Three Films Make A Post: A Terrifying Case of SKULL-DUGGERY!

Don't Look Up (2009): Fruit Chan remakes Hideo Nakata's fine early ghost story for the English language market, but replaces subtlety with loud noises and annoying dumbness and Nakata's interesting characters with a director who is seeing dead people in badly acted epileptic fits and the usual clichés that come with that sort of role. Instead of not explaining a lot, Chan churns out some crap about a "gypsy curse" that is supposed to give the film a whiff of the Gothic, but only achieves to bring it further down the road of films nobody needs to see.

It's an embarrassing film from a director who really should know and can do better. A fantastic demonstration how not to make a film about ghosts.

 

Rat Sakti Calon Arang (1985): Despite being blessed with Suzzanna (in an improbable double role as evil black magic queen and her kind-hearted daughter) and Barry Prima in the leads, this Indonesian film isn't really the insane mix of horror, martial arts and fantasy I had expected, but rather a more earnest-minded adaptation of an actual legend, which puts it right outside my area of expertise (and my areas of vaguely knowledgeable dilettantism, too). It's a fine time, though, and - earnest-minded or not - does have moments like the utterly bizarre scene in which Suzzanna fights one of her enemies by power-urinating on him that bridge all cultural barriers for your low-brow needs.

 

BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (2007): Leave it to Uwe Boll to make a movie with a vampire lord Billy the Kid as its big bad that is utterly tedious and boring. I would admire Boll's gift for inciting even the better of his actors to dreadful performances, or his utter inability to learn how to point a camera into the right direction without having it make the wavering motions of a sick donkey, or his talent for finding scriptwriters whose lack of craftsmanship is equal to his own, but then I have seen too many of his movies to feel anything but disgust for him.

There aren't many directors able to make their crap films feel like deliberate insults to anyone stupid enough to lay his or her money down for them. Boll is their master.

 

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