fleggett
Joined Oct 2001
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I'm only halfway into season 4, but I have to get a few things off my chest.
THE ACTING - inscrutable. Emily Rose as Audrey Parker plays the character as if it's a boring burden, as she perks-up when inhabiting anyone other than our put-upon FBI agent, proving that she CAN act when given the chance. Unfortunately, she's the federal fuzz throughout most of Haven's runtime, so it's scene upon scene of disinterest.
Lucas Bryant as Nathan Wuornos is, believe it or not, even worse, "projecting" the most wooden personality known to man and seeming to not care about anything. Now, I KNOW there's a narrative reason for this (no spoilers), but it's still straining to sit through. He's the equivalent of having to attend a much-too-long mandatory training program at work that'll be forgotten a nanosecond after it ends. As with Rose, Bryant CAN act when given a chance, but it's like pulling an entire row of teeth.
By far the most fun character is Eric Balfour's Duke Crocker, as he seems to be having a decent time and gets in many quips, some of which I'm sure were ad-libbed. He tries, and I mean TRIES, to play off of Rose and Bryant, but it's like egging a sloth to pick up the pace. I've liked Balfour ever since Skyline (an unjustly maligned movie) and he acts ever-widening circles around his co-stars.
The other actors and actresses featured in Haven are the usual TV mixed bag, ranging from fairly decent to eeeuhhh. Which brings me to...
THE DIALOGUE - turgid and repetitive. Seriously, this is some of the most rote and uninspired stuff I've ever heard. Characters are always repeating plot points like they've never been uttered before to the point that it could become a deadly drinking game. There is no flair, no insightful and hard-hitting parables about life and lemonade, and the majority of the writing is something a high school glee club wouldn't (or shouldn't) touch with a 10-mile electric cattle prod. Once in a blue moon someone will dare to let something grand, operatic, and introspective slip, but it's immediately followed by the same-o, same-o. It's like drinking a coke that you can still tell is a coke, but is disappointingly flat and lacks much syrup.
And then we get to our favorite, most precious plot contrivance of the entire show - the barn.
I recently watched the 12 Monkeys series and, at some point, a character called The Witness was introduced. After that, it was all over, with The Witness this and The Witness that. If you had taken a shot of watered-down piss beer every time the word "witness" was orated, the average person would've been dead 30 minutes in.
"The Barn" is 12 Monkeys' Witness, as it is repeated over and over and over and over again to the point that it becomes a despised plot device that you wish had never been thought-up. Do you think Spielberg ensured that the script for Close Encounters of the Third Kind constantly and incessantly referenced aliens or UFOs? No! He didn't because repetition like that would've robbed those words of their mystery and power. To keep dialogue fresh the words spoken have to also be (gasp!) fresh. When you indefatigably say "the barn" 50 times in the course of one forty minute episode, it becomes an insufferable annoyance and has obviously been scribbled there by the writers as junk filler (or a terrible prank). I swear, I do NOT want to see the baby that "The Barn" and "The Witness" would foist upon the TV world.
I guess we've now come to...
THE STORY & CONCEPTS - I can count on three fingers the number of Stephen King books I've read and The Colorado Kid ain't one of 'em. I mainly got into Haven thinking I could evade reading King's latest mega-tome by doing what I do best - watch a TV serial instead. Not that The Colorado Kid is a large novel, clocking in at only 184 pages, but my grey matter gets off on watching attractive people frequently say and do stupid things on the boob tube.
The "troubles" are Haven's raison dêtre, which we quickly find out is a politically correct word for people-killing curses (well, the "troubled" don't always engage in mystical homicide, but often enough for the map dot to sport a steadily rising bodycount). And I do admit that the writers sometimes come up with inventive and clever hexes to terrorize the townsfolk. However, they also come up with some absurd ones that firmly plants a fork in ones suspension of disbelief. For example, there is one episode that's straight out of Under the Dome fused with Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, with several scenes of a kaiju-sized Audrey blankly (of course) looking down at the viewer thru a badly-rendered snowglobe, the goofy execution of which has to be seen to be believed.
Speaking of the F/X, I know many reviewers have derided them, but they're about as good as one would expect for a "pragmatically" funded show such as this. Yeah, some sequences were done on the cheap, but others were decent enough, like the destruction of buildings or other structures. Like everyone else, I wish more money had been allocated for the special effects till, but it is what it is.
