Fear X

Very disappointing. After the amazing "Pusher" i was expecting great things from Nicholas Winding Refn, but this was a huge letdown. It was just very sad to see a guy who started out with such a strong distinctive cinematic voice churn out something so completely unremarkable. Refn sadly seems to lack any sense of personal style, as this film bares absolutely no stylistic similarity to his debut film. It could have been a completely different filmmaker from what i could tell. Sadder still is that this was Hubert Selby Jr.'s last project before his death. Why waste his talents on this empty piece of film-making? To it's credit, it was fairly well made, but it was all atmosphere and style and absolutely no substance whatsoever. This had potential to be a good psychological puzzle in the David Lynch/"Demonlover" mode, but ultimately failed on almost every level. It somehow managed to be both maddeningly straight-forward and simplistic, and illogical and unfulfilled at the same time. I have absolutely no problem with incoherence, in fact i would have enjoyed this film considerable more had it been more so, but this just plain didn't make sense and left me confused, but at the same time was just far too simple and unchallenging. Or maybe i just didn't get it at all. I don't know, but either way i found it to be a deeply unsatisfying viewing experience.