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"We're your friends, Rosemary. There's nothing to be scared about. Honest and truly there isn't!"
That's the question really isn't it? Except, that's what you would expect the question to be. Usually, we the viewer are asked to work this out one way or the other. In the case of Rosemary Woodhouse you would expect us to have to work out if her neighbours really are Satanist or whether Rosemary is just suffering some sort of mental breakdown as a result of her traumatic pregnancy. But quite quickly the outcome seems so blatently obvious, Rosemary's worst nightmares are very much true. This works because Roman Polanski doesn't refrain from telling us anything but just lets the story play out and leaves it up to Rosemary to discover what everybody else is telling her is not the case. We know the truth, she knows the truth and the horror comes from our knowing that we cannot help her.
The story follows Rosemary and her husband Guy Woodhouse. Initially they seem like the ideal couple. He is a semi successful stage and commercial actor, they have just moved into a new swanky apartment and together they want to settle down and have a family. Their neighbours are an eldery couple, Minny and Roman Castevet who seem likable if slightly peculiar. Rosemary gets her wish of pregnancy but when an old friend gifts her a book that highlights the fact that her elderly neighbour Roman is actually the son of a devil worshipper she begins to fear that her neighbours are a part of a Satanic cult. These fears escalate and the rest of the film is dedicated exactly to Rosemary wishes to satisfy these fears either way.
One of the films strongest assetts is the performance of Mia Farrow as Rosemary. In fact, it's such a brilliant performance that it ranks alongside Laura Dern's performance in David Lynch's Inland Empire, Francis McDormand's performance in the Coen's Fargo and Bibi Andersson's performance in Ingmar Bergman's Persona as one of the greatest performances by a female in a lead role. It is simply sublime. John Cassavetes is adequate in his role as Guy but Farrow's performance is backed up by two great supporting roles by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer as the Castevets.
The most impressive scene is the surreal dream sequence in which Rosemary believes she is being raped by the devil himself. Visually it is extraordinary but it also leaves the question of whether or not it really is a dream or whether she actually is being raped. Some will tell you one way, others will tell you the other. I'm sure there is an answer, I just don't know what it is.I've read a couple of comments by people whose opinion means nothing to me who comment that the ending is anticlimatic and 'rubbish'. Well yes it is anticlimatic but Rosemary's Baby is not a film that builds up to a climatic ending. As I said earlier, it was obvious what the outcome was going to be and as we watch we wait for the horrific truth to be revealed to Rosemary. Many of these comments question why Rosemary didn't kill the baby? After all these Satanists had ruined her dream of settling down into a family. But, I say to these people, look how much she wanted a child throughout the whole film. It's her number one goal and her maternal instincts were always going to be sky high and although she may have given birth to the child of Satan, that child is still hers and I think these maternal instincts stop her from making use of that meaty kitchen knife that she clutches in her right hand in this final scene.
Rosemary's Baby is one of the most chilling films I've ever seen acheiving Hitchcockian levels of suspense along the way. Everything in it works and it firmly ranks along side Polanski's Chinatown as being somewhere near masterpiece status and you simply have to view it.
Rating: 9/10 - highly recommended.
“Perhaps you’re…imagining things.”Moon is without doubt one of the best, if not the best, science fiction films of the decade. Whereas most recent attempts at science fiction focus more of their attention on action rather than intelligence Moon does exactly the opposite putting itself in the cateogory of other classic sci-fi's such as 2001:A Space Odyssey, Alien and Blade Runner.
The film is Duncan Jones' debut feature length film and the son of David Bowie (yes really!) does not disappoint by giving us a film that delivers and can be enjoyed on many different levels. It tells the story of Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) who is isolated on the moon working for Lunar Industries. Their and his project is to extract an energy, Helium-3, that is found in the moon's rocky surface, which is much needed as a power source back on planet Earth. Bell's only companion is GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) a thankfully pleasant robot who bears many silimilarities to 2001's HAL (it would have been a tragedy if GERTY had deteriorated in the same way HAL did, hence the use of 'thankfully'). GERTY is a great assett to Bell and acts as a great source of company as Bell's only contact with Earth is through pre-recorded messages from his wife and daughter.
I will refrain from plot spoiling but what I will say is that Moon raises and touches upon many philosophical questions regarding personal identity. Questions such as, what is that really constitues I? Is it bodily identity? Is it memories and thought? Both? Or are both of these insufficient? There are a couple of twists along the way that help raise this problems and I hope you find yourself pondering over these once these twists are revealed.
Moon also displays perfect pacing. At only 90 minutes long it is surprisingly short for a film that calls itself an intelligent science fiction film. We would expect it to be longer. Why I'm not sure, but we would. But it's running time is perfect. Jones fits everything that is necessary into the hour and a half and nothing feels unecessary and I wasn't left with a feeling of wanting more.
