A much more generic and formulaic movie than you would expect or want from Fruit Chan, the director of the extraordinary DUMPLINGS element of THREE EXTREMES, this is a peculiar remake of the J-Horror GHOST ACTRESS. It is also cursed with one of those interchangeable, apparently meaningless titles in the now (thanks to Edgar Wright) comical “Don’t” line : it could have been called DON’T EAT PORRIDGE or DON’T LOOK AT A GIRAFFE and made no less sense.
The opening is amusing : Eli Roth, educated at the ALLO ALLO School of Zee Foreign Accents, plays a 1920’s Romanian film director shooting a flick about a cursed, dead gypsy girl who made a pact with the Devil. This legendary folk tale earns extra mileage when rumours abound that the allegedly cursed movie was never finished due to the death of the entire cast and crew. In the Transylvania Plateau in Romania in the modern day, delusional, troubled filmmaker Reshad Strik leaves behind his estranged, dying wife to shoot a movie in the studio Roth tried to make his. Creepy shit goes down almost straight away : power failures, strange accidents, pieces of the “lost” film turning up in dailies, falling lights, plagues of CG insects…
There are good qualities about DON’T LOOK UP : it’s good looking, it largely avoids the worst kind of cheap scares, and Chan generates some foreboding atmosphere that’s helped by sincere performances (including Henry Thomas as Strik’s producer). A lot of it feels familiar : the notion of cursed horror film sets ; some epilepsy-inducing flash-cut eyeball poking gore ; a twist revealing that a key character has been dead from the start.
The final 25 minutes, however, display at least some of the gruesome nuttiness we might expect from Chan : including a bit of casual nastiness in which our increasingly crazy hero cuts a big chunk out of a cackling geezer’s neck.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
