trouserspace: Movie Round-Up #1

These are the films I’ve been watching in the last week or so:

Reincarnation (2005/Japan)

I was looking forward to this one as a fan of the director’s previous films (Ju-On:the Grudge and Marebito). The plot revolves around the filming of a movie about a mass murderer which creates a clever alternative reality within the film. This combined with the flashbacks to the original events means there is an unsettling shifting between 3 separate planes of reality which is done to great effect.

I was initially disappointed as it seemed to be spelling out the plot a bit much and half way through you feel like everything’s pretty much cut and dried. How wrong I was, as the film builds to a satisfying finale to what is a superior horror.

The Relic (1996/USA)

Pretty much your run-of-the-mill Hollywood sci-fi thriller. You know what you’re going to get and it delivers exactly that, no more, no less.

Vacancy (2007/USA)

I was expecting this to be another typical Hollywood horror and the first half an hour or so did little to sway me from that belief with minimal plot progression and the lead characters annoying the hell out of me. However, the remaining hour was tense and brutal, in what turned out to be a very enjoyable and surprisingly dark film.

The Simpsons Movie (2007/USA)

I haven’t been a fan of the Simpsons for a few years now and didn’t expect this to be any better than the mundane recent series. Shockingly it was far, far worse. There was barely a gag contained within that would’ve made it into any of the worst episodes of the series. Everything about this was completely mundane and compared to its contemporaries, Shrek and the like, it just doesn’t stand up. The most cynical piece of franchise exploitation for a long time.

Paradise Lost (AKA Turistas) (2007/USA)