BA_Harrison
Marcus Reed (Reshad Strik), a film-maker troubled by strange visions, travels to Romania to try and make a movie based on a long lost film by legendary '20s director Béla Olt (Eli Roth). Reed's film is hampered by strange accidents on-set: is Marcus losing his mind or is an ancient gypsy curse causing his problems?Don't Look Up is a remake of the 1996 Japanese film Joyû-rei; it is an American/Japanese/South African co-production starring an international cast and directed by Asian film-maker Fruit Chan. No wonder it's a bloody mess. The first half of the film is extremely boring, while the second half makes no sense whatsoever.A couple of gruesome death scenes and frequent clouds of CGI flies do nothing to make this garbage any more bearable. Boring dialogue, terrible acting, horrible editing effects, a set that looks like an old derelict junkyard, an irritating Romanian character who says 'Mr. Marcus' every few seconds: this sorry excuse for a horror film is a total dud from dull start to utterly incomprehensible finish.
gloshpit
(Insert obligatory joke about "Don't look it up")With that out of the way... yes. This looked interesting from the blurb: folk tales and urban legends impinging on modern day filmmakers. Remakes of Asian horror have always been variable quality, from the big budget blockbusters, to the bloodless knockoffs - and ever since the glory days of Ju-on and Ringu, any eastern horror seems to have been considered fair game.There's nothing wrong with the premise, per se: a doomed film shoot has residual psychic leaks and curses that are inflicted on someone wanting to take up the project decades later. Weird things are seen, accidents happen, fair enough. But the execution is lacking more than a firing squad with blank cartridges. The production in general feels like it would be cheap for a TV movie, with some terrible special effects and props. The acting is almost uniformly taken from the "dull surprise" handbook. And the actual storyline?I'm sure it made sense when it was being written. Maybe parts were cut out that were integral to the plot, or to try to make it more mysterious and arty. It didn't work, it just made the entire film a confusing slog. Viewers can get the general ideas, but so many things just come right out of nowhere - demon cancers on people's necks, glowing angel girlfriends who have secretly been dead for months - that more time is spent thinking you missed something than actually watching the movie. Hinting at something in a movie without outright telling, in order to let the viewer draw their own conclusions is admirable, but to just throw in seemingly random scenes or twists just for the sake of it means the conclusions drawn are that the scriptwriter and editor need to be replaced.It's not a total waste of celluloid - some people may enjoy it, by the other reviews some people have. I found it a painful, confusing experience with some parts that could have really played up the creepy aspect (the missing, undeveloped frames for instance) but instead chose to try for bizarre imagery and ridiculously contrived plot devices over substance.
Ben Larson
The formula has been repeated so often you have to wonder why they don't just quit.Take a good Japanese suspense film of the same name, which was directed by Hideo Nakata (The Ring Trilogy), and had a screenplay by Hiroshi Takahashi, who also wrote the screenplays for the Ring Trilogy. and bring in a big time director (Fruit Chan) and someone to adapt the screenplay to add gore instead of suspense (Brian Cox), add some American eye candy (Rachael Murphy), and you have a film that is a pale imitation of the original directed to teens.Forget the eye candy, find the original.
engelofdestruction
I originally picked this movie to watch after reading the plot. It seemed different from most movies so I thought I was seeing something new that would grab my attention. When getting the movie home, I read the reviews on here and saw it was a "bad" horror film. Still, I took my chances.I can see why many do not like this film. There is no definite beginning or end, leaving you to question the purpose of the entire movie. The plot seems to change focus from the movie production to the mental state of the producer.Let it be known, this is NOT a horror movie. There are "intense" images placed in scenes without much thought (i.e. the flashbacks the main character gets). The idea is probably to shock the viewer when they least expect it. The "gore" in the movie is less frightening than taking a stroll through the butcher's shop to pick up dinner. I do not understand how this movie is rated R. It lacks the core elements which would make a movie "R" - gore, language, and nudity. This movie is all about the deteriorating mental state of the "producer" inside the movie, which is fun to watch if you're into that kind of thing. The acting was subpar; I think a high school play crew could act the scenes better than the actors hired for this movie. Overall this movie gets a 3/10. They tried and came up short.
AD
