The things I do for you people. After a good seven and a half hours of previews -- and the craptastic preview for Lost Souls not only sucked the soul right out of my body but took up a good five of those hours -- we finally begin our feature presentation. Lightning. Droplets on a window. Hanging figurines. Ominous strings. Ominous oscillating fan from Restoration Hardware. OH MY GOD, IT'S A PASSPORT! And a plane ticket. More ominous strings. More ominous oscillating fan. Air France plane tickets. A hand takes a France travel book off a bookshelf, and Death of a Salesman tips over. DEATH! OMIGOD! Oh, ominous fan, stop thine oscillating, for thou scarest me, boding as thou art a skillet in my future! Pictures of death from the travel book. Fan. Strings. Fan. More fan. That fan had better kill somebody in this movie or I'll have to ask for a refund. Pages turning. Death pages, DEATH FAN! The pages flip open and rest on a page with "THIS IS THE END" scrawled on it in red; fade out so that only the writing remains. Oh, I am so scared…scared that it's a Jim Morrison bio-pic. Mom comes in to introduce us to Alex, the superstitious main character. Mom blah nag blah. A giant Pecker poster hanging on the wall signifies how much, and what, this movie sucks. Dad comes in to blah suitcase blah. Alex warns Mom away from tearing the old adhesive tag off the suitcase, because it's good luck, because the last plane didn't crash, because blah. We all saw the trailers. Just get on the damn plane already so that you can get off and start cheating death. Or, you know, whatever. Mom calls that a "nutball idea" and tears off the tag in helpful slo-mo. Off-screen, a PA holds up The Cue Card Of Doomsaying Exposition, and Dad hits his mark: "Seventeen, on the loose, senior trip with your friends in Paris, ten days in the springtime. Live it up, Alex -- you got your whole life ahead of you." Dad also gives this line the weirdest reading ever. No wonder he does shite like Secret Cutting. Alex stares at him all "do you know WHAT YOU JUST SAID?" After a month of Sundays, the director yells, "Cut!" Nighttime. Ominous crickets. Ominous breeze. Faint sounds of a girl calling, "Alex?" Ominous fan is, ominously, silent. Alex tosses and turns ominously. Dumb clock/departure board melt to the airport. The school's bus is unloading at the curb, and here's Kerr "Scared Straight" Smith with a bitty little blonde girl who belongs in a Candies ad. They lug their bags. Clowning around with the asshole guy from American Pie, known as "Hitchcock" in this movie. Hmmm. "Hitchcock." You know, as hard as I try, I just don't get that. ["Actually, a bunch of the characters' names are really transparent 'homages' to greater personages in horror films. One character's 'Tod,' another's last name is 'Browning,' after Freaks director Tod Browning. There's a Chaney (after Lon) and a Murnau (after F.W.), a Waggner (after B-movie director George), a Lewton (after fellow B-movie director Val), and, just in case you still didn't get it, one dude's actually called Bludworth. Subtlety, thy name is not James Wong, nor Glen Morgan, nor Jeffrey Reddick. And I promise you that, in sixty years, no one will be naming any of their B-movie characters after any of your asses." -- Wing Chun]
Quick shot of Ali "The Cream Doesn't Always Rise To The Top" Larter, now kitted out in brown hair and frumpy bangs so we know she's alternative or unpopular or something. Oh, who cares. Keep panning along to Alex and his scrawny buddy, who looks like a cross between Tim Roth and Christian Bale and who's macking on some supposedly-foxy-but-not-all-that betties. Rothbale's dad pops up to ask if Rothbale and his brother -- played by Brendan Fehr, and the casting director needs to get off the rock because these two look nothing alike -- if they've got everything. The French teacher blah blah blah. Mr. Rothbale gives Brendan money blah. Harrison Ford comes running up to Brendan Fehr screaming about how he trademarked that haircut blah. On the escalator inside, a bit of sibling blah blah with Rothbale and Brendan. Milling about. French teacher blah blah Pepe le Blah. Kerr wises off. Candies hits his well-defined pec. A Hare Krishna type hands Alex a flyer, saying, "Death is not the end." But oh how I long for it, only five minutes into the film. A sassy teacher tells him, "It will be for you if you harass my students," and sneers at the Hare Krishna type while herding Alex away. Checking in, Alex gets distracted by the bird-wing-flapping-esque clicking of the departures board. He stares at it, transfixed. Back-and-forth with the ticket agent. Close-up of the adhesive tag as the agent affixes it to his bag. Whatever. Get on the damn plane, people. The ticket agent says that his departure time, 9:25, is the same as his birthday, September 25th. Alex looks horrified. Hey…departure time? Does that…mean something? Nah, probably not. Alex stares at the word "TERMINAL" on the departures board. Hmmm. Do I get that? Do I? No, I don't think I do. Yet. Ow. Ow. The students mill around the gate in their Abercrombie & Feeyotch clothing. Hitchcock dorks out. Kerr shoves him. Rothbale and Brendan shove each other; Sassy Teacher separates them. Candies mounts Kerr in her skin-tight white capris and ringletty hair with the bitty little pink butterfly clips. Brown Ali sits down but drops her book, and Alex picks it up for her; when she opens it, it's to a photo of Princess Diana's death car. Brown Ali glares at Alex. Yeah, way to kill Princess Di, Alex. The world mourns, Alex! MOURNS. Alex goes to look at their plane, parked outside, and a ghostly reflection of him floats near it in the window. Rothbale comes up to share his non-mack non-daddy theory about taking a crap before boarding the plane, and how they don't want to take a crap on the plane and then come out of the bathroom to find the two betties from earlier waiting in line and knowing that they took a crap. Hey, Rothbale? You're, like, five foot three and your hair is bigger than your dick. The knowledge that you took a crap is not going to make the difference here. Also, cram it.
Cut to ceiling-cam shot of Alex and Rothbale, crapping. Rothbale reads a magazine; Alex fidgets. Alex hears a John Denver song on the PA system. "Died in a plane crash," he mutters. The boarding call breaks in for the flight to Paris. Back at the gate, Sassy Teacher wonders if anyone's seen Hitchcock. Alex is having a moment as the gate agent tears his ticket; Rothbale shoves him forward. Down the jetway they go -- Alex is having a wiggins, Rothbale is leering at the betties' asses as they proceed down the jetway ahead of him, and Brendan is just clomping along with his mouth hanging open. Alex looks out the little window. Lightning. Rain droplets. Ominous strings, joined by ominous brass. Rothbale shoves him again, like, simmer down, Rothbale, it's a seven-hour flight. Alex reads my mind and shoves the scrawn right back. Brendan mouth-breathes at them. Alex notices that the door of the plane is banged up. Alex looks down at the runway through the space between the jetway and the door. A baby starts screaming from the first-class section; it's obviously Rex the Wonder Preemie, as we'll soon see. Brendan calls the howling baby "a good sign," adding that "you'd have to be a fucked-up God to take down this plane." Entering coach, they see an ALS sufferer in the first row, prompting Brendan to mutter, "A really fucked-up God." How do I know the guy has ALS? Because, according to Wing Chun, the IMDb credits him as "Lou Gehrig's Man." Oy. Everyone moves to their seats. Alex is freaking for real now, even though he could use his lips as a flotation device in the event of a water landing. Blather between Rothbale and the betties and whether they can trade seats with him to sit to each other; he lies that he can't trade because he has a UTI. They ask Alex instead; Rothbale gestures at him to say no so that they can each sit with a betty (I guess -- whatever, who cares), but he says yes. Alex moves into his seat to Rothbale, wondering if Rothbale really thought he could "titty-fuck" one of the betties "over Greenland." Thanks for that, Lippy the Pinhead. The tray table falls open, and when Alex tries to put it back up, the little widget that holds it in place comes off in his hand, so he rings the stewardess bell. Rothbale bitches. Hitchcock gets on the plane late. Alex stares all intensely at the emergency procedures card. The flight attendants prepare for departure. Rain streaks Alex's window. He stares at the wing. Then a creature jumps up to his window, and he starts screaming and babbling and a little kid takes his picture with her -- oh, wrong movie. Alex just hyperventilates. The plane taxis. Rain streaks. French teacher blah blah blah poisson-cakes. The students cheer. Hitchcock eats pretzel knobs. The plane lifts, with much ominous rattling and clanking, and everyone looks tense and pale, and then the plane settles and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
Then there's a shearing sound and the lights blink on and off. Clanking. Rattling. The plane pitches and rolls. Hitchcock's pretzel knobs fall into the aisle. Everyone's screaming and clutching at each other. The oxygen masks drop down. More screaming. Instrument panels falling off. Sparks. Fuselage coming off; students getting sucked out of the plane. The pretzel knobs getting sucked out of the plane. Deceleration towards the ground. A fireball cooks Alex. Then Alex awakens to find the betties asking him again if they can trade seats with him so they can sit to each other. Oooh, very sneaky. If I hadn't seen the previews and known that Alex lived, anyway. Which I had. And did. Alex, gasping for air (a piece of the scenery must have gotten caught in his throat), scrambles over them and into his seat to Rothbale, and he pulls on