THE NEON DEMON
Dir - Nicolas Winding Refn
Overall: MEH
As impressive and pretty as Natasha Braier's cinematography is in Nicolas Winding Refn's latest The Neon Demon, (all shots act like a stylish, flashy LA painting habitating someone's roofied dreamspace), everything else going on has a thick cloud of "huh?" hanging all over it. Which is refreshing when a filmmaker leaves you guessing for most of the run time, barely if at all supplying you with any clear cut answers. At just shy of two-hours though, it proves problematic to garnish much interest for such un-fleshed out characters. Cartoonishly narcissistic or just downright nasty people repeatedly pop up and the randomness is not limited to the plot. Per example, what the hell are Christina Hendricks and more especially Keanu Reeves barely even doing here? Throughout the whole, Refn's point or lack-thereof seems to be absent from the party. As a nasty, nihilistic horror film, this frustratingly reveals itself and ultimately botches its would-be creepy premise by its own forced pretentiousness.
Dir - Oz Perkins
Overall: WOOF
A strong contender for the most boring movie ever made, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives In the House is actor-turned-director Osgood Perkins second feature and it is a very different kind of bad from most lousy horror movies. Understandably, it can be precarious when constructing your film as a slow-boil exercise and Perkins goes so far overboard into tedious terrain that it becomes exasperating. Shot in only one location with virtually one actor, everything that transpires does so at a molasses-oozing pace, where all the stylistic touches prove a disservice. The music constantly tells us when spooky things are happening and Ruth Wilson's on-going narration grows monotonous far quicker than it should, if it even should at all. Her character's odd-ball, "aaaannyyy-who" eccentricities coupled with the claustrophobic setting and deliberate pace work very much against each other. The ending seems like it will never come and also due to our fruitless narration, it was pre-determined almost immediately. We know who is doomed and we know there are ghosts, but this information is dragged along tortuously for, (only), eighty-eight minutes, far past the point of being the least bit compelling. Sadly, it is not an engaging story weighed down by an unsuitable approach; it is a barely there story overwhelmed by a refusal to appear anything close to inviting as a film experience.
Dir - Jaume Collet-Serra
Overall: MEH
Yet another lackluster effort from director aume Collet-Serra, The Shallows has a moderately idiot-proof concept of Blake Lively barely dressed and barely able to survive a shark attack for ninety-minutes. Regrettably though, all of the attempts made to make her character intriguing come off as film-script-by-numbers laziness. Of course screenwriters need to present their protagonists with a backstory and motivation for us to sympathize with them, but sometimes it is so obviously done that never once does it feel like you are not watching a movie. The "hey look, everybody's overcoming their issues and being a stronger person a year later" coda further exemplifies this. Which is perfectly OK as the film assuredly has its place among others like it and can scarcely be considered a bonafide disaster simply because it utilizes conventional such conventional narrative structures. As fluently suspenseful, popcorn fare, it does not elevate the thriller genre in any real capacity, but it also does not attempt to in the first place and therefor can be taken or left, depending on the viewer of course.
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