So anyway, I found a great excuse to go to the movies to catch "Gone" to enjoy a brief moment of air-conditioned air. Starring the adult red riding hood Amanda Seyfried and Wes Bentley, who was most recently seen in "The Hunger Games", this is a serial killer movie set in Oregon, United States. Later that day, I caught a 2008 movie "Prom Night" of the same stalker cum slasher genre back at home.
Yes, I enjoy watching suspense thrillers like these and I actually felt the former movie wasn't really that bad although I think it bombed at the box office. Amanda is Jill Conway, who a year ago escaped death from the clutches of a stranger. She was kidnapped from her home, woke up in a deep hole in the ground of a forest where she found other women human remains but managed to overcome her killer to be the only survivor. However, no one bought her story, especially since she spent years in a psychiatric facility after her parents' death and the police did not find the existence of any hole or her abductor after combing through Forest Park, Portland. They gave up the search after a week and believed the whole thing was just a figment of her imagination.
The paranoid Jill found herself spending her time visiting Forest Park to look for traces of the killer but to no avail. To her horror, her only sister Molly who stayed with her suddenly disappeared from the house on one morning. Convinced that the killer was back to get her but abducted her sister instead, she had to take matters into her own hands to search for Molly when she realized with utter frustration that the police was all oblivious to her side of the story and she only had less than 12 hours to find Molly before the killer would kill her.
Such was the sheer determination of a woman who was fiercely desperate and protective of her only close kin and the love that drives and motivates a person to overcome all odds and adversities to do the almost impossible even when no one believed her. Yes, I know it is a movie but I can't help but admire the character's never give up attitude. The lengths she took to evade the police's chase, who were hot on her heels at every step of the way, and her relentless search for clues to lead her to the killer, were just admirable, if not unimaginable. Just like she told her friend to the effect that she will try to do her best to find and rescue her sister instead of receiving news of her death and blaming herself for not doing enough, she would stop at nothing until she found the stalker and saved her sister.
The best part was, after she single-handedly finished off the serial killer in the woods and returned home to her sister where an entire squad of police was waiting for her, her reply to the police on the whereabouts of the killer was the killer never existed at all except in her own mind. Just imagine that the police did nothing to find Molly and was so bent to track Jill down and focused on taking her off the streets for endangering public safety because she possessed a pistol. They say revenge is sweet and it certainly was in this case. I had two suspects in mind, one of which was the sinister looking Wes, and was glad that I was 50% on the right track on the killer's identity.
What made the movie interesting was the numerous bird's eye aerial view of the 5,000 over acres of Forest Park, which is the crown jewel of Oregon. The dense stands of Araucaria or conifer-like trees are simply breath-takingly fantastic and remind me of how much I love this tree species.
Later that afternoon at home, I watched a taped 2008 movie "Prom Night" starring a whole lot of B grade actors and actresses such as Brittany Snow and Dana Davis. Kellan Lutz also had a bit part to play in the movie. It reminded me so much of the movie series "Scream" albeit with an entirely different cast.
Naturally, Brittany plays the main character Donna, who is surprise, surprise, the lone survivor of her obsessed and spurned teacher who turned on her family and killed her father, brother and mother right in her own house. After living in her recurring nightmares for 3 years, her aunt and uncle were determined to let her move on and have a day she would never forget by encouraging her to attend the prom night as part of her graduation despite reported news of the escape of the convicted serial killer cum slasher.
Once again, the killer had extremely good luck and managed to find multiple victims to slain and slash before the final showdown with the lead where his luck changed for the worst and he succumbed in the end. Sadly, similar to Sidney from the "Scream" series, two of her best girl friends and an impossibly attentive and loving boyfriend were killed in the process. Just when she thought she could start afresh, her world shattered once again when those closest to her were slayed.
Imagine the irony of attending a prom night where the best friends congregated happily and promised to remain in each other's lives for the years to come after graduation just to find that the night was precisely the last day they would ever see each other, alive. Time did not cause the friends to drift apart, it was fate that separated them in life and death. Just hours before, they were warm, chatty and were very much alive and kicking but ended up being brutally murdered, leaving behind cold dead bodies. Donna definitely had more than she bargained for and I am certain it was a day that she would never ever forget for the rest of her life.
At the end of the day, I must admit I had a slashing, I mean smashing good time watching the two movies.