the tray table doodad and it comes off. He stands there, staring at it and huffing, and Kerr asks what's his problem, and the French teacher gets in on the act, as well as a dork-ass male flight attendant who looks like Agent Smith from The Matrix but with longer hair, and Alex wigs and shrieks that "the fucking plane's gonna explode," and Kerr tells him to shut up, and so does Candies, and Rothbale tells him to chill, and Alex is yelling that it's not a joke and blah bling blah so Kerr gets up and punches him in the face, and someone else squalls, "Everybody in the aisles, off the plane!" In a nutshell, Alex, Kerr, Candies, Hitchcock (arriving late again), and Sassy Teacher all get booted off the plane, along with the French teacher and Rothbale, whom Brendan sends after them to make sure Alex is okay. Brown Ali stares after Alex, then grabs her stuff and follows them too. The brawl spills out of the jetway. The captain yells that none of them can get back on the plane. Sassy begs him to reconsider; she has forty students on the plane and both chaperones out in the waiting area. The captain relents, but only one of the teachers can get back on. Sassy talks the French teacher into going ahead of her, since he, uh, knows French. Hitchcock begs to be let on: "But I didn't fight with anyone!" No dice. Kerr, wearing a tight white t-shirt, watches the plane back away from the gate and broods. Candies nestles against him. Fuck off, Candies. Sassy asks Alex what happened. Alex says he saw everything, it felt real, blah. Kerr yells at him. Rothbale and Sassy wax skeptical. Kerr mocks Alex. Alex lunges at Kerr. They tussle. The cops come over. Hitchcock watches the plane and mumbles, "There they go, here we stay." Thanks, Hitchcock, but I think we get it. A wide-angle shot of Alex and Kerr on the floor, the cops holding them down, and then a giant fireball blossoms on the left-hand side of the screen. The windows shatter. Sirens immediately start up (yeah, right). Kerr glares at Alex. Alex…is sweaty and has blubbery, unattractive lips. Sassy starts to cry. Candies pants because her capris don't fit correctly and she can't breathe. Brown Ali shows her top teeth to indicate "horrified."
A clock, ticking. The survivors, waiting. The others, glaring all weirded-out at Alex. Alex didn't "cause this." Sassy asks, "Are there any survivors?" How should Alex know? "He's not a witch," Brown Ali sulks at Sassy. An NTSB guy comes in and makes with the vague. Then the FBI guys -- one of whom is one of Gerard's henchpeople from the film version of The Fugitive -- step forward to announce that they need to question the survivors. Henchguy questions Alex. Does he take drugs? No. He saw it; he saw it happen. Henchguy smells a rat. Rothbale says Brendan told him to check on Alex. It dawns on him that Brendan is now fish food. Sassy feels guilty. She cries. Her make-up creases in her wrinkles. Brown Ali isn't friends with the others, but she saw and heard Alex. She whispers to denote intensity: "I believed him." The relatives come. Hugging. Weeping. Rothbale's parents glare at Alex's parents. Brown Ali's parents don't show. I cry one tiny, perfect tear for Brown Ali. The car. Alex broods. We can tell, because he's squinting. Brown Ali whisperily thanks the Alexes for the ride. She gets out and stands in the rain for a moment, watching the car drive away. Poor sad Brown Ali. Then she sloshes up the driveway. Alex comes back into his bedroom. He cries. Mom hugs him. Mom and Dad sleep on the couch. Alex blearily watches reports of the crash on TV. His blubbery red lips tremble. Lightning makes him twitch. He whimpers and twitches over to the window to look out into the back yard. Lightning. Ominous clarinet. More lightning. The memorial service. Thirty-nine days after thirty-nine people died, blah blah bling. Reading from Ecclesiastes. The families glare at one another. Alex rudely turns to stare at each one of his fellow survivors; they all pout back at him. Everyone gets up to put flowers on the new statue dedicated to the students who died -- yeah, right, they got that cast in bronze in a month's time. Whatever. Sassy sobs all shuddery. Kerr says he doesn't owe Alex anything; then he and his fugly silver chain get up in Alex's lips, grunting something about living life to its fullest. Shut up, Kerr. Kerr menaces Alex some more. Candies breaks it up. "I'm never gonna die," Kerr says, and stomps off. Hitchcock comes up to Alex and asks if he can tell the future for him. Alex tells him to fuck off. When Alex approaches Sassy, she weeps that he scares the hell out of her and runs away. Shut up, Sassy. Then Alex and Rothbale have a moment. They miss each other. Rothbale's dad will get over it, and then they'll hang out. Brown Ali comes up and thanks Alex for letting her live or whatever. They get their picture taken. Brown Ali gives Alex her flower. No, not that flower, silly. Alex's lips redden.
