Speaking of Smith, much like his oeuvre, Courtney makes his mark through the dialogue rather than fully utilizing the camera to immerse the audience. Happily, the script is usually pretty funny and enjoyable, especially if one is well-versed in bad films. In Pitch Perfect, when Beca gets out of jail, Jesse says, “Hey, Hilary Swank from Million Dollar Baby.” She replies, “You know you just have to say, ‘Hey, Million Dollar Baby.’ You don’t have to reference the specific actress.” There are a few exchanges that hit the Jesse side of things; they are just too on the nose. Either the viewer got it or didn’t; there is no need to explain it, for lack of a better term. For specifics, “giving Wiseau a run for his money” is just a bridge too far. But most of the dialogue is on the right side of winking and pretty amusing. It helps that the cast has decent comedic timing, though a few of them tend to overact.
A tense discussion between theater staff unfolds in a storage room as danger lurks in Movie Theater Massacre.
“…pretty funny…”
Unfortunately, the final 15 minutes of Movie Theater Massacre undo much of the goodwill built up in the first hour. MASSIVELY HUGE SPOILERS ENSUE. SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH TO AVOID THEM. While he flounders on the atmosphere, Courtney masterfully sets up a roster of likely candidates to be the slasher. There’s real tension and intrigue in trying to figure out the who and why of the killings. But the filmmaker wanks it away with the stupidest possible ending ever. The killer is an alien who gets beamed back up to the sky. What the f**k? Scratch that! That only seems to be what’s happening because it is so poorly shot, and its connection to what is going on is tenuous, at best. The ghost from a randomly shoehorned-in subplot, which is the most extraneous part of the film, takes out the killer before anyone can ask the masked person about their motivation. This is not only unsatisfying, it makes zero sense given everything that has come before. The ghost has not been helpful until now, so why? Maybe if some goddamn special effects were used to render the ghost, I wouldn’t have thought it was something it wasn’t entirely. I only discovered this after rewinding and rewatching the few minutes leading up to it several times. It is not clear, satisfying, or entertaining. It is just a poorly edited sequence of bad close-ups and shaky camera work that is heinous to look at. But it is somehow not the stupidest part of the ending because then the robbers from earlier return with the money, which is then used to buy the theater from its owner. Huh? How? The cops were called earlier, so how can that money be used?
Movie Theater Massacre has one of the worst endings possibly ever. It doesn’t make sense, no matter how one tries to slice it. But before those last 15 minutes kick all watching in the head with stupidity, there’s a certain charm to be had. It is evident that Courtney loves movies and the cinema, and he gathered a group of like-minded people to create something sugary but fun. Watch the first hour and then turn the film off because whatever ending you make up is infinitely better than what actually happens.
"…an ode to the movie palaces, not the multiplexes, that allow cinephiles to get lost in flickering lights..."
