With any movie there are the good things and the bad things. Here's a list of both:
1. The scenes and the lighting and the shots from a technical perspective were obviously the director's focus. Hitchcock-ish. The puzzle pieces moving seen from UNDER the glass table was cool and spooky. This aspect of that and many scenes was AWESOME! Pepi Singh Khara has an eye for composition, for shooting from the unusual angle. A+
But... there was too much of it. It was the director's focus, which is what made it great, but also what killed the story. There was too much of it. Straight-up filming of the STORY, more of the story itself, was needed to BALANCE out the technical genius.
2. Slow-moving, yes. One kept waiting for something BIG to happen, and it jumped all over the place, the people were confused. Why? THE ACTORS LOOKED ALIKE! Three young women with long dark hair and the same bodies. Several young men with dark hair and the same bodies. They looked so alike that it seriously took half the film to figure out who was who. This I heard from someone else in the theater who could not discern who was who because there was no contrast. (Except the Indian guy.) Next time, the director needs to make the main characters look different from one another. Blondes. Short hair and long hair. Different personalities. They were all kind of the same in personality, too, kind of flat, quiet.
4. Dialogue was poor, I give it an D-. Not enough. Too simplistic. Too hokey and exaggerated (like the country people). When that gossipy lady with diarrhea of the mouth was telling her story, she said something like this:
"It was the depression."
Pause.
"People were starving."
Pause.
"They had to eat."
As one who has an acute ear for all things verbal, the dialogue needed lots of help. Fire the writer. Immediately. There needs to be a richness and authenticity of dialogue to keep people in the audience engaged. And when the actors did speak - they spoke SOOOO slowly.
5. The actress who was a cheerleader was good and had a nice body. Her nude scene was cool. She and Farrin's husband ESPECIALLY were the best actors I think. Of course the inn keeper was a HOOT, and she really held it together because she was the villain and she had that wild laugh and she was so mean! Good casting there, very good! So the old black dude was her "reluctant lover," eh? YEESH! The scene with her laying in the bed all white and doughy after having been "serviced" is permanently etched into my memory. Now, that was a good STORY scene, and it was pretty straight-up, too. Not every single scene has to be angled or Hitchcock-ish. Overkill.
Moral: The story has to be credible. Even a ghost story has to have supporting CREDIBLE details. History has to be accurate. You can't distract the audience with things they know to be implausible. They lose sight of the STORY.
On the way out of the movie someone said this: "It was full of non sequiters, unresolved scenes." What happened to the Indian guy? His jealous surveillance just trailed off into nothing. It had no relevance to the story. What was up with the nosebleeds? Several nosebleeds, no explanation. The old guy who had the dolls stolen died from his nosebleed - why? The junkie stabs the girl, the scene ends - why didn't he kill the other one too? What happened, did he just run away? The cops show up and ignore the husband cradling his dead wife. Only one body is wheeled away - the black guy. No attention to the husband, to the dead woman? This is either a story issue or an editing issue. The baby left in the basket - was this the black guy trying to save ONE of the children? Did motormouth raise her? How did she get from basket baby to grown up in Baltimore?
THAT is a key, key point, if nothing else the director should take that one to heart because it sums up a key problem in one sentence, and underscores my number 1 above, the MAIN problem: The director is so immersed in the creation of admittedly FANTASTIC scene layouts, lighting, angles, and the technical end of things that he left the story dangling, scene after scene after scene. Coupled with poor or nonexistent dialogue and actors who all look alike, the audience is beat.
I think an audience could actually take all that IF there are some small climaxes and one grand finale that takes their breath away. We knew what happened way too soon also, so there was no climax even.
GOOD details: The whispered, "Are you here to help us?" SPOOKY! Inn keeper in the bed, black daddy getting dressed with an air of disgust. HA! The puzzle pieces moving - YES! Even the Skeptic loved that one. Very smooth shooting of the moving car. One could feel the movement. Smooth. The ghostly figures of kids running around. Spookiness and pathos combined. Needed more of it. Farrin and her husband in bed - he was so genuine. No sense of contrivance. One wanted more of THAT.) Inn keeper's insane laughter and OPEN MOUTH as she was being led away in handcuffs - wild! So there ya have it!
The director's last film "Far from India" was far better. My 2 cents: "It was shot more simply and the creative scenes enhanced that one, this time they were just one after the other after the other. The director forgot about the story this time."
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