Month: June 2018

A dysfunctional family isn’t a particularly original source of horror, and Hereditary doesn’t blow the genre open with some revolutionary new take. It’s just gripping, white-knuckled, old school horror that never, over more than two hours, lets you get comfortable for long, despite the familiarity of its themes and tropes.

How do you deal with grief? It’s different for everyone, and if you’ve never experienced a major loss, you can’t really know how you’ll respond. Some people blame themselves; others lash out at loved ones; some people close up and just try to keep it together. The reactions of the Graham family–Toni Collette’s Annie, Gabriel Byrne’s Steve, Alex Wolff’s Peter, and Milly Shapiro’s Charlie–run the gamut when Annie’s mother (Peter and Charlie’s grandmother) dies. The tragedy slowly unravels them, but it’s not the only factor, and they’re not free from blame themselves.

Hereditary takes its major cues from classic horror movies like The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby. In terms of contemporaries, it has plenty in common with The Babadook. The Grahams’ house, full of dark wood paneling and darker hallways, is impeccably designed for maximum claustrophobic horror. A treehouse glimpsed from bedroom windows, lit space heater red, resembles nothing more than a smoldering furnace, summoning thoughts of cremation. Like all great horror, Hereditary is full of tiny details, foreshadowing, and hints that give it a sense of inevitability. It will benefit from multiple viewings.

That’s if you have the constitution. Hereditary isn’t a gratuitous slasher or gore fest, but it will test your mettle nevertheless. Its structure is unpredictable for a horror movie; every time you think the build-up will finally give way to all-out terror, the movie instead dips into another tense lull. There’s no slow build to a chaotic final act, because it’s all build, and it never lets up.

Hereditary can feel slow at times, but it always snaps you back to attention. At one point in my screening, the woman sitting next to me screamed, “Oh, god, no!!” at the top her lungs–and that was in the first act. When it’s over, there’s no catharsis. You won’t gratefully let out a huge breath you didn’t know you were holding. You’ll still be holding it as you leave the theater.

The horror doesn’t come from jump scares, of which there are very few. It’s more the sense of reality coming undone–of forces beyond control manipulating the characters into acts of self-destruction. Hereditary isn’t overly concerned with its own metaphors, but it does leave things open to interpretation.

Nuanced performances from the leads sell every moment of it. Wolff turns in a very different performance than in last year’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, while Milly Shapiro hides a lot of complexity behind her distinctive mask of a face. She plays a 13-year-old girl, but you’re never quite sure how much she knows–whether she’s in on the overarching plot, or simply another victim of it. Ann Dowd supports by doing what she does best–layering meaning and menace under things that sound benign on the surface, much as she does in The Handmaid’s Tale. As the bereaved family matriarch, Collette plays out all possible versions of the story at once: Is this all really happening, or is it a grief-induced breakdown? Does she love her family, or hate them, or a little bit of both?

As the supernatural scares become more prominent, those questions get harder to answer. But it’s a gradual shift. Afterward, you won’t know quite how to process what you’ve just seen. But if you love great horror, you’ll be dying to see it again.

Hereditary hits theaters June 8.

The Good	The Bad
Unpredictable pacing	Can feel slow toward the beginning
Complex lead performances	Relies on some familiar tropes
Detailed set and visual design
Consistently, shockingly scary
Good balance between plot and metaphor

In professional wrestling parlance, a “squash” is a blatantly lopsided match. Usually short in length and painful looking, a squash establishes the winner as an unbreakable monster. Often, a booker will place a title contender in multiple squash matches to demonstrate that he or she is a legitimate threat to the champion.

As for the loser of a squash match? His job is to look like a chump; the worse he looks, the better his opponent looks. And some wrestlers, like the Brooklyn Brawler, have made a career out of consistently losing and putting over their opponents.

Here are 7 of the most embarrassingly one-sided matches in WWE history. We’re not including the matches where the loser showed some resilience and grit, like John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar at Summerslam 2014. We’re also not including matches like Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus at Wrestlemania 28 or Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series 2016; these should have been competitive, back-and-forth fights, but they ended in some flukey, auspicious manner.

The matches in this gallery are the humiliating ones–the matches that already looked horrible on paper–where the loser was reduced to a joke.

1. The Rock vs. Erick Rowan

The Rock was not advertised as an in-ring performer for Wrestlemania 32. But midway through his promo at the pay-per-view, the lights went out and the Wyatt Family stalked to the ring.

The Rock has a selfish tendency to verbally insult his opponents over things that are true. This is considered poor form in professional wrestling because a promo is supposed to promote a “must-see” match. If you make your opponent look like a fool, who’s going to pay money to see him fight?

