Filmmaniak

A thriller with horror elements about a young man whose imaginary childhood friend appears and exhorts him to do bad things, gradually taking control of his actions and his body. This standard story of dealing with inner demons in the style of Jekyll and Hyde is dominated by the decent performances of unknown actors and the relatively innovative mythology of the imaginary friends and demons that control them, which are probably better captured in the book on which the film is based. The relatively routine direction was sufficient for a few remarkable scenes, but the film is unable to make use of main thing that would be able to make it really significant, which makes the film seem somewhat forgettable despite a few interesting and fresh ideas.

This film is a Laotian mysterious art ghost story imbued with magical realism and Back to the Future for demanding and thoughtful viewers. On the one hand it’s a drama about death, the inability to leave loved ones and the need to give the dead a dignified burial, on the other a supernatural sci-fi about time travel (very artistic), time loops, paradoxes and influencing the present through past interventions. The two storylines - one dedicated to a little boy who sees the spirit of a deceased girl, and the other dealing with the same character fifty years later - are remarkably interconnected and told in an innovative way that requires some investment on the part of the viewer (the frequent story ellipses are slightly confusing, but even so the story does make sense). Firmly grasped direction, an intelligently processed plot with unpredictable development, ambiguous characters with gradually changing motivations and a film that gives nothing to the audience for free and rewards you slowly but surely.

Poet, screenwriter and director Sion Sono apparently got free reign on Netflix and shot a two-and-a-half-hour-long extravagant compilation of his usual motifs. Schoolgirls jumping from rooftops are reminiscent of his film Suicide Club, the characters of amateur filmmakers remind of Why Don't You Play in Hell?, but most of all The Forest of Love (extremely loosely inspired by the real case of a serial killer) evokes his four-hour epic Love Exposure, not only through a number of common themes (the influence of strict conservative parental education on perverse inclinations of offspring, sexuality and partner relationships based on violence and power, a character with a strong cult of personality), but also a distinctive storytelling style based on the flow of free associations. The story is almost indescribable, but it features a lesbian version of Romeo and Juliet, a love quadrangle of three girls (two of whom are sisters) with a charismatic and manipulative heartbreaker, a romantic plot revolving around a fifty yen coin, electric shock torture and slicing people up in a blender. The eccentric genre mix does not lack emotional tension, the theatricality of hysterical acting and strong elements of nonsense, reminding us of the absurdity of the world. This is a remarkably bizarre film, but this time, the director simply presents another version of himself and creates nothing new.

A horror with comedic elements about two boys who are almost eighteen, one of whom lives with a strict grandfather and the other is bullied by classmates. Then a bloodthirsty vampire starts living in the shed in front of one of their homes, and he just might be able to solve their problems. A crackling funny horror comedy could have been created based on a similar theme, but this is in fact almost an amateur film that starts getting imaginative only in the last twenty minutes, and which comes off as if it was filmed by enthusiasts who put together a few popular horror clichés (there four scenes where someone experiences something horrible and then wakes up and it turns out to be just a dream) into an incoherent story with amateur actors, two successful jokes and a ton of "scary" shots of a wooden shed.

An impressive thriller about a thief trying to rob a car and falling for the bait placed inside by a seasoned doctor who has had his car turned into a darkened and bulletproof trap for potential criminals. This intelligently devised and skilfully written and directed film was created in the modest space of one street and one interior with all-wheel drive, and it develops in unexpected ways. It starts with an attractive idea of a person trapped in a car with limited resources, talking over the dashboard with the car’s owner. The film first innovatively uses the car's environment for various dramatic-comedic situations, although the middle section gets a little boring. Finally, it gradually works its way from a story about providing a hard lesson about theft to a clever and critical-social commentary (full of surprising twists) on life in cities with a high level of crime, on the need to respect the rules of mutual decency and on taking justice into one's own hands.

In this thriller, Sam Worthington plays a family father who takes his wife and their injured six-year-old daughter to the hospital, then takes a nap in the waiting room. When he wakes up, his family is nowhere to be found and none of the doctors or staff remember them. The plot is similarly constructed to Flightplan starring Jodie Foster, and also leaves viewers constantly in doubt as to whether the protagonist is a confused and hallucinating fool, or whether the hospital is part of some giant pharmaceutical plot and everyone is lying to him. The film manoeuvres between the two possibilities at all times, thus maintaining a fairly stable level of uncertainty, aided by several remarkable twists. The strong conclusion is spoiled by the fact that when reconstructing what happened in the film and what people said, you find a large number of screenwriting shortcomings and lapses, wherein the film had to be intentionally vague and ambiguous to be dramatic enough and not reveal the truth too soon. For some, it may be too contrived and silly, but it's a spectacle that is attractive and engaging, and it is solidly directed and the acting is good.

