5/10
sometimes 5 senses are not enough
3 December 2013
Warning: Spoilers
This movie contradicts its own premise in a way. The short vignette format works very well for horror, maybe because we don't really want to stay in those designed to be unpleasant environs for way too long. Everyone can remember being exhausted by some bloody and horrific film going on and on, like a nightmare we'd much rather just wake up from. Once we meet the good guys and the bad guys and the severed heads start flying, we get the idea pretty quick. The great old Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock TV shows both used only very short tales that were just long enough, they led us into and back out again of an chilling or startling worldview in a way that was just complete enough to be satisfying and never too much to be dull, like a great restaurant that brings just enough to your plate, but not piled on with a ladle. The problem with this effort is that the brevity is actually too brief. It suggests a writer's laziness instead of a skilled and intuitive conciseness. After each segment we are surprised by the fade out and ask, "Wait. Is that all?" This is especially true of the middle film about a clever blind boy, we just barely meet him and he takes his leave, and he is an intriguing enough character that we would love to get to know him more. The 5 senses motif is really just a pose of course, like a writer's class exercise, it offers nothing substantial to increase interest and every storyline is pretty much unoriginal and forgettable except the final one about a song that kills people. That is just bizarre enough to leave a permanent mark. One cute trick the filmmakers use is to recycle the actors, proper names and places in unexpected ways in different stories so that we get to have fun keeping track and see who pops up again. I kept expecting some of them to wink at the camera and say "Hey! Remember me"? I would be happy to wave back.
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