This movie deserves more than 5.4

Yes, it does. In fact, it deserves a rating more like 7-8 or higher.

I'd wager a bet that most people who watched this movie don't even know who the director is, nor do they care. Most of the comments I've seen were about how "terrible" Kevin Costner supposedly was, only going so far as to claim that the people who were making the film should have tried harder. Umm...they did perfectly. In fact, they did something with an American horror film that isn't done every day.

First of all, the director is Luiso Berdejo and he is an incredible writer and visionary. He crafted the story behind the first and third Rec movies and this was his first real foray into directing. That being said, it's possibly one of the most fresh and original takes on a pretty lame, Americanized story that I've ever seen.

Berdejo, being someone who is firmly entrenched in the Spanish Horror scene, decided to shoot this film like a Spanish Horror film. If you're watching it from the point of view of being anything else, you aren't watching the film correctly and you aren't fairly assessing what you're seeing on the screen. The cinematography alone is something I marvel at every time that I see the film. Take for instance the last scene, where we see the shadow of a figure coming toward the boy being reflected in the picture frame, our only indication of the events to come being the sounds that we hear. Framing the axis of our fears in the reflection of an actual picture frame being held, off kilter by a young child? That is sheer brilliance. I don't care who you are, if you can't appreciate that kind of cinematography, you have no business talking about or criticizing a film.

I read one person complaining, asking "why couldn't we see what happened to the babysitter? It was right on the other side of the door! Seems like they were just avoiding showing it for budget reasons."

No.

Have you ever heard of the concept that it's not what you can see that scares you? Sometimes you don't need to see the scary thing in the dark, all you need is to be able to hear it, to know that it is there. This whole movie fed on that concept from beginning to end, teasing us with a glimpse of something at the very beginning (poignantly avoiding any typical "gotcha" musical stings that are so common in the Hollywood drivel that passes for horror nowadays) only to give us random sounds, shadows, bumps in the night and other little creepy, atmospheric things over the course of the film. This isn't something that is done for budgetary reasons, it is just a facet of Spanish horror and it actually leads to a much creepier film overall if you are willing to suspend your disbelief and enjoy everything that makes this film what it is.

No, Kevin Costner does not make this film fantastic. Taken piece by piece, if anyone else were to have directed the film there would have been more stings, more special effects and a less impressive Hollywood schlock fest overall. This truly is a case where people have been force fed a certain breed of genre film for so long that they don't know how to appreciate it when something genuinely new and exciting comes along. In the same way that the Descent was an excellent, new and interesting idea, The New Daughter combines folklore and the slow, plodding style of Spanish horror to give us something truly special that I'm sure even the studio heads weren't expecting.

Oh, and in response to all of those "I don't even know how it ended, the film was cut short" comments...let me explain something to you all.

Film is an art form. It does not have any responsibility to you, the viewer, to placate your every desire and tell you exactly what happens, every step of the way. The film ends the way that it does for artistic reasons, intentionally leaving you hanging and leaving the audience wondering what happened next -- a style of storytelling which, in most cultures, is designed to keep you afraid and concerned even after the tale has ended; sadly, in our culture, we demand an ending because we've been fed the narrative that it is absolutely necessary.

Guess what? It isn't. Just like "seeing the scary thing," knowing the way the story ends is not absolutely necessary, and a storyteller has no responsibility to give you a typical ending. If the story ends on a cliffhanger, intentionally refusing to give you the information you desire, then that is how it ends. Period. Stories like this aren't necessarily bad just because they don't give you what you, personally, desire. They're different. Different doesn't mean bad, it doesn't mean unprofessional, it doesn't mean stupid, it doesn't mean poorly crafted, it just means something other than what you are used to. Being angry that this film is different is no reason to hate on it.

With all that out of the way, I'd just like to say that I can't wait to see what Berdejo does next. Maybe it wasn't wise to sell a movie like this to an American audience, but they did it anyways and it worked out pretty well. Okay, the audience it was aimed at didn't like the movie, but true film buffs get what's going on here and that's all that really matters in the grand scheme of things.

I love Costner films.

I didn't like this one much the first time I watched it.

But I like it better with subsequent viewings -- kind of stuck with me for some reason after the first time I watched it, and drew me back to it. I've watched it 2 times again.

That doesn't happen much with me, but it did with this film.






~~ If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story ~ Orson Welles