thor5894

Maybe the worst Chabrol film I've seen, and he's a director I admire. Is it that he was making a movie in English, not his native French? No idea, but this is just bad. The story is fine, a decent murder mystery, the execution is awful. The great Donald Sutherland does what he can. The first half has the feel of a giallo, and the mystery is intriguing enough. Then Sunderland starts reading the dead girl's diary and we get endless on-the-nose flashback scenes, with abysmal acting the level of an elementary school stage production. Also a leering sleaziness pervades the entire film. Finally a resolution which makes little sense, with a motive seemingly picked at random. A bizarre head-scratcher. See any of Chabrol's French mysteries instead, they're almost all good and some are great.

Barry Lyndon was slated by critics on release, kind of forgotten, but in recent years has been reappraised by many as one of Kubrick's great films. I side with the original critics. This is pretty to look at and also pretty pointless. The most glaring flaw is lightweight Ryan O'Neal in the lead role. He's a cipher impossible to care about, kind of a rogue but not an outright villain. The story proceeds as one would expect, there are slight satirical touches but nothing too biting, then it ends. It never gave me a reason to care. No idea what attracted Kubrick to the story or what he wanted to say with this. A large miss.

There is a lot to admire here, mainly a great lead performance by Amy Seimetz as the alcoholic ex-girlfriend of a serial killer trying to re-establish a normal life. Also it's tough to pull off a naturalistic arthouse horror flick, and this attempt does better than most. For most of its running time this plays more as a drama (that happens to involve a serial killer) than as horror. But two elements nearly wreck the film. One, mentioned by many other reviews here, is the constant close-ups with a jerky handheld camera. A little of this would be fine but it never lets up, this movie is 87 minutes of random close-ups with a camera that won't hold still. It's too much and becomes a constant distraction. Second, there is a very ill-judged twist five minutes before the end that effectively undoes much of the naturalistic appeal the movie had until that point. I won't reveal it here, but will just say it was wholly unconvincing to me. Even with these serious flaws, I found this to be worth watching for Seimetz's performance and for the unhurried, reflective storytelling. What's good here will stay with me, which makes the misjudgments that much more frustrating.