No one's ever done it in Russia before. And I still cant f...ing believe I saw it yesterday and the world wouldn't in the nearest 6 months (according the rumors). Taking a profitable original idea, proclaiming "doing the first Russian j-horror movie", getting the best underground (but rather non-major) casting-shootingpost-production team, fighting producers and all surrounding stupidity, Pavel Ruminov made neither a first national teen-horror, as he was expected by anyone, distributors incl., nor a "our answer to the best of genre". It should have been called "an auteur mystical thriller-drama". With a potential of blockbuster". Story of five young people socially trapped by a so familiar legend-of the-dead-dark haired-pussies-killing-everyone-who-sees-their-victim-last turned out to be just a ground for director's eagerness to use 10-year-making-short-movies experience on a big-screen project. Not to forget that in Ruminov's case "making movies" was never without a great deal of keen understanding, exploring and widening cinema horizons. Did he reach one of them? Definitely yes and not for a minute of his Dead Daughters did he forget of the audience expectations. Brilliant camera-work (by Lyass), incredible city and interior visuals, astounding editing (by PR himself), mind-blowing sounding and variety of genres (well, horror mostly from hints on Italian gore to the more or less American pattern) exploited during 110 minutes made me think I saw an indieAmerican-European movie, as nothing ever got closer to the cinema art in recent Russian cinema as DD did. Proclaiming himself a Russian Shyamalan-Kubrick-Spielberg kind of filmmaker, Ruminov is not so far from the truth. Surprising twist-in-the-end? Yes. Intelligent style? Yep. Commercial appeal. Well, if Praktika Pictures whose mythic promo-buzz made this project attractive for Hollywood wouldn't slack the speed everything is possible. Since DD is done, there is nothing for them to be afraid of unless its director is alive.
