Movie Appraisal: Apartment 143 (Emergo) (2012) (2011?)

Apartment 143 (also called Emergo in its native Spain) is a "horror" movie with "ghosts." It's an English language film despite being made in Spain. Its Spanish director, Carles Torrens, made his feature film directorial debut with this movie as well. Starring some pretty solid actors, it is a movie. It probably happens to be about ghosts. Maybe? I don't even know. Sorry for being lackluster about this film, but it seriously is about as mediocre as a horror movie can be. It doesn't do anything new or interesting or, most importantly, scary. It is a horror movie without a bite, a ghost film without a real ghost, a found footage film without any real footage that is found. I mean, seriously, it feels like this film goes by without anything ever happening. That's insane and the biggest problem a horror film could possibly have. It doesn't matter how well acted the characters are or how good the effects look or even how well-directed the movie is. It matters that the plot is boring and the movie is utterly not scary.

*sigh*

I guess we could call this a rip-off of Paranormal Activity and ghost hunter type shows on TV. It's fitting that I can only see those things when watching this film. Fitting indeed. While not a terrible movie by any stretch, Apartment 143 is not what I was expecting. It is neither scary nor does it ever really seem to try. While the acting throughout is very solid, and the direction isn't half bad, the movie suffers from a lack of absolute coherence. The pacing is simply bad. I can't say anything but that. Yes, there is a lead-up to a climax, but it is so spottily done- much like Paranormal Activity, but without that movie's build-up to something. The ambiguity is used as a crutch rather than an featured element. I didn't mind this film as I watched it, but as soon as it was done, I started forgetting everything about it. It's simply generic. It doesn't take chances. It doesn't try to frighten. It just kind of exists in space as a movie that could be horror if it cared enough to be.

Yes, the acting is solid. Honestly this is the part of the movie I liked best. Special mentions go out to Rick Gonzalez, Kai Lennox, and Michael O'Keefe, who, I felt, all turned in brilliant performances. Their dialogue was strong, their characters very well put together, and their situations compelling. The rest of the cast isn't half bad themselves, but these are the real standouts to me. Each had a moment in the film that left me nodding my head.

Do I even have to mention the plot? Seriously?

You already know it.

It's not as if you couldn't guess it.

Ugh.

Fine. I will. Begrudgingly.

Family thinks there are ghosts in the titular apartment. Investigators come. Things happen. No ghosts in the apartment. Teenage girl is schizophrenic and a poltergeist somehow, maybe. Not really. Since there is a bit of a stinger that completely shoots that down. Probably. Ugh. The dad is accused of molesting his daughter, but he probably didn't because he's a good dad. And the daughter is nasty and a little crazy mean herself. Obviously she's supposed to take after the less-than-perfect mother, who was a bad woman.

Some movies can do ambiguity well. This one is not a movie like that. The ambiguity just makes it confusing and annoying. The ending made me sigh. Hell, the movie was so predictable I was finding it difficult to keep interested in it. I was more bored than anything else. The dialogue and acting helped it not be the bottom of the barrel, but even they couldn't make the plot better.

I'll talk theories quickly. Yes, this movie probably has a ghost-thing in it. The doctor or parapsychologist, or whatever he is, is more than likely wrong or slightly off in his theory. The mother is probably evilly haunting the family and possessing the daughter since she has been established as being evil.

*sigh*

And that's that. I wish the movie would have been scarier, would have been more interesting, would have taken more risks, and would have had a better payoff. But it didn't. I found it lackluster and, in turn, I have no real energy to review it.

The direction was weird, with long periods focused on the same thing. I mean, there is only so long I can stare at a wall and not get bored of said wall. One scene with flashing lights made me not actually want to watch the movie anymore. I mean, seriously, it was so awful I didn't even watch the screen. I knew what would happen, and the flashing lights were making me feel sick.

Anyway, this is a highly mediocre film. It has no real relevance and does nothing different to make it stand apart from other, better films. It is so utterly standard and generic that it literally melds into the background, making it just another ripoff of Paranormal Activity, but not as good. I remember so little about the film, but every time I think about it I become slightly angrier thinking that with the strong acting and dialogue it could have actually been something new and interesting. Instead it was a bit of a waste. And the worst part is that I have so little to say about it because it is so mediocre. I would rather complain than say nothing at all, but that's what I have. This movie is so uninteresting that I have literally nothing to say about it.

Don't watch it. While it ha a few good moments, this film is nothing special. It's not memorable. It doesn't wow. And it doesn't frighten. It's just another movie. One that should be avoided.

Movie Appraisal: Triangle (2009)

"Is this normal?" A man asks.
All I want to answer is, "No, it's CGI."

