"Don't Look Up" is a remake of an old Japanese film, following in an almost viral tradition; "The Grudge" and "The Ring" are but two popular titles that have followed this trend. Both are stellar films in their own rights; unfortunately, "Don't Look Up" shows promise only moments before falling flat on its face.
From the very beginning of the movie, the viewer is introduced to the significant element: a vengeful spirit seeking to inflict her sorrows on the world. The Romanian Devil Beng, long ago, struck a deal with a woman who would bear this devil's child in exchange for the most powerful man. This would ensure her a life of leisure. It's fairly bread-and-butter as far as backdrop folklore goes, but it sets a solid premise; this is where the solidity ends, as the movie begins to jump... the viewer is treated to an early 20's filming where an actress purportedly "disappears" without a trace. The film was never produced and is never seen. The spirit apparently kills the director of said film, then, and we cut to a man standing in his room, having what can only be described as a seizure. He is apparently capable of seeing apparitions, and writes his sights down for movie plots-- he is a starving-artist director whose odd 'condition' has inhibited his ability to properly shoot a film. He then gets a phone call, apparently to see his sickly (ex, perhaps) girlfriend. She has a vindictive brother who has no love for our director star and tells him to leave his house. Thus the man sets out for Romania to shoot another film based on these otherworldly sights. For those keeping track, at this point, the movie still retains intrigue and a plot that seems to have potential.
Plot elements officially lose consistency here. They go to Romania, to the old film studio where the 20's director was killed. And from this studio, there are both strange sounds and awful smells; however, they ignore this and begin shooting. A scene mimics the very first in the movie with the 20's film shooting, and then all hope is lost. The director meets a strange old man with an unsightly growth on his neck who tells him he has been waiting for another to film a movie at the studio. Then, the supposed spirit starts causing wanton death with no real explanation as to why. People get angry and pull a strange hook out of nowhere-- this is a significant element only in that the old man was holding it, and apparently, he was important. Somehow. At this point, the plot and the characters are inexplicably inconsistent; if it is trying to make a knock on the style of "The Grudge," it has missed the critical phase of explanation. There is no talk of the spirit's influence. There is just flies. Lots and lots of flies.
At this point, the film has officially stopped making sense. The actress portraying the disappeared actress from the '20s is making her move on the main character, people are still dying at an almost alarming ratio of roughly 1 per every 8 or 9 minutes, and the deaths are still inexplicable, have no allusion or purpose, and just seem to be for the sake of wanton murder. There is a disturbing scene where the main character confronts the spirit, who proceeds to discharge a number of things from her vagina, and he runs. The actress tells him they can spare this girl from her suffering and then the main character's girlfriend comes in from a giant backdrop of glowing white and everything disappears. Someone asks the main character who he's talking to, and he says his girlfriend's name; the reply is simply that she has been dead for a while. It cuts back to him; she's not there. He cries, the police take him away, and the viewer is left wondering, quite frankly, what in the name of Mother Earth just happened. It's revealed that he was hallucinating her all along, but that explains all of five minutes-- if that-- of film. The viewer is left wondering what, why and how the spirit is what it is.
In conclusion, "Don't Look Up" isn't necessarily a bad premise; I say this only because I could not grasp the premise fully from the film. There is indeed a spectre, and there is indeed death, but what the relevance is between that, the myth stated at the beginning of the film and the main character, I cannot truly say. However, the operation is awful, the actors as a majority do poorly at their job, and the special effects feel a bit dated to be from 2009. It almost seems as if they had a good film for a rough thirty minutes, and then completed the remainder for homework in a cramped hour in their rooms, under dim lamplight with their sixth can of energy drink in progress. If you didn't pay for it, "Don't Look Up" is an item of mild curiosity. Otherwise, avoid it and rent something else. Anything else in the horror genre ought to be better than this, as few films nowadays lack such basic elements of coherency and continuity.
Note: I believe the scenes using the girl's eye are taken directly from "Ringu," the Japanese version of the film "The Ring."