Rothbale reads his remarks. He's a terrible public speaker. He rambles on about not forecasting the hour of death. As he speaks, we cut to Rothbale in the bathroom, attending to some personal grooming. Ominous crickets. Ominous breeze. Ominous taking of ominous crap. Water drips from a joint in the toilet plumbing. Ominous crap. Ominous strings. Alex's house. Ominous fan. Alex has gotten a bunch of air-disasters books from the library. He's doing research. A model plane hangs from the ceiling. His blubbery lips blubber broodsomely. Alex digs a Penthouse out of a drawer to distract himself. Shout-out? Rothbale decides to shave. He whacks at his neck with a dry razor -- the hell? -- and cuts himself as blue toilet water creeps towards his feet. Shave. Creep. Rothbale decides to clip his nose hairs. Creep. Nostril-cam. Creep. He plugs in the boom box. John Denver. He yanks the plug out. Creep. Alex hears rustling. An owl lands on his windowsill. He throws the porno mag at the window to drive the owl away, and the mag gets chopped up in the ominous fan, and a scrap of paper lands on his leg that reads "Tod" (that's Rothbale's real name). Oooh, scary. So scary, in fact, that I need cookies. Rothbale gets strangled by a lingerie line hanging in the bathtub while his father slumbers downstairs. I would explain how, but I don't care, and believe me when I tell you, it's not worth the trouble it would take to type it out. Kicking. Gargling. Eyeball reddening. Can't…reach…nose hair…scissors. Finally, he dies. Sad crickets of death. The creeping blue water retreats; its work here is done. Take me with you, creeping blue water! Alex runs over to Rothbale's house and finds the paramedics there. The FBI's there too. Henchguy glares at him. From behind a tree, Brown Ali copies the pout her acting coach uses to look worried and hisses, "Alex, get outta here." Mr. Rothbale blames Alex for Rothbale's "suicide." Alex blubbers. Mrs. Rothbale sobs unconvincingly. Henchguy nods judgmentally. Okay, does everyone get what's happening here? Death wants them all? Got it? Alex goes over to Brown Ali's house the day. A scary green leaf falls in his path as he reaches her garage; he stops short, and ominous strings signal the leaf's…something. I don't know what they signal. It's a fucking leaf, people. It's not even a dead leaf. Brown Ali pauses in her metalworking -- no, seriously. 'Cause, you know, she's artsy and whatnot, as you can tell from the brown hair and black attire -- to deliver a short monologue on the seasons and how "everything's always in transition." Alex wants to know why she went over to Rothbale Manor last night. She talks about the FBI investigating them and they have suspicions and blah blah. Alex asks again, "Why were you there last night?" Brown Ali shows him the metal "portrait" she's made of him and yammers on about how the sculpture doesn't know why or what it is -- "it's reluctant to take form." She says something about "incomprehensible attraction," and then says all accusatorily that in four years, she and Alex never said one word to each other, but on the plane, she felt what he felt; she didn't know where it was coming from until he started freaking out. "I didn't see what you saw," she says, going all whispery, "but I. Felt. It." Alex tries to keep his lips from jutting out quite so far. Brown Ali says she knows that something from that day "is still with" him. She knows because she can "still feel" him. They vibe at each other. Brown Ali says that's why she went to Rothbale Manor. Alex walks away, saying he's never dealt with death before. He feels like it's all around them. What if Rothbale's just the first of the survivors to go? If only he could see Rothbale one more time, he'd know. "Then let's go see him," Brown Ali says, furrowing her eyebrows in an approximation of "naughty."
