Films: Dead Daughters, Trigger Man, Severance, The Burglar, Ten Canoes

Future Screenings: Dead Daughters - Mon, April 16, 9:30PM at the Ritz East; Tue, April 17, 9:30PM at the Bridge
Trigger Man - Mon, April 16, 9:30PM at the Bridge
Severance - Tue, April 17, 9:30PM at the Ritz Five
The Burglar - None
Ten Canoes - None

Whew. Okay. This thing has been going on for a while now, and I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little tired. Friday was particularly tough. I had originally planned on seeing five movies, but when I yawned my way through most of them and ended up going to the wrong theater for the fourth one, I decided it was time to go home. After I finished watching that fourth movie, of course. Sunday I cancelled most of my movies, too. We'll see if I can manage to see the rest of the movies I'd planned on seeing Monday and Tuesday, but I'm not promising anything.

Dead Daughters
The festival program claims that this Russian film "does Asian horror better than most Asian horror films today" and that it's "for fans of fare like Tale of Two Sisters and The Ring." Quite simply, these are lies. LIES!!! Horrible, awful lies. Fans of The Ring, like myself, will not enjoy this film, because it is the same damn movie, but not nearly as good. It is way too long, the story is a complete rip-off, and it crosses the line from thrilling tension into complete boredom very early on, and pretty much never goes back. How much of a rip-off is it? Well, let's see. The horror involves three daughters who were drowned by their mother and then came back from the dead to kill her (looking all pale, dressed in white, with long black hair hanging over their faces). Not sated by that, they have gone on killing people, but only according to a strange set of rules: if you see their previous victim before he/she is about to die, then you have three days (three days! Sound familiar?) to live yourself. If you do nothing bad or evil during those three days, you might live. But then again you might not. At least, I think those are the rules. The subtitles in this film are so incredibly bad that it's often hard to tell exactly what people are trying to say, and unfortunately the translation was particularly awful during the scene where they were explaining how this was all supposed to work. Anyway, inevitably a bunch of young people end up cursed and have to try to figure out how to get out of it for three days. I almost never walk out on a film, but I was ready to leave this one about halfway through. I stayed to figure out what was going to happen, but after a bunch of people die in completely ridiculous and idiotic ways, and the climactic confrontation with the ghosts turned out to involve wearing a dress and screaming insults, I just left. I couldn't stand it anymore. Oh, and did I mention that the entire thing is filmed with shaky, nausea-inducing hand-held cameras? This is a terrible, stupid movie. Don't be fooled by the fact that it was chosen as a Festival Favorite (a selection which is based mainly on ticket sales, as I understand it); do not go see it!
Festival rating: Poor

Trigger Man
I was hoping for a more exciting film after the lifeless agony of Dead Daughters, but instead, I got Trigger Man, which is nearly as boring. The great majority of the film involves one or more guys wandering around the woods, not saying anything. The story is, three old pals go into the woods near NYC to go hunting, but then they start getting shot at themselves. Unfortunately, the shooting doesn't begin until about a half hour in, so you have to wait a loooooong time before anything even happens. This wouldn't be so bad if there were dialogue or character development or maybe some suggestion of the horror to come so there could be tension. But there is almost none of that. Well, there's some dialogue, including some Predator references, which was very funny, but that's it. Somehow even after the shooting begins, the film manages to get boring again, as we are treated to more scenes of a guy walking around. In general, the movie seems kind of pointless and dull, and the actions of the main character are hard to understand. I mean, what normal person would do what he does in this insane situation? Even given that, the movie might have worked if it were about a half hour long. But unfortunately it's almost an hour and a half, and not really worth the time.
Festival rating: Fair

Severance
Finally, a decent film again! Severance is a British film that somehow manages to be both a very effective slasher movie/horror thriller, and a very funny black comedy at the same time. Kudos! The plot is classic horror movie stuff: a busload of employees of a defense contracting firm head out into the woods of Hungary on a company retreat. When the road is blocked, the bus driver refuses to go any further, so they try to find their way on foot. Unfortunately, they end up in the wrong lodge, and... hey, is that an insane killer at the window? Why yes, yes it is! This film subtly and very cleverly twists and plays with the conventions of your typical slasher movie, while making you jump in your seat and laugh until you cry. It's completely brilliant, and I highly recommend it.
Festival rating: Very Good

The Burglar
I'm afraid I got to this one late, due to a stupid mistake on my part, but from what I saw, I don't think I missed much. The only really interesting thing about this black and white, 1957 B-noir crime film is that it was shot in and around Philadelphia and Atlantic City, and you can have fun saying, "Ooh! I know where that is!" or "Hey, wow, that sure looked different back then, huh?" and so forth. Otherwise, it is mostly a forgettable, over-the-top, poorly acted and written B-movie. The screenplay has the street slang slathered on so heavily, you start to think it was written by somebody who really had no idea what he was talking about and was just trying too hard to sound tough. The music is utterly ridiculous, blaring out in melodramatic screams at inopportune moments. Even the cinematography is over-the-top and silly; in one scene that particularly sticks out in my mind, they tried to shoot a house between a man's legs, but apparently couldn't fit it in right unless the man spread his legs open to a ridiculous degree. The movie drew out a lot of unintentional laughter from the crowd. Admittedly, this is partially because it's so dated and in many ways so alien to a contemporary audience. But it's mostly because the movie is just pretty laughable.
Festival rating: Fair

Ten Canoes
This film is directed by Rolf de Heer, but adapted from oral legends of the indigenous Australian peoples. In fact, for Ten Canoes, "de Heer worked intimately with an Aboriginal community to create the first feature-length film in an Aboriginal language." The result is a rather lovable film, with a classic coming-of-age story about love, anger, jealousy, and loss, that is a bit too long and belabored, and requires quite a bit of patience to get through (as the film itself admits). Although the story itself is simple and easy to understand, it is told in three layers. The outer layer is a bodiless narrator who speaks directly to us. The next layer is the story of a young man who yearns for the young wife of his older brother. The final layer is the story that the older brother tells his younger brother, in order to show him why yearning for the young wife is wrong. Really it's a story about how to live in the Aboriginal community: what is good and right, and what is wrong, and what happens when one does the wrong thing. It's clever, funny, and enjoyable. If only it were a bit shorter and edited a bit more carefully, it could be a truly excellent film.
Festival rating: Good