Linbeymusol
Wonderful character development!
Sexyloutak
Absolutely the worst movie.
CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Raymond Sierra
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
TheRedDeath30
You can go back a hundred years to CABINET OF DR CALIGARI for proof that the horror genre has always flirted with the artistic. However, it seems to me that, in recent years, we're seeing more indie horror directors skirt the traditional narrative structures and offer up a slice of much more artistic horror. From LORDS OF SALEM to A FIELD IN ENGLAND and BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO, the horror aficionado is seeing a wave of movies that are almost an antithesis to big budget pablum like THE PURGE. This love letter to the giallo genre may just push that limit a little too far, though, for most people's tastes. Let's be honest here. I'm a total horror geek. Amongst my "normal friends" I definitely have the strangest taste in cinema. I go to horror cons a few times a year and discuss horror films regularly online. Even in that horror community, my tastes run a little more avant garde than most. So, if this movie is a little too "artsy" for me, I'm not sure I know who the target audience is, though the fact that only 1100 have us have rated this probably speaks to that target audience not being very large.This is a gorgeous, entrancing movie that can really only be taken in small doses. It takes some dedication and resolve to really sit down and plow through all 100 minutes of this European horror film. This is the work of absolute devotees of the giallo movement. These are film makers who have absorbed Fulci, Bava, Argento, Lenzi etc and squeezed those films down to their concentrated essence. One of the worst aspects of most of those movies was always a convoluted plot weighed down by stilted dialog, so the directors remove almost all dialog from this movie. There can't be more than a few dozen lines and if you want to say there's an "A to Z" narrative, I guess there is, but it's only to push along the imagery.That imagery is what this movie is all about. It's like a checklist of archetypal images that every good giallo movie should contain. From the leather gloves to the continual shots of sharp knives puncturing and slashing flesh to the complete obsession with the color red and on down to the various shots of eyeballs through different holes. It's like these directors spent years studying the giallo and reducing it down to its' essential aspects, forgoing anything that wasn't necessary to creating a moving work of art.I, also, love the giallo movement and have sat through many a black- gloved movie that most would have considered to be garbage, so I share this movie's affinity for that genre and the adoration that it's so clearly showing. It's more than a little tedious, though. This would have worked great as an hour long project seen in a dark theater in an art museum. The movie asks a lot of its' audience, though, to stick with it all the way to an ending that not's quite satisfactory and not essential in any way. You could watch any random 20 minutes of this movie and have the same appreciation for it because there's no real story to resolve and no narrative to see to a conclusion.
darkness_visible
Yet another exercise in all-style-no-substance film-studies-friendly/paying-audience-hostile giallo "homage" from Forzani and Cattet. Oh for Pete's sake - come on guys! Amer was one thing, quite interesting at the time, but the value of that film has somehow been retroactively diminished by the release of its identikit successor. Replicating the surface details of the giallo style is easy peasy - anyone can do it - it's the Spaghetti Bolognese of filmmaking. But the point of the original gialli classics was that they were proper functioning movies that would have worked as exciting thrillers even without the stylistic flash. Neither Amer, nor TSCOYBT, have proper plots, and for me, failure to provide an adequate narrative element is an abdication of the filmmaker's primary responsibility. I hope, for Forzani and Cattet's sake, that they are not currently working on another EU-cash-lake-for-art-house-piffle funded giallo homage, because they will be risking losing their credibility forever after, which would be a shame, because I get the impression that they are extremely talented and visionary filmmakers.
Boyd
Yes ... Every scene is beautifully lit and designed ... But there isn't one new idea in this boring piece of junk ... At times you feel like you are watching a car advert ... And frankly an adverts length is about all these two could handle well ... They wouldn't know what to do with a character if their lives depended on it ... And wouldn't know a narrative if it bit them on the bum ... NO ... They do not manage to create an alternative surreal dream narrative, though I expect that it what they would try to claim ... That I'm afraid takes imagination and that isn't something you will find here Now don't misunderstand me ... Each scene is shot meticulously ... And would look perfect ( if somewhat lacking in ideas ) as a coffee table book ... As a film it is a complete, vacuous, failure And I would like to point out to the directors, that endlessly refer to their gialli influences, that these lighting effects actually were mainly used in Sword and Sandal/ Fantasy and Horror films in Italy in the late 50s - mid 60s and really were quite rare in gialli
fabulousrice
Barfing out references in place of a coherent screenplay, the directors of this kitsch turd appear to have been trying to have a good time copycatting Lynch, Argento and Phantom of the Paradise, while masturbating on Alfons Maria Mucha's art, more than trying to make it worth the spectator's while.The untalented and hideous actors, all lookalikes, and looking like the improbable offsprings of Klaus Kinski and Dominique Pinon, minus the talent, just show up on the screen doing various things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, while atrocious camera-work, hard to bear colour schemes and an extremely unpleasant soundtrack attack the viewer in a most unpleasant way. No beauty, no poetry, if not for a couple of scenes that are nicely thought out, but that do not serve an actual cinematographic purpose in the film, more of an onanist visual act.More than leeching off other director's trails, it would be a good thing for the two directors to go to a screenplay class, during which I'm sure one of the topics to come up would be "how to keep the viewer interested". If they don't go to one soon, they could remain amateurs for the rest of their careers but at this point, I'm not sure they have much left to say anyways because they already had so little to begin with.Let's just hope that they will keep to short films: in the grind-house scene, their insufferable aesthetics would be praised if they keep it short, as in title sequences or collective movies.In short, the lesson here is that one does not aim at directing a "cult" movie, it's not a genre, it's the viewers who decide. "Cult" films were usually trying to be interesting or narrative before they were trying to be "cult" films, and that's something we'll hope the directors understand soon.