a sickle, eh? never seen in the movie

By only the most magical twist of fate did I get to see American Psycho 2. Greg refused to let me buy it or rent it. Marla refused to watch it with me, but what else is new? And countless other people have also turned me down, or even considered pretending not to know me ever again, just because I wanted to see this movie. It's not the kind of movie you can rent alone either. You'd look like a total weirdo doing that. After all, everyone knows the premise won't make any sense. But you-- you forgot William Shatner.

The movie opens with a voice-over from Mila Kunis-- she explains her origins: One night Mila Kunis was tied up as Patrick Bateman was in the process or killing the girl's babysitter. She got free, but instead of freeing the babysitter, she killed her... just because. Remember, they're supposed to be sociopaths. She says that Bateman was caught and linked to all of his murders, then they wrote a book about him. So... there you have it. Either a) the first movie didn't happen, or it wasn't all in Bateman's head, or b) Mila Kunis is a separate character that lives in Bateman's head, and we're following her now. Could anyone be more irritating to have in your head than Mila Kunis? Geeze.

By the way-- this is a Lion's Gate movie. And the director is Morgan J. Freeman, accent on the J. His credits include directing Dawson's Creek episodes. Mila Kunis (who is named Rachael Newman, but who I will just call Mila Kunis) is in college, and she's being taught by William Shatner, the best psychological profiler... ever. Mila Kunis' voiceover keeps going and going. She's sooooo lame. Maybe she's a nice person, but what a voice! Elch. Now-- during Shatner's class we meet three or four people that are going to get killed off. We know it right off the bat because she calls them competition.

Competition for what? Mila Kunis wants to be Shatner's Teaching Assistant. She says, "Failure is not an option." That's the subtitle for The Substitute 4. Awesome, huh? Whatever. Kunis is a freshman. She's trying to be a sophomore TA. And then she finds out they don't let freshmen be TAs. Duh-- what schools has she been to? The secretary who tells her that is probably bound for death. Mila Kunis just put a cat in the microwave. It was the secretary's cat-- that's why. Then she beats the woman to death with an employee of the year plaque. Not like we care though. They also hide Mila Kunis' face, as if we're supposed to believe the killer is someone who's not featured on the front of the DVD box.

For the record, I don't have the DVD, I downloaded this. I don't think Lion's Gate is going to sue me-- no one should pay for this crap anyway. Mila Kunis is going on a date with one of the people she's competing with. Maybe to kill him? Trivia for you... they shot this movie in 20 days. I'm tellin' you... I can do this for a living. Hopefully my movie would go better though. Actors are stepping all over each other's lines and Mila Kunis is far too casual for this. It's like she's in a high school play. Like she's getting paid to over-act. On the stage, that's cool, but in film? AW jeeze-- they have an Old 97's song in this?! Maybe it was a record label fulfillment. I hope so.

Mila Kunis is going at it with the rich kid she's competing with, but then she puts on her hooded sweatshirt and kills him. It didn't happen yet, but it will. She strangled him with a condom-- over corny music too. She justifies her murder by saying that when she gets into the FBI, she'll catch serial killers everyday. DUDE-- guess who's the psychiatrist she's going to (for fun, I believe)? The guy from Forever Knight-- that vampire show-- and Cube 2: Hypercube-- Geraint Wyn Davies. He's pals with Shatner.

By the way, the writers who wrote this hadn't written anything else. I respect that. It's something to put on the resume, I suppose. Mila Kunis is jogging now. She doesn't seem like a jogger. She seems like a naturally skinny person. Anyway, She jogs to where she'll probably dispose of a body later. Why else would they take us out there? AWESOME! They just made a writing error. Here I am letting them go, and boom-- they start throwing around time references. They were in the past and present interchangeably. I do that, but I don't get paid for this. So the chick who Shatner's sleeping with tells Mila that she's a shoe-in for the TA position. And wouldn't you know it? She gets hanged in her room.

