Rather than reviewing one of the latest Pay Per View movies that have been released – “Forces of Nature”, I thought a better idea would be to examine how movies this bad, with well known actors are even made in the first place. This alone would be a great idea for a documentary entitled “Why and How Bad Movies are Made”.

In the case of this very bad movie, why any actor – known or unknown – could read this script and then decide to risk their careers by agreeing to take the part is more interesting than listing the boring details of one day in the lives of 2 cops, Cardillo and Jess during a Hurricane in Puerto Rico.

The two cops are played by Emile Hirsch and Stephanie Cayo. Cayo is an unknown actress and Emile Hirsch is well known and not too long ago was making some very good movies. While it is understandable to want to stay current as an actor, but choosing a bad role in a very bad movie, cannot be a good idea, no matter how badly things are going for you in the movie industry. This is also true of Kate Bosworth, who has not made many movies recently after being prolific about 10 years ago. Taking this role will do nothing to revive anyone’s acting career.

As for Mel Gibson, despite doing everything in his power to say and do the wrong thing for the last decade he is still a great movie director and is also very rich, so why did he decide to be in a movie this bad? Mel Gibson’s appearance in this bad movie is the most confusing part of this waste of 2 hours. This is one of those cases where I think there was some Hollywood favor that was owed. Despite being the main draw for this movie, Gibson’s appearance seems very awkward and out of place.

As far as the plot of Forces of Nature, the most interesting part of this entire story was one of the tenants in this run down Motel who has a violent pet Alligator who he feeds hamburger from a local food store. The criminals in the Motel trying steal valuable paintings in the building was completely unwatchable.

Forces of Nature has a 4.4 rating on IMDB and a 9 on Rotten Tomatoes and for a change, both of those numbers are accurate. Nobody should waste their time or money on this remarkably bad movie.

This excerpt from a review of Forces of Nature by Paul Byrnes summarizes one reason how and why bad movies are made:

“Some movies are born bad; some achieve badness through lack of care or budget. Some seem to aspire to it and director Michael Polish has had a long enough career to know the difference.”

When a person has been through a traumatic event – the plot of the new Amazon Prime streaming film “Chemical Hearts”, a severe car accident – the worst thing you can say is “get over it”. Traumatic events in any person’s life heal in proportion to the level of trauma, and that person’s ability to rationalize and slowly set it aside over a defined period of time. There is no speeding up this process, and in many cases some people never are able to get past the traumatic event. The famous phrase “Time Heals All Wounds” is just not true in every case.

Chemical Hearts is about a young woman, Grace Towns, who is in high school and was a passenger in a car with her boyfriend. One day the car swerves into some rocks and her boyfriend is killed. Grace receives a severe leg injury that requires a cane for her to walk. This is an example of a life trauma that nobody will get over quickly. Then add the guilt of “why did I live” and “if we had only done this instead” – that are typical thoughts for anyone who has been through something as traumatic as a car accident where someone is killed.

Through the high school newspaper, Grace meets Henry Page, a fellow student and member of the newspaper. Over time, Grace and Henry get involved in a very complex relationship that includes Grace reliving the accident and her guilt over still being alive and becoming involved with someone else. The plot of this teenage drama is different than any other similar movies I have seen in the past and I thought the complex relationship drama was well done and well acted.

I thought the acting in this film was excellent, with Lili Reinhart as Grace and Austin Abrams has Henry. All of the other actors were very good in their roles throughout this film, even though one side story about two lesbian students seemed more like “2 hour filler”, than something that should have been included in the screenplay.  I have been mostly impressed with the quality of originally developed movies with both Amazon and Netflix over the years. 

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie at only 57% is completely wrong and the audience rating of 86% is a bit too high. My rating is around 75% for the solid story and acting and I do recommend this movie. 

In July 1999, a very well made Shark thriller was released called “Deep Blue Sea”. The story was a very good one. A woman scientist was desperate to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease because her mother died from it. Her plan was to breed Sharks and change their DNA, so their brains would greatly increase in size – hopefully finding a cure for Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, by increasing the brain power of Sharks they became much more dangerous and proceed to wreck havoc within an underwater lab comprised of huge compartments and tunnels – essentially the same idea behind all of the Jurassic Park movies.

The original movie in 1999 had four well known actors, Samuel L. Jackson and Thomas Jane, LL Cool J and Micheal Rapaport. The 2 sequels were low grade B movies with no known actors. The problem with all 3 of these movies, much more so with the last 2, is that there are too many scenes where supposedly intelligent people do very stupid things. Scenes where people dive unprotected into the water trying to save another diver, or investigate a known disturbance when they have no chance to survive within a large body of water with fast moving, super intelligent and vicious Sharks. The most iconic scene in Deep Blue Sea was Samuel L. Jackson’s speech to get all of his colleagues to calm down and a shark jumps in the air, grabs him from behind and drags him back into the water.

To me it is obvious that in 2017, 18 years after the release of the original Deep Blue Sea, that it was decided to finally make a sequel for one reason. The reason was the huge popularity of “Shark Week”, so two bad movies were thrown together with no real script only for marketing reasons. None of the two sequels were widely released and both went to DVD, recently resurfacing with On Demand. I for one, had no idea that two sequels were made from the original very good Deep Blue Sea that was released in 1999. In all 3 movies there are scenes of massive blood and gore, caused by human beings being eaten alive by large killer Sharks. Due to budget reasons, the special effects in the first version released in 1999 are much better than the sequels that were released in 2017 and 2019.

For fans of Sharks, Shark Week or a movie about highly intelligent vicious sharks, see the original movie, and run from the two sequels that are bad films with no real story. I agree with the very low ratings for the two sequels.