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jonathankui
Reviews
The Dark (2005)
Bravo, bravo! This is the film that THE RING remake should have been...
This is one of the best narrative-driven horror films that I have seen in a very long time. The story revolves around the death of Maria Bello's daughter early in the film, and her exploration of the connection between her daughter's death and a young girl, thought long dead, who has returned.
My one-line plot summary doesn't begin to do the film justice. The film is a very, very enjoyable watch for those who enjoy narrative and some thinking in their horror. Light on gore, but heavier on chills, THE DARK borrows very heavily from Gore Verbinski's remake of THE RING and a bit less from Tarsem Singh's THE CELL. Those who have seen THE RING remake will recognize some familiar elements: mysterious dying animals, mysterious dead girl among us, blond woman investigating and trying to save her child.
Indeed, not DESPITE those similarities, but rather BECAUSE of them, THE DARK comes off as the film that THE RING should have been. John "Ginger Snaps" Fawcett's directing far exceeds Verbinski's earlier effort, and Christian Sebaldt's cinematography is absolutely breathtaking at every step. (Interestingly, the film was produced by Paul "Event Horizon" Anderson.) This is truly one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking horror titles I have seen in the past few years, and the biggest shame is that it was only direct to DVD in the US. Perhaps the film was too "cerebral" for theatrical distribution in our PG-13 slasher culture, but it's good to know that this underrated gem was widely released around the world. Excellent, excellent film.
Hostel (2005)
Another example of a great premise unfulfilled due to poor writing
Wearing the chevron of Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth has created one of the first gore-filled horror films to hit mainstream theatres in recent memory. HOSTEL, the latest film from the writer/director of CABIN FEVER (2002), has an advertising campaign that makes it come across as a filmed abattoir on steroids.
For those who have asked, I've summarized HOSTEL as follows: 1) Take the most gore-filled, pain-filled, dismemberment-filled scene you can remember that makes you flinch just by thinking about it. (I, for instance, use that 5 minute scene from the end of the disappointing AUDITION (1995).) Now, repeat that for about 40 minutes.
2) Now take an hour of American PIE (1999) and drop it in the front. In hindsight, I probably should have told everyone to take EUROTRIP (2004) instead.
HOSTEL was an intensely gory film, which was poorly written, very very poorly acted, and ultimately only moderately executed.
In fairness, the premise was actually superb. I don't want to give too much away, but the premise was reasonably believable, and while not an entirely novel concept, it was given a fresh spin.
However, the story was structured in the worst possible way. The first hour was nothing more than pointless nudity (and I don't even mean entertaining, I just mean utterly boring) and cheap humor. Sitting through the first half was tedious and had us wondering, "are we in the right film? THIS is the great horror film that's been hyped?" The film then takes a drastic right turn and delves headfirst into gore. Explicit gore. And lots of it. For about 40 minutes.
I can only assume that when writing the film, Roth tried to go for maximum contrast: really funny and lighthearted, and then, WHAM, what the Hell is happening?! The failure lies in both the pacing of the first half (insufferably long, light on suspense, total lack of atmostphere), and the horribly written characters. In many horror films, the "protagonists" are annoying, and you're just waiting for the Big Bad to kill them. Here, they're so annoying, that you just get bored waiting for it to happen.
The gore, however, is delightfully extreme, if you're into that sort of thing. Lots of puncturing, slicing, laceration, dismemberment. Good times, for those who enjoy. But that make it a good horror film? No. No, it doesn't.
A good gore scene will make the average person wince. 20 gore scenes in succession just kind of dulls the senses. If not used tastefully (see SAW 2 (2005)), gore for gore's sake just becomes another load of special effects.
On the bright side, the gore miraculously managed to escape an NC-17 for reasons that I'll never understand. With the more liberal R rating, and a limited release, HOSTEL will likely be considered a commercial success. This is good, for two reasons: 1) Maybe HOSTEL 2 will be to HOSTEL what SAW 2 was to SAW: a dramatic improvement in writing and ambiance that greatly enhances the rewatching of the original.
2) A commercial success for HOSTEL could conceivably drive the industry away from these atrocious PG-13 teeny slasher flicks, and back towards some more serious, disturbing, dark material. Look: I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and quite frankly I likely never will.
Do I recommend HOSTEL? Not really. If gore really does it for you, have at it. Otherwise, just watch American PIE and the first 20 minutes of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998).
Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)
"How's that for a wakeup call?"
