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sudsinthebucket
Reviews
Don't Look Up (2009)
Disappointing
This movie started with some promise, considering that it's from the same writers of "The Ring," and directed by (until now) promising director Fruit Chan.
The beginning is fairly intriguing, but maybe fifteen or twenty minutes in, I was losing interest, and wondering where the plot had gone. In my opinion, the writers definitely missed out on an opportunity to really scare us, to give us the next "Ring," or "The Grudge," but they passed it up. God knows why.
I didn't find Chan's direction particularly riveting or impressive, which was disappointing, to say the least. Without any notable exceptions, the acting is dismal and unconvincing, making a bad movie worse. The fake Romanian accents, in particular, started to get to me after a while. (Our hero's name is MarCUS. Not MarCOOS.)
I still felt they might have managed to salvage it at the ending, but this, as well, was a disappointment. Any brief horror they had managed to drum up had been whizzed right down their legs in roughly fifteen seconds.
Yes, there is some gore, and at times I felt an uneasy sense of foreboding, but this film ultimately failed in delivering the punches. Rent it if you like, but beware that it won't live up to expectations.
The Cry of the Owl (2009)
What happened? Where am I?
I am one of those people who believes that all good scary/thriller movies and books have one thing in common that makes them so scary: They could happen to you.
The events that take place in this movie have not happened to anyone, ever. They aren't believable, not in the least. So the film doesn't work as a drama, either, because the entire time, you're distracted, wondering: "WHEN does that happen???" Aside from the outlandish plot, the writing was clumsy. For a long time, I wasn't sure who the protagonist was supposed to be, and when I was sure, I wasn't motivated to care. I was just waiting for the movie to end. And the director, it seems, didn't care, either. Every scene went: Establishing shot, close-up of Paddy, close-up of Julia, splash of red, close-up of Paddy staring at Julia, patch of blue, scene. It didn't help that the actors were walking through their roles, too. They were bland and tasteless, and I'll be polite and leave it at that.
Five minutes in I was laughing hysterically and saying, "It's a dark comedy, right? Please tell me it's a dark comedy." If it were a dark comedy, I'd like it a lot better. Point is, it's still boring. Whether it's a drama, thriller, dark comedy, whatever the hell it was originally intended to be--believe me, I have no clue--I was bored out of my skull, and I wanted my money back.
The Shortcut (2009)
Don't Waste Your Time
I didn't have very high expectations for this movie, but I was at least hoping for a few good jump scares, and maybe a few robbed hours of sleep that night.
My hopes were shattered when, a minute into the movie, we see two teenagers at a homecoming dance in the fall of 1945, the boy talking about how he ships out in two weeks to fight the Nazis. (All of Nazi Germany had surrendered by May 11, 1945.) The movie went downhill from there. I was giggling two minutes in, and ready to turn it off at the opening credits, which blatantly rip off "Se7en's." But, against my better judgement, I stayed with the sinking ship, and wish I hadn't.
Everything about the movie had been done before, and better, by others. The plot was weak to say the least, and the ending was stupid and implausible, which robbed it of any genuine shock it had the potential to hold. If the movie had at least had some decent character development, I might have been able to forgive it...but five minutes in, I was actually praying for the characters' deaths, and nothing changed. I was groaning out loud at the pathetic "bantering" dialogue, and there were jarring continuity errors as well. When I wasn't giggling, I was nearly falling asleep. As I said, there was no story, no emotion, not even any gore for slasher fans. The shots were bland and boring...I felt like I was watching a middle school's drama production of an adaptation of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" without Freddy.
Feeling like I'd been robbed of eighty-five minutes of my life, I turned on the director's commentary to try to understand his reasoning...only to find that he had none. His opening comments were: "Hi. If you can hear my voice right now, then that means that you're watching the DVD." Fifteen minutes in, I'd discovered that I knew more about directing a film than he did.
I turned off my television and had a good cry, and I'm still trying to erase the whole experience from my mind. I can only implore you all not to waste your time or money on it.