Reviews

While documentaries aren't usually written in the same way fiction is, there still exists a script. The first job of the script is to show potential financeers that there is something to the topic worth documenting and after that it's a preliminary plan. And while plans never survive the actual implementation it is still helpful to have one, because you will be better prepared when the plan fails.

That being said, I am pretty sure the plan with this movie was not this. Looking at this from the outside, it would seem that the filmmakers were interested in the occult and had a good basis to get funding in the form of the infamous Richard Stanley. It just turned out that Stanley became even more infamous during the process.

Personally, I am not religious at all, but I am interested in the spiritial paths people take. However, I have seen people use religion and spirituality as an excuse or.atonement, so I have a strong mistrust of these people. So, the experience of this movie was mostly about whether these people are true believers or not.

And it would seem that some are, some aren't.

This religion they practice seems like a step between paganism and Catholicism and is thus interesting. Their practice feels very much improvised rather than formal even though there seems to be some grimoires and other notes regarding their magic.

All in all an interesting look at the region they inhabit and the traditions that still live on in there, but then there is a twist that I'm not still quite sure about, but things just happen in documentaries, so the filmmakers didn't really have a choice and it is good that this was documented.

For context, I love folk horror, so keep that in mind while I fawn over this movie.

In this world witches are real and there is a lot of folklore surrounding them, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on how to approach them. We do know that they come with the harvest and they have been coming earlier every year.

We follow three brothers who are brash enough to follow their friend to a grave of witch killed by the said friend. However, things go haywire and suddenly the brothers are in peril.

One thing to note is that not much happens in this 80 minute movie. It moves slowly. We kind of understand the dymanics between the three brothers, but not really. Especially the middle one doesn't really get much in the way of characterization.

Still, I like the world building, no matter how fragmented and inconsistent it is. Considering how varied the understanding regarding witches in different areas of the world has always been, this should not be a surprise.

Also, we never really see a witch, except for the dead one. There is no gore or violence, but I can't really call this psychological horror either, because we do learn at the very beginning that the danger is very real if badly understood.

We also have a b-story of a radio DJ and his producer on a nightshift taking calls. They don't necessarily add much except conflicting worldbuilding, which is interesting as a lot of people seem to know quite a bit, but how is any of this verifiable in any way?

Again, I liked it quite bit, but I can't really recommend it too strongly except for people specifically interested in this kind of weird horror, although it doesn't really go that far with the weirdness.

Weirdly, as far as I know and as of this writing, this Japanese movie has only received a real release in Finland. Not the most lucrative market with a population of only 5.5 million. Then again, after seeing this movie, I get why no-one wants to try to market this. That can't be the easiest thing.

The basic idea is good on paper, but the movie doesn't quite deliver. At times its kind of clumsy and it changes genre mid-movie in a way that is not really satisfying. There are nice emotional moments here, but as the pacing in the film is weird, they don't quite hit as hard as they could.

At the same time, this is an outsider view into Japanese culture, so I might also be missing things, but this didn't receive much attention in Japan either.

On the positive side, the movie does contemplate the complexities of modern life nicely. People are finding it harder to connect even though (or because) we live around more people than we could possibly ever know.

The movie is presented in three episodes and the final one works best. It requires the build-up and discussion of the previous two episodes to do what it wants, but the movie probably should have emphasized things differently.

The theme of the movie is interesting enough for me to wish more people would have an opportunity to see it, but I can't really imagine an audience for this.

I had to give the movie a release date here to write this...

Parasocial warning: I have followed Thorn's work for many years now, so as often happens, I have a feeling I know more about her than about most actors or writers, so I can't help but read what I know about her into this short. It doesn't help that this movie covers topics she has covered previously in her work on The Philosophy Tube.

With that in mind, I enjoyed the movie. I am a pessimist by nature, so when the movie was first announced, my initial reaction was somewhat hesitent, since this could have easily been a regurgitation of various clichés, but instead it's actually quite engaging.

The movie is about the meeting of Dracula's girlfriend (Belladonna) and an ex-girlfriend (Fay) she reached out to. Most of the movie is the two of them discussing their lives in a pretty confrontational manner publicly at a restaurant (where they do have a table that is conspicuously far from all other tables).

The pair do feel a little over the top in their antagonism, as they try to... get somewhere in their conversation, but then again, vampires are often depicted as more emotional than humans, so we can maybe assume that's the reason for it.

