CAST
Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars)
Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf)
Violett Beane (The Flash)
Hayden Szeto (The Good Place)
Landon Liboiron (Hemlock Grove)
Nolan Gerard Funk (Arrow)
Sophia Taylor Ali (Mono)
Sam Lerner (The Goldbergs)
Aurora Perrineau (Passengers)
Tom Choi (Hall Pass)
Andrew Howard (The Outpost)
Olivia Barron, her best friend Markie Cameron, Markie’s boyfriend Lucas Moreno, along with Penelope Amari and her boyfriend Tyson Curran, and Brad Chang go on a trip to Rosarito, Mexico. In Mexico, Olivia runs into fellow student Ronnie who proceeds to harass her until a man intervenes on her behalf. The man introduces himself as Carter and eventually convinces her and her friends to join him for drinks at the ruins of a mission. There, Carter initiates a game of Truth or Dare with Olivia and her friends, plus Ronnie, who followed the group. Eventually, the game ends when Carter reveals that he deceived Olivia as a means of tricking her and her friends to the mission to offer them in his place in the supernatural game of Truth or Dare. As Carter leaves, he explains to Olivia that the game will follow them and they must not refuse it.
At a local college bar, sometime after everyone returned from Mexico, Ronnie dies when he fails to complete a dare. Olivia, having become convinced that Carter was telling the truth, gathers and attempts to convince her friends that the game is real. The game, playing in accordance to the order the group played in Mexico, turns to Markie, having already appeared to Olivia and Lucas, and she is forced to break Olivia’s hand. At the hospital, Brad is then forced by the game into revealing to his father, Officer Han Chang, his homosexuality.
The next day, the skeptical Tyson lies when forced to tell a truth and, as a result, dies. A drunken Penelope is next forced by the game to drink and finish a full bottle of vodka whilst walking along the edge of the roof of a house. She eventually falls from the roof after finishing the bottle, but is saved by Brad, Markie, and Olivia. The group manage to come into contact with a woman named Giselle, who is also a participant in a separate incarnation of the game, and the group go to meet her.
Giselle reveals that she and her friends played the game and her friend Sam, the only other survivor of her incarnation of the game, was responsible for the game becoming reality in the first place, having wrecked the ruins of the mission. Giselle reveals that a truth can only be chosen twice before the next player is forced to chose dare. Giselle draws a handgun on Olivia and shoots, confessing that she was dared to kill her. However, Penelope jumps in front of Olivia and is shot and killed. Failing to kill Olivia, Giselle shoots herself in the head. Later, following Olivia, Lucas, and Markie’s turns in the game, Brad is dared to withdraw his father’s gun and make him beg for his life. However, in the act, Brad is shot and killed by an approaching officer. At the precinct, Olivia learns that Carter is Sam.
Olivia and Lucas drive to Tijuana and meet with a mute woman and former nun who operated out of the church in which they originally played the game. The woman informs them that they are dealing with a demon she first summoned, who possessed the game of Truth or Dare and can only be stopped if the last person who evoked it sacrifices their tongue into an urn and seals it with wax after an incantation is made in the church.
Olivia, Markie, and Lucas find Sam and force him at gunpoint back to the ruins of the church in Mexico. There, Sam begins the ritual and is about to sever his tongue when it becomes Lucas’ turn to play the game. Lucas is dared to kill either Olivia or Markie, which he refuses. Possessed by the demon controlling the game, Lucas is forced to kill Sam, before the latter can complete the ritual to end the game. He then proceeds to slit his throat and die.
Olivia forces the demon to reveal to her whether or not there was a definitive way to end the game with Markie and herself alive. The demon reveals that now that Sam is dead, there is not – but they can draw more people into the game and prolong their turn in it. Olivia hastily records and uploads a video to YouTube, warning of the game and its rules, before challenging the viewer of the video to Truth or Dare, initiating them, effectively involving millions of new Truth or Dare players therefore postponing her and Markie’s involvement in the game for the rest of their lives thus saving them.
Wow the haters all came out for this one. There was nothing wrong with this film. The directing, writing/screenplay, acting, cinematography, score and vfx where all on point! I really enjoyed this one and it was much better than most of the films out lately in this genre. Watch it, you will be happy you did.
