Horror Film Review: The Collector (dir by Marcus Dunstan)

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There are a few horror films that I dislike as much as I dislike 2009’s The Collector.

I guess that should be considered fair warning about how this review is going to go.

I’ve only watched this movie two times and, both times, it was as a part of a live tweet group. The first time that I watched it, I absolutely hated it because I found it to be incredibly mean-spirited and lacking in any sort of wit. It just felt like a rip-off of the Saw movies, with a bit of Hostel tossed in. I felt that it was the least imaginative torture show that I had ever watched,

The second time I watched, I know what was coming so my reaction was not quite as viscerally negative as the first time. I still didn’t like the film but I could at least see that there was some craft involved in the making of the film and there were even a few hints of wit at the start of the film. I could even respect the fact that the film stayed true to its dark worldview. The Collector was a truly creepy character, even if his motivations and his techniques made absolutely no sense.

That said, I simply cannot get beyond the death of the cat.

A cat is killed in the film and it’s such a gratuitous and mean-spirited scene that I simply cannot look past it. There was absolutely no reason to kill the cat, beyond wanting to show off that this film was so hardcore that it was even willing to kill cute pets. The way the cat died was sadistic. It was unnecessary and the scene went on forever. Sorry, The Collector. You lost me.

What’s interesting, though, is that it’s not just the cat that dies in the film. At least seven or eight people die over the course of this film. Of the two main, non-villainous characters who are still alive at the end of the film, one only has a future of physical and mental torture to look forward to while the other is going to be psychologically scarred for the rest of their lives. And yet, none of the human death and suffering bothered me as much as the death of the cat. I guess some of that is because the humans were played by recognizable actors and I’ve seen enough behind-the-scenes documentaries to know how all of the gore effects are done. I didn’t particularly enjoy the many scenes of people being tortured but I knew they weren’t really being tortured and that everyone was getting paid. Of course, it also helped that none of the human characters were particularly likable or interesting. The cat, meanwhile, was just an innocent house pet who was killed for absolutely no reason.

And yes, I know they didn’t kill a real cat. Still, it was way too graphic and drawn-out for me.

So, maybe I just don’t like seeing animals suffer in horror movies. But it really didn’t bother me when an attacking dog was killed towards the end of the film so maybe I just like cats.

Anyway, I didn’t like The Collector.

The Things You Find On Netflix: The Loft (dir by Erik Van Looy)

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Loft‘s journey to Neftlix was a long one.

A remake of a Belgian film, The Loft was originally filmed in 2011 and was meant to come out in that year. It was due to be released by Joel Silver’s Dark Castle Entertainment and Warner Bros. However, when Silver had a falling out with Warner Bros and moved his operations over to Universal, he took The Loft with him. And it turned out that Universal was in no hurry to distribute The Loft. After sitting on the film for three years, Universal announced that they would release it in August of 2014 but, at the last minute, they changed their mind and instead released the horror film As Above, So Below in the spot that was originally set aside for The Loft. Dark Castle then dropped the film, leaving The Loft in limbo until Open Road Pictures picked up the distribution rights and gave it a limited release in January of 2015. The critics hated it, audiences were indifferent, and The Loft quickly vanished from theaters. It’s now available on Netflix.

And, having watched the film, I can understand why the studios weren’t exactly enthused about it. It’s not the type of film that works on the big screen. The characters are too unlikable. The plot is an unstable combination of silliness and melodrama. The big twists are more likely to inspire groans than cheers. It’s just not the type of film that you want to spend too much money on.

And yet, it’s the perfect film for Netflix. What may seem over-the-top and annoying when viewed in a public theater becomes a lot more entertaining when viewed in the privacy on your own home. The Loft is a film that works best if you don’t spend too much time thinking about how little sense it all makes. It’s the perfect film to watch while you’re doing something else.

And if that sounds like faint praise, it’s not. I thoroughly enjoyed The Loft without once mistaking it for being a “good” film. Instead, it’s an over-the-top melodrama, with all that entails. It’s ludicrous, it’s silly, and — when taken on its own terms — it’s also a lot of fun.

The film is about five friends and the loft to which they all have a key. All five of the friends are married and all five of them have secrets. Vincent (Karl Urban) is the unofficial leader of this group of friends, an architect who is also a compulsive cheater. Luke (Wentworth Miller) is a nervous guy who appears to worship Vincent. Marty (Eric Stonestreet) is an alcoholic who always manages to say the wrong thing. Chris (James Marsden) is a psychiatrist who often seems to feel that he’s morally superior to his other friends. And Phillip (Mattias Schoenarts) is Chris’s half-brother, a mentally unstable and violent guy who snorts cocaine and may have incestuous feelings towards his younger sister.