There are some comedic elements, some of which work better than others, but mostly they are a pretty good way of telling us that Belladonna is hiding her pain from the world and probably from herself as well. Is there anyone who could possibly understand this better than Fay?

Since this is a short, it doesn't cover a lot of ground and basically feels like just an extended scene in a larger story, but that is generally a good way to approach shorts and it definitely works here. There is some character building, but the it also utilizes our expectations of these characters quite nicely. We know what vampires are and we know Dracula, so not that much explanation needed.

This is my favorite of the Nebula originals thusfar and makes even my pessimistic a*s optimistic for their future.

It's the last days of The Great War and Karoline is barely eking out an existence working in a factory. She believes herself to be a widow as her husband disappeared during the war (even though Denmark didn't really participate), but is not getting the benefits for widows because he has not been listed as dead.

A lot happens during the movie and I don't want to go into spoilers, so I won't go deeper into the plot except that the marketing is emphasizing something that is not as big a part in the movie as someone might expect.

While that does get a lot of attention in the latter half of the movie, to me the real value of the movie is the feeling of reality around Karoline's story. When was the last time someone in a movie was trying to convince a potential tenant to take up an apartment by telling them that they can get running water for two whole hours a day (from ten to noon, which might not be much of a selling point as most people would be working during those hours)? When was the rampant drug use of the era portrayed so candidly? Even what Dagmar is doing was relatively commonplace back in the day, although I would hazard a guess the trend was downward at this point in time and it wasn't happening as much as it had before.

I actually might have enjoyed the movie more if the marketing was different and Dagmar wasn't brought up, because it created expectations. While Dagmar is a major character, the movie is clearly about Karoline and her hardships. On the other hand, it is hard to say how I would have felt seeing the name Dagmar Overby on a door if I hadn't known beforehand that this real life person was used in the movie. (It should be noted that the movie is inspired by real life events rather than based on, so they are trying to maintain a certain distance to the real Dagmar).

I do feel some part of the audience will find it hard to symphathize with Karoline, as she does sometimes seem to make the right decision just a little too late. At the same time, there isn't that much time or opportunity for ethics when you are just trying to survive in a world where the odds have been stacked against you. On the other hand, while we know the hope she is given would be for nothing in this world, we still understand why she gives into it.

I like the look of the film. It's black and white and the whole city seems to be decrepit and barely holding up. It reminds us of the lack of interest in the well-being of or even disdain for the working poor. Have things really changed that much? The time being depicted happened over a century ago, but the concept of female bodily autonomy is under constant assault again.

Of course, all art is in some way a mirror of the time it was made, but it just seems easier to see the similarities here.

This had been on my watchlist for a while, but I don't have any recollection of adding it, so it must've been witchcraft.

I love folk horror. I love all those weird superstitions and local legends that manifest themselves in these movies. I love the weirdness and the unpredictability. Yet, there's a truth to them. There's a mid-19th century French book called Satanism & Witchcraft, which argued that witchcraft was adopted by women, because the feudal society gave them no other options for gaining any kind of control over their own lives. While the contents of the book is just garbage, this argument does have a certain proto-feminist appeal to it.

Now, I don't know if Rakich is aware of this book, but the film makes a similar case. Feudalism might not exist in this world anymore, but the driving force behind it, Christianity, does and is still as harmful as ever. On paper, the witch might be the antagonist here, but it is hard to see her as the villain.

On the other hand, our protagonist, Fletcher, might try to play the part of a man of god, he is definitely not the hero. He does not seem comfortable with what they are doing from the beginning, but it takes a long time before we are told why and that's great.

All in all, this doesn't quite rise to the pantheon of folk horror, but is very close. The microbudget does sometimes show, but you can also argue that it gives the movie character. There are some points where the movie, which feels more like psychological horror, looks like a cheaply made slasher and it doesn't really work, but overall that's a small complaint.

I need to admit here that while I do watch a lot of horror and have seen a lot of zombie media, this is kind of new to me, but I can imagine there could easily be a torrent of stories like this somewhere out there. I've never seen The Walking Dead, but this could easily be close to it from what I've heard.

With that context in mind, I did like this movie. The characters are dealing with the situation in different ways, as people would. Everyone is trying to find some connection in a world that is no longer under their control.

I like the details, like people exchanging glances instead of discussing things, because that is what you do when being noisy can kill you. Also, when done properly, a glance can do so much for the movie.

At the same time, this is nothing relevatory. It's just a competent story with a little extra weirdness on the part of the zombies. It's the kind of movie you make when you have very little money and a very generic idea, but you are somewhat competent. Not exactly high praise, but I am still giving it some praise.

