Brett Posted April 7, 2015 Share Posted April 7, 2015 Anyone else seen this? It kind of fell into the "Drive" category for me, mostly style over substance... but the style is well executed enough to make the film worth while. The score is nice, maybe draws too much attention to itself, but I'm a sucker for retro-synthesizer-based scores (like Beyond the Black Rainbow); and the use of heavy static noise was nauseating in a good way. The ambiguous-era visual style is a bit jarring at first but gives the film a dreamy, ominous tone; like it's some jumbled up half-world where pieces of the late-70's through today all co-exist. For some reason I really enjoyed the fact that there were all these clunky television sets in the kid's rooms, no one had cell phones, but that one girl had what looked like a Kindle in the shape of a clamshell lipstick mirror. It was an odd, Donnie Darko-esque choice that I thought worked.On a purely "horror" level though I thought it was underwhelming. The only scenes I found remotely frightening were when the tall guy follows Jay's friend into her room, and the scene at the pool when we can't see what Jay sees. I thought that was more effective from a suspense standpoint. They should have done more of that.The overall threat just never felt immediate or tangible enough. It's like the director got too fascinated with the world he was building and just kind of let the basic plot (girl runs from thing trying to kill her) drift into auto pilot. The premise (which is overly simplistic to begin with) gets stale really fast because at no point is there a twist on the formula, or complication of any kind. So, after a while it just started to feel a bit like "yeah, ok, we get it. There's a thing coming... and it walks slowly... and all you have to do is walk slightly faster to evade it. FINE!" Zombies are effective because of their numbers, sheer relentlessness, the fact that they were once one of us, and the fact that we could become one of them. Michael Myers, slashers, etc... they adapt and can be unpredictable and have at least SOME measure of back story. Ghosts, spirits, the girl from The Ring, basically do the same thing: playing a deadly game of tag. But, again, there's a history, an underlying sense of unresolved pain and suffering. The "threat" in this film almost starts to feel like a benign entity after a while, a mild nuisance, because it has no context whatsoever. It comes from nowhere, goes nowhere, has no beef, has no reason, and no permanent form. The only time it EVER seems to act in a thoughtfully malicious way is when it kicks that one kid across the beach when he tries to interfere. To quote MST3K's Manos riff "ambiguity is scary." [/sarcasm] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted April 7, 2015 Share Posted April 7, 2015 I'll type more when I'm not on my phone, but I saw it last year and thought it was one of the best horror films I've ever seen. It's art house horror, but it doesn't pretend not to be... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoLA Posted April 7, 2015 Share Posted April 7, 2015 The trailer has me intrigued! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copper Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 So I saw this film last week and I thought it was a-mazing. It follows (no pun intended) its own rules really well and only deviates from it in a sort of dream-like quality that makes you question the sanity of the protagonist. I thought the overall themes of innocence and sexual coming of age was incredibly evocative and portrayed in a way that makes it easy for the viewer to put themselves in the shoes of the characters. Color choices were smart and helped cement the feelings of paranoia and the loss of innocence of Jay. One of my favorite things about the film were the moments of just "being". Like when Jay is lying on her stomach in the car and playing with the weeds on the ground as she talks to her lover, when she floats in the pool, and how those moments take on a sinister air as the film progresses. BTW, towards the end when Jay sees the man standing naked on her roof I don't think that's the thing that follows her- whenever we see her being followed it is always moving, never stationary. So either that was just a naked dude or she is starting to crack mentally and is seeing things. I appreciated the creepiness of what I assume is her dead(absent?) father being the one to try and murder her in the pool. This is one of the best horror films I've ever seen for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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