Film Filter: Off- So I had literally heard about this movie the mere day before I had seen it. It had come highly recommended, so I figured why not watch it. I was a little apprehensive to see Radcliffe in his first real breakaway role from Harry Potter, but the movie certainly did not disappoint.
Pros- To properly portray this type of film, you need a very strong lead actor, which I'm happy to say they received with Radcliffe. This is the type of introspective first person thriller not unlike I am Legend or Castaway, where the lead character spends most of their time alone and must captivate our interest through a majority of silence. Again, Radcliffe delivers.
I am also very enamored with the time period in the film, the late 1800s early 1900s. I think most horror films try to make themselves look realistic, so the obvious ploy would be to set the story in a modern day time period to make it feel more "real". After watching this film, however, I would argue the opposite to be true. Without the modern technological marvels of cell phones, laptops, vehicles, and electricity, characters in a scene are more vulnerable and don't have an easy way out of the situation. It's a much more frightening thought to be without the ability to communicate with anyone and to feel totally alone and helpless. Although modern age scary movies try to attempt this concept with power outages, no reception, flat tires, and dead batteries, I find it a little less extreme of a situation when they have the resources for instant communication and they become rendered useless, than when those resources are not available at all because they do not exist yet.
Something I found I had a love/hate relationship with about this film was its lack of "dead giveaway" music. Being a musician, I always tend to listen for the background music in a critical part of the plot so I can hear the climactic part and expect what's going to pop out and scare me. It's sort of an unwritten rule that this happens in horror movies, and even when the music cuts out to try to fool you and they scare you anyway, there's some type of predictability. This film does NOT utilize background music, pretty much ever. Therefore each moment feels more like real time and the audience finds themselves literally on the edge of their seat in suspense, as anything could happen at any moment. Pretty effective, I'd say, as I jumped out of my seat no less than three times.
Oh, how ever so slowly we received all the pieces to this mysterious puzzle, which is an extremely effective way of putting a story together. It was pretty much perfect timing because as soon as things felt like they might begin to drag, we got a new piece of information to work with, and we continued to receive more and more pieces to that puzzle up until the very end. Excellent work, yet again.
Cons- I don't have many for this film, but one that I heard from many people was that "it was too much screaming in your face". Okay, this is a valid point, but can we rationalize why we go to scary movies in a theater? It's to see if how frightened we can become. From an analytical standpoint did the creepy images, screaming faces, and pop-up moments become redundant? Yes. But did they also scare the pants off of most people in the theater? Yes. It's all about give and take, people.
One of my most common complaints regarding this genre of film is the stupidity of the main character in their attempts to investigate clearly unsafe circumstances. This film is no exception, however we see that Radcliffe's character is a saddened, yet compassionate man who is constantly out to make the world a better place. I think we're to assume he's trying to see if someone is hurt, or in trouble, but come on Dan- you're in a haunted house with the CREEPIEST of CREEPY dolls in the upstairs room. Use your head. You can also argue that, should he have known there were terrible things happening in the loud rooms he investigates, he really can't leave the house, so he might as well go up there and face it rather than become surprised later.
Wrap up- If there's a movie that I've reviewed that I could recommend the MOST it would by far be this one. I think it delivers an almost flawless recipe for horror, and leaves you constantly on the edge of your seat, wanting to know more about what's going on until the very end. Very well done, Potter.
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