Horrid Horror Movie Review: Dark Ride

I have seen a lot of bad horror movies. I've seen the inexcusably bad movie Cthulhu and the nonsensical blabbering of The Nun. I've also seen bad movies that were good because they knew they were bad, like the Stephen King "laundry-gone-bad" tale of The Mangler. Usually, these movies are bad from either the script, the direction, the editing, a combination of the three, or all of those and the acting . So this is a first for me. This is a first because it isn't the script that made this movie bad. It's the cliches and, most importantly, the acting. Ladies and gentle-man, step right up for Dark Ride!

The movie starts with a picture of a creepy smiling Howdy Doody wannabe with the words "See you Next Summer" below him. Add a random phallus, and it'd be something straight from Deviant Art's "Horror and Macabre" collection. Two girls, both twins and dressed in Catholic School uniforms (don't get your hopes up), walk to the park. One of them is scared because her sister wants to go to the Dark Ride. I don't know why she's scared, unless she's afraid that the ugly curly mop on their heads will eat their brains in the dark. Every thing in the ride is incredibly fake looking, from a wooden devil, to a wax Keith Richards. While one twin is looking away, the other one flies up into the air. The ride stops at a "doctor's" exhibit, where we see that the doctor is really a killer, and the patient is the twin. The credits start rolling with news paper clippings about the dark ride, and how the city voted to shut it down. I'm watching this movie now... they didn't vote fast enough.

We meet our characters now, and this is where the movie starts to go downhill. First we meet Cathy (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) and Liz, who are talking about getting laid, high, and drunk. It's sad when Tarantino wrote a more eloquent scene about "Like A Virgin" than this conversation. We then meet Bill, the movie nerd, and Steve, Cathy's... boyfriend? Now, to get into this, I have to quote something the Cinema Snob, Brad Jones, said in his Troll review: "Never reference a better movie in your own movie." Why is there a poster for Evil Dead and Bram Stoker's Dracula in the room, then? Even better, the wax dummy premise of the killer blending into the scenes of the Dark Ride? House of Wax. So far, this movie referenced three better movies. To make the room weirder, Bill owns a blow up doll... with the devil's head. Where in the hell does one get something like that, much less form a fetish based off of it? As they leave the college, we meet the fifth freak in this band of morons, Jim. Jim is the typical college "pretty boy," except he looks like a retarded Albert Wesker. In fact, since I have a friend named Jim, I'm just going to call this asshat "Wesker."

The five go to a red van with a guy painted on it. Wesker kisses the painting of the guy (and he's a ladies' man?) and tries to get in, but is stopped when Bill starts screaming quotes from Midnight Cowboy. That's four movies now. After a driving montage of them all playing pattycake while Wesker drives and makes weird faces, they end up at a gas station. Bill goes in and finds the gas clerk having a stare down with the camera. By the way, the gas station is the same set as the one in The Hills Have Eyes. Five movies. Bill rambles on about the Deer Hunter for some reason (six), and leaves, telling Wesker and Steve about the guy. They go in, find that he's gone, causing Steve to shout "Who do I have to blow to get some service!" The man comes out, tells him the gas price and waits for his blow job. Of course, Wesker rags on him about this, despite kissing a picture of a man earlier in the movie.

We cut to a mental institution (seven for the Black Christmas, reference), where two orderlies are tormenting Jonah, the killer, with meat. The skinny one starts yelling at him, and eventually screams "Accent!" What, is the director screaming notes, and the actor confusing it with lines? Hell, earlier, we see him with his face pressed up to the glass with a flashlight under his chin, making him seem like the killer, now he's torturing a guy in a straight jacket with raw meat, screaming director's notes at him? No wonder Jonah breaks free, stabs the fat orderly with a flashlight (I shit you not), making a hole you can see the skinny orderly through, and then eats the skinny guy.

We cut to a montage of the kids traveling, until Bill mentions finding a pamphlet for the Dark Ride. They decide to go there, despite Cat making stupid faces and saying its a dumb idea. Along the way, they pick up a female hitch hiker. Wesker does this because he thinks that, even if she's a psycho-nympho that will kill them, at least he gets fucked. Even better, she dresses and acts like Baby Firefly from House of 1,000 Corpses. Seven movies, and we aren't even an hour into the movie. That has to be a world record. One that's going to break itself very soon, I'm willing to bet. Anyway, not-Baby-Firefly tells them that her name is Jen, which makes Wesker all the more horny, saying, "Jim, Jen! Jim, Jen! We're meant for each other." He also starts making a stupid face every five seconds with his mouth gaping and eyes wide. It's the look you have when watching something so horrible that you don't want to watch. You know, like this movie. Turns out she wants to see the Dark Ride, too, so they take off.

