juillet 08, 2007
review #2
I also reviewed 3 Doctor Who episodes yesterday, but I didn't know what I was talking about so you're not seeing that.
"The Abandoned" is cool, but the twist in the tale (just before the snake eats it) will have you vexed and shaking your fist, and the final voiceover may inspire you to kick summat. Do watch it and let me know if you agree, or whether I am missing something... Oh, gosh, that wasn't my review. Click "continue" to see the official 250 words.
From the psychedelic pulp publications of the 70s to Devil’s Backbone, Spanish horror is an inimitable combination of passion, style and restraint. Even a lapse into self-parody such as Accion Mutante is worth watching, but this self referential irony is precisely what Nacho Cerdà strives to avoid with his feature film debut “The Abandoned”.
Peripatetic heroine Marie is going through a mid-life crisis when she inherits a Russian farmhouse from her birth mother, whom she has never known. Her search for the meaning of life, falling appropriately on the eve of her 42nd birthday, brings her to this derelict structure which draws parallels with Twin Peaks’ “Black Lodge”. Its deliberately obscure setting lies somewhere between Hostel’s Slovakia and Dracula’s Transylvania. As a physical manifestation of Marie’s psyche, when the floorboards of the house split, there comes to pass not only a ghostly family reunion, but a forced reconciliation of ego and shadow.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s influence lends a new vitality to the ubiquitous viridian hues of the 21st century horror film. From brown study and rusted tableau to bursts of verdigris, this is a place where gaming classic Resident Evil 4 meets Breughel. Composer David Kristian’s profoundly effective and original sense of Dies Irae sustains an overindulgent intensity, and the climactic un-destruction of the house is breathtaking. Does the past haunt us, or do we haunt the past?
Heraclitus said, “The soul is its own source of unfolding”, and unfold it does, rashly but beautifully. Let’s see what Cerdà does next.
So the floorboards splitting and that, is it like the cracking of the plaster in Polanski's Repulsion; or have I totally sticked the wrong end of the grasp?
Posted by: Pete Innit at juillet 8, 2007 10:27 AM'Viridian' is a lovely word for good horror movies. Apart from what it means, I mean. This review spins along beautifully. x
Posted by: Mumbrane at juillet 8, 2007 10:32 AMMm hm to Repulsion, except with grown-up twins instead of a dolly bird. The thing is, though, that we don't see the fella go in the cellar, and he won't let his sister go in for a look. I think he met the writer in the cellar because he came out knowing exactly what was going to happen in the last section of the film, and told us, to save time.
Posted by: Rosy at juillet 8, 2007 12:09 PM