- This movie feels like it’s been out forever and all I’ve been hearing are snippets of how disastrous it is because Peter Jackson thinks he’s Robert Zemeckis and is using Weta Workshop’s amazing technological powers for evil rather than good. The same complaints about heavy reliance on phantasmagorical CGI were made against The Fountain and, like with The Fountain, I feel like those complaints are grossly unfair since neither film is the incoherent visual effects mess I was expecting (and, let’s be honest, kind of looking forward to).
- That said, I’m not really into the supernatural, the fantastic, or the magical when it overlaps with reality. I need these things to be in their own self-contained worlds, although somehow this worked for me in Pan’s Labyrinth. I could also do without ghosts with unfinished business, but since that’s an integral plot point I will learn to live with it.
- YES, MARK WAHLBERG 1970s HAIR. This man was born to be forever cast in movies from this time period. This was pretty much the impetus to see this movie, in case that was in any way unclear. Audrey, you are going to love him in this.
- Buckley is something you name your dog, not your child. Speaking of which, they had a very beautiful golden retriever, in case you couldn’t figure out that they were an average American family who you never expect tragedy to befall.
- I had a bit of a mind-fuck moment when Susan Sarandon was introduced as the grandmother. I suppose she is old enough to be playing grandmothers now, she’s just not that old in my mind. Come on, Stepmom didn’t come out that long ago! She was delightful and fabulous as a clearly irreverent woman, although I’m not sure that alcoholism is terribly funny as a prolongued gag.
- I like Stanley Tucci and he was really, really upsetting in this, holy god. Upsettingly good, of course, but ick he made me want to take a shower and drug myself into a coma just to stop thinking about his character. His elaborate ritual of building makeshift murder houses was really, really disturbing. You know, beyond the disturbingness of everything else he was doing.
- Speaking of his penchant for architecture, I really did quite enjoy the blueprints he’d draw up. I especially liked that he used Staedtler pencils since you don’t have those casually lying around unless you’re at least a drafting hobbyist — or professional murderer, apparently. I think Steve Martin also used those pencils in It’s Complicated, so Meryl Streep’s character should beware.
- Because her sister looked older than her, I was under the impression for most of the movie that Susie was the middle child until they stated otherwise toward the end of the movie.
- I thought it was fitting that Jack had a poster of Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. I thought a lot of the fantasy worldbuilding had a similar quality to that kind of dire German romanticism (woe, we are alone in a vast landscape!) and there was some other symbolism that I can no longer remember that fit in with this.
- I found this pretty suspenseful at times, especially in scenes where you knew what would happen. When Susie was trapped in Mr. Harvey’s underground lair, I felt especially sick since you knew she was definitely not getting out. The following scene where she ends up in Harvey’s bathroom where he’s bathing to rinse off the evidence of his crimes, I definitely wanted to throw up. I watch gratuitous violence all the time, but it’s when you imply intense and isolated acts of violence by showing the disgusting remainders of the crime that actually makes any impact on me as an audience member. Ugh.
- When Harvey coereced Susie into staying in the Underground Funhouse of Eventual Death, it tweaked me when he told her that she had to stay for a “refreshment” (HOW DARE YOU USE COCA-COLA FOR EVIL, MR. HARVEY!) because it was the “polite” thing to do. We socialize girls to be polite in the face of danger, to laugh nervously when made uncomfortable by sexual predators in public spaces, in other words to not react in a way that tells their assailant to step off, and here is Mr. Harvey using that social conditioning to further trap his victim. I thought perhaps I was reading too much into this but then at the very end Harvey offers a young woman a ride late at night and once again uses the politeness card to try to lure her into his vehicle, trying to manipulate her by assuming she’ll have feelings of shame and guilt about being rude to someone trying to offer her a ride. Luckily for the audience (and the girl!), she stands her ground and essentially tells him to screw off.
- I thought it was a pretty crappy ending for Harvey to simply slip off the edge of an elaborately pointy cliff where he had parked his car. The CGI version of Stanley Tucci tumbling and hitting every single sharp rock that he could is the grievous bit of CGI that people should be complaining about. That, and the hilarious wax dummy version of him with his arm bent at an un-godly angle. This is the best we can do? Seriously?
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Buckley IS a name for a dog, not a child so I kept confusing them after the film was over. Stanley Tucci was amazing and if he doesn’t win an Oscar it’s a travesty.I liked his love of architecture too and his pencils because we sold those at GT and I loved them. I was sad about him using coke for evil too! (But I suppose coke does that all by itself in South America).
It was surprisingly suspenseful even though you knew what was going on. I agree about the girls and politeness thing. Good social commentary there. And I think the best scene of the film was when she was in the bathroom because it was not only bloody, muddy and creepy but there was like flecks of her body here and there and it was just revolting. Way more effective than ever showing it between that scene and the cop describing how much blood there was.
I thought the sister was older as well. Also, I didn’t think the girl really had a purpose for haunting everyone with her ghostiness since all she came back for was to kiss her boyfriend/stranger who she tried to date. So basically for me her character had zero point after she died other than to show how much getting murdered sucks. Her sister was totally awesome however. The killer’s creepy ‘hide’ was super creepy too to the point that even Marky Mark, who at that point had accused the entire town of killing his daughter was like oh maybe it’s this creep with the hide across the street!
It was obvious the last roll to be developed would be the one with the killer on it but this is annoying since the box was a mess and not tidied in chrono. order. Oh well.
I hated the dream crap. Eric liked it though. He also pointed out that the den of death in the ground had one major issue: where’d all the dirt go when he dug it out? It’s nowhere to be seen. But whatever.
His death was SO bad. When they were hinting at icicles earlier in the film both Eric and I groaned thinking they’d just peg him in the head with one. So they weren’t THAT obvious but his death was so, so dumb. The movie itself to that point was not great but then when she ignores her body being dumped to kiss the guy and then the killer dies in such a stupid way… wow, movie fail. So like I said, COULD have been a good movie. Just wasn’t.
The roll of film stuff annoyed me because it’s like, if you didn’t want to develop that much film why did you buy her so much all at once? Nice planning, parents.
Good point about the dirt, Eric.
And with the icicle, all I could think of was the mom in A Christmas Story going “Those icicles have been known to kill people!”