Just watched it. I have no pleasure in watching people get tortured. This was more thoughtful than tripe like Saw but still in the end largely the same. After about ten minutes the creepyness wore off and I was just waiting for the end, nothing really happened over the course of the movie other than movement towards a foregone conclusion aided by characters that were almost entirely passive.
Edit: I've heard people say the point of this movie is to get you to ask yourself "why am I watching this?" In my case the answer was "I'm not" because I fast-forwarded through most of it.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2009, 11:43:15 PM by Margalis »
vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
I haven't seen the Naomi Watts version, but the original was great. It predated Saw and Hostel by quite a few years so its long before torture porn became blase. It was really quite shocking at the time.
The Watts version is basically the same film and by the same guy.
I can appreciate what the movie was trying to do and unlike ostensibly similar movies I don't get the impression that the director hated his characters and enjoyed torturing them for the pleasure of the audience. But I still hated it and thought it was far too long. The scene where the two guys politely refuse to leave the house was the strongest scene in the movie by far, after that it mined the same territory for diminishing returns.
vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
Yeah, I shut it off after about a hour. Basically after the kid got ganked and the parents were just sitting there crying with the camera panned out for like 10 fucking minutes. It's uncomfortable to watch, which I think is what the director was going for. But it's not entertaining or enlightening. It's just uncomfortable. I asked myself the question "Why am I watching?" and decided I didn't have any good reason to.
Author
