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intertribalHere's testament to how much of a Carrie I am: I watched The Exorcist on my senior prom night.
And even though I'm not a believer, The Exorcist is a very disturbing movie. It does not rely on religion to be scary - it relies on image, sound, and cinematography. Personally, I'd call it more grotesque than scary - oddly, more along the lines of The Hills Have Eyes and "torture porn" - precisely because as far as the story goes, random Mesopotamian demons that were probably good guys to begin with but were turned into demons by the Church... not really high on my list of things to watch out for.
But, because it's a good movie, I decided to watch Exorcist the Beginning on AMC. Summary: After WWII, former priest Merrin goes to Africa to dig up a relic. Turns out the archeological dig has this big winged demonic statue inside, and bad shit is happening to the little colonial African community because the demon is "touching" people. Yeah, yeah. So Merrin has to get over his issues and pick up the priesthood in order to exorcise the demon.
Positives: The setting is great. Basically Indiana Jones without Indiana Jones (so in other words, an Indiana Jones I might actually enjoy!). The colonial Europeans are down-pat - the evil soldiers, the psycho drunk guy, the woman who's sent herself into exile, the weak do-gooder priest. And the Africans were fantastic too - the demon was thought to have possessed one of their little boys (who has a pack of hyenas kill his older brother - really disturbing scene) so they basically go into a full-on revival of their own exorcism strategies (which don't work, but good try) involving leeches and chanting. At the end the Africans are on strike from their work at the dig site and the soldiers have come in to enforce order, and they do battle in this giant, blinding sand storm, so both sides look like ghosts coming through the sand. Great scene. All the archaic medicine and mosquito nets and lights going out and hyenas in the house... the whole thing was beautifully textured.
Negatives: The cast had accent problems. Skarsgard never seemed to be "in" the movie, despite playing the lead (they had Liam Neeson originally lined up for it, but he quit - he would have been like 10,000x better). He reminded me of Stephen Baldwin occasionally, and that's always a bad thing. His tragic war memories seemed both gratuitous and irrelevant, and not fitting for an Exorcist movie. Sometimes the CG was not so good. The plot was kind of convoluted - are you "touched" or "possessed", what's the difference, etc. The demonology was a little weak in the mechanics. And I will say this - I think it could have been a lot scarier. There were a lot of scenes where something seemed to be building, and I would get all tense, but then nothing would happen. I mean, huge opportunities - opportunities I could see coming - and it's so surprising to see a horror movie pass on those shots. That and the climax seems too far removed from the rest of the movie.
I later discovered that this movie has an 11% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I think this is undeserved. The movie is not that bad. In fact, I've been trying to figure out what makes it a shit movie - because it's certainly not an awesome movie - and I've decided it's more like a poo movie, but I'll make a new tag called okay movies anyway. I know I'm soft on horror movies, but the setting was just too good to punish this movie with a shit movies tag.
And even though I'm not a believer, The Exorcist is a very disturbing movie. It does not rely on religion to be scary - it relies on image, sound, and cinematography. Personally, I'd call it more grotesque than scary - oddly, more along the lines of The Hills Have Eyes and "torture porn" - precisely because as far as the story goes, random Mesopotamian demons that were probably good guys to begin with but were turned into demons by the Church... not really high on my list of things to watch out for.
But, because it's a good movie, I decided to watch Exorcist the Beginning on AMC. Summary: After WWII, former priest Merrin goes to Africa to dig up a relic. Turns out the archeological dig has this big winged demonic statue inside, and bad shit is happening to the little colonial African community because the demon is "touching" people. Yeah, yeah. So Merrin has to get over his issues and pick up the priesthood in order to exorcise the demon.
Positives: The setting is great. Basically Indiana Jones without Indiana Jones (so in other words, an Indiana Jones I might actually enjoy!). The colonial Europeans are down-pat - the evil soldiers, the psycho drunk guy, the woman who's sent herself into exile, the weak do-gooder priest. And the Africans were fantastic too - the demon was thought to have possessed one of their little boys (who has a pack of hyenas kill his older brother - really disturbing scene) so they basically go into a full-on revival of their own exorcism strategies (which don't work, but good try) involving leeches and chanting. At the end the Africans are on strike from their work at the dig site and the soldiers have come in to enforce order, and they do battle in this giant, blinding sand storm, so both sides look like ghosts coming through the sand. Great scene. All the archaic medicine and mosquito nets and lights going out and hyenas in the house... the whole thing was beautifully textured.
Negatives: The cast had accent problems. Skarsgard never seemed to be "in" the movie, despite playing the lead (they had Liam Neeson originally lined up for it, but he quit - he would have been like 10,000x better). He reminded me of Stephen Baldwin occasionally, and that's always a bad thing. His tragic war memories seemed both gratuitous and irrelevant, and not fitting for an Exorcist movie. Sometimes the CG was not so good. The plot was kind of convoluted - are you "touched" or "possessed", what's the difference, etc. The demonology was a little weak in the mechanics. And I will say this - I think it could have been a lot scarier. There were a lot of scenes where something seemed to be building, and I would get all tense, but then nothing would happen. I mean, huge opportunities - opportunities I could see coming - and it's so surprising to see a horror movie pass on those shots. That and the climax seems too far removed from the rest of the movie.
I later discovered that this movie has an 11% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I think this is undeserved. The movie is not that bad. In fact, I've been trying to figure out what makes it a shit movie - because it's certainly not an awesome movie - and I've decided it's more like a poo movie, but I'll make a new tag called okay movies anyway. I know I'm soft on horror movies, but the setting was just too good to punish this movie with a shit movies tag.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-12 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-12 02:00 pm (UTC)Dominion is more the kind of horror movie I could see being remade by some indie director like Peter Weir with less overt supernatural imagery (while still retaining an overall supernatural vibe) and being a critical hit.
whoops
Date: 2010-08-12 01:44 pm (UTC)Re: whoops
Date: 2010-08-12 01:52 pm (UTC)