Why did anyone think this is charming? Is this just one of those Netflix projects where you don't really need to think about the quality since you already got paid or you can do just whatever you want without any kind of oversight? I was bored at 25 minutes and I only watched the rest because I generally don't quit midway through a movie. Probably should have.

The main character is just void of any kind of personality and the titular dragon just grates on the nerves. Is it supposed to be like Donkey from Shrek? At least Donkey was fun and would shut up when the filmmakers realized he wasn't just bothering Shrek, but us as well. Nothing like that in this movie. The dragon just goes on and on without any kind of reason or pay-off.

The internal logic of the movie is lacking and that's putting it nicely. I found myself continuously tutting at whatever was happening on screen. The whole premise of the film is that the dragon can keep an island afloat just by being strong enough to pull it back atop the water when it sinks too low, but at the same time the dragon is uselessly weak.

I do like some of the visuals, but the dragon is just bad. Why would you spend so little thought on the most important character in your movie? Was the point just to make it simple, because you are going to have it on screen so much and you didn't want to work too much? Anyhow, the points I did give the movie are for the visuals, because many of the other animal designs are kind of fun.

And then... when you finally think it's over, when the natural course of the story has happened and the climax is over, you find that there's 20 more minutes in the runtime. Pacing, anyone?

This is a difficult movie to assess. My initial thinking was that one of these after six years is fine and I think this is in some ways a welcome return to form. On the other hand, the idea of the multiverse, which has already been overplayed, is in force here. Not on the same level as, for example, the second Dr. Strange movie, but still it is here. They are smart enough to make fun of it, but even if you are satirizing and commenting on something by doing that very thing, you are still doing that very thing.

Same with fan service. The movie is both doing it and making fun of it. They brought back so many characters from the past. This kind of meta-irony doesn't really work for me as it has become a cliche on to itself. At the same time, it is Deadpool, so I kind of signed up for this specifically. I do admit that there was one little-more-than-a-cameo that was actually done in a very cool way (and as far as I knew, they managed to keep it a secret this time).

Sure, there is stuff in this movie that gets me, but I'm easy that way. I'll cry for anything with weepy enough soundtrack. But again, there's one of these things that really works for me within all the noise.

Deadpool movies haven't really needed a good villain, but Cassandra Nova works pretty well and they do some cool things with her powers here. Also, I always enjoy it when the actor seems to relish the role and that's definitely the case here.

In the end, there's a lot of things to like. Pretty every scene is good on it's own, but the whole feels messy and unfocused... or more like focused on the wrong things. I liked it, but I don't see this as being the course correction MCU so dearly needs.

It is easy to misread the marketing for this movie and expect it to be very different, mainly because of the name, but the movie actually focuses quite a bit on the French troops. The titular Sarraounia is shown every once in a while, but doesn't really get that much to do.

Maybe that is as it should be. She is a symbol of the resistance. Just watching her make speeches would definitely get boring, while the inner squabbles of the French have a very different tension than what we usually see in a war movie.

This does feel a little strange in the sense that the hero of the movie is just living her life while the bad guys fall apart on their own. Captain Voulet, as the commander, does his best to keep his troop together, but that is a huge hill to climb and we have no reason to like him. The other memorable officer is the unit doctor, who is there more or less against his will, but is trying his best under impossible conditions.

Because of the point of view, this movie is not going to be for everyone. Like Hondo's movies in general, the movie is about the impact and racism of the colonial projects of the French to the peoples of Northern Africa, so it's not going to be for everyone. For those more interested in these obscure movies, I wouldn't say it's quite on the level that you should definitely seek it out, but since you should seek out West Indies and the easiest way to find that is probably the box set in which you can find this one as well, you definitely shouldn't dismiss this.

Actually, the movie is not hard to follow at all. I was just thinking about how to try to explain this to anyone. How do you not spoil anything, but still explain the wild genre switches? I mean, as I'm writing this, the major genre is not even listed on this site, but I don't even want to fix it, because it would kind of make the movie worse.

And in general, I'm not against spoilers. Usually the "how" is much more interesting than the "what" and the "what" is usually so obvious that knowing it beforehand doesn't really matter, but this movie does the whole thing so differently that I wouldn't want to point anything out.

Is this even helpful to anyone? It's a cute little movie that accomplishes much more than anyone can ask of it. It's this little gem that manages to mix wildly different ideas in a way that doesn't feel forced. If nothing else, it's interesting from a filmmaking point of view.

