Ladyworld

I cannot understand why this movie has such a poor rating. It's definitely for the art house crowd, there's no denying that. However, when taking on a whole, the movie has much more than it seems to show on the surface. The other reviewers comparing it to Lord of the Flies are correct, with a similar vibe, just in a "disaster strikes at a birthday slumber party" way. I'm not saying this movie is great, because it's not. What it is, is an interesting representation of what happens to people left to their own devices in a crisis situation. Watch it for the acting, which is very good, and don't read too much into it, and you might actually enjoy this movie.

What drew me to this movie, first and foremost, was the cast. I've been a huge fan of actress Annalise Basso, who played Piper, for several years now. I'm also a fan of Ariela Barber, who played Olivia, who I had seen in a movie that she had done when she was much younger. It was nice to see her in something as a young adult with more mature material to work with. As much as I liked the premise of a close-quarters character study set in a very limited setting, how the movie actually played out (at least to me) was equal parts underwhelming and confusing. Scenes of tension and/or peril would start only to cut to more slow and mundane scenes out of the blue, sometimes right in the middle of the previous scene. It probably would've also been better of they had fleshed out the start and the aftermath of the earthquake a little better. One positive that I will give to this movie is that it looked to me like a mixture of The Shining and Suspiria, what with its deliberately haunting music and frazzled tempo.

This film is getting a lot of unnecessary politically charged criticism that has really nothing to do with what makes this film "broken" for a lack of a better word. The acting is so-so. I at least believe them often enough that I forgive a bad reading here or there. There are plenty of loose metaphors scattered about and really this is the main issue. This film wanders in a setting that's to small to really get going.

And there is the major "elephant in the room"... regrading the windows.... ugh. I get it "wUt iF wE GEt cOMfoRtableeeeeee."

If you watch a lot of movies already give this a shot maybe you'll get something out of it. If you're a more casual viewer skip it

Its 'Lord of the flies' meets 'The Hole'

An earthquake strikes, and the home has only young women in it. With no water, no electricity, and no cell phone service, they are, of course doomed. Some may liken it to a female version of Lord of the Flies, except the boys were really trapped, and that is a far better movie. Olivia seems to be one who had her head about her, and Dolly holds on tightly to a doll, as it seems it is her only friend. There is dirt piled near the top of the windows, but since the house didn't suffer a lot of damage and the windows didn't break, it couldn't have been a massive amount of dirt, so they could have simply opened a window and crawled out. That would have made for a 5 minute movie, and be better. Instead, it degenerates into most of them living in filth, showing despair and basically going crazy. All in the space of a couple of days, at the most. No one seems to be able to come up with a plan. On top of that, the sound track becomes super annoying. It starts out like geese honking, then horns honking, and then (according to subtitles) women vocalizing. A truly terrible movie, and while 3 may seem generous, one may not want to know which movies I have rated lower than that.

I'm a fan of all sorts of film and I especially love those little "undiscovered" films that stand out. The problem is, when you seek out films of that nature, you run into far more like this. It wants to be deep. It tries real damned hard to be Art. But to this viewer, it was neither. I'd use the word Tedious. Aside from the, and I use this term as lightly as humanly possible, music (which was little more than repeated noises and Girl Moans..), the thing that bothered me the most was the camera filter. At several points in the film it looks like pantyhose with a hole cut in them are stretched over the lens, the edges of the screen are dark and the center almost looks like you are watching the film by flashlight. It's not artsy or claustrophobic, it's sophomoric lighting and cinematography. Actually, if this was a student film... no.. wait. Nevermind, it would still be boring. The actresses are all capable of handling better material. If I were them, I'd fire my agent. As a moviegoer, you'd do better watching pretty much anything else up to and including paint drying.