Thine Ears Shall Bleed

Thine Ears Shall Bleed describes a phenomenon brought upon by an overwhelming, unnatural sound in an isolated woods. I was hoping there was more to the movie than that - but there's really not. It's much too basic for the entire movie to be about arrogant evangelical protestants mistaking their imagination for "god" but that's really all the movie is about.

I was hoping there would be some kind of message that corresponds to what is going on right now with horrifically misguided racist Christian nationalism but there really isn't, other than the men being more susceptible to not recognizing evil versus the women. The wife and the daughter are extremely clear minded about the odd noise being a force for evil while the husband completely loses his mind and the son eventually follows suit.

Or conversely, it could have set the stage for a scathing criticism of the Mormon church, which was founded about the time this film is set. The fact that the preacher character calls the strange wooded area "the Garden of Eden" gave me brief hopes we'd start tearing into the bizarre beliefs of the LDS church. No such luck.

Meh.

For the last year or so I have been going down the road of obscure movies. The hidden gems as they say. I enjoy original plots. Directors and writers that take a chance on something a little different. It combines supernatural within a period movie which is a combination I always like. Acting was strange to me. I couldn't hear emotions in their speech. Not that is wasn't good acting it was more like a foreign movie that was dubbed English. No jump scares is my favorite part of the movie. Don't need them and I don't understand why Hollywood uses them in everything. I applaud the director for a nice creepy movie.

...as you nod off trying to watch this weird little film. It starts off sooooo sloooow you're not likely to bother reaching the end. Fret not, for you will have missed nothing. Never in my life have I heard such stilted dialogue, and I read Shakespeare for fun. Honestly, the characters sound like they've all got sticks shoved so far up their rectums they can't bend to sit. This is not how people spoke in the 1850's: it's how the literature sounded, but not the speech. Anyway, the patriarch of this family traveling through the woods believes the spooky, inhuman roar they all hear occasionally is the voice of God. As one does. Before long, pops has lost his reason and is doing some strange things. The only person with an iota of common sense on this little outing is the wife (of course) but little good it does her. Eventually, another character wanders in and blah blah blah. There's bloodshed, craziness, murder, and supernatural hijinks, but somehow it still never gets past being only vaguely interesting, and far from worth the $4 I paid Prime to watch it. The idea could make an interesting movie, but unfortunately this one wasn't it. Pass.

Not bad at all as current horror movies go. At the end there was a bit too much telling as opposed to showing and certain things that were obvious got verbally explained which was unnecessary, but the first 75% of the movie was excellent.

It was an interesting excellent creepy period horror film until the ending when it became more of a really good episode of something more akin to Tales from the Crypt, I will say that this film was made very well and the acting never bumped me out of enjoying the film. The blind son was the weakest link in that realm, but he wasn't horrible.

The forest scenery is beautiful and the sound was a fantastic idea done well.