We rented a movie last night—recommendation of my son's friend. And I learned a few things.
Lesson #1: NEVER take the recommendation of an eleven year old boy if you don't know him well enough to make some sort of assessment on his tastes. My own 11 year old likes a number of movies I don't most involving Adam Sandler or Will Farrell (though Farrell has a handful of cute ones too). But for the most part his tastes aren't too bad. Action he likes, usually I like. So I completely missed the alarm bells on an eleven year old (not even MY eleven year old) recommending a horror movie.
Ack!
The recommendation was called Dark Asylum and I have NEVER seen such a poorly acted film. The director and producer also need sound spankings. It was just SO BAD. It was so bad my children and I voted unanimously after 30 minutes to take it out and watch something else. Now THAT is bad!
BUT, there was also a Writer's Lesson
As I watched, I could SEE that the underlying story wasn't all that bad. It wasn't based on a book, at least that I can tell, but I think as a book it might have been okay. The screenplay had some failings, but the biggest problems were REALLY bad acting, and screen directions.
What I took away from this is, if you write something that may have movie appeal, keep SOME level of control on the outcome (or insist they at least change the name) so that if it stinks THIS BAD that it doesn't come back to bite you.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
2 comments:
I'd take the money if they just changed the name from the book's title. :)
Sounds like it was a real stinker.
Elizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder
Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen
Honestly, I probably would too, but as I watched, it just seemed such a painful ending to a book someone had spent so long getting just right... to have it mangled like that... fortunately, in this case, the same guy wrote and directed, so he only had himself to blame...
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