Simon Says (2007)

Great Film overall

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I thought this movie was entertaining, it had its flaws but delivers the goods. crispon glover is great at his part, i think he is an underrated actor, its good to see him on the screen( i loved Back to the future). i enjoyed the death scenes, although some were very far fetched, they were all fun to watch. could have used some more nudity, but at least we got a quick tity shot early on. i would enjoy a secon simon says. the filmmaking was alright, the river they were on is beautiful, i want to go there, maybe not with simon roaming around. my review is over, but i have to have ten lines to complete the review, so i will add that the lighting was OK, the acting was mediocre other than crispen, his acting was great. 6/10

Crispin Glover. The man. The myth. The legend. It was a no-brainer that he'd make the perfect psychopath. When it comes to weird, Glover wears it like a glove(..sorry, it was just too easy).He stars as "two" very unstable twin brothers(..or so we are led to believe)who just so happen to be serial killers as well(..although, the film obviously clues you in early that this might not be the case)and their new targets are a group of teenagers, in a van, on a camping trip. Yes, the conventions are all here, but somehow the film takes off in spite of the familiar trappings. The gory violence(..particularly what happens to a group playing paintball in military fatigues)is so over-the-top(..the constant use of the pick-axe is carried to extreme heights such as how they are used in various wilderness traps, mostly triggered by wire)and tongue-in-cheek, the reaction will vary from shock to outright laughter. Glover toys with a ridiculous(..often slowwww) southern accent and his range is so broad, you can't help but wonder where he's liable to take his character(s) next. You watch as "Simon/Stanley" murders folks, wondering how in the world he's so successful, and oftentimes, victims find ways to get themselves in a world of hurt. It's all so absurd and yet so, for whatever reason, entertaining. I think, it's the way the material is presented. You never, at any moment, get a whiff of seriousness, in the tone or material. The film features aberrant behavior and people dying in very, quick, but vicious ways, yet it never gets very disturbing or terrifying..that could be a good or bad thing depending on how you view these kinds of films. The ending is about as demented as can get with another one of those surreal "dinner sessions with mom and dad", hosted by a cuckoo Stanley offering Kate(Margo Harshman) a "hand sandwich"! This might just gain a reputation(..or cult following) with slasher fans in years to come due to Glover's association..and the "punch-in-the-stomach" violence where victims are killed in elaborately gruesome ways(..it's really a bloodbath), but it mostly happens and is over so the viewer can catch a breath before the next person is slammed with the massive thrust of the pick-axe. If I had to choose the most potent act of violence, it'd be when a victim is burned alive as he lets out a "Devil's cry"(..though, when a woman, dangling from a noose, is hurled into the windshield of the van, it certainly packs a wallop).It looks like Margo Harshman, the pretty heroine Kate, will work within this genre for sometime to come. The rest of the cast play basic stereotypes seen in the slasher genre for some time. The stoner(Greg Pipes), the jock(Artie Baxter), the health nut(Kelly Vitz), and the sexually active hottie(Carrie Finklea). They all pretty much play second fiddle to Glover(..and that crazy machine that launches a number of pick-axes at those who Stanley/Simon aims at) who does his usual scenery devouring.

It took me some 30 minutes before I realized that I shouldn't take this movie too seriously. Not that there wasn't anything to smile about from the start. There's the usual bunch of teenage friends (the horny jock, the luscious bimbo, the preppy mona lisa, the airhead dork, etc.), it's ludicrous enough that we always take such an improbable pairing of girls and boys for granted, but they provide us with the usual wannabe funny stuff, like vulgar jokes, dumb one-liners and fooling around with each other. But when the killings began, it was as if everything turned dead-serious, probably because of the dark atmosphere and the crazy killing-mechanisms (like some mechanical contraption that propels axes through the air like a tennis ball canon) and the rather gloomy flash-backs that introduced us to the killer-twins as infants. But once we meet Simon (or IS it Simon???) and actor Crispin Glover drawls his lines in a blatant piece of over-acting, it suddenly dawned on me: it's supposed to be FUN!! Everything that follows turns out as way over-the-top: the more-than-graphic kills, the extreme gore and the rapidly mounting body-count (enhanced by some amateur soldiers that appear in the movie totally out-off-the-blue, just to get themselves immediately killed).I have to admit that I found it all very entertaining, as long as you don't use your brain and just go for the ride in this really fast and gory machine. Because, lets face it: the story was totally incomprehensible, I didn't know who the hell we dealt with (Simon or Stanley or maybe both???) and I couldn't have cared less. The teenagers were all extremely annoying (although air-headed Zack turns out to be a posthumous hero in the end) and there were numerous potholes in the script. I mean: how come this Simon (with or without his brother) is evidently for years on the loose, while killing off anyone who sticks his head into his little shop?! Wouldn't someone (the police for instance, to make a wild suggestion) by now have come to check for the countless missing persons? Anyway, there's a lot in favor of this movie too. I you like hefty gore, this is your thing, the special effects are absolutely great and I was really stunned by the wonderful photography, the brightness of the colors, even in the night-scenes, is remarkable!! The kids are mostly good looking, the jock has a great physique (and is allowed to show it), and Crispin Glover is… well, is Crispin Glover, he's not exactly my cup of tea, but he sure as hell makes a convincing weirdo! In the obligatory last scene where we learn that the story will repeat itself for ever and ever, a group of new friends come to the little shop as fresh meat for Simon, and be sure to check out this bare-chested guy, who's totally awesome. What a shame that the movie stopped right there and then!

First of all I saw this movie dubbed in German and German dubs of horror movies most of the time are ridiculous. In this case it somehow fit the plot and the characters. You get you basic horror movie setting... a bunch of teenagers go out to camp in the woods (Good one: "You know a romantic place at the river? Something dark and creepy where serial killers walk around?"). After the characters are introduced... funny stoner guy, hunky football guy, horny annoying chick, naive chick and the smart chick that is supposed to save the day... they stop for fuel and meet Sicko Stanley played by Crispin Glover. Crispin plays the two brothers Stanley and Simon who are the same person after all because Stanley turns out to be schizophrenic and playing the role of his dead brother Simon (whom he obviously killed like everyone else). So when they get to the camping site the usual serial killer story unfolds. That is packed with as many clichés as the opening of the movie. Girls fall down when fleeing the killer, stoner guy walks into a freezer with corpses, hunk guy gets mixed up between two girls and Stanley walks around, killing people with his crazy pickaxe catapult, stomping dogs, stabbing people, building funny dwarfs out of corpses and having a relaxing dinner with his dead rotting parents. A lot of this stuff is absolutely ridiculous, Stanley seems to have supernatural powers when pinning people to trees with pickaxes and making a human shishkebab. Some party made me laugh and reminded me of the Freddy Krueger Horror-Fun like when stoner guy is killed with a giant spliff and then set aflame. Anyway, the acting of all involved is pretty medium and the movie is not horrifying at all, although there really is some gory stuff in there. To me it came across like an extremely clichéd horror comedy that in many scenes made no sense at all (for example the dead horse woman pointing somewhere) and was stolen from loads of movies you know anyway.