11/11/11

After watching Twilight I always know I'm doomed to see a bad movie when the main characters drive a Volvo.

I should point out that this isn’t 11-11-11 which came out on the same day. Yes there are two movies with the same title, with different punctuation marks released on the same day and yes they both suck.The main plot of 11/11/11 focuses on a family that just moved into a new house where everyone in town seems to be very interested in the son who is due to turn eleven years old on 11/11/11.

This movie literally has every cliché possible when it comes to neighbors and main characters. It has the creepy cat lady, a group of people determined to stop anyone from warning the family, the psychotic nanny named Annie who helps the son, burn butterflies, a doped up mother who has visions and father who is only protective when it doesn’t really require him to do anything. It’s a weird flick that you are not really sure whose side anyone is on. The only thing that is for sure for the majority of the flick is the next door neighbor is trying to kill the boy before his eleventh birthday and there is a large group of people who are set against anyone that tries to get in the way.

The son Nat is getting creepier and creepier throughout the movie starting with burning a butterfly (with the aid of his nanny) then every night at 11:11 watching his parents sleep in bed. He doesn’t say a whole lot in the movie just kind of lets everything happen around him. During one scene in the movie he and his father Jack are eating cereal at 11:30 pm and the father leaves for a moment coming back to find Nat sitting on the floor unconscious covered in blood. After washing Nat up he doesn’t see any cuts or source of the blood so he just kind of puts Nat to bed in his own room. If I ever found my kid unconscious and covered in any blood whether his or something else’s I would seek professional help. Not just wash him up and put him to bed.

Later after guarding Nat all night with a baseball bat against the evil alarm clock, Jack goes off to work leaving him with his nanny who keeps reading him a book about deaths dealing with the number 11. We also see that Nat’s mom Melissa is trying not to be drugged by her nurse but is slapped hard (in probably the best acting in the movie) and then given her shot. Along his way to work he passes the parked van with several of the minor characters Jack and the family have encountered talking about Nat and wondering if the nanny has what it takes.

Upon getting home from work he finds Nat again standing at his wife’s bed, upon telling him to leave the room Nat just stabs his mom and walks out.That night Jack goes to check on Nat and finds his son is covered in either bruises or scratches (was hard to see in the lighting) and calls 911 (9+1+1=11) for the second time that day. Annie is taken by police from the home for questioning and is asked by the cop where she came from as he knows everyone in town and has no idea who she is. The cop is then attacked by wasps inside the car which wrecks. Annie simply walks out of the wreck and the car explodes. Even though they appear to have been driving for a while, the family still hears the explosion and when Melissa tries to check on her son is again attacked by the nurse.

While this is going on the crazy lady next door chokes out Nat in his bedroom while the group in the van performs a bloodletting ritual to Satan.While the ritual is going on Melissa escapes her nurse, cat lady drags Nat to her house and Jack is nowhere to be seen, until he just kind of shows up sees his son’s room is empty and then runs to the shed that separates his house from the crazy cat lady. The cat lady is performing an exorcism on Nat saying the town is the gate way to hell and his son is the key. That every thousand years Satan escapes hell and we must kill him. She starts spouting all the weird biblical prophecies regarding 11 and is then killed by Jack. I would probably kill her too for kidnapping my son and all but I would have listened to her a little if he just stabbed my wife.

Jack rushes Nat back into the house and goes to check on Melissa who isn’t there; he goes to the nurse accidently knocking her out of the window killing her. He then finds Melissa in the bathtub full of water with Nat watching her holding a hairdryer which he then drops in. Jack is then incapacitated by the Nanny and when he comes to finds his living room has been overrun by Satanists awaiting 11:11 to hit which is only 3 minutes away. Jack takes out the entire room with a can of wasp spray (yeah…bare with me it is almost over) and takes him back to the wood shed.

Nat then pulls a Linda Blair and starts floating in mid-air. Doing the only thing a father can do when his son is about to become Satan he stabs his son in the heart killing him. In a room full of Satanists that disappear the moment Nat dies. He carries his body back to his wife’s body and is arrested by what looks like the same cop who died in the earlier explosion which makes you wonder if either Jack had gone insane or he was the only guy who could fit in the police uniform.We are also teased that a child inside Melissa is moving around, please don’t tease any sequels I can’t take it.

There are a few good death scenes in the movie which include impalement on a white picket fence, a hit and run that puts Final Destination to shame and a random act of violence involving both a shovel and baseball bat. Those are about the only good redeeming qualities of this movie. I realize I’m only a movie critic and have no idea what goes into the actual writing of a movie, casting, directing, producing and everything else but I don’t think the people that made this know either. No big name stars but a big budget flick doesn’t make any sense. I wonder if someone sold their soul to Satan to get this made. Quick let’s kill the DVD before anyone else gets hurt.