Author: gffreviews

An hour and a half, single-location, edge-of-the-seat thriller, that combines the tension and claustrophobia of something like Assault on Precinct 13, and the architectural cat-and-mouse of something like Die Hard. Three burglars break into the home of a blind man and, boy, did they ever fuck with the wrong guy. The Detroit urban prairie makes a brilliant backdrop, combining the crime and anonymity of the city with the scream-all-you-want isolation of a rural setting.

The Neon Demon is incredibly beautiful and disappears spectacularly up its own arse. It has a solid first hour, which should be the entirety of the film with the climax scene tacked on. It builds up so much capital in its first half, I was like, this can be as slow as it wants, it’s gorgeous, but halfway through I had a giant prolapse of patience and rapidly got bored. It burned through my goodwill and congealed into nothing. It unravelled into cliché and clunky obviousness.

It’s a movie whose trailer and synopsis are a lot better than it is. For a movie where a model eats a regurgitated eyeball, it is surprisingly dull. It’s like they feel the need to punctuate stretched-out, baggy, overlong scenes with bursts of violence, but all to no real effect. There are 3 rape scenes in this film, 4 if you include corpses, and they happen one on top of another as if suddenly this slow, dreamlike film is stuttering crudely towards some kind of dramatic conclusion by way of the cheapest tropes possible. Look out for Predatory Lesbian #1.

It also has Peter Jacksonesque levels of false ending where you repeatedly expect each next scene to be the closer. And with each next scene you struggle to understand what it was intended to bring to the story.

My recommendation is download this, watch it with your pals, eat crisps and talk over it when you get bored. It’s that kind of enjoyable.

Houses of Halloween is not bad for a DVD given away free at FrightFest.