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@theplokoonyreviews
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For the good, occasionally there’s an alright effort at executing concepts behind scenes and some of the actors are decent. For the negatives, the acting and dialogue is horrendously stale, the characters themselves are as shallow and uninteresting as possible, scenes are boringly drawn out, while all cinematography is incredibly lazy and amateurish.
Positive: The Occasional Interesting Idea
Buried within some scenes there are interesting ideas, the director never really brought them to light but they’re still noticeable and kind of interesting. The relationship between Lindsay and Jenny is horribly acted but when they’re in the centipede they do have moments together which show a bond and a very human response to the situation. It would nicely contrast the first half where they bickered which each other, this contrast isn’t effective because the acting was originally so hollow but it’s still somewhat present. Also, it’s interesting how it tries to explore a state where the body has died but the mind still is conscious. It’s an effective and uncomfortable idea to explore for horror, and even though the delivery of this idea is skewed with its incoherently artsy presentation, it still is present. Lastly, (SPOILERS) there is a really fascinating idea explored in the moments where Lindsay tries to escape from the doctor and when she’s stitched into the centipede. When she’s trying to escape she goes to the bedroom, backyard, and even the indoor pool, when she’s stuck in the middle of the centipede she revisits all these places. It’s a very bleak contrast, her ability to make decisions and run has been stripped and she’s a prisoner in her own body. This is a horrifying concept that deserved so much more attention, unfortunately it’s incredibly muted in the film, if this was ever emphasized at all it would greatly increase the score.
Positive: Some of the acting
While there are distractingly bad performances and even the good moments have many problems, there is some decent acting to be found. On paper, the Doctor is a very shallow antagonist but the actor gives him an undeniably sinister presence. He commands attention through his uneasy demeanour, which makes what he’s saying all the more impactful and creepy. The line delivery itself is very stoic and blunt, he’s impossible to be reasoned with which makes the situation all the more hopeless. The Japanese man as well is very effective at expressing his characters turmoil through body expression. He only speaks Japanese however, he never creates a dynamic with the other victims and it limits the understanding of the him. As for the acting however, he does the best he can with the material he’s given and this ends in a pretty believable performance. He mainly screams and snarls at the doctor, however behind this a passionate, animalistic hatred for the Doctor. His mannerisms are obvious enough to pick up on, but also have a subtle, muted quality which just makes it all the more interesting. As for the two actresses, their acting is pretty awful but during the actual horror scenes they delivered convincingly terrified performances which did help with the creepy atmosphere. Overall some of the performances are decent, unfortunately the script doesn’t give much for the actors to work with, but they try their best and the end result can be decent.
Negative: Acting and Dialogue
While the Doctor and Japanese man turn in overall solid performances, the same can’t be said for the two actresses who play Lindsay and Jenny. During the car scene they exaggerate everything they say, even if it just feels like a small detail and it makes the whole scene ridiculously funny to watch, but critically a disaster which takes any weight away from what they’re discussing. The time spent developing these characters is wasted since they actually seem more shallow after delivering their lines in the most preppy and amateurish way possible. The Japanese man only speaks Japanese which makes it hard for him to make a connection or create a basic dynamic between him and the other victims. It’s obvious he hates the Doctor and they share a basic dynamic, but this dynamic just goes in a circle where the The Doctor gets mad and then stops being mad, there isn’t any evolution or nuance to it at all. Also, the version I watched didn’t come with subtitles for these parts, so all his yelling didn’t have much weight to it and listening to him go off on tangents was more boring than anything. As for the dialogue, it seems as if the writer/directors Tom Six doesn’t know how regular people talk. The dialogue for The Evil Doctor is decent, it’s detached and horrifying enough to fit with his character. However, the dialogue for the regular people sounds like a parody of a high school comedy. It’s hard to relate to or get invested in them (these are adults as well) when their dialogue is this shallow and whiny. Also, the way these lines bounce back and forth from characters is either funnily or awkwardly unrealistic. They both are complaining about the situation, but they don’t really acknowledge each other’s feelings and just to complain about how bad their life is to themselves, which is then passed off as a conversation. Maybe it was good that I couldn’t understand half the dialogue in this film due to it being Japanese or German, the English dialogue is unbearable and The Doctor is the only person who ever finds a balance between good dialogue and line delivery.
