The Sonata

This movie will not stimulate your brain nor will it scare you. However, it was very atmospheric and moved at a nice pace. It started off quite good then for some reason, took a nose dive about half way through. The protagonist was also somewhat unlikeable and we never really get to know her in order to like her better. I found myself not really caring what happens to any of the characters. It started off well, but needed more character development and more of a story. The ending was overly simplistic. But I can't say it was boring.

Very reminiscent of old Hammer horror films, with superb locations, quality performances from virtually all of the cast, superb music scoring and a really well orchestrated atmosphere of dread and suspense reminiscent of The Devil Rides Out and it was proceeding so well until the end and the last 10 minutes of the movie just fizzled and burned out like a damp squib.

It had all the ingredients too, including a well paced and original story but what could have been a really great horror-thriller was spoiled by the rushed ending and brief CGI - such a shame but it is still well above average and beats most of the recent horror drivel that has been coming out of the film studios recently so a fair 6.5/10 from me!

A brilliant young violinist inherits the music of her estranged father, a mysterious composer, but it leads her down the path to darkness ...

Curious case of an ordinary tale with extraordinary potential. I was looking forward to a cinematic treatment of an evil phenomenon in music, but it didn't go there in the end, although I do think the idea was covered in the score.

Instead, we get a traditional story with a puzzle in the symbolologicaltastic manner of Dan Brown - clever, but not enlightening, and nothing that couldn't have been dealt with in a 60m TV episode.

The performances are good, with an odd difference in height between the two leads. There is material for the actors to get their teeth into, but the characters remain fairly simple, despite the dark past of family estrangement (the mother's story wasn't followed up) and alcoholism. I'm also thinking of the housekeeper, who really just shows up for exposition - in a film noir or in David Lynch she would serve several purposes at once and deepen our unease, focus the drama.

The cinematography is quality. Not so sure about the direction, and certainly the editing and story line are a bit plain. The opening scene is effective, but had the feel of a first person POV sequence in an old video game. The choice of location at the old mansion was way over the top, immediately raising all sorts of irrelevant questions - it's not Dracula's Castle!

The evil phenomenon in the music is the Devil's interval, which the lush score hits repeatedly - that unresolved discord made familiar through so many genres of disturbing music, and I hoped the story would somehow turn on this. Hard to say how to do it without ending up as '60s psychedelia, but I think it would need a shift of perception, a shift in the story-telling itself, to provide an interval in reality through which we slide down to Hell. Ahem. You know what I mean. But not this time.

Overall: Good production, but lack of depth in the story.

To me The Sonata deserves a higher rating than it actually got on here. Andrew Desmond did a good job with this movie. There is a certain dark athmosphere created, mostly by the excellent soundtrack. If you want to make a good horror movie (even thought it's not categorized as such, but it should) you need good sound effects and music, that's just essential and in The Sonata it's just perfect. The acting wasn't bad either. I would have liked a bigger part for Rutger Hauer but the rest of the cast did certainly well. The Sonata isn't a very visual horror movie even though there are some good frightening scenes and jump scares, it's more an athmospheric horror movie that has it from the sound and story. Not bad at all if you like that stuff.

A decent horror flick that overall feels like a missed opportunity. About 20 minutes more for some backstory adding a touch more character development and I think we could have had a right winner. That and CGI looked like it came out of a video game. That all being said, I enjoyed it for the movie it should have been.