Admittedly that isn't saying that much. I have loved all of his English movies and even if this is the worst of them, some movie has to be. So, it's this. (For the record, Dogtooth is still my favorite.)

This does have a feel of interstitial work. Something to do between the "real" projects. Alternatively it feels like an attempt to monetize shorts, which has been difficult for a while.

It's an anthology of three fairly long shorts (about 50 minutes each). In my mind I would say the last one is the best, the first one is slightly behind that and the middle one is the worst, but the middle one is also the most challenging one, so it is possible that on future rewatches I will change my mind on this.

All three parts are very, very darkly funny, as Lanthimos often is, but he hasn't been quite this dark in a while. The movie often sets up situations where there is potential for a joke and then something goes horribly wrong or gets otherwise very disturbing, although some of these are disturbing in a way that the surprise factor did make me laugh.

It's still good, but if you are looking for Poor Things or The Favourite, this isn't it. If you are willing to go further, the water is warm, but not necessarily inviting.

One idea that might work for many is to watch this in three parts. Each part can be a bit tough and you might want to.let each part digest a little before moving on to the next one.

First, I'm trying not to be parasocial here. I have followed Jessie Earle for a while and in general I like her content. So, you might want to keep that in mind.

I do like the idea of the movie. The themes are kind of in-your-face, but you have to do that in a short (even if this is pretty long for a short), where you don't have the length of a feature to explore these ideas. I'm boringly cis, but it's not hard to identify with what's going on.

The problem is that the dialogue is awkwardly cliched and I mean distractingly so. This is weird as Earle is a writer in her dayjob. The script definitely could have used another pass with just trying to say these things aloud. I mean, that is the place where you can do the cheapest work to improve the quality of the work as a whole in a small budget production such as this.

In the end, there is much to like here, but the dialogue does take away quite a bit.

That is rare. Well, I often laugh at the movie, but this time I definitely laughed with the movie, which happens only once every blue moon.

For context, I'm not the biggest fan of Richard Linklater. I generally find his movies to be okay at best, but this one I did really like. We have a nerdy main character I can definitely relate to as a fellow nerd and a fellow educator.

I did not really know who Glen Powell was before this. I had seen some movies he has a role in, but as he has been more of a character actor, I wasn't really aware of him. Here, he can kind of use that. He is supposed to be forgettable and learn to be something else.

Powell also co-wrote the movie, his first feature as the writer. The story is nothing special. It's kind of obvious after the premises, but it does work nicely as something to hang all these jokes on.

It doesn't really fall into copaganda either, which is a rarity.

First you mess up the lives of millions of people through slavery and then you make sure they can never recover by just being racist, whether systemically or just personally. That's the way of the colonizing European powers.

A sign of a good movie: I get retrospective about my own actions. I teach students from all over Europe, Africa and Asia (with a random student from South America thrown in), so am I fair with them or do I harbor racist thoughts similar to many of the white characters in this movie? I would hope not, but science does say otherwise. We are racist by nature, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be better about it.

Hondo's own history has probably informed the movie quite a bit. He was born in Morocco, but his mother was from Mauritania and Hondo emigrated to France at a young age. There he found that similarly to the main character of this movie, he couldn't find work in his chosen field (as a chef), so he was "forced" into filmmaking.

Anyhow, the movie itself is a an interesting debut from an area we hardly ever see movies from. It mixes straightforward realism with a little bit of surrealism, which becomes more obvious near the end of the movie. Sometimes characters break the 4th wall on purpose, sometimes by accident, which makes this somewhat hard to immerse yourself in, as you (at least I) begin to secondguess what is deliberate and what is not. It isn't too distracting though.

While this mostly deals with racism, it does get into intersectionalism, at least to an extent, even if it wasn't really a concept back in the 60s (as far as I know). Class is also a major factor in the events, but other groups are not discussed (not that one movie needs to "fix" everything).

I did like the movie quite a bit, even if the seams are somewhat visible. The movie manages to juggle many topics without dropping any balls. The main character is portrayed as very sympathetic and you do understand his blight. It is a pity that the movie was almost lost for a time.

I found this movie on SIght & Sound's Critics' Poll of 2022. Considering the discrepancy between the popularity in that poll and the number of voters on IMDb, this has clearly made an impression on the way few people who have seen this movie.

