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I have been
watching more and more horror movies on Netflix. I was doing this in preparation for a 30-day
blog challenge for October which would be horror themed because I am a hack and
will do things with seasonal synchronicity to drive appeal. However, I got a real job and have serious
doubt that I will bother with a full complement of 30 entries next month
because I have the ability to prioritize things.
To make use
of the brain space I would have otherwise wasted by watching these movies I am
instead going to do a couple quick reviews.
Yesterday I wrote about the movies that should be avoided, today I move
onto the movies that are good enough to watch but I could not imagine them
being on anyone’s list of favorites.
---WATCHABLE---
“A Dark Song”
(2016)
Runtime: 100 minutes
Director: Liam Gavin
Writer: Liam Gavin
This is a
pretty simple premise for a movie, a woman hires some neckbeard wizard to help
her perform a demonic ritual to contact her dead child. As the ritual goes thru its various phases
reality starts to break down around them, with mysterious behavior by animals,
flowers appearing, and voices in the dark of the night. Along the way, she comes to grips with her
inner demons and ultimately communes with her better angels.
If you have
seen “Jacob’s Ladder”, that is the better version of this premise, as the
protagonist’s worldview deteriorates with demons and strange happenings. If you want more of that premise but with fewer
characters, locations, set pieces, and it being generally less scary “A Dark
Song” will kill some time.
My biggest
complaint was the character of the neckbeard wizard who alternates between
nasty, perverted, mean, and jocular to the point where he comes off unevenly
written. He is too unlikable, and they
could have made the movie with an actor and writing that would pull more
sympathy from my stony heart.
“Death
Note” (2017)
Runtime: 101 minutes
Director: Adam Wingard
Writer: Charley Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides
I feel
obligated to defend this movie because there is a never-ending chain of weebos
clamoring to point out how this is some kind of abomination. It isn’t that bad. In fact, I prefer it to the source material.
If you
don’t know, this is the latest adaptation of a Japanese work to be made into a
live action presentation in the United States.
The plot concerns a lesser death god named Ryuk (pronounced Ree-youk)
who gives his magical notebook to a guy named Light, anyone whose name is
written in the book dies, so Light sets out to kill as many evil people as
possible, the number of inexplicable deaths draws the attentions of the world’s
greatest detective, who goes by the pseudonym “L”.
Ultimately
Light becomes consumed with his own power and starts killing innocent people
robbing him of any sympathy, while L is (to me) a Mary Sue character who’s
bullshit detective work bumbles into the correct solution and he is hailed as a
genius by dipshits in the audience who identify with his bizarre behavior
instead of seeing it as a learning disability that holds him back (much like
Sherlock Holmes or Doctor House, L is an asshole wish fulfillment character,
someone so good at their job they can treat everyone around them like trash and
get away with it).
The
original “Death Note” was (to me) bogged down in its own bullshit rules about
how the magical killer notebook worked and was kind of a chore to watch.
This
version does not focus on those rules and is more about characters being given
the power to kill and seeing what they do with it (I am sure some fans of the
anime will semantic me, that is the plot of the anime, but what I am saying is
that what the anime was ABOUT; the emphasis of the show was the clever
manipulations of the rules and the mind games and deductions surrounding those
manipulations, the characters were just vessels for that).
This movie
has, ironically, the exact same issues that the original anime has. The super detective L has intuitive leaps and
lines of reasoning that simply do not track.
I know fans of the original anime like to think that L is some kind of
genius, but honestly his conclusions are just as contrived there as they are
here, they just have more time to BS an explanation for them in the series, and
those explanations do not hold up to scrutiny.
Since the
Netflix movie is about characters who happen to be using a magical book, rather
than the anime which is firmly about BS-magical-book-murder with the
character's existing as a way to play with rules I am able to enjoy the
dynamic/conflict of this movie without having to sit thru long explanations of
how smart L and Light are which is the constant focus of the anime.
It is a
matter of emphasis.
This is by
no means perfect. I think that it should
have been a 6-episode series rather than the compacted narrative we got. I think that more time being spent of the fun
gory deaths, psycho-romance, actual detective work (can we please clean up the
messy “genius” of L), and… yes, some more looks at the rules and how to use
them, would have made the story better overall.
As a whole I think this movie works just fine, truncated as it is.
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