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Posted By: iNSANEmoments at 2:51am, November 8, 2009
I had such high expectations and this movie was such a failure. I like the fact that it was portrayed as a oldies, with great acting. The problem is that the first hour and forty minutes is boring as heck. And then the last ten are action packed with absolutely no meaning. And the ending is highly predictable and doesn't leave you shocked. I also hated how the movie was filled with scenes that took forever to make a point; such as a car driving down the road for twenty seconds until it finally turned in the driveway. Half the movie was filled with these long, pointless scenes. If I wanted to see cars driving on a road, I'd look outside. If I wanted to hear a girl go to the bathroom, whilst looking at the wooden door... I'd go to a public washroom. This movie had no point. It is, by far, one of the worst I've seen in 2009. I don't recommend this at all, unless you want to waste almost 2 hours of your life.
Posted By: billthespazz at 11:33pm, November 7, 2009
Just finished watching this snooze-fest of a movie. There is only one really cool moment in the film for me, and that's when the friend gets her face blown off. Other than that, this movie lacks any depth at all. The gore is good, but it's over-all lack of story for the first hour that kills it. And if you do make it through the first hour, then the pay off isn't worth the wait. Much like 'Antichrist', this movie could have been so much more......even Rob Zombie could have done a better job.
Loved the look of this movie. It looked EXACTLY like the late 70's, early 80's movies that I love! Would have gotten a better rating if there were a few more elements to build up the tension in the middle of the movie. The build up is extremely long, and once the action picks up at the end it moves WAY too quickly. Worth a watch, not sure about the replay value though.
very effective little chiller. those who are badmouthing it all seem to fall into the same ADD induced attention span. This movie works on so many levels and it is creepy. The pace is perfect for older style chillers (for which this is obviously an homage to)and the acting is top notch. who says a movie has to have buckets of gore and ridiculous scenes to be good. I like a lot of different kind of horror pics and this is a good one to me.
Watching THOTD is like renting a late 70's-early 80's satanic horror film that just happened to be filmed digitally. Ti West clearly payed close attention when watching all the slashers, cult epics, and other low budget fare, and with this knowledge he has effectively gone back in time with the intention to indulge in retro nostalgia and even add some improvements.
The story is incredibly simple, almost too simple, but not without a heart. The film starts with an excellent, slow zoom on a young college student, Samantha, as she stares out a kitchen window, accompanied by an eerie score. Samantha is looking for a place to live by herself, being the kind of girl that would rather do things on her own, and not live with in an unkept dorm room with a slob of a room mate. She has come across a pretty good deal too. For one, Dee Wallace is her landlord, and will remove the deposit fee to help Samantha out. The only thing is, Samantha doesn't have the money for rent the following week. Luckily for her, she notices an especially nondescript ad amongst all the others advertising the upcoming eclipse, which simply says "Baby $itter Needed," or something like that. Being desperate for cash, she calls the number on the ad, and talks to Mr. Ulman, who comes off rather rather strange and secretive. She agrees to do the job, and has her friend Megan drop her off at Mr. Ulman's home out in the woods. Let's just say, things get weirder, and this turns into one baby sitting gig she will regret.
First things first, Ti West, who scripted, directed and edited the film, knows how to get you immersed. We're not just strutting along with Samantha, excellently played by Jocelin Donahue, as she walks around her small, bland, and cold town. We get the feeling of what it's like to have the new frustrations that come with youth, whether it's monetary or socially. As cute as Samantha is, she is clearly a loner, who would rather listen to her Walkman than engage with your average partying 20 year old. Her best friend Megan is supportive, but to an extreme, going to the extent of acting out on in the name Samantha's feelings in a rather immature way. But hey, what other friends are around in this oddly uninhabited small town during late Autumn to do anything for? Megan is performed by Greta Gerwig, who is always entertaining when onscreen.
But this is a horror film right? There is going to be scares and violence and suspense and all that creepy stuff right? Why yes there will be, but it's approached in a way that you would never find in something more contemporary like SAW. For one, there is a nice, slow, atmospheric build up in the film the works for the most part due to the precise pacing and charisma of Jocelin Donahue. You will be reminded what it's like to be in a boring small town, to be on your own with not much to do, and to be in a big, old, foreboding home that seems so far away from everything else that you may as well have signed your death sentence. However, I know many people will be thinking "Gosh, how much are we going to watch this girl walk around and look through windows?" Well, it happens a lot, but there are evenly placed moments of shock, violence and subtle terror that keep things interesting.
