Otto-20

I should say that the version I watched was maybe not ideal; as of September of 2016, the version of this that was available for streaming on Netflix just had absolutely terrible sound quality. I had to keep the subtitles on just to follow the dialogue, and most, if not all, of any atmospheric sound efforts were totally lost on me. It may be a more effective film in better circumstances.

That said, this feels almost exactly like a tiny, low-budget version of the 1973 film The Legend of Hell House, to the point that it became so predictable that I lost interest for much of the film. It's not a terrible film by any means, and it's quite well set up visually. The repetition of the hallway sequences worked for me - I felt oriented to the space, and able to appreciate the variations between the hallway "encounters." It also has a much better ending reveal than the bizarre one in The Legend of Hell House . . . but it sure felt like the journey there could have been much more dynamic.

I was really pleasantly surprised by this, given its low budget and obscurity (and some pretty negative reviews, to boot).

It's a very ambitious and heavily stylized ghost story, which depends a lot on darkness and/or obscured vision (be warned!), as well as its classical-music soundtrack, in order to convey its atmosphere. It can be eye-rollingly over the top at times, but when it works, it works very well.

It's far from perfect, I will say; I can put up with the scares that don't quite come off (there's a sequence with snakes and spiders that is more silly than scary, for example), as that's almost an inevitability of low-budget film. Instead, most of the problems I had were with characters just not acting in believable ways - most egregious was probably the entire character of Kreese, who was poorly written and maybe as a result not terribly well acted. (Hint: if you ever have a restaurant manager aggressively verbally assault customers because he didn't hear them come in, you should fire that manager immediately.) But overall, I really did like this. I'll admit I'm prejudiced, because this is a kind of film I really love: the Bad Place movie. We don't need to understand the logic of the Bad Place, all we need to know is that it eats people, and has a voracious appetite. I only ever cared much about one of the characters (Matt, who gets kind of a cool backstory/history), but I cared a lot about how scary the place was. The logic of the film overall is sketchy in places and just plain bizarre in others, but the surreal nature of what happens in and around the Bad Place is part of what ultimately made this effective for me.

Your mileage may vary.

"A Little Night Music," is absolutely brilliant as a Sondheim stage musical. Emotionally touching, artistically powerful, it's got it all. And then there's this film. *sigh* Elizabeth Taylor is a lovely lady. But she can't sing. "Send In the Clowns" was not intended to be a spoken piece. Many of the incredible stage numbers have been cut or replaced, with the most magnificent survivor being "A Weekend In the Country," the best-performed song in the film. Unfortunately, it is not the most artistically pleasing one, and, without an intermission, its exuberance falls a bit flat. The visual aesthetics of the film are not well done -- it's not night, it's obviously just daytime with a filter -- and are disappointing. The best reason to see this would be for the opportunity of seeing the gorgeously voiced Len Cariou recreate his incredible performance as Frederik.