20140621: Horror Review--Sin Reaper

Sin Reaper

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. German live action feature length film, 2012, rated R, 94 minutes, horror.
2. IMDB: 3.1/10.0 from 151 audience ratings. Estimated budget, 1.2 million euros.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 25% liked it from 5 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.5/5.0 from 7,726 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Sebastian Bartolitius.
6. Starring: Helen Mutch as Samantha Walker, Lance Henriksen as Dr. Douglas Hoffman, Hazuki Kato as Jenny Kaylin, Patrick J. Thomas as Sasha Jones, Paulina Bachmann as Melanie Pregler, Andrew James Porter as R. J. Williams, Alexander Kirsch as Daniel Yulin.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film opens to a dream, then the writing down of the dream, then the discussion of the dream between the young woman Helen, and her analyst, Dr. Hoffman.  Helen also does automatic drawing now and then, including after vivid dream.  The opening dream concerned a young woman in the time of the Crusades being murdered by a Knight's Templar in armour.  Helen's discussions with Hoffman are as vague and inconclusive as one might expect from a man who prescribes mind-numbing drugs.


2. One thing definite from Hoffman was a set of photographs that match some of Helen's automatic drawings.  Based on this match, Helen accepts tickets from Hoffman to travel to the castle depicted in the photographs.  Hoffman's hope is that Helen finds the sources of Helen's dreams.


3. The castle that Helen seeks has become a museum maintained by Yulin and a colleague.  Yulin kicks out Helen, whose curiosity is instantly engaged that much more.  She hires some of the locals to break into the place.  As it turns out, the museum is in financial troubles, and insurance fraud is contemplated to bail out the museum.  Helen's escapade gets resistance from those about to commit the fraud.


4. Just to tie up the whole story, someone dresses up in Templar armour (and weapon, the 'sin reaper') from the museum exhibits and starts killing people involved in the double break in.  So, will an explanation emerge from the carnage of the opening sequence?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Bad dubbing, bad screenplay, neither scary nor suspenseful.
2. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 Some of it is fine, a lot of it is just plain poorly done, particularly the night photography.


2. Sound: 3/10 The voice track to the audio sucked rocks.  Lance Henriksen's voice and accent were fine, for instance, but not so much in sync with the movements of his face.  The accents were to shudder at.  Helen was supposedly an American, but her accent was broad and English.  The English sub-titles for the German sentences looked more or less OK, but the dubbed English for the German speakers was between unintentionally humourous and stupid.


3. Acting: 2/10 Lance Henriksen's performance was OK, but the lip-sync editing failure rather spoiled that.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Oh, goodness.  The three threads I noted did not mesh up all that well.  The dream of a past life seemed at first just the delusions of an ill mind.  The unification at the end seemed a bit weak.  With a good director at the helm, this should have been chilling or hard-core scary.  As it was, it seemed boring and tedious; I could barely wait for the film to end.  The thread of a troubled mind trying to be made healthy was just lost.  The thread of insurance fraud seemed a red herring at best, and seemed to have little to do the rest of the film.