DISCLAIMER: If you haven’t read The Yellow Wallpaper, stop and go read it now. Seriously. I’ll wait: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952-h/1952-h.htm
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790788/
Starring: The father from Troll and the woman who gets hexed by the Witches of Eastwick. (Arlo Givens from Justified has a cameo.)
Review:
It’s been a while since I’ve hated a movie enough that I needed to blog about it.
You can thank The Yellow Wallpaper for bringing this site back to life.
Let’s get to it shall we? AHEM
Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put a fucking vampire in The Yellow Wallpaper? About 10 minutes in someone found a chest full of dirt inside the house and I thought “Oh crap, vampires like to keep dirt from their homeland around. But NAH, this is The Yellow Wallpaper, not a vampire story. They wouldn’t go there.”
You’d think I would have learned by now.
Then to add insult to injury they flashed back to the dirt scene after the big vampire fang reveal. This type of flashback is a technique directors use when they’re worried you might have missed how clever they are.
And yes, I know it’s an adaptation from page to screen and my expectations should have been low. I’m usually very forgiving so long as I feel they stayed true to the story. But there is no forgiveness here.
Because there isn’t just a vampire in The Yellow Wallpaper. Oh no. They went one step further and shot most of the movie from the HUSBAND’S perspective.
Let’s just give fans of the story a moment to recover here.
You ok? Alright. Let’s continue.
Yeah, one of the most important pieces of early feminist literature (and early horror) was re-written to focus on the plight of the man in the story. The script is credited to the actor playing the husband and the trivia says they were going for an origins story… No. Sorry. There is NO excuse for reducing the female characters in The Yellow Wallpaper to set dressing in another fucking vampire movie.
And last but not least:
I felt nowhere near enough of the movie actually takes place in the room with the yellow wallpaper. It’s bad enough that the wife never gets locked in the room. She just hangs out up there a bunch writing “the story”. I guess she’s shown to be strangely drawn to the room, but so is everyone in the house at least once in the movie. Truthfully most of the movie takes place outside of the house or on the lower floors.
Where I found it: Amazon Prime
How much I paid for it: 1 hour and 42 minutes of time I could have been re-reading the story.
The Money Shot: Not a shot but a series of them. There’s a psychic who visits them, yells at ghosts and then tells them they are safe… right before she gets eaten by the vampire.
My Favorite Line: “Where’s my wife?” “In my veins.”
Related Links:
The father from Troll
The hexed wife from Witches of Eastwick
Arlo Givens
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Wikipedia entry containing Gilman’s own words about what the story was about.
I love bad movies. LOVE them. I have several definitions of bad, but it all comes down to “bad on purpose” and “bad by accident”.
I will watch it if:
it can be described as science fiction, fantasy, or horror (Sometimes I will watch action comedy but these are less likely.)
it is described as a mystery or thriller and a serial killer is mentioned in the description.
it has less than three stars on Netflix
the cast includes Ron Perlman, Rutger Hauer, Henry Rollins, Bill Mosely, Bruce Campbell, Clancy Brown or Malcolm McDowell
Lovecraft, Cthulu or Dragons are mentioned in the title, tag line or box art.
- Midsommar - January 28, 2020
- Slender Man - March 4, 2019
- The Unnamable - March 2, 2019