Dir - Tilman Singer
Overall: GOOD
One of the most unapologetically strange debuts the horror genre at least has seen in quite some time, Tilman Singer's Luz is pretentious to a fault though startling in its low-key ambition. A thesis student film for Singer who wrote, directed, edited, and produced, it utilizes a micro-cast and only an equally small handful of locations. While some of the film's eclectic qualities can be traced back to retro Euro horror, the approach is thoroughly avant-garde. Multiple, incredibly stagnant takes, a completely incomprehensible story, fantastic yet highly unorthodox sound design, a percussive, ambient score, and trance-like performances make the movie a sensory overload that is relentlessly bizarre. A few startling sequences are thrown in for good measure, though they are as frustratingly vague from a narrative standpoint as everything else taking place. Even at a forgivable seventy-minutes in length, Singer ultimately stretches the laborious pacing to a breaking point and too many moments overstay their very weird welcome. Still, it is a highly impressive work and if anything else, almost shockingly different from any other genre movie in recent memory.
Dir - Alejandro Brugués/Joe Dante/Mick Garris/Ryuhei Kitamura/David Slade
Overall: MEH
Predominantly speaking, the anthology film Nightmare Cinema is, well, a nightmare. Every movie of this kind is uneven by nature and David Slade's excellent entry with the surreal and genuinely unnerving "This Way to Egress" sticks out jarringly amongst the other four hackjobs. Mick Garris' closing segment "Dead" is textbook for the by-the-books genre enthusiast, meaning it is thoroughly uninventive and mediocre. Joe Dante's "Mirari" fares little better by comparison, managing to be both quirky and predictable all at once. As yet another goddamn slasher parody, the opening "The Thing in the Woods" from Alejandro Brugués jumbles its tone and features a truly abysmal performances from Sarah Withers. The worst of the bunch is thrown smack in the middle though with Ryuhei Kitamura's mind-numbingly awful, laughably derivative and cheap "Mashit", which is pure "shit" alright. One of the oddest components to this collection is the sporadic presence of Mickey Rourke as The Projectionist. Clearly available only for about thirty minutes of shooting, he is awkwardly shoe-horned in only three of the five segments as a totally uninteresting Crypt Keeper, except Rourke's own mangled face is in a way far scarier than said Tales from the Crypt host ever was.
Dir - Emma Tammi
Overall: MEH
In her full-length debut The Wind, filmmaker Emma Tammi creates a gradual form of tension while ambitiously utilizing a fractured narrative. Teresa Sutherland's script focuses heavily on themes of severe isolation, paranoia, and loss, setting itself in the barren, late 19th century American frontier lands. The supernatural mythology is wisely obscured, forcing the audience to question everything just as the troubled characters do. The feminist angle is not limited to the writer/director team as the film is also centered almost exclusively around female protagonists who are persistently reminding each other to be respectful and catering towards their men who are either aloof or refusing to believe the supernatural occurrences both insist on experiencing. Though it is refreshing during its first two acts, the movie looses its compelling grip due to excessive use of flashbacks and flash-forwards and an almost jarring switch to more conventional, hackneyed horror cliches after predominantly having avoiding them earlier. It is still a promising work, beautifully shot and performed, but the drawbacks come during the final twenty minutes which ultimately leaves the viewer underwhelmed and somewhat disappointed.
No comments:
Post a Comment