Movie Junction

In a recent conversation with my friend about horror movies, she remarked something that made me think about the modern horror genre as a whole.  She said, “Horror movies by their nature are meant to scare you.” She further implied that the scare factor has become a cliché in the industry, a cliché that makes her not want to watch any horror movies anymore. I wholeheartedly agree with her assessment of the present state of the horror genre. It’s true that filmmakers’ propensity only to induce chills and scares by disgusting viewers has reduced the viewership of this genre to a mainstream format for a wider audience. For studios, horror movies are still a tough sell, and with a limited budget, these movies hardly have any impact at the box office, except for a few. The website Box Office Mojo, which collects box-office and other data related to movies, reports that the horror genre had only a 4.87% share at the box-office in 2012, with the adventur...

It’s a fascinating idea to use a child who’s an arithmetic prodigy as the central character of the film’s plot in “Safe” (2012).  An eleven-year old, Mei (Catherine Chan), can memorize long numbers and is able to perform long and complex calculations with relative ease. But the script is so chaotic that Mei is only used as a human calculator. In today’s world of modern technology, the idea of storing a complex number inside a human mind is utterly laughable, especially when smartphones and other sophisticated devices can do the same thing. As we see in the movie, a gangster asks Mei to memorize a long sequence of numbers, which is a code to a safe, from a sheet of paper, and when she is done memorizing, the gangster burns the paper. Needless to say, burning this paper sets the plot in motion, but I ask: Why is there a need to burn the code? Mei possesses extraordinary skills, and she can be utilized in many intelligent ways. But considering the dumb gangsters...