4/10
Stands out from others, but isn't that good
5 June 2016
A Horrible Way to Die was in a 3 DVD movie box presented by Night Vision. I bought two of these boxes months ago, and I started the Psycho Killers box.

The name paints a totally different picture of the film than what it truly is. Most of the actually deaths in this movie don't seem that horrible when you only see some mild gore here and there. Yes, a horror movie doesn't necessarily need that much gore, but when a movie has a title like this, you're expecting that. Also A Horrible Way To Die is a very straight-forward title, but the movie is far from it. The movie is quite short yet it's very slow. It takes too long for anything to happen, which makes it seem more like a seriously boring art drama.

The "seriously boring art drama" feel was also enhanced by the way this film was shot. While it enhanced the creepy, haunting atmosphere, it also annoyed the hell out of me. That kind of shaky shots are good every once in a while, but not all through the movie. It's not easy to look at, and therefore not easy to follow. It wasn't just the visual side that was hard to follow. Of course I don't believe in chronological narrative anymore, because breaking the story with flashbacks work most of the time, but in A Horrible Way to Die it was sometimes really hard to tell when something happened. Of course this was enhanced by the cinematography, because you can't always see the characters and what they look like, and then realise when that scene took place and all that.

The writing of this film is good though. The dialogue is as amazing as it tends to be in horror movies, it's so real. The story itself is not bad, apart from the story being so slow. The good writing can be seen in little things, like amazing twist, dialogue and whatnot. The slowness itself is not a sign of bad writing in general, but when you watch a horror movie it's frustrating when everything happens at the last minute. But the story might work well as a novel.

A Horrible Way to Die is an interesting movie to say the least. While it's not actually good and I didn't enjoy watching it, it definitely stands out from the horror movies I've watched.
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