A preposterous goody-two-shoes college girl (Melissa Sagemiller) kisses her ex (Wes Bentley) then feels so guilty that she freaks out and accidentally crashes her car, killing her current boyfriend (Casey Affleck). Heavy drama, right? But wait! It's worse! Things are no longer what they used to be. Shadowy masked figures lurk in doorways. Everyone talks cryptically about "letting go" and "finding freedom". Her best friend starts wearing goth make-up. Could it be that someone's already dead/dying? I'm not spoiling the film, honestly, because this SURPRISE TWIST is made inarguably obvious some 20 minutes in, which leaves the remaining 61 to be squandered on moralising, sentimentalising, listening to bad 90s college rock and behaving with increasing implausibility as our heroine sleepwalks her way to the inevitable, mawkish conclusion. If it's worth watching "Soul Survivors", it's purely to remind yourself that as bad as horror can be now, it was worse in the early 2000s. *
Showing posts with label Special Needs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Special Needs. Show all posts
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Monday, 16 January 2012
The Baby (1973)
Dir: Ted Post
An obscure 70s movie that's garnered cult classic status over time, I remember reading about this some twenty years ago and yet I've only now got round to watching it. I have to admit that it was a disappointment. Once you get over the shock of the unpleasant premise, it's really quite a boring film. A grown man with the apparent mental capacity of a small infant is treated like one by his mother and two older sisters. They keep him in a crib, call him only "Baby" and punish him with cattle prods when he does anything that might suggest he's growing up. There's a social worker trying to save "Baby" but it's clear from the start that she may have her own ulterior motives and dark secrets too... Some of the special 70s touches - the hair, the lighting, the costumes, the dancing, Suzanne Zenor - are enjoyable but these can't save the drab, lifeless TV-movie-like script/direction and the fact that it's just a little bit offensive. It deals with heavy subject matter like mental illness and child abuse in a way that's neither sensitive and well-informed, nor intentionally, gleefully tasteless. Instead it's just a bit misguided and leaves an aftertaste somewhere between a yuck and a yawn. *
An obscure 70s movie that's garnered cult classic status over time, I remember reading about this some twenty years ago and yet I've only now got round to watching it. I have to admit that it was a disappointment. Once you get over the shock of the unpleasant premise, it's really quite a boring film. A grown man with the apparent mental capacity of a small infant is treated like one by his mother and two older sisters. They keep him in a crib, call him only "Baby" and punish him with cattle prods when he does anything that might suggest he's growing up. There's a social worker trying to save "Baby" but it's clear from the start that she may have her own ulterior motives and dark secrets too... Some of the special 70s touches - the hair, the lighting, the costumes, the dancing, Suzanne Zenor - are enjoyable but these can't save the drab, lifeless TV-movie-like script/direction and the fact that it's just a little bit offensive. It deals with heavy subject matter like mental illness and child abuse in a way that's neither sensitive and well-informed, nor intentionally, gleefully tasteless. Instead it's just a bit misguided and leaves an aftertaste somewhere between a yuck and a yawn. *
Thursday, 29 December 2011
Amer (2010)
Dir: Hélène Cattet / Bruno Forzani
Slow, pretentious snoozefest without much in the way of plot shows us three key events in a girl's life that involve sex and death. These incidents are demonstrated largely through endless close-ups of earlobes, fingernails, navels, nostrils, etc. There's some Bava-style lighting and some music stolen from classic gialli but it owes more to French new wave cinema and dialogue-free avant garde directors like Kenneth Anger. The main problem is that while the directors it pays tribute to were genuine mavericks, "Amer" instead just clunkily recycles stuff that's been done better some 30+ years ago. There's nothing challenging about that. It's almost the antithesis of the art they're imitating. I suppose it works as a self-aggrandising showreel for the directors to show off how clever they think they are but, as a film, it's unwatchably dull. *
