Director – Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child’s Play)
Starring – Michael Madsen (The Hateful Eight, Species), Luke MacFarlane (Supergirl, The Night Shift), and Jennifer Titus (Zoombies, Cheerleader Massacre 2)
Release Date – 2017
Rating – 2/5
Tagline – “Child’s play no longer”
When I was in elementary school I was obsessed with 80s and early 90s vampire flicks. This was around 1994 and I rented the Fangoria produced Children of the Night. This opened a can of worms and I couldn’t stop renting vampire movies. One of these films that I rented and it stuck with me is the classic Tom Holland film Fright Night. This is a classic that I often recommend new fans of the genre. The characters are beautifully written and the scenery and sets or unforgettable.
I tried to follow Holland’s career but most of his follow up films are movies I could not really get into. His other known hit is Child’s Play which is another one I don’t really care for. A few weeks ago I was asked to review a film Holland finished in 2017 but wasn’t released until this week. Rock, Paper, Scissors originally had the title Rock, Paper, Dead but that title was scrapped along with some seriously awesome artwork for the more generic title and artwork which is pictured above.
**Spoiler Alert**The film follows Peter (Macfarlene) who is arrested for killing and torturing young women. He is locked away in an asylum but after years of treatment he is released. The cop that arrested him (Michael Madsen) is now retired and spends his free time following Peter to ensure other innocent women does not fall victim to him. Peter tries to live a secluded life but the sister to one of his victims moves in beside him after spending years training to get revenge on him and gets close with him posing as an author writing a book about Peter and the murders. Peter tries to keep his cool but does snap but she is ready and soon we realize that the trauma she suffered from losing her sister has pushed her over the edge of madness as well.**Spoiler Alert**
The artwork for the film didn’t get me excited to see this one but the images on the back of the DVD made me think this was going to be a gruesome horror affair which is something that Holland is not known for. His films are very much horror related but they are rarely gruesome or brutal. Sadly, this film was not as brutal as I thought it was going to be.
The acting in this one is extremely strange. Madsen plays the same character he always plays. He’s so accustomed at playing the same character over and over that he doesn’t act anymore. He shows up and says his lines before moving on. The rest of the cast feels like a soap opera with extremely loud dialogue, distant emotions, and confused looks by the entire cast. MacFarlene and Titus just seem so out of place in their roles. I’m sure they both are amazing actors but their roles are almost laughable. Their reactions to the scene are so dry or forced that its extremely difficult to keep a straight face.
Also, the age casting is so fucked up that I was laughing at the locker scene. You have some drastically older women playing 16 year old cheerleaders. They are noticeably older which is another reason I was laughing at the casting on this film. It’s like the casting director owed someone a favor or just didn’t give a fuck.
The story for this one was painfully clichéd especially if you have watched any of the extreme horror films in the last ten years. We follow someone who was sexually abused growing up and now torture and kill women. Nothing new there at all except Holland removed the extreme from the equation and we are left with a Wal-Mart horror film with some blood. The movie has a snails pace and a few twists that you can see coming from a mile away.
Finally, we do get a few on screen kills that don’t shy away from the blood. We get buckets of the red stuff in the last portion of the film with some solid practical effects but the kills are ones we have seen hundreds of times now with nothing to help the viewer remember them. Overall, Rock, Paper, Scissors is a clichéd horror film that offers very little for the viewer. The acting is strange, the story is predictable and unoriginal, and the kills are forgettable. Fans of Holland may want to check it out but this paint by numbers horror film is one I will not be revisiting.
