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The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
A brooding soap opera...with jump scares!
I tried to watch it, kept coming back, but all I found in Hill House is a cure for insomnia. There's a few creepy scenes, but most of the jump "scares" fall flat. The kids do a fine job, but grown up they're mostly distant and detached. I get it, it's a broken family, but what we get of their childhoods isn't enough to give me a reason to care about a bunch of brooding adults. I don't need a show for that.
The narrative is chopped to confetti, jumping from bits in the past and present, but when the writer finally strings enough bits together they tend to amount to little. Basically, Hill House is a soap opera...with jump scares! Aside from the rare creep, the kids' performances and general production are the only redeeming qualities.
(And no, I didn't finish it. I kept falling asleep from boredom.)
Låt den rätte komma in (2008)
Trick of light and shadows
There's plenty of other reviews that cover the basic premise of the film, so I'll just get to the point. After watching "Let the Right One In" and now rereading the same reviews that lured me to it, I'm completely befuddled. It seems as though I did not quite see the same film as everyone else. Sure, the film is in Swedish, the scenes and plot points were the same as the reviews described, but I apparently saw the film in a different light. They say it's a love story, I see a tragedy. They say the long wide-angle shots of snow were "atmospheric", where as I felt the scenes were slow, dull, empty--emblematic of so much of what is wrong with the film.
Before I get into that, I would say the one thing that I truly liked about the film was Eli. Most modern films of its genre are huge overproduced blockbusters with tons of exposition, backstory, and/or gratuitous gore. Eli stands in absolute contrast. She's shy, enigmatic and, I may say, wonderfully understated. She has very few lines, so most of her story is told through her interactions with other characters and the actress' performance. Eli seems bored, trapped by her circumstances, as I suppose someone in her situation would be. Throughout the film, there are nice little hints and glimpses of her true nature before the "reveal". It shouldn't come as a surprise to those who'd been paying attention. The break from her normally shy and reserved demeanor in the reveal was a bit jarring, I give the film a point for pulling that off as well. Also, beneath her facade of shy innocence is a deceptive manipulator. There's a lot of other clues about Eli that almost no one seemed notice, but I'll get to that in a bit. In spite of her age, I feel the actress gave a solid performance that outshines even her elder castmates.
Most of the film, overall, is average at best. The cinematography is "effective" at conveying the story. However, the pace of the film is glacial. While some slow-paced films take their time to build to something, this one seemed more interested in long shots establishing the "mood" than building plot or character. Much of this is to do with editing, how the film budgets its time with various elements. I wanted to know more about the characters and what was going on with them, but no...it feels like those scenes were cut short to make more time for cinematic "atmosphere" or other extraneous filler. For example, all of the scenes with Oskar's dad could just as well had been cut, as he's otherwise not part of the plot and the short phone calls with Oskar's mom said more about him and his relationships than any of his actual screen time. Hell, after all of the time spent with Oskar, the main character of the film, what can one really say about him? He's about middle-school aged, his parents are estranged and living apart, he's bullied by some of the schoolboys, he has a hobby, and a weird neighbor. A lot of his screen time is spent with all these things related to him, but the film says very little about what he thinks or feels.
The rest of the performances are mostly average. Some characters were a bit understated and some were melodramatic, but a least they give some insight into their feelings and motivations. However, the lack of depth in Oskar is what really kills the film for me. He portrays very little about himself and rarely reacts to anything unless it affects him directly, in the moment. Even worse, the actor just can't act. I've seen other films with socially challenged characters that still managed to pour much more "character" into their roles. Oskar was as wooden as Pinocchio, only without any aspirations of becoming a boy. The film could have just as well had an actual block of wood stand-in while the actor read his few lines off camera without much consequence to the film. Eli's caretaker is similar to Oskar in many respects, but even he manages to portray more about himself in his few scenes than Oskar does in the entire movie. Also, the plot gives very little motivation behind Oskar. He's mostly a puppet of his circumstances, tumbling through life, lost in his own world until he meets Eli. The main character and actor are crucial to a film's success and Oskar fails to hit any mark. The only things I feel for him are boredom and pity. I pity myself more for haven't been suckered into watching the film.
So, what did everyone miss? What makes this a tragedy rather than a romance? Looking at the plot from Eli's side rather than Oscars, things take on a very different perspective. (If I still, somehow, haven't dissuaded you from watching the film, I'll try to avoid any outright spoilers.) Eli's caretaker is an older man, likely in his 60s, who seems to be a little slow, dull, and socially challenged--much like Oskar. Eli's relationship with her caretaker is manipulative and abusive. By coincidence, one night she meets Oskar, who is also a social outcast. Oskar isn't put off by her peculiarities, because he's so desperate to have a friend and otherwise oblivious. Though Eli seems to develop feelings for Oskar too, she repeatedly uses and manipulates him for her own means--things she can't easily do herself. The similarities with Oskar and her caretaker, and Eli's relationships with them, don't seem to be a coincidence. None of this is explicitly said in the movie, as much is done without any real explanation, but there is a lot of subtext.
Earthrise (2014)
Less than the sum of its parts
Three crew members are on a mission from a future Mars colony to a failed Earth, and along the way they start acting strange. After a close call with an asteroid, they discover something unusual in the cargo hold.
Overall, Earthrise is a huge disappointment. Even judging it by its low-budget indie peers, nothing in the film rates above a 5/10. The sets, lighting, cinematography serve their purpose, but noting notable. The only highlights are that the actors' performances occasionally raise above the material they're given. Also the score sometimes hits the right emotional note to heighten the tension, but other times misses it entirely. What most defines Earthrise is editing and plot. Non-linear storytelling is an artform rarely done well. In the hands of a master, it adds an extra dimension to the film, but generally it's just a tacky veneer to distract from an otherwise thin plot--and the plot of Earthrise is as hollow as a cracked bell.
One thing that becomes clear early on is that some of the events are put together out of order. For instance: between scene cuts, Marshall suddenly has a band-aid on his forehead without explanation. The actual scene where the accident occurs comes later. Also throughout the film are recorded interviews with the three crew members prior to their mission, and others who completed it. Though the interviews provide an interesting contrast between what the crew believe themselves to be and who they really are, the latter serves better as a Three Stooges revival. They're lucky that their ship is on autopilot, because it would be a smoking crater if they had to land it.
The core elements of a thriller are tension and payoff--Earthrise almost never does. The opening summary might sound like an interesting movie, if a bit cliché. However, Earthrise manages to take anything noteworthy and blows it out an airlock.
**If you read everything up till now and still have a vague twinge of curiosity, you can stop reading...and maybe smack yourself with a frying pan till the feeling subsides. If I've otherwise managed to dissuade you from watching this slow-burning train wreck, you'll soon thank me.**
The part about Mars and Earth is merely pretense; none of that really affects the plot. Much of what we learn about the crew through the interviews is largely tossed to the cold vacuum of space as well--they all equally go nuts by the end. They start acting strange and having hallucinations, but never investigate why. A collision with an asteroid would usually be a disaster, but the trio make it through with merely a scratch. Nothing a band-aid can't fix. (Not even Johnson & Johnson could save this plot.) The broken crate they find in the cargo hold looks more like an animal cage, but all that's left inside are Mars rocks. What was really in it? No idea, they never follow up on that one either. In fact, their only concern is not reporting *anything* back to Mars out of fear of the mission being called off. In the real world, they'd be judged more by how they deal with the situation than the crisis itself.
Why did Mars pick these three stooges for this mission? I honestly don't care. *Nothing* really happens.