Gothic News

Moronic Mark is a big dumb animal. He’s not as smart as he think he is, and he has the grammatical skills of 7 year old. He may not be the best guy to go to in order to figure out if a film should be viewed or not viewed, but he does have the ability to watch anything. Yes, anything. He’s made it through 11 Todd Sheets movies, 2 porn flicks with Joanie Chynadoll Laurer, and has seen every Rob Schneider flick in the theater (well the ones that made it to the theater). Nothing on any screen can make him tap out, and sometimes this viewing endurance can make him find a diamond in the rough. He may ramble on about stuff that has nothing to do about the film he’s suppose to be talking about, but he means well. This is the Moronic Movie Review.

13 TEEN (2010)
Directed by Pritesh Chheda (don’t ask me how to pronounce that)
Starring: Amanda Brown, John Lansch, Marc Hustvedt

I always find it funny when the DVD box art of a film has a quote which compares the film to another film or two which are usually better or well known or commercially successful. It’s as if the marketing team has given up on letting the film stand up on it’s own merit and originality. Plus, the whole comparison angle might dissuade people from viewing the flick since the film that they are comparing this film to something which might not be a film that the audience, that they are trying to capture, would generally like. Now I know that there’s never been a film who has a DVD cover that claims that the film is like HOWARD THE DUCK and AVENGING DISCO GODFATHER, but there have been many movies over the last several years which probably hurt their sells by claiming that their movie is funnier than NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (heck, ZOMBI HOLOCAUST is funnier than NAPOLEON DYNAMITE). It’s a silly gamble that they make and today’s movie has the same marketing gamble on its DVD cover.

13 TEEN has the statement that it’s “SEVEN” meets “PARANORMAL ACTIVITY” on the very front of its DVD box and that statement is directly below it’s title. Now, the statement is from a real deal critic (Stuart Alson of Independent Film Quarterly) which is nice, so you know it’s not one of those realms of film maker’s fantasy statements where they make their own comparative statements with the dreaded words “In the style of …” or “In the tradition of…”. Now the big question: Is the statement true?

Sure it’s true. In the same vein as Shrimp Flavored Ramein noodles have the taste of shrimp.

It’s like SEVEN in regards to the fact that it has a serial killer has a plot point (The killer carves the number 13 in the chest of it’s victim). It’s like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY due to the fact that it shows some ghostly images for about 13 seconds. The more appropriate comparison to the film 13TEEN would be that’s in tune to the classic television series “Tales from the Darkside” since it’s contained in one setting and has 3 main characters in it. It would of been a decent episode to the series. Unfortunately, it’s longer than 30 minutes.

The film opens with Sera Night (Amanda Brown) coming home from a long day at work. The viewer gets nearly every detail of her post work ritual (a.k.a. padding), including her viewing of some minor league baseball. Now I don’t know if I’m making myself clear that all this padding is boring, but when she’s watching the minor league baseball game, I’m actually more interested in the game. Finally, a stranger (John Lansh) comes knocking at her door. He’s a real estate contract guy who wants to get control of her place to sell for his company. She informs him that her place is not for sell, and he says, “Oh”. He asks to hang since it’s raining out and he needs to wait for a ride, and she says, “no,” but has a change of heart when she sees the poor asthmatic schlub outside in the pouring rain. He comes inside, drinks the broad’s good hooch, and they talk for 45 minutes. They talk about the local serial killer, their work, his custody problems with his kid, cake farts and dingle berries. Ok, they didn’t talk about about the last two things, but boy did they do a hell of a lot of talking. A guy (Marc Hustvedt) who works for the home’s security company comes over to work on the security system. His unusual work habits make the other two question his motives, and Sera sees a “13″ written on the wall in one of the rooms and something might finally happen.

It does, but mainly off screen.

13TEEN would best be described as a low budget suspense thriller with a shitload of talking and it takes the M. Night Shyamalan’s route of having a twist for the sake of having a twist. The main twist has 33.3% chance of being figured out well before the movie’s end. There’s some other twists, but they’re more in the minor league ballpark line of thinking of “oh, so that’s where it’s going” versus “HOLY FUCKING SHIT! DID that just HAPPEN?”. It’s not the worst way to waste 90 minutes, but it’s noting special.

I guess if I had to go in the whole twist for no reason other than having a twist route that this film loves to go into, I guess I better add that I didn’t really review a film from 2010 called 13TEEN.

HOW COULD THIS BE?

Well, it was originally called FOR SALE BY OWNER and was made in 2005.

Pork Chops and Applesause. Rosebud is a sled. They make pickles out of cucumbers.

Now you know.

2 stars out of 5.

P.S. 13TEEN is also a pretty stupid title too since there’s no teens in it. I guess they were trying to go with a title that has both letters and numbers in it, so it could somehow be better marketable like the films SE7EN, and ID4, and the TV show “NUMB3RS”,
and to a much much much lesser extent ZB4.

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The Moronic Movie Review: 13 Teen