So they break into the funeral parlor via a skylight. No, they really do. Brown Ali says it gives her a rush. Please -- nothing in this movie could give anyone a rush. They see Rothbale's corpse, all made up for the viewing. An unfunny Michael Jackson comment is made. Then Rothbale's arm twitches, and Brown Ali and Alex jump, and the mortician appears to deliver a speech on death and interfering with death's plan and "in death, there are no accidents, no coincidences, no missteps and no mistakes," and he blathers on and on and on instead of just calling the cops on Brown Ali and Alex's asses. ["And the mortician is played by the same dude who played Candyman!" -- Wing Chun] ["Mmm. Candy." -- Sars] Alex wants to know more about the design and asks if they can cheat death. The mortician says that they've already cheated death; now death has a new design for all of them. And for me. Specifically, boredom so severe as to cause a shutdown of major bodily functions. The mortician finishes his speech with, "And you don't even want to fuck with that mack daddy," and yanks some tool out of Rothbale's neck. Alex and Brown Ali scramble out. The mortician flosses bits of scenery out of his teeth. At coffee the day, Alex and Brown Ali discuss the design. Alex shows Brown Ali the scrap of paper with "Tod" on it and says it's a sign. Brown Ali calls bullshit. Alex sees a bus passing in a shop window, but it's only a reflection -- when he turns around, no bus. Brown Ali blathers on. Alex keeps yammering on about death and how they messed up the design and blah blah blah. Kerr spots the two of them as he drives past in his meathead muscle car, sets his jaw, and pulls an illegal U-turn, accidentally hitting Hitchcock, who falls off his bike but doesn't die. Candies bitches at Kerr. Kerr gets out and stomps over to Alex and Brown Ali and says something about a "reunion," and Sassy comes out of the coffee shop and Kerr leers at her, and Alex gets up and says they all have to talk about what he's discovered about the design, and Kerr blames Alex for the fact that Sassy's moving out of town. Sassy looks fragile. Kerr yells some more. Alex blathers some more. Candies bitches at Kerr some more: "They died, and we lived! Get over it!" She's moving on, and if he wants to waste his life beating on Alex, then he can "drop fucking dead." She's mid-stomp out of there when a bus hits her, spattering the others with blood. Kerr, kitted out in swoosh-wear and that dope-rope chain from earlier, doesn't even flinch. Alex's lips flap blubberily. Sassy does her best Piper Laurie: "Woo HA haaa huh." They all stand around with blood droplets on their faces for about a year and a half. Finally, the director says, "Cut!" I put in my dentures and eat another cookie.
Alka-Seltzer product placement. Alex blows off Brown Ali's phone call. Dad gives Alex a pep talk while Alex numbly watches TV. Alex starts to tell Dad what's up, then spots a news report about the crash; the NTSB has ruled that it's accidental in nature, but they show a seating chart that grabs Alex's attention for some reason. Apparently, it has to do with Rothbale's seat and how death had actually come for the betties or some damn thing, but I went into the kitchen to get another handful of cookies and when I came back, Alex had figured out the design. Cut over to Sassy's house, where she's waxing trembly on the phone with a friend of hers and blaming herself for the death of the French teacher some more while packing up her house. She looks out into the front yard to see Alex lurking there. She calls Henchguy. Alex creeps around Sassy's car, apparently trying to get a tire off. Henchguy and friend pull up and make him get into their car. Sassy watches from behind a curtain. Seatbelt joke. Sassy moves away from the window. Ominous breeze. Window? Closed. Alex believes Sassy "is ." Henchguy doesn't buy it. Alex explains about the pattern. Henchguy humors him. Sassy keeps packing. She comes across an old record and puts it on; it's -- ready? Hope you're sitting down -- John Denver. Sassy seals her doom. Alex didn't ask for "what happened on the plane" to happen. But he saved six lives. It's not PTSD. He's not "going Dahmer on" them. There's a pattern. Yeah, there's a pattern, Zitty Kelley. It's on your face. It's called acne, and it's disgusting. OxyClean. Look into it. Sassy sees death reflected in the side of her tea kettle. John Denver. Ominous strings. Pointed close-up on butcher-block knife caddy. The flame on the stove goes out. A very suspenseful lighting of the pilot light, except for the "suspenseful" part. Close-up on the burner, which lights uneventfully. Henchguy can't explain why the other survivors have died, but he knows that nobody can control life or death "unless they're taking lives or causing death." Thanks for that, Henchguy. Alex can't control it as long as he's "in here, sorry." They let him go. Whatever. Alex gives Henchguy's partner the creeps. He almost believes Alex. The partner gives Henchguy the creeps. Oh, the comedy. Oh, the cookies. Tea and Sassy. She throws her tea at a bug, then tells herself to chill. She pours vodka into the mug instead. The mug cracks. Vodka creeps out onto the counter. Sassy dribbles over to her desk and drips onto her monitor, sipping the vodka like it's water. The monitor shorts out. Smoke begins to rise from the monitor. Sassy stares at it. The monitor explodes, and a shard of glass embeds itself in Sassy's throat. Sassy wheezes and staggers about, bleeding. The moral here: Never give your monitor Smirnoff, kids. It'll just get angry and kill you.
