Dir: Victor Salva, 2001
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0263488/
Reviewed by: Whitney
Plot: Two meddling kids, a brother, (dumb name) Darry, (Justin Long, who seems to be following me everywhere... perhaps even... dare I say... haunting me?) and sister Patricia, (Gina Phillips), while on a road trip home, stumble upon an unspeakable beast and his layer and are subsequently hunted down by the beast looking to harvest body parts for its own rebirth.
Review: I had seen this film once in high school when it first came out on DVD. I remembered that I didn't really care for it then, but seeing as it has been 10 years, I figured it was safe to revisit it, give it a second chance and look at it from more objective eyes. After a second viewing, I wasn't swayed from my initial opinions. Many of my friends have raved about this movie and have told me how scary it was. With this in mind, I accept all backlash I have coming my way after this review.
For starters, as with my initial sentiments, the cinematography is pretty bad. Yes, poor lighting has a well deserved place in horror movies, but when it constricts me from actually seeing the action that is going on, it becomes problematic. It makes me wonder if the lighting was a mere ruse to distract from a poorly thrown together monster, which looks nothing like the human parts of which it has been created. The one place poor lighting could have been effectively used was in the monster's underground layer. Unfortunately, it wasn't dimly light enough to distract me from the terrible mannequins that looked nothing like real human bodies. They looked more fake then the boobs I previously discussed in my Candyman review. If I was Justin Long, excuse me, Darry, I would have laughed, assuming I was in some avant garde Nordstrom's store display.
But that's all aesthetic technicalities. Outside of technical details, the characters were kind of flat, and yes, I know horror movie characters traditionally do not have a lot of depth, but when you only rely on two characters to carry the whole film, there should be something that makes the viewer hope for their survival. The acting is pretty typical, the camera shots are rather uncreative, and the twist... well, if you can't guess which body part the monster is trying to harvest from one of the two main characters just be even reading the title, then you may be a little daft.
Perhaps the only saving grace to this movie is the originality of the boogeyman. A monster that hunts humans to harvest their body parts in order to rebuild itself is a pretty clever motive. Oh, the other thing that I enjoyed about this movie were the cats. I can enjoy any scary movie where the cats don't die. I also have a confession, I fell asleep during the last ten minutes. I think I fell asleep during Jeepers Creepers the first time I saw it as well.
I recommend watching this if: You need a sleep aid; you are a teenage girl who scares easily; you have a strange fascination with Justin Long.
Rating: 3/10 stars
Scare Scale: Teen Scream
No comments:
Post a Comment