Offerings

THE STORY:   Well, this certainly was a waste of time. On one hand this movie was mildly entertaining in its blandness on on the other hand it was irritatingly plodding. It felt like an entire week went by while watching it.

There's this little boy named Johnny and he's a strange kid. He tortures animals (though we don't ever see him doing that, we just hear about it from other characters), and he never speaks. He's picked on by other kids in his neighborhood except for little Gretchen Peters, who for some reason has befriended him. Well, Johnny falls into a well while taunted by other kids and somehow this disfigures his face. Well, we don't see that until way later in the movie.

After he falls in the well we next see Johnny (now called "John") is all grown up. Its ten years later so I guess he's around 20 or so now. He's also in a mental institution where a doctor and nurse helpfully fill in a few more details about him....apparently he killed his shrew of a mother and ate her (when he was ten?). Here's a hint if you ever commit a crime...act crazy and get locked up in a mental institution. John's escape was so ridiculously easy I wonder why they just didn't give him a key to the place. You can pretty guess what's going to happen next...Johnny goes back to his home town to exact revenge on the kids that taunted him ten years ago. There's also a doctor guy named Jim that teams up with the local Sheriff, Chism, to find and stop John before he kills. They fail to stop him from murdering most of the now grown up kids, but I'm betting you knew that. Sounds familiar, huh? This movie is like Halloween only without any really good parts.

The biggest problem with this movie is that its not scary. None of John's victims are aware that he's on the loose until its too late and none of them puts up an even moderately good resistance to being killed. And you don't really see anyone get killed in an interesting way. The kills you do see are kind of anticlimactic. Given the quality of the local police force I can see how John could elude capture and kill so easily. Get this....Chism tells Jim that he doesn't want to tell anyone that John may be on the loose because he doesn't want to scare anyone! Uh, hello? You know if a creepy kid from my childhood days grew up to be a homicidal maniac and he happened to break out of jail and arrive in my general area I'd appreciate it if the local authorities at least gave me a warning! And what is it with these small towns with like, TWO cops? Has anyone ever lived in a place like that? (Besides Mayberry and Andy Griffith) Does anyone live in a place like that now? And if you do how come you have enough population to warrant an ISP connection but not enough for more than two cops? I'm moving to your town if that's so because I could get a job in law enforcement...Chism sure doesn't look like he missed any meals and he damn sure doesn't do much to protect any of the soon to be dead young people until the end. He has clear evidence that John is targeting Gretchen and the others but he doesn't even bother to warn them!

Still for some reason I didn't hate watching this movie...it just wasn't very good. No one I know or care about was in it, if you don't count the score that was completely ripped off from Halloween.

Best Lines: "Hello, this is Gretchen Peters and I called, like, a long time ago and our pizza still isn't here!"-Gretchen complains on the phone to the local pizza delivery service. Its just that her delivery of the lines were so bad I had to write it down.

1.) The kids in this movie are pretty [unwrite]ing sadistic. I grew up surrounded by lots of bullies, but I think if I had been seriously injured in one of their pranks they'd at least go get an adult or the police. These kids leave Johnny after he's fallen in the well. (Except for Gretchen who cries "Guys, help me! {help me help Johnny is what she means}) You know, I'm writing this before seeing the entire movie...who wants to bet that Gretchen ends up being the heroine?

2.) If Johnny's in a psychiatric hospital (as an adult) and he was put in there for killing his mother and eating her...why isn't he secured in his bed in some fashion? (answer: so he can kill the nurse and break free) Seriously...if you were a nurse in a psych hospital taking care of a crazy man that you know killed someone,...their own mother...and ATE her, wouldn't you be a little apprehensive about being left in a room with that nutball? I wouldn't go into a room with a guy that did that alone unless he was chained to the bed and I had a loaded gun.

3.) As a young adult Gretchen is awakened by her parents before they go out on their two week holiday. (cliche! The parents aren't going to be around for the big massacre!) After they leave Gretchen's clambers back to bed and the phone rings as soon as she climbs in. Her friend asks her if she'll be in class and Gretchen says yes, then hangs up. She looks at the clock and its Eight Thirty AM. By the look on her face we're to know that means she has little time to sleep...Gee, 8:30? What kind of college is this? When I went to college I had to be in class at 7:00 AM sometimes! It reminds me of a Red Dwarf episode where Lister complains about his college days citing that they had classes scheduled at "First thing in the morning.".

4.) I'm wary of eating anything that I get at any fast food joint but these idiots...whoa....the pizza our characters order arrives...to be found at the door with no person in sight. No delivery man (or gal) to collect payment...and they still EAT IT! I don't know about you but if I order a pizza, it turns out late and then I find it at my door with no person in sight I damn sure wouldn't eat it. As it turns out the morons notice that the pizza has sausage on it when they didn't order sausage...and naturally it ends up being not sausage but human flesh. Does human meat taste like sausage? And how the hell did John cook the meat?

NUDITY AND SEX: None

HUH?: Johnny's a disturbed little boy. He doesn't speak, EVER and his mother is a queen bitch. His father apparently died under strange circumstances. Now, wouldn't a teacher or neighbor have called social services by now? His mother indicates that he goes to school and the teachers must know he's a little strange. I find it hard to believe that no teachers in his school would have alerted someone. My mom was a teacher and she called social services once because she noticed the strange behavior or a little girl that was being abused at home. Hmmm...I find that disturbing....that no one cared enough to call the proper agencies when Johnny was young. If any of you know a kid that's in pain like this do call the authorities because I don't want the little psycho to grow up to be a big psycho and attack me when I'm [unwrite]ing 75 years old and can't defend myself!

Are you up on your old comic book heroes and villains? I couldn't help but yell out "He's Electro!"* when Johnny, during his escape from the mental institution approaches an electrified fence and simply climbs over it. Keep in mind that when he touched it (and we get to see signs indicating that the fence is electrified) sparks burn his hands. Still, Johnny must be able to absorb electrical energy since it didn't really faze him. What good is an electric fence if it only has the strength of say, a joy buzzer?

I know that certain things in movies occur only for exposition, but come on....Sheriff Chism goes to see Jim at the local college and tells him that john has escaped the mental hospital. Jim asks if he thinks John will come here. (By here I assume he means this town) and the Sheriff says "I really don't know. I've got to go." Uh...why didn't he just freaking call him and tell him this? Was it really necessary for the sheriff to go to the college, wait until Jim's lecture was done (which was on Serial killers...surprise! NOT) to tell him that bit of info?

THE FINAL JUDGMENT:  Watching this movie is probably a waste. If you really want to see it rent Halloween and pretend the acting sucks, the killer is uninteresting and the characters are all retards. Then whack yourself in the head with a ball peen hammer. That's what watching it was like. Still, I'm a masochist...I found this movies banality enjoyable in a crap movie kinda way.