The blob itself didn't interest me. It's one thing to have the big bad play the unknown field and only get glimpses of it in the dark, but for it to be this gooey gelatinous mass of some germ was just too strange for me to buy into. Sure, it did some gross, gory things, but typically to characters I wasn't invested in, and super gory deaths just don't have the same affect for me that something more emotional would. As I've said before, if gore serves a purpose, then that's cool, but gore and gore again just for the sake of itself desensitizes me to the point where I lose interest in the whole work.
One aspect I did enjoy was Meg's character. She wanted to know what the hell happened to her date and she took matters into her own hands, rather than taking her mother's sleeping pills and drifting into ignorant oblivion. Meg was written quite well and I always appreciate when a female character takes action in a horror movie and isn't just there for to have sex with main male hero, get naked, and die all bloody. So kudos to the writers. I liked Flagg's character as well. He had the bad-boy-turned-hero-for-a-pretty-girl cliche going on, but I thought it worked fine
The concept of the blob being created by mankind for the sake of germ warfare was kind of interesting, but the way it was presented killed the potential it had. It was just so over-the-top to have these "evil" men in white suits show up and have a conversation among themselves (for the sake of Flagg to overhear them) about their magnificent plans to use the germ as a military weapon and oh yeah, the locals are expendable, sure that's no big deal to the government (then again, who knows?). So if the dramatics of the situation had been toned down and more subtle, then I think the creepy factor could have existed.
The ending with the crazy priest and his blob in a jar was predictable, but hey those things often happen in horror movies (especially from the 80s), so it wasn't terrible. Is there even a sequel to this version of The Blob? I don't think I will be seeing it if so...
Yeah that exposition-by-dialogue scene where Flagg is eavesdropping killed me. And if I recall correctly (it's been decades since I'd seen it) I think in the original there was no men in suits conspiracy. It was just a blob that dropped to Earth.
ReplyDeleteI think you pegged it perfectly when you labeled this dark comedy. And for that reason alone I cut this movie a lot of slack. There is a point where I stop expecting anything normal in a movie. So by the time I got to the dramatic let it kill everyone exposition scene I was already laughing. I mean they're talking about containing something and they don't even know what its capable of doing. How are they possibly going to contain it? It's ludicrous. So I just laughed it off. In fact I can't think of a single scene in this movie were I felt even a shred of seriousness.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I took serious issue with the bad guys who decided all townspeople were expendable. I think this was a good idea in theory. We've got the Blob, which has no humanity to relate to or appreciate. It's nothing more than a killer, inanimate object that happens to have a directive about hunting and killing humans. Because of this, a human bad guy is actually a great idea, but it was executed purely. Those men were laughably one-dimensional.
ReplyDelete