Thank you, Internet.
I’m watching Martyrs. For any of you that haven’t heard of it, it’s a 2008 French Horror film. Imagine the suspense/torture aspects of Hard Candy applied to the film High Tension. I guess if you have severe anxiety issues with torture or you just have no patience, this movie would be very hard to stomach. I’m kinda meh over it. Good execution, somewhat-flawed concept. The “villain” (if you can even call her that) is a terrible, terrible actress, so her all-important monologue could have been delivered by a piece of wood more convincingly.
What this film DOES do is illustrate that giving horror movies a budget is like giving them a license to fuck up. This film was made for less than $5 million US. Great makeup, both of the main characters are quite good, good atmosphere. This movie, despite not really scaring me, does a great job at making you feel fucking uncomfortable. It has flaws, but overall, well done. If this had a $20 million US budget, it would likely be shit. Pretentious, overly-artsy shit. You can scare someone with 5 dollars worth of knives and fake blood. Use the budget for (viral) marketing. Infinitely better uses of money out there.
I also recently saw 500 Days of Summer. I had been looking forward to this film for months now. And…if you don’t watch the last 20 minutes, it’s almost perfect. They do manage to cock up a great film with just dumb, trite sunshine bullshit. If/When you see the film, when Tom gets on the bus, imagine the film ends there. Take a mental note of everything that had happened to that point, and just shut it off. Then come back to it later and finish it and tell me it wouldn’t have benefited. If you take one thing away from the film though, it’s this:
“If you meet someone, and they make you happy, that’s good. If you like them because they’re strange and a bit crazy, that’s fine too. But know that down the line, that crazy girl you like? Still going to be crazy until the end of days.”
Requisite lyrics below:
“It was the day that she started knowing
She had a gift that started showing
The Starmaker pulled his strings
He gave her golden wings
But vicious snakes invade her world
With cigarettes and purple pills
Man on a red horse, man on a red Harley
Girl on a mind-trip, lost on the mindway
She commits to a custom bike guy
Over-sexed, rebel of rubber
Tired, punched and numbered
Off with her head said the King of Lightning!
There is an occult explosion taking place in the Western world
Would you like to come along for the ride?”