Slow, pretentious snoozefest without much in the way of plot shows us three key events in a girl's life that involve sex and death. These incidents are demonstrated largely through endless close-ups of earlobes, fingernails, navels, nostrils, etc. There's some Bava-style lighting and some music stolen from classic gialli but it owes more to French new wave cinema and dialogue-free avant garde directors like Kenneth Anger. The main problem is that while the directors it pays tribute to were genuine mavericks, "Amer" instead just clunkily recycles stuff that's been done better some 30+ years ago. There's nothing challenging about that. It's almost the antithesis of the art they're imitating. I suppose it works as a self-aggrandising showreel for the directors to show off how clever they think they are but, as a film, it's unwatchably dull. *
Tuesday, 28 March 2006
Pet Semetary (1989)
Dir: Mary Lambert
Stephen King adapts one of his most popular novels for the big screen, seemingly by typing with his toes, blindfolded, on Class "A" drugs; all in under five minutes ... Clumsy and hackneyed are adjectives that wouldn't even begin to describe this clunkin' hunk'o'junk's sorry-ass screenplay. A family who move into one seriously inappropriate house for children (it's right in front of a main trucking route and doesn't even have a fence in the front yard) are surprised when their kid gets run over. Luckily, there's an Indian burial ground next door (oh, that old chestnut!) and, according to their creepy-ass drunkard neighbour (Fred Gwynne, tragically slumming it here), it can bring the dead back to life if you put them in the soil. Next thing you know, dead kid's up and running with new-found skills in telephony, knot-tying, scalpel-hunting and corpse-stashing. None of this is really elaborated on and yet it all takes itself so seriously that an explanation is sorely needed. Instead, we just get melodramatic, pseudo-philosophical rhapsodising on the nature of death. The acting is atrocious (Dale Midkiff, as the family father, seems to be in a particularly talky coma) and director Mary Lambert clearly doesn't have a passion for the genre and (over)compensates by loading her film full of every cliché in the book (echoey voices, copious dry ice, loud bangs, gratuitous gore, etc). The animatronic child puppet steals the show from everyone and, if it wasn't for the totally gnarly Ramones song at the end, "Pet Semetary" would be entirely worthless. It's odd because I remember watching this when I was a wee lad and really enjoying it, but as an adult, it's just too poorly executed and downright stupid to work in the slightest. EL BOMBA!
Stephen King adapts one of his most popular novels for the big screen, seemingly by typing with his toes, blindfolded, on Class "A" drugs; all in under five minutes ... Clumsy and hackneyed are adjectives that wouldn't even begin to describe this clunkin' hunk'o'junk's sorry-ass screenplay. A family who move into one seriously inappropriate house for children (it's right in front of a main trucking route and doesn't even have a fence in the front yard) are surprised when their kid gets run over. Luckily, there's an Indian burial ground next door (oh, that old chestnut!) and, according to their creepy-ass drunkard neighbour (Fred Gwynne, tragically slumming it here), it can bring the dead back to life if you put them in the soil. Next thing you know, dead kid's up and running with new-found skills in telephony, knot-tying, scalpel-hunting and corpse-stashing. None of this is really elaborated on and yet it all takes itself so seriously that an explanation is sorely needed. Instead, we just get melodramatic, pseudo-philosophical rhapsodising on the nature of death. The acting is atrocious (Dale Midkiff, as the family father, seems to be in a particularly talky coma) and director Mary Lambert clearly doesn't have a passion for the genre and (over)compensates by loading her film full of every cliché in the book (echoey voices, copious dry ice, loud bangs, gratuitous gore, etc). The animatronic child puppet steals the show from everyone and, if it wasn't for the totally gnarly Ramones song at the end, "Pet Semetary" would be entirely worthless. It's odd because I remember watching this when I was a wee lad and really enjoying it, but as an adult, it's just too poorly executed and downright stupid to work in the slightest. EL BOMBA!
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