A Horrible Way to Die

A horrible way to die is nothing more than a horrible way to make a movie. It looks like they just blasted some lights, cranked the shutter speed and did hand-held to make an "artistic" movie. Well, there is nothing "artistic" about this, and this is coming from someone who is a huge fun of unique and original F-U Hollywood film making. I'm a huge fan of Gaspar Noe, and I appreciate directors who "break the rules." These guys do nothing but shaky hand-held the whole time, and man is it annoying! The acting and music is good, but I feel like the camera man has never operated a camera before! It's the same type of shot over, and over, and over. You couldn't beat a dead horse any more than they used out of focus shots to transition scenes, and hand-held shakiness to show hectic moments in the movie.

I could understand if they used some hand-held and shakiness, but maybe for 5 percent of the movie, not 95 percent! Even if your a film student, I don't think you'll like this. It looks like they shot it all in 3 days. The camera work is a far cry from human vision. Human's don't float their eyes aimlessly in a shaky haze. The only point of view shot is the point of view of a really bad camera man! It's like a really depressing and poorly made reality show.

Please don't compare this movie to anything Gaspar Noe has done. Gaspar Noe's camera style isn't shaky vision, it's Gaspar Noe vision, and isn't easy to replicate, as these guys probably found out. Everything Gaspar Noe does is delivered with an original and innovative sense of technical brilliance, which this movie doesn't touch with a mile long pole. Gaspar Noe films make you interested and actually want to watch the rest of the movie, not take your eyes off screen because you have a head ache.

This movie is not much more than a student film with a really nice camera and good actors. The camera work just makes it impossible to actually get into. The script doesn't really go anywhere, and there's not much suspense. The music, color grading, and acting are all decent but unfortunately, they don't know how to set up a tripod or dolly, so you have to torture yourself to see if the acting is good or not. Please invest in a tripod, or Steadicam, or just quit floating around like a film student trying to be artistic! Hand-held film making can be really awesome, but this is a very poor example. The camera-work in Blairwitch Project was better, and they didn't even know how to use a camera! Hold the camera against your head if you have to, the more points of contact the more stable. What a horrible way to make a movie.

A Horrible Way to Die was in a 3 DVD movie box presented by Night Vision. I bought two of these boxes months ago, and I started the Psycho Killers box.

The name paints a totally different picture of the film than what it truly is. Most of the actually deaths in this movie don't seem that horrible when you only see some mild gore here and there. Yes, a horror movie doesn't necessarily need that much gore, but when a movie has a title like this, you're expecting that. Also A Horrible Way To Die is a very straight-forward title, but the movie is far from it. The movie is quite short yet it's very slow. It takes too long for anything to happen, which makes it seem more like a seriously boring art drama.

The "seriously boring art drama" feel was also enhanced by the way this film was shot. While it enhanced the creepy, haunting atmosphere, it also annoyed the hell out of me. That kind of shaky shots are good every once in a while, but not all through the movie. It's not easy to look at, and therefore not easy to follow. It wasn't just the visual side that was hard to follow. Of course I don't believe in chronological narrative anymore, because breaking the story with flashbacks work most of the time, but in A Horrible Way to Die it was sometimes really hard to tell when something happened. Of course this was enhanced by the cinematography, because you can't always see the characters and what they look like, and then realise when that scene took place and all that.

The writing of this film is good though. The dialogue is as amazing as it tends to be in horror movies, it's so real. The story itself is not bad, apart from the story being so slow. The good writing can be seen in little things, like amazing twist, dialogue and whatnot. The slowness itself is not a sign of bad writing in general, but when you watch a horror movie it's frustrating when everything happens at the last minute. But the story might work well as a novel.

A Horrible Way to Die is an interesting movie to say the least. While it's not actually good and I didn't enjoy watching it, it definitely stands out from the horror movies I've watched.

A guy has a kidnapped girl in his trunk. He drives out somewhere during winter and chokes her to death. A girl assists an AA meeting. Another of the attendees introduced himself to her and slowly they begin a relationship although she's traumatized and repressed. How these two stories relate we come to find out in flashbacks as this movie progresses.

Turns out that the killer is a convicted serial killer who managed to escape while being transported somewhere. He steals cars and as the manhunt intensifies and his face is plastered all over the news, he threatens people to drive him across state lines.

The couple becomes intimate and she reveals her secret to the guy. She was the serial killer's girlfriend. She called the police on him after she followed him and discovered he had rented a storage unit to keep the bodies. But there is a twist in the relationship between her and the new guy.

