Lousy Lottery 30: It's a Llamageddon!
Welcome, friends, to the Lousy Lottery! Here’s how it works. First, I post four movies to a poll on Twitter. Fans vote to pick which movie to make me watch that week. I watch it, review it and spread the word about an amazingly awful, terribly terrific b-horror flick.
This is week 30! This week we do our best to survive 2015’s Llamageddon! But first, let’s talk plot.
Oh, who am I kidding? There is no plot. A llama seemingly from outer space crash lands on a farm somewhere in the United States or maybe Canada and starts killing everyone it encounters. It has laser eyes that blow people up. It also spits green goo at people that for some reason makes one dude turn into a sort of llama-human hybrid who lays llama eggs that hatch other laser eyed baby llamas. Why eggs, you ask? Look, man, I don’t know. It feels like a sort of Critters meets Gremlins but isn’t half as good as either of those movies. It’s just some young people having a party, the llama shows up, starts killing folks, then it’s over.
The budget for this movie wasn’t large, but what it had wasn’t used well. There are simple, basic mistakes that really can’t be blamed on money. Mistakes like someone making a joke, then looking right into camera, which is fine fourth wall breaking, but the shot hangs on the guy for about 8 beats too many. There are also times where people start laughing and breaking character that could’ve easily been edited out. Lines are delivered in wooden ways. There’s a scene where you can clearly see the cameraperson when the shot changes to a particular angle. There’s also a big fight scene in a forest where suddenly there’s a dog in the shot, then it’s gone, then it’s back and so on. The dog is not acknowledged at all and clearly just wandered into the shot.
This movie had nearly twice the budget of Napoleon Dynamite and a bigger budget than Pulp Fiction. My point being that if a filmmaker knows what they’re doing and has skills and vision, the budget isn’t an excuse. Look at Tape, Clerks and Paranormal Activity for further examples. Llamageddon had a fun name and a fun premise and nothing else. Ok, fine, not nothing, but next to nothing. I say not nothing because there is a guy whose shirt changes in every scene as a sort of in-joke and I genuinely thought that was pretty funny. There are also random bits of animation that were really well done and I loved that too. Hell, I wish the whole movie was animated like that, would’ve been much better. Outside of those two things, though, there’s really not much fun to be had.
Look, you know me, I’m a b-movie lover. I don’t mind mistakes. I don’t mind bad acting. I don’t mind a movie that’s not very well made. That said, it still has to work on some levels. For example, the movie could fail at being actually scary, but succeed at being funny. It could fail at being a good drama but succeed at being so bizarre it’s worth watching. It just has to be something. It has to be fun or scary or something to keep it engaging. Llamageddon just doesn’t really do much of anything. With a one hour runtime, it barely feels like a feature.
So, I’m honestly not sure what to say about it. I’m down with disaster flicks and even cheesy one’s like Lavalantula. I love me a goofy creature feature too. I would suggest, though, that you put Llamageddon way down on your watchlist. If you wanna check it out, though, it’s on Prime. If you disagree with my take, let me know. I’m always happy to learn and see things from different points of view.
Also, don’t forget to see what’s coming next in the Lousy Lottery. Make sure you tune into Twitter later today and vote for Lousy Lottery 31! My handle is @MrJosh79, look for it and don’t forget to vote!
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