Dungeon Girl

...was what we thought. Unfortunately, we checked IMDb after my wife and I paid for this movie on pay-per-view and started watching it.

Well, we found out how you could all be so negative.

I, although not so much my wife, enjoy "bad" movies sometimes - for example, "bad" science fiction movies with laughable plots, laughable monsters/villains/viruses/aliens/etc - I believe they are bad on purpose to make them enjoyably laughable.

But this disaster has nothing to laugh about. The only joy you will realize is either when you turn it off or when it is mercifully over.

Do not waste your time.

Dungeon Girl (2008)

** (out of 4)

My never ending parade of German director Ulli Lommel's "real life" movies continues with this one, which steps away from the horror genre and enters the drama category. This one tells a story that happened in Austria as a young girl was kidnapped and held hostage by a man for nearly six years. The entire running time centers on voiceovers as the girl tells her feelings for her parents, her life before the abduction and for her kidnapper known only as The Stranger. Again, I've seen all of Lommel's "real life" movies that have been released so far and this one here took me by a pleasant surprise. Not that I'd ever sit through the thing again but at least Lommel tried something different and didn't just deliver the same old garbage. I think what really helps this film is Wendi Jean Linn as the girl and Gunther Ziegler as The Stranger. We really don't get to see them "act" since most of the film is structured around voiceovers but this is beneficial since the majority of Lommel's recent films have been even worse due to the bad acting. Here, they at least look the parts well and the narration by Gwen Trevathan is really good. The film is way too slow and too much stuff is repeated for it to be considered a marginally good film. I'm really not sure what Lommel's obsession is with having a character look into the camera, ask questions and then constantly reuse this footage. Also, the running time of 81 minutes is the norm for his recent films but he might want to consider cutting them down to a hour or less. This is how "B" and "Z" movies were back in the day so he might want to revisit that. With that said, this is still a weak film but it's a lot better than anything the director's have given us over the past decade but then again, that's not saying too much.

From Ulli Lommel, the director who has mastered neither porn nor narrative, comes this fusion of the worst of both genres. The mindlessness of porn and the jarring, non-resolution of clumsy narrative are combined in this "to be missed at all costs" disaster of a film. Ever wonder what Hollywood means when they say "Based upon actual events"? That's just their way of saying "Once upon a time". In other words, the tale spun so maladroitly in this film has little in common with the real story. The director seems to have a prurient fascination with the fact that the actual young woman became a "media darling" after her ordeal. My impression of Lommel....hmmm...DaFoe's portrayal of a director in the comedic 2007 Rowan Atkinson film comes pretty close.

I've seen my share of crummy movies, but this is by far the worst ever! From the horrible acting, to the crummy plot, to the strange soundtrack... The entire film makes YOU want to go hide in a dungeon, it would be more entertaining than watching this movie. If you watch a movie about someone being kidnapped for six years, you expect something more than the guy feeding her chocolate and looking at her through a hole in the wall. Although it sounds morbid, where was the molestation or the mind games? I could not tell if this was a story about Stockholm syndrome or what. All in all, I'm still upset I wasted money buying such a horrible movie.

This movie is an absolute disaster. It's a lurid melodrama with no sense of plot or purpose. Dungeon Girl is a truly awful movie, not worth the price of a rental. Avoid this at all costs, it's not even worth seeing even just for the sake of seeing how truly bad it is, unless you just happen to be in an extremely masochistic mood. That said, there's a directors commentary on there and since I've already made the mistake of renting the movie, I'm almost tempted to run through the movie again with the commentary playing just to try to figure out what the folks who made this mess of a movie were thinking. Or, at the very least, what they were smoking. I can't really add anything that hasn't already been said about this movie, but I did just want to add my voice to the warnings in the hopes that maybe somebody, somewhere, can save the price of the movie rental and put the 90 or so minutes of their lives they would have spent watching this movie to better use. I should have checked the reviews here before I rented the movie myself. Unfortunately, this seems fairly representative of the quality of movie Lionsgate is releasing these days. Move along, nothing to see here.