Today's Review: The Sea of Trees

Another review belatedly posted here:

The Sea of Trees - recensie

If you thought Gus van Sant would be more suited to make an interesting picture about the phenomenon of the Japanese suicide forest Aokigahara than the creators of the recent bland horror movie The Forest would, you thought wrong. Say what you will about The Forest, it had no other pretentions than being an average spooky flick (except maybe for the 'average' part, but then they should have tried harder). The Sea of Trees, not so. It's a bold potpourri of supernatural thrills, Japanese versus Western belief systems, tearjerking drama and philosophical reflections on the nature of suicide. At least, it likes to be. It sadly fails in every respect, making this a prime candidate for the title of 'Worst Gus van Sant Movie'.

The ingredients for a terrific movie are all there. There's a haunting mystery (a forest where people voluntarily come to kill themselves), a shot at emotionally compelling drama (a husband and wife not getting along but coming together over the latter's impending demise), some damn fine actors (McConaughey, Watanabe, Watts, need I say more?) and lots of wonderful cinematography. The movie only succeeds in offering that last bit to our satisfaction. Whether it's the director or the screenwriter who couldn't be bothered with stringing it all together seamlessly into an intriguing whole is hard to tell. It's certainly not the actors, as all of them appear bored or distracted. In Watanabe's case, matters are made worse due to him apparently having been hired as Hollywood's token Japanese man for this occasion, making him rant on about Japanese superstition ad nauseam. We simply can't learn to care about either him or his American companion, who set out to kill himself but had a change of heart in his desire to help his new local friend get home alive. It's seemingly enough of a motivation after the devastating death of his wife to make him find new faith in life and forget all about his suicidal plans, but not for us to go along with his new lust for living.

We simply cannot care about it all, which also stems from Van Sant's odd choice of going nigh 'full Hollywood' in his dramatic scenes set in the States. Usually he opts for what many consider a more European style, but in this scenario, studio tearjerking methods got his preference. And so we have to sit through dull and ultimately predictable flashbacks explaining the protagonist's desire to end his life, even though, illogically, he and his wife never really got along anyway. The scenes in the forest, meanwhile, offer little more captivating moments or surprising twists. Admirably shot and lit as they may be (though much of it not actually filmed in Japan, but rather Stateside) and accompanied for the most part by decently melancholy music, we still grow restless over the lack of empathy triggered at our side of things. It's not so bad that it makes us want to kill ourselves, but it's still frighteningly frustrating to come to realize that a director who often has something worthwhile to share with his audience, really has absolutely nothing noteworthy to say about a fascinating topic of conversation as the so-called Sea of Trees.

Today's News: Crimson pirate inferno

Slow week for news thus far:

Eerste trailer Crimson Peak

Looks... Del Toroesque. Lavish and baroque, but creepy and grotesque at the same time. Eerie, bbrrr. The plot thus far is not wholly clear, and for a teaser trailer like this it's more about the first impressions rather than the overall narrative. Del Toro usually makes a good first impression and he doesn't disappoint here. I got interested seeing this. Ever since the fantastic Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro and horror feel like they belong together, especially if there's a good story involved. We've had our fair share of haunted houses in movies over the last decade, most of them pretty dismal (not to mention the horror spoofs hurting the subgenre even more), but with a good director and cast involved, another one surely will do more good than harm. Visually at least this will do the trick; as for the story, ask me again when I actually comprehend what the hell is going on. Which probably won't me until I've seen it for myself.

Cast onthuld voor Dan Browns Inferno

So they're making another one of these puzzle flicks, eh? Shouldn't bother on my account. So far both Dan Brown adaptations for film didn't win me over. I heard the books were good (though that's probably the hype talking), but I never bothered to read them. I'm not about to start now. I love a good mystery, but not if it's wasted on a Hollywood semi-spectacle. I doubt Inferno will be much different from its pair of predecessors, but at least the cast looks interesting, mostly because of its diversity. You've only got five names and you're already spanning three continents (and two of these names co-star in Jurassic World, so that piques my interest to some extent). Good names too, notwithstanding the Hollywood stardom of Hanks. That at least will count for something, if at least they are put to good use. But judging from the previous installments, they probably get lost amidst all the puzzling somewhere.

Plot Pirates of the Caribbean 5 onthuld

In this film's case, the plot is more likely to get lost amidst all the actors. Not that it matters much, since it sounds as formulaic a story as they come, not particularly different from that of the previous Pirates of the Caribbean flicks. You've got your basic pirate threat endangering our pirate protagonists, there's a mystical artefact that can prevent their demise so they set on a course for said object, there's a few love birds ensuring a romantic note that doesn't actually involve the pirate protagonists and there's various random jokes, gags and witty rebuttals shared between the pirate protagonists themselves. Though I'm getting kinda tired of Depp's Jack Sparrow, I'm happy to see Rush is still returning as Barbossa, who I deem to be a superior character. As for the rest of them, sure I'm happy to see a grand actor cast as the new ultimate baddie, but that doesn't mean it'll save the movie from sinking from a narrative perspective. Ian McShane made a great Blackbeard, but On Stranger Tides sure wasn't a great movie. I hope Dead Men Tell No Tales proves different, but I severely doubt it. Apparently, PotC Movies Tell the Same Tales, every time.

