this particular movie is bad. I've heard various things such as terrible acting, and the story being complete shit. But aside from that, not much else. Which, honestly, makes me even more curious about it. So, I'm not expecting this thing to be any good. I just want to see how bad this stupid thing really is, and see if those claims are as valid as some people have made it out to be. And who knows? Maybe the film will end up being watchable. Not good. Just watchable. I don't know if it will be, but the only way I'm gonna find out how bad this movie really is, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "The Item".

14 minutes later

My god, guys...this has got to be one of the worst paced death scenes I've seen in a long time. This fucking blonde bimbo has received more than enough gunshots to her body. And yet, despite that, she's still running, has blood all over her body, and...well, finally, she's fucking dead. Took her long enough to fall down and die. Holy shit, that took way too long. Guys, this movie's just started, and already, nothing has made any sense. So far, we're off to a rather bad start.

18 minutes later

You know, guys, I was expecting many things from this movie. I was expecting terrible acting, the story being complete shit, the dialogue sounding horrible, and a terrible composite shot of a gun flipping in the air in circles. Well, guess what? I'm getting all of that. Do you know what I wasn't expecting? This movie being catastrophically boring as shit. I swear, guys, the more that this movie continues to not make any sense, the more I'm just getting bored by it. Because this thing, so far, has not tried to not tell any kind of story that would sound interesting in any way. I'm kinda hoping maybe that this move will start to get interesting soon, but I have this strange feeling that it's not going to happen.

8 minutes later

So this is it, huh? This is the horrible creature that was inside that box? Guys...this movie is shit. I understand that there's about an hour of movie left, but I have no faith in this thing getting any better. I just want it to end soon, and I know it's not going to.

16 minutes later

Guys, if I ever meet Dan Clark, the person who wrote and directed this fucking thing, in person, I want to ask him what the hell made him think that this movie was going to be any good? Did he actually put any real thought into this movie? Because I am losing brain cells with each passing minute, and I got another...40 minutes of this shit to go! This is really gonna suck, guys.

20 minutes later

Why isn't this fucking thing finished yet? Seriously, guys, you have no idea how badly I want to shut this movie off. I have not struggled to get through a movie this inane and stupid in a long time. The good news is that there's only a little over 20 minutes left, and I cannot wait for it to end.

The Review

Oh, thank God, it's over...well, guys, that was "The Item". I'm gonna shut this movie off...OK. Holy shit, was that ever torturous to get through. You guys have no idea how happy I am to see a movie's closing credits pop up. Now I actually have to talk about this fucking thing.

I want to address something first. Because, I have this feeling that there's gonna be somebody out there who's going to say something like this. I do not want to hear that this movie was made to be 'intentionally bad' for the sake of being funny. Or that this movie was aiming to be 'so bad, it's good'. Because that is death to a movie. No filmmaker should EVER aim for that kind of status. Unless you are making a homage to bad movies, then you should not be intentionally going out of your way to make your movie a piece of shit. Because then, that kills the entire premise. If any filmmaker's intent was to make a movie that was intentionally bad, then guess what? You have made a piece of shit. Now, I am not saying that you can't have bad movies. You can. You can have bad movies that range from a different wide of spectrum's. You can have movies that are just plainly bad. You can some really god-awful movies. In fact, I've seen plenty of shitty movies for this series. Some of those are definitely going to make it to the Bottom 5 this year. You can even have movies that are just laughably bad, that they end up being fun to watch. But the thing about that is that those kinds of movies have to be naturally bad. They have to have a natural feeling to them. Whether it's something involving bad writing, a problem with the acting, or if it has shitty special effects. You know, it has to have some kind of element where the problems are natural to be found. Or, as I mentioned earlier, if you're paying homage to bad movies, then don't force it to look bad on purpose. This movie, on the other hand, has a different kind of problem to it. This movie is not bad. This movie is not terrible. This movie is not even retarded. This movie is 100% brain dead. This thing has almost no reason to exist. It is, by far, the worst horror movie I have ever had the displeasure to sit through. I understand that I'm showing my hand a little bit early here, but I guess I should try and get into the writing proper.

