dissanctus

I started out moderately intrigued, as Russel Crowe managed to convince me that his humorous gruff exorcist might be a worthy character to follow forwards. Everything soon fell apart into a shambling overblown mish-mash of every exorcism trope possible, and I quickly became bored of the family we didn't know or care about standing around while the usual cross-waving prayer shouting nonsense carried on. The young lad did a gutsy performance but the whole thing never presented any palpable sense of menace, believability or realism, in fact I felt like I was watching an unnecessarily long episode of Creepshow. By the end I was more interested in my toasted cheese sandwich than the screen, where characters were flying about in some completely nonsensical CGI comedy. In short, dreadful. It's convinced me more than ever that the whole possession theme is completely milked dry and has nothing new to offer. This was no "The Exorcist", not by a long shot, and even the vaguely Catholic moralising felt pointless, shallow, perfunctory. I wasted 7 bucks on this but I don't mind if it puts me off future gambles with anything similar.

I'm somewhat annoyed that too many people are dismissing this intriguing work out of hand, either because they hoped for some gratuitous and nasty torture chamber of horrors like Hostel or Saw or because there was a bit of thinking involved in relating to the philosophical symbolism. So it wasn't perfect, had some plot flaws and was obviously made to a budget, but personally I like this type of small cast experimental sci-fi... it had heaps of heart, and I thought the cinematography was done very well given the challenges of a restricted space, the acting was gutsy and the music gave it quite a bit of emotional depth. Well it kept my interest and engagement much more than a lot of the slick expensive nonsense Hollywood churns out lately, and it had a bit of strangeness too which for me just made it more endearing.

Like some other people it seems I also watched this show on a whim, knowing nothing about it and expecting a fairly standard political thriller.

Well it was standard in some ways, but it had a fresh and unique style I thought, very gritty and convincing fights and a great chemistry in the duo of the main characters who both showed a lot of energy. I liked the quirky oddball assassins too.

I noted that Luciane's plucky female lead "Rose" adjusted rather too easily to the dilemma she was thrown into, but I found myself hugely entertained by the gutsy way she was always jumping right in to help in the fights. Gabriel Basso was wholly likeable and despite the occasional inconsistency in the cast there were moments of truly skilful acting all around, and snappy dialogue.

Again, there was something about this show that was really easy to enjoy - I suppose it's not great art but it sure was a fun watch, and I'm already looking forward to season two.