Not only that, I was compelled by the cinematography, which even though it's nothing new or outgoing, it's intrinsic to West's attention to the small things, the little actions, and ability to make the build up before the carnage avoid the faults that plague older genre cinema directed by hacks or hired guns. Being a film junkie, it's apparent West isn't just a horror geek but a true cinephile who has gone through the bargain bin all the way up to the high brow, and with this large frame of reference- which the film most definitely is in a thankfully un-ironic or indulgently self aware manner- West has been able to focus on making his craft more mature than one would anticipate. That's pretty clear when we get a reference to an actress who got big through Ingmar Bergman in a retro horror film.
The climax is where we run into some issues. The prior scene is effectively done with some nerve wracking anticipation, and the transition to it is simply frightening. This bridge to the point in the film where it becomes something completely different is a highlight. Unfortunately, even though the final act raises the bar and tackles a subject that is blatantly dated, it's short lived, and shot in such a way where you know that West intended to change the tone and have the cinematography up on the level of action and violence, but it's all done in a more annoying and incoherent way. The visuals are great, especially Samantha's visions, but the story of it all is a little thin and not incredibly rewarding. The very ending is a bit illogical too, but gets points for being implicit, but it's quite a hanger of an ending that will turn off plenty of people or get them thinking that West just needed to throw in a bit of ROSEMARY'S BABY.
Despite all of this, the thing I like the most about the film is it's overall intention: To take us back when to a time when things were fresh, simpler, and although frightening, not so deeply nihilistic and cynical like most contemporary genre cinema. The story is dark and far from ending happily, but the you can sense the nostalgia and what those older times encompassed, which is something we don't get very much in our modern world plagued by the vacuous vortex of pop culture and the endless flow of pointless information being digested by vacant mediated techno-slaves. Yeah, THOTD is pop for sure, but such a sincere kind of pop that might as well have came out in 1980, with all the same kind of flaws and strong points. Plus, it's hard not to like Jocelin Donahue as Samantha and all the time we spend with her. She has the perfect look of a simple yet elegant beauty that you would hope to find in a film like this.
So, yesterday for Halloween you could have rented some old flicks, or seen one made today in the theater. I did the latter, and for the most part it was pretty fun. The film didn't taste as bad as everything does for the characters in the film, wink wink.
I actually typed up a well thought-out review for this movie... then decided it didn't do justice to the way I truly felt about this film. So now I'm just doing a simple checklist that gets right to the point. Here we go:
1. The acting is fine. Everyone delivers in their roles and no one should be complaining about this particular part of the movie. Tom Noonan especially delivers in his role.
2. There was almost no suspense to be found in this film I thought. Which makes a massive chunk of the movie useless.
3. The overly long scenes of mundane crap started becoming annoying. I wasn't bored, but I was getting aggravated that only a few interesting things happened in the first hour and 15 minutes.
4. Ti West is a weak script writer. Well that's the feeling I got after watching this movie anyways. I kept thinking the only reason those scenes were so long was because he had no clue what else to write.
5. The ending comes up so friggin' quickly I felt like I had just switched movies. Some people may like this approach, but I found it to be amateurish and forceful. Especially since the build-up, or lack of, did not lead well into the ending.
6. I found the ending to be good and goofy at the same time. Good in the sense that it was shot well and SOME feeling of dread finally crept into the film. Goofy in the sense that a whole lot of horror movie stupidity (which I can usually ignore) suddenly started popping up. It was so blatant that I actually thought Ti West might have put those moments in there on purpose (which he may have?).
7. You could watch the first 30 minutes of this film, skip the next 30 minutes, and watch the last 30 minutes and still have an idea of what was going on to lead up to this.
8. This movie isn't bad. It just did not come close to the dread-fest I thought it would be. Maybe I'm expecting too much out of certain films these days. Who knows?
I can't believe how bad this was! It was extremley slow and builds up to about ten minutes of action. It was to late though, that last ten minutes couldn't save this crap!
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