Doyalikedags

I found it. The worst film I've ever watched, and yes I did watch it from start to finish.

I guess some people's argument of this film being Avant Garde and just "out of the mainstream film-goer's understanding of what a masterpiece is" have merit if you were to go by a quote of the Director himself -

"I make up the rules of a game and I play it. If I seem to be losing, I change the rules."

He can't lose. Anything anyone says to criticize it can be shot down with that quote as a basis.

Examples:

1) It's not entertaining

"well it isn't meant to be"

2) The soundtrack (for lack of a better word at the moment) is too jarring to be enjoyed

"You're missing the point, he didn't want you to enjoy it"

In my opinion, films are meant to be some form of entertainment and they're supposed to be enjoyed. Looking at art at a museum (as some reviews compare this to) is entertainment too, and people who have an interest in art will enjoy it - but comparing this to that is simply not the same. It's comparing apples to syphilis. Can you study syphilis? Sure. Is it pleasant? No.

But another quote by the director gives equal firepower to both the people who like and dislike the film -

"Perception of the work is the on-lookers department."

Do I perceive this film to be unforgettable?

Yes

Do I perceive this film to be good?

Absolutely not, and I think this is where the people in support of this film get confused...

Unforgettable =/= good.

I'm not a huge fan of the Harry Potter universe. I like it - it's got an interesting setting and the films have a good amount of cool/fun moments - but I have never tried to figure out which house I belong to, I'll say that.

With that being said, I wasn't very excited for this film because to be honest, the first Fantastic Beasts didn't seem as good as the Harry Potter films, and I don't even remember the 2nd one. But I've watched every installment so far, so I figured I had to give it a shot, and...

It actually was good. I was entertained and I suspect I would've been more entertained if I remembered more of the 2nd film. It was visually stunning - I'm more of a fan of practical effects than CGI - but this film (and the harry potter universe in general) seem to get it right a lot more often than not. Acting is pretty great all around, story was decent enough, so yeah I enjoyed this movie.

Until about the last 25 minutes or so. The film completely fell apart for me. It became extremely rushed and much too coincidental - it felt like they forgot to finish the story so the actors stood around on set that day while the writers and director figured something out on the spot.

The ending killed it - would've earned a much higher rating from me otherwise.

Movies like this don't seem to come around too often, at least I don't see them.

Definitely a B movie reminiscent of the 70's, includes an over use of blood and an abundance of gorgeous women, some missing their shirts. If you're in to B movies, this is the movie for you... I suppose some people would drop it in the category "So bad it's good", but just like "The Room" I don't really agree with that - it's just bad.

It does have a few good things about it -

Besides the girls being great to look at, they're actually not the worst with their acting. Their accents and slang from the wild west were pretty decent, not gonna win an oscar or anything but, decent. Also, Julian Sands (The Count) seems out of place here since he actually plays the part really well, the best acting of the movie by far.

The story and setting is also fun and as far as I know pretty original, although the plot is VERY basic with dialogue to match.

Also one small thing I really liked was watching them shoot their pistols. It looked pretty realistic (as in, not perfect).

Honestly, the whole film could be elevated to a praiseworthy B-movie that almost shouldn't be classified as a B-movie if it fixed 2 things:

1) Editing -

The shots hang on way too long. I'm not sure if it's for "artistic" value or what, but way too many times does it zoom in on a character and then fade out over an uncomfortable amount of time, sometimes the zoom will even have a clear stop and then an ever-so-slight zoom again (which made me laugh).

The couple of fight scenes could improve by leaps and bounds too.

2) The sound mixing -

WOW the film could be SO much better if this was done right. The movie is QUIET except for dialogue.

The score is barely heard and when it is it's very low, and the bar scenes especially suffer from this.

You can tell no one is making a sound in the scene and you can only hear the faintest whisper of background chatter added in. You need glasses clanking and people talking over each other. It's seriously very bizarre that the sound levels for background noises (extremely low) and effects (abnormally high) are what they are, but dialogue is normal. Actually, a lot could be elevated by the sound mix being fixed, even the acting.

I had to rate it a 2 because even though I appreciated the original plot and enjoyed the film more than "The Room" (which I also rated a 2), the technical issues are just too glaring to overcome.

The counselor has an all star cast, and a great director. Anyone would go into this thinking it's going to be a great movie, hands down.

But it wasn't...

The actors still do a good job, but the dialogue to this extremely simplistic plot, is painful to sit through at times. It tries to be smarter than it is. It tries to be cryptic when it's really mostly unnecessary, and the rest is blatantly obvious foreshadowing.

The best way I can describe this movie is if a sub-plot that could've ran it's course in 15 minutes in another movie, was made into a feature film, padded with tons of extra dialogue, and a few unnecessary scenes to extend the runtime, it would be the Counselor.

To date my lowest rated movie on IMDb out of almost 700 movies, is a 3. This is the third movie I have given a 3.

The great things about this movie are:

• The acting. From the children to the parents, the acting was great, the dialogue is very believable.

• The script. It's a good story all around, maybe could have been expanded slightly but it was still good.

• The setting/visuals. The time it was set, and the location on the edge of the woods makes for a great horror movie.

One of the only problems with this movie is that it shouldn't really have been labeled a horror... although I'm not quite sure what would be a more accurate genre. Something psychological. Like "The Shining", but with much less of the scary/creepy visuals. (there are still some) It's more about a family's mental breakdown.

The other problem I had was that yes, it is a little hard to understand the characters sometimes. The dad is the worst. I had trouble in the beginning but if you devote a little more of your attention to what they're saying it should help.

My advice is, don't go in to it thinking you're seeing a run of the mill horror movie where your heart is pounding, wondering when the next jump scare is going to be. There's few, if any. (depending on how easily startled you are). Go in thinking you're going to see a well put together movie, with some psychological elements to it.

I was thinking about giving it an 8 because the acting, setting, and dialogue really blew me away, but, I gave it a 7 because I felt the ending could have been slightly better.