(That snowglobe episode was extra-special, though.)
What else to address... The show occasionally ropes-in some actual talent, like Stephen McHattie, Nicholas Campbell, and Nicole de Boer, but they smartly don't stay around too long. I couldn't help but chuckle whenever Adam Copeland's opening citation appeared, as it often read, "WWE Superstar Edge" (Copeland plays police chief Dwight who is often called Sasquatch by Duke). Mr. 90210 himself, Jason Priestley, slums around for a few episodes and actually emotes, which frequently took me off guard (hey, remember the show's overall acting prowess).
I keep hoping that Laura Vandervoot will respond to my ESP pleas for her to have my babies, but all I get in return is neural static. Claudia Black has an episode where she's anti-Claudia Black by being outfitted like a homeless person. Even the Maytag Man, Colin Ferguson, stops in for a few drinks. And the gorgeous, beautiful, and ravishing Kate Kelton slinks around like an exotic wildcat for a fair number of episodes, much to my delight (I have an intense thing for long raven-hairs).
And while I haven't seen him yet, William Shatner is destined to appear at some point. Shatner is my acting hero and a God to the profession, so if Haven does him dirty, I'll be back here with a MUCH amended review.
That's about all I got. Haven is a bog-standard show of its type that doesn't strive to win a single Emmy and would probably not even appear on a fan ballot. Its lore is horribly constructed and the town is infested with acting zombies that occasionally turn human when pushed. And while Balfour is a treat, not even he can get this patient out of its coma (though he is trying).
If you hate Haven, good on you. If you like Haven, also good on you (but I would encourage you to raise your standards). If the show has come and gone and you don't remember any of it, much like that dull workplace class, I suspect you're right in the middle of the bell curve.
"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." - Stephen King.
"I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries." - also Stephen King.
THE ACTING - inscrutable. Emily Rose as Audrey Parker plays the character as if it's a boring burden, as she perks-up when inhabiting anyone other than our put-upon FBI agent, proving that she CAN act when given the chance. Unfortunately, she's the federal fuzz throughout most of Haven's runtime, so it's scene upon scene of disinterest.
Lucas Bryant as Nathan Wuornos is, believe it or not, even worse, "projecting" the most wooden personality known to man and seeming to not care about anything. Now, I KNOW there's a narrative reason for this (no spoilers), but it's still straining to sit through. He's the equivalent of having to attend a much-too-long mandatory training program at work that'll be forgotten a nanosecond after it ends. As with Rose, Bryant CAN act when given a chance, but it's like pulling an entire row of teeth.
By far the most fun character is Eric Balfour's Duke Crocker, as he seems to be having a decent time and gets in many quips, some of which I'm sure were ad-libbed. He tries, and I mean TRIES, to play off of Rose and Bryant, but it's like egging a sloth to pick up the pace. I've liked Balfour ever since Skyline (an unjustly maligned movie) and he acts ever-widening circles around his co-stars.
The other actors and actresses featured in Haven are the usual TV mixed bag, ranging from fairly decent to eeeuhhh. Which brings me to...
THE DIALOGUE - turgid and repetitive. Seriously, this is some of the most rote and uninspired stuff I've ever heard. Characters are always repeating plot points like they've never been uttered before to the point that it could become a deadly drinking game. There is no flair, no insightful and hard-hitting parables about life and lemonade, and the majority of the writing is something a high school glee club wouldn't (or shouldn't) touch with a 10-mile electric cattle prod. Once in a blue moon someone will dare to let something grand, operatic, and introspective slip, but it's immediately followed by the same-o, same-o. It's like drinking a coke that you can still tell is a coke, but is disappointingly flat and lacks much syrup.
And then we get to our favorite, most precious plot contrivance of the entire show - the barn.
I recently watched the 12 Monkeys series and, at some point, a character called The Witness was introduced. After that, it was all over, with The Witness this and The Witness that. If you had taken a shot of watered-down piss beer every time the word "witness" was orated, the average person would've been dead 30 minutes in.
