Ghoulumbe Better than most people think

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Michael Ledo This is an odd Russian fantasy film with mediocre translations and lack of a decent soundtrack. Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) is an inventor and master cartographer. Caught in a compromising position, he leaves London and maps Europe with his wanderings taking him to a small superstitious village haunted by a 7 horned Viy creature and who knows what else. Here he learns their secrets and is drawn into their issues.The production might be a horror fantasy for tweens. The cinematography was decent and the plot interesting as the film makers did everything they could to make it dull. The dialogue lacked zip. It needed to drop clues. The soundtrack needed to be some of that black Russian folk death metal or whatever they classify it. What was with the bad Mohawk comb overs? Did they really wear their hair that way? I did like the CG special effects.Guide: No f-bombs. Implied sex. Distant nudity?

kosmasp Just in case you didn't know (like me), this is sort of a remake of a 1967 movie. Though as some have stated here and on other places, it's not really a remake or people shouldn't expect it to be one. Whatever the case, this has pretty good special effects in it. The acting on the other hand is hard to rate.Why is that? While watching (in English in this case), you might realize that something is off with some of the actors. I can only assume, but most of them either couldn't speak English or their English was so bad, they had to be synced. And that is very apparent in many scenes. Obviously Jason Flemyng does not have that issue. And if you are a fan of Fantasy Fiction, you will still sort of love this. But there are things that just don't work or are too convoluted ...

orvuus I have been eagerly anticipating seeing this film for a long time, ever since seeing previews. The first film made from Gogol's story, also titled Viy (1967), was humorous and yet had scary special effects, especially well done for the time (the Russians made some great films in this period). This is a different take on the story, NOT a remake of that 1967 film, which I can appreciate. As one reviewer noted, this is very like Burton's take on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (possible spoiler?) in that the plot veers away from the original story. In fact this makes the film very interesting, and I think Jason Fleming does a good job in his role as the cartographer who blunders into a drama in a cossack village. The letdown comes in the overuse of CGI, to me, and in the decidedly humdrum actresses used for the female parts. Not being Ukranian, naturally, I don't share other reviewers anger at the portrayal of drunken cossacks, and in fact this is hypocritical in that the 1967 shows about the same thing. (The Don Cossacks historically were an important people in Russian history, and made up elite cavalry units). Comparing this movie to similar American ventures in period horror overusing CGI, I think this is actually better than, say, Brothers Grimm. Nonetheless overall weak actors (the witch should be at least as fascinating as the 1967 version, and there are plenty of beautiful Ukranian or Russian women that could have played this role), overuse of CGI, and an overly busy plot make this a less than stellar picture that is forgettable. Please note the film is available in a somewhat English-friendly DVD, but the subtitles are horrible -- making the plot even more incomprehensible. Some of the subtitles make no sense at all, and some apparently cannot translate Russian words and just put them on the screen in kind of direct transliteration. I think this subtitling was done with computer assistance, badly, because even the HTML for a title card is translated (a font number!).

Max Nemtsov The other day, I decided to be with my people (in their collective hell), and watch this je ne sais quoi. What to say here. They can't write, for they're basically illiterate, and they can't act, for the mugs of the "Moscow theaters actors" (tm) are too well-fed. Everyone speaks in those pumped-up husky voices that are expected to mean passion from females, and courage with the other kind. For me, personally, though, they signify only people sitting on their potties trying very hard to give birth to something immortal, needles first.The cinematographers seem to have learned shooting eye-pleasing pics, though they say it's not very hard to do, these days. They have also learned how to steal nice-looking stills for our desktops from others. Although, it seems that all visuals were created not by Russians but by Czechs, Germans and whom not, so maybe I should take this last statement back. You know, it's all like giving bright neon building blocks to an idiot child—he would definitely build something with them, and it would certainly catch the eye yet it would be utterly meaningless. For there is absolutely no logic in the plot, and the montage of those nice-looking pictures, there's no even the Hollywood logic in it. The sense is totally absent from this product, like lip-sync (for all actors were dubbed like in a bad TV production).All PR effort (and the Wiki article) only confirm that the movie was targeted at brainless idiots who salivate from Photoshopped landscapes, and fast-changing camera angles. Also, xenophobia detected: the film creators seem to convey a very simple idea that all the worst in humans comes from within, and as the most humans in the film are, obviously, the Ukrainians, they look like the evil incarnate. On the other hand, Nicholas Gogol apparently thought so, too, although he didn't like all people, not only the Jews.A slight anti-clerical pathos makes a welcome respite from all this stupidity but the creators apparently didn't dwell on this. Judging from what and how they speak in the promo documentary, they have no dwelling place in their brains. Their aim was "to catch up and overrun," like Khrushchev used to say, and "to produce the movie with the highest, globally accepted standards of intiteiment" (I kid you not, this is the word they use on a dumb card in the promo film; and I just love this provincially soviet demagoguery).But the theme of rebooting classics is rich, no arguing about it. They now are free to re-shoot The Petty Demon, for example, creating the small dusty monster there with the multifaceted LED eyes, like what they did here. It will give much pleasure to the young and broad audience, no doubt.