Faces in the Crowd (2011) / Texas Killing Fields (2011)

Faces in the Crowd (2011)

Starring: Milla Jovovich and Julian McMahon.

In the 2011 film Faces in the Crowd, Milla Jovovich plays a really hot elementary school teacher by the name of Anna, who becomes the newest obsession of a crazed maniac after she accidentally stumbles upon him raping a dead woman in a back alleyway during a two-in-the-morning venture home from a girl's night out where her two seemingly stupider friends were smart enough to catch a Taxi or a ride to the Crab Shack.

Her friends may be dumb as all hell, and not to mention craving-that-cock slutty too, but at least they have enough sense not to walk home through dangerous streets (and yet, not sober enough to persuade their good friend not to do so) with no lights, in the middle of the night, and with a necro-rapist on the loose. But of course the hottest chick out of the crowd decides to go for a stroll and just happens to come across our mysterious killer, fucking the freshly slashed corpse of a cute young lady while he cries like a little bitch!

If that last statement starts to chill you after a couple of moment's consideration, don't be alarmed. The feeling of intense and crushing sexual terror at the concept indicates only that you are still insane.

Then her cellphone goes off! Dur. The chase gives way, he slices her up a bit and she stumbles backwards over the peer, smashing the back of her head on some sort of plank before going blank in the water and awakening in the hospital. After she awakens she can't recognize anyone's face... but it's not just that, the faces of everyone she knows change every time she looks away from them. So naturally she freaks out on everyone who's ever loved her and fucks the first guy who's face doesn't change every time she sees him. Or does it?! 

Things I liked: First off, Milla Jovovich. She's the only reason this movie is even worth watching. I liked the concept of the film, how they used different actors for the husband each time she woke up (weird shit like that I always get a kick out of), and the tone of the film was pretty good.

Things I didn't: This movie is basically a TV Crime drama show extended cut that gets slower as it goes along, and in the end the killer reveal is pretty weak. This isn't anything special aside from some of the cool moments and interesting thoughts behind them. It doesn't even seem that the producers of this film cared too much about anything judging by the two different posters for the film (one of them has a photo of Milla from Resident Evil superimposed over a broken mirror). There also seemed to be quite a few instances of shoddy CGI scattered about.

Texas Killing Fields (2011)

Starring: Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chloë Grace Moretz and Corie Berkemeyer.

Two homicide detectives and a NYC cop in a not so lovely triangle are teamed up to find out just who has been murdering all the cute young ladies in some rundown shithole of a town. Following their instincts and clues, they're led all over the damn place and do a pretty damn good job of getting nowhere fast while more and more dead girl bodies keep piling up in the swamp.

Is there a serial killer on the loose? Or does this all have to do with a small town prostitution ring run by a family of black folk who are led (by choice?) by a heavily tattooed, swastika-on-the-neck sporting white guy who's gangster as fuck? Perhaps a more important question, you'll ask yourself while watching this movie, is 'why should I even care?' Is it because a young girl with frizzy hair and an addiction to milk of magnesia (she even drinks it out of brown paper bags like it's Tenafly Viper or some shit) somehow gets caught in the crossfire of these violent, sexually addicted fiends!? Well, I guess that's a good enough reason if any.

Things I liked: I rented this because basically I've liked everything Jeffrey Dean Morgan has done, I mean, the dude is just awesomeness personified. As an added bonus, Moretz plays the frazzled haired girl who for whatever reason (maybe she's the last cherry in the backwoods - but I doubt it by the looks of things, and the way she maintains distance from certain men in the film while delivering freakishly awkward stares) becomes the object of play here.

Jason Clarke (who also played the private investigator in Trust_) is in this as the über-tattooed thug and child abductor named Rule. His character in this movie is perhaps the most entertaining aspect out of everything presented here, not that there's all that much to compete with. But anytime this guy is onscreen the movie felt entertaining, and he shows up so periodically that every time I felt like taking the disc out of the player I ended up not doing so.

The Meh! Factor: This is a pretty forgettable crime drama that plays out (much like the film above) like a TV cop show, only there's not a drop of humor, deadpan or otherwise to be had here. It's also very disjointed! This shit is all over the place, and a lot of the time it bounces from scene to scene and location to location without a clarification of what's going on or what the motivation is. The script isn't all too great and most of the acting is stilted and unnatural. Aside from Jason Clarke, and somewhat from Dean Morgan (even though he hams it up pretty good here) and Berkemeyer, it really seems as if nobody was trying all too hard to keep this movie from just feeling dull and lifeless. It's a pretty mundane affair, and the color scheme to the whole film doesn't help any either. At least the girl in this first screenshot gives it her all with a stunningly accurate Sam Worthington impression: