The "I Totally Saw That Coming" Blog Hop stops here!

04/24/2015 08:33

 

Thanks to my pal Deborah Nam-Krane

for setting up another fun blog hop!

 

This time, we're discussing predictability in entertainment, or 

"I saw that one coming a mile away".

 
 
The more I write, the more it seems to take to get me to be shocked at a plot twist.  I guess my "writer's brain" never actually turns off, because I'm always trying to guess what happens next, or even thinking about what I would have done differently (but that's a whole other blog post).  There are a few exceptions, which regularly have my jaw literally dropping as I watch.  Case in point, did anyone besides me totally freak when Victoria Grayson killed herself on REVENGE this week?!?  
 
 
And my favorite show, THE FOLLOWING, scares the living crap out of me on a regular basis, plus they're not afraid to kill anyone off.  (Well, mostly.  They had better be afraid to kill off Mike, because if they do, I'm not going to watch anymore.)  Anyway, to go in the opposite direction for a moment, here's one of my favorite "Oh, no they didn't!" moments:
 
 

 

You have to understand--Mike is ALWAYS the good cop.  Always the Boy Scout, the voice of reason to loose cannon Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon).  Lily Grey killed his father and sent him a video of it, so he snapped.  What was great about it, though, was we believed that at the last minute, Mike's fellow agents would be able to talk him out of killing Lily in cold blood.  We knew deep down there was no chance Mike would murder anyone.  Well, we thought wrong, and that's what makes THE FOLLOWING so great.

 

Now--on to the not so great.  Today I'm going to gripe about a movie called THE CALLING.  It was so bad, I'm pretty sure it was one of those straight-to-video, let's-not-even-bother-with-a-theatrical-release throwaways.  It shouldn't have been.  It starred Susan Sarandon, Donald Sutherland, and Topher Grace, which should have been a good line-up, but their characters were so boring, you honestly didn't care whether they lived or died.  The real problem though, was that they basically handed us the killer in the first half hour, and he wasn't scary, smart, or calculating.  They might as well have put a sign on his forehead that said, "Hey, I'm the killer!"  So, first off, we know who the bad guy is--saw that one coming.

 

Aw, come on!  Seriously?  They even put the killer on the movie poster.

It's like they weren't even trying.

 

And, we knew that there was going to be some kind of twist with Donald Sutherland's character, too, because who pays Kiefer's dad to come in and only give a five-minute performance as a secondary character?  Doesn't happen.  So, saw that one coming, too.  Anyway, in the end, all the loser-y sheriff Susan Sarandon has to do is tell the killer she doesn't want to die, and he's like, "Oh, well, then I guess I won't kill you".  I won't bore you with the details of the movie, but it was well-explained that the killer wouldn't kill anyone who didn't already want to die (like the sick, elderly, and terminal), so you knew that in the "big finish", if you could call it that, if Susan even fought back a little, she was in the clear.  Again, saw that coming, as well.  So, unless you're having a problem with insomnia, don't bother watching THE CALLING.  

 

Join Jami Deise on April 28th on her blog for the next "I Totally Saw That One Coming"!