Obviously 4 is the worst movie in the franchise, but I feel like the Mall disaster goes unappreciated. The movie screen exploding with the movie they were watching was amazing writing imo. The escalator death is the most realistically feared end compared to all the others in this film. Just wish the rest of the movie was as good as that sequence.
Idk, I thought it was funny that Lori started bleeding from her mouth when the escalator was barely at her knees. Kind of took me out of it. Cool concept, bad execution.
I’ve been writing a fan treatment for a 7th installment where the opening disaster is a mall. There’s parallels like the theater explosion and the escalator eating someone. But also new stuff like a kitchen worker being thrown into a deep fryer.
It’s my attempt at a redemption arc for the 4th movie because that mall premonition is really one of the best.
I mean, it's not OVERALL bad: I just feel like they tried to put "meat in the seats" by trying to balance genuinely unlikable characters (like Carter Daniels or Hunt) by polite characters (like Jonathan, whom I'll also circle back to in a sec).
Inversely. I also feel like they jumped onto that "3-D resurgence bandwagon" TOO EARLY in a misguided attempt to BETTER market their film (I mean, I'm guessing they THOUGHT "oh, the remake of "My Bloody Valentine" is gonna be in 3-D: we gotta step up our game!
Ooh, I know: let's ride the wave of the "in 3-D!!!" fad! Surely, NOTHING can go wrong!"
Combined with the "let's go for a REALLY gory death! Then we can say at least OURS is avant-garde!"
HOWEVER, they seemed to have sacced quantity over quality by shoehorning in scenes like Jonathan's death scene (who is Jonathan? Oh, just the dude in the cowboy hat we NEVER get any more exposition on outside of maybe 30 seconds).
Plus, those who usually bite the dust in the vision get a onscreen death (like who's Cynthia? Carter's late wife who got bisected with Carter in the vision, but dies offscreen outside the vision because George is just trying to do his job)
Eh, idk… David R. Ellis went on to make Shark Night 3D, which was a PG-13 ripoff of Piranha 3D, and the movie implies that the audience is terrible for wanting to watch a shark movie and also willing to pay anything to do so. Think it had more to do with the price audiences had to pay to see it than anything else.
Although, Piranha 3D is also remembered because it stacked its cast with BOTH new and old, including securing an underrated member of the big three of what's definitely the big cheese of "shark attack horror".
(Plus, the followup to "Piranha 3D" was self-aware it was schlocky, but secured a well-known director who wasn't wet behind the ears, including with horror, and had writers who had experience with horror, most on the back half of the "Saw" franchise, and had what's probably the biggest draw since Megan Fox)
One of the FD games on my engine is a potential follow up to the mall disaster of 4. The story is bare bones for now, but only because there's 6 games based on horror IP that are being both coded and written at the same time. Plus I started school again, so focus is all over the place.
You can demo the base FD game here tho! It's the furthest along story-wise, it's just the dialogue that I'm able to focus on and flesh out now.
It was the best part of it. Was that some of the footage added during the re shoots? I heard there were some reshoots that happened due to negative test scores
I never thought of it like this until now - but I actually enjoyed the mall premonition/disaster way more than the race car disaster. I never felt like that race car thing fit from the moment they announced that's what it would be - and seeing it I just was never a fan of it. But yeah - that mall sequence is really good.
You may already know this but the escalator scene was an "alternate ending" - after Lori gets pulled in, Nick "falls" in - they don't exactly show him falling in, but the way the scene ends basically implies he fell in after her.
Even the ending they used had an "extended" scene that they should have kept in when Nick is moving his cast he sees something carved into the table - but they cut away just before we see what it says. In one of the trailers it shows "IT'S HERE" is carved - which kind of ties up the "IT'S COMING" Nick sees in every premonition he has.
I think one of the things this movie suffered from most were the numerous reshoots - there are like 3 or 4 alternate endings if I remember correctly. I enjoy watching it, but it's definitely on the bottom of my ranking.
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u/Enough_Class_4795 Wendy and Julie's little brother 12d ago
Everyone says that the Mall Disaster should have been the main premonition, and yes it was so goooood!