And it is good. It is very open about the damage racism, slavery, corruption and colonization have inflicted upon the titular West Indies, but it somehow manages to do this in a kind of a fun way without the dissonance between the themes and the approach feeling in any way contrived.

You get the feeling that while this might not be the literal historical truth, it is defiinitely the spiritual historical truth. Things might not have happened exactly like this, but as a musical, you forgive that. It's close enough.

Many of the characters are more like.archetypes than actual characters, but due to the nature of the film, where the same actors play pretty much the same roles through 400 years of history, that works very much for the benefit of the film.

This is very much a movie I would hope more people would have access to.

Yes, this can be exhausting, but it also definitely has good qualities to it.

The two things I especially liked is how it doesn't forget to be humane and how the hints misdirect you, but in a good way.

First, the humane part: This is a mystery movie and in the western traditions this means that the human victims are forgotten and the whole plot is presented as a puzzle the detective is trying to figure out. This one reminds you what it's actually all about.

Second, the misdirections. When you've seen enough movies, you begin to identify the things that the moviemakers drop in the movie for you to notice when they become important. This one does that, but in an elegant diversion. I did not feel cheated, like I would in a less well constructed movie.

At the same time, the twists keep coming and they come often. It isn't hard to keep up rationally, but emotionally it's hard to keep invested in all of them. The movie does let you catch up with the ending, but there was a big stretch where I found myself not really interested in what was going on.

All in all, a pretty good watch. The story might have been better served in a miniseries, because that would let the twists simmer a bit longer to make the story more palatable.

I also do like it that we now have a better access to Chinese movies. They bring a bit different approach to stories and genres, which can be refreshing.

What do I mean by "these movies"? There's a sort of genre known as Oscar-bait. They are dramas about a multitude of subjects, which are easily approachable to the to the people voting for Oscars. Now, I'm not claiming that this movie is Oscar-bait. It sort of follows that same formula, but it is not driven by ego like true Oscar-bait. And that's what I have a soft spot for: those movies that are very personal for the people behind it, but they lack those artificial moments of pathos, which always take me out of those movies.

You know quite early where this is going. There aren't really surprises here, but that's not necessary, because it's about the characters, not the story. And sure, you don't see all the specific incidents coming or how the exactly movie gets to all the points it wants to go.

The point is that we understand the Iida character and her worldview enough to symphatize with her. The movie does fail a little in showing us how she became as jaded as she did, but you can infer that pretty well. It feels like a defense mechanism more than anything else.

Of course, there's also the history of the Skolt Sami, as well as the other Sami peoples, during the last century or so. We, as a nation, should definitely study and record everything we can about what happened to them before it's too late. The last I heard a politician speak about this, his stance was that "we are not ready yet", so he was probably protecting someone instead of being on the side of the victims of forced assimilation, which is a form of genocide our country participated in. That should not be just actively forgotten when there's still a chance to document it.

This is where the importance of art comes in. We need movies like this to remind us of these things.

The movie centers around two different characters: Bill, a man in his early 20s, who is hustling in order to maintain his family and his relationship with his two sons from different mothers, and Matho, a much young boy, who's life is spiraling due to drugs and unstable home life.

I was hesitant to like this movie at first, but Bill won me over. At first he just seemed too obtuse, but over time you learn that he just takes that role when he needs to maintain a relationship. In reality, he is a smart and affectionate young man, who might be somewhat too impulsive, when he sees opportunities, but on the other hand, he needs to make money somehow. He is no father of the year, but maybe if he could just find some calm in his life, he would be.

Matho is a simpler character. He is rebellious and while early on he isn't the leader of his little friend group, he raises to that position later. On the other hand, life keeps dealing him a bad hand over and over again even at his very young age.

For most of the film, their paths are separate and despite the relatively small community, they don't even know each other.

We see a lot of examples of the native American culture they come from. I can't really claim to understand all the metaphorical aspects of certain motifs in the movie, but at the same time the characters have also lost their connection to them, so they don't understand them either.

In many ways this feels more like coming from European tradition of film making than American, as the focus is on the characters, not the story, which is just a vehicle for us to get to know the people.

On the other hand, it's also about the wealth disparity these people experience and the repercussions of that. Crime is casual. Many of these people just do it. It's all around them. The few interactions they have with people outside of their culture are quite racist and there's a strong feeling of their people being used.

Overall, definitely worth a watch, if you are into sort of Oscar-baity dramas, but without the baggage of being real Oscar-bait (thus transcending that pseudo-genre).

