Basically
these are ‘bad’ reviews of me condemning these movies. But -the way I am- I
hardly ever (only once uptil now: Norbit)
truly hate a movie with a vengeance. There are always little diamonds in the
rough to be explored. So, even though these reviews might sound a bit negative,
I can say, without pretense that these movies are entertaining – but they could
have been so much more and that's darn frustrating.
Emelie - What story were they trying to tell?
The story: Emelie is a movie about a psychotic babysitter who ‘sits’ for an oblivious family. Naturally terrors are unleashed once the dear sitter is in charge.
Has Emelie been completely rewritten during
the movie shoot? Basically the story is
about a psychotic babysitter. The hand
that rocks the cradle with a face lift if you will. But something about
this movie doesn't sit right with me. It feels like this movie was originally
intended to go into a completely different direction.
I'll start
into what I generally liked about the movie and then I'll go into my questions.
The good
What the
movie does right is the buildup. For such a short movie (1h.22m. -which is
often a bad sign from the get go) it takes its time for us to invest in the
main characters. The acting is perfectly fine. The kids act their asses off
while being overtaken by the effective tranquil Emelie character. In short:
Nothing really outstanding but definitely not bad, even for child actors. The
tension part, however, is lacking, which brings me to my questions;
The questions
My main
question/ feeling is that this movie was originally intended to be something
different. My evidence for this:
The son's friend.
The first
character you focus your camera on becomes an important character. So in this
case the African-American boy. The camera follows him around. But then -the
minute he throws his backpack in the tree house- the focus shifts to the white
boy. The African-American boy is then completely forgotten for the rest of the
movie. You could just as easily erase the character.
The axe.
Another
short example is the axe in the garage. Early on in the movie Emilie picks up
this axe before deciding on a screwdriver. Now, if you show the audience a
Chechov's gun you'd better use it later on. The movie doesn't. But maybe this
was an attempt to make Emelie more
scary before she goes full out crazy.
The son's moral compass.
Alright the
boy is eleven and probably a bit rebellious at that age. But let's be honest: a
babysitter that lets you paint all over walls and wants to feed a hamster to
your pet snake. The alarm bells should have gone off inside his head a heck of
a lot sooner. It's like the editing-process changed some scenes around.
Why do all that?
Basically
all the weird stuff the babysitter does is unmotivated. What was the crazy
motivation behind the toilet, the video and pictures? For a second there I
feared a very dark route (also because the parents were discussing 'the talk').
When that didn't happen I sighed a breath of relieve but then I started
thinking: Why put all those things in in the first place?
The accomplice.
From the
opening scene we've got two main criminals. Immediately I was thinking about a
possible kidnapping/blackmail scenario. Who knows mom or dad have to do
something or else. Instead the movie went the 'old I
lost-a-baby-I-want-a-baby'-route. Why this accomplice then? His character is
totally unneeded.
The parents.
I'm a bit
biased here. I liked how the movie focused on the parents and their
relationship as part of the buildup. But basically all the talking they did had
nothing to do with the plot.
The real babysitter.
Okay, the
big problem with 'children in peril'-movies is that the children are hardly
ever truly in danger. There are only a few movies in which the moviemakers
dared to harm a child on screen. So what movies often do is create cannon
fodder. Adults who die early on to show how dangerous the villain is. So the
original babysitter dies off screen (I liked the touch of the blood drip on the
shoe). And halfway through the movie shoehorns in a second babysitter to die quickly
after.
And this is
how it felt, shoehorned. Moreover the final fight scene between Emilie and the
babysitter felt like it was trying hard not the show the face of the 'good'
babysitter. Somehow, to me, it felt like this was a completely different actress.
Or at the very least; like this scene was shot long after principal photography.
To summarize.
I can't
help but think this movie was originally intended to follow a different kind of
story instead the one we finally got. It has all the elements of a
blackmail/'do this or your children get hurt'-story. Which would give the
parents and the accomplice something to do.
And on the
other hand with all the sex-stuff put in - well I'm rather glad they didn't
take that route thank you very much. Still it’s
a fun movie for a lazy evening. But it could have been far better.
