As Good As It Gets

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The premise is a good one. Serial killer is caught. House he murdered victims in is turned into a webcam house. New girl befriends first client, mute boy. Terrence Howard goes to interview serial killer because new murders are poping up just like his. Serial Killer returns to house to kill girls. Mute boy sees it and tries to warn web cam girl. She doesnt believe him. Turns out the serial killer in jail is actually the father of the real serial killer still at large. Aside from little stupid things like the killer being extra slow, mishaps like Terremce Howard holding files then exiting room with no files, the guy getting his face cut up and all of a sudden he just stops making noise... Details that dont mix just throws me off. The acting was OK but the execution of the plot could've been better. Mute guy, the famous actors and the guy who gets his face cut up were good. Ive seen it twice so its not terrible!! Predictable but not that bad. I would love to see Queen in a real horror movie tho. I doubt she would sign up to do one where she dies first so it would be fun to watch.

Terrence Howard and Peter Fonda's scenes in the movie is basically one very long interrogation scene split up to parts.A fairly pointless one may I add as well, where Terrence Howard plays a cop who's interrogating a serial killer played by Peter Fonda about a copycat of his.It's obvious that all their scenes where shot on the same day in the same location, and that they both did it for the money, and that the producers needed some stars in the movie to attract viewers, and that's the sole reason why they are in the movie.They aren't bad per se, but if they weren't famous their scenes would have been cut down to a couple minutes, or cut out entirely, hell they'd probably wouldn't have been filmed in the first place to be honest.The rest of the movie is about the 'House Of Bodies' which is not a haunted place even if that's what it sounds like but a website with 'web-cam-girls' in a apartment complex re-enact murders.It's really slow, and riddled with plot-holes, and the only reason I didn't absolutely hate it was because one of the web-cam-girls forms a friendship with one of her clients who happen to be a mute.But yeah the rest of the movie is a tiring peace of work, with overall annoying characters and pointless scenes of people clicking on websites etc etc.Queen Latifah steps by in a web-chat as a counselor or something to the mute young man, but that's about it.

Despite having some pretty good ideas behind it, this movie was terrible.Good: The setting was interesting. A bunch of cam-girls who live in the house of a serial killer and people can pay to (watch them) act out serial killer-y fantasies. That's pretty unique and adequately creepy. You get to see some gore-y shots of dead girls and related. It had all the elements of a good horror movie...they just were totally misused. A few good actors. Terrance Howard and the serial killer dude had good chemistry. The deaf guy and the main girl were fine. Queen Latifah's cameo was well done. She should've played a bigger role though, would've been funny to see her as a main character in a slasher. It was shot well enough. Sets were good.Bad: Everything else. The storyline was written in such a disjointed way that it made no sense. It jumped around and was needlessly difficult to follow. You have the main storyline of a guy in the house murdering women which was super generic but decent. Then you have this other storyline with Terrance Howard which had almost NOTHING to do with the main storyline and was used in a way that rendered it completely pointless (way to waste your best actors). From the preview I expected this to be more like Silence of the Lambs, but it wasn't at all. The concept of a dude watching these girls die via webcam was OK, but not executed in an interesting or substantive way. It wouldn't have changed much if that part wasn't even in the movie (sadly, the same goes for Howard). And just when things start getting interesting, the movie prematurely ends with no resolution whatsoever. It felt like the director didn't quite know what type of movie they wanted to make and used elements of several (silence of the lambs, feardotcom, untraceable, etc), but was unable to connect and interweave them. Maybe it was just the version I saw, but the sound was abysmal. The music was WAY too loud and all of Howard / killer's dialog was nearly incomprehensible. There are also some stupid plot holes like how the kid magically "hacked" and got the power to turn back on in the house / website.

*****WARNING: SPOILERS*****House of Bodies is a bit of a back-and-forth roller coaster, a feature that I like if it's well- executed. This movie does it quite nicely, in my opinion. Although it's predictable in the fact that everyone but the "good girl" dies, I enjoyed the irony behind it. There is some nudity, as with a lot of movies in the genre, but it is mild and far from distracting to the viewer. The characters were believable, although there were certain scenes that threw in the element of convenience for the sake of letting a certain character live longer. To go off of that, I would have liked a bit more violence, and less of the inmate and detective scene. Overall, not a bad flick. Give it a watch on Netflix, I'm glad I did.