Blackwood, le pensionnat

I had high hopes with the one after seeing the preview. The Flitting shadows that disappear had me intrigued. But no, it was not to be. There was a whole lot of movie, but really a whole lot of not much. When I rate horror movies I usually give a little leeway as there are so many bad horrors out there. Slowly but surely though there are so many horror movies entering the realm that are just nothing. P.S. Uma does a really annoying job at pretending to be a person pretending to be french.

I think I know what happened to this movie, at least in part: It's adapted from a book written in the 70s, and that's why part of it feels like a period piece and so much of it feels just a little "off." Why didn't they just set it in the 70s? Did they think the audience wouldn't relate to timeless issues like rebellious kids in a nightmare school? Setting it in present day didn't fit the feeling of the school at all. That felt disjointed.

But ultimately, the problem for me is that the movie isn't fulfilling. The ending feels cliche and attempt to give some kind of closure but fails. I absolutely loved the premise of this thing and wished they would have gone further with it, but they didn't. In fact, I felt like they hardly spent any time with it at all. They spent so much time showing us that the kids are all delinquents and the headmistress is controlling and the school is dark and spooky but ignored the good stuff until the end, when it was supposed to be an a-ha! Moment but it just kind of falls flat.

I loved the performances, the setting, the score, and, like I said, the premise, but I kept getting angry at the movie and its characters for doing dumb things and for constantly bombarding me with conflict rather than resolution. They tease you with it, but never really give it to you, even when they try, and it's maddening.

You're gonna laugh at me, but I didn't even recognize Uma Thurman at first. I didn't recognize Anna Sophia Robb, either, but she's grown a little since the last movie I saw her in. I thought both did a wonderful job. The girl from the movie "Orphan" was in this, too, but she didn't have as much screen time.

There's a lot I liked about this movie, and I really wish the story had been more fulfilling than it was. In my head, I'm comparing it to The Kingsmen, where similarly, kids are sent to a school with strict rules to be refined into better versions of themselves, but that journey was MUCH more fulfilling and fun. It also kind of reminds me of the movie Seance, which I didn't like because it turned out to be something other than what it was advertised as, but felt more complete than this did. I also got shades of Harry Potter from this, and now that I think of it more, there are a ton of parallels. I'd recommend watching any of those over this one, but, according to most people's ratings here, if you want to watch this, you probably won't hate it, it's just probably not going to be high on your rating list either.

The premise is intriguing, and you can tell it tried it's darn hardest to be a successful supernatural, suspense drama/thriller, but this film just could not weave together these elements well enough to tell a captivating story. The actors were great, but the writing and character development was lacking. The cinematography and grand setting was beautiful, but was not accompanied by a well written story. The first act had promise, the second was questionable and then the final third just fell flat on its face. By not layering successful elements of supernatural horror in a consistent method, the final act's horror reveal, which should have been thrilling, just look plain weird. I was really looking forward to this movie, but it failed to deliver a decent film despite having all the right ingredients.

Seriously, I kit you not. %80 of the movie is filmed in almost complete darkness to the point I could hardly see what the hell was going on. Must have bean dead cheap to make if nothing could be seen.

Film is OKish, nothing that wasn't done before but the freaking darkness just annoyed me.

Well I like the idea of spooky stuff going on in an old boarding school. I just didn't think this movie did it very memorably. Uma being miscast was distracting, although I thought Anna was likeable. The ending did have some level of satisfaction, but nothing that will stay with you. Just a cheaply made disposable horror that no one will find scary.