The psychiatrist knows Kunis is a psycho, but she knows he knows, so there's a complex dynamic. Everyone but the black guy in competition is dead now. The music reminds me of Puppetmaster 4. I think they did it all on one keyboard, Two days after the first class, the boards haven't been erased. What a crappy school for maintenance. The black guy must be going down next. He looks like a good enough guy. You gotta feel bad for him. We have a stairs scene in the library, like out of the original. I doubt she'll have a chainsaw in the library though. No, she doesn't. Ice pick to the head.

Shatner, in the meantime, finds his dead girlfriend. Poor guy. He leaves her, because he shouldn't be boinking students anyway. Shatner's the hero in this movie. He's one hell of a character. His acting is unintentionally hilarious-- as usual. Now Kunis is the only one left-- but she won't get the position. In his grief, Shatner's going on sabbatical. Enter thunderstorm. The wardrobe isn't very good in this movie. That's usually something you don't notice, but two dresses just looked entirely the same.

When Shatner lets the claws out, he starts to think about things... Mila Kunis tries to make Shatner look crazy. Kunis shows up in the dead chick's dress (so, not bad wardrobe) and necklace, and pretends she's the dead girl, who looks nothing like her-- just to mess with his head. Shatner connects some dots with Kunis' help. She also confesses her love for Shatner. Shatner falls. Stop it Mila! You're hurting Bill! Stop! Nooo! Shatner fell out the window! Nooooooooo!

Wait-- what now? Kunis is taking the body and staging an accident. So... what's the point of this movie now? She can't be the TA or get into the FBI with a shortcut as his TA, so why are we still watching? We don't like her enough to want to know what she'd do next. Kunis' parents show up, planned, but she's not ready for them. She's housing a corpse in the closet. She'll probably end up killing them. The only person left to kill, even though it's for no reason, is the psychiatrist. Oh-- his mom entered the picture, so she's bound for death now.

And both the mom and psychiatrist just happen to be at the same restaurant as Mila Kunis and her parents. There's a trainwreck waiting to happen. Oh-- by the way-- in the bathroom, Kunis went off about talking to Shatner later. I guess they want to remind us that she's a sociopath again. The mother indicates that Kunis' last name in the movie Rachael NEWMAN, is not her actual last name. So that leaves some mystery. If her last name is Bateman, that would be so lame. They never even alluded to her being related though. Let's stay positive... it won't be that bad... Kunis killed Rachael Newman during the first weekend. She never was Newman-- she never was as smart as she claimed-- she just killed the smart girl for the credentials. Funny part is IMDB lists "Real Rachael Newman" as a character. Oh well.

Kunis is faking an accident to kill off the already dead Shatner-- I think. Either that or she's ditching the Real Rachael Newman and having necro-sex with a dead Shatner, or she's just talking crazy. None of these possibilities would be a shocker at this point in time. The psychiatrist and the cops catch up with Kunis. You thought she killed them didn't you? But wait-- she escaped the police. Then the car went off a cliff with a terribly lame CGI explosion. They all assume she died, but we know she didn't. They did find Rachael Newman's body in the car, but it was Real Rachael Newman, so that works out alright.

Kunis, on the other hand, is alive and well at Quantico (the FBI), where the psychiatrist is guest-lecturing. Ah, nice touch. After the lecture, who would come up for an autograph? Not-- no-- couldn't be-- It's Mila Kunis! No way! But she's all dressed up now. She's dressed like the TA-- the last TA, who went on to get into Quantico. Oh, and she's an agent in the FBI already. How nice. So she gets away with it. As a character in Patrick Bateman's head, she's fine. But is she? Because she suggests at the end that if she never went to get the autograph, it would be like she'd "done nothing at all." And isn't that a principle behind the original American Psycho? The whole question of whether you really are that crazy even if it is all in your head? But why ask questions now?

For now, I'm just happy with the chance to watch this rarely seen piece of cinema. I'd liken it to Surge-- that Mountain Dew knock-off from a few years ago. Those who knew it was out there were rarely even tempted to try it, but those that did got a little taste of something they could get better somewhere else. But, at least they can say they tried it. Me? I can say I finally saw it. Thank you Lion's Gate and Bill Shatner.