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The Blair Witch Project (1999)
The ends don't justify the middle
The beginning was kind of cute, and the end was okay, but that doesn't justify the long implausible episode of The Real World that we got in the middle.
I wanted to like this film, and I was really careful that my reaction would not be a backlash against the hype. I am pretty willing to suspend my disbelief for most things (like, I didn't even question if the house in The People Under The Stairs was plausible). But I just couldn't make the leap for the Blair Witch Project. I think that it was the premise that ultimately made it fail.
Because the characters in the BWP spent so much time and effort taping themselves react to things, at no time could I really believe that they were all that scared. I mean, if you were scared out of your wits, would you be peering cockeyed through a viewfinder, or would you use both eyes to look around?
Ah, but then, we wouldn't have a movie, would we?
The result is some unbelievable overreactions caught on tape and some eye-rolling situations, which made the entire movie as believable as an episode of Jerry Springer. It was as if the emotions were overplayed just for the camera or for a drama improvisation class. And, despite the "innovative" way of telling the story, that conceit, as realized by those actors, made the situation too implausible to be truly frightening.
Don't take the comparisons to Jerry Springer and the Real World to mean that this movie is bad. It's just that despite all the efforts to make the terror seem real, the BWP just fails to be genuine and believable.
F/X2 (1991)
Well, now, you don't play video games for the *plot*, do you...
People who prefer coherent stories shouldn't even touch F/X2 with a pole of any length. But those who can browse through books for the scenes with action might enjoy F/X2. The plot is secondary, like the plots of street fighting video games like Tekken or Killer Instinct. This plot only serves to link all the special effects together, so F/X2 becomes more than a random montage of clever escapes and neat toys, all engineered by the main character Rollie, who is a former special effects creator played in the most charismatic way possible by Bryan Brown.
Despite the sparse plot, the escapes and the toys really are fun to watch, especially the famous supermarket scene and the strange creation Bluey the Clown. The "witty banter" between the characters is pretty much survivable. But under no circumstances should a person attempt to pay close attention to this movie. The narrow escapes may be fun and showy to watch (the main character is a special effects engineer, after all), but the getting there is pretty tedious. Distract yourself along the way: fold the laundry, hold a cocktail party, balance your checkbook, or browse the Internet, and just pay attention again during the fun bits. You won't be missing much in between.
Safe (1995)
A psychological "thriller" perhaps?
Safe is a remarkably quiet and rewarding movie. The IMDb calls this a "Thriller," although there is very little action in the film. However, Todd Haynes' slow pace perfectly heightens anxiety and captures emptiness of suburban life and consumerism.
Without being as heavy handed as I am being here (and as most people are when talking about this topic), Haynes demonstrates wonderfully how the cliches of the 1980s consume Carol White's existence. One of the most inspired things about Safe is Haynes' use of insipid 1980s music and fads as the backdrop to Carol's passionless Barbie doll-like life. Julianne Moore plays Carol with wonderful restraint, resisting the proto-feminist cliches of a spirited woman being submerged in a cruel capitalist world. Perhaps the scariest thing about Safe (and maybe why the IMDb classifies this as a "thriller"), is the suggestion that even Carol's own best efforts to get well, shaped as they are by her own bland notions of what life should be, might fail.
It takes a lot of patience to watch Safe, but, as Safe demonstrates, Haynes isn't into instant gratification.
The Young Poisoner's Handbook (1995)
A funny, witty, and creepy glimpse inside genius gone horribly wrong.
Director Benjamin Ross has done a terrific job creating a humorously warped view of life through the eyes of Graham Young, alienated boy genius and serial poisoner. Hugh O'Conor perfectly portrays Graham's carefully studied innocent appearance, which Graham constantly feigns lest anyone find out what he is really thinking in his twisted, calculating mind. O'Conor manages the tricky job of looking innocent enough to fool the other characters, but maniacal enough that the audience always knows what is going on.
Through Graham's eccentric (to say the least) point-of-view, we witness the painfully mundane Young family, the pitifully easy to fool psychiatric and medical community, and the pathetically simple-minded middle-class. Ross captures the comic disdain with which Graham sees his surroundings without disposing of the distance necessary to be horrified at Graham's "experiments" and the fate of his unwitting subjects.
Because of Ross' careful tightrope walking between distance from and intimacy with Graham, the audience can't fully fall under Graham's spell and sympathize completely with him. There are some gruesome scenes of people reacting to poison, but these are necessary to heighten the audience's horror at Graham's incapability to assess his own actions and to recognize his own evil. Ross gives us an entertaining, yet twisted, glimpse into genius gone wrong, without sensationalizing Graham as a hero.
It is also very hard to go out for drinks or coffee after seeing this movie.