Observance

There is the skeleton of a story draped around the film, enough to make you think it might be going someplace or mean something, but it will all be abandoned, or ignored in favor of obtuse, confusing, unconnected occurrences strung together for no reason whatsoever. There are some good creepy moments, one particularly effective scare, and even reasonably strong performances, but basically it's a 20-minute student film made by a potentially talented filmmaker, whose sole dictate was to create a mysterious and creepy ambiance - stretched to 86 minutes without the least idea (or perhaps intention) of providing anything more. There is enough of a plot to leave you frustrated when it veers away into disjointed nonsense whose dots will never connect, padded out with a man hearing strange noises, the source of which doesn't matter and is never explained, or hearing strange voices on recordings which may or may not be ghostly voices, and photographing images that may or may not be some time-displacement issue, seeing a bottle filling up with inky liquid for no discernible reason and certainly not connecting to anything else in the film, or showing shots of blood drops run backwards. And then there are the extreme close-ups of rocks, and suddenly spitting out tar. You know, anything permissible under the rubric of "it's surreal", or "it's art" but far more likely "it's kinda like something David Lynch would do." Which might be justification for crafting a 20-minute student film, but not enough to try and pass it off as a feature film. I personally love complex films that make you work intellectually; but that's a far cry from incoherent, lazy film-making where nothing logically fits together however technically accomplished it might be in places. Considering its minuscule budget it is extremely well-done and uses its limitations wisely. Too bad there wasn't a thought-out screenplay that all of this could have been in service of.

This movie is beautiful, and there are a lot of cool 'gross-out' moments. The way it is shot actually made me feel uncomfortable while I was watching it. Unfortunately, the lack of any kind of story or plot kills the film. It's fun to look at it, but so disappointing that there isn't more.

I'll go ahead and say this was one of those horror films, like Alien, Absentia, AM 1200, Banshee Chapter, The Corridor, etc... that is very Lovecratian without overtly rehashing any of that author's stories.

Also, a LOT of folks are not going to have the patience for this movie... it's slow... most of the plot is suggested rather than overtly displayed... there's no real gore or nudity (though one scene nearly made me puke)... and the end is open to interpretation. For the people, like me, who do get into stuff like this... subtle horror that will stay with me for days afterward... Observance is a damn fine little film. I wasn't aware of its tiny budget until after I'd watched it... and for me it didn't show. I think horror often works best on this intimate scale anyway.

3/10.

It's not boring because the plot is interesting, but the grade is low due to poor realization. From the beginning we are not nicely introduced to the plot and the story, as well as the characters, are not elaborate enough. At the end of the film, I expected at least some explanation, but nothing. The same mystery remained as at the beginning because I didn't understand anything.

I was REALLY into this film. I could totally feel the David Lynch vibe with the great atmospheric B&W shots, the excellent, moody soundscape, and the compelling and, to me anyway, very involving mystery of what the hell was going on.

BUT... although the movie makers had carefully paced the movie to create an increasing sense of tension and unease, very artfully immersing the audience in an effective ambient mood, and then... abruptly about 40 minutes into the story, for some inexplicable reason the director seems to throw all that hard-earned subtlety to the wind and we have like a 5-10 minute disgustingly gross scene of this guy in the bathroom heaving all this horrible stuff up, etc., etc...

Now, if I had wanted a GROSS fest, I would have chosen a film that highlighted that. I cannot understand WHY this abrupt and to me extremely disappointing change in tone was suddenly thrust upon us. I tried to weather the scene figuring it might be over in a minute or so. But, astonishingly the director just keeps us focused on this completely jarring grossness that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the lovely textured mood that had been created up to that point. To me, the whole bloody thrust (and appeal) of the film was the great sense of mystery and the SUBTLETY of the mood, clearly leading to some powerful reveal later on. What I was NOT frigg'n expecting was for that to be yanked out from under us and then to be forced to view this meaningless, VERY extended, mood-breaking grossness. I tried to put up with it as long as I could, but after about 5 friggin, constant minutes of our this mindless audience abuse, I had to shut it off.

A real shame too... The movie up to that point I felt was very well done and very cleverly crafted. Whatever the hell got into the director to completely ruin it by doing this is almost a greater mystery than he had taken all that time and effort to create in the first place...