Triangle is a moody, melancholic, and somewhat imaginative "horror" movie directed by Christopher Smith and starring Melissa George. It was made by and in the UK and Australia with mainly Australian actors, but takes place in Florida for some reason with every one of the actors faking an American accent, probably because of the allusion to the Bermuda Triangle, which is not what this movie is about. Instead, the titular Triangle is the sailing ship the characters start the movie on.

Melissa George, the big name in this flick, plays Jess, a single mother with a special needs son. Throughout the film, but especially in the beginning of it, she seems out of it, confused, and a little lost as well. I'm not sure if it was the character that was out of her element or the actress. I'm kind of sorry for saying this, but Melissa George is not a powerhouse actress in this film. While I've seen her play some decent roles (most notably in 30 Days of Night) she doesn't seem quite ready for the emotional performance that this movie really required. She has a mighty vacant expression on her face for most of this film, with her mouth slightly agape, like it's stuck in constant surprise. I know that's a bit unfair, but it kept getting to me as the movie progressed.

The being said, this is a whale of a movie plot. Despite the limited characterizations and dialogue, the plot is incredibly complex... although equally incredibly predictable. It's kind of the nature of a plot like this to be predictable, but I seriously wish I hadn't guessed most of the movie in the first ten to fifteen minutes of the film. It made a large portion of this movie quite boring. The only thing I couldn't have even anticipated was how Jess was going to act and react rather than what was going to happen, since that seemed set in stone. And her reactions, which should have been the most interesting part of the movie, became confusing and badly put together and thought out- more frustrating for the viewer than interesting.

The problem is that I have no idea why everything was set in stone and why Jess couldn't have changed stuff at any time she wanted to. This becomes a huge problem towards the end of the movie, but I'm digressing a bit. If you know nothing about this movie you are probably lost, and I don't blame you. If you have watched this movie you may be lost as well, but no worries! It's fairly easy to understand once you realize that time travel plots and being stuck in a time loop is utterly idiotic and rarely works well in any fictional medium.

Okay, maybe not ENTIRELY idiotic, but I cannot stand movies that attempt these types of plots. Time travel and time loops are complicated and never seem to work in movies or stories in general, often falling flat long before they become compelling. I would have shut this movie off in an instant if it had not shaken anything up at all or performed intelligent moves effectively. But it did. No, it didn't do it amazingly every single time. I still have a ton of questions lingering in my mind, but I thought it told the plot satisfactorily.

So, yes, this movie is all about a time loop. It's basically your standard Sisyphus plot. They even mention it in the movie proper. It's so apparent and so telegraphed that it felt like the movie were trying to hammer it into my head. It did back off a bit eventually, and I have to thank the director for that at least. While I did appreciate some of the more intelligent designs in the plot throughout the movie, I found for the most part that the movie lacked surprise, which is a leading force when it comes to actual HORROR movies.

Anyway, the movie starts out at Jess's home. She has a special needs son and is cleaning up some paint he spilled on the floor. She hears the doorbell, goes to get it, and finds nobody there. She asks her neighbor if he saw anyone, and of course he didn't see anyone. She goes to tidy up and then we meet up with the other characters of the film. Greg is on his sailing ship, getting it ready to take some of his friends out for a nice and relaxing cruise. Victor, a young friend of Greg, is staying with him and helping him with the boat. Greg has two married friends coming along specially for the ride as well as a friend they brought along to hook him up with. Jess then makes an appearance as well, looking disheveled and awful, seeming like she needs a good sleep. Greg had invited her along, and seems particularly protective of her.

So, they go sailing, start having a good time... and THEN (because of course there's an "and then") the wind dies, a CGI storm hits, capsizes the boat, the friend of the couple is lost, and a large cruise ship from the 1930s rolls past them looking to help. Or so they think. They see a figure on board, the ship seems to let them on board, and then there's nobody there to greet them. They start looking all over the ship for other people, but all they find is Jess annoyingly saying that she thinks she's been here before. Some odd things start to happen, including Jess's keys suddenly dropping at a random place on the ship, and a figure seeming to follow them.

Jess eventually gets upset with Greg because he's being realistic and is trying to reason with her, so she runs off, and is attacked by a seriously wounded Victor who tries to choke her to death. Now, this is the kind of movie that has characters in it that have never seen a horror film before. They had split up before this all happened, so being on a creepy empty ship and splitting up is obviously the best course of action. Anyway, Jess runs back to find the others only to find Greg shot dead, claiming that she killed him, and the couple over him, blaming her for the death even as they are shot to death by a mysterious figure with a sack over its head. The masked figure continues to shoot at Jess even as she tries to escape, leading to one of the funniest scenes I've seen in a horror movie in a while, where the masked gunperson runs out of bullets and throws the gun at her. And it hits her too! I mean, I was laughing to myself even as the scene went on because it was absolutely ridiculous. It was also easily the best moment (or two- ha ha ha time travel ha ha) in the film.

