Nightsiren

The dark mysterious atmosphere with a touch of folk horror, the cinematography and audiovisual direction are truly captivating. The acting performances are good and especially the main female duo is great, they carry the entire film.

However, Nightsiren also has several flaws. The writing is messy at times, character behaviour is weird sometimes and the biggest problem is that almost everything is one-dimensional, there's no nuance. For example, the villagers are portrayed as mean, superstitious, prejudicial assholes. And although I understand and support that the film attempts to point out/criticise many relevant problems, I must also acknowledge that the way in which it is done is itself problematic

In terms of (Czecho)Slovakian cinema, the Nightsiren is a bold, unique and high-quality work, so despite its flaws I give it a high rating.

After a shocking start, the script by Teresa Nvotová and Barbora Namerova slowly builds the story of a peasant community rooted in immovable agrarian values, according to basic concepts of duality (like a moon bath versus a sun bath, for example), which awakened my interest. The film also came labeled as "folk horror", a subgenre that is fashionable today, but that has existed since there has been cinema and has produced works about agrarian cults, human sacrifice and other aromas, with classics such as Murnau's «Tabu» to recent notable works such as the Estonian «November», the Portuguese «Alma viva», and the Chilean «Brujería», without forgetting cult films such as the Italian «Il demonio» and the British «The Wicker Man», nor the goats and inverted pentagons from Ari Aster's cinema.

However, this Slovak film is a mystery drama that places heavy emphasis on collective harassment, ignorance, sex and violence, telling us the story of a young woman who returns to her hometown, when she is called by the mayor to claim her inheritance. She ends up entangled in a patriarchal environment, full of family secrets. When the story takes the path of psychedelia, by "reconstructing" a summer holiday, I could not help but completely distance myself from the drama of the protagonist (which almost turns out to be a circus freak) to the point that the family tale lost its fascination and became a tearful melodrama. Awarded in Locarno and Sitges and renamed "Nightsiren" in the USA, proceed at your discretion.

This film is truly a disaster The plot is really trivial in Meta Fil you understand everything even before, the film at certain times certainly offers us something good at then ruins everything with really trivial and stupid choices as the choice from a photo model perfectly clean and depilated, this character beyond everything serves only a thing that too is at the most crammed and banal, that is, to have sex this character is a puppet without any characterization only because the film can be a scene without a scene. Gender, we must always follow the flock of sheep, that is, a screenwriter must always do what everything do, without the Pecoraro model photo would have been a good movie with the photo model Pecoraro is just a movie like many others! Model photo which is then literally forgotten by the script !!

No pun intended - it is always hard to be a woman with an opinion. Even more so if that is true in a village. Where whispers can become rumors and those than outcries and shouts for something that does not make much sense, if you think about it rationally. Also everyone knows (or things they do), what happens around them.

It is sometimes easier to blame something else than to face reality. When a woman comes back to the village she was born, she has to learn the hard way ... well about her past, about her mother, about gossip ... and about the people that live there ... how they conduct themselves and how they project ... or are unable to admit to their own wrongdoings.

If you believe in a religion, you should ask yourself how you interpret what you believe in ... if you are able to be that self reflective that is. But back to the movie at hand. This is really well made, great location, great story and really well acted. If you like thrillers/dramas with real life implication .. and society examining ... with a touch of otherworldly flair that is ... or more than that? You have to watch to see.

Okay, here we go. This was unfortunately not a very good movie. The acting was pretty bad all over the board (one scene in particular, including a drunk woman, was especially jarring), but my biggest issue with it was by far the screenplay. The overarching story didn't work at all for me.

The basic premise of the movie is that a woman returns to her native mountain village where she grew up because of unclear reasons. From there the plot development is pretty much nonexistent, the main character mostly walks around in the village and surrounding forest with her newly found friend. Things happen a bit randomly. There are hints of sorcery and witchcraft going on that is tied into the narrative, but isn't explored in any meaningful way throughout the film.

The villagers, that initially are suspicious of the newly arrived woman, are laughably one-note. They are depicted as extremely horrible people with no other traits (or even a personality). There are several disturbing scenes in the movie, including nudity, sex and rape, that makes no sense whatsoever plot-wise. I'm not sure why those were included at all, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. The ending is equally disconnected from the rest of the film. What was even the point of all this?

The only strength this movie has is that it actually looks pretty good. The foggy moonlit forest creates an unnerving atmosphere, and the Slovak mountain ranges are a great backdrop for the story. It is a shame then that the rest of the movie is such a mess.

(Seen at the 2022 Stockholm International Film Festival)