The Crescent

I was hooked from the start, the single mom and her little kid, (How they made that lil' kid do so much, say so much, run around, and hide from monsters and ghosts and evil Pet Semetary cats and on and on... ) Spectacular!

It starts right with an anti-climax , in the mothers attempts at trying to rebuild her life and just be a mom to that poor child we are intermittently interlarded with dash of melancholia here and a little bits of fear here.

I was pleasently surprised, to me, it seems like there perhaps is way more to the tale, yet the narrative is so artsy , due to the fact that the mother is constantly painting in the abstract and so it the narrative touches on that as she tries to figure out what is going on, it will give you a start here and there, but at the end even after the crisis moment, we are left with a sense that something good came out of all this , do we need to understand every single second of it, I don't know, I mean the tale at some point spills into the other regions, other realms man has posed questions and inquired since time immemorial, this was just a nice artistic tale that took us there, yes though beware of really spooky creepy middle-aged men with really nice silver locks! That's one thing I learnt from this movie! lol...

This movie is a shining example of someone who had a very specific vision for their film, so they just did whatever they wanted and it didn't end up coming together in any meaningful way. In an attempt to be deep and symbolic the movie is instead pretentious and a waste of time. The story is nonsensical and confusing until a character just explains it at the end. It's manages to be obtuse and hard to follow without actually being intriguing or leaving much up to interpretation. It's shot like absolute garbage, mostly using a lot of ugly close ups and handheld shots that have no sense of framing for the scene. Occasionally the movie has weird interludes where the aspect ratio changes to basically portrait view for seemingly no reason. There are some interesting visuals involving paintings made by the main character, but they don't end up having any real significance other than looking cool. Every performance is laughably bad; the lead especially seems incredibly bored every time that the scene is supposed to be suspenseful or scary. Probably most damning, it just isn't scary in any way. Nothing that happens to the main character and her son is really that threatening or disturbing in any way. There are a litany of cliches and played out set ups that never go anywhere. For a movie that's paced like a slug on wet concrete it doesn't create any sense of suspense whatsoever. In total, it's stupid, it's boring, it's ugly, it's poorly acted, and it has nothing to offer on a story level. Skip it.

I wasn't expecting too much and that is exactly what I got. Very slow, dull, and virtually no real scares or excitement. There are a few good shots and some decent acting but the story really drags it down and is really something better suited for a short story at best. Very artsy yet it lacks real nuance. Your time would be much better spent watching something else.

I repeat. . . The baby speaks more than everyone else. Just think about that for a second. Think about a very young child you know, and just imagine a movie where they are the protagonist amongst mostly adults. The baby is very articulate. . . For a baby. So don't expect any soliloquys, but 10/10 acting for a baby. Beyond that, I had trouble staying connected to whatever was happening in the movie. I just have more questions now, and don't know or care enough to watch the movie again - to confirm if it was an actual loose end or if it was explained. I would ask the questions now, but they might be considered spoilers. And perhaps this may be the warning someone needs, but won't read if it has spoilers.

Beth has lost her husband and takes their toddler Lowen to their beach house to heal. While there, she is frightened by an elderly neighbor who has taken an interest in her son. The movie is trippy and beautiful and slow but it does what The Babadook didn't - make you care for Beth and her son Lowen. As slow as it was, I was so terrified and uncomfortable for Lowen I almost had to stop watching. The toddler was amazingly cute and so good I wondered if he was older but small for his age. There were hints at the movie ending but for the most part it managed to maintain the mystery until the very end at which point everything makes sense.