So, Jess fights the gunperson with a fire-axe, and eventually backs the masked person off the ship while the masked person whispers something unintelligible to her. We think the movie must be done at this point- but it's only just started. Jess backs into the captain's quarters or the bridge or something, plays some music and hears some cries coming from the open ocean. Oh no! It's the capsized Triangle with the five characters again calling out for help from the cruise ship. And we have officially entered the plot of this movie.

It's all a loop on the cruise ship that ends when all the characters (seemingly save Jess) die. When they all die, the loop starts all over again. So, Jess starts off by doing exactly what previous versions of her had done before, jotting down a note, losing her locket, grabbing a gun... but then decides she wants to break the pattern. She finds Victor, hoping to warn him, but that just spooks him because she sounds like she's insane. She grievously wounds him completely by accident (which it seems every Jess seems to do), then changes what happened earlier in the time loop by making certain Victor didn't attack her earlier self. She confronts that earlier self, seems to think about killing her, then lets her run away. Again, she seems like she's trying to break the loop and keep everybody alive. Remember this for later.

The problem is that the masked person (who is also Jess, but a later version of her) is killing off the other characters whenever she can. So, this "good" Jess is trying to save them, and the masked "bad" one is trying to kill them. This goes on for a little while and several loops, every time having the characters die. She even sees herself die at least once, I believe. She sees a mass of Sallies (the female of the couple) and where they all died, and kind of realizes that this has been going on much longer than she's been here.

Jess, who had been trying to save the others, suddenly doesn't want to do that anymore. I mean, she seriously just changes her mind without any character development saying why. She actively starts hunting the other characters down with the sack on her head, shooting them whenever she can. Oh my God how stupid can Jess be? She goes and decides to do all the things it was decided that she would do by the loop or fate or whatnot, but SHE KNOWS HOW THAT'S GOING TO TURN OUT, with earlier Jess making certain that the final Jess jumps overboard. There is an easy solution here she hadn't thought of: why not just wait out on the landing dock, let the other Jess kill all of the others, then warn the Triangle when it gets close? Why does she start thinking it's a good idea to murder all the others? Why does she do it exactly like the earlier version of her saw her do it? She could have changed anything and everything, but she knew how it would turn out. Why not change what is going to happen rather than living it? And why be surprised when it happens the way she KNEW it was going to happen if she followed that route?

I can't get over this. I really can't. Her character changes in a single second from being a decent person trying to save the others (even if she doesn't) to being a murderer with a sack on her head for the simple reason that she wants to save them by killing them. Look, lady, there are easier ways to go about doing this than murdering them, okay? I don't like the jump of personality change here. I don't think it works, and it bothered me a ton. I don't like her justifications, and I especially don't like how she doesn't act like a person would. Look, if I find myself in some kind of weird loop and then see I can change some things sometimes, I'm going to make certain I don't do anything that I saw some masked moron do earlier. I am especially not going to put on said mask and shoot people. I mean, seriously.... damn it. This was too frustrating for me.

Anyway, I guess the rest of the movie happens after that. Jess, in a mask, jumps off the ship, hits the water, wakes up on a beach and goes home. At this point I'm wondering why the movie is still going. In my mind it should be over. But no, Jess goes home and we see that she's gone back in time, it seems, to watch herself scream and beat her special needs child. Jess decides she doesn't like the old her very much, plays ding-dong ditch with herself, grabs a hammer, and beats the everloving crud out of the earlier version of herself, killing her. The son panics, understandably, and she consoles him by saying it was all a terrible nightmare. She packs her body into the trunk of the car and gets ready to leave Florida. On her way she hits a seagull which causes her son to freak out, and we see the ultimate TWIST of the movie. There are a ton of dead seagulls which it seems like previous versions of herself had thrown over the cliff as well. She is still in the loop! She continues driving for a few seconds, but she is totally not watching the road... AND ACCIDENT.

Her son dies, and the earlier Jess is also there dead. There's a very obvious nod to the idea that she's in a loop of hell, and really died in a car accident, but she doesn't seem to think about it much, instead talking to a random creepy taxi driver. This taxi driver out of nowhere decides to drive her away from that place, and she accepts, saying she'll go to the harbor to meet Greg and the rest. And she does. And the loop starts all over again, although we have no idea how much she remembers now or how much she remembered in the first place at all.

So, one other thing I have to mention is that in the cruise ship there seemed to be a much later version of Jess for several minutes. She killed Downey (the male member of the couple) and seemed to be doing all of what she was doing to save her son, even citing that she loves her son as the reason the other have to die. This seems to be the final version of Jess we see, the one who remembers that her son died because of her... and she's still looping.

