Dungeon Girl

...was what we thought. Unfortunately, we checked IMDb after my wife and I paid for this movie on pay-per-view and started watching it.

Well, we found out how you could all be so negative.

I, although not so much my wife, enjoy "bad" movies sometimes - for example, "bad" science fiction movies with laughable plots, laughable monsters/villains/viruses/aliens/etc - I believe they are bad on purpose to make them enjoyably laughable.

But this disaster has nothing to laugh about. The only joy you will realize is either when you turn it off or when it is mercifully over.

Do not waste your time.

What a relief! I watched this on fear.net, so it was free.

I echo the sentiments of virtually every reviewer. This movie promised to be interesting by pretending to be based on the real case in Germany where the man held his daughter captive, molesting and even impregnating her multiple times.

This movie has NOTHING like the news story.

Long story, short....nothing happens in this movie. Yes, the guy kidnaps a girl and keeps her in his "house"? Apart from the rather mundane activities like cooking, playing guitar and reading a bible...there is no activities that contribute to the "plot"!!?? Annoying narration that explains nothing of the motivations by the protagonists. This makes Eraserhead look transparent! An absolute mess! It is incomprehensible how this ever got made or distributed.

From Ulli Lommel, the director who has mastered neither porn nor narrative, comes this fusion of the worst of both genres. The mindlessness of porn and the jarring, non-resolution of clumsy narrative are combined in this "to be missed at all costs" disaster of a film. Ever wonder what Hollywood means when they say "Based upon actual events"? That's just their way of saying "Once upon a time". In other words, the tale spun so maladroitly in this film has little in common with the real story. The director seems to have a prurient fascination with the fact that the actual young woman became a "media darling" after her ordeal. My impression of Lommel....hmmm...DaFoe's portrayal of a director in the comedic 2007 Rowan Atkinson film comes pretty close.

There is honestly not much to say. The movie was simply very bad. Worst movie I have ever seen. Don't be fooled by the DVD or VHS cover because that is the only good thing of this whole package. The movie repeated itself all the time and when it wasn't boring, it was just confusing or making you wanna hit your head on the wall. Obviously the whole point of this movie was to give the viewer some sense of the all the feelings the girl was going through. The movie was trying to be very artistic. It failed miserably and only gave the audience a pure feeling of disappointment, frustration and wanting to throw the TV out from the window. If you love yourself, don't watch it.

Dungeon Girl (2008)

** (out of 4)

My never ending parade of German director Ulli Lommel's "real life" movies continues with this one, which steps away from the horror genre and enters the drama category. This one tells a story that happened in Austria as a young girl was kidnapped and held hostage by a man for nearly six years. The entire running time centers on voiceovers as the girl tells her feelings for her parents, her life before the abduction and for her kidnapper known only as The Stranger. Again, I've seen all of Lommel's "real life" movies that have been released so far and this one here took me by a pleasant surprise. Not that I'd ever sit through the thing again but at least Lommel tried something different and didn't just deliver the same old garbage. I think what really helps this film is Wendi Jean Linn as the girl and Gunther Ziegler as The Stranger. We really don't get to see them "act" since most of the film is structured around voiceovers but this is beneficial since the majority of Lommel's recent films have been even worse due to the bad acting. Here, they at least look the parts well and the narration by Gwen Trevathan is really good. The film is way too slow and too much stuff is repeated for it to be considered a marginally good film. I'm really not sure what Lommel's obsession is with having a character look into the camera, ask questions and then constantly reuse this footage. Also, the running time of 81 minutes is the norm for his recent films but he might want to consider cutting them down to a hour or less. This is how "B" and "Z" movies were back in the day so he might want to revisit that. With that said, this is still a weak film but it's a lot better than anything the director's have given us over the past decade but then again, that's not saying too much.