The five men use the loft to cheat on their wives. The men are all confident that only they know about the existence of the loft and that they are the only ones who have a key. So, naturally enough, they are all a little shocked when a woman turns up dead in the loft. As the men gather in the loft, they debate who killed her and we get numerous flashbacks to how this all came to be.

Of course, it all leads to many secrets being revealed. This is one of those films that simply cannot stop with one plot twist. Instead, every twist leads to another twist until eventually, it becomes nearly impossible to keep up with who knows what. In fact, the film features so many twists that it all quickly gets a bit silly. But, at the same time, it’s also undeniably entertaining. Strangely enough, the fact that it doesn’t make much sense only add to the film’s melodramatic charm.

As for the five men — well, none of them are particularly likable but at least they’re all interesting to watch. Wentworth Miller is properly strange, Matthias Schoenarts is properly sleazy, and Eric Stonestreet is properly pathetic. James Marsden often seems wasted in mainstream films (like Straw Dogs and The Butler) but he’s actually very charming when he appears in B-movies like this one and Walk of Shame. And finally, you’ve got Karl Urban, doing great work and turning Vincent into the epitome of every middle-aged guy who has ever tried to flirt with me while I was waiting at a red light.

The Loft may not have got much respect when it was released into theaters but it’s entertaining enough for Netflix.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdVMCx3J6jo

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #89: Legends of the Fall (dir by Ed Zwick)

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I first started to watch the 1994 film Legends of the Fall on Encore, I was a little bit concerned when I discovered that it was directed by Ed Zwick. After all, Zwick also directed Love and Other Drugs, which is one of the worst and most insulting films of all time. In fact, I nearly stopped watching when I saw Zwick’s name. But, largely because I want to finish up this series of melodramatic film reviews at some point in the near future, I decided to go ahead and watch the film.

And it turned out that Legends of the Fall is not a bad film. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I had seen it in a movie theater as opposed to on television but, considering that it was directed by Ed Zwick, Legends of the Fall is definitely watchable. If nothing else, it’s better than Love and Other Drugs.

Legends of the Fall tells the story of the Ludlows, a family that lives on a Montana ranch at the start of the 2oth Century. Starting with the final days of the Indian wars and proceeding through World War I and prohibition, Legends of the Fall covers a lot of historical events but does so in a very Hollywood way, which is to say that all of the main characters dress like they’re from the past but they all have very modern social attitudes. In this case, Col. William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) may be a wealthy white military veteran but he’s also totally pro-Native American. And, of course, all the local Native Americans love him, despite the fact that he’s a representative of the institutions that have destroyed their way of life.

Anyway, Col. Ludlow has three sons. The oldest, Alfred (Aidan Quinn), is serious and responsible. The youngest, Samuel (Henry Thomas), is naive and idealistic. And the middle child is Tristan (Brad Pitt), who is wild and rebellious and looks like Brad Pitt. You have to wonder how the same gene pool could produce both Aidan Quinn and Brad Pitt.

As the film begins, Samuel has returned from studying at Harvard. With him is his fiancée, Susannah (Julia Ormond, who has really pretty hair in this movie). Though she loves Samuel, Susannah finds herself attracted to Tristan, largely because Tristan looks like Brad Pitt. Tristan is also attracted to Susannah but he would never betray his younger brother. In fact, when Samuel announces that he’s enlisted in the Canadian army so that he can fight in World War I, Tristan and Alfred soon do the exact same thing.

War is Hell, which is something that Samuel discovers when he’s gunned down by a bunch of German soldiers. Tristan responds by cutting Samuel’s heart out of his body and sending it back to Montana. He then proceeds to go a little crazy and when we next see Tristan, he’s uniform is decorated with the scalps of dead Germans.

Meanwhile, Alfred has been wounded in battle and is sent back to Montana. Eventually, he ends up married to Susannah. And then Tristan comes back home and…

Well, a lot of stuff happens after Tristan returns. In fact, you could even argue that too much happens. Zwick obviously set out to try to make Legends of the Fall into an old school Hollywood epic but far too often, it seems like he’s mostly just copying scenes from other films. There’s a hollowness at the center of Legends of the Fall and the end result is a film that’s visually gorgeous and thematically shallow.

And yet, you should never underestimate the importance of looking good. Legends of the Fall is a beautiful film to look at and so is Brad Pitt. I wouldn’t necessarily say that Brad gives a particularly good performance here because, to be honest, Tristan is such an idealized character that I doubt anyone could really make him believable. But the Brad Pitt of 1994 looked so good and had such a strong screen presence that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t as good an actor as the Brad Pitt of 2015. Legends of The Fall is one of those movies that can get by on pure charisma and fortunately, Brad Pitt is enough of a movie star to make the film work.

Legends of the Fall is not a great film but it’s still not a bad way to waste 120 minutes. (Of course, the film itself lasts 133 minutes but still…)