Braid

Let me say first, that I like things like this...I won't regurgitate the plot...there's enough of that here in the other reviews. What makes this a satisfying watch is that you're really not sure what's going on half the time, why characters do the things they do...at times it appears as one happy family, at other times a bit combative...who's playing who and who has the upper hand ? What is real and what is playing the game ? Simple things can appear as plot holes...or not, given the perspective that can change at a moment's notice. It all comes together at the end, but it's a trippy ride there.

Petula and Tilda, two small time drug dealers, go on the run and decide to stop off at the isolated estate of their childhood friend, Daphne. Daphne's seclusion has turned her into a dangerous psychotic who insists on playing childish games all day long and, if Petula and Tilda don't want to get caught, they'll have to play along.

More of an exercise in style and shock over substance, Braid is a daring and often confounding indie horror/thriller. Madeline Brewer steals the entire film as Daphne, finding just the right balance between terror, camp, and pathos. It's an excellent performance and Braid is worth seeing for that alone.

The cinematography is gorgeous and the filmmakers use the crumbling mansion location to great effect. Pacing never drags much either which is surprising given that the majority of the film is a chamber piece between three characters and it's mostly confined to one location. In that sense, it feels much more like some long lost regional horror relic from the 70's, using whatever it has available to tell its story.

The script could stand to be tighter and it leaves us with maybe a few too many unanswered questions, but the experience of Braid as a whole is well worth your time.

I nearly gave this a 4 because I really didn't enjoy it but opted on 5 in the end as that doesn't reflect it is at least a solid piece of film making.

In brief: three girls in a house, two of which are there to get paid, for playing along with the hostesses odd fetishes and fantasies. Not all is as it seems ... but for whom?

It takes quite a while to get to the point and is hoping to wow the audience with some innovative plot turns late in the day, which might work for you but I didn't really get much out of it.

However, if you're happy with its style and enjoy the off-beat characters, you might find this film a pretty satisfying watch. Unfortunately, that was not the case for me and its lack of an evolving plot left it feeling like a stuck-record.

There is a brash, surreal, out-the-box vibe to Braid that I have to appreciate, but it's hard to ignore the amateurish aspects which make it feel more like a B-movie, whether it's the uneven acting, bratty characters, unstable tone, and almost random attempts to be edgy and experimental.

I absolutely love overt weirdness in movies, but I also believe there must be a solid vision to be able to employ it successfully. What makes surrealism work or not, is perhaps down to personal taste, and since it becomes clear very early on that the director has every intent of sabotaging a 'normal' telling of this story, one then has to rely on intuition as a guide.

My problem is that despite watching with full attention, my intuition kept telling me that this whole ordeal is bupkis. As it devolved into predictably violent terrain, with a poorly drawn detective character, the film began to feel less intelligent, and deliberately inchoate, as though its director put this whole thing together during a manic coke binge.

Instead of the pleasure of watching little pieces of brilliance come together like pieces of a dream, I was simply lost very early on, and when I submitted to that loss, I was bored. There are moments of crazed greatness here, but they are unfortunately not well enough sustained, and arrive along with a mixed bag of scenes and characters that don't amount to a whole lot.

This is my second viewing of the film. I will simply say that there are a mountain of highly negative reviews here, which inspired me to comment. If "Braid" (now titled as "Dying to Play") ain't your cup of brew, so be it. Feel free to dislike it. But to simply say "it made no sense" or to point out multiple plot holes is to lazily ignore what is going on.

A single example: what might appear to be bad film-making (a bloody, scarred knee appearing in the next frame as totally healed), is in service of the larger purpose at work here: the blurring of reality, role-playing and the consequences of resigning oneself to a world of fantasy.

As for the "point" of this film: This really is a movie where the camera controls the plot. The jumpy, cinematic shots control the text, and do so in a manner that is much more careful than its seemingly haphazard style would suggest. After all, this is on its face a movie about a game that three girls created as children- here, repeated as adults. The point, then, concerns the creation of a fantasy world (whether through drugs, the Game, acting, wealth etc.) and the repetition and phantasmagoric dysfunction that this bubble world of safety ends up creating. Put another way, the Fellini, Lynch, Argento touches serve a narrative that is purposefully disjointed and fragmented: each of the primary characters plays "the Game;" but only one of them really attempts to make it out . . . Again and again in almost circular fashion.

While this movie certainly has its flaws, it is quite ambitious. I do think it is the sort of film that fares better on a second viewing.