gk_chesterton-1 Reviews

The Woman in Black (1989 TV Movie)

I can take it or leave it

[6/10 · 21 September 2005]

I don't know; it just didn't do much for me. I felt it lingered *far* too long on stuff that neither advanced the plot nor truly built the characters or atmosphere. It's not that I can't handle slower, more suggestive movies. I liked "The Innocents", "The Others", "Ringu"... But this was too slow even for me. I will admit that the ending was pretty chilling, though.

Also, the sequence of ghostly sounds was frightening at first, but was repeated so often -in it's entirety- that it lost much of it's impact.

A lot of people seem to love this movie, so you might as well check it out, but my opinion of it falls on the "mediocre" end of the scale.

On Our Own (1988)

Ouch,ouch,ouch

[3 February 2004]

As a child, this movie was one of the many "Family Movies" line films that were forced upon me by my parents. Even back then, I remember thinking that this was a terrible movie, and it only looks worse as an adult.

Sure, it's badly paced, badly acted and all-around boring, but what makes this movie really offensive is the ham-handed way it tries to shove a moral down our throats that isn't upheld by the story itself. Basicly, every illegal thing the kids do, they do because they have no acceptable alternative. Instead of placing the blame where it belongs- on the people who put them in such a desperate situation in the first place- we get an infuriating speech from a Random Granny about how the kids should know better than to Break The Law. Thanks, Betty Crocker.

Parents, please, don't inflict this movie on your kids. I'm never going to get those lost IQ points back, and they won't either.

Black Christmas (1974)

Superior slasher

[4 September 2001]

This movie has been promoted as the inspiration for "Halloween", and there are some similarities, but to tell you the truth, "Black Christmas" has always been so little known that I would be surprised if it influenced "Halloween". I think it's probably more a case of great minds thinking alike.After all, there are only so many ways to do the whole "psycho stalker" thing. That said...

It's a pretty good movie. Not as good as "Halloween", but still admirable. On the plus side, it has beautiful cinematography, an eerie score, a palpably creepy atmosphere, freaking scary obscene phone calls, and good acting. On the minus side, the plot rarely makes much sense, the characters are so poorly developed that the wonderful acting was the only reason I cared about them, and the scares are too obligatory, even if they're so stylistically accomplished that they manage to be tense anyway. I also have to say that I don't think the film had as much emotional resonance as it could have.

Basicly, this is a movie that could easily have been a bonafide classic, if only more attention had been paid to the script before shooting started. As it is, it's a near-miss, but still more than worth watching.