Do you remember Blockbuster video? Are you old enough to actually remember waiting in line for like 15 minutes on a Friday evening to rent a couple of five dollar new releases that you’d probably end up paying ten bucks in late for because you returned them a day late? Blockbuster had America by the nuts in the ’90s and early ’00s so nobody really shed any tears when they filed for bankruptcy in 2010.
They refused to evolve with the industry. They got hurt bad when Netflix and Redbox came around and now with Netflix streaming and Video OnDemand nobody ever needs to go to a Blockbuster store ever again. It’s crazy that video rental stores even exist anymore. It’d be like seeing a Homo Erectus walking around –
Blockbuster, Netflix/Redbox, streaming.
Hell, it’s been at least two years since I’ve even used a Redbox kiosk but you still see them everywhere. I actually saw one at a gas station the other day just to see what it was offering. What I saw could fall into three categories.
1: Actual new releases. Stuff that was in the theater several months ago. There were only a couple of titles in this category.
2. Popular stuff from the last decade labeled “returning to Redbox!” Just a couple of titles here, too.
3. Straight to video shit that I’ve never heard of. This was like 80% of the kiosk’s stock.
Since you’ve probably never heard of these movies either I thought I’d sum up the plot of a few of them for you based on title alone (I did this once before with Shark Night 3D. Check it out!). Here we go!
LOL
“You can change your status, but not your heart.” That was the actual tagline on the poster. Seriously.
Miley Cyrus plays Lola, a teenager that can only speak and understand textspeak due to a head injury suffered while twittering. Demi Moore plays her mother, a speech therapist who has to quit her day job to spend more time with the most challenging patient of her career, her daughter. At first, Lola doesn’t really see what the problem is since all her teenage friends can still understand her perfectly but she eventually agrees to the speech therapy sessions with her mother after she breaks down crying trying to talk to somebody over 35 years old. Emotions run high as the sessions prove difficult and at one point Lola screams “STFU! I H8 U!” and runs away. Wandering through the city she sees a mother and daughter talking to each other about Justin Bieber and she realizes how important communication is. She run back to her mother, hugging her tightly saying “I less than sign three u! I less than sign three u! I love you! I…” Her mother looks at her, tears welling in her eyes. Fade to black.
KNOCK KNOCK 2
I’m honestly surprised the tagline for this isn’t “who’s there?”.
In this sequel, the Knock Knock killer escapes from prison once again to torment victims by locking them in rooms and forcing them to knock on the door and telling every knock knock joke they know. If the deranged lunatic likes their knock knock joke, he sets them free. If not, he knocks on the door until they say “who’s there?” and the answer is a gruesome death.
COUGAR CULT
“These cougars EAT their cubs!” … literally. Like, they actually try to eat them.
Okay it’s actually impossible to make up a plot for this that’s wackier than the actual one so I’m just going to tell you what this movie’s actually about. Three women are cougars in more ways than one! They’re sort of attractive middle aged women who like to have sex with younger guys and also they can turn into literal cougars. Like, the animal. They lure three unsuspecting young guys with great abs to their mansion so they can kill and eat them to become young again.
This movie takes the sad metaphor of older women using younger men to reclaim lost youth and turns it into a sad literal thing that’s supposed to be a horror movie. Seriously. Here’s the trailer.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LKNfQmOdxM&w=560&h=315]
I think the young guys end up defeating them by hiding their control top pantyhose and telling them they dated their daughters a few years ago.