Okay, while I think that all sounds very complex, it's actually pretty simple to follow for the most part. It is a movie that requires paying a bit of attention, but most of the film is explicitly stated in dialogue. Jess is in a loop, more than likely because she died. The others may or may not exist, but that doesn't even matter. Jess is a bad mother and feels guilty about it. She dies in a car accident and cannot accept that she and her son are dead, which creates the loop in the first place. That's the more plausible explanation, and I hate movies that do that. The other explanation is that the cruise ship is a magical time dimensional traveling cruise ship from the 1930s that allows her and the others to loop constantly through time ad infinitum because she's too stupid to break the loop or convince the others that what she's saying isn't crazy. And that isn't a much better plot, is it?

Anyway, this is a really different movie. I appreciate how it's different. I really do. I like the plot, but it's not very original no matter what you think. Look at Stay, Jacob's Ladder, The Dark, or a ton of others movies I'm simply not thinking about right now. While the loop may not be done in every movie, the premise is one that is wholly predictable, and the plot is way to easy to figure out. Most of the characters are either unlikable or completely flat, and the one that seems to show any personality, Jess, simply does confusing and nonsensical things throughout the film. The acting is nothing special, with Melissa George probably putting out the best performance out of everyone even if it is mediocre. The actors are somewhat believable, but... again... it's hard to feel anything for them throughout the movie. They just don't have enough character for me to go "Oh no! I don't want him/her to die!"

As for being a horror movie... No. No, this movie is in no way scary. It may be kind of interesting and gory, but it is in no way horrific or terrifying. Calling this a horror movie is like calling spaghetti thrown onto the ceiling psychological terror. It's simply not.

I also want to say that, yes movie, I saw what you did with the references to The Shining. Don't think I didn't see the Room 237 there. I am a big Stephen King junkie. Do you think I would miss obvious references like that? Or the blood on the mirror? Or the ax? I mean, I don't even like Kubrick's The Shining, but the blatant references just made me roll my eyes. You should never make me remember a better movie while I'm watching your movie. And as I said, I don't even like The Shining very much, but it is a much better movie than this, and I shouldn't have been thinking how much more I wanted to see that than this.

Now, this movie isn't garbage. Nor is it bad. It's a mediocre plot mixed with some pretty decent time travel looping kind of stuff that makes it kind of interesting and different. The first half of the movie is not very fun to watch, but once the true plot comes out, it's a much easier movie to stomach. While I never wholly bought the movie, and found myself more frustrated than happy with it, I will say that it was a decent enough flick. I came away feeling like it was pretty average and kind of forgettable, but not bad exactly. While that's no recommendation, I can't say to avoid it fully either since there are some decent things here even if it's frustrating and nonsensical at times. If the plot sounds interesting or you think Melissa George is a great actress or great looking, maybe check it out with the warning that there are much better movies out there. Barring that, it is just not a good enough movie for me to wholeheartedly thrown my support behind.

Movie Appraisal: The Innkeepers (2011)

Every once in a while a movie comes along that I absolutely cannot stand on any level. The Innkeepers is that movie for this October. While I'm unsure of exactly what I was expecting from this movie, it certainly wasn't whatever I just saw. Almost nothing about this movie is good. The pacing is terrible. The acting is nearly atrocious in all given cases. The characters are unlikable at best and unfathomable at worst. None of the decisions made by the characters, particularly towards the end of the film, make any sense whatsoever, and there are long periods of time when nothing at all happens.

I happen to love atmospheric horror, but this is  atmospheric horror without atmosphere. It's a ghost story without a purpose. It's a character study without character. This movie is inept. It doesn't work, wither as a movie or as a horror movie. It's boring, predictable, and somewhat pathetic. Ti West, a director I've heard a great deal of very good things about, is about the only reason this movie is even watchable. His direction is passable, even good at times, particularly when the old man shows up dead. Besides that though, none of the actors even seem to be trying. Well, that's not true, Sarah Paxton, who plays Claire, is trying way too hard. She needs to tone her acting down a notch. All I received from her character is that she was twitchy, impulsive, and really dumb. I'm sure many people are like that, but this just felt like overacting to the extreme.  Pat Healy, playing Luke, does a better job, but there are times, particularly when he is scared in the basement of the inn, where it is painfully obvious what's going on in his acting. I like subtlety in movies of this nature, but this movie looked at the word "subtle," didn't understand it, probably never even heard of it, and moved on.

