Hey guys,
Like the rest of you (hopefully) I just checked out the review that Mr B posted, and you can conveniently find directly below these ramblings. Just wanted to say first of all, awesome, awesome stuff. A tiny bit hard to follow, but one senses
that's a flaw of the film itself perhaps. Overall though an intelligent and accomplished piece. At this point had I seen the film in question I'd have loved to do my own review on a compare and contrast basis. Unfortunately I haven't, though the words evoked a sense of it and made me feel like wanting to, despite the flaws pointed out. One particular part stood out and stirred something in me though, and that was when Mr B inadvertently posed a question: does horror need to have what is considered a good plot? Certainly horror can work on many
different levels, for example I recently came across the semi-legendary (to the
Razzies at least) "I Know Who Killed Me" on late night digital
TV and, despite myself, found that I was watching it. The story was an unmitigated disaster, a frankly incoherent, insulting mess. The acting wasn't much better (when your lead is Lindsay
Lohan I guess you can't expect Olivier). So why didn't I turn off? I found myself drawn by the directors' use of a colour palette. I won't bore you with what passed for a plot but suffice to say the 2 lead characters are represented in a constant hue of either red or blue, on themselves and everything around them, denoting who we're watching, at least primarily. I never considered myself a
connoisseur of things like lighting, photography etc but this really grabbed me. Similarly on the flip side I found myself watching Dark Water a few years ago with Mr B himself and hating it for a massive duration of the run time. Too slow, nothing horrific, it all seemed a bit mundane and "kitchen sink melodrama", there were no "Cat People" style jump shocks and a very, very gradual building of tension. This all meant, however, that when the scares came, at movies denouement, it seemed all the more effective. When asking myself why I figured it was because of the effect of knowing the human characters, not least the actual supposed supernatural element. So I'm tempted to lean towards the latter opinion that, whilst any film can have it's merits, the best in any genre, horror, included, have all of that and a kick ass story teller, either in front of or behind the camera. Or if you're very lucky sometimes both.
Stay tuned for some developments as always, peace out folks.