One of the first things you see in “Undone” is a car crash. One of the last things you see, in the pilot at least, is a car crash. One of the things you see the most over five episodes of Season 1 — in a myriad of different ways, interrupting various other moments — is this same exact car crash, where Alma (Rosa Salazar) gets T-boned after running a stop sign because she sees… something… on the side of the road. That “something” holds great meaning to the central mystery, but, as it first appears in the show, it’s just a few brush strokes on the giant canvas that is “Undone”; it’s an important part, but also a means to the bigger picture — and I’m not just talking about the show’s groundbreaking format.
“Undone,” the new half-hour original program from creators Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg (both of whom work on Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman”), is the first serialized TV show made with rotoscope animation. Rotoscoping is a process where artists trace over images that have already been captured, alter that footage with original artwork, or find a way to do both at once — you’ve seen it before in films like “A Scanner Darkly,” and the same team who made Richard Linklater’s 2006 film helped animate “Undone,” as well. The visuals, which are breathtaking in and of themselves, also compliment the series’ wide-ranging ambition, from the genres it smashes together to the themes of its core story. Together, the animation and the writing compliment each other to form a unique new form of television; one that’s easy to get caught up in, even when it stumbles a bit while explaining itself. “Undone” is a fascinating project to examine, but it’s also a very good, very human story, sans the flashy packaging.
Leading up to the crash, Alma’s life is presented as mundane to the point of frustrating. She’s stuck in a rut, bouncing between her routine job at a daycare center and a quiet life at home with her live-in boyfriend, Sam (Siddharth Dhananjay). Further exacerbating Alma’s discontent is her all-too-normal sister, Becca (Angelique Cabral) and all-too-traditional mother, Camila (Constance Marie). Becca is recently engaged, which serves as a) a reminder for Alma that her best friend and drinking buddy will soon be domesticated, b) a trigger for Camila, who’s hoping Alma will soon follow in her sister’s footsteps, and c) a trigger for Alma, who needs a change and doesn’t know exactly where to look.
These conflicts heat to a boil over the course of an engrossing debut episode, leading to the aforementioned car crash and a twist on the narrative only hinted at in the initial half-hour. Ostensibly, “Undone” revolves around one question: What happened to Alma’s father, Jacob (Bob Odenkirk)? He died in a car crash when Alma was an adolescent, but he resurfaces after Alma’s own accident to ask for her help. Is he a hallucination? A symptom of brain trauma? A time-traveling pseudo-spirit trying to help his daughter from behind the grave?
From Episode 2 onward, “Undone” focuses on training and practice, as Jacob urges Alma to tap into a mysterious ability he claims to have mastered: the power to travel through space and time, altering timelines along the way. Perhaps she can save his life. Perhaps she can save her own. Or, by indulging in her visions, perhaps Alma is ruining the life she’s already built — are her choices self-healing or self-destructive? Is she burning down everything and everyone around her because she’s fed up with a banal existence, or is she actively addressing her mental illness in order to save those very same things?This kind of confusion should be deeply relatable to anyone who’s taken risks, broken the status quo, or made difficult life decisions. It’s often hard to know you’re doing the right thing as it’s happening, and “Undone” brings that confusion to beautiful, convincing life through its animation. As Alma tries to sort out one issue, others come crashing through — literally. She might be sitting in a hospital bed, but then she’s suddenly transported behind the wheel of her car. Or she’s having a fight with her sister, and the sky comes crashing down around them, sending Alma adrift into the cosmos.
Purdy, Bob-Waksberg, and director Hisko Hulsing (“Montage of Heck”) find more and more inventive ways to transition between scenes, emotions, and stories as the series progresses, creating a wild atmosphere always grounded in Alma’s perspective. The format helps you see things as she experiences them as much as it helps you feel what she’s going through, but the creative team takes things one step further and realigns the series’ structure, too. After starting off with a pretty traditional pilot (introducing characters, a central problem, and an intriguing mystery), the following episodes have atypical start and end points, fluctuating narrative arcs, and sudden shifts in focus.
A lot of that is acknowledged in the storytelling itself, as Alma will comment on the abrupt departure from one topic to another, sometimes steering us back to the original point. In a weird way, it’s like an action movie — except the fights or chase scenes that break up the emotional story are thought experiments or time travel, and Alma can decide for herself if she wants to run with it or go back to what she was doing before being interrupted. This creates a feeling of drifting between stories as much as it blends them together; there’s a murder-mystery, a personal journey of self-fulfillment, and existential queries about what makes a person who they are, all incorporated into 30-minute episodes. Like Alma losing her tether to reality, “Undone” loses momentum while it’s wrestling to work through so much (not to mention while trying to explain itself, which mainly works because of Odenkirk’s dulcet professorial voice).