The plot largely centers around the last weekend of the Yankee Pedlar Inn (incidentally in my home state of Connecticut). I have seen the inn before in Torrington, and I guess it could be creepy. Honestly, anything set in this godforsaken state could be creepy, but for the most part this movie was decidedly not creepy at all. Anyway, this last weekend, involves a bunch of shenanigans, ranging from Claire freaking out constantly, to an actress who happens to be psychic, to ghosts and spooks jumping out from all angles. Luke and Claire have attempted to try to find ghosts in the hotel before, and Luke is even in the process of making a spooky late 1990s internet page about the ghosts in the hotel despite it being 2010/2011 when the movie takes place. Ugh. The inn is supposedly haunted, but they've caught very little in the way of evidence, and near the end of the movie you find that Luke doesn't even believe in the ghosts. He's more than likely doing all of this stuff to appeal to Claire, whom he has a thing for. Claire, on the other hand, is a ball full of twitch. The girl can't stand still. She can't stop touching things and moving and twitching and screaming, and it distracted the absolute hell out of me. I didn't connect with her character at all. I didn't like her at all. I had no emotional connection with her, and that was an absolute shame.

I don't think this movie had a promising premise in any case, with or without great characters. Some ghost stories work, but one that seems based on lack of creepy visuals, lack of atmosphere, and lack of actual subtle scares is absolutely doomed to fail. Now, I generally don't like ghost movies anyway, but I had this movie recommended to me by a source I generally trust for compelling spooks and creepy stories. Not this time, it seems. This movie is so devoid of character, scares, or investment that I found myself frequently getting bored, and wishing the movie would just end already. I never do that. Hell, even The Reaping and Marronnier were compelling enough to watch the whole way through. This movie just had nothing for me. It could have been okay. I do like a well handled ghost story... and I happen to watch Ghost Hunters too, so I should love a movie like this if it is well done. But this one was not.

I don't even have more of a plot analysis than that. I have no idea if the ghosts Claire saw were real or not. That seemed to be something the movie was trying to put a question mark on. But the end of the movie completely invalidated any question of the validity of the ghost sightings... or at least of the psychic sights. And that just took away any interest I was clinging too. I figured, "Oh, it might all be in her head. She might be cracking a little. She might be making it all up." But no. Just ghosts scaring her to death because she didn't have her inhaler (since she has asthma). Another thing I have to mention is that my girlfriend had mild asthma. I see her using her inhaler every once in a while. And although Claire uses her inhaler correctly in a few scenes, there are quite a few others when she doesn't use it effectively at all. That bothered me like mad.

There is also forced humor throughout this movie that completely undermines the horror elements. Sometimes humor can be used well with horror, see The Cabin in the Woods or Hausu, but more often than not, humor is not encouraged for movies like this, particularly if it isn't well acted in the first place. I was incredibly disappointed with this piece of garbage movie even though I wasn't expecting anything but some ghosts. The tension was never there; the horror was never there. I would rather watch almost any other horror movie than this one. Avoid it. Don't see it. Don't watch it. Don't encourage it.

Oh, and just to point this out, because I love feeling superior to movie critics who are precisely the worst kinds of people. This terrible movie? Yeah, it has almost an 80% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This movie that I hated because it was a poorly made, poorly acted, poorly executed horror movie? Yeah, give it an almost stunningly positive review number. But great movies like Silent Hill: Revelation, Ghost Ship, 1408, or even the near-classic Jacob's Ladder all have worst scores. Never trust critics. Seriously. If someone tells you a horror movie has a great score, just pretend it's a bad movie. Do the opposite for films that have terrible scores. Nobody seems to know how to precisely score horror movies, especially when most critics already hate them. Well, horror movies are awesome, and true horror movies need to be known. I will always call out the crap and praise the great ones. And this movie is absolute garbage.

Movie Appraisal: Dark Water (2005)

Some remakes are really good, while others simply aren't. While the remake of the earlier Japanese film Ringu made quite the impression as the American The Ring and was largely praised as both a good movie and horror movie alike, Dark Water has a very dubious distinction of being a remake of a Japanese film that really didn't live up to expectations. I'm going to say before I start that the premise of the film is not incredibly interesting to me, and while I've never seen the Japanese version, I kind of expect I would not like it bsed off of the story itself. So, while this American version may still be bad, I do seem to have a bias against the story of this movie as a whole.

I think that the acting of the movie is mostly subpar, despite some of the really great actors in it. I've really liked Jennifer Connelly in other movies, granted movies that involve a much younger version of her, but still... Pete Postlethwaite and John C. Reilly also have oddly flat performances despite both of them being superb actors in other films. I almost have to believe that the direction of the film has something to do with it... or something. I mean, sometimes the acting is almost wince-worthy. And that certainly cannot be a positive remark. I will say that the second half of the movie does seem to pick up both in acting and in the emotional intensity, but the first half is still so very bland. I will also admit that Tim Roth's performance as Dahlia's lawyer, Jeff Platzer, is absolutely fantastic throughout. When he blows off talking with Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) to go and watch a movie by himself in a nearly empty theatre, it is a thing of absolutely beauty.