"The Barn" is 12 Monkeys' Witness, as it is repeated over and over and over and over again to the point that it becomes a despised plot device that you wish had never been thought-up. Do you think Spielberg ensured that the script for Close Encounters of the Third Kind constantly and incessantly referenced aliens or UFOs? No! He didn't because repetition like that would've robbed those words of their mystery and power. To keep dialogue fresh the words spoken have to also be (gasp!) fresh. When you indefatigably say "the barn" 50 times in the course of one forty minute episode, it becomes an insufferable annoyance and has obviously been scribbled there by the writers as junk filler (or a terrible prank). I swear, I do NOT want to see the baby that "The Barn" and "The Witness" would foist upon the TV world.
I guess we've now come to...
THE STORY & CONCEPTS - I can count on three fingers the number of Stephen King books I've read and The Colorado Kid ain't one of 'em. I mainly got into Haven thinking I could evade reading King's latest mega-tome by doing what I do best - watch a TV serial instead. Not that The Colorado Kid is a large novel, clocking in at only 184 pages, but my grey matter gets off on watching attractive people frequently say and do stupid things on the boob tube.
The "troubles" are Haven's raison dêtre, which we quickly find out is a politically correct word for people-killing curses (well, the "troubled" don't always engage in mystical homicide, but often enough for the map dot to sport a steadily rising bodycount). And I do admit that the writers sometimes come up with inventive and clever hexes to terrorize the townsfolk. However, they also come up with some absurd ones that firmly plants a fork in ones suspension of disbelief. For example, there is one episode that's straight out of Under the Dome fused with Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, with several scenes of a kaiju-sized Audrey blankly (of course) looking down at the viewer thru a badly-rendered snowglobe, the goofy execution of which has to be seen to be believed.
Speaking of the F/X, I know many reviewers have derided them, but they're about as good as one would expect for a "pragmatically" funded show such as this. Yeah, some sequences were done on the cheap, but others were decent enough, like the destruction of buildings or other structures. Like everyone else, I wish more money had been allocated for the special effects till, but it is what it is.
(That snowglobe episode was extra-special, though.)
What else to address... The show occasionally ropes-in some actual talent, like Stephen McHattie, Nicholas Campbell, and Nicole de Boer, but they smartly don't stay around too long. I couldn't help but chuckle whenever Adam Copeland's opening citation appeared, as it often read, "WWE Superstar Edge" (Copeland plays police chief Dwight who is often called Sasquatch by Duke). Mr. 90210 himself, Jason Priestley, slums around for a few episodes and actually emotes, which frequently took me off guard (hey, remember the show's overall acting prowess).
I keep hoping that Laura Vandervoot will respond to my ESP pleas for her to have my babies, but all I get in return is neural static. Claudia Black has an episode where she's anti-Claudia Black by being outfitted like a homeless person. Even the Maytag Man, Colin Ferguson, stops in for a few drinks. And the gorgeous, beautiful, and ravishing Kate Kelton slinks around like an exotic wildcat for a fair number of episodes, much to my delight (I have an intense thing for long raven-hairs).
And while I haven't seen him yet, William Shatner is destined to appear at some point. Shatner is my acting hero and a God to the profession, so if Haven does him dirty, I'll be back here with a MUCH amended review.
That's about all I got. Haven is a bog-standard show of its type that doesn't strive to win a single Emmy and would probably not even appear on a fan ballot. Its lore is horribly constructed and the town is infested with acting zombies that occasionally turn human when pushed. And while Balfour is a treat, not even he can get this patient out of its coma (though he is trying).
If you hate Haven, good on you. If you like Haven, also good on you (but I would encourage you to raise your standards). If the show has come and gone and you don't remember any of it, much like that dull workplace class, I suspect you're right in the middle of the bell curve.
"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." - Stephen King.
"I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries." - also Stephen King.
I have never read The Hellbound Heart, so I'm not knowledgeable on the literary side of Hellraiser lore. However, I have seen all of the movies and this remake/reboot/whatever is, as the title indicates, confusing.
The main narrative thrust of Hellraiser is fairly simple - solve the box, claim your "prize". As eloquently observed in Hellbound, it's not hands that call the Cenobites, but desire. Yet, in this film, all there seems to be are hands that fondle a puzzle box with a mind of its own.
I'm generally not one to spoil things, but I think the writers either didn't understand the movies or they returned to Barker's written source material. If the former, that's unfortunate. If the latter, then I guess I'm just ill informed.
