The Corridor

Otherwise you might start watching The Corridor. The front cover looks genuinely well-made, with a real creepy atmosphere. How wrong it can be. Despite the intriguing visual art, the film is pretty dull.

It plays out like Stephen King's 'Dreamcatcher,' only not as good (and Dreamcatcher was pretty maligned!). Four (or was if five?) friends go to a mountain cabin to bond (or something, it doesn't really matter). There, one of them starts finding a wibbly-wobbly area of the surrounding woods that looks nothing like a corridor, yet that's what they call it. This wibbly-wobbly bit gives them all nosebleeds. Carnage follows.

However, what little carnage there is (and one particularly impressive gore scene) comes woefully too late. The characters are simply too dull to care about, which is a shame, as the actors do a decent job of portraying them (if you can excuse the worst 'bald' man's head ever to hit the screen).

The acting is not the problem, it's just the flow. The first two thirds are basically the guys sitting around discussing their problems. Most people will have already condemned the film before it kicks off. Then, when it finally gets going, you may enjoy the final third, but it's a hell of a long road to travel just for the pay-off.

If you liked Dreamcatcher, stick to it. If you didn't, you probably won't like this either!

The Good: With the exception of one actor, the acting was generally believable. The cinematography was decent overall.

The Bad: A dragging 30-minute exposition that could have been accomplished in 5 minutes or less. This is a movie not a novel; don't dialog us to death. As time went on I felt my interest in the characters decrease exponentially which, I imagine, stood in opposition to the director's intent. Ultimately, however, it's difficult to tell exactly what the director was going for. Regardless, the exposition never took me anywhere emotionally, and that left me with a "who cares" feeling that persisted throughout the majority of the movie.

Character believability also had issues. Without giving too much away, I thought the characters' reactions to the corridor seemed unrealistic. However, I fault the script more than the actors for this. Arguably, though, their reactions could be attributed to the affects of the corridor itself, which would be consistent with the "plot." Nonetheless, it made for awkward viewing and I found myself silently begging the director, "get to the point."

Additionally, there are episodes of violence in this movie that were unpalatable. Mind you, I'm a horror fan and can tolerate a fair share of gore. It would be incorrect to call the violence "gratuitous," because I think the violence was necessary for the director to get where he wanted to go. The problem was, the place he went was not fun, exciting, new, or even that interesting.

The Ugly: The "hair" and makeup. I mean, wow. It's not often makeup has a hand in sinking a movie, but when you see the bald character in the beginning of the movie you will understand my point. It was so bad I think it skewed my impression of his acting ability. I've read others comment about the special effects. I didn't expect much in this area so it wasn't as big of a deal for me. If you're a stickler for good special effects, you might find yourself frustrated.

Overall this movie felt like a bumbled attempt to stitch Dreamcatcher and Donnie Darko together and call it "art" under the guise of a psychological thriller. The thing about psychological thrillers, however, is that you have to get the viewer psychologically invested. This is where The Corridor failed.

I can't think of the last time I saw anything this bizarre. The script must surely have been written by a genuine schizophrenic - parts of it are too idiosyncratic to be anything other than autobiographical and other parts of it are too strange to have any meaning beyond the context to the author's own delusions. There must be an endless number of scripts out there that are equally weird, produced daily by schizophrenics in mental hospitals all over the world. Here is one however, that someone decided to straight up make into a movie. I mean I don't know that this was the case but that's certainly what it appears to be.

There are however some genuinely scary moments amongst the bad acting and contrived scenes. For example - when the mother starts doing sign language on a loop on the video. The best bits of this movie (and they were very few) reminded me of "the Atrocity Exhibition". Check it out if you like unmitigated weirdness.

Well, definitely liked the way that this movie started out. It had a bit of mystery with a kid psyching out, and with the illusion of a possible crime being committed. But, the film had a lot of slow moments to it, especially right after the first five minutes. It dragged a bit to long at times, and it bored me quickly. Once all of the friends got together out in the country, I felt like the characters were disjointed and acted more like they just met, rather than supposedly being best friends since high school. Fast forward to about the last 30 minutes of the film. This is where it just seemed a bit odd to me, and I didn't particularly like that portion of it. I felt that I knew where they were trying to go with it, but to me, it didn't quite get there. I could definitely identify with the "crazy" character, but again, what was reality and what wasn't? I don't know if parts of the film was supposed to be some sort of reconciliation, or was it mere punishment. I didn't hate the movie, but I didn't quite like it either.

This movie is more of an acquired taste, than anything else. You'll either love it for its refreshing take on this genre or hate it for making you feel left out.

The other reviews pretty much covered everything, so I'll make this short and simple: The story requires your undivided attention. If you miss a second of it, you may not "get" what it's all about.

The actors are actually very good. Surprised me, really, in their intensity. Their emotions were almost palpable.

My only "complaint" is that the "entity" itself had too little a role, and its appearance too subtle for cinematic effect.

Nevertheless, it's a movie I would recommend.