Don't Look Up

There was a time that Japanese or Asian flicks were the next big thing. Gore galore and brutality used was a common thing. Sadly, Hollywood saw the dollars coming in and started to remake most of those flicks, many of them flopped. Even worser, those eastern directors were asked to make Hollywood movies. Bad idea, they are really crap. Here, Fruit Chan, the director couldn't deliver the stuff. And even as the granddaughter of actor, Charles Chaplin, plays in it it really is a dreg. The idea is okay, but done before a year ago in two other films. The movie in the movie, remember The Hills Run Red and Midnight Movie. Here a director would like to remake a movie that was never finished due to, as legends go, evil spirits. Those evil spirits are killing all crew members or anyone involved in the making of the movie. The supernatural is a main thing in this flick but appears too much via CGI. No gore, no nudity, no suspense, no nothing. I would recommend it for teenagers seeking for a good time with a beer and some crisps.

This movie started with some promise, considering that it's from the same writers of "The Ring," and directed by (until now) promising director Fruit Chan.

The beginning is fairly intriguing, but maybe fifteen or twenty minutes in, I was losing interest, and wondering where the plot had gone. In my opinion, the writers definitely missed out on an opportunity to really scare us, to give us the next "Ring," or "The Grudge," but they passed it up. God knows why.

I didn't find Chan's direction particularly riveting or impressive, which was disappointing, to say the least. Without any notable exceptions, the acting is dismal and unconvincing, making a bad movie worse. The fake Romanian accents, in particular, started to get to me after a while. (Our hero's name is MarCUS. Not MarCOOS.)

I still felt they might have managed to salvage it at the ending, but this, as well, was a disappointment. Any brief horror they had managed to drum up had been whizzed right down their legs in roughly fifteen seconds.

Yes, there is some gore, and at times I felt an uneasy sense of foreboding, but this film ultimately failed in delivering the punches. Rent it if you like, but beware that it won't live up to expectations.

Here's a film which seems to be all over the place in terms of story, which is needlessly complicated and as a result feels rushed and unsatisfactory. This is apparently a remake of an Japanese ghost film, given a western twist and cast, and directed by Chinese director Fruit Chan (who made the sickening DUMPLINGS).

The story tells of a film crew attempting to shoot a tale about a cursed production, only for themselves to fall foul of the evil spirit of a witch inhabiting the set. The witchcraft/ghost angle is entirely predictable, although there are some cool CGI effects involving swarming flies, but that doesn't stop the film from feeling disjointed and more than a little unfocused.

There are familiar cast members here, from a cameoing Eli Roth as a Hungarian director to Henry Thomas and Shiloh Fernandez, but the actors fail to bring life to what is a very stale script. You can tell Chan is trying and indeed DON'T LOOK UP is unsettling in a few places thanks to his efforts, but as with most remakes I'd recommend checking out the original instead.

The formula has been repeated so often you have to wonder why they don't just quit.

Take a good Japanese suspense film of the same name, which was directed by Hideo Nakata (The Ring Trilogy), and had a screenplay by Hiroshi Takahashi, who also wrote the screenplays for the Ring Trilogy. and bring in a big time director (Fruit Chan) and someone to adapt the screenplay to add gore instead of suspense (Brian Cox), add some American eye candy (Rachael Murphy), and you have a film that is a pale imitation of the original directed to teens.

Forget the eye candy, find the original.

I can see why some reviewers thought this film was a bit messy. But I can see how that adds to the, this person is loosing their mind and what is, and what is not actually real. I thought some of the ideas here were cool.

It's not the best work for this director, but I thought it was still a pretty interesting watch. It has some cool ideas, and the idea behind the story was pretty interesting too. Like finding out more depth behind the spirit the filming is meant to be about would have made this a better film.

The acting and script are pretty average, but overall I think the film is worth a watch.