Today's Review: The Woman in Black: Angel of Death

Finally wrote another review. Yes, it's been a while. More to come soon though!

The Woman in Black: Angel of Death - recensie

Not a very inspired sequel to an otherwise effective and stylish predecessor. It wasn't the actors, it wasn't the atmosphere, it wasn't even really the story that made it a rather boring watch devoid of real scares. It was simply the running out of gags, recycling the scare tactics applied in the first film, with nothing new to creep the bejeesus out of us added to the mix. That's usually the curse of these horror sequels: you know what shenanigans the evil portrayed in these films is up to and how it goes around attempting to frighten us, the spectators, while they are doing it. You can change settings, but not the nature and established tricks of the evil itself. Take Jason Voorhees for example: even transplanted to a spaceship in the distant future he was basically up to his same old bloody slashing routines. There's only so much you can do with your typical horror monsters, without inventing a new set of rules, which is often viewed (and not wholly incorrectly so) as a blatant cop-out, illogical in terms of narrative compared to the events of the previous film(s). There's simply not much more to a ticked-off ghost lady with a fetish for driving innocent children to suicide than the first film displayed and this second film regurgitated. Angel of Death certainly has proven the limits of the angry spectre's effectiveness to scare us. No need to prove it again with a third Woman in Black film, I'd say. But if this second movie makes money, that's very likely exactly what will happen.

Today's Mini-Review: The Conjuring

The Conjuring: ****/*****, or 7/10

James Wan merrily continues to reinvigorate the horror genre to great effect in this spooky possession type scary flick. Though 'reinvigorate' may be said too much, as The Conjuring is driven by trite but true scare effects that have literally been employed thousands of times already. Nevertheless, Wan makes them work as if there's still a sense of novelty to them. Supposedly based on true events – with the end credits providing the necessary pictures to back up that statement – The Conjuring follows the married Warren couple specialized in demonology and paranormal investigations, which is confronted by the most shocking case of their already illustrious career. The Perron family recently moved to an old provincial house on Rhode Island, where they have been plagued by bizarre occurrences ever since their arrival, which swiftly seem to take increasingly aggressive turns. Doors slam shut on their own accord, unexplained sounds are heard everywhere, the dog died a mysterious death (even though it never even dared to enter the house) and their daughters are harassed and assaulted by unseen assailants all night long. With the balanced help of both hard science and religious ritualism, the Warrens discover the presence of several ghosts of folks that have died horrible deaths in the house over time (some of them actually sympathetic), the cause of which is a satanic presence with an appetite for child murder that won't let go of the Perrons until the blood of their girls has been shed. To put an end to this terror the Warrens must call on all their experience and lots of luck to get everyone involved, including themselves and their own kid, out of this gruesome mess alive. Naturally the evil spirit won't make it so easy for them. A synopsis like this reads like a repetition of narrative elements and age old horror themes that have been done to death. It cannot be denied that it is just that, and so are the effects Wan utilizes to scare the bejesus out of his audience. Surprisingly, it all works great nonetheless. Maybe it's his sense of timing (there's many a moment of small shocks followed by silence, which itself is shattered by a big shock), his careful employment of efficient, mood setting lighting and editing techniques, or maybe it's the convincing performances delivered by his cast, with Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson making ghostbusting exorcists feel plausible and compelling. It's probably the whole. Despite this movie's failure to come up with wholly new concepts to the horror genre, instead embracing all the clichés people have come to associate withe the genre, The Conjuring proves a genuine scarefest from beginning to end, guaranteed to oblige both regular viewers out for an evening of thrills and die-hard horror lovers who gave up on Hollywood's tactics ages ago. Hopefully this movie will stay a standalone film, instead of soon being the victim of rapid enfranchisement as happened all too easily to Wan's Saw – to detrimental plot effects, though unfortunately not so much in terms of box office– which currently also seems to be the case with Insidious, to which Wan just released a sequel as well (it's a fruitful year for him apparently). The Conjuring is a good old-fashioned horror film which brings to mind all the similarly themed classics of old (though of course not getting anywhere near the shock level of, say, The Exorcist), but shouldn't be exploited ad infinitum as some of Wan's other movies have been, for its own benefit. You can only be reminded of how creepy a door can be so many times before the feeling of dread is getting stale.