Odenkirk, who also produces, is the show’s beating heart. His mysterious father figure pokes and prods his daughter into action, as Odenkirk creates an endearing, self-aware know-it-all; a guy who has all the answers, dispenses them as he best sees fit, and yet does so in a way that feels earnest. (Odenkirk shows a particular talent for delivering lines like “try, but don’t try try,” making them believably helpful without feeling condescending.) Meanwhile, Salazar carries the entirety of Alma’s crazy journey with a deft touch and quick wit. She’s a grounding rod and a spark of energy, turning exposition into entertainment without betraying the import of the situation. Salazar taps into Alma on every level, and the lived-in performance helps keep the sci-fi story from feeling too out there.
In case it’s not obvious from the above descriptions, the animation takes nothing away from these immaculate performances. Each actor shines through just as they would in live-action and deserve accolades accordingly. Every level of “Undone” compliments another, which encourages belief that the ending of the series will be as strong as the start. With three episodes left in the first season, much of “Undone’s” commentary on mental illness has yet to fully form, but given the way Purdy and Bob-Waksberg tied similar themes together in “BoJack Horseman” (like the Season 4 masterpiece, “Time’s Arrow,” written by Purdy), it feels like those answers are coming. For now, there’s enough to admire in the way their new series plays with time to blend significant people with significant events, while allowing its characters to reassess both by taking control of their temporal reality — in doing so, the experimental new series finds significance itself.
RECURRING/ NOTABLE GUEST CAST
“Scream: The TV Series” was never a big hit over at MTV, both in ratings and with critics’ reviews. Due to its struggles, it was announced that the third season would see a hard reboot with a completely new set of cast and characters brought in to introduce a brand new story-line. The third season was completed after several re-shoots, but then it sat on the shelves in Hollywood for nearly three years due to the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Honestly, all hope was lost that fans of the television show or Wes Craven’s four part Scream movie series would see the show again, but then out of nowhere VH1 bought the rights to the show and dropped the six-episode third season in a three-night event spectacular.
RJ Cyler (Power Rangers), Jessica Sula (Split), Giorgia Whigham (“The Punisher”), KeKe Palmer (“Scream Queens”), Christopher Jordan Wallace (Notorious), Guillian Yao Gioiello (“The Carrie Diaries”) and Roger Jackson reprising the role of Ghostface star in Scream: Resurrection with Tyga (rapper: 2009’s Bedrock), Mary J. Blige (9x Grammy Award winning singer), Gideon Emery (“Teen Wolf”), Tony Todd (Candy Man), Tyler Posey (“Teen Wolf”) and Paris Jackson (Michael Jackson’s daughter) appearing in supporting roles. I think the biggest question anyone reading this overview has is: how is Ghostface introduced and does he have a connection to the Scream movies? Well, the original Ghostface costume returns – the previous seasons used a weird sex doll version – and better yet, the original voice of Ghostface returns, too, however, he/she has no relation to the material in the Scream movies.
When Deion and his brother are trick or treating as kids, his brother is wearing the Ghostface Halloween costume when he was murdered. Naturally, the killer dons the same costume to mess with Deion throughout Scream: Resurrection. This was a clever way of re-introducing the iconic costume to younger horror fans while easily avoiding the conflict of making it relate-able to the plight of Sydney Prescott. As far as characters go, my favorites were Beth (Giorgia) and Becky (Jackson), although the latter was used so sparingly. I had trouble investing my energy in Deion (RJ) because I didn’t believe in him as the hero.
Scream: Resurrection also hits a minor road bump at the start because it introduces its own urban legend – The Hookman (played by Tony Todd). Having a Candy Man/I Know What You Did Last Summer type of character in the Scream universe was a little cluttered, but ultimately Tony Todd and Ghostface have an epic battle in a junkyard that is the horror battle royal we’ve all been waiting for since Freddy vs Jason. Also to its repulsion, Scream: Resurrection refers to its central characters as the Deadfast Club (a Breakfast Club parody) with each character matching one of the roles in the 1985 classic. Two of the characters, Kym (KeKe) and Amir (Christopher), are incredibly annoying and then you have a third, Liv (Jessica), who’s so wooden and disconnected from the violence that it hurts the viewer and their overall viewing experience. I don’t fault the actors at all because they have extensive resumes and have turned in great performances in the past. 
