20151124: Horror Review--Lost River

Name: Lost River (2015)
IMDb: link to IMDb

Genres: Horror    Country of Origin: USA.

Cast: Christina Hendricks as Billy, Iain De Caestecker as Bones, Saoirse Ronan as Rat, Matt Smith as Bully, Eva Mendes as Cat, Ben Mendelsohn as Dave, Redo Kateb as Cab Driver, Barbara Stello.

Written and directed by:  Ryan Gosling.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux: The film has two locations.  One is Lost River, a more or less country version of Detroit: jobs are in short supply, law enforcement is non-existent, salvaging copper is a dangerous way to make money, and the gangster Bully kills anyone who opposes him.  Billy has two children.  One is Bones, who salvaged copper at the wrong time, and is on Bully's extermination list; the other is Frankie, who is a bit past toddler.  Bones and Rat become friends.  Bones tries to find the origins of Lost River's problems.

In order to keep her house, Billy takes a job at a house of horrors (with plenty of simulated gore and mayhem) and starts to adapt to it with Cat's help.  The bank arranged (well, extorted) that; her loan officer runs the house of horrors.

Delineation of conflicts: Bully wants to keep his little empire of fear and hate.  Bones wants to figure out what all was drowned when the river of 'Lost River' was dammed (not damned...or was it?).  Billy would like to keep her house, but also escape from the bank's coercion.  She listens to the monologues of the cab driver who takes her to the fun house.  Bones is supposed to watch over Frankie while Billy is at work; his failures to do that cause substantial trouble.

Resolution: Law of the jungle crossed with politics of scarcity yields a dreary downward spiral. Is there any upside possible?

One line summary: Life is difficult, then it gets worse.

Statistics:
  a. Cinematography: 3/10 It takes real determination to make something that looks so shabby with modern equipment.  Lens flare, stupid filters, so many frames with over 90% darkness, poor focus, lousy depth of field, shooting through out-of-focus moving objects, and mediocre framing are some of the problems.  This movie reminds me of the visual wasteland of the deeply terrible Only God Forgives (2013), another Gosling project.

  b. Sound: 0/10 I quit listening after about 30 minutes of 100.  The subtitles seemed sufficient and much more enjoyable.

  c. Acting: 0/10 The direction and screenplay defeat acting.  My previous experience watching Ms Hendricks was from Mad Men, where I liked her acting.  This film made me re-think that.  Saoirse Ronan (How I Live Now (2013), The Host (2013), Violet and Daisy (2012)) is high on my deal breaker list.

  d. Screenplay: 0/10 As dreary, vile, and pointless as Only God Forgives or Stay (2005).

Final rating: 1/10

20150827: Drama Review--The Babadook

The Babadook

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: The Babadook
2. IMDb: Users rated this 6.9/10 (79,570 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   98% of critics liked it: 168 critical reviews liked it of 172.
   73% of viewers liked it based on 29,186 ratings
   Critics Consensus: The Babadook relies on real horror rather than cheap jump scares -- and boasts a heartfelt, genuinely moving story to boot.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2014-05-22
6. Production Companies: South Australian Film Corporation, Screen Australia, Smoking Gun Productions, Causeway Films
7. Tagline: If it's in a word, or it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook.


8. Budget:  2,000,000 USD
9. Revenue: 4,222,200 USD
10. Runtime: 93 minutes.
11. Genres: Drama, Thriller, Horror


12. Written and directed by: Jennifer Kent.


13. Starring: Essie Davis as Amelia, Noah Wiseman as Samuel, Daniel Henshall as Robbie, Tim Purcell as The Babadook, Hayley McElhinney as Claire, Cathy Adamek as Prue, Craig Behenna as Warren, Benjamin Winspear as Oskar, Chloe Hurn as Ruby, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight as Supermarket Mum


14. TMDb overview: A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Amelia's husband dies while she is pregnant with Samuel. Losing the husband is a huge traumatic spike, and raising the now unwanted child as a single parent is strong ongoing stress.  She does not impose practical boundaries on the child, who responds by pushing her well past the limit.  That is, she is a terrible parent, and the child makes her and everyone around them pay for that fact.


2. At age six, Samuel starts broadcasting his dislike of the way he is treated. His aberrant behaviours at school and around town invoke additional stressors to Amelia's already weakened mental state. When mother and son find a book with a pop-up character, they make the mistake of reading it together at night.  Their lives get worse by this simple foolish choice that could be revoked at any time.


3. Will Amelia heal herself and flush all this ridiculously obvious nonsensical cluster of lies?


3. Conclusions


1. This is a psychological drama where the protagonist refuses to resolve her own self-generated difficulties.  There was no character to identify with in the film.  As the film progressed to the ten minute mark, my empathic response to the self-destructive protagonist had already evaporated.  So, who cares?


2. Netflix classifies this hot mess as Thriller, Independent Thriller, Psychological Thriller.  At least they did not mark it as 'horror.'  Also, Thriller?  Really?  There is nothing thrilling (or even engaging) about this descent into the outer boundaries of stupidity.


3. The Movie Database (TMDb) calls it Drama (yes), Thriller (no), and Horror (no).  The film had no body horror, no serial killers, no gorefest.  The madness aspect was all fake, so the supposed supernatural elements were each and every one fake.  What aspect of horror is this misstep supposed to represent?


4. Rotten Tomatoes marked the genres as Drama, Horror, Mystery and Suspense.  There is no suspense here since there were no real threats involved.  The protagonist's pathology was set clearly during the first 45 seconds.  The mystery, I suppose, was whether she would decide to get well.  The other mystery is why RT rated this dog so highly.


5. There are so many dull stretches in this film. At times I thought I was watching Paranormal Activity without the jump scares. Also, watching full-screen, low resolution badly taped ancient television is just boring, whether or not the protagonist thinks she sees something in the childish images. There is nothing there, just the wandering consciousness of a sleep-deprived weakling who has given up on life.


6. One line summary: This film is 93 minutes of witnessing ongoing willful self-delusion.


7. Zero stars of five.  This is one of the worst films I have ever seen. Why it received sacred cow status is a mystery.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 Oh my, dark and evocative?  Well, no.


2. Sound: 0/10 Unfortunately, I could hear the dialog.


3. Acting: 0/10 I suppose most of the actors accomplished the tasks the director set them.   In that way, this film resembles some of Wes Anderson's horrible early works.  The actors did what the director wished, but that was just the problem.  The director's flawed vision trumped any and all of the actors' efforts, rendering the net effect of acting as zero, nada, zilch.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 There are no real threats, no real suspense, no real anything.  This film is 93 minutes of witnessing ongoing self-delusion.  I did like the line where the child says to a potential suitor that she won't let him have a birthday party and won't let him have a dad.  Of course he hates her, deeply, strongly, and forever.  This all could have been done in much less time.  Apparently the auteur director had already done that: Babadook was an expansion of Monster (2005), which clocks in at 10 minutes.

Babadook is an anagram for 'a bad book,' but 'a bad author' might have been better. As Amelia bragged to her friends in one passage, Amelia wrote the problematic book, and constructed it out of ordinary materials. Then she foisted it on her unsuspecting child.