Negative: Horrifyingly Bad Characterization
The characters are remarkably uninteresting, none of them have any distinguishable traits and they all suffer from a lack of effective or meaningful development, or any development at all. Lindsay and Jenny couldn’t feel more like stock horror victims if the writer tried, Jenny especially she often appears in the film but all she does is bicker and scream, there’s nothing beyond this her entire presence consists of nagging the audience. Lindsay is most like the protagonist of the film, unfortunately she’s a very bland protagonist with confusing character development. This is where the lack of varied characterization majorly hurts the film, the audience is mostly exposed to the characters in a horrible situation, so it’s hard to attach or understand anything about them since all they really do is beg and scream. This wouldn’t be a bad thing, in fact it does help the bleak atmosphere but without properly relating to or understanding the characters, this screaming doesn’t affect the viewer in nearly the same way, in fact it more so becomes obnoxious. The viewer barely knows anything about Lindsay and the only time her and Jenny had a conversation, it was one where they bickered at each other. So, when Lindsay tries to show much she cares about Jenny later on, it doesn’t feel natural since from our limited exposure to them didn’t reflect any mutual compassion. It speaks to the quality of the characters when it’s hard to believe that two friends actually care about each other, these people feel more like tools to scare the audience and that’s an incredibly cheap way to handle the complexities of developing people. As for the Japanese Man, It seems like he’s going through a character journey, but his response to the situation changes so dramatically over the film and the audience has no prior knowledge (or any knowledge) to base these developments off of, his responses are very dramatic and they also shift dramatically so seeing him change is very apparent, but the reason given for why isn’t very apparent. This is the same with Lindsay, these characters will do something out of character, and while this decision could very well be backed up by their past experiences and their own personality, our understanding of them is so limited that we have no idea if this is the case and it ends up just feeling unnatural. The Doctors motive for doing what he does is barely delved into and the silly reason why (he used to take things apart and now he wants to put things together)is much too abstract to work as only excuse the film uses through its entire duration.
Negative: Annoyingly drawn out scenes.
This film doesn’t even reach an hour and 30 minutes but it’s still painfully boring to get through, inside this film is the material for something that should be a 15 minute short film, and trying to reach feature length with this very sparse amount of content does not lead to a very interactive experience. Before getting into the artificially elongated quality of scenes, it’s also important to note a lot of scenes are also completely pointless and carry no impact to the overall goal of the story or effect on character development, rather just being there to get to be feature length. (Minor spoilers) The very first scene is the Doctor watching someone from his car, then going out to capture him. This sequence just echoed things that would be focused on later, it doesn’t feel like an introduction, nothing actually gets introduced to the audience it’s just shown briefly while nothing actually feels important, the scene just plays out and ends with no new information learned and foreshadowing which wasn’t actually necessary for the Doctors proper introduction later. Also, the scene where the creepy guy tries to hit on Lindsay and Jenny was awkward, lasted too long and wasn’t brought up again for the rest of the film. It seemed as if it was trying to say something about objectification, but not even the theme this scene acknowledged was mentioned again and carried no excuse for why it needed to be there. (Spoilers end) The movie also tends to have things go on for much longer than they need to, this could be considered an artistic decision but it’s still executed in a remarkably boring way. The goal of the scenes is usually very simple, there aren’t any character challenges to overcome and it plays out very simply, the plan is to capture people and create a centipede and this is what happens, so scenes have to find something else to fill that gap. Unfortunately, this is typically either with lots of screaming or having scenes become repetitive so something is still happening on screen. The screaming doesn’t hold much weight to it, the characters who are screaming don’t have very interesting personalities, so it was hard to care if they were in pain since Tom Six never spent the time to make them sympathetic or at the very least moderately interesting. As for the repetitive nature of scenes, it’s easy to see that they’re becoming repetitive since scenes just keep on going for no other reason than maybe building atmosphere, when atmosphere is the only thing being built on and all the other elements stagnate and their lazy and unpolished nature becomes even more apparent, it leads to a very boring experience.
Negative: Cinematography
The cinematography is consistently low quality and effort, 90% of the time it just settled for the easiest shot possible while the quality of the video is remarkably low for a film from 2009. There are times when I even thought of all the other angles (I never do this) that could help give more personality and an enriched understanding of the scene. This is another reason why the drawn out nature of these scenes is so annoying, it just stays on the same angle as well it’s too lazy to even switch views. For this film camerawork feels like a matter of convenience, the easiest shot won’t always be the most effective shot for what needs to be depicted, but this film doesn’t seem to care and consistently takes the easy way out, leaving it devoid of any creativity or passion. At least In the writing, there was an effort made to be interesting but there isn’t even a noticeable one with the cinematography, never before has looking at a movie been so boring especially since nearly the entire film takes place in the same house. It’s consistently ugly to look at, it seems as if no lighting equipment was used and there was barely any refinements in post editing. There’s a dark tone (literally) which awkwardly mixes with the bright colours and makes the entire experience incredibly drab, this may have been a purposeful artistic decision but that doesn’t stop it from being an ugly eyesore which kills any interest to be had in its lifeless environment.
Overall, this is a standard, kidnap based horror movie that has barely anything else to offer other than its especially twisted concept. The execution of every element in this film reeks of a lack of interest, what makes this all the more disappointing is that inside this film is actually a pretty interesting one. Unfortunately, everyone involved in production shows a lack of care in actually taking the time to understand the characters they were acting as, further exploring the ideas it touches on in the script, and actually making the film look palatable with its cinematography.
Entertainment rating: 3/10
Critical rating: 4/10
Final rating: 3.5/10
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