Reaction & Review | The Scribbler

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to "Tales of the Longbox" here on Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm be gonna covering a sci-fi movie from 2014. That movie is "The Scribbler".

And unfortunately, I really don't have a whole lot of information that I can give out to you guys as to what I know about this movie. The only thing I do know is that this movie based off a graphic novel written by Daniel Schaffer, and I also know that he wrote the screenplay for this movie. So there's a good chance that this thing is going to be mostly loyal to it's source material. At least, I'm going to assume that, since I've never heard anything about either the book or the movie until I stumbled across the latter one day and found out that it was based off a graphic novel. Now whether or not it's gonna be any good, regardless of whether or not it's loyal to it's source material, is something I'll find out momentarily.

And honestly, guys, that's *all* the information I know about this movie. Even the description that's written on the back of the DVD case doesn't really give away much for a plot. From what little I read, it's about our main character having a multiple personality disorder and that's she's trying to destroy her multiple personalities. Admittedly, it does sound somewhat interesting, though I have no idea if the movie's gonna make this somewhat interesting premise work. I haven't seen any trailers or clips from this movie, so I'm gonna go into this sucker completely blind here, and I'm hoping that it's gonna be good. And the only way I'm gonna find out if it is any good at all, 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 Scribbler".

14 minutes later

OK, I have a question here. Well, actually, it's a couple of questions, but I'm gonna ask them anyway. All right, I kinda like the concept of this hotel suite, which is for people who have strong mental disorders of some kind. And you stay there until you can get over whatever disorder you may have. But I have a couple of questions regarding the suicides that have taken place there. So my first question is if people have committed suicide from this hotel suite because of how supposedly horrible it is, then why has this place not been shut down because of the increase in suicides? Secondly, if nobody's actually watching the place, just like Hogan has said, then what's stopping the rest of the people living there from just leaving the place entirely rather than just commit suicide to solve all their problems? I understand it's still kinda early and the movie still has plenty of time to flesh itself out, but I am kinda hoping the movie will give out some kind of answers soon.

14 minutes later

So, of all the things that have been talking to Suki so far, we've had a dog, and now an elevator. And so far, even though they've barely had, like, a minute of screen time, they've both had more personality than our main character. That's kinda sad, really, when you think about it.

17 minutes later

I'm gonna say this right now, guys, I *really* hope that, when Dan Schaffer wrote the screenplay for this movie, he didn't lift the dialogue directly from his novel. Because if he did, then his novel is probably shit, and translating that into a movie is even worse. I swear to god, guys, this movie is starting to make less sense with each passing minute, and I don't believe the next 45 minutes are gonna get better. Calling it now.

12 minutes later

So Suki's costume is basically just a black spandex suit with skeleton bones designed all over it. I gotta say...that's probably one of the lamest fucking costumes I've ever seen for any superhero in a long time. It *really* looks lame as shit.

18 minutes later

So not only does Suki, now taking on her identity as the "Scribbler", supposedly have psycho-kinesis and super strength, but she also can climb up walls like Spider-Man. Sure...why not? Makes about as much sense as anything else going on in this fucking movie.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "The Scribbler". Thank god it's fucking over. I'm gonna shut this garbage off...OK. Christ almighty, that was fucking torturous to get through. Now I have to actually talk about this fucking thing somehow.

Well, I may as well just get into it now and try to make sense of what this movie was trying to be. And I'm gonna start with the biggest sin this movie commits, which is the writing. I have a theory about something. And mind you, this is all just a theory, so you have to take it for what it's worth. I don't believe this was the script that Dan Schaffer wanted to write when he was trying to adapt his novel into a film. I believe that, somewhere along the way, there was a *mountain* of executive meddling going on from the people at XLrator Media, the studio that distributed this movie. I believe that they got involved too much within the creative process of this movie that it ruined the vision of what Dan Schaffer wanted to actually write for this adaptation. Now again, I should stress that this is *only* a theory. Maybe I'm just bullshitting myself and what I just said probably didn't actually happen. Maybe Schaffer actually did try to adapt his novel into a movie beat for beat, possibly word for word from his novel. Now again, I've never read the novel, so I could also be wrong there. But if that *is* the case, then this movie is another case of what happens when you try to stay too close to it's source material. As I made mentioned before, when you're adapting something, be it a comic book, video game, or whatever into a movie, you do have to kinda take certain liberties with what you're adapting. Otherwise, you get movies like this, which ends up becoming a stale mess because someone tried too hard to stay as true to the source material as you possibly could.

