Meet the Blacks (2016) 1h 34m

Is modern horror white centric?  This is the question that I've come to ask myself.  Now that you're thinking about that question I'm sure Get Out has come to mind but there really hasn't been another film that pops up to fill that number two spot.  The reason I even raise this question is because while I understood the jokes and references, I felt as though I was on the outside looking in with this watch.  This wasn't made for me.  Personally I mean.  I'm not speaking for a group of anyone as I can't represent that.  Even as a horror fan with this blog I can't speak for all horror fans.  Yet I just felt a disconnect.  I'm probably rambling into oblivion with an absence of a point, but I had that step back moment and this is now clawing at my skull.

If you took The Purge films, mixed in some Beverly Hillbillies, and made them into an "urban" horror-comedy then you'd have Meet the Blacks.  Carl Black takes a stash of weed and money from a dealer's house after that dealer goes to jail.  He moves his entire family from Chicago to Beverly Hills to live a rich life.  Carl assumes that the purge (it's literally called "the purge" in this movie) won't effect them in their rich neighborhood.  His presumption is wrong and everyone from the drug dealer he stole from, to racist neighbors, black klansman, the Visa company, etc. come after him.  It's literally a revolving door of "Who are you?" "You owe me money for xxxx" or "I don't like black people."

As I mentioned, I was on the outside looking in here.  The regular jokes were not as funny to me as the obvious ad lib jokes were.  The presence of some major stars like Paul Mooney, Charlie Murphy (RIP), and Mike Tyson kept it interesting but some duds like George Lopez (as President El Bama) and Perez Hilton (as the Visa man) really took away from what humor I did like.  They would also set up running gags which got stale quickly.  How many times are you going to kill someone and then forget it's purge night and freak out about the cops?  Apparently three or four times if my count is correct.

This isn't really a bad film.  The acting was decent, even from the kids, and the Rza did the score so you can't go wrong there.  It's also not that great.  I can say I felt disconnected from it as much as I want but I can tell when something is still good or bad and this was just short of middle of the road.

I give Meet the Blacks 1 copy of Friday out of 5:

Most Likely to Die (2015) 1h 30m

I ended up going to see Wonder Woman before coming home and watching this.  That was a mistake.  Not seeing Wonder Woman.  That movie was awesome. But you can't have a steak and then be served bologna and expect it to be the same.

Most Likely to Die is a C-grade movie with D-list actors.  Seriously, Jake Busey?  Perez Hilton?  Get the fuck out with this shit.  The plot is that a bunch of old friends get together for their own celebration before their 10-year reunion.  I don't know what school they went to because the yearbook had all of the seniors listed as a "most likely too..."  We didn't have that.  I also went to a school in the fucking mountains.  I still don't know what kind of school they went to... but I digress... though not really.

Everyone starts dying based on what their "most likely" thing was.  Apparently everyone was a scumbag rich kid asshole and then continued to not quite measure up as an adult.  A murderer dressed in a cap and gown with a paper maché mask is your killer.  The only good thing about this guy is that the mortar board had some razors along the edge which made it like Oddjob's hat.  Between a sweet headbutt/throat slash and a Kung Lao fatality, that cap was the best thing in this film.  The killer was the class clown guy but more out of some psychotic personal guilt thing in relation to the person they bullied all through school.  Then after he's dead a mysterious person dressed in the same outfit steps up and takes the mask from joker's corpse and puts it on.

I hope there isn't a fucking sequel to this.  I would rather watch the Chipmunk movie sequels than another one of these films.  At least those have Jason Lee in them.  Fuckin' Jake Busey... all he does is creep around for like 10 minutes and then gets strangled!

I give Most Likely to Die 1 graduation cap out of 5 only because of the sweet graduation cap kills:

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