Ogre: Shrek meets The Village

05Apr08

i’m beginning to think that the SciFi channel has it out for eco-tourism.

There are one of three scenarios that will happen if a group of four young people head out into the woods for a day-long hike. The first one will be that they will be chased by a serial killer. But we don’t watch those movies because i find them too upsetting.  The other will be that some sort of force of nature will fuck with them. The third is that they will encounter some sort of monster, like Sasquatch Mountain. Of course, those plucky youngsters also had to contend with some sort of poorly defined mobster scenario, which never made any sense to me which is the main reason i never finished watching it and therefore, no movie review.

Of course it has to be at least three people, otherwise it messes with your body count. For example, Kraken had to keep returning to shore and having other people go out into the water (or just fish from a pier) to build tension. As much tension as a large calamari can generate, outside of salmonella.

In this party, two bite it and we’re left with a cute teen who looks like he’s probably on some show that Veruca’s daughter watches and his plucky, dour-faced gal pal who provides the only voice of reason, which is promptly and routinely ignored.  No foxxy scientist chick. No special ops dude with a traumatic backstory to explain his obsessive determination to kill the enemy. Melville, you have no idea what you’ve done for the history of cinematography.

Instead, you get Ellenwood, which serves as a poorly conceived Brigadoon meets The Village (not to be confused with Ellenwood, GA, where the most terrifying thing you might encounter is a mom in a mullet whose shirt was attacked by an angry Bedazzler). Yanno, M. Night Shamalamadingdong may have caused a stir with the creepy Haley Joel Osmond, but The Village certainly did nothing to further his career (although it was superior to Unbreakable, which made Battleship Earth look good, if you can believe Veruca). Why it already warrants a tribute, i’m not sure.

In any case, out from the autumnal birches emerges a town stuck in the 18th century, led by none other than Bo Duke, who could really use the guidance of Uncle Jesse right about now. Bo rules a town that lives in the ether and only occasionally emerges every once in a while, just in time to feed its local friend, Shrek, with a tasty morsel from one of its townfolk. Given that the townfolk never marry or have kids, you can only imagine what the occasional sacrifices are doing to its yearly census figures.

Fortunately, our plucky teens arrive just in time to get in the way of the sacrifice of one of the town’s youths and saves him from a pissed off Ogre, who clearly needs the tender lovin’ of Cameron Diaz.

Ogre?

Yes, an ogre.

Because one automatically thinks of rural Pennsylvania when one thinks “ogre.”

I know I do.

Anyway, i’m not sure why there is an ogre, only that if you try to leave the town a most terrible thing happens.  It also effects the ogre, who is terrified of a band of rocks.  ~spooky waggly fingers~ Thismeans the plucky modern teens are home free, except that the rational girl chick is ignored (see above) and they go back for more.

Cute boy teen gets the town to fight back with their muskets and a police rifle (don’t ask). None of it works.

They do finally get the ogre, but then the most horrible thing ever happens to all the townspeople, who accept it gladly, and you are left wondering what the fuck was the point of all of this anyway.  Overall, a couple of good shots of people’s heads being bitten off, and a few limbs scattered here and there. Happily, there are also some great weird scale issues where the Ogre changes size. That always delights me. Plus there’s Bo Duke, who has aged far better than Luke.  

Poor Tom Wopat.  He used to look so great in Levis. 

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