Alex sees a fire burning by the side of the road. He runs away. Sassy's house. Burning. John Denver. Wheezing. Exploding vodka. Grunting. Clutching throat. More wheezing. Alex pulls up outside Sassy's house and sees it burning. Sassy, collapsed on the floor, pulls a towel down from the counter to stanch her bleeding throat. The knife on top of the towel falls point-first into her chest. Alex finds her there, wheezing and shuddering. Things crash down all around them. A chair nails the knife into Sassy's chest up to the hilt. Alex yanks the knife out of her chest, then drops it on the ground and books on out of there. Nice one, Not Lips Houlihan. Hitchcock, riding by on his bike, sees Alex run out of the house, and then the whole house blows up. The FBI guys hassle Brown Ali. She plays it cool by not showing her teeth. Kerr hits Hitchcock on his bike again. Kerr tries to carve Candies's name on the memorial. Brown Ali asks what he's doing. Kerr asks why she's there. The FBI's watching her to see if she goes to Alex. Kerr has to take her to Alex. Uh…then why would Kerr take her to Alex, if the FBI wants to know where Alex is? The fuck? Anyway, Kerr doesn't want to see Alex, but Brown Ali says Alex knows "which one of us is ." Kerr's car. Lots of boring back-and-forth while Brown Ali expositions the other two up to date on death's design. Kerr makes a dumb joke about having a vision that he's going to kick Hitchcock's ass. Kerr and Hitchcock drop Brown Ali off to find Alex. Alex is in a clearing. He's brooding and talking about the stars and if "they're still up there." Brown Ali talks about how her father got killed in a hold-up, and what if he hadn't needed to buy cigarettes, and her mom married "this asshole," poor little Brown Match Ali -- short form, she doesn't think it's part of a design. "Alex. You can't give up." The car. Brown Ali's taking Alex to her dad's cabin in the woods. Kerr gets all accusing about Sassy. Alex bitches about getting blamed. Hitchcock blah. Kerr wants to know who's . Alex admits that he knew about Sassy in advance. He does not add that Revlon, Inc. probably had her assassinated for misuse of blush. Hitchcock wants to know if he'll live to see the Jets win a Superbowl. Heh. Probably not, Hitchcock -- not even if you lived to see your grandchildren would you see that again. Anyway, Kerr thinks it's him, so he starts wailing about destiny and controlling his will, and he stomps on the gas so that they can all crash and die and get it over with. The others scream at him for what seems like a week and a half while he weaves through traffic and runs stop signs and blah bling blah "slow down, Kerr" and "knock it off" and "it doesn't work that way, Kerr" and Alex has a vision of no seatbelt. Kerr does the really bad screamy crying we all love so much on Dawson's. Alex has a vision of a train. They almost hit an oil tanker. Kerr drives with no hands. Hitchcock thinks he might speeyack. "Dammit, Kerr, I want you to stop this car right now!" He stops the car, all right -- on the train tracks. How very "Teen Angel." More screaming and "get out of the car"-ing. The other three scramble out, but Kerr won't move. The train is coming. The train is blowing its whistle. I am in the kitchen again, getting ginger snaps. Another week passes by in which people scream and squall and yell at Kerr to get out of the car. Finally, Kerr agrees to get out of the car. But he can't. Door? Locked. Seatbelt? Jammed. Me? At the deli, buying more ginger snaps. Alex runs over to try to pull Kerr out of the car through the window. We get a couple of close-ups of Alex's hands pumping up and down on Kerr's crotch, "trying to get the seatbelt undone." Step aside, Alex; this is a job for a professional. Heh. Did I say that out loud?