I blame the sloppy writing and unenthusiastic production team for these blunders. The writing is terrible, even worse than the previous seasons, and the characters’ train of thought and emotions fly all over the place like loose canons, or they’re dead inside and a couple more takes should have been filmed for a better effect. The writing literally made me want to scream my face off, pun intended. You should see how the teens talk about the murders half the time, like it’s as commonplace as eating breakfast every morning. Just terrible.
Considering Scream: Resurrection is aimed at teens, several romances bloom this season, much like in the previous two. One of the main character’s dad is a big time police officer in town, closely following the outline of “Scream: The TV Series,” but Scream: Resurrection does carve out its own path on occasion. This can be seen in the frequent nightmares and visions that Deion experiences where he or one of his friends is killed by Ghostface, and when the teens decide to take the fight to the killer before one of them gets picked off. Racism, poverty and class discrimination are also heavily explored in Scream: Resurrection due to a more urban setting. One of the biggest pitfalls Scream: Resurrection makes, much like the two entries before it, is its use of throwaway kills. Over the course of the six-episode season, nine victims fall victim to Ghostface, and they’re done so by use of various instruments including needles, trash compactors and lots of fire.
While it’s nice to see Ghostface using other weapons, something he rarely did in the Scream movies, I wish he was using these weapons on characters with some sort of worth. Three of the victims could barely be considered characters, another three only had about five minutes of air-time and the last three were part of The Deadfast Club or someone close to them. Only having three dead main or supporting characters packed no emotional punch what-so-ever; not that you’re actually going to care about any of them.
With one really beautiful visual, one awesome death scene, and a lot of great locations, Scream: Resurrection leaves a lot to be desired. It has modest production value and it tried to do something different than the first two seasons on MTV, but it’s still kind of a shitfest. An abbreviated season that was pushed out in a three night event was a smart timesaver on VH1’s part, but the whole thing still seems unnecessary.
Nothing in Scream: Resurrection is actually scary and the writing, and the performances that it births, are absolutely dreadful. Come to think of it, they’re the only frightening thing in the whole show. Not to mention the killer’s motive of “watching scary movies wasn’t enough anymore, I wanted to be in one,” was kind of a let down. I was hoping for more bite in their reveal. Bringing back the original Ghostface costume and voice actor was a welcomed idea, but the rest of Scream: Resurrection was so bad that it took away from this nostalgic effect. And again, Ghostface’s presence wasn’t enough to get fans invigorated in a script that was dead on arrival. I saw the live viewership numbers for episode one (767,000) and episode two (627,000) and I don’t think the ratings picked up after horror fans saw how bad this was. To its favor, though, these numbers are more than double what “Scream: The TV Series” was averaging in season two. Still, I don’t think anyone’s going to rush to buy this one when it’s inevitably released to Blu-ray/DVD this Fall. Another wasted opportunity in the Scream franchise, I think it’s time to put this adaption to rest and leave it there forever.
They say timing is everything, and for me the timing of watching season 6 of Smallville for the first time was perfect. Why is that? Because this was the season that introduced their take on Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow, and I got hooked on the new show about him this last season on TV.
Of course, before we can get to new characters, we have a few cliffhangers to resolve. While all kinds of chaos is reigning down on the citizens of Earth thanks to the evil force that has taken over Lex Luther’s body (Michael Rosenbaum), Clark Kent (Tom Welling) can’t do much about it since he’s trapped in the Phantom Zone. While he does escape and manage to save the day, he unwittingly releases the evil prisoners from the Phantom Zone and must spend some time tracking them down this season. As things return to normal, characters explore new options. Lois Lane (Erica Durance) and Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack) become roommates and Lois starts a new career as a reporter for a tabloid. They also both get new boyfriends in the two new characters that are introduced.
Lois starts dating the previously mentioned Olive Queen (Justin Hartley) while Chloe falls for Jimmy Olsen (Aaron Ashmore), a young photographer at The Daily Planet. Lana Lang (Kistin Kreuk), meanwhile, has moved in with Lex and their relationship becomes more serious when she finds out she is pregnant. Chloe learns a very surprising secret and is reunited with her mom as played by TV’s Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter.
Other storylines of the season involve Clark and Oliver’s clashes over how to use their powers for good. Lex is collecting and hiding people with abilities. Those storylines clash when we see the first glimpse of the Justice League Smallville style. This season is really about the young adults. No one is in college any more (did they all drop out after one season or did they all graduate at lightning speed?) While Lionel Luther (John Glover) is still around being unclear in his intensions, Martha Kent (Annette O’Toole) is given very little to do. And before the season is over, one character makes an exit from the show.
