Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies

Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies

by Fullofkittens 11/20/2004, 9:16pm PST

Bill Dungsroman wrote:

Prior to seeing this film (or really, the preview of the orginal when Erik linked to it on Qt3), I hadn't realized that Japan fetishizes children and young girls because they are actually very scared of them, especially when they open their mouths and/or make clicky sounds.

I didn't realize it was that they were scared of them so much as that Westerners are allegedly afraid of Japanese kids and girls. But now that you mention it, I saw The Eye a few weeks ago and that was the same exact thing. In fact, The Grudge was almost exactly The Eye + Ringu - The Sixth Sense. Ooh, scary Japanese kid! BLAGLAGLAGLAGL.

The opening scene is good but annoyingly mysterious, forcing you to shelve it and wait for a moment when the film finally links it up, not all that deftly. Just Here's the reason that happened in the first scene, okee? Still, not so bad. The narrative does a lot of time sequence shifts anyway. What the Hell is wrong with grandma? (five minutes pass, the film jumps to a day or two earlier) Oh.

Are you talking about the Bill Pullman thing? I thought that was retarded. =(

The Pullman deal was really indicative of the biggest problem with the movie: it has this Pulp Fiction-esque nonlinear time structure that doesn't add anything to the story besides making it more MYSTERYLIKE, but I was basically on board with it, was understanding it, until late in the movie, not only are the scense out of sequence, the characters for other parts of the movie are now seeing the flashbacks, like they're ghostly reenactments. Okay, Mr. Jap Director, you can have nonconsecutive scenes in the movie or you can have ghostly reenactments. Not both. Too easy to make a joke about at what should have been the scariest part.

On the plus side, they really did a good job of playing up how scary Japanese girls and kids are. Scary! Also, the House On Haunted Hill glitchy cutting during the last instance of the ghost girl was really creepy looking and visually frightening.

That's basically my assessment of the whole movie: it was scary-looking but not scary. Or good.

FoK

The Grudge. Scary, and then not. by Bill Dungsroman 11/13/2004, 8:15pm PST NEW

Yes. Actually, the 3 or 4 previous versions/prequels/sequels. by Lizard_King 11/14/2004, 5:16pm PST NEW

Saw this too. by Fullofkittens 11/20/2004, 9:16pm PST NEW