Anyway, the train whips past just the seatbelt breaks and Alex yanks Kerr through the window, and the train creams the muscle car, and Alex and Brown Ali hug, and Alex babbles that he saw the seatbelt breaking in his vision, and then the train hits a piece of loose metal, and the metal shard whips over to the kids, and Hitchcock gets beheaded while he's yelling that Kerr's and he's dead, he's dead, and whooooosh, Hitchcock's head rolls into the underbrush and Hitchcock's body does a funny pratfall. Hee hee. Headless bodies pratfalling = funny. Brown Ali grunts and sobs. Alex's lips make a flappy blubbery sound. Kerr gets up and screams at Alex that he's the devil. Kerr has a giant wet stain down the front of his pants, which leads me to believe that he's projecting his bladder-control frustrations onto Alex. Alex yammers about the design and how he intervened and changed the design. Kerr screamily cries. "Gods don't die, we do!" Alex pants. He's , he says. Brown Ali bares her teeth to denote "confused and scared." Kerr tells them to get the hell out of there. Fade out on pee-pee pants Kerr clutching his head and bemoaning the untimely demise of his penis surrogate as the sirens approach. The cabin. Alex does his best Colonel Kurtz. Ominous trombones. Alex sets a trap, and death falls into it. Because death is, apparently, a clumsy, stupid piece of shit prone to tripping over lengths of fishing wire. Many, many close-ups of non-cute, blubbery-lipped, sweaty-ass Alex. Alex neener-neeners death: "I can beat you. Not forever, but I've got this cabin rigged to beat you now!" Shut up, Alex. Lightning. Brown Ali peeks out her window. Then she looks at a picture of her and her dad at the cabin and gets an idea. The FBI watches Brown Ali's house. Seconds later, Brown Ali comes out and wants the FBI guys to drive her up to the cabin. "Protective custody" blah blah blah, they won't take her, they just want her to tell them where to find Alex. Alex. Newspaper article about the betties. He realizes he never moved on the flight. I don't get it. Lightning. "She's ." Brown Ali sees a power line go down and start snaking around on the ground, spitting sparks. Alex ditches the cabin just as the FBI guys pull up. He jumps into a canoe -- yes, a canoe -- and begins rowing madly away as Henchguy bawls, "Alex! ALEX!" Row, Alex! Row like the wind! Or, don't. I don't really give a shit either way, frankly, so do what you have to do. Brown Ali lights candles. Outside, her chained-up dog barks madly at the whipping power line. Way to bring your dog in for the night, Brown Ali. If death doesn't get your ass, the ASPCA should. She struggles into her coat to go deal with the dog, and the candle she just lit gets blown out. By the ominous breeze. Smoke curls away from the wick. I do believe I might get it. Maybe. Sort of. Ask not for whom the power line tolls, Brown Ali. It tolls for thee.
Alex flounders away from the canoe. Shot of police vehicles as Alex runs through the woods. He crosses the road in front of the cop cars, and the law enforcement guys give chase through the underbrush. "Alex! We're! Trying! To help! You!" Henchguy calls out, waving a Clean & Clear facial cleansing pad like a little white flag. Okay, he doesn't. But someone should. Brown Ali yells at the dog to get away from the power line. The line whips over to the little spiderweb-shaped clothes-drying…thingie…and drives it into the ground right beside Brown Ali's head. She staggers up and tries to let the dog off the chain. In the woods, Alex runs. The officers run. Alex tumbles into a crevasse, and his lips almost get impaled on a twig. A ripple of fear crosses said lips, which have swollen with fear to Erik-Michael Estrada proportions. Brown Ali. Above-ground pool, bursting. Dog, barking. Brown Ali, "afraid." Power line, padding its Academy Award reel. Sparks. Whipping noises. Gasping Brown Ali hurling herself at a rose trellis; dog almost getting fricasseed. The whipping stops. The dog runs into the bushes. The power line goes in another direction. Woods. More lightning. More running. More lips. A branch falls on Alex and pushes his head into a puddle. I drop my ginger snap to applaud the branch, which has answered my prayers by burying Alex's pizza face and moon-jump lips in six inches of muddy water. The officers can't find him. "Oh shit," grumps Henchguy, in a meta-statement about the movie. Brown Ali climbs the trellis. Climb, Brown Ali, climb! The power line chews the scenery, literally. Brown Ali nearly falls off the house like ten times. Alex. Puddle. Devon Sawa's agent bribes the puddle, and it lets Alex go. Gasping. Dripping. Brown Ali climbs some more. The non-suspense is killing me. She breaks into her own house, inches ahead of the madding power line. Sparks. Falling down stairs. Fuses bursting. She runs into the garage and dives into the car, but the garage-door opener won't work because of the power outage. Duh, Brown Ali. But that's a good thing, supposedly, because the power line is yawing about just outside the garage. Brown Ali starts the car and throws it into reverse and blazes right through the door, and the garage-door-opener mechanism thingie falls from the ceiling off the garage and smashes the windshield, and Brown Ali screams all Clan Of The Cave Bear, "EEEEEEEEuhhhh!" She keeps revving the engine, but the shaft of metal has the car pinned in place, and she can't move. "Eurrrrguuuhhh!" Then a canister of oil falls onto the floor of the garage and starts spilling everywhere. Of course.