The premise of the film is that a woman, Dahlia, is going through a nasty custody battle with her ex-husband, Kyle (Dougray Scott). As the battle intensifies, Dahlia seems to be having very strange nightmares and visions all involving... wait for it... wait for it........... dark water. Well, this dark water seems to have something to do with the apartment above Dahlia's own, a missing little girl, and a whole lot of very odd mischief. A great deal of the movie is very Japanese, with few scares and a much greater build-up of tension.  It is incredibly reminiscent of The Ring, both is story matters, persistent rain, and a little girl, who is almost seemingly malicious, dying in water. In the same way the movie also follows a similar climax and denouement to The Ring, solving the major plot points a good while before the movie ends. And there is a fairly dark ending here, one that is decent enough not to spoil.

It took me a while to warm to this movie. I don't think it is a great film, and I certainly don't feel that it is scary in the least bit, but it does work if you can get invested in it, something that I simply couldn't do. I don't know if it was because I couldn't relate to any of the characters except Jeff Platzer, who I thought was the only really likable character besides maybe possibly the kid and maybe Dahlia if you can relate to her. I certainly couldn't. I haven't seen the original Japanese version, and I do feel that this puts me at a disadvantage in reviewing this film. I'll check it out eventually and give a comparative review, but right now this movie seems only mediocre to me and incredibly subpar when compared to The Ring.

The imagery can sometimes be pretty good, but often does not feel much like a horror movie. I mean the dark water from the title is pretty well done and also so incredibly Japanese is style that it's kind of conventional in some ways. Also, damn it, little girls are not scary. I found myself laughing at the ridiculousness of this little girl being intimidating. Maybe it's just me, but although the second half of the movie is mostly pretty good, the ending was actually kind of painful to watch and left quite a bad taste in my mouth. I mean, I'm sorry, but I shouldn't be rolling my eyes throughout the ending, sighing, and wishing, almost hoping, it would just end without all of the stupidity. It didn't thought. It ended both painfully and so melodramatically that I wanted to scream at the movie itself to not do what I knew it was going to do.

I will say I do like the constant rain imagery throughout the film, but I liked that in The Ring too. I thought it was much more effective in that movie though. I guess altogether this movie can be seen as a ghost movie, certainly, very Japanese in style, but as a bit of a movie about the paranoid delusions of a woman under a lot of strain. The subtlety of the film was lost to me though. It seemed incredibly heavy-handed at times, and just didn't do it for me. I wish the movie was about the adventures of Tim Roth as Jeff Platzer in a ghost movie instead... but no. No such luck.

I wouldn't recommend this film to anybody. I mean, I guess if you're really hardcore into ghost stories with a Japanese twist, go ahead and watch it maybe? Although I'd almost guarantee that the Japanese version is better even though I've never seen it. So, I'm simply going to shrug and tell anybody reading this review to avoid it.

Movie Appraisal: White Noise (2005)

I had a very mixed reaction to this movie. It, on some levels, is very competently executed, but on others is simply befuddling. I guess my ultimate thought is that it is a movie that never really needed to exist. It seemed as if it was trying to talk about EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) but really became much more of a ghost or malevolent spirit film by the end. I guess the three malevolent figures could be demons as well. I mean, that right there is hard to get a conclusive thought on. I did somewhat enjoy the film, although, again, I found portions of it to be incredibly unnecessary, which is not a positive.

My biggest complaint would be the persistence of funerals. I have no idea why they kept springing up, but after a while they started to fall very flat, becoming a little too much for this hour and thirty minute movie to handle. The emotional intensity was lost on me after a while, maybe about halfway through the film, maybe a little more, and once it was gone, well, there wasn't much else to care about. Characters kept dying, funerals kept happening, and I stopped caring.

That being said, Michael Keaton is pretty good throughout the movie, and really is the best part of it. I like the idea of the EVP stuff, and the three demonic figures were interesting until the very end. I guess I still don't see the point though. It's just difficult for me to see why the movie ended the way it did or why things happened the way they did. I mean, yes, the "killer" was stopped, but ultimately nothing was solved but that. I think that makes it only a partial story, only a partial victory. So, the movie ends on a down note, which is fine, but also slaps the sacrifices in their faces by showing that no matter what they did they wouldn't stop the three shadow figures, which... okay, I can accept it, but it doesn't make a good conclusion.

So, talking about the movie itself, its plot and such, it really starts out like a weird Michael Keaton romantic comedy. I don't mind that, but it's a really odd way to start a horror movie. 1408 starts a similar way, but really gets so much more effective as the movie progresses whereas White Noise is really only effective towards the middle of the movie when few actual objective facts are known. The feeling of weird romantic comedy never really goes away until maybe the very end of the film. It's the weird bright colors of the cinematography, the slick apartment, and the camera focusing on characters in such a way as to portray a kind of weird romantic comedy effect. I can't explain it fully, but that feeling never truly went away.

