Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: Making The Underwhelming Bad

It's no secret that I disliked the original Fantastic Beasts movie. The story was underwhelming, the characters were flat, the dialog felt like it was written by an English author who only had a passing knowledge of America in general and probably thought we were all rubes to begin with and, while it was never a terrible movie, it felt mostly unnecessary to the Harry Potter franchise as a whole and to movies specifically. How does Warner Brothers react to a movie with no real new ideas and only the promise of flashy CGI and little substance? Do they just cut their losses and run with the money (it was a box office success)? Do they try excessive merchandising to pull a few more dollars out of the movie before people realize it didn't really have anything to say? Of course not! They make the stupid thing a franchise!

Surprise! Creating a sequel to an underwhelming movie yields worse returns (who knew?)! The dialog is still just as flat as ever, the actual character of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) is still just as uninteresting as before, Johnny Depp remains the king of stunt casting as the titular Grindelwald, the pacing is atrocious, the setting feels like nostalgic blackmail (because of the whole Potterverse thing) and the movie somehow destroys Dumbledore (Jude Law) with a completely new canon. Throw in the fact that the movie negates Jacob's (Dan Fogler) sacrifice (the BEST part of the original train wreck) from the original movie in all of fifteen seconds (apparently, memory charms are easy to overcome) and it makes me empathize with, of all things, Voldemort's giant snake and you have something that's not only far too scattershot for its own good but is slowly unmaking that which even made Harry Potter special: there's just no charm here to speak of.

As for good, Jacob is still here and is still kind of fun as the pitiful schmuck of a human in a world way over his head and it remains fun to watch him overreact to things he doesn't understand. Say what you will about the rest of the cast, the writing being a little to full of itself or the fact that J.K. Rowling truly is nothing but a one trick pony in terms of writing, she managed to make Jacob and, if he could have been utilized a little better here, there might have been a saving grace for this movie. Emphasis on “might”.

As for watching it, did you see the entire Harry Potter series? Did it make you curious about stuff that happened seventy years before the events of the books? Did it make you want to learn more about Dumbledore than was already provided in the last few books? Go for this and lose more interest in the Wizarding World, I guess. Do you prefer to remember Harry Potter as a better-than-average series of movies about a boy wizard and his friends and their affinity for getting into trouble (usually involving dark wizards)? Go back and watch those movies and store this tripe somewhere far from your memories. You'll probably be better for it.

David Yates (Tarzan) finally does what no director has accomplished and makes Harry Potter a terrible thing with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, a boring, full of itself rush job of a fantasy movie about a guy no one on Earth cares about (Newt Scamander) trying to save the world from a guy (Grindelwald) we all know fails if we saw any of the previous eight Harry Potter movies. Did you read the books or see the Harry Potter movies and wonder, “How did all that stuff happen seventy years ago?” No? Good! Avoid this garbage.

My score 2/10. Goodbye, Stan Lee. You made the word nerd cool before it was monetized, you created a whole new culture around late-in-life popularity (life begins at 80 for some people, apparently) and you were the rare person to defeat the age-old phrase “The good die young”. You did good, kid...

The Dark: Trying (and still failing) to recapture Evil

As much as I might have liked the 2010 horror film Let Me In, its existence remains indicative of Hollywood's inability (or disinterest) in exploring the concept of evil. To me, the Swedish original Let the Right One In not only captured this concept perfectly but turned it on its very head by making the vampire Eli (Lin Leandersson) the innocent who must kill to survive and the “innocent” child Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) a ticking time bomb of repressed anger and sadistic urges that, had Eli not entered his life, would have eventually turned him into a full-blown monster by the time he'd reached adulthood. With Justin P. Lange's debut horror film The Dark, it finally seems like American movies might finally be able to not only explore this concept properly, but even make it interesting. At least it did for a little while.

Okay, okay, I'm going to be nice because I'm kind of desperate for this kind of horror movie and it will likely be another decade before a screenwriter or director grows the courage to make this kind of thing again: The Dark is a good horror movie that could just have easily taken the horror out to begin with. Nadia Alexander and Toby Nichols have great chemistry as the two leads, the origins of both of their characters border on heartbreaking and terrifying, the circumstances for their meeting seem plausible enough to feel real and, even by the end, I was still hoping they would make it for the sake of each other. Throw in a twist about the potential of recovered humanity and how the world seems to literally be trying to prevent such growth and you even have the rare type of movie that relishes in its own darkness for the sake of growth rather than for the overused cheapness of a simple scare. Its a horror movie that makes you think about who the bad guys might actually be! Try doing that, Saw!

Unfortunately, while the movie flourishes when its two leads are playing off their own suffering on each other (with hints of dedicated companionship throughout), the movie's biggest flaw comes from the fact that the movie feels the most rushed when it needs to ultimately slow down. I was invested with these characters enough to not worry about a run time, movie. You could have at least given me more information on why Mina (Alexander) is becoming the way she is. Saying Alex (Nichols) is causing it “with his love” just isn't as satisfying an answer as you might think.

As for watching it, do you desperately need a horror movie for Halloween? If so, this might be a nice (if slightly more out of the way) alternative to the neutered Halloween sequel I don't recall anyone on the planet ever asking for. Would you prefer to same cheap, consumable tripe that is the Hollywood horror movie? They probably have you covered at all the other angles too (Saw, Paranormal Activity, The Purge). Pick the one your brain will forgive you most for, I guess.

Justin P. Lange directs his first feature length movie with The Dark, an at times awkward, mostly endearing tale of boy meets monster and monster decides not to eat boy because he brings out the good in her (I think that's how that saying goes). When ghoul teenager Mina discovers blind boy Alex hiding in the trunk of one of her victims cars, her decision to let the boy live not only throws her solitary existence into chaos, but awakens long dormant remnants of humanity within her that force her to re-examine not only her origins (its pretty horrific) but learn to actually feel again. Its not exactly the study of evil I wanted, but I'll take it!

My score: 8/10. Seriously, Hollywood. Are you really that scared to make movies that might not toe certain philosophical lines just because they might not draw a large audience? You have the Oscars! That is the definition of an awards show for movies no one watches.