I'm never going to call myself the biggest Oz fan. I haven't read the books and I'm not passionate about the MGM classic. But this film came with a reputation for scariness that hooked me, and it left me with more than just a frightening kid's film.
The plot is given the same frame of "Oz reflects the real world" that the MGM film used, with parallel characters and such. Here, it establishes a grimness early on. Dorothy Gale's stories of Oz have convinced Aunt Em that she's mentally unwell, and so she's taken to have electrotherapy at an imposing mental hospital. She gets whisked away to Oz in a flood, but there's already a gravity that broadcasts something darker. In Oz, things are in ruin and Dorothy's old friends are missing or out of service, leading to her finding a new party of companions and facing several frights.
The movie was introduced to me as a source of childhood trauma, and yeah, it doesn't pull its punches. There are legitimately freaky characters and unsettling and frightening visuals and special effects. Excellent filmmaking, but indeed scary. I think the darkness worked well to give the film a unique identity, to take Oz in a new direction while maintaining gripping stakes. It was never too disturbing or bleak. The darker themes in the real world also lend the story an sharper edge of allegorical commentary than in the MGM film.
The heroes are great. Fairuza Balk does a great job as Dorothy. Despite being a child actor tasked with the part rather than someone older and more experienced, I find her much more real and her acting better than Judy Garland's turn as a teenage Dorothy. Balk is the correct age and pulls it off, and her portrayal is strong enough to root for and very likably kind. The other characters are nice, too. Tik-Tok the older mechanical "army of Oz" is a nice bit of animatronic costume work and Jack Pumpkinhead is a sweet vulnerable fellow who looks like another impressive effects achievement. Honestly, the depictions of Dorothy's old friends are the least appealing. Even though they needed to be different under a different studio, the more iconic characters could have had better.
This film really works for me, though I don't know how fans of Oz through the MGM film would feel. I see this as an engagingly dark adventure anchored by an excellent young protagonist and charming fantasy friends. Check it out.
A perfectly dark fantasy.
I'm never going to call myself the biggest Oz fan. I haven't read the books and I'm not passionate about the MGM classic. But this film came with a reputation for scariness that hooked me, and it left me with more than just a frightening kid's film.
The plot is given the same frame of "Oz reflects the real world" that the MGM film used, with parallel characters and such. Here, it establishes a grimness early on. Dorothy Gale's stories of Oz have convinced Aunt Em that she's mentally unwell, and so she's taken to have electrotherapy at an imposing mental hospital. She gets whisked away to Oz in a flood, but there's already a gravity that broadcasts something darker. In Oz, things are in ruin and Dorothy's old friends are missing or out of service, leading to her finding a new party of companions and facing several frights.
The movie was introduced to me as a source of childhood trauma, and yeah, it doesn't pull its punches. There are legitimately freaky characters and unsettling and frightening visuals and special effects. Excellent filmmaking, but indeed scary. I think the darkness worked well to give the film a unique identity, to take Oz in a new direction while maintaining gripping stakes. It was never too disturbing or bleak. The darker themes in the real world also lend the story an sharper edge of allegorical commentary than in the MGM film.
The heroes are great. Fairuza Balk does a great job as Dorothy. Despite being a child actor tasked with the part rather than someone older and more experienced, I find her much more real and her acting better than Judy Garland's turn as a teenage Dorothy. Balk is the correct age and pulls it off, and her portrayal is strong enough to root for and very likably kind. The other characters are nice, too. Tik-Tok the older mechanical "army of Oz" is a nice bit of animatronic costume work and Jack Pumpkinhead is a sweet vulnerable fellow who looks like another impressive effects achievement. Honestly, the depictions of Dorothy's old friends are the least appealing. Even though they needed to be different under a different studio, the more iconic characters could have had better.
This film really works for me, though I don't know how fans of Oz through the MGM film would feel. I see this as an engagingly dark adventure anchored by an excellent young protagonist and charming fantasy friends. Check it out.