Reviews

I am very disappointed at Fairuza Balk for being in this episode. Although I haven't seen all the episodes of Masters Of Horror yet, this one is the one I've liked the least so far, mainly because I find it empty of serious plot elements, but full of gratuitous violence. The story is very lacking, and although I appreciate the main idea of this series of horror made for TV films, the duration of the episodes seems to be a real problem not just for viewers but also for directors and screenwriters who have to create a "scary" or gory film that lasts around 50 minutes. What they will be tempted to do, and do here, is to build their films on gratuitous and senseless violence. After the first 15 minutes of this one, when both the trucker and the hunter are definitely presented as being moronic killers and sick in the head, what is there to expect? Nothing else happens than an increasing build-up of violence, which not only is not scary, but even bores you to death because it's so uninteresting and there's really nothing at stake worth caring for. Ugly to watch, too, which is almost true for all the episodes. The cinematography seems inexistent, the music is crap. It's just north-American TV at its worst.

Guillermo Del Toro shows an incredible amount of passion for his job. In interviews, in festivals, it is undeniable that this man adores making films, from one end of the creative process to another, and has tremendous energy and honesty for the activity. Nevertheless, there is something that doesn't function in his films, and as heartbreaking as it is to see someone with ideas and talent fail, this film isn't an exception and has a few weak points as well as his other ones. For some reasons explained further, it isn't even a "true" fantasy film. I have to stress upon how wonderful and magnificent the imagery - not just of this film but of all his films - is. Man-like creatures, caves, labyrinths, statues, puzzles, everything that contributed over the years to make Del Toro's imagery makes him a very powerful visual director, which times like these are in desperate lack of. The visions he projects onto the screen make him no less than a visionary. The thing that fails to give his film(s) the grandeur they need, though, seems to be always the same element: character depth / psychological analysis of his characters / the way the characters and their personalities blend into the rest of the film. Maybe we can attribute it to Del Toro having more patience to polish the sequences with special effects than the ones with actors, but in particular in this film, the characters seem to have no depth at all, they are grounded to feel one emotion at a time. Ofelia in the film is shown owning and reading books, but her relation to these books, what they mean to her, what they bring her, this relation is never shown or explained, we have to go by a stereotype and "assume" for ourselves that she has a wild imagination. The mother of Ofelia is also a faulty character of the story, we the audience have to fill a gap, and imagine for ourselves why shy would be attracted by Vidal, what brings her to be forced to stay with a monster like Vidal as opposed to remaining a single mother, etc... Vidal himself is very quickly presented: we know his lineage was military and that his father let him have his watch... not much of an emotional background for a man who tortures and kills with no hesitation! We know nothing of Vidal as a child, we only have this one-dimension, Manichean character. The list goes on, and none of the characters - Mercedes and Pablo, the doctor, etc, are presented or explained to the viewer. The same could be said about the elements of the illusory world. Usually, though, fantasy/horror films don't need any explanations (see Edward Scissorhands, Alien, Legend...), but this one would need to have some, and this is probably due to the state of psychological confusion of the characters (or, should I say, their irrationality). Ofelia, throughout the film, seems to live in constant fear of the tyrant Vidal, yet finds enough time and solace to go on imaginary journeys at night, and light-heartedly do anything the faun asks her, without even questioning or wondering where it will lead her. Mercedes, when given the opportunity to gut Vidal and be finished with him, leaves him alive half-way. And the doctor itself, whose side on the events is never clear, never poisons Vidal or puts himself in the way when given opportunities. Is Guillermo Del Toro cold? We might wonder. He has absolutely no scruples when he tries to shock the audience with violence towards nice characters, with monsters, with blood. Yet when his overall goal is to make a fantasy film, he remains a little bit too polite and shy to really break into the genre. To me, a "real" fantasy film would have had the imaginary break in the "reality". Yet Vidal doesn't see the faun, the faun doesn't save anyone or scares Vidal. Reality remains reality and fantasy remains inside the heads. The imaginary world in itself seemed a bit poor because of that, because of the film not really being a fantasy film, keeping the fantasy inside the head of its protagonist and reducing the spectrum of illusions (which are never directly opposed to the "realist" world). Overall, the film shows great academicism, not just by politely keeping the imaginary and the reality separated, but also by the decisions of the film-makers (the editing is gentle when it should be a bit punchier, the camera moves are scarce, the music is incredibly lame and boring, the camera angles are overall inexistent, etc).

