Julia

This has been done before, and better, as with I Spit on Your Grave. Julia(Ashley Williams) seen earlier in the even more bloody Human Centipede, gives a decent performance in the otherwise tedious, dark, and poorly written Juila. It begins with our heroine wearing ugly, oversized glasses walking up the stairs to an apartment for a date with a fellow intern from a nearby New York City hospital. He gives her a drink, which of course is spiked with something to knock out the young lady. Through a series of flashbacks, we are shown her assault by five very angry young men. She overhears a conversation at a seedy bar by women recovering from rape. Of course she pursues them and eventually gets her revenge on her culprits. The movie drags on for ninety five minutes and is a waste of time.

Ghost Whisperer meets the Devil.

Revenge movies are always unpleasant to watch. But Julia has an underbelly that is dark.

On the surface it's just another revenge story, but beneath that is the occult, Julia's helpers are more like demons than people.

They take her in her weakness and turn her into one of them.

She goes from destroyed, to destroyer.

She becomes like the devil, stealing men away from life.

If you look at these mentors as the symbols of demons, and not human, as they appear to be, this movie really takes shape.

One of the worst films I have seen this year, it is just ridiculous that people get away with making these types of abominations. We have seen the set up before; mousy girl is raped, physically and mentally damaged, seeks revenge. It was done in I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, etc. and there is a reason why these movies simply retread the same territory with little variation. Where you can vary (such as inventive kills), the movie skips these over almost completely, instead opting to showcase the aftermath. Why make a revenge film if you are going to censor it so heavily? Give me something visceral, gut wrenching and horrific, not this made-for-Chiller-T.V. snooze fest that left me with more questions than I started out with. The acting was decent (surprisingly), and the only real stand out was the soundtrack; Japanese vocals, heavy bass and inventive rhythms make this an audible treat. But the movie itself is so utterly banal, that I was exasperated mind way through at the lack of anything interesting happening, and by the end I was just glad that it was over. Disappointing is an understatement. It was just a weak experience overall.

6.5 of 10. While the Saw films accomplished the same modern-day, reality-based blood and gore, the extremes and contraptions involved took a willingness to fantasize to believe something like that could happen. With Julia, there's no need for imagination or fantasy and nearly everything that's left to imagination in other films is visualized on screen.

Amongst other parts of it to enjoy are the soundtrack integration and the focus of the film. It doesn't try to be something more or imply something other than what the story is about.

What's missing seems to be pacing and acting and a few unedited non-sequiturs. Otherwise, you get a goth/emo-chick horror with some mystery without suffering through make believe monsters or heroes.

I just watched this film and came away completely surprised by it. At first I thought it was just another run of the mill horror flicks as I didn't watch any trailers and just went on the movie artwork. How wrong was I. I was so impressed by this film I logged onto IMDb hoping to see some well written reviews of this gem but to my shock Im presented with a 4.4 score!! Who is coming up with this stuff?

Let me just make this simple for you, if you liked the film Drive and don't mind a bit of violence and want a strong female lead then this is the film for you.

Fantastic score and visuals and a real moody vibe to the whole thing. Yeah, some scenes are a little bit unnecessary but I can totally let it off.

Great flick.

7/10