Filmmaniak

This is the first Moroccan horror movie with a monster. This story of a group of old childhood friends who had a traumatic experience with an unknown monster as a children, then lost their memory over time and now set out to confront the monster again to prevent the mysterious disappearance of children in the area, would be quite decent, if it didn't so noticeably resemble It by Stephen King. Imagine King's novel crammed into a 90-minute film, missing all of the psychology of the characters and most of the scary moments (the film is only minimally scary and the monster is an ugly digital version in places) and you have a leaky and sometimes somewhat confused story fragment, moreover with not very convincing actors and poorly chosen music. The only positives are the selection of locations, sometimes the camera and, above all, motifs derived from Moroccan culture and national traditions, thanks to which the film at least seems slightly original.

This is the story of the employees of an ultra-modern, large morgue who are facing an armed assault on Christmas Eve. It makes no sense even in the most basic terms and consists of mediocre action sequences consisting of characters running around and wrestling in corridors, offices and freezer halls. It is filmed pleasantly briskly and energetically, but there really is no logic and credibility in the behaviour of the heroes and the implementation of specific situations. The stupid villains and naively positive heroes, who are constantly trying to outwit the armed attackers at all costs, and the overall feeling of the film is reminiscent of many action thrillers from the 90s. If you turn off your brain, you can enjoy the film’s amusing developments if you only watch it once, but you really can't expect more from it.

This is a visually and masterfully enchanting and outrageously impressive psychological drama, with great acting and with horror elements, inspired by naval stories, the works of Herman Melville and ancient mythology. It is impossible not to admire the film’s depressing claustrophobic atmosphere, elaborate mise-en-scène, unreal camera, work with sound and meaningful lighting, and the acting of both protagonists, to whom the script gives a fair share of space (apart from a number of significant scenes together, they both shine in their own long monologues). This is a realistically raw and uncompromisingly unique work, in which, surprisingly, there is also humour. The film excels in pictorial intoxication and maximum directorial precision, and fortunately, unlike the Witch, it is not at all cumbersome, overstretched or unintentionally ridiculous.

An inconspicuous-looking little film, which is in fact a well-written, brilliantly acted gem directed by a firm hand. In it, one of the directors plays the main role of a man who tries to cope with the recent disappearance of his partner in an empty house and also with an unknown monster, scratching at the door every night, which may be real or may be the embodiment of his sadness and fear. The regular alternation of two narrative positions, based on the alternation of days and nights, combines a romantic drama with a strong horror element, which serves as a metaphor for anxiety about the potential end of a relationship, and builds on the motif of uncertainty and real-life situations. The beginning is very slow, but then the consistently graduating story develops its qualities more and more and enthralls with long dialogue sequences and a famous, emotionally strong conclusion.

The allegedly cursed 1979 film, whose only two festival screenings (in Hungary and Italy) ended in disaster and the death of several people, and even surviving viewers usually died within 24 hours, has now been miraculously found and supplemented with documentary materials in which film theorists speak about whether a movie can kill. The vast majority of this mockumentary thus deals with the deadly film called Antrum (about two siblings who camp in the woods and try to dig a hole into hell), the qualities of which, however, fail to match the impressive legend created by its creators. The film tries with questionable success to imitate cheap horror movies from the seventies, is inconsistent in its stylization and above all does not contain much that would have a sufficiently disturbing effect on the viewer (there is absolutely nothing scary at all in the film, and some aspects of the film are rather ridiculous). A strong motif of the film is the strength of one's own convictions, and the reason for watching it is clearly curiosity, but the willingness to believe in its authenticity and supernatural power just from watching it fundamentally weakens.

This is a thriller reminiscent of Snowpiercer about a vertical prison, which also serves as a metaphor for human society and its caste. Together with the voluntarily imprisoned protagonist, we gradually discover the rules of the prison, the multiple floors of which form individual cells. A table with food gradually passes through the cells once a day, from which prisoners can eat anything left over from those above them. The prisoners are moved every month, so we get to see the very different situations on different floors, and this fantastic, distressing, and sinister excursion culminates in the hero's decision to try something no one before him has tried. One would like to know more, but the film does not answer everything and, in its fictional world, it creates its own logic, according to which it is necessary to play and not dispute it too much. This an excellently written, uncompromising, brutal, striking, suspenseful (and sometimes even funny) and engaging allegory, perceiving human society as a collection of hungry selfish people, with clever dialogues, excellent disturbing moments and an innovative environment. It is attractive in its resistance and the clear and simple mechanism by which it is driven. There is beauty in simplicity, and this is certainly true here.

A surprisingly complex drama-horror (about newlyweds who are about to have a baby) that interprets haunting demons as traumas from childhood and parenting, and as something we invent so we have something to blame our mistakes on. However, the film also contains a real demon that tears people to pieces and turns them into bloody fountains. In a branching story, whose protagonists gradually die and the side heroes take over the reins, there are often jumps in time and between several plot levels (as well as dream passages, hallucinations and visions from the world of the dead), with an emphasis on the nature of the characters and the psychological reasons for their actions. The culmination is a conclusion with a fantastic exorcism scene attended by a dozen exorcists, a dozen monks and half a dozen dancers. The film’s big obstacles are that it’s too complicated, there are too many characters and motifs, and it has a scattered storytelling style that will not let you properly absorb the displayed content.

A drama set in a closed mountain community, in which three young adult women obey the orders and sermons of their father, a false prophet who tries to protect them from the Devil and his temptations. The film is impressive both visually and in terms of acting, but highly problematic in its content and cursed in a pile of metaphors and symbols that are hard to understand; they only have to be interpreted, and it is difficult to say whether the director himself is lost in them. The film works as a critical reflection on faith, God, the Devil, and the damage and evil atrocities that religious faith can do if one succumbs to it, but for its entire runtime it just shows variations on the same idea. With a very gradual gradation, the film piles on itself various ambivalent and multi-meaningful events, while the viewer keeps waiting for the point, which never comes. One of the characters in the film says that things that concern God are complicated. Which is true, but they could also at least be a little bit lively, and we should also be able to understand their basic aspects.

This Victorian drama revolves around a teenage girl living on a family estate according to an established regime and binding rules that make her life a stern and depressing repetitive routine (the same feelings are transmitted to the viewer through similarly tense and tedious storytelling). A little bit of excitement comes with the arrival of an unknown beauty of the same age as the heroine, who had a carriage accident nearby and is suffering from memory loss. However, the intimate period piece, which attracts the audience with a potentially forbidden lesbian romance and devilish elements, only ends up amounting to a promise and cautious hints and offers nothing more; only ambivalent unravelling with motives of prejudice and fear of the unknown which, after an hour and a half of a weak story about the desire to break free from the shackles of the ascetic environment and finally live to the fullest, cannot be considered particularly satisfying.

An anime variation on The Nutcracker and The Chronicles of Narnia about a high school girl, chosen by an ancient prophecy, who has to deal with a crisis plaguing a magical parallel world, in this case a lack of water. The simple story of the heroes' journey from point A to point B is based on visual ideas, contains a strong ecological theme (picturesque villages with sheep in contrast to the smoky city and industrial metallurgy) and culminates in an emotional conclusion shrouded in original mythology. However, the film as a whole lacks drama and tension (the heroes are never really in any danger) and, moreover, it’s quite ordinary, i.e., it amounts to a change of motifs that have been seen many times before. This pleasant fairy tale, also suitable for children, is slightly above average purely thanks to its imagery.