The outcasts of hell rise from the dead (though not entirely in their original line-up) and are given another opportunity to have fun and put real terror into motion. The result, however, is an outdated garbage dump of worn, annoying and brazen lunatics with a schematic and straightforward story consisting of three parts - a breaking news story introduces us to the situation, followed by flirting with the prison director and then by a Mexican party, which seems as if Rob Zombie added it to the script after finding out that the material he had would not be enough for a feature film. Even so, the film is based solely on the brutality and ostentatious abomination of the hell trio, but it makes them into cool killers that you are supposed to cheer for, which is at least regressive in today's climate of critically filmed movies and series about uncovering the complex psychology of murderous maniacs. Rob Zombie is thereby only able to satisfy the most loyal of fans, who are more than happy with a bit of stylistically shot bloody butchery and the return of their favourite characters, who basically do what they always do, and in their free time they play cards or argue about which one of them is more like Bogart. 3 from Hell amounts to the same exhausting misery as the clown performance in the second part of the film, which also came without anyone asking for it. And look how it turned out.

In this grim drama, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau excels as an insurer with a brain tumour who is prevented from committing suicide by the thought of his loving wife (and also the fact that something always gets in the way every time he tries to kill himself). In order to leave the world in peace, he decides to go to a mountain hotel specializing in assisted suicides for its guests, which he accidentally learns about. At the hotel, the staff cares for the well-being of its clients, serves them hallucinogenic tea and tries to make the killing process as pleasant as possible. However, there is nothing in the film resembling pleasant feelings - the characters in the film are helpless, depressed and mentally broken individuals, doubting their decisions, the non-linearly told story has a strong funeral atmosphere and the images are eternally grey and hazy. The film offers nothing more than this and, like its protagonist, doesn’t really know what to do with itself. Surprisingly, the film doesn’t really encourage debates about the moral aspects of suicide, it builds incredibly slowly and, through various disturbing hints, it almost ends up feeling like it belongs to the thriller genre. This fact doesn’t help it much, because it never pays off the twists and instead of a relatively satisfactory point (which has been there all along), the film only stumbles to an uncertain and interpretatively open conclusion.

The qualities of Paradise Hills are that it can be perceived as a feminist story of how several young women try to escape from a luxury island hospital (where their relatives sent them to deprive them of their individuality), and without the need for any men to come and save them. This is also a film that has a surprisingly distinctive and remarkable visual component for its feature debut, reminiscent of a mixture of Tim Burton and Tarsem Singh, including a rich trick set, colourful locations, and flashy costumes. However, these advantages are not balanced in terms of screenwriting (very simple plot and flat to silly dialogues), nor in terms of acting, which varies from confused (Emma Roberts) to completely clueless (Milla Jovovich), and unfortunately also the sluggish direction, which relies too much on visual gloss and fails in its storytelling from start to finish.

If Stephen King's book is a culinary specialty, then It Chapter 2 is a patchwork stew made from the same ingredients. It doesn't taste particularly bad, but it's far from a tasty experience. While the first It movie was a solid start to a story about growing up with a reasonably decent level of scary horror, the second part is more like a horror comedy that is not even taken seriously by its creators, who feel the need to systematically disparage all of its more serious and scary moments with comedic interludes and other alienating means (film quotes, inappropriately chosen music). The schematic story suffers from a number of theatrical shortcomings, the horror scenes are often funny or even a parody, and the clown itself is more of a laugh than anything scary. It amounts to simple, average genre routine that recycles motifs of nostalgic childhood and friendly fellowship from its predecessor, replaces tension building with jump scares and digital spooks, and unfortunately, despite a few solid acting performances and a few remarkable scenes, fails to provide anything else worthy of praise. Again, the question arises as to whether it might instead be worthwhile to film It as a narrative series which, unlike a film, could be truly uncompromising, broader in terms of story and more inventive in working with tension and the psychology of fear.