Reviews

As a true Disney child, I used to watch Sleeping Beauty over and over again, till I knew all the lines and all the songs by heart. It remains one of my favorite cartoons of all time. Having said that, I had high expectations from Maleficent. I was disappointed. As a prequel to the original story, we were expecting some major alterations to take place, in accordance with contemporary mass Hollywood agenda of lightweight storytelling, resulting in huge summer box office success and even bigger revenues from popcorn sales. Let me start of by saying how plastic-y and CGI-heavy the visuals were. Even by fairytale standards, they were absolutely unrealistic and unconvincing, as was pretty much everything else in the movie. Character development was almost non-existent, despite a few twists which were to be anticipated mere seconds before they were revealed on screen, leaving the atmosphere of utter discontent and ultimately posing a question "Who is supposed to be the target audience?". For example, King Stefan and the three fairy godmothers were so naively and superficially depicted that it almost reached a point of absurd. They were by far the biggest disappointment. Casting Jolie as Maleficent proved to be a good choice from the visual point of view - she is stunning, but her acting wasn't so pleasing. Fanning's Aurora is sweet and innocent and it would've been a delight to have more of her on-screen presence, but only if it was followed by a decent plot. With the original Sleeping Beauty you knew what to expect - it's a cartoon, so it must be for children, right? But even so, the cartoon is still a masterpiece, cleverly and charmingly combining the everyday goofiness of the characters together with the ultimate evil, followed by a classic true love theme, and lastly an amazing soundtrack, making it a joyful experience for viewers of any age. In my opinion, not only does "Maleficent" lack charisma, but is also insecure about its genre, making it an in-between-type-of-movie - not entirely for children nor the adults. I pains me to see that a story with such potential for serious re-interpretation is diluted down to a mediocre and worn out tale of war between good and evil, when in fact it could have been a masterpiece. If only Hollywood would grew a pair...

I could see on the forums, as well as by the overall rating, that this movie got some real hate. Now, Camilla Belle is no Carol Kane, by any means, and she's no Jamie Lee Curtis to be able to carry out almost an entire movie by herself, but she's not that bad. This version does differ from the original, especially in the last third of the film. Now, if you saw the original - then you know the major spoiler, the one thing that made the original really scary in the first place. And I agree with some of the reviewers that this is a cliché, but since it is rated PG- 13, I would strongly recommend this to younger viewers who are just entering the amazing world of horror movies. It's contemporary and modern and therefore more relate-able to the younger audience. What disappointed me the most were two things. First, even though Camilla Belle is okay, she lacks that true horror-heroine-quality that could've made this movie into a real gem. Decisions her character made in the movie were believable, and in some cases logical, but her acting was just not convincing enough. Second, they really played it safe and by doing so, stripped the movie of its original horror. The line "Have you checked the children?" kind of lost its meaning here by not correlating to the "stranger's" motives in the original plot, but I don't want to give anything away to those who haven't seen the original. So, I'm a bit disappointed because this could've been a really serious re-imagining of a classic, worthy to stand by its own. However, since this is not the case, watch it anyway, 'cause it's fun, but do see the original because it's scary.

Disclaimer: this movie can prove to be "scarrie" for those who are not a fan of the horror genre in general. For those of us who are, at least for me, this movie was everything but scary. First of all, when I heard that Chloe Moretz will be taking the role of Carrie, I was afraid that she might not be able to pull it off. In fact, the only thing I was pleased to hear was that Julianne Moore will be playing Carrie's mother. She is a great choice for the role but the way she handled it, as well as everything else about this movie is - over the top. I could sense the idea of wanting to make a good remake of a classic, but in the end they just missed it... Chloe Moretz is a very good, promising young actress, I don't even wanna talk about acting abilities of Julianne Moore, but they just didn't seem real here. What makes the original Carrie truly disturbing is that it's really slow paced. In its essence, it's a drama about a teenage girl that is being deprived of an ordinary teenage life and experiences that come with it due to her fanatically religious and psychologically extremely questionable mother, to put it lightly. And yes, the plot is pretty much the same and everything, but the general feel is that they rushed it. As I said, everything is over the top, the acting is exaggerated, the relationships between the characters are unconvincing, but it's biggest flaw is that you KNOW what's coming. You have Carrie doing her telekinesis stunts from the very beginning. It's almost as if she was practicing this skill from waaaaaay back, making pencils float around the room, flying the bread over to the toaster - you know, the usual stuff. So when the real thing was supposed to happen, the x was out of the equation making it quite frustrating to watch. It seems to me that, to make a remake of such a classic film you need to put so much thought and effort into every little detail to make it at least convincing enough, if you're not aiming to top the original. This movie seemed like someone got the idea "hey let's make a remake of some classic horror movie... hmmm... which one should we pick... the Exorcist? no, that's to heavy. hey, how about Carrie? Sure! it has a young girl as a lead, we sure have plenty of those, and there's a mother - oh, no, don't tell me? are you thinking what I'm thinking? JULIANNE freakin' MOORE!" And off they went with their brilliant idea and messed it all up. It was to hasty, it was thoughtless, unconvincing and at the end all I could to was to pick the flaws as I was comparing it to the original. I could go on and on about which aspects of the movie I disliked the most, instead I'll just give it a 4/10 and never watch it again. The 2013 version, at least.

okay... I know that there are A LOT of bad reviews for this movie. I get why some people may find it to be not very well written or acted or whatever. BUT, I am a long time horror movie watcher/fan, and recently I've watched a lot of horror movies that were either NOT scary enough or just plain boring, with the except of few, of course... I usually hate this kind of horror movies, because they don't make any sense - like, if something really bad starts happening to you (in the real world) while you're filming your vacation trip for example, you probably won't be holding the camera, but rather throw it away and run like hell. But, maybe I'm wrong. The only movie of this type I found to be scary was the Blair Witch project and that was more then ten years ago. Later, after some horror- movie-watching-experience, when I saw i.e. Paranormal Activity, I found it to be ridiculous. So, almost every movie with this kind of premise (with the exception of REC)I found to be ridiculous and unconvincing. HOWEVER, this one proved to be a real gem for me. And believe me, I have high standards. Like, I watch Tarkovsky and stuff. So, why did I like it? To me, it wasn't boring at all. It has a general story - couple of guys go searching for some video tapes and find bunch of VHS with some really crazy s**t on them. For me, director found an elegant way to incorporate this kind of premise into a convincing movie. Some of the elements are sci-fi, there are gory scenes, there's suspension, but human behavior of the actors in this movie, or rather in these VHS movies was logical and believable. To me. There are some totally unexpected and freaky stories. This movie is like a gallery of different horror genres all elegantly wrapped up into one bigger movie with a premise that actually makes sense. And what was most entertaining about this movie is that you get a lot of different short movies in one, so it was very dynamic, I was waiting to see what the next story will be, I tried to make connections between the stories, I tried to get the "bigger picture", I was amused and after all that, when I went to bed - I had a nightmare! And that almost NEVER happens after watching a horror flick. Don't expect this to be stunning as The Exorcist or as dumb as Paranormal Activity. It's not even in the middle, it's a twist on the genre that can hardly be remade, even though it's not a masterpiece. But, do watch it, it's worth the time, and hopefully you won't sleep very well after ;)