This Weekend’s Movies: “Skinwalkers”

There is no reason for you to see Skinwalkers.

 

Seriously, I cannot emphasize that enough. No reason whatsoever. If your child has a rare and fatal disease that can only be cured by seeing Skinwalkers; you still have no reason to see Skinwalkers. If you are carjacked and commanded at gunpoint to see Skinwalkers; you still have no reason to see Skinwalkers. If you are kidnapped by members of Al Queda Iraq and told that the only way to avoid being dressed in an orange jumpsuit, forced to “confess” your crimes against the Muslim world on streaming internet video, and have you head sawed off is to see Skinwalkers; you still have no reason to see Skinwalkers. If God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, Of All That is Seen and Unseen descends from Heaven in a swirl of clouds, flanked by seraphim, and promises you a life of happiness, joy, and fulfillment as long as you see Skinwalkers; you still have no reason to see Skinwalkers. If Tyra Banks calls you up for dinner and a movie and following that, an evening of athletic sex so debauched, so raunchy, so debased that you will remember it upon your deathbed as you prepare to shuck off your mortal coil and can’t even recall your loved ones or your own name–as long as that movie you see is Skinwalkers…I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Okay, get the point? Skinwalkers is bad. It’s not fun bad, or funny bad, or even train-wreck bad. It’s dull bad. Bland bad. Highway rest stop bad. McDonalds breakfast burrito bad. Absolutely no pleasure can be derived from watching Skinwalkers, but neither is it a risible experience. It lacks even the ambition to be terrible. There are any number of more productive things you could be doing rather than watching Skinwalkers. Some examples:

· Reading the TV Guide

· Completing the TV Guide crossword puzzle

· Sleeping

· Bathing

· Petting a dog

· Scratching a cat between the ears.

· Bathing a dog between the ears.

· Doing your laundry

· Doing someone else’s laundry

· Selling someone else’s laundry on the street

· Tearing your apartment apart to find hidden microphones

· Writing admiring letters to Joel McHale

· Engaging in a lively chatroom debate on the merits of the USS Enterprise vs. the Battlestar Galactica

· Threatening members of a sci-fi chatroom

· Making YouTube music video homages to Scarecrow and Mrs. King

· Setting your house or building on fire

· Setting your neighbors’ house on fire

· Setting your neighbors on fire

· Googling everyone you know

· Masturbating

· Buying a dozen GI Joes and reenacting the Battle of Pork Chop Hill

· Using the GI Joes to reenact the 2007 Armed Forces Sub-Committee Hearings

· Using the GI Joes to make amateur gay porn

· Seeing any movie with Keaunu Reeves

· Seeing any movie with Andie McDowell

· Seeing any movie by Lars von Trier

· Reading any novel by Tama Janowitz

· Seeing which home electronics will work in the shower

· Repaint your bedroom with White-Out

· Mentally listing every villain from every James Bond film in chronological order

· Mentally listing every villain from every James Bond film in chronological order while drinking malt liquor

· Reading a graphic novel

· Paying your taxes

· Updating your Buckaroo Banzai fan site

· Raising sea monkeys and then feeding them to a sucker-fish

· Writing haikus about William Shatner

· Seeing if your car can float

· Teaching yourself a foreign language by watching all your DVDs with the subtitles running

· Audition for American Idol

· Write a thesis on the lyrics of Corey Hart’s Sunglasses at Night

· Speaking to a loved one

· Thinking up additional dialogue for Slow Burn

· Thinking up a better ending for Sunshine

· Baking gingerbread men, so you can eat them while pretending you’re the ginormous crocodile from Primeval

· Daytrading

· Stockpiling ordinance for the inevitable zombie attack

· Frequenting Haitian prostitutes

· Making a shot-for-shot remake of Psycho

· Writing your Family Ties/The Shield crossover fanfic

· Seeing how many e-mails you have to send to Claire Danes before the inevitable restraining order

· Dressing your pets like late-Vice Don Johnson

· Prank calling Elmore Leonard

· Slipping Patrick Stewart photoshopped pictures of you and he dressed as a harem girl and a sultan respectively (or vice-versa)

· Filming The Grapes of Wrath using weebles

· Inventing a comic commentary track for Schindler’s List

· Go to Single’s Night at the local Wal-Mart

 

I could go on and on, but I think I’ve made my point. There is absolutely no reason to see Skinwalkers.