Alex runs into the yard and sees the power line doing its dance of death. Okay, it's not a dance, really, but how many times can I use the word "whipping"? It doesn't even look like a word anymore, that's how many times I've typed it. Anyway, Alex runs around the side of the water. Brown Ali gets free of the shaft (heh) and powers down the driveway, but the power line hits the hood and kills the battery…I guess. It's sort of unclear what happens here, and if I can get a show of hands of people who care…? Right, thought not. Anyway, Brown Ali is surrounded by sparks and leaking fuel and Alex's lips, which tell her not to move because she's grounded by the tires. "Heeeeuhhhhh," Brown Ali says, and shows her bottom teeth to let us know she's crying. Alex faces off against the power line with a shovel lying handily nearby. He swings like a girl, by the way. He whips the line away. It flaps about. The fuel catches fire. "Huh huh uhhhhh," Brown Ali says. Everything's on fire. "I can only hold on for so long, you know what to do," Alex says. "Don't!" Brown Ali wails. I guess he has to grab the power line so that he can die and the design gets stymied or some shit like that. "Don't!" "I'm not gonna let it beat us both!" Brown Ali's teeth gleam in the firelight. "I'll always be with you," Alex says, his lips shimmering blubber-esquely. He moves towards the power line. Henchguy pulls up with the other cops in tow: "Alex! Get away from there! Your lips will ground you anyway, so don't bother!" "Noo-uuuuuu-gahahhhhhh," Brown Ali keens. Alex grabs the power line. The car blows up, throwing Brown Ali into the bushes and shooting Alex…somewhere. The power line goes dead. Brown Ali runs to Alex, who's scorched and steaming. ["Can he hear women's thoughts now, or am I thinking of another shitty movie?" -- Wing Chun] She babytalks to him until the law enforcement folk shove her out of the way. Henchguy starts doing CPR on Alex. Distant sirens. Sad cello. Bored Sars. Long, blue-lit hallway. It's a jetway. A title card reads, "SIX MONTHS LATER," and we see Kerr, Brown Ali (who's now blonde again), and non-chicken-fried Alex deboarding a plane. They can't believe they made it. They can't believe they got on a plane. I can't believe they didn't make Alex check his lips. Paris. At a café, they wrap up the loose ends in the most disorganized and boring fashion possible, blathering on about the design and "it's weird being here" and puzzles, and they toast to Paris and Rothbale and all their "friends that can't be here." Kerr admits that "it was a design," and crows that they beat it. Alex and Non-Brown Brown Ali hold hands. Alex gets out the seating plan and goes on about the order of their deaths; the other two want him to let it go. Alex's large, blubbery, red, butt-ugly lips keep moving. Non-Brown Brown Ali calls bullshit on him again, asking how he knows that they got the right design. Kerr says it could come back and get them all again. A busker sings the John Denver song. Meathooks. A rolling metal pipe. Alex spills wine on the seating chart. He jumps up and wants to go back to the hotel and tells Non-Brown Brown Ali to stay there; she wants to come with, but he says no and heads out. Non-Brown Brown Ali sees a bus reflected in the window and screams, "Alllllaaaayyyxxx!" Alex dodges the bus. It knocks over a fruit cart. Roger Ebert nods approvingly. The bus knocks over a street sign, which whacks into a lighted sign for the café. Quick shot of Alex's massive lips parted in terror ("Alllllaaaayyyxxx!"), then back to the sign disintegrating and swinging towards Alex, and as it arcs past their table, Kerr tackles Alex and saves him. Kerr jumps up and yells, "I told you you were !" "Then it just skipped me," gasps Alex. "So who's ?" Kerr says. Dolt. Oh, hello, sign. Kuh-LANG! Au revoir, Kerr. Credits.