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RATING |
| 6 |
DIRECTOR |
| J.J. Bigas Luna |
CAST |
Zelda
Rubinstein
Michael Lerner
Talia Paul
Ángel Jovè
Clara Pastor |
YEAR |
| 1987 |
RUNTIME |
| 89 minutes |
DATE REVIEWED |
| 1 /
15 / 03 |
SHOPPING |
| BUY THIS FILM |
| REVIEWER: FrighT MasteR |
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RATE THIS MOVIE:
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RATED BY:
1 FAN(S) |
CURRENT RATING:
10 SKULL(S)
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Anguish
This is one of the strangest films I've ever seen without it being ridiculously gory. I went in not knowing much about this movie except for the fact that its got a lot of mixed reviews. What makes this such a strange film would be because it's a movie within a movie. I'll explain later on. The movie is about a weird mother and her son, who is an orderly for an optometrist. He gets fired from the job due to screwing up and was reported by a snobby rich woman. His mother uses a form of hypnosis to get him to go out on a killing spree, starting with the woman who got him fired. The son also collects his victim’s eyes after he kills them.
About 20-or-so minutes into the film we discover that the movie we thought to be watching was actually a movie called "The Mommy" that an audience is watching at a theatre. We learn this as the camera actually pans out from the screen to show an audience. The movie just goes into a weird turn from then on. The main focus is not only on the mother and son now, but two teenage girls in the audience. It was one of the weirdest experiences I had while watching a movie, because I've seen it done before in film, but not for so long. It was an interesting twist to say the least. We later learn in the movie that there's a repeat movie-goer in the audience who has seen the movie way too many times and actually believes the "mommy" is talking to him. It doesn't take long before he holds everyone in the movie theatre captive and picks off people one by one.
Another weird thing about this movie was the incredibly long scenes involving the hypnosis the mother would put over the son. The director obviously wanted the audience in the movie and us - the real viewers - to feel as though we were being put under hypnosis. I thought those scenes were too long and too many. It made sense to do it one time, but to do it as many times as it did were just annoying. I decided to give this movie a 6-rating, because, like I said above, it had quite a few scenes that I found unnecessary. I did like the movie, but not as much as I wanted to. The directing and format was unique, but the basic plot wasn't too original. The film kept me interested from the start, especially with the guy killing so many innocent people, and I had fun being the audience within an audience.
I thought it was also cool how the stuff that went on in "The Mommy" was also going on in the real theatre. The killer in the theatre was obviously mimicking the one in the movie. There's some decent gore in here, especially since the killer likes to collect eyeballs, and there may be a couple scenes that may disturb a weaker viewer. I liked how before the movie began a disclaimer was shown saying if so and so happens to leave the theatre or something.
OVERALL
A decent watch. It had a cool and original
format set up for us to be an audience within an audience. It was weird,
but interesting. Worth a check if you want to see something different.
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Would people just stop doing the same crap already!!! With remakes it's implied that they're going to duplicate an idea but just for some random movie to take away from one that's already been made is a cheap ploy and a total betrayal.
Both movies sound kind of weak, mostly because theirs not many places that just certain people can get killed and everyone else that's not directly involved in the storyline won't know about it. Unless they're going to play it like Prom Night, a have a disaster that only leaves a certain group left within the movie theatre. But who knows, Hollywood could pull both simulaneously premised movies out their asses, but of course they could always stick 'em further in!!!