One of my favorite yearly family traditions involves going out with friends and cousins, having a big picnic in Los Angeles's Griffith Park, and watching some free Shakespeare courtesy of the Independent Shakespeare Co. We arrive early, stake out our blankets on the grass, roam the old zoo cages near the stage, eat spam musubi and chicken salad sandwiches, and hang out until the show time. The play is always awesome, and it's a good way for us to bond as a family.

(Shakespeare by the Sea also puts on good free shows, too, but my family tends to prefer the less traditional interpretations that the Griffith Park players act out.)

This year, we saw Twelfth Night, a cross-dressing comedy with one of the most bizarre love triangles (squares? pentagons? shapes?) put to pen. We rolled with laughter. My 3-year old niece, Leilani, got a crush on one of the actors, and even my 1-year old nephew swayed to the songs and dance.

I never thought that this would turn into a tradition. When this started, I was just a Shakespeare geek with no car, grabbing along whoever I could find to give me a ride. But little by little, it started to become an event. I'm glad.

I think that supporting and even just going out and enjoying the arts is important. It creates a connection, a shared experience, a memory. For me, personally, it lets me share one of my passions with my family. Above all else, it just makes me really happy. And who doesn't like to be happy?

After being burned by Legion, I decided to watch a horror movie that I hoped might turn out to be good. I went with The Ritual on Netflix, which has a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and a pretty nice trailer.

Four friends, grieving their lost buddy, go backpacking across the Scandinavian Mountains. One falls and hurts his ankle. The men to decide to go off the trail, taking a shortcut into the woods. Weird things happen. A dead animal, impaled on high on the branches, drips blood. Strange letters appear on the bark of trees. Something is about to go horrifically wrong.

The Ritual is well-crafted and beautifully shot. The actors all do a good job of making their characters seem believable. They’re everyday blokes who find themselves in an increasingly horrific situation. I bought into the premise from the start, and because of that, for the first half hour of the movie, I was genuinely unsettled and frightened. But the longer the movie went on, the less it scared me.

On a purely visual level, the antagonist is unique, creepy, and even occasionally beautiful. But the story failed to develop the antagonist’s motivation and mythology. This caused the final act to collapse in on itself. The Ritual turned a simple premise into a complicated, muddled mess. It remained beautiful and well-crafted until the very last shot, but by then, I had stopped believing in it. I left the movie with mixed feelings and vague sense of disappointment.

Why is that though?

(Warning: From this point on, I will be a LONG, scene-by-scene summary, that will SPOIL every plot point of the movie. If you haven’t seen The Ritual, read on at your own discretion.)

I thought I liked bad horror movies, but it turns out not all bad horror movies are created equal. Some I just hate.

Back in 2010, while living in a small town in Japan, I saw the trailer for Legion. In a small, greasy spoon diner, a group of strangers find themselves in thrust into the apocalypse. An old woman turns into a demon and attacks them. A fallen angel declares that humanity’s only hope is a pregnant woman’s baby.

This seemed like an interesting premise. But the movie scored dismal reviews (19% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a pretty poor opening ($17 million, for an eventual $40 million domestic, $67 million worldwide). That’s a pity, I thought, and moved on. But I have a weird memory which can inexplicably remember obscure movie trailers from 9 years ago. So when Legion popped up on Netflix, I thought I’d watch it.

I am so glad I didn’t see this in theaters.

There are few bad movies which have actively pissed me off as much as Legion. I absolutely hated the anti-hero, fallen angel protagonist, who managed to be both holier-than-God self-righteous and a soulless, compassionless jerk. The antagonists were non-threatening cartoons with no brains. The ending was anti-climactic, and the themes were a mess. Legion spouted faith while ripping out its foundations. It sacrificed a basic understanding of good and evil in an attempt to be edgy. This movie did not know what it wanted to be and juggled action, fantasy, and horror set-pieces that might look cool, but had no tension, suspense, or emotion.

It wasn’t that nothing worked. There were characters I liked, there were ideas that could have been developed, and certain elements did genuinely hold my interest. However, the story as a whole was so muddled and soulless, it soured even the parts I liked. 

(Warning: From this point on, I will be giving a SUPER LONG point-by-point summary of the movie and spoiling everything. If you feel you must watch the movie first, go ahead. Personally, I don’t recommend it.)