The Sixth Secret

Quite a clever comedy with some genuine chills. Keeps you guessing til the end and then wraps up nicely. Love the 1930s decor and the dark low key atmosphere. The flashbacks are hilarious.

I really wanted to love this movie. It promised all the Agatha Christie like elements I love. Secrets to be revealed. An eclectic group of very flawed characters in a confined setting. Class differences. A spooky mansion. Dark humor even.

But we quickly lurch into blandness and predictable plotting. It does not help that eight of the 12 characters are sent away at around the 20-minute mark after abruptly revealing their not very creative secrets. I had wanted to know more about each of them. After there abrupt departure some crosses and double crosses. And a series of flashbacks, one with very strange CGI, and a few bedroom scenes, one of which might be a bit of a surprise to some viewers.

The acting is community playhouse level. Madame Orlofsky, the psychic, (Triin Lellep) has an especially silly "Russian" accent and with the overacting reminded me of Natasha in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. The screenplay is full of plot holes, the directing pedestrian at best. There is not much in the way of visual interest in the sets. The characters are bland, not as villainous or "off" as they should have been.

Any positives? I understand that parts of this film may be a homage to the Hammer films of the 1950s and 1960s. Maybe. I've watched most of them, and this really too much of an inside joke for me to get.

The only mystery is why The Sixth Secret called a horror. I note a number of reviewers here use the term, as do some of the synopses on other sites. Odd. It's hardly horror. More mystery, sort of, and lame dark comedy.

Oh my. My wife turned on this movie, and it first I was happy to see what I expected to be another movie very much like "Clue," of which I am a big fan. Very soon it became clear that this movie was at a different level. A much lower level. If I paid five dollars to see that at my local amateur theater, I would've been satisfied. But watching this, even at home for free, was painful. I'm not sure why anyone thought this collection of actors, dialogue, and plot had any chance at all of being a decent movie. The actors all seem sincere, and tried very hard, but the acting just doesn't come up to a professional level.

Confined to one room mostly this felt like a filmed theatrical performance, but then the flashbacks are introduced with some interesting cinematic elements, such as the monlogue being synchronized to the flashback images, which seemed rather witty.

There's an LGBT twist which I don't want to disclose but which was quite surprising. Actually there are two twists. Nowadays LGBT subjects are being treated with such forced respect that it was quite refreshing to see some fun poked at this matter. I mean, there are good LGBT people in the world but there are also evil ones, right? I'm an LGBT person and I liked the way this subject was interwoven into the narrative, whereas too often it's just an added element of political correctness that has nothing to do with the story.

The Sixth Secret - the horror comedy by Estonian filmmaker Mart Sander - was a rather surprising cinematic experience. Horror movies haven't been that country's strong suit (at least to my knowledge), and that alone makes it worth a watch. It's even more interesting to realize that the film is a parody of old Hollywood films - but not in a negative sense. Rather, it's a nod to a certain type of filmmaking that is no longer in vogue but deserves a comeback. By placing the emphasis on the dialog (which must be followed closely, as it contains several details that play a significant role later on) and keeping the action in the background, it demands audience immersion and assumes that the viewer is familiar with the vintage atmosphere and its associated boundaries. The film offers a pleasantly intriguing and witty narrative, piling on various elements of crime and horror films of yesteryear. The ensemble cast is very international, and it can be difficult to understand their English at times, as one needs to quickly adjust to their accents. Nevertheless, the story is humorous and handsomely filmed.