Schemer

Schemer – Dusk – CATCH IT ( B ) Allegedly based upon true story of 15 years old girl "Jessica "killed by her friends in small town of Netherlands. It's a story of jealousy, insecurity and how group leader Caesar magnify the small grievances that each of Jessie's friends bear towards her. Caesar transforms these small grievances into a general and pervasive hatred towards Jessica that leads ultimately to her horrible, senseless killing. Schemer cunningly tells the same events from five different points of views. So the audiences understand how each and every one of Jessica's friends starts hating her out of jealousy, insecurity and envy. This method may show one scene again and again from different angles and point of views but in a movie where we know the murder is been committed it's really important to go into minds these people. Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen ("Caesar" and Yes that's his full Name) excels as a group leader, who convinces everyone to kill Jessica when he realizes that she doesn't want him and like Rico. Gaite Jansen is simply brilliant as Jessica, she is innocent, careless and blunt like teenagers. Roos Netjes, Melody Klaver & Robert de Hoog did a nice job as jealous friends of Jessica. Gerson Oratmangoen as Rico seemed misfit to me. Overall, Schemer is a great attempt from Netherlands as in small budget it's been able to capture the essence of jealousy and envy in natural manner.

I, being Dutch, really enjoyed this movie. I've saw a lot of Dutch movies who weren't even close to being as good as this one. As I got closer and closer to the end of the movie, it got better and better. The further into the movie I got, the closer I got to finding out what exactly happened. The finale creeped me out. The characters were very realistic and the way the acted and reacted in different scenarios made them very relatable. Even the 'bad' guy was realistic. I could relate really good with the characters, which made the whole story believable. The movie was inspired on the murder of a Dutch girl Maja in 2003. I was pretty young when the murder happened, but knowing what happened than and comparing it to what was happening in the movie made it even more realistic. The movie overall sent chillings down my spine and I recommend everyone to watch it.

The original Dutch title "Schemer" literally translates itself in English as either "Dusk" or "Twilight", but I suppose the producers righteously and determinately decided not to opt for "Twilight" as the international title in order to avoid confusion and/or association with that horrible teenage-vampire franchise hype. Good for them! "Dusk" is an intriguing and rather harrowing coming-of age drama/thriller, based on a factual murder case as it occurred in The Netherlands in 2003. It's also the type of film that simply had to be based on a true story, otherwise skeptical viewers would immediately start claiming the screenplay is implausible, far-fetched and unrealistic. The events describe the murder of 15-year-old Jessie, everything from the circumstances leading to her murder, the actual crime itself and a brief impression of the painful aftermath. We're introduced to a circle of six (supposedly) close friends, adolescents and classmates, each and every single one of them struggling with personal issues, secrets and demons. At a certain point all of their anger and oppressed frustration is aimed at one person, Jessie, and – mainly under the influence of group leader Ceasar – the five others decide their lives would be much better if Jessie was death. They carry out their plan, although some of them choose not to participate actively, without realizing the horrible impact of the crime until afterwards. Particularly disturbing in the murder case illustrated in "Dusk" is the adolescents' inability to put all their banal little misfortunes and grievances (like jealousy, boyfriend rivalry and forbidden love) into perspective and so easily consider murder as the magical solution to everything. Their conversations about abruptly ending the life of a fellow human being are so natural it quickly becomes deeply discomforting. The vile act itself is executed in a truly cold and vexing fashion as well. In spite of the ugly subject matter, "Dusk" is a very stylish and serene film. The young and relatively unknown cast and crew thankfully chose for atmosphere over sensation, and thus the film patiently takes the time to introduce its characters and even works with different narrative angles to cover some of the same sequences. This narrative structure is well-handles and often gives useful additional insight in the facts as they occurred. Last but not least, tons of respect for the young ensemble cast and director Hanro Smitsman. This certainly isn't conventional Dutch cinema, but the acting performances and directing are outstanding. Very much recommended!

There's not much to say about this film other than that the best one can do is to stay as far away from it as one possibly can! This film is extremely, utterly boring. Nothing happens. The dialogue is virtually non-existing, unintelligent, uninteresting and forced. The characters are dull and colorless. They are as interesting as a blank sheet of paper. The film revolves around six young mediocrities who apparently are best friends. None of them are particularly intelligent. One will not find a future notionalist among these kids. They spend their days speaking ill and stab each other in the back,figuratively speaking, and manipulating each other. It is quite incomprehensible that the film has been given such high rating! The only logical explanation must be that, in one way or another, the voters are people involved in the making of the film. Do not watch this piece of trash! AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

This movie was partly shot on my high-school, and, having been an extra in it, I was of course looking forward to seeing it. Knowing what the story was about, and prepared for what would probably be a vehement cinema visit, I went to see it with some friends.

If I would have to choose one word to describe this film, it would be Wow. I believe this film is able to take away all the skepticism we see in opinions on Dutch movies. This movie is raw, it is honest, and, like my summary above says, above-board. The killing scene is very shocking, it actually affected me physically; my heart was pounding, I almost couldn't believe what I saw. I've only had that with a couple of movies in my life (including "Black Swan" and I believe "Titanic" as well). Man, this is so good...the acting is wonderful on nearly every point of the movie. Having in mind that we're speaking of actors aged 17-21, I feel a lot of admiration for what they've achieved with this film (especially when I realise I wasn't quite a fan of two of them beforehand). Gaite Jansen again proves herself a big acting talent, and I think we can be very proud of having such a beautiful and gifted girl among our Dutch movie stars.

One might think: if you loved it so much, why not rate it 10? Well, I rarely ever rate 10, and I didn't do it here, because of a few reasons: at a few points, the dialogues were beside the mark. The director and actors specifically said they wanted to show how such "normal" teenagers like those in the movie can perform such a cruel deed, but for me, the dialogues felt uncomfortable at some points...it seemed to be too jerky, though I won't deny that might also be part of the mechanism this movie wants to show its viewers...the scapegoat mechanism, the story of a group of friends which such derails that a horrific crime is performed.

Don't watch this movie if you can't stand shocking images. Like I wrote, this movie is above-board; the killing of Jessie and the liquidating of her body is an 8-minute scene in the movie. Also, the showing of Jessie's inanimate and corrupting body makes one swallow twice. Do watch it if you like good movies, and if you are prepared and willing to let go of your possible sceptical view on Dutch movies. This one's different than quite a lot of the other ones made before.