Revenge plots are familiar ground with the Hellraiser films, but, as we all regrettably know, they increasingly ran off the rails as the movies iterated. I'm a big fan of the first two (especially Hellbound), Hell on Earth was a misfire, and I genuinely thought Bloodline had ambition and merit. That's where my interest in the universe plummets, though, as the remaining outings are mediocre at best. As such, Hellraiser 2022's narrative, to me, is very, very strange and even a bit off-putting, as it all hinges on clueless people doing clueless things to our favorite box, not individuals seeking experiences from the furthest reaches. I know that critique is a bit vague, but you'll understand once seen.
The acting is...fine. I know much has been made of the new Hellpriest(ess), but the character didn't do a whole heckuva lot for me, mainly just delivering cryptic dialogue in the most stoic manner possible. The pacing is agonizingly slow in the first and second acts, but does pick up considerably in the third. The cinematography is exactly what you'd expect for a moderately funded horror flick in current year. The Cenobite redesigns are quite good and I swear the one called The Gasp was inspired directly by Bloodline's Angelique. Even our boy The Chatterer makes a few appearances.
Leviathan and the labyrinth are also featured, which may (or may not) be carryovers from Hellbound. The score is just background noise and only rises to the occasion when Christopher Young's legendary leitmotifs are reused. The whole film was apparently shot in Serbia, so it has that distinctly Eastern European sterility and grime that Romanian Deader capitalized on.
So, all in all, a mixed bag. If it sparks another series of films, I suppose that's a blessing to be found. It would be cool to see Ashley Laurence one last time as the REAL Kirsty Cotton instead of that unrecognizably awful and subverted character that she was turned into for Hellseeker (which still leaves a bitter taste).
My final advice - grind through the first two acts for the rewards of the third, then go rewatch the original and Hellbound while throwing some love Bloodline's way. And if you want to also slot in Hell on Earth, hey, to each his own.
The main narrative thrust of Hellraiser is fairly simple - solve the box, claim your "prize". As eloquently observed in Hellbound, it's not hands that call the Cenobites, but desire. Yet, in this film, all there seems to be are hands that fondle a puzzle box with a mind of its own.
I'm generally not one to spoil things, but I think the writers either didn't understand the movies or they returned to Barker's written source material. If the former, that's unfortunate. If the latter, then I guess I'm just ill informed.
Revenge plots are familiar ground with the Hellraiser films, but, as we all regrettably know, they increasingly ran off the rails as the movies iterated. I'm a big fan of the first two (especially Hellbound), Hell on Earth was a misfire, and I genuinely thought Bloodline had ambition and merit. That's where my interest in the universe plummets, though, as the remaining outings are mediocre at best. As such, Hellraiser 2022's narrative, to me, is very, very strange and even a bit off-putting, as it all hinges on clueless people doing clueless things to our favorite box, not individuals seeking experiences from the furthest reaches. I know that critique is a bit vague, but you'll understand once seen.
The acting is...fine. I know much has been made of the new Hellpriest(ess), but the character didn't do a whole heckuva lot for me, mainly just delivering cryptic dialogue in the most stoic manner possible. The pacing is agonizingly slow in the first and second acts, but does pick up considerably in the third. The cinematography is exactly what you'd expect for a moderately funded horror flick in current year. The Cenobite redesigns are quite good and I swear the one called The Gasp was inspired directly by Bloodline's Angelique. Even our boy The Chatterer makes a few appearances.
Leviathan and the labyrinth are also featured, which may (or may not) be carryovers from Hellbound. The score is just background noise and only rises to the occasion when Christopher Young's legendary leitmotifs are reused. The whole film was apparently shot in Serbia, so it has that distinctly Eastern European sterility and grime that Romanian Deader capitalized on.
So, all in all, a mixed bag. If it sparks another series of films, I suppose that's a blessing to be found. It would be cool to see Ashley Laurence one last time as the REAL Kirsty Cotton instead of that unrecognizably awful and subverted character that she was turned into for Hellseeker (which still leaves a bitter taste).
My final advice - grind through the first two acts for the rewards of the third, then go rewatch the original and Hellbound while throwing some love Bloodline's way. And if you want to also slot in Hell on Earth, hey, to each his own.