There are also some gorgeous visuals. The moon and surrounding space looks fantastic. The numerous shots of the harvesters going about their work are gorgeous and there are no showy, unecessary special effects that we associate with your more action filled science fiction films.
Aronofsky's The Wrestler was 2008's character driven piece and Moon is surely 2009's. It is all about Sam Bell and Sam Rockwell is incredible in his role. He carries the film perfectly in what is surely an Oscar worthy role!? Sam Bell was likeable and we sympathised with him and this was all down to Rockwell superb acting skills.
Moon is currently my favourite film of 2009. It's a great blend of science fiction with philosophy and even if philosophical issues aren't your thing it can still be enjoyed as it provides us with an enjoyable, fairly easy to digest story and a couple of humourous moments. It's a modern era rarity to get such a thought provoking science fiction film when instead we are given sci-fi action failures such as I,Robot and the disappointing big budget Star Trek reboot. The sad thing is not many will see Moon unless the marketing improves for the DVD release. It's received little advertisement both on television and on billboards and has had a worldwide limited cinema release. In fact The only advertisements I've seen for it were on the tubes in London on a recent visit and this is a real disappointment. What isn't a disappointment is the final product. See it.
Rating: 9/10 - highly recommended.
"Hey, there's something down here..."...there sure is and chances are you probably aren't going to get out alive. Here we go again? Perhaps but perhaps not...
Whilst watching The Descent it seemed apparent that it's director, Neil Marshall, is a big fan of film, especially film of the horror genre. What is also apparent in the modern era is that horror films just aren't very good anymore. For every one horror film that can be considered good, there is about fifty that are pretty terrible. Neil Marshall wanted The Descent to be that one.
The Descent is a claustrophobic British horror film which tells the tale of an all female group of British cave enthusiasts who are venturing up to Scotland on a caving expedition. Upon descending into their chosen cave things quickly take a turn for the worse as strange human-like creatures pursue the women.
I've read many reviews and comments for The Descent many of which praise it for being just a little bit different and more considerate than many horrors, not just focused purely on mindless violence and mutilation of random bodies. So I guess the question is do I agree with this common assessment? My answer would be partly yes and partly no. When we meet the characters we immediately see that Marshall wasn't interesting in falling in to the trap that many modern horror films do in which we see a mixed sex set of 'friends' embarking on whatever trip they may happen to be embarking on. Usually these 'friends' don't actually seem to have that much in common as they all seem to have vastly different personalities so that it becomes easy to separate and recognise them. The Descent however has an all female group as its main protagonists all of whom seem very similar to one another. In fact it was actually quite difficult to establish which character was which due to this similarity but this certainly is not a bad thing. The abandonment of familiar character developments such as this, that we see all the time in horror films, brought a more realistic edge to the story and simply allowed Marshall to 'get on with it'.
Don't get me wrong, The Descent does have it's brutal moments. But instead of over the top gore that simply makes us queasy The Descent truly scares us into caring about the outcome with some horrifying scenes of bodily mutilation nicely blended with a sense of doom, madness and sheer terror. The picture above spoils the ending but it is ending filled with relief. I was genuinely delighted that Sarah escaped and this sense of relief was brought across perfectly with some great acting and writing. After escaping she gets into the girl's vehicle and drives away at great speed, clearly disturbed by the days events.
One thing I rarely get to say about horrors is that there were actually some nice visuals here. The shot through the bullet holes in the road sign as the women make their way to their destination, the beautiful shot of the only surviving female clambering up the rocks as she spots an exit from the caves and the use of red flares to illuminate the caves throughout the film are all excellent. The latter gave the situation an air on impending doom. As the girls celebrate the fact that they have made it down in to the cave by lighting a red flare, the cave is awash with colour as the walls gleam. Is this a sign of the blood that the walls will soon be smothered in? It is a warning sign, red does mean stop after all?
But it is not all positive. The story in general is rather familiar. It is obvious from the get go that the majority of these women will end up dying, probably with one lone figure surviving. Although the usual format of the protagonists each making individual stupid judgments in their 'quest' for death is not apparent in The Descent the film still does follow the plot line mentioned which gives the film the familiar air of inevitability. Furthermore, the use of unrealistic, 'these creatures simply do not exist' predators is another aspect of modern horrors that I do not like but Marshall insists of using them here which disappointed me (but did make me curious to see Eden Lake).
It's not perfect but is a great attempt at bucking modern horror trends that has some brilliant moments along the way and for this it has to be commended. The problem is that Marshall just doesn't go far enough in trying to complete this goal of true originality when it seems clear that he really did want to.
Rating: 7.5/10 - recommended.