Instead of putting the Wyatt Family over as a trio of scary cult followers, Rock referred to Bray Wyatt, the “Eater of Worlds,” as the “Eater of Hot Pockets,” and he referred to Erick Rowan and Braun Strowman as “inbred Duck Dynasty b****es.”

He then proceeded to Rock Bottom and pin Rowan in six seconds–a WrestleMania record. On his podcast, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin expressed his sympathy for Rowan, who was placed in a difficult situation that gained him nothing.

“It didn’t do anything for The Rock,” said Austin. “It certainly didn’t do anything for Rowan, so what’s the deal? I don’t think the match needed to happen. It was not of consequence.”

Bob Backlund was a beloved, decorated WWE Champion, whose prime lasted from the late-’70s to the mid-’80s. In the mid-’90s, Backlund returned to the active roster, this time as a deranged heel who would snap over perceived insults and assault people.

At Survivor Series 1994, Backlund beat Bret Hart to win the WWE Championship after Bret’s brother, Owen Hart, interfered in the match and guilted their mother to throw in the towel. But make no mistake; there was no way that Backlund, at his age and with his current gimmick, looked or acted like a dominant world champion. Three days later, he faced Diesel in a title match at WWE’s spiritual home, Madison Square Garden.

Just look at the above photo. Is there any doubt of who would or should win this? Diesel kicked Backlund in the stomach, Jackknifed him, and pinned him to clinch the title. It only took eight seconds.

It was humiliating for Backlund, but the old veteran sold his beating like a professional. According to Diesel, he crawled up the aisle to the dressing room to demonstrate his pain. Diesel was very grateful for that.

3. Brock Lesnar vs. Zach Gowen

When Brock Lesnar debuted in 2002, WWE Creative booked him to be a monster, and he drew a ton of heat by destroying beloved, significantly smaller babyfaces like Jeff and Matt Hardy. But this match between Lesnar and Zach Gowen seemed extremely classless, even by early-’00s WWE standards. Not only was Gowen as skinny as a twig, but he only had one leg–the result of an amputation due to cancer.

The match, and its aftermath, was an awful bloody affair. Gowen actually won by disqualification, but that’s a laughable outcome. Lesnar “broke” Gowen’s leg, slammed him outside the ring, and even smacked him in the head with a steel chair, all while taunting Gowen’s mother sitting by ringside.

The following week, just for good measure, Lesnar grabbed Gowen by his wheelchair and threw him down a flight of stairs.

4. Big Show vs. Jamie Noble

The running joke on the Big Show is that he’s turned heel and face so many times, everyone has lost count. This particular squash of Jamie Noble was during one of Show’s heel phases in 2008.

Jamie Noble, realizing he was hopelessly outmatched, delivered a kick to Big Show’s testicles, disqualifying himself. But the beating continued; Big Show kept sinking in body blow after body blow until Noble was spitting blood onto the mat. The memorable part of the beatdown was the quiet crowd reaction; suddenly, it wasn’t fun anymore.

Show would go on to have long, fruitful career. Noble would sustain a severe back injury in a match with Sheamus in 2009, which sent him into early retirement.

5. Sable vs. Marc Mero

Marc Mero was brought into WWE as a good guy, and his wife, Sable, accompanied him to the ring. This makes little sense; why would a good guy need a sexy valet? Traditional booking dictates that the sexy valet manages the heel; she can make the women jealous, and make the men envious of Mero. Still, WWE moved ahead with the idea, and pretty soon, Sable eclipsed Mero in popularity.

Eventually, Mero turned heel; he became a jealous man who wanted Sable to cover up. And in May 1998, Sable and Mero, a man who outweighed her by over 100 pounds, squared off against each other. Technically the bell never rang, even though the referee was officiating. But the segment ended with Sable power bombing Mero before leaving the ring. Mero, to his credit, was an incredible sport behind the scenes and had no problem letting his wife be the star.

6. ECW vs. Colin Delaney

This was a sick joke, spread out over the course of weeks. Colin Delaney was a pale wisp of a man, and when he debuted on WWE’s ECW brand, he was matched up against a different monster every week or two. They would all pummel him into paste in mere minutes.

The first match was against Shelton Benjamin. The second was against Big Daddy V. Then Mark Henry. Then Kane. Then The Great Khali. And then a handicap match against John Morrison and The Miz.

It was dark, but funny. Tazz would interview Delaney before each of these confrontations and show a highlight reel of the previous weeks’ carnage. Every week, Delaney would look more and more injured; by the time he reached Morrison and Miz, he was covered and bandaged from head to toe with athletic tape.

