Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

GazerRise Fantastic!

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

dbdumonteil People will fatally evoke "los ostros" and "the sixth sense".Those remarkable works did not invent the "trick" though.It was already used in "carnival of souls "(1962).And anyway "arte de morir" owes more to the largely underrated "Jacob's ladder" and to the rather original adolescent movie " Campfire tales" ."El arte de morir" suffers from a screenplay which lacks focus and intensity and the story does not take off during the first thirty minutes.There are good ideas which suggest that the movie could have been much better than what we see on the screen.I particularly dig the lines "it takes nine months to be born,why would it take so little time to die?""There'll come a time when all of us must leave here(...) There' ll come a time when all our hopes are fading When things that seem so very plain Become an awful pain." (George Harrison,"Art of dying","All things must pass " album)

spanky6666 Nice Spanish Thriller(supernatural)/Drama that's definitely worth watching,nice rental!!It's your typical "Kill them one by one" movie (like Scream) where a bunch of young adults did something wrong in the past and have to pay for that now...This is NOT a horror/Comedy,it breaths a dark,chilling atmosphere... It's very well directed,kind of strange and has good music(New Wave/Gothic).Ideal to watch once on tv or for an overnight rental.GO SEE THIS,YOU'LL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!!See ya!

Fredericmignard Spain has made good impression lately with movies such as The Nameless, tesis, Abre los ojos, Los amantes del circulo polar... Unfortunately el arte de morir fails to impress. it inspires boredom instead of inspiring awe and terror. The murders depicted (it's a slasher film) are uninteresting which is the worse defect for a film of that genre.

TechNoir A new genre was created in the Spanish cinema when Alejandro Amenabar presented his two first and great movies, "Tesis" and "Abre los Ojos". They were brilliant movies with some things in common: A thriller with complicated stories, scenes of great visual impact where weird, impossible things happen and leave the viewer breathless, awaiting for the next surprise, but at the same time with brilliantly resolved screenplay and avoiding the cheap "scary" tricks of bad terror movies. Young and relatively unknown actors are also used in both movies, but they perform great, and the movies last in your memory forever.Some movies have tried to follow this pattern to obtain the same success as Amenabar's. With some good marketing and Amenabar's well rounded work, they have everything to be box-office megahits, and indeed they have been. Some of these movies are "Nadie conoce a Nadie" and "El Arte de Morir". The first one was not bad after all, even though Amenabar's movies were a lot better; but "El Arte de Morir" is really a very VERY bad movie.The story is very typical and seen before a lot of times; a killer goes after a group of friends, who are killed one by one. Nobody knows who he is and even if it's one of the group members, ala "Scream". (I don't think this is a spoiler since it's what the trailer shows). What tries to make the movie special is some weird events that happen along the movie, which are explained in the ending. But overall, it's a move seen a thousand times. However, that doesn't necessary have to be a bad thing. But also the acting is just horrible (Only María Estevez does an acceptable job and Fele Martinez is disappointing after much better performances in Tesis and Abre los Ojos), the story is quite uninteresting and the ending is plain dull and implausible. Some scenes are absurd, they are often placed in moments of the movie where they do not belong and the killings are... well, boring. Some key factors of the movie are overlooked (Nacho's paintings influenced by El Bosco) and almost everything is undeveloped.All in all, a really bad movie that will make a lot of money thanks to a good marketing campaign, a nice trailer and the hope of seeing another great "Abre los Ojos". But stop dreaming. It is not. We will have to wait for Amenabar's next movie for that.