Sisu is a complicated concept. In a way it is pure stoic perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, but it is important to note that it is not just determination. It is also cleverness, that manifests itself when you most need it. Sisu is finding the solution to a problem, no matter what. This movie is definitely about that. Aatami, our "hero", finds the way.

Being old enough Finn to have known many people of this generation, this isn't even that much of an embellishment.

The movie is quite simplistic. The Finnish characters don't even talk until very late into the movie (which is actually another insight into Finnish culture). You have a goldminer with gold and a company of Nazis hunting him. You can't really go wrong with this storywise. You just have to make the characters and the action interesting enough. Do they? Yes. This might me kind of mild in the age of superhero movies and the more traditional action movies copying the superhero movies, but it works. In some ways kind of refreshing to keep it all more grounded.

While this might be more meaningful to me as a Finn, I would assume that if you enjoy mid-budget action, this will be right up your alley (although, at 6 million euros, the budget was much lower than what would be considered midlevel in bigger markets).

Since most people outside of Finland probably don't know who Anna Eriksson (the director/writer/star) is, think someone on the lines of Mariah Carey just deciding that she would rather make dystopian, small budget art movies. Not only that, but she would also stick her neck out and take the main role, because she doesn't want to put anyone else into that position. I mean, she was known for her good looks and great voice, but here she is willing to degrade herself and her body.

She plays Europe, a sick woman tended to by a man, who feeds her addictions in a place she calls her catacomb where the two have ended up while running away from a war.

The catacomb is a part of a hospital of some sort run by nurses, who are, based on the descriptions at the beginning of the movie, there to run the place, because they don't want to face the reality that they no longer have any function in the world.

The nurses are interesting. They feel very alien. They perform tasks as if they don't really understand their context or function. Some of them also seem to be malfunctioning.

There isn't much in the sense of story. It's more about the mood. Everything is falling apart and no-one is willing or probably even able to do anything about it.

Now, if you are a fan of Eriksson music, this is probably not for you. This is hardcore weirdness. If you've already seen all the Lynch, Jodorowsky and the.darker Tarkovsky movies, this might be for you.

Back in mid-80s, my parents recorded this of off TV on VHS (yes, I'm old) and because we didn't have many children's movies recorded (and only three channels), me and my sisters ended up watching this quite a few times. I did remember this fondly, but when I was curious as to whether this would hold up when I tried to find it to show to my nieces. Couldn't find it when they were children, but when I finally did get my hands on it, I can now say that it does indeed hold up, although I can't really tell whether I ike it because of those childhood memories or because it's actually good. I would like to believe its the latter.

It is quite weird. The world is quite absurdly centered on the king, who has.a fragile ego and is quite quick-tempered. Everyone else is completely disposable (and he disposes of quite a few of them throughout the movie). It is absurd in other ways as well. It is a police state, but the police generally don't wield anything more dangerous than umbrellas. I do remember wondering how this world even functions or how the king ever managed to gain such power, but we can also see examples of the latter in the real world, so the older me sees that as almost a warning on what might be happening in the world right now.

Here, a.young chimney sweep in a painting falls in love with a shepherd in another painting. Things get complicated when a painting of the king also falls in love with the girl and claims his right as the king on the girl. The young pair escape with the help of the mockingbird.

The production was quite fragmented and at times you can see the seems in the animation, but its not that bad. I don't know if this is also the reason for the.uneven pacing of the story, but the kid in me doesn't really care about that either.

This feels like a quarantine movie in that it has very few characters and is only shot in very controlled location. On the other hand, this was released in very early 2021, so it's questionable whether this would have been shot during 2020 and would probably have been written and financed before the pandemic. Also, at least some of the themes are very personal to the director (at least gender non-conformity), so in that sense this does not have much to do with that event.

Anyhow, I feel like much of this movie would require an explanation, which none of you would read because of it's length, but on the other hand, I'm also probably reading many things into it from my own subjective perspective.

While I am much older than most people who are "terminally online", the combination of the pandemic and my work situation has forced me into largely living my personal life online, which probably colors my perception of the movie. This does feel like a horror movie for the generation that has been online for their whole lives and were further forced into it in the last couple of years.

While it's marketed as horror, I don't think that's the right audience for this. Sure, there are horror elements here, but it's too slow and, in some cases, too weird to appeal to that crowd. This is for that small intersection of horror and art movie fans. I would hope there's some out there, because I do think this deserves to be seen more than it has. I just don't think this is the movie for those, who are looking for shocks.