The set-up is great, plenty of potential: a remote drilling rig in the Sahara, and the theme of digging nine miles, all the way down to Hell itself - plus a succubus as the icing on the cake. Great, huh?
Nope. Turns out there is no Hell, only the imaginary kind of "personal hell", i.e. The boring cop-out sort that's so much less interesting than the real Hell (which extremely rarely gets shown in horror movies, because film-makers are so frightened of failure). No succubus either. Apparently, the expedition members were all killed by their own hallucinations, caused by a strong toxic gas. They offed each other basically. So lame...
Imagine if "The Thing" had ended with a "there was no alien" because "a toxic gas made everyone go nuts". Eff off, movie.
Even worse, the movie lies to us around 100 times, not exaggerating, and doesn't stop lying until the bitter end, until a few minutes before the credits start rolling. I don't recall a movie this wishy-washy, this may be the most indecisive mystery ever. The writer alternates between "it's real hell" and "it's all a hallucination" for almost an hour. It's literally a seesaw:
She is an evil succubus.nShe isn't. Yes, she is. No, she isn't. Yup, she is one after all. No, she's not.
This is the whole movie. It's literally all like this.
This goes on for far longer than is acceptable, advisable or tolerable. Eventually it just gets almost laughable, and by that point I just wasn't that interested anymore because by the end I'd lost trust in the director who'd cried "wolf" way too often. Trick me once, fine: you're allowed to do that. Trick me twice or thrice: OK, forgivable, as long as the end-product works. Trick me 100 times and you can eff off.
It is absurd that JC - a woman - is the only survivor found by Jack. Surrounded by dangerous, psychotic men, she should have been easy prey, and an early victim of the insanity and mayhem that took over the drilling place. Her demeanor upon being discovered by Jack is too calm and collected, considering everything that went down. The director did EVERYTHING to make her suspicious and an obvious candidate for succubus, by manipulating and lying. Then he makes her behave like a human. Then she's back to being demonic. Then it's suggested "well, Jack is inhaling a toxic gas" which means that EVERY single scene could be a deception by the director. Then JC admits to "pretending - doing whatever it took to play along and stay safe". What a load of...
Hell, if I can't trust ANY of what's being shown on the screen then what story is there to follow? The director went overboard, forgot some basics to story-telling hence messed up the plot by making it ultra-convoluted. Or not so much the plot itself but the truth. He wanted to play games with the audience, thinking that film-making is not much else aside from deception. But there's more to film-making than treating the audience as cretins.
Then there's that nonsense about no armed rescue team being available for a while. A rather weak, unconvincing plot-device. Morons may fall for it, but convincing me is much tougher.
The movie completely relies on just two actors throughout. Neither of them are good enough though. He is too frantic, not convincing enough, and she'd been too badly instructed by the director who made her send inconsistent, mixed signals.
Nope. Turns out there is no Hell, only the imaginary kind of "personal hell", i.e. The boring cop-out sort that's so much less interesting than the real Hell (which extremely rarely gets shown in horror movies, because film-makers are so frightened of failure). No succubus either. Apparently, the expedition members were all killed by their own hallucinations, caused by a strong toxic gas. They offed each other basically. So lame...
Imagine if "The Thing" had ended with a "there was no alien" because "a toxic gas made everyone go nuts". Eff off, movie.
Even worse, the movie lies to us around 100 times, not exaggerating, and doesn't stop lying until the bitter end, until a few minutes before the credits start rolling. I don't recall a movie this wishy-washy, this may be the most indecisive mystery ever. The writer alternates between "it's real hell" and "it's all a hallucination" for almost an hour. It's literally a seesaw:
She is an evil succubus.nShe isn't. Yes, she is. No, she isn't. Yup, she is one after all. No, she's not.
This is the whole movie. It's literally all like this.
This goes on for far longer than is acceptable, advisable or tolerable. Eventually it just gets almost laughable, and by that point I just wasn't that interested anymore because by the end I'd lost trust in the director who'd cried "wolf" way too often. Trick me once, fine: you're allowed to do that. Trick me twice or thrice: OK, forgivable, as long as the end-product works. Trick me 100 times and you can eff off.
It is absurd that JC - a woman - is the only survivor found by Jack. Surrounded by dangerous, psychotic men, she should have been easy prey, and an early victim of the insanity and mayhem that took over the drilling place. Her demeanor upon being discovered by Jack is too calm and collected, considering everything that went down. The director did EVERYTHING to make her suspicious and an obvious candidate for succubus, by manipulating and lying. Then he makes her behave like a human. Then she's back to being demonic. Then it's suggested "well, Jack is inhaling a toxic gas" which means that EVERY single scene could be a deception by the director. Then JC admits to "pretending - doing whatever it took to play along and stay safe". What a load of...
Hell, if I can't trust ANY of what's being shown on the screen then what story is there to follow? The director went overboard, forgot some basics to story-telling hence messed up the plot by making it ultra-convoluted. Or not so much the plot itself but the truth. He wanted to play games with the audience, thinking that film-making is not much else aside from deception. But there's more to film-making than treating the audience as cretins.
Then there's that nonsense about no armed rescue team being available for a while. A rather weak, unconvincing plot-device. Morons may fall for it, but convincing me is much tougher.
The movie completely relies on just two actors throughout. Neither of them are good enough though. He is too frantic, not convincing enough, and she'd been too badly instructed by the director who made her send inconsistent, mixed signals.