Let me start with the movie. The movie was good. It was clever. It was fun. It deserves to become a regular Halloween time event among horror fans.
This is not about the movie. This is the journey to viewing the movie.
This movie has a copyright date of 2008. The first review at the Internet Movie Database was dated October 11, 2008. Even before the first lucky filmgoers got to see the movie, it was being talked about at the usual horror sites. (I have been a member of the forums at www.upcominghorrormovies.com for many, many years now.) Posters, photographs, artwork, and stills of the mysterious little boy Sam had created a lot of interest.
The DVD was not released until October 6, 2009.
When the dvd was finally released, I ordered it from Amazon in time for Halloween. Sadly, some chump in shipping forgot to actually ship it out. I love Amazon as well, but this experience was painful. I emailed customer service a week after the movie was supposed to arrive, and they replied with a message that told me what I did not need to know about their shipping practices, and to please wait another week for the movie to arrive, because sometimes things are late. I continued checking the shipping status of my order, and saw that it had shipped the day I wrote to them with the issue.
I work for a small internet retail company. I would have been quite satisfied to hear the truth, no matter how stupid it made anyone look. The reason for this is that they look twice as stupid and practically called me stupid with that chain of events. (I still love Amazon, and did a great deal of my Christmas shopping there. As I said, this was the only bad experience with them to date.)
The worst of it was yet to come, however. Horror movies work on the basis of surprise. Some terrible and unexpected image grabs your attention, and stirs an emotion based on the horrific nature of the event and the surprise of encountering the unexpected.
The movie would have to wait until both kids were in bed. I was still eager to finally watch the movie, and began reading the synopsis on the back of the package. The synopsis began telling more about the movie than it should have. The information being offered bordered on movie spoilers.
In favor of the packaging, the front of the cardboard slipcase is really nicely put together. It hints at things to come without giving away any of the story.
This is the last nice thing I will say about the packaging. In fact, my children almost learned a few new epitaphs when I pulled the plastic case out of this slip cover.
See, I was still feeling eager. I was also feeling rather trusting for some insane reason. So I decided to pull the movie out of its cardboard sleeve and make sure it was ready as soon as my kids’ heads hit their pillows.
I do not wish ill to anyone. Whoever did this, however, needs to never work on designing art for another horror movie again. Send him back to comping oversized heads on under-sized models to market romantic comedies.
I will also not repeat the words I wanted to scream when seeing this image. There are plenty of blogs and review sites using that kind of language for shock value.
Roughly 7/8 of the plastic cover were taken up by the largest, most egregious and unnecessary giveaway that I have ever seen on a horror movie. It would be like putting cover art on Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince wherein the title character was shown doing the thing he instantly became famous for.
After the extended wait and non-truth endured just to have the movie shipped out, this cove was absolutely infuriating
I have posted an altered image of that cover here, with the spoiler blurred out then given a good touch of the whirl tool. This is the size of that image relative to the size of the box. There is no way to avoid seeing it.
As I said, the movie was very good. It was worth the wait and will no doubt provide a lot of fun for many Halloween seasons to come. However, I would have enjoyed it much more by reading a synopsis instead of a low-grade book report on the slipcase. I would have also enjoyed the surprise of discovering the information on the plastic cover for myself as well.
He has worked as a level designer for a small online video game, as the grim reaper in a haunted house, and traded web design for concert tickets and tattoos.In years past, he could be found performing improvised comedy or stage magic in the south side of Austin, Texas.
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