White Noise is supposedly a horror movie, but it has very little actual horror. It's not shot like a horror movie as I said above, but that arguably works in its favor, especially at the end of the film when it goes into full horror movie mode. I guess if you like the ending the film is effective, but if you don't, and I fall into that boat, the film really becomes fairly ineffective at bringing across its ultimate points.

I really went into this movie with an opened mind. I had never seen this movie before, nor had I ever learned much about it. I saw a lot of negative reviews for it, but I rarely agree with other reviews, so I figured I'd give it a chance. I liked some of the ideas and some of the execution. The slow beginning was nice as was the middle of the film when everything was still pretty unexplained and spotty. My personal favorite part of the film was when Keaton's character starts reading the old transcripts that state words like "PIG" and "BASTARD" over and over again, trying to tell the EVP investigator, Raymond Price, to give it all up. I don't know why, but I really liked that part of the movie, showing the malevolent entities mixed with an investigation aspect.

My biggest problem was the amounts of deaths in the movie. It really kept me from caring about the characters or sympathizing with them. The lack of characterization in the second half of the film also shows, with most characters being defined with an adjective or two. Very one-dimensional and very flat. All the other major characters really besides Keaton's get shifted to the background and barely make appearances at all. It all feels rather awkward, never really giving enough screentime or care to anybody. I don't know, I guess the feeling that there was a concentration of plot over character didn't work for me. It might have if the characters were insignificant or if there hadn't been more of a focus on characters earlier in the film. Hell, it might have worked if the plot was better, but instead... it just fell very flat for me in general.

All of that being said Michael Keaton is fast becoming one of my favorite actors. The man is an excellent actor, but I feel very strongly that this film didn't let him show off his acting chops which is a real shame.

I also found it strange that most of the victims were women. I mean these demons seem rather woman-specific in their choices of victims. And it seems like it's always men who do the EVP as well. It's a strange kind of sexism that mystifies me. The "killer" is a man listening to the EVP stuff. Keaton's character, Jonathan, does a well, and so does Raymond. All of the other characters are basically female and never really have much or anything to do with the EVP stuff in general except to watch it. Kind of strange. I can't really say anything beyond that. I started noticing it and had no idea why it was chosen to be that way.

I didn't like the ending, not because Keaton's character dies, but because of the way he died. I don't know, mixing bad CGI, another really dumb and unnecessary death, the random killer gunned down by police, and yet another funeral... it felt really strung together and mechanical. I could have predicted it, but if I had it would have been a lot better. It didn't do it for me, hell most of this movie just felt so pointless and ridiculous. I did like parts of it, but overall it left a bad taste in my mouth. I think it's absolutely mediocre, and I also have no idea who this movie could be made for. It's not for the horror audience because it's not scary. It's not for the EVP audience because EVP doesn't work like that at all. AT ALL. So, who was this made for? I have no idea. All I know is that past the halfway point or so the movie really isn't worth watching... maybe a little for the imagery before the climax, with the broken windows of Jonathan's apartment and the three figures darting across a window or two... but mostly the movie isn't really worth it.

Movie Appraisal: Silent Hill (2006)

As can probably be inferred from my collection of horror genre reviews, I love horror, especially psychological horror. I've probably said that about a million times since I started this blog, but in this review it becomes apparent that I need to really need everybody to know that. Some of my favorite movies include the best of the psychological horror genre, including Jacob's Ladder, 1408, Sauna: Wash Your Sins. There are other good ones like The Machinist and The Dark, but there is a very clear distinction between good psychological horror movies and bad ones.

Part of the problem with any psychological movie (even without the horror) is that characterizations are difficult to do with the limited amount of time. Also using actual psychology- memories, ideas, and such-becomes increasingly difficult when the filmmakers know nothing about psychology. Sure, a good movie can still be made, but not a good psychological movie. One of the reasons I like movies like that so much is because of how difficult they are to make and the challenge of actually succeeding with them by making a clearly effective and sometimes terrifying film.

The Silent Hill series is also one of my favorite video game series of all time. I would love to review more Silent Hill games, but I also want to pace myself, really do them during my October Nights every day horror review schedule for next year. My point here is that Silent Hill is amazing for the most part. It does psychological and survival horror extremely well, terrifying the pants off of anybody who plays them. Anybody who has ever taken the time to play Silent Hill 2, for example, know that it is easily the scariest video game of all time. That's what this series has to offer, quality horror, often psychological horror, and often debilitating to the player.

God help me, I love the Silent Hill series, so when this movie Silent Hill, came out in 2006 when I was all of 17. I wanted to see it. I was dying to see it. I knew everything about the franchise, knew the characters, knew the monsters, knew the horror. I was in the mood to be terrified by this movie.

