The movie’s main focus is on a young man named Edmund Bigelow that’s played by Kip Pardue. We don’t really know much about the man at the start of the film, and unfortunately we don’t learn much more as time goes on. We know he survives off a trust fund, which explains why you never see him do anything remotely like a job, and that he passes his time putting out a small newspaper that deals with the strange and occult. We do learn that he has a girlfriend named by Maggie that’s played by Bijou Phillips. We learn even less about her than we do the main character, but for some reason it just felt like we didn’t need to learn anymore than we did. Crispin Glover also stars, but more about him in a minute.
The movie start’s with Ed’s curiosity about weird things leading him to a magic show featuring Montag the Magnificent. This is Glover’s first chance to shine, and if you’re looking for a character that’s a little too over the top, he delivers. Glover’s character is also my main reason for not liking this movie. He’s not in every scene like Pardue is, but his scenes are so annoying that by the end you’re really glad you didn’t see any more of him than you had to. I was personally ready to shoot him by his second time on camera, and there was about an hour of film left if I remember right. His costume consists of a white suit that for some reason has a huge bulge where his package would be. This isn’t something I think anyone would really notice, except they make a habit of using shots where this is in your face, and you really can’t miss it.
The magic show consists of Montag’s helper coming out and warming up the crowd through some pretty cool FX, topping everything off by biting off the head of a rat. At this point the crowd get’s disgusted and someone stand’s up and starts to leave (It’s always a suicide girl). It’s right at this second that Glover appears, and suddenly has the person up on stage about to perform some kind of magic trick using her. The formula is simple, and repeated I think 5 or 6 time throughout the film. Montag pulls someone up on stage, give a little speech, appears to kill the person, and then shows them to be just fine. Everything would be just fine were it not for the fact that every time he does this, the girl is found dead the next day. What follows this first example is a never ending cycle, with some private eye elements thrown in to liven things up a bit. It’s at this point that the film starts to get hard to follow, as we’re suddenly dealing with things like mind control drugs, Vietnam war stories, and a repeated effect that looks like it came out of the Matrix. I won’t ruin anything major, but I will say the big plot twist at the end is sort of a letdown, and that at least I felt like I had seen it done somewhere before, but I wasn’t able to place where or what movie. When they finally do explain everything, I was able to follow what was happening up until the very end of the movie, but I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few people out there will finish the movie and just scratch their heads about the whole deal.
My final thoughts on the film: Acting-it was pretty solid all around, but Glover’s character just made me want to shoot myself, and he doesn’t let up anywhere in the movie, so I guess you can give him credit for being consistent throughout.
Humor-Not really too much to speak of, I can’t really think of any time at all when I laughed actually.
Blood/Gore-Well given the title you would expect this to be a high score, but it’s only average. The title made me think of rivers of blood, and sadly the gore is really confined to a few select parts of the movie, other that that we really don’t see too much.
Nudity-Again not as much as I would have hoped, but I feel that’s because the bottom of the cover promotes the fact that we see suicide girls in the film, and when I thought of suicide girls I thought of naked women. Sadly, this is just as reserved as the blood is, although you do seem to see the two mostly at the same time.
FX-I have to give this a good score, as the film did have some pretty good FX throughout. Any movie that has a girl getting her chest cavity opened up and makes me think that’s really has done it’s job well.
Plot twist-Like I said, I felt like I had seen it before. That aside it is a pretty descent attempt at something you might expect from M. Night Shyamalan, although it will be pretty hard to follow unless you were really paying attention throughout the movie.
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OVERALL RATING--2.5-- |
2 comments:
.5 .5 .5 .5 make up your FN minds people.
Woo hoo, welcome to The Side Show Stalls! Good first review, nice balance of movie details and personal thought. I'm sure at some point we'll clash in our
ideologies and likes/dislikes (The Descent), and that's even more reason why I wanted you to join. What will you review next?
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