I have no idea whether Del Toro will or will not provide better character depth and psychological progression in his next films, but it flaws the films he has made so far. Yes, there is a beautiful message, we've heard it before, of how monsters can be monsters on the inside and humans on the outside, while some monsters look like monsters and aren't all that bad after all. But until the characters and the story have a real depth and meaning to the audience, none of all the fantasy, violence or special effects will mean anything. The blunt reality as it is shown here, carries so much depression in it that the message of poetic escapism doesn't function in the end. The task is difficult to propel kids in wartime eras, it is even more difficult when fantasy takes part in it. Del Toro's next films will, hopefully, dig deeper into its characters.

Here's yet another awful set of (badly) moving images from Diss-ney.

Actors: they don't act. It's shocking how little dramatic direction they got, how flat and emotionless their acting is. Main reason that will make you forget the film 10 minutes after you're out: they just can't act. The kids weren't even cast to look alike (they're supposed to be siblings!). Tilda Swinton, very fine actress most of the time, shouts and acts with grandioso gestures as if she thinks she's in a Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter scale epic... which it isn't.

Director: he doesn't direct either. You'd think there would be interesting camera angles, intelligent editing, mysterious travelings into the forest? No. The cinematography is awful, brightness always makes everything so obvious and plain that all sense of mystery disappears instantly, the sets are almost over-lit sometimes. The camera surely remained locked on its tripod during the whole shoot. It does move a tiny bit during a sleigh chase sequence, only sequence in which something really happens ("happen" might not be the word), and it instantly qualifies as the worst chase sequence in the history of cinema. The action is reduced to some running scared, never gets any better. Even the "war" scene (yes, I know, there aren't supposed to be "war scenes" in films for kids... don't ask me) is disgustingly still and heavily-directed.

Wardrobe design: absolutely horribly disgusting design, the ugliest and stupidest designs for clothes I've seen in long. Whenever the actors wore a different outfit, I could barely restrain myself from laughing because it was even stupider than the previous one. Hence the Witch with her "ice" hat, hilarious it's so ugly.

Computer graphics: the worst I've ever seen. The beavers look like two obese humans, the fox looks like anything BUT a fox, and the LION... oh my, the lion is the worst piece of computer graphics I have ever seen in my life. Anything animatronic would have looked more realistic than this, a man in a lion suit would look more realistic than what they did here, hell, they should even have used a real lion, but this lion is absolutely rotten computer graphics, and makes Godzilla look like a masterpiece of realism and good taste. But you know, nowadays, everything HAS to be computer graphics, n'est-ce pas? Even if it's the phoniest visuals ever seen, they're still going to do it and not question themselves a single second.

The plot: I haven't read the books, I have no interest in religion, Christianity or paganism, and yet when in a kid's film Santa Claus shows up distributing magic whistles, swords, potions and what not, I really can't help wondering why I paid to be watching a film with such stupid ideas. Or maybe the film's target is kids who are yet to be taught that consumerism and bigotry are not the only two ways to see the world. It doesn't go anywhere. The Witch can freeze people, but Aslan can make them live again. You can be wounded, but the magic juice heals your wound instantly. The lion dies, yet the magic stone table gives him his life back. It's not going a-ny-where.

Production design: as cheap and uninventive as the rest of the visuals. The snow looks fake, every supposedly "cold" area depicted in the film is blatantly shot on a sound-stage (they don't even try to add some steam, mist, or anything, when someone talks in the middle of the snow-filled forest, the girls don't sneeze while all they're wearing is stockings and a skirt, etc). Nothing in the atmosphere of the film remotely compares to such fantasy masterpieces as "Legend" (dwarves & unicorns) or "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" (little girl lost far from home in fantasy world), which were made long before computer graphics and with a lot less money. But with plenty ideas.

Make up effects: bad bad bad bad bad. Once again, totally uninventive, very very cheap-looking, ugly to look at. Just plain ugly.

Cohesion: a lion with no lips saying the word "past". Kids living during World War II who need to fight on horses and with swords to defeat a Witch surrounded by cyclops (why don't they just go out of the closet and go get a good old tommy gun somewhere to get rid of the filthy stinky one-legged scum?). There is NO cohesion. But maybe that's from the books themselves.

To sum up, I'd just say "phoney". Phoney acting, phoney snow, phoney computer graphics, phoney animals, phoney everything, this is the state of the art of phoney. Even if it was made-for-TV, or straight to video, it would be a phoney TV movie. When the film was over and the atrocious song started to play (awful song, really), I hadn't felt like I went on a trip anywhere, I just felt like I was stuck at the bottom of a closet for two hours, talk about escaping! Some people say that the film has a Christian content. The only message I could "read" through the film was that "inside the closet" was better than "out". I'd love to know if it's a Christian message as well?

