| Overall Grade: |
B+ |
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| Story: |
B- |
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| Acting: |
B |
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|
| Direction: |
B+ |
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|
| Visuals: |
A- |
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The creepiest western cinema has offered in years
by D (movies profile)
Mar 3, 2007
4
of
5 people found this review helpful
Left with few options for good movies to see tonight, I decided to check this movie out on the vast majority of people who graded this movie with high marks and I'm glad I did. This is a movie that truly has you creeped out from the first minutes of the movie and keeps it building until its bloody end. What especially kept me in that state of tension was the excellent atmospheric soundtrack, which was throughly eerie and occasionally jarringly creepy (like the scream of a crying baby growing to piercing volumes and fading into the sound of a jet plane landing) but without resorting to the over-the-top sound effects and "dun-dun-dun" moments the genre often offers. Additionally, the slightly grainy and shaky camera work comes off as anything other than cheap or poorly made, rather it intensifies the already tightly drawn vibe. The story isn't especially well written, and the story's big reveals are a little spelled out with the dialogue, but that dialogue is thankfully light. Rather than filling spaces with panicked rehashing of the story or lame humor, the characters are allowed their silence and we get beautiful shots of the lonely Russian countryside and the dense, dark forests that serve as backdrop to the film. The film has some seriously creepy visuals and some gore in later parts of movie, but it keeps most of the scare in the atmosphere and of a quality that you usually only find in asian horrors. |
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