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edwyyn
Reviews
Altar (2014)
A hoot
Well, the usual mix - so boring I could weep. A big old house, an inquisitive woman, two standard-issue kids, stupid adults who - as in all horror movies - haven't the sense to get out when they can. Some old loony who believes in ghosts, spirits or whatever, and has a ludicrous incantation or ritual which of course doesn't work or that would be the end of the movie. And I have always found, as here, that people running a lot is an excellent sign of a bad movie. Unless, of course, it's a comedy and, in fact, the sequence of a ghost chasing one of the characters round the grounds is a hoot. Perhaps the whole thing is a satire on horror movies. If so, it's a good try.
The Babadook (2014)
Sad crazies
It reminds me a little of 'The Turn of the Screw' in being essentially about a neurotic woman who finally tips over into frank psychosis. Yes, the boy is crazy too, but I would also be crazy if I had a mother lkke that. To be at all credible, the mother should at least have some lucid moments, but she is permanently dishevelled and shrieking-mad.
Otherwise, the whole thing is simply ludicrous. I burst out laughing at the scene where the mother's head popped up above the counterpane, then popped back when she saw the nasty.
And as for the last few minutes, I couldn't figure out what was going on, and couldn't make any sense of the ending. Some-kind of mind-game, perhaps, but I couldn't cope. Maybe I am the third crazy. Maybe that's the whole point.
The Scarlet Claw (1944)
Stuck in a bog?
I refer to the 'stuck in a bog' review. Naive viewers like this often misunderstand the characters of Holmes and Watson. The latter may appear to be a 'buffoon', but this is his ploy to disarm suspicion, as a result of which he is often able to gather more information than the hatchet-faced and somewhat alarming Holmes.
Mind Games (1989)
Clones
A cracking thriller, but awful casting. The boy is great, and acts superbly - but the main problem is that the two male characters look almost exactly alike (both off the standard issue handsome-male-actor shelf), so that it was often difficult to know which of the two one was looking at. Some thought should have been given to this. And the female lead was (visually at least) another 'blonde-film-star' clone. And would parents in real life have let their small son go overnight camping in the forest with a man they had just met? Otherwise, a good watch.
The Awakening (2011)
Second-hand goods
I am not very clued-up about movies, and haven't seen most of the films referred to by other reviewers here. But from my perspective, this is largely a version of The Turn of the Screw, with all the ingredients - a neurotic heroine deeply in love with a man she has just met, a large old house with children under ghostly influences, a middle-aged housekeeper full of foreboding who knows more than she is telling, a brutal gamekeeper, and a final confrontation between the heroine and a boy ending in death. And the thing seems to abound with cliches common to supernatural movies - a young woman with big eyes walking around endlessly, staring at everything, a ball bouncing downstairs - and where have I already heard the line, 'There are no children here - just us.'
With all this, entertaining enough - though so many lines were mumbled or submerged in musak, making the already complex pay-off difficult to read. I enjoyed it (slightly), and loved the period visuals, but won't watch it again.