But setting aside whether or not how close this movie was loyal to it's source material, does it make for an entertaining movie? No, it doesn't! I was bored out of my fucking mind the longer this movie went by. Granted, I did sorta like the concept of this hotel that's only fit for mental patients as they try to get over whatever mental disorder that they may have. My problem with it, though, is that it really doesn't delve into this concept far enough. We only see about a few people in this hotel as a whole. Not counting our main character, of course, we have this snake lady who's also known to be a bi-polar sex addict. We have another female who's pathologically afraid of clothing, so she's always nude all the time. There's another woman who keeps asking around looking for her dog while also casually pushing our main character down a flight of stairs, twice, mind you. And then there's Hogan, the only male character, apparently, who's also seen as a friend and, I guess, "love interest" of our main character, Suki. I'm putting the quotations for love interest there because it's kind of an oddity for this movie, and it sorta ties into spoilers, which I'll try not to go into, even though this movie makes very little sense with it's writing. And a couple of the characters I just mentioned are basically just throwaway victims for our plot, so don't expect them to stick around for the entire movie.

Our plot, on paper, sounded kinda simple at first. Our framing device for this movie centers around our main character, Suki, who's being interrogated by a police detective and a psychologist, about the suicides that went on throughout the entire movie. Our police detective believes that Suki killed them by pushing them out of windows, however, the psychologist is more open-minded, what with her being some kind of special psychologist and all, and wants to hear the whole truth from Suki. Now I say this sounds like a simple premise at first, because I thought this was just gonna be some kind of murder mystery about how exactly the people died from coming out of their windows. But then the movie tries to delve deeper into the personality disorder of our main character, Suki. And you'd probably think that the movie was trying to take it's time in trying to develop her character, right? Well...kind of. However, in terms of her personality, she's very one note, and because of it, she comes off as very flat and lifeless. Now that would make sense, given that she has these multiple personalities that she's trying to get rid of, however, excluding those personalities aside, her base character is, as I just stated, very flat and not very likable at all. And her character depth isn't really all that interesting either. Because we're told in the movie that she had no kind of family or anybody to look after her, and, I guess, because of that, she developed these multiple personalities, thus is the reason why she ended up at a lab before Dr. Sinclair picked her up to use her for his experiments. And I'm sorry, but this sort of backstory is just not very interesting to me. And because we have a character that barely has any kind of background to begin with, I can't find a reason to care about her character at all.

Which also brings me to another point as to why this movie could have possibly been ruined by studio interference. As I mentioned at the start of this thing, this movie came out in 2014. And at that time, superhero movies were still very popular. I bring this up, because this movie claims to be a superhero film. At least, according to a blurb by Phil Wheat at Nerdly, who also claims that this film is one of the best superhero origin stories ever committed to Celluloid, whatever the hell that last part means. Now, setting aside on what kind of medication Wheat was taking when he made that statement, I wonder if the reason why this movie had studio interference was because they wanted to capitalize on the growing popularity of superhero movies by shoehorning in the superhero stuff towards the end of the movie? Now again, I could totally be wrong on this, and it's very well possible that it may have happened in Schaffer's novel. But, to be honest with you, guys, it just felt really forced and didn't need to be added into the overall movie. If this movie was just a straight-up murder mystery, as I described earlier, it might've been better. I'm not saying the film would've been great, but it could've been better than what we actually got. But for me, personally, the whole superhero bit added to the story just didn't fucking work, and, again, felt forced and unnecessary.

