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10 Worst Horror Exposition Monologues!!!

Published

11 years ago

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Often times, a horror film has to take a moment or two to finally explain what’s been going on the whole movie. These exposition scenes are almost always eye-rollingly long and drawn out.

Not every film can have Richard Dreyfuss show up and offer a just perfect amount of information with a great performance. Sometimes you have to listen to Tony Todd pontificate instead.

Check out some of the worst offenders after the break.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

Usually exposition in Halloween films is handled by Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis. But along with basic quality, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers eschewed this convention and gave its big speech on the history of runes and killer children to Paul Rudd who delivers his speech as though he are some kind of autistic robot. The film is less than 90 minutes long, but scenes like this make it feel like a lifetime.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Nightmare on Elm Street 3, easily stands as the best of the NOES sequels, and in some ways even eclipses the original. But it’s also the film where Freddy’s backstory starts to get unnecessarily complicated. Pretty much any time the movie cuts to either a nun or Craig Wasson (no, that’s not Bill Maher), you know you’re entering exposition Hell.

Sinister

Sinister is a lot of fun, but it’s remarkable how much help Ethan Hawke’s character needs putting the pieces together. For him to finally understand the easily avoidable danger he’s put himself in, he needs help from a goofy deputy and not one but two Skype conversations from local academic Professor Talksalot (played by Vincent D’Onofrio). By the time he has the case cracked, we are all way ahead of him waiting for his drunk ass to finally catch up.

Scream 3

Each entry in the Scream franchise deserves a place in the Blatant Exposition Hall of Fame. Part 3 has to be the worse offender, though, because even after you sit through Roman’s (raise your hand if you remember Roman) whole spiel, you’re still not sure you completely understand what the Hell he was talking about. On top of that, he claims to be retroactively responsible for the whole franchise thus far, which in a way means we can blame Roman for the horrible explosion in all the films.

Saw 2

Like the Scream films, exposition scenes are one of the things that help define the Saw series. Any of the films could have made this list, but I’m going with Part 2 since starting at about the halfway point, we have to hear every character spill their guts about their backstory. Furthermore, with the whole Amanda twist, this is the first movie to really establish the methodology by which Saw would ultimately eat into itself to survive as a franchise.

Shutter Island

By the time we get to the Ben Kinglsey’s massive info dump near the end of Shutter Island, we’ve kind of figured it out for him. A little explanation would be fine, but he just keeps going and going. Pretty soon, he’s referring to anagrams on chalkboards and it’s almost to the point of self-parody.

Jeepers Creepers

A large part of what makes Jeepers Creepers work is the fact that we have no idea what’s going on. That all changes with the introduction of Jezelle Gay Hartman, who tells us basically everything we need to know about the film’s villain in one really long and annoying monologue. After this, the film is remarkably diminished, since The Creeper has now been revealed as a somewhat silly bad guy.

Silent Hill

People are often very down on Silent Hill. Watching it, you spend most of your time wondering why everyone hates it so much. Then the second act exposition fest occurs and you fall asleep. It’s still going on when you wake up, so you fall asleep a second time. When you wake up again, everything is chains and ash and blood and it’s a fun horror film again. But for those three-to-four hours spent explaining Silent Hill‘s backstory, the film is a nightmare, and not the good kind.

John Carpenter’s Vampires

I really like John Carpenter’s Vampires, but the middle section of the film often feels like an extended run of exposition interrupted with occasional Sheryl Lee episodes. We have to learn about the bad guy. We have to learn about all the vampires’ plans. We have to learn about James Woods’ tragic past. And, even though he’s talking to a priest specially trained for vampire work, we have to overhear as James Woods gives his new priest partner the whole spiel all modern vampire movies must give defining which bits of vampire lore adhere to this particular lot of bloodsuckers. Still, it’s worth it. James Woods is one of the more underrated John Carpenter heroes, and it’s always nice to see a film with that much denim.

Identity

I kind of want to give Identity a pass. For one, it’s a pretty fun and original take on the “Ten Little Indians” trope. On top of that, the premise of this film is so wacky, there’s no way anyone could explain it in a timely manner. But that doesn’t mean the big reveal doesn’t drag and dip its toes a bit into the waters of over-explanation. The film’s big twist helps distinguish it from other horror films for sure, but it also makes rewatching it a chore.

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Editorials

Finding Faith and Violence in ‘The Book of Eli’ 14 Years Later

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1 day ago

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April 22, 2024

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Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.

To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.

Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.

After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.

SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?

Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.

For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.

Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.

Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?

AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?

Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.

From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.

The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.

Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.

With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…

There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.

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