Creepiest movie monster I've seen in a while. Imitating Josie's voice was an incredible WTF moment. I was pretty surprised this movie got totally ignored by Oscar, but it got plenty of other awards, including a best picture at the Faro Island Film Festival, which I've never heard of, but they certainly know their shit.
shareThis movie deserved way more promotion and attention---it didn't get either one when it came out---nice to see that people have discovered it since then. And yeah, that was a really disturbing moment in a pretty disturbing film, too.
shareI don't get how people get freaked out by CGI effects. It has the reverse effect on me as opposed to the creepy atmosphere which I find more effective. As soon as you can tell that something isn't organic it automatically takes me out of it and it looks like you're watching a live action movie where the actors are "interacting" with a cartoon character. There's a way to blend CGI with practical effects to make it look more realistic but completely relying on CGI just doesn't have the same impact on me. Until we have computer technology that is advanced enough that you can't tell it is CGI, I can't really buy into what I'm watching. Too bad, because I liked how the movie started and the idea behind it but as soon as I saw the alligator (and the monster bear later on) I felt let down. I still watched the movie all the way through and liked the story overall but the CGI is what brings it down for me.
shareI consider it my favorite cosmic horror film, and I'm pretty sure I've seen them all. At least the true definition iirc created from or based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, about cosmic forces (elder gods) older and incomprehensible by humankind, with humanity, the Earth, or the very universe at stake . My second favorite is Peter Weir's The Last Wave.
As a fairly grizzled horror fan, the bear had me sunk down in my seat. I had never heard that sound mix of animal roar and dying and pleading screams of humans.
Absolutely. alex321 has lost his empathy/imaginative side to technogeekdom.
shareI don't know what "technogeekdom" refers to but I'm guessing it's not a compliment. As far as being empathetic or imaginative:
1) The reason why I can't take the scene seriously is because of the obvious CGI taking me out of it, not because I don't care what the characters are going through.
2) What does CGI have anything to do with imagination? They are precisely the opposite of imagination when they are explicitly showing you the thing in question as opposed to let you wonder what it would look like in your head (like if you were reading a book).
3) The goal of a movie is to make you forget that you are actually watching a movie as, to your point, make you empathize with the characters. My point is that I was invested in the story and the characters until I saw the CGI creatures which reminded me that I was in fact only watching a movie and that makes me care less about the characters because I know they are not interacting with something real.
4) To use CGI as an excuse that viewers will only use their imagination to "fill in the gaps" since it doesn't look real is just not good movie making. The job of a filmmaker is to make the movie as realistic as they can. My main point of contention was that the reason why so many filmmakers rely on CGI is because a majority of people are buying into it and I'm just not one of them. It was more of a curiosity than a criticism but you obviously didn't take it as such.