Probablyforme Reviews

The Return (2005)

Good premise, story anemic

[3/10 · 27 February 2007]

Seemed like there was supposed to be a good movie in here. I have no idea what kind of script changes this thing went through, but the bare bones concept was intriguing.

More and more it seems like these horror/thrillers are director's wet dreams, meaning that the story was buried under cool cinematography and vein director shots instead of narrative. The flashbacks were intriguing, perhaps because of the presents of Sam Shepard and the Mole in the ground song, but over all it was a seriously lacking movie.

People always wonder how these movie get made. Hollywood most likely doesn't buy a bad scripts, but the directors and dev. people ruin them along the way. This might be the case here.

The King (2005)

Too much left to conjecture upon

[6/10 · 15 February 2007]

I appreciated the subtle style and the efficiency of the editor/director when putting this movie together through most of the story, but the ending was abrupt and annoying. I just hate when TOO much is left to ponder. I also wanted more of an in depth reveal of characters here. So much was great this really stuck out and bugged me. I think a great deal of the tenseness of this kind of situation was run over by the extreme. I would've preferred the subtle approach taking by the film makers to be infused in the overall plot. When the symbol of your past sin comes back to haunt you, literally, in the form of a bastard son, the measure of the current man is in his ultimate reaction to this. Are we supposed to believe that because the Preacher dismissed the boy initially, that his past sin festered into the destruction of his entire family? If he had embraced this kid right away, would this kid be less of a psychopath? Did the way in which the boy came into the world make him a psychopath? Was the Preacher forever damned by his past sin? A normal human being does not murder people in such a detached way just because his long lost father rejects him. He is or isn't a psychopath...and if he is, it's only a matter of time for him to trigger. If the filmmakers had completed the ending a bit more, I think they could've clearly made a statement one way or the other.

The Hitcher (2007)

Some parts better than old version, some worse

[7/10 · 23 January 2007]

I saw the original Hitcher when it came out and it was really scary psychologically. A lot of it's ability to hold tension is dependent on the Hitcher himself. Rutger Hauger was really freaking scary. He had a unpredictability element that this new guys doesn't have. That being said, this new guys is great. A great actor and very scary. There just something missing. Maybe the script or direction, not sure. The two kids aren't as good as C. Thomas Howel. He had some kind of quality that made him seem excruciatingly vulnerable without being just plain stupid. I also remember feeling sorry for him...like he'd had a rough time in life, now this! I think that really adds to the tension when you care so much about the kid. Those little intangible elements were missing from the leads.