Claustrofobia

Carolien Spoor is quite a good actress (such as in Black Tulip), but the script is truly terrible and thus does not give her room for good acting. After 40 minutes we all know who the bad guy is, but even after 5 minutes the plot can be predicted, which is full of plotholes.

This is what happens when nobody involved in a movie seems to care or try very hard. The script seems to be a collaboration from a middle school project that received a failing grade. Canned dialogue delivered unconvincingly. The mad doctor. The cell phone with no signal. All the absurd cliches are present, and never have they been more grating. Carolien Spoor does a lot of what's supposed to be meaningful glares which end up just being silly. She's gorgeous, yes. Very easy to look at her and her body but the script is so bad even her lovely presense is not enough to hold a hint of interest. It's nowhere near the horror genre, and fails at every turn on a thriller level. What little action there is couldn't have been more poorly written and choreographed. In a word, it's just dumb. Two words? Pointless and dumb. That sums it up. The detective was the worst miscast here. Too young fashion model looking bearded hipster. Very unconvincing, yet no dumber than anyone else in the film. Landlord? Um.....he may have been the most decent guy in the film. Thing is the creators gave everybody equlally stupid things to say and do. He was not spared this unfortunately. Carolien's friend, the ditzy drunk, could have imporved her scenes immensely by jumping out any window and falling to the pavement. Cringingly untalented actress. You need to see this for one reason. Everything that constitutes a successful movie is missing here, yet it got made. It takes a special kind of ineptitude to take a wonderful talent such as Carolien Spoor and make her end up looking like a 2nd year acting student. Rotting Garbage. Enjoy.

Top-notch Dutch thriller. Story involves Eva, a first-year veterinary student and aspiring actress. Just after moving into a new apartment, she finds herself captured and chained to a cot by a nameless/faceless abductor.

And that's really all you can say about the plot without giving too much away. The story kept me surprised all the way, and I've seen hundreds of thrillers. Every time you think you've settled in and know where it's going, it makes a twist, and every one of them makes perfect sense within the context of the film. The acting (especially from leads Carolien Spoor and Dragan Bakema) is solid and believable and this is an outstanding thriller from beginning to end.

And just to make clear for those who might make assumptions based on my limited synopsis -- although it does involve someone trapped, this is in absolutely no way part of the "Torture Porn" genre (although I hate that name, you all know what I mean). Not in any way, shape or form.

Overall, "Claustrofobia" is a superior thriller and definitely worth seeking out. Apparently, this was originally an on-line film, but it's available on DVD from Amazon with clear, removable subtitles.

Now and then out of the Netherlands comes a horror. They are called Netherhorror and I surely would add this one on that list. The story is easy to follow and even as it doesn't have gore or messy situations it still delivers.

It starts with a young boy following a teenage girl. The girl promises that he may kiss her if he dares to be locked in a mortuary. He agrees, once locked up the girls ran away. We move further a few years with nothing explained. It's up to the viewer to solve the case. If you are a bit cleaver it is easy to follow. Even as we don't go too deep into the characters still you want to know what is going on.

The acting was okay, only Dragan Bakema as Alex Purvis wasn't convincing all the time. All the thespians are known for people living in the Netherlands, but aren't big names. Somehow it reminded me of Caged (2011), another Netherhorror.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

I am writing this with a bit of an outside perspective being from the US & reading in subtitles, something that I never have a problem with in films from this region due to the very smooth translation it has into English. This film was crafted so expertly all around I cannot find any part of which to criticize negatively. It drew me in & kept me there while I constantly tried to intellectualize what the real story was and I haven't been outsmarted this good as far back as I can remember. It gives you multiple moments where you are saying, Aha, now I know exactly what the meaning of everything is then suddenly it changes to have an entirely different purpose behind the grand scheme of things.

I know I have just written an entire paragraph without any plot or character information given away & that was done purposely to let you the viewer know how well made this entire production was. It starts with a young boy of say 10 playing in a morgue along with a young girl of the same age, he is tricked by the promise of a kiss if he climbed into one of the refrigerated bins they store bodies in and remained in there for ten seconds. Well she walked away & left him locked within with no way to get out. The film then changes to a time many years later with no clues left as to what happened to that young boy. As to the remainder of the story, to sum it up proper, it's kind of like a chicken's egg cracking open to reveal something very unexpected like a dragon. If you enjoy a good tight thriller where you have to keep guessing then you should take a good look, you will be surprised in the cleverness of the writing & direction.