Ah, Lovecraft. I remember reading "The Call of Cthulhu" when I was 14, and loving it a LOT. Then I read his other works... aaaaaand the magic was lost. Turns out, Lovecraft has a boring prose, is bad at characters, is bad at dialogue, and it's also pretty bad at, well, scaring people, or at least at scaring me. I don't know, I just think that... Actually cleverly constructed situations are much scarier than going "oh, so scary, these things that aren't actual things, wooooo" or stuff like that. The only thing that manages to redeem Lovecraft is the initial impact that his stories can have before you learn that they're all the same.
But I still wanted this movie to be good. I mean, Rotten Tomatoes says it's good. Many reviews have praised it as a great adaptation.
The movie sucks. It's so bad that it managed to resuscitate the "magenta is not a color" thing, that I thought was dead when actual scientists came in and said "guys, just because it's not a wavelength, doesn't mean it shouldn't be defined as a specific phenomenon, if the brain defines its interaction with the eyes as such".
The plot of this movie is boring as hell. A family moves into a new town, a magic rock from space comes down and kills everybody in spooky ways, a guy sees all, the end. Seriously, if it wasn't from a Lovecraft novel, would you actually regard it as anything other than a generic space-horror?
The characters are baaaad. At least, Lovecraft didn't try to shove them down your face (maybe he knew he was bad at it). This movie actually tried to make them relatable, with hilarious results. They're all terribly acted (even in my native language, it was pretty darn visible), and their personalities are absurdly one note. I would be more scared of such people, in real life, than of a space meteor: I'm pretty sure that's how psychopaths behave when they try to pass off as normal. Oh but then they go insane. Ah hell yeah. Too bad they're still one note. They should be drained of life, and instead they're... I don't know, crazy monsters? "Mother, I'm hungry"? Really? That's the best you could come up with? I've read better characters on cereal boxes.
The actual horror? Forgettable. There's a scene where they used this awful looking practical effect, where I was just thinking "ah, so the power of the color also drains quality from the movie? I didn't know that". The only vaguely scary scene was immediately ruined by the appearance of the most fake CGI ever.
And I know what they did here: they passed it off as a "tribute to B-Movies" in order to justify the mistakes. Too bad B-Movies aren't... You know... Good. They're only ironically good, and this movie fails at that too. It takes itself way too seriously, tricking the audience with a fake-non-serious movie, only to surprise them with drama when they're not ready, so people will be touched even if the characters are badly written.
Too bad the movie was so predictable, it figured itself out on its own. 4/10
Film Quality standards for script writing
Ah, Lovecraft. I remember reading "The Call of Cthulhu" when I was 14, and loving it a LOT. Then I read his other works... aaaaaand the magic was lost. Turns out, Lovecraft has a boring prose, is bad at characters, is bad at dialogue, and it's also pretty bad at, well, scaring people, or at least at scaring me. I don't know, I just think that... Actually cleverly constructed situations are much scarier than going "oh, so scary, these things that aren't actual things, wooooo" or stuff like that. The only thing that manages to redeem Lovecraft is the initial impact that his stories can have before you learn that they're all the same.
But I still wanted this movie to be good. I mean, Rotten Tomatoes says it's good. Many reviews have praised it as a great adaptation.
The movie sucks. It's so bad that it managed to resuscitate the "magenta is not a color" thing, that I thought was dead when actual scientists came in and said "guys, just because it's not a wavelength, doesn't mean it shouldn't be defined as a specific phenomenon, if the brain defines its interaction with the eyes as such".
The plot of this movie is boring as hell. A family moves into a new town, a magic rock from space comes down and kills everybody in spooky ways, a guy sees all, the end. Seriously, if it wasn't from a Lovecraft novel, would you actually regard it as anything other than a generic space-horror?
The characters are baaaad. At least, Lovecraft didn't try to shove them down your face (maybe he knew he was bad at it). This movie actually tried to make them relatable, with hilarious results. They're all terribly acted (even in my native language, it was pretty darn visible), and their personalities are absurdly one note. I would be more scared of such people, in real life, than of a space meteor: I'm pretty sure that's how psychopaths behave when they try to pass off as normal. Oh but then they go insane. Ah hell yeah. Too bad they're still one note. They should be drained of life, and instead they're... I don't know, crazy monsters? "Mother, I'm hungry"? Really? That's the best you could come up with? I've read better characters on cereal boxes.
The actual horror? Forgettable. There's a scene where they used this awful looking practical effect, where I was just thinking "ah, so the power of the color also drains quality from the movie? I didn't know that". The only vaguely scary scene was immediately ruined by the appearance of the most fake CGI ever.
And I know what they did here: they passed it off as a "tribute to B-Movies" in order to justify the mistakes. Too bad B-Movies aren't... You know... Good. They're only ironically good, and this movie fails at that too. It takes itself way too seriously, tricking the audience with a fake-non-serious movie, only to surprise them with drama when they're not ready, so people will be touched even if the characters are badly written.
Too bad the movie was so predictable, it figured itself out on its own. 4/10