Horsehead

Visually this film is at times quite stunning, but beyond that there's not much else to recommend it.

Unfortunately one reviewer had to compare it to Dario Argento's work, which then started a trend. In reality it is only the director of photography that resembled Argento in this film, the actual director had some nice ideas but fails to hold the film together. The comparison with such a brilliant director is nothing short of total nonsense.

The cinematography was the best part of this movie, providing a powerfully attractive opening scene which exquisitely recreates Fuseli's 18th century oil painting, The Nightmare. After this point however the film is gradually let down by weak acting, a poor script and an overall immature plot.

That's unfortunate because it seems this film had potential, taking iconography from sleep paralysis, some interesting ideas provided by Jungian psychology and consistently attractive scene construction. But all of this gets flushed down the pan by a director who seems determined to compromise everything this film could have been with an over reliance on visual effects and music apparently compensating for a lack of any real substance.

This film is the work of a great cinematographer and a director that needs to develop his ability, especially his screen writing.

This movie is indeed well done! The acting was good, the scenes and locations were perfect! The symbolism. And just the general quality of the movie was outstanding! I just had difficulty knowing what was going on much of the time. Also, there wasn't good flow for me. I had to watch it separate days to finish. Horsehead was a beautiful piece of cinematic art that wasn't that entertaining as a movie.

This is a bizarre movie that does a very good job depicting the nature of the nightmare, not the bad dream itself, rather the malicious entity that causes sleep paralysis and bedevils the victim with awful dreams. If you are unfamiliar with the folklore I suggest you look it up as that knowledge may congeal the seemingly disjointed story in your mind.

The imagery was beautiful while the story was rather simplistic, although I feel if the story was more complicated it may have distracted from the nature of the nightmare (horsehead) itself. There is so much communicated through the nightmare images that no narrative is needed to explain the journey if you are acquainted with the folklore.

I fully agree with Angiris' review above. I thought he articulated it really well as to what this film is 'about' and how it comes across.

I THINK that I can see what the director is TRYING to do. I appreciate a number of the visual sequences, especially the REALLY creative lighting. The Ambient soundtrack (NOT the sound design. I will come back to that in a moment) is quite good. VERY moody. This is the ONE aspect where I think the director did achieve a Lynchian feel in the movie. In my lowly and wretched opinion, IF they had just approached the film DIFFERENTLY, I think there was enough creative energy and vivid imagery to pull it off. BUT... what I feel is 'wrong' with this film and unfortunately where it fails in what it is TRYING to do, is just the approach is all wrong. If you are going to imitate or be inspired by or try to have a similar approach to a film as, say, David Lynch, I feel that the single, vital thing ABOVE ALL is the MOOD that you create. Now, I feel that he did this SOMETIMES with certain short sequences. But, where I feel that he worked against himself is by 'jarring' or kind of 'cross-purposing' the very mood he was trying to create by introducing a kinetic visual style and Techno-Electronic sound that, to me anyway, totally destroyed whatever eerie, disturbing mood that he was trying to create.

Again, just my opinion... But, I think that if he had gone for a more laid back, static shot, murky sub-conscious approach and ditched all the Techno-Electronic / Mtv crap, then it likely would have worked pretty well. Just the wrong approach. And, what the HELL was up with the almost bloody CONTINUOUS hand-held crap in just about every scene. Dude... you are NOT going for a 'Found Footage' feel here mate. What the hell is the film all about anyway...? DREAMS, right? So, to me, it seems that the ENTIRE mood and visual / sonic approach to the film should have centered around Dreamy, murky, understated visuals and effects. Just SLOW the damn thing down dude... All that hyperkinetic Techno stuff, in my opinion, just ruins the whole thing. This is PRECISELY why I hate the 'American Horror Story' series. Absolutely NO subtlety at all...

Look... if you are making a film about 'Lucid Dreaming', I can understand why you would want to let loose with all these GREAT awesome visuals. Okay, fine... However, WAIT until you build up to it. WAIT until you create a ponderous and disturbing and YES, a DREAMY mood, even a Nightmarish mood and then BUILD and ratchet up the tension until you have this great WILD, Hallucinatory finale. THAT would work, I think. It was a shame too, because some of the technical approaches and techniques were GREAT, in and of themselves. A shot here, a short sequence there. BUT... you HAVE to be able to put it all together in such a way that it is EFFECTIVE and creates the mood and overall result that you are trying to achieve.

Also, maybe it was just me, but I REALLY thought the girl was LAME. She was not a very good actress. So, when you are trying to evoke this deep, disturbing, subconscious fear in your audience, you ABSOLUTELY have to have an actress who can convey that BELIEVABLY and GEEZ, a LOT more subtly than this girl did. Particularly this really stupid, open-mouthed expression that she had throughout most of the film. Bad...

And I KNOW that I've harped on this before, and I KNOW it is one of my little personal neuroses, but the Sound Design was VERY amateurish, and at least to me, that takes me right out of the film every time. What I am talking about is like for example the girl is opening a little box across the room from the audience's perspective. And from where you and I are seeing her it is like 30 feet away. And yet, the sound of the cardboard rustling is around like 100 decibels and sounds like it is right next to your ear. Or, just in general, EVERY bloody sound is HUGELY amplified, every footstep, every swish of material, ALL of it is boosted up to '11' I'm sorry, but not only is that NOT at all realistic, but to me it just is plain stupid and inexcusable.

So, yes, I did give the film a '5' And yes, that is probably a little generous. BUT, what tears at me somewhat is that I can ALMOST see the film that the director is trying to make coming through on the screen, but it is hidden under all this crap that I mentioned which basically ruins it. And I DID truly appreciate the EXCEPTIONAL creativity that went into a lot of the lighting, editing, and some of the visual techniques, so I felt that my score should at least reflect my acknowledgment of some of these things.

I guess I would say that if you are like me and you REALLY like David Lynch and what he does, then you likely will find this film to be clumsy and conflicted in it's approach and mood. If you like the subtlety that David Lynch uses in his long, static shots, and SLOW build ups and weird images and visuals that seem like he dug them up right from your subconscious, then I think this film here will probably come across as far to jarring and disjointed. Now, IF you are the kind of person who likes stuff that is more 'In your face' and kinetic with an Electronic-Techno soundtrack, and you like more direct, brutal imagery, well then you might like this movie more than I did. So, it just depends on the TYPE of visually 'Out There' kind of stuff that you like...

I am usually generous with stars here, so I hope this is a good explanation of why I give it a 7 star review.

My first view of this, was a little more entertaining than the few time's I tried to re watch this. I found it interesting and it had cool sequences of her nightmares that were pretty intriguing. I liked it and thought that was interesting. Sadly I have re watched it a few times and don't usually finish it.

It seems like a good movie, but I guess I don't get it and the theme's are more interesting to me since I don't fully get it. I'll be honest I rarely get movies fully and like the actor's and visuals or settings way more than the content, so detailed content and further meaning usually buzz my tower at high speed and then are gone... lol.

Give it a try for horror with deep meaning... I think. Hopefully you like it, I almost did... but I still give it a chance now and then for the hope I will since it made such a good first impression.