So, what's there to say about the writing? I would love to say that this story sounded kinda stupid, when I first heard about this movie's plot. However, 'stupid' would be the least offensive thing I have to say about this movie. You will literally lose brain cells if you try to attempt to figure out this movie's writing. It is so inept, that it actually made me feel a little bit more stupid after sitting through this film. Nothing about this story makes any sense. It drags on for way too fucking long, because we have scenes that go absolutely nowhere, such as when our main characters are trying to kill these drag queens. And the only reason why I can assume this is happening is when the drag queens first discover the opened trunk in which our characters open to find out what's inside. And it follows up with this long, drawn out, chase scene, where our main characters try to kill these drag queens in these dark alleys. There was no reason for that scene to drag out the way that it did. Speaking of which, our characters are all completely unlikable, and part of that has to do with the dialogue. The dialogue in this movie is fucking terrible. Nobody talks like a regular human being. In fact, I don't think Dan Clark even knows how normal people talk. Which is mind-boggling, because not only did he write and direct this fucking thing, he's also the lead star in this film! And even he sucked balls, but I'm gonna get more into that when I talk about the acting. But anyway, the dialogue is absolute rubbish. Speaking of which, I'm going to give you guys a challenge. If you ever decide to watch this movie, don't know why you would even want to, but let's just say you want to watch "The Item". I'm going to give you guys a challenge, in the form of a drinking game. I want you to take a drink every single time any character in this movie decides to utter the word 'monkey'. When that happens, take a drink. I guarantee you that by the time that this movie has concluded, you will have passed out, or possibly even die of alcohol poisoning, depending on how well you can handle alcohol. I personally wouldn't recommend this kind of challenge, but it's there in case you ever decide to take up this challenge. Actually, there's another word of dialogue from this movie I want to add to that challenge. And that's whenever someone utters the word 'fat' or 'fatty' in some context, because one of our characters is fat, and our other characters always have to insult his weight. Our characters are not only unlikable, but they have no depth to them whatsoever. There's only two of them I can recall. One of them is our fat character, who has a wife and children that are afraid of him because he fears that he might eat them. Get it? Because he's fat. Ha-ha-ha..........ha. If Dan Clark was trying make this a horror comedy, then he failed at it miserably. But then again, I don't think he was actually trying for anything when he penned this script. But anyway, that's all the depth the fat character had. The other I want to quickly make mention of is another male character who admits that he has brain cancer. He also mentioned something else before that, but I couldn't tell you what that was because his dialogue was incredibly quiet. There's also Alex's girlfriend named Rita, who is an artist. And that's all the character that she has. So overall, all of these characters are fucking shallow and lifeless.

Now, let's get to the one thing that our characters are suppose to be guarding, which is this thing called "The Item". So, you may have noticed during the reaction portion of the movie that I commented on the reveal of what this Item looks like. So, what is it, exactly? What does this horrible monstrosity look like? Well...I'm not going to spoil that part. If you really want to know what this retarded thing looks like, you're going to have to watch this movie for yourself. I will say one thing about it, though. You guys may notice on the front cover for this movie that there is a creature in the middle of it all. And it looks though it has a reptilian eye and scales surrounding it. So naturally, you might be thinking that our characters are going to contend against a reptilian creature of sorts. Uh...no. There is no creature in this movie that looks like that. So basically, this movie's cover is a fucking lie. And whoever made that promotional art for this movie should be fucking ashamed of themselves for lying to the viewers that are dumb enough to watch this thing. As for what this creature does, I guess it has the ability to warp our characters as they spiral into madness, such as when the fat character ends up shooting his assault rifle while screaming "Turn off the lights!". Or when the character that has brain cancer ends up getting mind-fucked in someway, while experiencing his, I guess, son as he sees him lose his mind. And I probably would care more about these characters, if Dan Clark actually took the time to develop them properly. However, since he doesn't know how to write characters, or an interesting story, it falls flat on it's face. Also, this "Item" creature talks. I am not kidding about that. It actually talks in this movie. And it makes no fucking sense as to WHY this thing talks, but it looks like shit when it's talking. Part of that has to go to the puppeteering. Because again, without going into spoilers as to what this thing looks like, the puppetering on this creature looks like absolute shit. Which makes this movie even worse to look at. And I totally understand that this thing, most likely, was filmed on a low budget, but they could've done much better involving the puppeteering of this creature.

