J*A*S*M

Well, that was really kitsch! It’s fine to look at; in terms of craftsmanship it’s very good – the cameraman knows how to produce nice shots – but other than that, Wilding is so sterile that I’m surprised at the positive reviews from abroad. It’s shallow where it pretends to be deep and cold as hell where it wants to show emotion. There’s absolutely no tension or fear because nobody has tried to generate any. If you fancy a horror/thriller genre film, go somewhere else. Wilding wants to be something more, but it fails to deliver anything “more”; and the last third can be laughable at times.

The less sense there is, the stronger the fate, or how not even a mutated extraterrestrial ecosystem isn’t enough for someone to act with some sense with their protozoan intelligence, isn’t it, Marceloo? But on the other hand, I wouldn’t take Annihilation as a deeply philosophical work, either – the fact that anyone can get frustrated because of that is funny. Portman and four more scientists, about whom a lot can be written (though certainly not that the director has made them likeable) go to investigate a Zone… and they find pretty much what the trailer promised, although there is less survival and mutated creatures than expected. Then it nicely goes to a highly atmospheric and wordless mind-fuck, but there’s nothing unpredictable about it, either. In a Nolan film, Nataly would have spoken a lot in the end and that would be it. I really enjoyed Annihilation, it’s visually excellent, the special effects are engaging and here and there it pushes the mind into a nicely dark direction. But I have a soft spot for sci-fi premises like this, in any media, and I’m really interested in the book version now. But I don’t think this film is that awesome, really; my expectations were perhaps a little higher.

Technically, a first class horror film with beautiful, blood-thirsty humanoid monsters that are great fun to watch when they go on a rampage (the bus scene is truly AWESOME). Unfortunately, it’s two hours long and for much its run there isn’t any monster mayhem, but rather a teenage mayhem – besides a horror film, it’s also a social drama about bullying and horrible high-school kids and their relationships in modern Taiwan. As a result, the main characters are disgustingly evil individuals, to the point that you can trace a parallel about who the real monsters are… That works so well that sometimes it’s hard to watch. In any case, the film manages to hold the illusion and I somehow stayed till the end, which I certainly don’t regret.

I sincerely hope that this theme won’t become a trend, because if this year I have to watch another film about a crazy, hysterical mother with post-partum depression, I will also go bonkers. This premise was addressed ten years ago by the excellent Baby Blues, and should have been left at that.

When you see in IMDB a 8.1/10 rating from more than two thousand viewers for a new horror film, which also happens to have a very atmospheric trailer, the expectations go a notch higher. Pengabdi Setan may not be the ultimate horror miracle, but it’s still a superbly executed film and probably the best by Joko Anwar so far. He’s a master of the horror craft and capable to scare very effectively. His two previous genre films were based on overly messy scripts, which isn’t the case here, fortunately. His latest work is basically a traditional ghost story. What was missing to make me fully happy? Anwar can put together atmospheric, creepy scenes standing on his head, but when it comes to a bit more action (for instance, the motorcycle and van accident or the kid unnaturally fluttering in the wind), you can see his limitations, which make clear that this isn’t Hollywood, but Indonesia. I don’t think it’s anything important, but it does affect the experience a little. In a fairly generous run of 107 minutes, there are a couple of redundant passages that should have been left out, while at the same time, I would extend the ending a bit, and also make it a little more tense.

The perfect film to “celebrate” the Victorious February. It’s very funny and dark, but also chilling when you realise that some of the events portrayed are not that far from the realities of a totalitarian regime. So, let’s hope that the gradual stupidisation of this country won’t make us go through something like this again. Otherwise, when compared to this film, the Czech satire President Blanik looks pretty sad. It’s on another level.

I really don’t like it when people give ironic high ratings to bad films. At all. I don’t care about guilty pleasures, I just don’t like bad films by incompetent creators. I think they are offensive to those creators who at least try. But The Room is something else! If it had been made like this deliberately, I would be a brilliant comedy, but the fact that this is the result of a series of accidents and some kind of bizarre aliens can’t erase the positive emotions that I have from this “film”. No bullshit, I haven’t been so fascinated by a film in a long time, even if it is really bad, and how improbably bad it is sometimes, but still.

A bunch of funnily dressed amateurs playing cowboys and indians in the woods by a housing estate, that’s basically how this film can be described. It’s almost unbelievable how resistant it is to arousing interest in the viewer. It has neither tension nor atmosphere. The premise may be praiseworthy, but the result certainly isn’t. Only the last twenty minutes are a bit better – there is something resembling an atmosphere – but, overall, very bad. 3/10

Horror short to watch on Vimeo.

What attracted me to this film were the conflicting ratings. For some viewers it’s rubbish, but you can find others who are fairly satisfied. Spoilers: Well, I’m also half and half. I kind of like the inconsistency. I understand that preserving the point of view of the main characters – the victims – is the intention of the authors, and won’t condemn it, on the contrary, I think it’s pretty well done. Those poor bastards didn’t know who attacked them and why, and neither will the viewer. On the other hand, I feel this could have been done more interestingly and convincingly, especially without some of the foreplay, which ends up going nowhere. And in particular, if I saw that things in my house (the phone, a bowl of food) were moving without my intervention, I would address it right away.