Scathing review from The Guardian
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I don't agree at all...this movie was pretty fantastic, and a very different take on the horror genre compared to other movies out now. Very sad as well. I went from not knowing what to think to liking it to loving it, all on the ride home while mulling it over in my head in silence.
shareWere you drinking on the way home? Seriously... Too much left to audience assumption. Too many holes he audience had to fill.
Even the title, while intriguing, unless I go hunting online I have no clue what it means. "The Blackcoat's Daughter". Sure. Okay. It's new title "February" simply refers to the month the apparent events occurred... nine years apart!
Once I got wind that the events in the school and the events with Emma Roberts were taking place in two different times interest was peaked but then the improbability that Kat would facial morph into Joan in a nine year span made no sense. No one's face changes that much, not without help anyway. I half expected the priest to start smashing Kat's face with the box he was holding (which I thought at fest was a book)! That would have explained the facial changes to some sort of degree.
Why not have Keiran or Emma play both parts? Ah, it would give away the only true wtf the movie had in store. The other wtf's were simply poor scripting; such as what was in the boiler room, was Kat seeing the shadow of a demon or was she simply mad, how could a 15 year old cut people's heads off with such ease, etc.
And yet another thriller\horror movie with no ending. Just cut to credits. Sick and tired of this lazy ass technique.
My sentiments exactly. In lieu of a well written story, everything was left vague and quietly creepy. It worked as a mood piece, and I was enjoying the atmosphere -- it felt a bit like Let The Right One In, at times -- but when the story took a turn into The Exorcist, I soured on the whole thing.
share"Let The Right One In" did right, indeed. One of my fav horror films of the past 16 years. It had a great atmosphere and told a coherent story. Other than not detailing what happened to Eli when he\she was turned (the book covers it) there was no ambiguity.
This film, and more than a handful of others, try to do the artsy foreign film approach but in the attempt seem to forget that mood isn't all that is required. A story is helpful!
And yet another thriller\horror movie with no ending
Why would you say that it had no ending? I agree about the use of two girls being really dumb, but it was really easy to interpret what had happened at the end. Whether you take it as:
A)she was really crushed by the loss of her demonic possession so much that she killed to escape the asylum and headed back to the school with sacrifices in hand only to be let down by the fact that the demon was no longer within the cold basement, so she was wailing in the street at the sad reality of her situation.
Or B) she was schizophrenic from the onset and being very suggestible she heard the BS story from Rose about the two nurses/aids worshipping the devil in front of the furnace and it imprinted on her which in turn led to her going on a murderous spree, then after admission to the hospital what we see is her reacting to the priests antics purposely because she's obviously insane and when someone is insane they do all types of crazy sh!t like kill to escape captivity and hit the road to offer sacrifices to the place in which her psyche had it's initial massive fracture in hopes that in her mind it would
speak to her, but when it doesn't she is left wailing in the street because she's gotten a dose of reality and realized even if just for a moment how insane she actually is and what she has just done, all for nothing.
Sure you have to put it together from the scenes given to you from the film(aka thinking), but it is certainly an ending, one way or the other. share
I agree that there was an ending because, well, it ended but... I guess then the lack of denouement is my peeve. That we the audience, not just here but with many genre films of late, have to put it together for ourselves. Sometimes that is fun and ambiguity can add to the experience. Other times it's a "wtf?"
"aka thinking"?? I could take offense but this movie isn't worth being offended by.
I know the kind of films you describe and yes they are tending to be more ambiguous as of late, sometimes I like it other times I'm left irritated, depends on personal choice or even the mood I'm in at the time. I wasn't trying to insult your intelligence by the "aka thinking", I just thought maybe you had expected a more relaxed straightforward horror flick whereas you got this, anything but that. My affinity to horror rests on what type of horror I'm in the mood for and sometimes I just want a generic slasher cabin the in woods, mostly later at night it is the more that occurs and sometimes in the mood for a disjointed constantly trying to figure out what the hell is going on here kind of film. I didn't say or infer you weren't intelligent enough to get it(I hate when people use that) just not in the mood for a puzzle like film with a few pieces to that puzzle missing in the end forcing you to pencil them in when it's over.
I didn't have all the answers when this ended and it took added work thinking afterwards and even reading some of the theories from here before I came to my final conclusions.
You make a great point about expectations. Yeah, honestly I was expecting something a bit more straightforward or even akin to "The Moth Diaries" which wasn't very straightforward but yet had a solid direction and denouement.
My expectations then filtered the experience. So again perhaps a second viewing would be in order.