Guys, the writing in this movie is absolutely atrocious from top to bottom. It doesn't make any sense. And, as I stated earlier, you're going to lose so many brain cells if you even try to attempt to figure out this story. What also doesn't help this movie is the acting. The acting is fucking terrible. Which shouldn't sound surprising, seeing as how this was one of the very few things people would bring up when they watched this movie. And yeah, the acting totally sucks. And in most cases, I would say that you can only do so much with a god-awful script, because the actors aren't going to give a shit if the script that they're given totally sucks. However, I have a feeling that this cast has never acted a day in their lives. Because these actors totally phone it in, and they have no idea on what the hell they're doing. And I'm going to include Dan Clark, because he plays the film's star, which is Alex. Even though he's the one who wrote, directed, and starred in this thing, he quite possibly turns in the WORST showing in the entire film. And that's a feat, in and of itself, when a person is involved in all of this, and even his acting is fucking terrible. Mind you, the entire cast was fucking shit, but when your main star turns in the worst showing, even though he had a hand in all of the major stuff such as writing, directing, and acting, you have fucked up somewhere. Not just in film making, but you have fucked up in life, somewhere. And that is nothing short of pathetic. So yeah, the acting is an absolute train wreck from across the board.

Now, we get to special effects. I've already touched upon the puppeteering involving the creature, so there's no need to go into that again. But I do want to talk about blood effects. You see, one of things I noticed about this movie is that when people use guns, they shoot a shit ton of bullets in this movie. Again, if this movie was trying to play itself up for laughs because someone didn't die after getting a ton of bullets pierced into their body, along with blood smeared all over them, then it fails miserably, because the only thing that it really succeeded at was dragging out a death scene for far too long. But again, considering that Dan Clark doesn't know how to write comedy, I guess I shouldn't expect too much from him. But my point is that, in most cases, when you do have blood that's just pouring out of your body, you should expect to die really quickly. But even when people are shot afterwards, they don't know how to fucking die. One example I can give, and I'm going to try and not spoil one particular character's death, is when one of them ends up getting their body shot through the middle, and there's so much blood that has splattered on the wall behind him. Naturally, you would think that the character would barely move after that. Instead, he's actually strong enough to try and light a cigarette! Because, you know, that's what most people do after they end up getting shot at. And not only that, he's able to get up from where he's sitting at and walk straight to his bed, with NO problems whatsoever, where he finally ends up dying. First of all, that was the only real positive in the entire movie was when this sack of shit character dies. And secondly, as I just stated, nobody in this movie knows how to die properly. If you are shot at, and your blood sprays out of you, then it would make more sense for you to fall over to the ground, rather than get up with no problems and go straight to bed. It doesn't work that way, and it never will. I will say that, even though there is so much blood in this movie, the blood effects are OK. None of it is great, but it's the only halfway decent effect in this movie. There is one sequence involving a composite shot of a gun flipping in the air, and it looked like shit. Guys, special effects in this thing are a very mixed bag. More so leaning towards shit.

Camerawork here is decent. Lighting here is OK, even though there is a LOT of darkness in this movie. And I am not kidding about that either. Sound-mix, for the most part, is decent, save for one scene where the actor who was talking about how he had brain cancer. The dialogue he had before that, I couldn't hear it because the music was too loud. Speaking of which, the score in this movie is fucking shit. And the big reason why is because it doesn't feel like it fits into this style of a movie. Especially one part of the score, where it plays this one track that feels like you would hear it out of a family film. It doesn't fit within the context of this movie, and it's gonna take you out of the film. Well, then again, almost everything else in this movie is gonna take you out of the film, what with it's atrocious writing and shitty acting. But yeah, the music here is fucking terrible from just about the entire film.

So, when all is said and done, can I recommend "The Item"? Take a fucking guess! No, I cannot recommend this movie to anyone, unless you absolutely hate yourself so much. Or if you have a morbid curiosity like I did. But I'm gonna warn you again, you will lose a lot of brain cells trying to get through this movie. And that is not something that happens a lot with me when watching a movie. This movie fucking did just that. This film is a guide on what not to do when making a movie. And that's the only reason I can think of as to why this movie even exists. And out of curiosity, I checked to see what else Dan Clark has made, and the only thing he has made is mostly stuff for children. Which makes it easier for me, because I am not wasting anymore time on what this fucker has made. He has shown, to me, that he cannot write. He doesn't know how to write a horror movie, he doesn't know how to write characters, and quite frankly, I am done with his filmography as far as I am concerned. This movie had a reputation of being one of the worst movies ever made, and it totally lives up to that. And now, I need to watch a better movie. I don't care what at this point. I just need to find something better, so I can forget about this abomination of a movie.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all in the near future. Peace.