Film, movies, cinema, Hollywood, the dream factory. The whole business has come to a pretty pass when B-movie dross like DEMISE can get itself reviewed in a national newspaper. Disney's atrocious Snow White reboot having failed so spectacularly a Jason Statham actioner outlasted it at the box office, and with Mine Craft being excoriated as we speak, is it any wonder any thing, any little thing that seems remotely related to people and their problems can get industry attention. Even amateurish junk like this.
DEMISE begins with the sound of sexy time, lady's heels scattered on the carpet, man's shoes sat neatly side-by-side. We then see the lady riding high with her undies still on. Admittedly we are talking classy lingerie, but still, one senses we're in Hollywood prudish infantilisation territory. Subsequent clinches don't become any more explicit, nor realistic.
The opening titles wouldn't look wholly out of place on a James Bond movie, if Bond was no longer a spy and merely a gigolo. (Who knows, maybe that's where the franchise will go in the future. Double-Oh Demise, perhaps?) Later we get generic Spanish guitar during one quickie (17 secs, in real time), and generic videogame music, Super Mario maybe, around the 45 minute mark. The music, like the editing, like the dialogue, is a muddle. And what dialogue!
- Wow. Tonight was such fun. I think we needed that.
Who talks like that with their wife, after dinner and nookie? Do people have 'date nights' when they're still childless? From the first words one senses that Demise is not predicated on life experiences but on genre recognition. The dialogue sounds like it could have been written by, you guessed it, AI.
- Fiona! Look, I know you think you're getting the short end of the stick here.
- You're right. I AM getting the short end of the stick.
(The short end of the stick?)
Demise has been compared in the press to 1990s era skin flicks, bonkbusters, T&A movies, only now we have to cope with computer-generated dialogue and what could be intimacy-coordinator-coordinated sex scenes. Even movies like Animal Instincts had better dialogue than Demise.
- Well don't worry, I didn't f*** him in my new dress.
- OOh! I probably deserved that.
(Was that meant to be a witty scolding?)
You get the point. I'll have to presume the writer/director is a breather and not a bot, and let's face it, plenty of Hollywood 'content' is based not upon observation of lived experience but rather upon genre pictures, brand recognition. Just as AI works by recycling what's already out there, so can real life human beings, possessing more ambition than talent.
DEMISE deserves to be studied in film schools. Much can be learned from such fare.
