Dark Memories

Boy, I must be unlucky. Two banal and pointless movies in one week (the other being the extremely bland "Shallow Ground", for reference). I don't think I've been this unfortunate in a long time. Anyway, this is the story of a woman, Karen, who moves back into her grandparents' home after her grandmother dies, following her last wish. She's going to clean up the house and then sell it and marry her boyfriend. But what happens when she starts reliving the horrors of her past every single night?

This seemed promising, like some kind of Amityville Horror or The Shining-type of film. It had the lead actress from Jeepers Creepers, which I thought was a good movie overall. So this one was a good pick for me, and I didn't bother reading reviews or anything. But ehh...it's just mediocre at best, if not flat out awful. The acting is...terrible...especially from Gina Phillips, who was nowhere near this horrible back in Jeepers Creepers. Maybe it's the awful script. She screams way too much and they go on for too long. The caretaker is meant to 'become increasingly more violent', but it's actually more like one moment he's nice and kind and the next moment he's a freak. Doesn't make much sense. By the end it's barely even a horror movie. I don't know what to call it, but this was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

I did give it a point or two extra for making me think, because there is a really intriguing idea buried here if you look hard enough. The ending of the movie seemed trite and lame to me, until I thought about it, and realized exactly what the whole thing meant. All the hazy, distorted flashbacks, the missing pages in the kids' book, and Pierce's sexually violent nature...all of it leads up to something that I think I'll let you figure out yourself. This may be a terrible film, but I had to give it a point for making me think and realize the meaning behind some stuff here.

This has to be the stupidest, incoherent bunch of crap ever to waste 90 minutes of my life! Absolutely worthless! Obviously, Tom Sizemore was hired as a "name", which after his problems with Heidi Fleiss and drugs, he hardly is anymore. But, this drivel needed every chance it could get.

It's like the six, yes that's six, writers really couldn't agree on a plot, so they just kind of threw everything together.

Don't waste your time. Trust me, when it is over, you will be scratching your head saying, "What the f***?" If you want a really scary, atmospheric movie, just rent "The Ring" again! And as someone pointed out in the forums, this movie actually ripped off music from "The Ring" and "The Grudge" - Two completely superior movies.

A movie has to be really bad for me to fail to see some redeeming quality in it. This is that movie. It has no redeeming qualities. None. The acting is bad. The story (or lack of same) is bad. There is no resolute ending. It is about a woman who must come to terms with a lifetime of night terrors and the cause of them. When her grandmother dies and leaves to her the house where she spent her summers as a little girl, the opportunity for her to deal with her nightmares presents itself. She goes to the house to stay until she can sell it. She transforms from successful business woman to disoriented, annoying screamer as soon as she enters the house. Apparently everything she sees, hears, feels, thinks is symbolic of a childhood trauma. Unfortunately, there is never a foundation developed to which one can relate the symbols. Nothing relates to anything. Nothing makes sense, except we know that she is terrified, maybe guilt ridden from some childhood experience(s). None of her actions are logical, even if you can manage to suspend disbelief, which for this movie is required to even sit through the whole thing. I'd like to see a finished version of this movie, because this version is obviously half baked.

When the grandmother of the publicist Karin (Gina Phillips) dies, she inherits her property in the fields. She travels with her boyfriend Jeff (Randall Batinkoff) for the weekend, but she decides to stay along the week cleaning up the place and packing the stuffs. Karin has horrible nightmares and visions of ghosts of her past, while she stays in the house with the creepy housekeeper Pierce (Tom Sizemore) and her younger sister Wendy (Jenny Mollen).

"Ring Around the Rosie" has a non-sense, absurd, confused and unintelligible screenplay. The motives and actions of Karin, who behaves like a moron in spite of being a successful publicist, are never well explained. It seems that she had a traumatic experience in the house many years ago, and when she returned, she recalled and lived it again, blending nightmares with reality, but the director Rubi Zack was never able to explain the story. It seems also that each one of the four writers wrote one part of the story, but they forgot to interact and put the ideas together. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "O Mistério de Rosie" ("The Mystery of Rosie")

i rented this movie last night hoping for a scary movie, something that would keep me entertained, and maybe i have watched too many scary movies and have become desensitized but this movie was bordering on hilarious rather than hair-standing-on-end scary. and i just didn't get it, nothing tied in together. this movie just provided you with a bunch of shots about a girl hallucinating and then in the end didn't explain any of it, and then added another ending scene that just seemed pointless. sure maybe it is supposed to make you think, but it just seemed....like a bunch of loose ends that never tied together. definitely a waste of time. i said in the first 13 minutes that i hoped it was only an hour and a half film. if you want a really good suspense film i say watch the skeleton key.