A Horrible Way to Die is a good title for a horror movie, except that it doesn't have anything to do with this movie. The idea comes up somewhere when the killer asks his gf how she would like to die. But that's about it. We don't see any horrible killings. There is some after-the-fact gore, but nothing special. It's a small budget movie that doesn't look or sound like it is. Wingard knows how direct and he knows hot to tell a story. And this movie looks very nice and sophisticated. Wingard has to employ a variety of tricks to overcome the main problem- the short script. So we get a lot of different and strange camera techniques that may seem out of place but that give this film its unique tone and atmosphere. We get moving but not shaky camera, out of focus, odd placement of the camera, things in the way. And almost all of it works, except for the distracting Christmas lights that the girl for some reason has everywhere in her house. The story works, even the way it's told, the surprise. The actors all do a good job, in particular Seimetz. And the film transmits the closeness and intimacy of the characters. It's just not enough- not enough horror, not enough violence, not enough gore- after all this movie involves a serial killer.

I'm clearly running out of movies to watch on Prime and Shudder, which is why I eventually gave in and decided to settle for A Horrible Way To Die. Before delving further into the review, to be fair, I should state that just a couple hours before watching it, I saw one of the most incredible films I've ever had the pleasure of watching-'Magic Magic'; so 'A Horrible Way To Die' had a lot to live up to.

I had been reading around about this movie for a while. After all, with a title like that, you can't help but wonder what it's all about. I, of course, presumed that AHWTD was just another B-Horror movie belonging to the 'torture-porn' genre, and therefor, most likely a waste of time. But after reading several reviews which hailed the film for it's magnificent writing and acting, I decided to give it a go.

The first thing that I'll say about this movie is that the cinematography is terrible. I mean, really, it's almost unwatchable-maybe the director had some artistic statement in mind (attempting to give the film a feeling of 'visceral reality'?), or if the camera man just didn't have a the ability to stay in focus or to keep a steady hand. Regardless, it didn't work. I'm a man that values aesthetic, and I like movies to look beautiful-and if they don't..Well, I expect there to be a reason for that (for instance, it makes sense that the camera work looks shaky in a movie like 'The Blair Witch Project'). I suppose some might argue that the hand-held shaky camera-work adds a flair of 'grit' to the film, but I would argue that it does not (after all, Bad Leutenant got it's point across while still staying in focus), and instead creates the impression that the cinematographer was relying on a corny gimmick to cover up his lack of talent. There is absolutely no reason that half the film has to be out of focus.

Secondly, I would have to disagree with the assertion that the writing in 'A Horrible Way To Die' is anything above average. In fact, I would say a lot of the dialogue seems forced. It's hard to tell in movies like this if this is the product of the script itself or bad acting, but I'm going to go with the latter. I've seen some of these actors in other films and they were capable enough, and at times their talent does shine through the dull dialogue.

Another thing that annoyed me was the depiction of Alchoholics Anonymous. Having struggled with addiction for many years, I know the format of a 12 Step meeting like the back of my hand. Now do not misinterpret what I'm saying-I am no 'Big Book Thumper', but I am starting to get really annoyed by how all these movies are depicting Alchoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous. To me it just shows sloppiness..After all, how hard would it be to approach a member and just ask, 'Hey, we're making this movie, and a central theme is alcoholism, so do you think you could help us out to accurately depict a 12 Step program?". Clearly that conversation never took place. I almost feel as if they got their impression of 'The Program' from other movies.

Anyway, I have to admit, I only watched 3/4 or the film, because quite frankly, the quality became to abrasive for my taste. I don't mind low-budget films if the film-maker knows how to work within that limited budget (a great example of this is Mark Flannegans' 'Absentia', or the Sci-Fi time travel film 'Primer', supposedly filmed with a $7,000 budget), but that is not the case with 'A Horrible Way to Die', which instead looks at best like an ambitious student film that despite it's efforts, fails.

I will say that for what they were given to work with in terms of the script, the acting was pretty good, and that's probably the movies' one redeeming quality. Still though, I wouldn't waste my time with this one. I see a lot of people making claims like it's a 'hidden gem', and I imagine if you went into the movie with the expectation that it was going to be the the worst film in the history of cinema you might walk away with that point of view, but in to me it was an incredibly mediocre, predictable thriller.

Well, the title ain't lying. Lots of people die in this movie, either on screen or off, and one person comes very close to dying, and all of the methods used are pretty horrible.

"A Horrible Way to Die" brings an admittedly unique spin to the serial killer movie. It uses mixed up chronology to tell the story of a woman whose boyfriend, a convicted serial killer, escapes from prison and comes back to find her, and the efforts of a new love interest to help her and keep her safe. The wacky order in which the story is told makes it feel richer than it probably is, and there are some major plot twists toward the end (up there with some of the biggest) that are handled less than delicately (you can practically hear the gears grinding at one point as the movie shifts into an entirely new direction). And stylistically it feels like a film made by a film student who's been itching to get his hands on a camera and can't control himself once he has -- the camera is always, I mean ALWAYS, moving, randomly zooming, drifting off to the edges of the frame, going out of focus. It's exceedingly annoying.

But the film does have a morbidly grim appeal to it. I can't say I necessarily enjoyed watching it, but I can say that it was memorable.

Grade: B-