Last week, I made note of upcoming horror releases (see Horror goes PG-13). I stated that I had planned to see each release. I saw two out of the five mentioned, Venom and The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I’ve decided to wait until Cry-Wolf comes to video to view it. Hellbent and The Corpse Bride are opening this upcoming weekend, September 23.

Title: Venom
Starring: Agnes Bruckner, Jonathan Jackson, Meagan Good, D. J. Cotrona, Rick Cramer
Written by: Flint Dille, John Zuur Platten, Brandon Boyce
Directed by: Jim Gillespie

Vs.

Title: The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Starring: Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Carpenter, Colm Feore
Written by: Paul Harris Boardman & Scott Derrickson
Directed by: Scott Derrickson

I could not bring myself to pay to see Cry-Wolf in the theaters after doing so with Venom. It would be cheaper to torture myself with it when it comes to video. Also, I had to use the cash I saved in not seeing it to start a fund to erase the memory of Venom from my mind. There’s no polite way to say this, so… Venom sucked – no pun intended.

I am not sure why it got an R rating, except perhaps for the gore. But considering how awful the plot was, the gore was not that great. I’ve seen some horror movies with weak plots – let’s admit it - that is most of them. But what they lack in plot they make up for with suspense or gore or humor or some mixture of those elements that at least leaves the film entertaining. Final Destination 2 is a good example of that. It has a very basic plot – cheat death’s design – that does not require intense dialogue or dramatic acting. But the death scenes were highly imaginative and well-executed – pun intended.

In Venom, the plot is that a man becomes possessed by evil and his only impulse is to kill. He reaches this state because of an accident involving a voodoo priestess and a suitcase containing snakes possessed by the souls of evil men. He is bitten by the snakes, transferring the evil into him. Then he goes after the locals and they must fight to survive.

I’ll admit that the story is presented in such manner that it seems plausible. But then they toss in some details that don’t add up. I think a lot of it comes from the taglines in the trailers – very misleading. There’s mention of 13 souls and an ancient Creole burial ground that makes it seem like this is going to be a direct rip-off of Pet Sematary (no my spell check is not broken – this is how it is spelled in the movie title).

But the burial ground is where the suitcase came from and not where countless loved ones where buried. So there is differentiation there. It’s no similar to Pet Sematary than Pet Sematary is to Poltergeist. The only link is the ancient burial ground.

And I may have missed it but I don’t think there were 13 souls mentioned in the movie, yet that number is referenced in the trailer.

Then with the killing – it seemed that perhaps he was trying to collect 13 pure souls to replace the evil ones. But that was never followed through to any purposeful conclusion.

Venom turns out to be just a typical slasher flick, but without that much slash. I found it to be very disappointing. I mean, I went in with low expectations for the plot, but had expected more gore. Bummer.

Then there’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose. This turns out not to be a horror film, but it is a good film.

The plot here follows the court case of the priest who performed an exorcism on a 19-year old female. He is being held responsible for negligent actions that lead to her death. It basically comes down to a battle of science versus faith.

The movie was great – good acting, nice cinematography and an intriguing story.

It presented information that might not be common knowledge in both realms of science and faith. But it doesn’t hold anything to be a fact, just a possibility. This point is stated in detail during the closing arguments of the case. It’s deep, deep stuff.

I think many movie-goers may be disappointed that Emily Rose is not a horror film. But I think it reaches a goal that should be the goal of any film – it had a point. The point is to bring to light ideas about faith and our existence that may not have been previously pondered. Yet, it did so in a way that was entertaining.

Sure, some movie’s only point may be to entertain. But then do that! Venom failed to achieve even that. That is why it sucks.

I have one last thing to say that relates to both of these films. Whoever is responsible for marketing certain films ought to do a better job of it. The trailer for Venom had misleading information. The trailer for Emily Rose made it seem that it was a movie within the horror genre.

Of course, these trailers may have been intentionally deceptive. I might not have gone to see Venom were it not to see what was correct – the trailers, the reviews or the synopsis on IMDB. And I very much doubt that I would have gone to see Emily Rose if I were not lead to believe that it was horror film, but rather a drama on faith versus science. I certainly would have rented it, but I would not have gone to see it in the theater.

I recommend skipping Venom and highly recommend catching The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

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