curt_doolittle

Kelly need a lot of voice coaching, mostly to slow down, because she doesn't carry off 'thoughtful' well enough for the part. (Common Canadian acting problems - bovine energy) Kelly and Hull roles would have been better reversed. Willis hasn't brought energy to a role in years, and you see it in his private life as well. He needs the humor and edge to carry off the seriousness and he's settled into this retired state of mind that's projected dead on the screen. Forliani does her job well and she continues to carry the screen. Never thought she'd keep getting better. Pacing is wrong. Director should have slowed them all down. It's noir dialog filmed at summer blockbuster pace.

Well developed characters, good casting, articulate script, well acted, well directed - particularly the flashbacks which are too often a weak point, and produced adequately if cost effectively, provide us with an unexpected gem, and one of the best in the genre in the past five years.

Little things matter. Loved the barbed wire work throughout. The director does not overindulge the characters or the actors. And conversely, he still retains sufficient bloodiness to invoke our primitive emotions and symbolism without trying to shock us with something new - the story is the story after all, and it's a character's journey. And he respects us along the way.

One of the things that struck me repeatedly, was the difference between the British and American acting schools, and just how much better suited the British technique is for presenting the internal moral conflict necessary for good horror. Thought still exists in such characters, where Americans favor the senselessness of the raw nerve. As if honest acting somehow prohibits rational moral conflict, and self reflection.

The director proves it's still possible to still produce a moral movie, a moral horror movie, in the western tradition of our pagan fairy tales and Christian horror tales. It's just not in possible to do in Hollywood, where our pagan and Christian morality is actively suppressed both by intent, and non-verbal consensus in the culture of the place.

Prey is how it is done. Without novelty of effects and gimmicks that can be put into trailers, it may be harder to sell to distributors and studios. But it's a nearly flawless addition to our visual libraries.

I hope we see a series of movies with the same character development, with the same basic effects, under the same narrative, hopefully by the same producers. They're profitable. We want them. We can't get enough of them.

So yes. More please.

And thank you.

Dreadfully bad casting that doomed it from the start. Painfully amateurish lyrics, painfully bad music, painfully bad storyline, painfully bad script that even the best talent and fair camera work cannot save. Absolutely painful. Depp's costume? My only emotional reaction was sympathy for the career damage being done to the actors. Despite seeing nearly every movie that is in wide release every year, this is only the fifth movie I remember having walked out of in as many decades. (Blount and Streep can carry these roles, but Depp? Kendrick as heroine? O. M. G. Seriously? Chris Pine? Did Maisler and Tesley farm it out to Canfield while taking a vacation? )