Dir - Lynne Ramsay
Overall: MEH
Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel We Need to Talk About Kevin is a relentless nightmare that both works and is unsuccessful due to its overbearingness. The one-hundred and twelve minute running time feels its length, but not because the film forgoes a linear narrative and painstakingly unveils its layers. As far as structure goes, Ramsay exhibits a level of taut control that bombards us with highly concerning moments while deliberately dishing out their inevitably horrific outcome. Tilda Swinton is her usual outstanding self, playing a woman who has made to feel that her entire motherhood is nothing more than the universe taking itself out on her and making her feel that she is the least sane person in it. As her plight becomes more and more hopeless, Swinton becomes more and more numb as well as frustratingly empathetic. Speaking of frustrating, that is where the movie ultimately falls apart as its subject matter is highly unpleasant to watch. Any story is fighting an uphill battle to be relatable where a child is allowed to behave so appallingly as to set off incessant red flags while one of their parents thinks nothing is remotely amiss. This may be the point to show the danger in such a dysfunctional family dynamic, but said danger is all too obvious and annoyingly disregarded for the audience to really stay with.
Dir - J.J. Abrams
Overall: MEH
In between his two Star Trek reboots, J.J. Abrams got a chance to blatantly channel his inner Stephen Spielberg, (who also produces here, so the admiration seems to have been greenlit from the source), with Super 8. Drenched in the type of nostalgia that has run rampant with horror throwbacks in a post Stranger Things cinematic landscape, Abrams' work here will unmistakably get compared to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., and The Goonies to name simply the most obvious ones. Throw in lens fairs in nearly every frame, unnaturally smooth, cartoony CGI, and jump scares interrupting all moments that stop to breath and those are basically the only new things Abrams offers up to distract you from how much the movie is trying to beat you over the head with fond feelings of the good ole days of child-centric, mega blockbusters. On the plus side, the performances from predominantly unknown child actors and no A-list major ones are universally solid and when it comes to compelling character arcs, at least the humans present are plenty well-written enough to care about. The same cannot be said for the main alien monster though whose entire backstory and arc are resolved in a poorly rushed fashion.
Dir - Colin Minihan/Stuart Oritz
Overall: MEH
Jumping on the found footage bandwagon for their debut Grave Encounters, the Vicious Brothers Colin Minihan and Stuart Oritz exhibit a level of unoriginality that borders on sheer plagiarism. The idea here is not all together bad, though it is proven to be a monumentally difficult one to pull off. The first act is an adequately amusing Ghost Adventures parody, equipped with their own version of the walking paranormal bro cartoon character Zak Bagans, here called Lance Rogerson. There is also a pretentious psychic, a pretty, female "occult specialist" and a black cameraman who provides nearly all of the "Dude fuck this shit" comic relief. Such things only scratch the surface as far as cliches though. The location is a closed down mental hospital with its own physics-defying, labyrinth-like layout, supernatural entities merely toy with people for no logical reason and take their sweet time in doing so, every idea anyone suggests does not work exactly as the viewer can predict, there is screaming, bloody CGI ghost faces, said ghosts stand in corners, a laundry list of obvious foreshadowing is utilized, jump scares are every-which-a-way, sadistic surgeons perform experiments, and while we are at it, an occult alter makes an appearance too. You could probably construct a boring and trite comedy at least out of what is here, but sadly they abandoned the comedy part early on so all that you are left with is the boring and trite part.
No comments:
Post a Comment