Fortunately, Tommy Dreamer ran in to save Delaney from Morrison and Miz. It was with Dreamer that Delaney would finally win his first WWE match.

It was Wrestlemania XII, and Triple H, then known as a snotty blue blood named Hunter Hearst Helmsley, was booked to fight the Ultimate Warrior. Once seen as the heir apparent to Hulk Hogan, Warrior had been gone from the company for several years at that point, and WWE wanted to pick up right where they left off.

The entrances took longer than the match. Triple H’s only attacks were at the very beginning of the engagement; he performed a Pedigree on Warrior, and Warrior completely no-sold it; he popped right back up and started pandering to the crowd. Warrior then performed all of his signatures, one after the other, before pinning Triple H by kneeling on his chest.

In the years afterward, Triple H didn’t have many nice things to say about The Ultimate Warrior. “Probably one of the most unprofessional guys I’ve ever stepped into the ring with,” Triple H said in an interview. But time heals all wounds; it was Triple H who pushed for the Ultimate Warrior to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, only days before he died.

When it comes to figuring out how successful a movie was with audiences, the box office returns are normally a pretty good thing to research. However, once upon a time, there was another way to figure out how big of an impact your film had.

During the 1980s and 1990s, a slew of movies were adapted into cartoons to further appeal to kids. After all, if your movie becomes a cartoon, you can make more toys to sell, and more toys equals more money. And while most of the animated series made perfect sense–of course Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures made a great cartoon–others were a bit questionable. The very idea of a Rambo cartoon is puzzling.

GameSpot dug back through cartoon history to dig up the best and craziest cartoons based on old movies for your viewing pleasure. How many of these did you watch? And what did we miss when it comes to your favorites? Sound off in the comments below!

1. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1995-2000)

You might not remember it, but Ace Ventura: Pet Detective ran for three seasons over five years. After two years on CBS, it took a nearly two-year break before jumping to Nickelodeon for its final 15 episodes. Surprisingly, there was also a computer game based on the cartoon–but not on the movie.

Image: Warner Bros. TV

2. The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1991)

This is the gold standard of cartoons adapted from movies. The Real Ghostbusters–which also became Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters for a time–ran for seven seasons and turned the movies into an even more kid-friendly adventure. It also led to a massive toy line.

Image: Sony Pictures Television

3. Extreme Ghostbusters (1997)

This sequel to The Real Ghostbusters introduces a new crop of heroes, with Egon returning as the lone original. Taking advantage of the late-’90s obsession with the word “extreme,” this new Ghostbusters was anything but. However, it was a fun, short-lived way to expand the Ghostbusters animated universe.

Image: Sony Pictures Television

4. Back to the Future (1991-1992)

While Back to the Future Part III was a pretty definitive end for the franchise, that didn’t stop them from making a cartoon, following Marty, Doc, Doc’s Family, and Einstein the dog. Naturally, Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox did not return to voice their characters, though the former did appear in live-action segments at the beginning and end of each episode. What may surprise you, though, is both Mary Steenburgen (Clara Clayton Brown) and Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen) did reprise their roles for the animated series.

Image: NBCUniversal Television Distribution

5. Clerks: The Animated Series (2000)

This one is weird for a number of reasons. Based on the Kevin Smith movie, this was not a cartoon for children. It saw the return of practically the entire Clerks cast, plus the addition of Alec Baldwin as rich weirdo Leonardo Leonardo. It was also canceled after two episodes by ABC. However, six episodes were produced and eventually released on DVD.

Image: Buena Vista Television

6. Beetlejuice (1989-1991)

If you watch Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice movie, which can be pretty graphic, it may be surprising that they turned it into a children’s cartoon. That said, the animated Beetlejuice series ran for four seasons and even got its own line of toys. As you can probably guess, Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder did not return to voice their characters.

Image: Warner Bros. TV

7. The Karate Kid (1989)

Instead of a fighting tournament, The Karate Kid sends Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Miyagi on an adventure around the world to find a magical shrine, with a new sidekick joining their quest. The cartoon is such an insane departure from the movies, that it should come as no surprise it only lasted a single season. Thank goodness for Cobra Kai.

Image: Sony Pictures Television

8. The Mummy: The Animated Series (2001-2003)

While based on Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy movie, this cartoon centers on the 14-year-old son of the main characters, as their family is chased around the world by Imhotep.

Image: NBCUniversal Television Distribution

9. Dumb & Dumber (1995-1996)

Yet another Jim Carrey movie adapted into an animated series. It follows the film, continuing the adventures of Harry Dunne and Lloyd Christmas as they continued to be incredibly stupid. Now, though, they have the purple beaver as a sidekick. Why not?