100 feet standard?
The story: 100 feet is a movie about a woman who, after years of physical abuse, murdered her husband. As a plea-bargain she is allowed to return to her former home. But, the court decided, she’s to wear an ankle bracelet that prevents her from moving hundred feet from the sensor. All is well until the ghost of her aggressive husband returns to haunt her.
100 feet is a strange movie. Mainly because it cannot
really decide to follow the standardized Hollywood path or the more acquired
taste path. Let me try to explain:
Looking down at the audience
At first
glance this movie honestly expects the audience to be deaf and dumb. And -it is
my experience- those movies who treat their audience like toddlers usually
causes them to lose interest and check their cell phones. In a sense: ‘If the
movie doesn't expect me to pay attention - why should I bother?‘ Two
beautiful examples of this:
#1. Frightening dialogue
One bit of
dialogue goes something like this:
(the main
woman on the phone) "So when does
the man come by? What Monday? That means that I'll spent the entire weekend
without electricity. Ow
damn!"
Yes the dialog is as atrocious as it sounds. And
all this 'informing the audience that she's talking to the power company'-
becomes useless because in the very next scene she's lighting candles. An
average audience is in no way stupid; they can connect the dots perfectly well.
Now we got boring dialog that over explains the plot.
And then
there are the scenes that just don't really work. Not because they are badly
acted or anything but because they feel like they were part of some bigger –or
discarded- plot. For instance the sister scene is utterly unneeded. The Halloween
scene; has potential but none of it is used (I mean, the combination of a ghost story and
Halloween – and the movie doesn’t do anything with it).
#2. Visual underlining
The main
woman has discovered a hidey hole under the floorboards. Two scenes later
somebody drops dead in that very same room and she needs to hide the body. Now,
you actually see her remove the floorboards; and still the camera decides, a
few moments later, to dive down under the floor to show the audience where the
main woman has hidden the body.
It’s one of
those head scratching moments where you moan: 'We know! Get on with it!'
Now I can
understand that the director wants to try his hand at some Scorsese or
Tarratino cinema but don't do it if you don't need to.
Five minutes
of fun, a hour and twenty minutes of boredom.
When you look
at this movie objectively 100 feet is
rather cliché after cliché. Character motivation - or why somebody would do
anything- is so out of tune that it actually becomes hilarious in this movie.
Like the
brilliant headscratching moment in which the main character throws her wedding
ring in a food grinder only to, then, put their hand in to retrieve it. I mean,
she knew full well about the angry ghost
in the house.
But that
brings me to the only redeeming scene in the entire movie. So redeeming in fact
that I honestly believe that the director only wanted to do this scene. The
rest of the movie is just filler to get there. That the original ideas for this movie were far darker and grotesque (aquired taste) but that some kind of bargain was struck that allowed the director could keep this scene if he toned down the rest of the movie.
I’m talking
about the moment when the ghost kills for the very first time. Because that
moment is bloody bloody. Suddenly the movie shifts in gear from laidback haunted
house fare to all out Hostel blood against the ceiling fare. And it is an
amazing scene to watch. For starters because you’re not expecting something
THAT explicit. And, for seconds, because suddenly the tension rises to an
acceptable dramatic level. But this bugs me. Why not work on the script enough
to get the entirety of the film on that level?
After this
brilliant moment the movie immediately starts tumbling down again like a house
of cards.
I think
that the biggest letdown of this movie is, in fact, the ghost himself. He is
vile and evil and that's all we ever learn from him. There is no moment of
letting go, no comeuppance. There is no twist at the end. And in a genre
wherein hero dies or hero survives are both suitable acceptable endings 100 Feet actually managed to find that
one singular unsatisfactory ending -Amazing, like the movie was really trying.
I think
what sold this movie to producers was the interesting premise: Woman can’t
leave the house, house is haunted. But what 100 feet turned out to be is a
movie focused on that one particular scene
of a ghost killing a guy and not even the selling point (gimmick) to begin
with.
In short 100 feet is entertaining but very very uneven.
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