When they reach the Dark Ride, Wesker gapes again as a security truck drives by, and a guard takes a drunk away from it. They decide to park the van in front of the Dark Ride, even though they just saw the security truck right the hell in front of them. Steven tries to convince Cat to come with them, to which she says, "I'm not Catwoman." This is how bad the movie is: Catwoman, is a better movie than this, and they referenced it and Batman Returns. I'm counting this as two, making it nine movies. When fucking Catwoman is abetter movie than yours, and you're not Uwe Boll, you have to evaluate your movie making prowess.

Wesker finds a way into the Dark Ride, and lets the rest, save for Cat, inside. Why they didn't follow is beyond me, but that question is quickly dismissed as Wesker is scared by a wax Keith Richards. At least, I hope its wax, otherwise, he has some serious money issues to appear in this movie. As the kids enter, Jen tells Wesker that she like a useful guy, making him gape again. Liz expresses that she's surprised that he got it working. What he says to this, I'm not even sure I heard it right, mainly because he doesn't enunciate: What you think I'm only good you slishz I don't think szlo!" I have heard a lot of incomprehensible lines such as "Padre Pine in a Corridor" or the infamous "Trevor doesn't want a Yee-yee." But at least you could make out some of the words, no matter how nonsensical they may be, out of it. He's just happy to slur his lines like a drunk, and the director doesn't seem to care. Sure, you can use the characters smoking pot as an excuse, but even drug movies don't have lines like this.

After looking around and smoking more pot, they come across a suburban style exhibit (apparently the Dark Ride is a museum now, not a roller coaster). Wesker finds a dummy of a little boy, picks it up, and dances with it. He razzes his buddy about nearly blowing an old man, but Wesker kissed a painting of a man, and is dancing with a dummy of a little boy. So far, Wesker has done more questionable things than offering an old man a BJ. After he finishes dancing with the boy, they start talking about the killer being killed, even though he was locked in a mental asylum. Bill corrects them, saying that his cousins were killed just before Jonah was caught.

They go deeper into the Dark Ride where Steve catches a glimpse of... something. It ends up to be Cat, with a fake throat wound. Ends up that Bill, Jen, and Cat planned this to play a joke on Steve to get back at him for sleeping with another girl behind Cat's back. Steve tells Cat to, "Get fucked, and stay fucked for a while." You know, I may have given this movie too much credit. This is the dumbest use of the word "fuck" I have ever heard. "Stay fucked for a while?" That makes little sense.

Steve goes off somewhere, Jen takes Wesker to the entry way to blow him, and Cat, Bill, and Liz go to look for Steve. Jen takes off her shirt showing she has no bra. This would be typical horror movie schlock, except that earlier in the movie, she changed her shirt, and showed that she did have a bra on. Anyway, Cat finds Steve, mutilated and made into a marionette. Liz and Cat go to find Wesker, who is off gaping his face off. Bill is seemingly forgotten, as he doesn't show up for most of the rest of the movie.

While Wesker is getting sucked off (how I never knew those words would be written), Jonah comes by and cuts Jen's head off. Wesker, not noticing the difference pulls her head up, drops it, turns around, and knocks himself out by running into the pipe he was holding onto while getting his whinkey whacked. Wesker is an intellectual giant, as you can plainly see. You see, Jonah thinks Wesker's dead, so instead of checking to make sure, he runs off to find Liz as she screams like a maniac. Wesker wakes up and tries to get out of the entry way.

Liz finds an ax after being chased by Jonah, but as she leans forward to grab it, she ends up jumping through a hoop. Jonah kills her, of course, but for the life of me, I can't bring myself to care how he did. It does cause the security guard to check it out. He finds Cat, but almost immediately gets his head cut in half vertically by the ax Liz was trying to get. Cat runs off and finds a way out letting Wesker fend for himself as she reaches the van and drives off.

Wesker finally comes face to face with Jonah in a room with a wall of spikes. Jonah is about to kill Wesker when Cat drives through a wall and hits Jonah into the wall of spikes, killing him. What the fuck? They used real spikes for this ride? Really? Really?! Anyway, Bill comes out and says that Psycho (ten) was wrong; a boy's brother is his best friend, not his mother. Ends up, Bill is actually Jonah's brother, and planned on killing the kids if Jonah hadn't done it, because Jonah would kill people for Bill's amusement. I'll give the movie this, it is a different twist. It didn't work, though, because Bill was nonexistent through the second half making him a suspicious character. He then looks at Cat and thanks her, thus ending this movie.

This movie needs to go to the deepest, foulest bowels of Hell from which it came. The story is hackneyed, the acting is slurred and drunken, and the movie reminds you that you could be watching a better movie at nearly every point of the movie. Trust me, this makes Killer Klowns From Outer Space look like Citizen Kane. For now, this is the Window Keeper, signing off to possibly beat Resident Evil 5 to see Wesker gape.