We saw this film at the Imagine (sf/horror/fantasy) filmfestival Amsterdam 2014. To state our conclusion upfront: We left after an hour. We had agreed at 45 minutes running time that this movie did not seem to go anywhere, but nevertheless waited an extra 15 minutes to make sure we were not judging hastily.
The lack of narrative direction was not all, however. Several things we saw were illogical, which we can bear once but not too many times in the same film. For example, the flower girl who we saw murdered, unexpectedly appeared later on in her flower shop alive and well. Maybe a novel form of flash forward, but it was lost on us. Such a misunderstanding can happen, and an isolated case may leave us wondering whether we overlooked something. But there is a limit to the amount of illogicalities we can stand.
Apart from this example, we found the rest of what happened on screen not really interesting either. Hence our departure at a moment we nearly saw half of the 137 minutes running time, so the words premature and hastily do not apply here. This film ended at a 30th place (out of 43) with an average score of 6.91, the latter more or less in line with the IMDb score. It must be so that many others saw much more in this film than we did, so apparently we missed a lot, but so be it.
The lack of narrative direction was not all, however. Several things we saw were illogical, which we can bear once but not too many times in the same film. For example, the flower girl who we saw murdered, unexpectedly appeared later on in her flower shop alive and well. Maybe a novel form of flash forward, but it was lost on us. Such a misunderstanding can happen, and an isolated case may leave us wondering whether we overlooked something. But there is a limit to the amount of illogicalities we can stand.
Apart from this example, we found the rest of what happened on screen not really interesting either. Hence our departure at a moment we nearly saw half of the 137 minutes running time, so the words premature and hastily do not apply here. This film ended at a 30th place (out of 43) with an average score of 6.91, the latter more or less in line with the IMDb score. It must be so that many others saw much more in this film than we did, so apparently we missed a lot, but so be it.