Image: Warner Bros. TV

10. Jumanji (1996-1999)

Though based on the original movie, the Jumanji animated series has a lot in common with Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. In this cartoon, two kids are sucked into the game’s jungle on each turn and have to solve clues to go back home. While there, they befriend Alan Parrish–played by Robin Williams in the movie–and explore the wild with him.

Image: Sony Pictures Television

11. Police Academy: The Animated Series (1988-1989)

This is another bizarre example. The original Police Academy film was rated R by the MPAA. The sequels that followed ranged from PG-13 to PG, but basing a cartoon for children on a Rated-R movie is a risky bet–though it’s one that happened a few times in the ’80s. It worked well enough to earn the series 65 episodes and an extensive line of toys, though. It should be noted that the Zed action figure dropped his pants, if you were wondering how classy these toys were.

Image: LBS Communications

12. RoboCop: The Animated Series (1988)

RoboCop is an incredibly graphic and vulgar film, filled with violence. Yet, somehow, it got two cartoons. The first only ran for 12 episodes, but its very existence is remarkable. Naturally, it wasn’t as violent as the movie.

Image: MGM Television

13. RoboCop: Alpha Command (1998-1999)

The second RoboCop cartoon was far more successful, with a higher-quality animation style earning it 40 episodes before it was canceled.

Image: MGM Television

14. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures (1990-1991)

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure lends itself perfectly to an animated series and this cartoon is a lot of fun. However, what’s most notable about it is the cast. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter voiced their characters in the first season. The second season saw the duo replaced by two actors that were also going to star in a live-action adaptation that was canceled after seven episodes. The animated series was then dropped.

Image: MGM Television

15. The Mask Animated Series (1995-1997)

The last cartoon based on a Jim Carrey movie on this list but perhaps the craziest. This series crossed over with the Ace Ventura cartoon, creating some kind of shared Carrey universe. In the crossover, the green mask gets attached to Ace Ventura’s butt. That is not a joke.

Warner Bros. TV

16. Men in Black

Though based on the Men in Black film, the animated series takes place in an alternate timeline where Agent K doesn’t retire and have his memory wiped. He and Agent J are joined by Agent L, who was introduced at the end of the first movie, as they fought aliens invading the planet.

Image: Sony Pictures Television

17. Rambo: The Force of Freedom (1986)

As you’ve seen thus far, making cartoons out of adult movies was commonplace in the 1980s. However, even this is taking things to the extreme. First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II are intense and unsettling action movies about a Vietnam War veteran that goes on killing sprees. Yet somehow, they were adapted into an animated series that saw Rambo lead a team of heroes around the world to fight an evil organization known as S.A.V.A.G.E. And in case you’re wondering what that’s short for, it’s Specialist-Administrators of Vengeance, Anarchy, and Global Extortion.

Image: StudioCanal

18. Godzilla: The Series (1998-2000)

If the world needed anything, it’s a cartoon based on the 1998 Godzilla movie starring Matthew Broderick, right? In this animated series, the giant lizard teams with Broderick’s character and a group of environmental crusaders (and a robot, of course) in a fight against other mutant monsters. Somehow it lasted two seasons.

Image: Sony Pictures Television

19. The Oz Kids (1996-1997)

What happens when The Wizard of Oz and Muppet Babies gets mashed up? The Oz Kids! In the series, Dorothy is a mom, and it’s her two kids, along with Toto Jr., that go on adventures to Oz. Once there, they meet up with the kids of the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and more. If you’re wondering how the Scarecrow and Tin Man managed to have kids, you are not alone.

Image: Walt Disney Television

20. The Robonic Stooges (1977-1978)

Imagine a world where the Three Stooges are so popular that they get a cartoon set in the future, where they are bionic superheroes. It exists, and it’s as crazy as it sounds. Unfortunately, by the time the show was in production, the original Stooges had died, leading to them being voiced by other actors.

Image: Warner Bros. TV

21. Street Fighter (1995-1997)

This peculiar adaptation is based on a mix of the arcade game and the live-action movie. In it, Col. William F. Guile leads his team of Street Fighters around the world as they work undercover to defeat M. Bison and his criminal empire the only way they know how–through martial arts.

Image: Discotek Media

22. Alienators: Evolution Continues (2001-2002)

Evolution, starring David Duchovny, Seann William Scott, and Julianne Moore, was not a box office hit or a critical darling. And yet, somehow, it was turned into a cartoon. Of course, with a name like, Alienators: Evolution Continues, the animated series wasn’t very obvious about its status as a sequel to the film. However, in the United Kingdom, it was known as Evolution: The Animated Series.

Image: NBCUniversal Television Distribution