GreyHunter
Joined Dec 2004
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Reviews117
GreyHunter's rating
The quality of most of these shorts is actually pretty good in terms of camera-work and cinematography. The quality of the acting ios decent too, mostly. There's really nothing to earn a low rating on those grounds. If these are representative of current Mexican cinema, they're actually pretty good exemplars to praise.
Now...the stories and approaches to horror...well, that's another issue. A couple of them weren't bad, primarily the 2nd one, set in a haunted hacienda. But somewhere along the line, Mexican horror filmmaking seems to have equated horror with disgusting and off-putting. And that's a huge problem. When you leave your audience more queasy than scared, you've failed at horror. There;s a reason the genre is called 'horror movies' rather than 'disgusting movies'. Your core audience might be somewhat jaded to gore, but that's not really the reason why (most of them) watch.
Just on filmmaking grounds alone, there's a lot of promise for Mexican cinema on display here. If these filmmakers manage to substitute real horror for excessive viscera, I'd certainly love to watch what they put out.
(Also, several of them drag out shots and scenes for far too long. But that's an easily correctable issue.)
Now...the stories and approaches to horror...well, that's another issue. A couple of them weren't bad, primarily the 2nd one, set in a haunted hacienda. But somewhere along the line, Mexican horror filmmaking seems to have equated horror with disgusting and off-putting. And that's a huge problem. When you leave your audience more queasy than scared, you've failed at horror. There;s a reason the genre is called 'horror movies' rather than 'disgusting movies'. Your core audience might be somewhat jaded to gore, but that's not really the reason why (most of them) watch.
Just on filmmaking grounds alone, there's a lot of promise for Mexican cinema on display here. If these filmmakers manage to substitute real horror for excessive viscera, I'd certainly love to watch what they put out.
(Also, several of them drag out shots and scenes for far too long. But that's an easily correctable issue.)
Always on the lookout for a decent horror anthology that I haven't seen, I ran across this title somewhere and decided to give it 10 minutes to win me over. After 10 minutes, it was obvious that, unlike so many excretable horror anthologies out there, that this was a professional and talented production, so I kept watching.
First things first. The good: as I noted, this was pretty well-made. I don't know what the budget was (though the alphabetical list of thanks to people who helped at the end of the movie suggests it was basically a crowdfunded indie project), but whatever it was, the people behind the movie made good use of it. It wasn't perfect but clearly a cut above the average amateur affair. Also good: the writing was...pretty decent. Some of the dialogue was a bit clunky, but nothing distractingly so. The framing segments were okay, if a bit too hammy on occasion. One of the segments stood out from the rest, "Splinter," and I do appreciate the attempts to get in actual horror without going for upbeat endings in the other segments.
Inevitably, some shorts in horror anthologies will better than others. This is not to say any of them were *bad*, as such. They all had decent elements of horror, but only one of them, "Splinter." seem to really embrace true horror throughout. The others relied on bringing the horror in or near the very end, which presented a problem due to my main complaint here...the extent of unnecessary filler. The run-time of almost 2.5 hours elides into this criticism. The shorts involved, while clearly done with an eye toward good cinema, were stretched out far too long. The stories and their resolutions didn't rate so much filler, especially given how simple and straightforward they were and how little horror they actually had for most of their narratives.
Being well-made, and being that, even with my above criticism of the segments, it rates a solid 7 for me. Good enough that I've put the original movie (the one being returned to in the title here) in my queue to watch sometime soon.
First things first. The good: as I noted, this was pretty well-made. I don't know what the budget was (though the alphabetical list of thanks to people who helped at the end of the movie suggests it was basically a crowdfunded indie project), but whatever it was, the people behind the movie made good use of it. It wasn't perfect but clearly a cut above the average amateur affair. Also good: the writing was...pretty decent. Some of the dialogue was a bit clunky, but nothing distractingly so. The framing segments were okay, if a bit too hammy on occasion. One of the segments stood out from the rest, "Splinter," and I do appreciate the attempts to get in actual horror without going for upbeat endings in the other segments.
Inevitably, some shorts in horror anthologies will better than others. This is not to say any of them were *bad*, as such. They all had decent elements of horror, but only one of them, "Splinter." seem to really embrace true horror throughout. The others relied on bringing the horror in or near the very end, which presented a problem due to my main complaint here...the extent of unnecessary filler. The run-time of almost 2.5 hours elides into this criticism. The shorts involved, while clearly done with an eye toward good cinema, were stretched out far too long. The stories and their resolutions didn't rate so much filler, especially given how simple and straightforward they were and how little horror they actually had for most of their narratives.
Being well-made, and being that, even with my above criticism of the segments, it rates a solid 7 for me. Good enough that I've put the original movie (the one being returned to in the title here) in my queue to watch sometime soon.
...it sounded very much like a rehash of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Since it was only 19 minutes, I figured I might as well watch. After watching, well., it's still very much like "Eternal Sunshine," right down to the themes of recurring attractions bringing people together, like low-grade fate. It didn't bring anything really new to the table that "Eternal Sunshine" didn't already cover, and was frustratingly vague about the motives of each person and what sort of incident had brought them to this pass. Ambiguity is one thing, but the narrative was so basic and spare that there needed to be at least *some* backstory to make this short worth watching at all.
Without more backstory, it's just some okay special effects and two people reacting with either misery or cruel disdain, depending. Why they were reacting this way, and what events led to this point? Not a clue. Not even a hint. There's no meat whatsoever to the story, so there's nothing that makes you want to bother even thinking about it as the credits roll. There's considerably less depth here than your average "Black Mirror" episode (a series where it would have fit quite nicely if it had been better-written.)
Without more backstory, it's just some okay special effects and two people reacting with either misery or cruel disdain, depending. Why they were reacting this way, and what events led to this point? Not a clue. Not even a hint. There's no meat whatsoever to the story, so there's nothing that makes you want to bother even thinking about it as the credits roll. There's considerably less depth here than your average "Black Mirror" episode (a series where it would have fit quite nicely if it had been better-written.)