So yeah, guys, the writing here is just a jumbled mess of garbage that tries to act smarter than what it's suppose to be, but it really just falls flat on it's face with weak characters and a story that probably would've been written better if Schaffer was actually given free creative reign on what he wanted to write. Again, I know it's all just a theory, but I'm sticking by it, at least until I actually get a chance to read the novel this movie's suppose to be based on. So with that said, let's delve into the acting. The acting here is...OK, at best. None of it is great, mind you, but I could see most of these actors trying their best with the messed up script that they were given. Our main lead, played by Katie Cassidy, definitely turns in the best showing of the cast. While her character is definitely not written well, she still turned in a really decent showing, so I gotta give her major props for making her character somewhat tolerable. The one who turns in, probably, the worst showing would have to be Michelle Trachtenberg. She's the only cast member I know by name, and she easily phones in the weakest showing of the bunch. Aside from her character also feeling flat and lifeless, she really just did not sound like she gave that much of a shit when asked to act for this movie. And considering her career hasn't really been all that great since her days as a child star, perhaps it was best for her to retire until this movie came out, because, like I said, she just did not give a shit here. Now yes, I could honestly just blame the bad script here, since you can only do so much with a badly written script, but honestly, she should've just stopped while she was ahead. But hey, what the hell do I know? Anyway, the acting here is OK, minus Trachtenberg's performance.

I want to touch upon the costuming for a second, because as I watching the movie, something came to my mind when I saw that costume. Now as I said earlier, it's basically just a black spandex with skeletal bones added to it. And as I watching it, it reminded me of another movie that had this same kind of costuming that our main lead was wearing. The movie I'm referring to is "The Karate Kid". If you remember in that movie, Daniel-san was being chased by Johnny and his friends while wearing the same kind of black spandex with skeletal bones added to it. And that's what it reminded me of when I saw Suki's costume in this movie. Where basically, she looks like that one rejected girlfriend of Johnny's that wanted to be part of the group, but ultimately never made the cut. At least, that's what it looked like to me. But yeah, that was the only thing I wanted to comment on when it came to the costuming, AKA a rejected extra from "The Karate Kid". Special effects in this movie are kinda average. I have no idea what the budget was for this movie, but I'm going to assume it was made on a low budget, because this thing definitely feels like a low budget effort to me. Not that it's always a bad thing, mind you. I mean, I enjoy a lot of B movies, but I feel that this one didn't really take much of an advantage with it's low budget. So overall, the best thing I can say about the special effects is that it's just...kinda there, really.

Camerawork here is OK. The lighting here, for about 85 to 90% of the movie, is filled with blueish lighting, especially towards the final act, where I could barely see what was going on in it when it got darker. And for some people, it's gonna be a huge turnoff, especially if you're not a fan of this particular lighting. It's not the worst bit of lighting I've come across in a movie, but it's definitely not good, either. Sound-mix here is mixed fine. The score here is just kinda average, as well. I could not remember a single piece of music in this movie, so I could mostly just chalk it up to being forgetful. Not terrible, just forgetfully average.

Ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "The Scribbler"? No. There is no way in hell I can ever recommend this movie to anyone, unless if you're one of the few people who ended up reading the graphic novel this thing was based on, and you're curious to see how a movie adaptation of it could possibly work. Myself, personally, it ended up becoming too stupid, even for me. The characters all suck, and the story barely made any fucking sense for me to work with and enjoy. The only other possible way I could recommend it is if you could somehow shut your brain off and just view it as some mindless sci-fi junk you could riff with friends on a bad movie night. Myself, though, that's never gonna happen. This movie sucked balls, and I have no interest in giving this thing a second viewing. I may still end up checking out the graphic novel itself, because I am somewhat curious to see if it's any better than it's crappy movie adaptation. But as for this movie, I'm never gonna watch it again, and it's probably for the best, as well. Now...seeing as how I mentioned I enjoy watching B movies, I'm gonna go and watch one of those right now, and I have plenty of options to choose from my DVD collection. I think I'll go and watch my copy of "Chopping Mall". That one's always a fun one to get through. So I'm gonna do that next after I get done typing this review up.

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 later. Peace.