But I really wasn't. It's not that it was bad. It probably stands as one of the best movies from a video game source ever made, but the problem was that it was incredibly mediocre and not scary. There were no terrifying parts, no tension, no... anything. The acting was mediocre except from Sean Bean who is consistently awesome, but criminally underused in this film. Why couldn't he have been the protagonist and really had the video game this movie was made from really be made into a movie? (Silent Hill, the video game, had a male protagonist and the movie used the same storyline with a female protagonist. It didn't work well.)

The actors in this movie were... well, mediocre. Sure, Sean Bean is always great, but Radha Mitchell was frankly terrible. I don't know if it was her lines or her acting, but she never really seemed like a concerned mother, but rather more like a person reading from a text book. Laurie Holden, a good actress by the other things I've seen her in, is also underused here, being good in the scenes she's in, but not used enough to be effective. Alice Krige is effective in points, but silly and unneeded in the story. Where did Dr. Kaufmann from the video game go? Why is the character of Dahlia (Deborah Kara Unger) relegated to side character status?

And then there's Jodelle Ferland, who actually does do a good job as a creepy child/innocent child, but really should have been in a better movie than this to justify her performance.

The psychological elements in this film are terrible. Characters like Pyramid Head, called the Red Pyramid in the movie, is blatantly used for... no reason at all except that he's recognizable and iconic. In Silent Hill 2 he serves a purpose as both executioner and punisher, but here he is shoehorned into a few scenes for no other reason than to show up in the film and be on the posters. WHY? Why would a franchise that focuses on such powerful psychological elements criminally misuse psychological elements? Why are there sexy nurses? Why? Seriously. Sexy nurses were in Silent Hill 2 and were well-explained. Before that there were nurses, but they were monstrous, not sexy, which made sense to the game. Silent Hill, the video game, made a clear source of where the psychology comes from and how it is used. The nurses were from Alessa and her basically being trapped in a hospital. They were warped reminders of her terror and fear of where she was. Why are they sexy? It makes no sense.

There are other monsters to complain about, but that's all I'm going to say. Some things were interesting and not so terrible, like Colin, although even that was for a few seconds and mostly terrible. The bugs were silly. And here's the grossest misuse of the movie: The miners and the cult. Oh, dear God, the miners and the cult made me want to rage-quit the movie. For where they are, sure the miners make sense, I guess, but what about the stupid Christian cult? Where did the video game cult go? Why is it Christianized? I mean, yes, the cult is seriously one of the worst parts of the video games, but at least use it. Don't change it to crazy fundamental Christians and use witch burning and stuff. It's insulting and frankly terrible.

Now for some good points. The end of the movie is really well done. I found it enjoyable. The gore might be a little much at points, but the whole ending is both poignant at times and pretty hardcore at other times. The end of the movie is really original, not taking much from the video game, and that works. It's pretty cool. I love the grainy filters over the flashbacks and I wish the whole movie could have looked like that. I like the use of darkness and light in the ending and the visuals are altogether really well done. Even the acting seems better in the end.

The problem is that the rest of the film is pretty bad. The pacing is bad. The psychology is bad. The acting isn't good. Even the scenery, something that should not have been problematic, looks terrible. The visuals frankly suck even when the Silent Hill franchise is known for their amazing, terrifying visuals.

I'm not exactly in the group of some people who absolutely hate this movie, but I do think it's absolutely mediocre and forgettable. The Dark, a movie from 2005, and one I'll probably review eventually, basically follows almost the exact same plot as this movie, but with better acting, a better story, a better and more confusing and ambiguous ending, and more Sean Bean, which is always a good thing. The psychology to that move is fantastic, even if the movie isn't absolutely stunning. But I'll review that when I review it.

One more thing I'll mention about Silent Hill is that my girlfriend, a person who has never seen a horror movie before, was not afraid of this movie. She kind of just shrugged it off, saying that the only part that actually scared her was the gore, which happens for all of twenty seconds. She also hated the persistent CGI throughout the movie... and now mentioning that...

The persistent CGI throughout the movie is terrible. The transitions between worlds, the monsters, some of the visuals, etc... all look terrible with the CGI. It's painful to watch and I would have much rather had people in costumes and a transition in the character's sleep instead, like in the Silent Hill games.

There's a lot wrong here, and my biggest problem with the movie isn't even the movie itself, but rather that the next game, Silent Hill: Homecoming, used so much from the movie, that had taken from the earlier games, that it made a game that had terrible psychological elements, Pyramid Head around for no reason, miners, sexy nurses, patients... ugh... that game was awful and it's all because it took from this somewhat successful movie.

Anyway, it's not scary even though it should be, it left a bad impression on me and the Silent Hill franchise, and the video games are much better and scarier. Leave this movie alone unless you really love Silent Hill, and then realize how bad this movie actually is to fans of the games.

Also, as an endnote, there's a sequel in the works. Isn't that wonderful?