Polednice

I was very disappointed by the recent HBO Europe release of the Czech horror Polednice (The Noonday Witch):

HBO has produced some fine films, so I was excited to see this "Europa" HBO production. Alas, despite having the budget to hire some good actors, such as Anna Geislerová, Polednice falls flat.

The acting is quite good, and the cinematography is superb, but the screenplay, direction, and soundtrack make watching this film a lugubrious experience. I caught myself falling asleep on numerous occasions. Put simply, it's boring. The "Hallmark card" soundtrack, in which sickening strings remind of us when to recognize the "poignant" moments, is irritating and works against this film's pretensions to be a horror movie. The execution of what sounds like an interesting story is uninteresting, and the direction lacks energy. I lacked energy after forcing myself to finish watching this film.

5/10, at best.

A mother and daughter move to the childhood village of her dead husband. What follows is an intelligent portrayal of how the mother and daughter cope with the loss. This is set against the backdrop of a tale of supernatural stealing of children. The characterisation is strong and script well written. This is not a gore fest. It has subtitles. If this sort of film is something you just don't get, fair enough, but please don't post poor reviews that might put off us grownups.

There is no witch. Its all fairytale. Also, why so many unanswered questions? SOME things are better left for the imagination, not Every. Thing.

Let it be said right off the bat: not daring enough to be called horror. Folklore elements that give us taste of what could have been do give this drama a certain flavor, but it did get cold feet in the final act that could have redeemed the slow build-up.

Beautifully shot, the amount of golden light that, in my experience, could only be challenged by The Reflecting Skin, the film certainly holds that dark grief that characters carry around deep down.

Largely psychological, Polednice takes sweet time portraying the village community mother and daughter got to be a part of, and only briefly plays with a prospect of supernatural. It is, sadly, never fully exploited although the opportunities were many. Instead, it builds suspense just to go nowhere with it. A shame, with such potent setting, cinematography and cast this film needed just that one step to be truly memorable genre piece. Instead, it just left dangling in the midair...I was left itching for more.

This movie had two problems behind it, or perhaps just one of them, the first clearly being a weak script, the other, the execution that did not make the most of its potential.

Now I for one will go with the weak plot, because it had no substance, besides the beautiful scenery and great acting, this was clearly no The Babadook. Sure, grief is a powerful sentiment, one that was not developed properly here, and was not enough to make a good movie, and don't even get me started on the Horror part. There is less than 2% horror here, just a few tiny scenes and nothing more, in rest, just country side habits, a good depiction of heat and its influence, and a little behavior that was altered by alcohol. Beer makes more appearances than the scary parts, and that is saying something.

So there is no way I could ever recommend this, as I said it is no Babadook, maybe you'd have more fun with Midsommer, even tho that one is not my coup of tea either. Polednice went unnoticed simply because it deserved no real attention, an attempt was made here, but I still strongly believe the plot was too thin to make a movie out of it.

Cheers!