The kids are excellent and so is the cinematography, Kerr is OK too.
But boy is the script a naive bore, no wonder this hack Capote co-wrote the script, his journalistic writing never had a bone of originality.
And it's all good and well to talk about traumatic experiences, and freudian repression and all sorts of fancy metaphors that people tend to read into films, but the fact of the matter is that the story just isn't there. Nothing happens at all trust me. There's no big revelation, an innuendo here another there, and that's that.
Prissy governess stays in the house with two young kids, she has a few visions of a man and a woman, the head maid tells her the vision is of a man who used to work at the stable or something and who died on the stairs some time ago and the woman in the vision, his lover, committed suicide over this. And then the governess has a few more visions and some confrontations with the kids, before she sends the girl and the maids away, to stay with the little boy, he forces him to say the name of the devil that haunts him, or so she thinks, and the boy dies...big frigging deal.
I like dark and atmospheric type movies of that age, l' anne derrière a Marrienbande is a favourite, but this is one is a miss for sure. So what if people like to speculate about the suggestive plot, in and of itself it's as boring as it could be. It's boring to have kids prance around acting all sinister, the apparitions are boring, and there are no twists. So what if the children were abused, or possessed or whatever, who cares? All these are interesting themes but when they are actually treated not hinted upon in a dead slow pseudo horror flick...
You really can't trust peoples' taste in movies judging by the high rating this has, they are easily impressed by the most vacant stuff (high brow for film buffs, low brow for the rest, but vapid nevertheless) and they miss the subtleties and intelligence of (most of) the truly great pieces of filmaking. But that's just how it is I guess.
But boy is the script a naive bore, no wonder this hack Capote co-wrote the script, his journalistic writing never had a bone of originality.
And it's all good and well to talk about traumatic experiences, and freudian repression and all sorts of fancy metaphors that people tend to read into films, but the fact of the matter is that the story just isn't there. Nothing happens at all trust me. There's no big revelation, an innuendo here another there, and that's that.
Prissy governess stays in the house with two young kids, she has a few visions of a man and a woman, the head maid tells her the vision is of a man who used to work at the stable or something and who died on the stairs some time ago and the woman in the vision, his lover, committed suicide over this. And then the governess has a few more visions and some confrontations with the kids, before she sends the girl and the maids away, to stay with the little boy, he forces him to say the name of the devil that haunts him, or so she thinks, and the boy dies...big frigging deal.
I like dark and atmospheric type movies of that age, l' anne derrière a Marrienbande is a favourite, but this is one is a miss for sure. So what if people like to speculate about the suggestive plot, in and of itself it's as boring as it could be. It's boring to have kids prance around acting all sinister, the apparitions are boring, and there are no twists. So what if the children were abused, or possessed or whatever, who cares? All these are interesting themes but when they are actually treated not hinted upon in a dead slow pseudo horror flick...
You really can't trust peoples' taste in movies judging by the high rating this has, they are easily impressed by the most vacant stuff (high brow for film buffs, low brow for the rest, but vapid nevertheless) and they miss the subtleties and intelligence of (most of) the truly great pieces of filmaking. But that's just how it is I guess.