C'Mon Attractions: Mean Girls 2, The Absent, and Husk

I've rounded up yet another batch of trailers that will make your head spin, and you'll want it to keep spinning until it flies off into the air and goes into orbit around the Earth. Why would you want that? Easy, because then you won't care there's such as thing as Mean Girls 2.

Taking over for Mark Waters who directed Mean Girls from the script by Tina Fey is Melanie Mayron, perhaps better known for her appearances in the show thirtysomething and the film My Blue Heaven, than her  twenty plus years directing on television. I suppose having directed several episodes of In Treatment (which I assume involves setting up 2 locked off cameras and watching Gabriel Byrne reacting to other characters crying) she will be ready to be put away on a funny farm for directing this mess.While the first installment had the script from Tina Fey to fall back on, this time the biggest name among the writers is Elana Lesser who penned greats like Holly Hobby and Friends: Marvelous Makeover  (Really? Holly Hobby got tarted up?) and Charlotte's Web 2 (How is that even possible?) In fact the only person I see returning for a second helping of Mean Girls is Tim Meadows. I like money as much as the next guy, but so not fetch, Tim. Before it plops onto DVD Feb. 1, you can check it out tonight as a double feature along with the original Mean Girls. So if you hate yourself, go for it.

Next up, keeping on the track of films tangentially related to Lindsey Lohan, here's the follow-up from the "makers of" I Know Who Killed Me, The Absent.

So I always knew that teachers didn't like it when students didn't show up for class, but I didn't think it was this big an issue. Oh wait, that's just what I hoped this movie was about. So let me address the claim that this film is "from the Makers of I Know Who Killed Me" as the trailer implies. First off, I don't see how being attached to that piece of crap film would help out director Sage Bannick's new film. It's not like I Know Who Killed Me was a huge hit. I poured over the IMDB for The Absent and what I found to be absent was a connection to the Lindsey Lohan one legged stripped movie. So perhaps there's someone buried deep in the production to make the connection, but I got tired of looking. I also got tired looking at the trailer. While the plot, psycho gets out of jail and begins killing the friends of his teacher brother's underage girlfriend, seems pretty original, the acting in the trailer makes me wish I hadn't answered "Present". 

Next up take a dash of Texas Chainsaw, a little Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and add in a pinch of Dead Birds, and what you got left is just a Husk....

Director Bret Simmons first took a stab at the idea for Husk back in 2005 with a short film of the same name. Now, six years later, he's managed to extend this derivative looking film into feature length. Husk typifies what I don't like about most horror releases. I have to be suspect when the synopsis starts off with this sentence,"When a murder of crows smash into their car windshield, a group of young friends are forced to abandon the vehicle, leaving them stranded beside a desolate cornfield." Really, a murder of crows. I know that's what they're called, but that's laying it on pretty thick.  I've just seen this all before. There's not a thing in this trailer that looks original. Hell, the house looks like they went out and tried to find a place that looked as much like the 'Saw family's abode as possible. Now of course I'm judging these flicks on just their trailer and maybe there's something incredible inside here, but I have a feeling that when you break open this Husk there's nothing but dusty remains of other people's films. 

That wraps it up for this week's C'Mon Attractions, but join me back here tomorrow for my next entry in The King of Wilmington and later this week for a Hitch on the Hump from my good friend Matt Suzaka of Chuck Norris Ate My Baby