I absolutely loved DEADER, and I feel that it's one of the strongest additions to the series since HELLBOUND. So, I held back from watching HELLWORLD so that I could have something to look forward to watching in the future (as I hadn't read ANY of the comments in this thread...) Finally, I decided to gave in and decided to watch it last night.
I am utterly shocked at the chasm in quality between DEADER and HELLWORLD. Stylistically, HELLWORLD has all the makings of a PG-13 theater horror flick. There were only two things that stopped it from being PG-13; one was the presence of a few vividly sexual scenes and the second was insufficient death to be a teenage slasher.
I'm all for trying new things with the franchise. Certainly, almost every installment since HELLBOUND has taken the franchise in a new direction (well... except maybe HELLSEEKER.) Regardless, DEADER showed us that a decent, intelligent (though at times incomprehensible) Hellraiser story can even be woven from a non-Hellraiser work. I'm assuming that the HELLWORLD script was written specifically for the franchise, and I have to tell you, this was far from a good story.
1) CHARACTERS - The first half of the film is driftingly slow. It revolves around the characters spending troves of time on each, yet managing to develop NONE of them. The token minority/asthmatic served little purpose beyond poorly timed comic relief, the horny bastard was NOTHING more than a horny bastard, the brooding teenager was nothing more than a brooding teenager, Chelsea tried oh so hard, and the British girl was a throwaway. How can you spend 45 minutes barely moving the plot forward, and STILL not expand the characters beyond two dimensions?! (And by the way, I think someone should recut the film and edit out the asthmatic comic the way STAR WARS fans edited that annoying fellow out of Episode 1. At least the film would be SOMEwhat darker.)
2) MUSIC - Nothing said "PG-13 teenage slasher wannabe" like lots and lots of party rock. It absolutely killed almost any sense of mystery and darkness that this film COULD have approximated.
3) CENOBITES - I love Chatterer, Bound and Pinhead, but come on. Where was the aura of majesty and intrigue and control that make the Cenobites so alluring? They were reduced to little more than slashers. Honestly, Henriksen could have done the killing scenes himself and it would have probably been BETTER. I'm all for keeping Cenobitic appearances limited, but then when you DO use them, for God's sakes, use them WELL.
4) "HOW'S THAT FOR A WAKEUP CALL?" - Besides the fact that the ending made less sense than the ending of BLOODLINE, and that it was probably more far-fetched than the ending of HELLSEEKER, throwing in this oneliner was the single worst thing they could have done other than have the Cenobites burst forth into glorious song... Pinhead has NEVER sunk to pun oneliners (unless I've forgotten.) Even in HELL ON EARTH, the puns were limited to the makeshift Cenobites, and Pinhead retained his majesty with some fantastic speeches. Someone needs to tell the screenwriter that he was writing for a HELLRAISER film, not A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.
5) SHODDY EDITING - Take your DVDs to timecode 1:01:41 and watch closely with the volume up until 1:02:20. Ignore the fact that Pinhead jams a wooden stake (?!) through the cop's throat. Watch the actors' mouths and listen to the dialog and just picture the actress and a voice-over actor in a recording studio with headphones, microphones and a sound mixer. This was the most POORLY CONCEALED looping I've seen since HELL ON EARTH's "S***!!! GASOLINE!" And at least that was only one line, not an entire exchange. I'm all for ADR, but TRY to do it a bit better...
6) ENDING (SPOILER WARNING) - This was a lot like A.I. (the Spielberg film), in that it could have ended several times, but was dragged unmercifully on and on. It could have ended with Chelsea screaming in the coffin. That would have been best under the circumstances. Or it could have ended at her rescue. Or it could have ended with Lance looking at his son's photo. But no, they threw in a puzzle solution with no apparent reason. (See #4.) And then they dragged it out EVEN FURTHER with a vanride and scenes from the police arrival at the hotel room.
7) The minor stuff - Then there's the stuff that's just plain petty, things that annoyed me in this film, but probably wouldn't have in a stronger film: 1) Lance, lose the earring. You're cooler without it. 2) In the scene in the attic (1:13:00) In ONE minute of edited footage, they cut to the flapping pigeons SEVEN BLEEDING TIMES! ENOUGH!!!! 3) Did anybody notice in the beginning that van had a European license plate while driving and then pulled up with an imitation New York one? That was just blatant. *sigh* ...
Grr...
"How's that for a wakeup call?!" THAT was how we followed DEADER?! If there's EVER, EVER another HELLRAISER film on the table, please, PLEASE give it to Tim Day to correct FIRST.
"How's that for a wakeup call?" *sigh* On the other hand, it was begrudgingly better than VAN HELSING.