Anakin-15

I heard that _The Night of the Hunter_ was a classic film noir and suspense movie. Having now seen it, I can say definitively that it is neither. It is clumsily made in almost every way. The only redeeming quality is the masterful cinematography. Otherwise, it is a terrible, terrible film. It has a complete and utter lack of subtlety, beating you over the head with its "symbols" and its "themes"--at the conclusion of the film they even have the guts to have Lillian Gish look _straight at the camera_ and state explicitly the "moral" of the film. But really the only messages the film seems to be trying to communicate are that "children endure" and "women are stupid." Frankly, the children in this film are annoying (not to mention terrible actors), and hearing that they will endure is rather depressing. All of the women are depicted as fickle, easily-tricked idiots with no ability to tell right from wrong, good from evil. The editing is clumsy, like most everything else. And what is with the strange, meaningless shots of animals that intersperse the film? A turtle here, a fox there. What does it all mean? As far as I can tell, nothing remotely interesting. Give this one a miss. It's not what it's cracked up to be.

Not really a sequel to the original classic, but rather its own story with its own things to say. This is, in fact, a powerful allegory about our violent world, the suspicious nations that make it up, what those nations teach their children by way of example, the state of religion in the modern world, etc. Very smart, and beautifully shot in glorious black and white. If you're looking for a horror movie, you might be disappointed, but as an allegorical fantasy it's top of the line.

I was surprised to see that IMDb users had given this movie a 7.0. It's really pretty terrible. I gave it a 3.0, and that was being generous. It's ridiculous, opaque and all around pretty stupid. It's empty of any emotion or believability. I had no sympathy and very little interest in the characters. Every time I started to get interested or began to like someone, something ridiculous or stupid happened. I was very disappointed in this movie. What did I miss? How come everybody liked it?