Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones (2013)

Runtime: 84 minute

Directed by: Karl Mueller

Starring: Jon Foster, Sarah Jones, Mark Steger, Faran Tahir

From: Preferred Content (which I think this is not)

I'll let the cat out of the bag: I saw this movie mainly because of its title and how I found it hilarious there is a movie named after that 90's song, although the two aren't related at all. I am not the biggest fan of the song but Lord is it better than this movie! I explain why in the Letterboxd review below and I'll return tomorrow night.

I randomly decided to watch this recent horror film on Netflix Instant earlier in the day. Unfortunately this is a rather big miss and I made a grave error here.

This is yet another found footage movie, although the way it is done, it makes zero logical sense, especially by the final act. Found footage with a musical score? We have to hang out with two young pretentious asshats named Scott and Penny They decide to move out into the rural California woods, not to sing “Shalalalala” but so that Scott can film “a nature documentary” but as the couple are not only stupid idiots but they also can never get along after the opening scene, and not a lot gets done with the documentary. They randomly run into a nearby house owned by a reclusive artist (the title character) who probably doesn't strike up conversations with black-haired flamenco dancers. He makes weird art that he sends randomly to random people. Yeah.

From there the asshats try to unravel the mystery... then it turns into a pompous surreal nightmare as the director and cinematographer do various things they learn in film school to “twist reality so you don't know what's real and what's a dream” and a movie that I hated already as I could NOT stand the two leads and their buffoonery or their constantly changing moods and opinions... it never made much sense then it just got confused when you find out what it's actually about and the movie was a gigantic waste of time and the only reaction it got out of me was not fright or terror but anger and rage. Sorry for the run-on sentence but I thought this was an agonizing experience.

The song by The Counting Crows isn't one of my favorites but I'd much rather listen to that for 84 minutes than watch this piece of crap ever again.