Over the years I have watched some shockers. As is my habit, I do a little review afterwards. As a public service (he said, somewhat tongue in cheek), I offer up some of those reviews in the hope that I may be able to save some other unsuspecting souls from suffering what I had to sit through. No, let me be honest - I did choose to sit through them.
And let me start with a relatively upmarket one:
The Strangers
Reading the paper and/or watching the trailer means that you go in to this film knowing that it's about some people being menaced by strangers wearing masks. It starts off with titles telling you that it is based on real events (I don't always trust this after the Coens lied to us at the start of Fargo), complete with a redundant voice-over reading those titles word for word (and not very well either). These titles tell us that X and Y went back to Z after a wedding reception, where violent things took place and nobody knows quite what happened. To cement this, the opening sequence is two boys cycling by, only to go into the house and then make a hysterical phone call going on about all the blood.
Point being we know from the start that this is not going to turn out well.
We then go into an interminable opening sequence where the two main characters, played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, return to this holiday home in the middle of nowhere. All is not well between them. We never find out exactly why, but we seem to take half my life to not find out. The audience was full of young couples, the target demographic I imagine, and by gum, there was some restlessness among the natives. The feeling of everyone wanting to shout "Get on with it!" was almost palpable.
The rest of the film is building tension - which it does quite well - but without anything much actually happening. Liv Tyler's character is drippy and snivelly and she plays it so well that you hate her. Both of the beleaguered couple are late realising the peril they are in and fail to do any of the things which might help them but, instead, do things which are even more monumentally stupid than the things which characters in this kind of film normally do - the audience was saying, fairly frequently, "Oh, that's completely stupid. He/she would never do that." Finally, in the last few minutes, the masked strangers actually get round to slaughtering them - yes folks, they die, just like you knew they were going to after the first few minutes made it clear, sorry for the spoiler - and that's it. Oh, except for the replay of the sequence of the two lads discovering the mayhem and then, the final shot, the clearly dead Liv Tyler suddenly grabbing one of them and screaming like only someone who has been lying on the floor bleeding for hours can scream. That's right, like an air-raid siren. A complete cheat ending, stolen from Carrie, flying in the face of everything in the film up to that point, just to create a final shock moment.
This film is one of the most irritating films I have seen for a long time, and I do not recommend it.
And let me start with a relatively upmarket one:
The Strangers
Reading the paper and/or watching the trailer means that you go in to this film knowing that it's about some people being menaced by strangers wearing masks. It starts off with titles telling you that it is based on real events (I don't always trust this after the Coens lied to us at the start of Fargo), complete with a redundant voice-over reading those titles word for word (and not very well either). These titles tell us that X and Y went back to Z after a wedding reception, where violent things took place and nobody knows quite what happened. To cement this, the opening sequence is two boys cycling by, only to go into the house and then make a hysterical phone call going on about all the blood.
Point being we know from the start that this is not going to turn out well.
We then go into an interminable opening sequence where the two main characters, played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, return to this holiday home in the middle of nowhere. All is not well between them. We never find out exactly why, but we seem to take half my life to not find out. The audience was full of young couples, the target demographic I imagine, and by gum, there was some restlessness among the natives. The feeling of everyone wanting to shout "Get on with it!" was almost palpable.
The rest of the film is building tension - which it does quite well - but without anything much actually happening. Liv Tyler's character is drippy and snivelly and she plays it so well that you hate her. Both of the beleaguered couple are late realising the peril they are in and fail to do any of the things which might help them but, instead, do things which are even more monumentally stupid than the things which characters in this kind of film normally do - the audience was saying, fairly frequently, "Oh, that's completely stupid. He/she would never do that." Finally, in the last few minutes, the masked strangers actually get round to slaughtering them - yes folks, they die, just like you knew they were going to after the first few minutes made it clear, sorry for the spoiler - and that's it. Oh, except for the replay of the sequence of the two lads discovering the mayhem and then, the final shot, the clearly dead Liv Tyler suddenly grabbing one of them and screaming like only someone who has been lying on the floor bleeding for hours can scream. That's right, like an air-raid siren. A complete cheat ending, stolen from Carrie, flying in the face of everything in the film up to that point, just to create a final shock moment.
This film is one of the most irritating films I have seen for a long time, and I do not recommend it.