It is very important that I say that the gratuitous violence, the various occurrences of plain hatred, resent, graphic violence or bodily harm and purposeless humiliation or torture towards friendly characters of the story make this film highly unsuitable for kids under 15 or 16. Disney and the rating associations probably had to work hand-in-hand to get a PG, but the kids that cried and sobbed in the theater when I went and saw the film, I'm sure they didn't hear that.

This film is one of the most beautiful films ever... Visually, the idea of having a red balloon fly through the gray-filled landscapes of the long-lost neighborhood of Belleville is such a magnificent visual element that it will make some viewers' lower jaw drop. The symbolic story, along with the elements into which it unfolds into a dramatic and lyric masterpiece, are as simple and therefore as stunning as the visual thematic of the film. I have seen this film again a few months ago, and was amazed at how well it ages. I presume it has to do with the fact that the film's central topic is the journey of this boy, his joys and sorrows, his hopes and disappointments, friendships and conflicts, or just his imaginary world. But I would also bet that the unmatched simplicity of the plot, the mesmerizing color tones of the film and the cinematography that deserves it are equally important in what makes it universal and a must-see for every child in the world.

I don't really know whether Cabin Fever is supposed to be a joke or a film... But as far as I know, it's much closer to being a joke than anything else. A few years ago, the community of horror film makers decided to take a new step and make fun of the genre, thus giving birth to the Scream series. A list was given in Scream, of all the stupid things horror film characters will do that are predictable, and the characters in Scream ended up doing exactly the same things, which added a lot of humor and irony to this analysis of the genre, and led to hope that horror films from now on would show a bit different, either full of irony towards the genre, self-derision towards the film itself, or at least different in their dramatic process than all the "old" films that responded to the same tired criteria. In seeing "Cabin Fever", alas, many will see how unoriginal, serious, pretentious, boring and even not scary some supposedly "scary" films are now, even a few years later. First of all, this film lacks originality in a way few others do. It has been said several times, how little imagination horror directors have today, remaking remakes of foreign sequels, but setting the film in a cabin in the woods just doesn't seem to be an "hommage" to anything, it seems to be, simply, a ripoff. Whoever wishes to be surprised by other factors of the film's story won't be: once again, we are dealing with a film whose characters are all in their early twenties, who won't think rationally when placed in front of a problem, will rather argue for hours and pick up fights than try to think and do something about it. Not much excitement there either. For the umpteenth time in a horror film, they are tempted to kiss, make love and just basically have fun, all sorts of things that don't really make them any different than any other horror film victims seen previously. Secondly, this film is unimaginatively serious. Every situation the characters are in, every dialog, every situation in the film is treated with such seriousness that any viewer with a little sense of derision will be relieved when some characters finally end up dying. Nothing in the way the film is directed, written or acted shows any sign of humor or sarcasm, which is quite amazing considering the film is about an invisible-never-heard-of-before-flesh-eating-virus (no laughs please). I won't even bring up the acting, since there are no actors in this film. The cast was most certainly hired for being friends or neighbors with the director. Thirdly, and this will strike whoever has seen a "good" horror film before, the screenplay is absolutely empty. Nothing really happens, some actions are repeated several times ("let's try to get help!"), nothing makes sense, either in the facts, the psychology of the characters, or even the hilariously lame last sequence of the film, which is probably supposed to be funny according to the director and screenwriters. In the end I will only remark that a horror film is supposed to have something scary in it. Gallons of fake blood, whether they are being vomited, squirted from severed limbs or simply dripping from wounds, never were enough to scare an audience. Such major features as screenplay, ideas, and even cruelty are requested for whoever claims to have shot something scary. If I wasn't considering it to be a total failure, I would agree to reckon that the film has one talent: it is filthy disgusting to watch. Yet being grossed-out and being scared are two very different feelings, let it be known.

I would like to encourage anyone a tad curious or interested in seeing this film to check older major horror films first, why not from the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, films made by Wes Craven, Dario Argento, Sam Raimi, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Roger Corman, William Lustig, John Carpenter... it might not only give a good definition of what is scary, or self-derisory horror, but also convince viewers that "new" isn't necessarily "better". A good example related to the film is the few tracks composer Angelo Badalamenti provided for this film, even although they are unmistakably close to his previous compositions, they are below anything he has ever done before.