Carmilla – Edinburgh Film Festival Movie Review

Carmilla had its premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival yesterday evening. Based on the Gothic vampire novel of the same name, Carmilla is a coming of age movie that explores sexuality, oppressive religious families and the feeling of being trapped.

Carmilla follows the life of Lara, a 15-year-old girl living with her father and governess. She feels trapped and alone in her father’s house, as she is the only young person living there. One day, a broken-down carriage is found outside the house and an unconscious young girl is brought in. Lara and the girl inevitably meet and become close. The girl says she cannot remember her name, so Lara calls her Carmilla.

As the two become closer, their relationship becomes more romantic. They start kissing each other and call themselves “blood sisters”. However, Lara’s governess finds the two of them in Lara’s bedroom and soon starts telling every other adult in the house that Carmilla is the devil.

It’s never confirmed whether Carmilla actually is the devil or not. Lara’s governess finds a book with satanic images in Carmilla’s broken carriage and Carmilla also hides a cross from the wall of her room under her bed. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Carmilla is evil though – how do we know that the book belonged to her? And maybe she just isn’t religious?

Carmilla explores the intense homophobia masked by the promise of salvation that 19th Century Christianity so often forced upon people. Lara’s governess often gives Lara lectures on how to treat her feelings and how to suppress her nature. Lara is left-handed, so her governess ties her left hand behind her back to force her to use her right hand. She does this because it’s “sinful”. Lara shows a great interest in surgery, often taking books from her father’s study. But her governess punishes her for this and tells her that she’s “playing with fire” and “letting the devil in”. This makes the setting of the house completely stifling and oppressive. When Carmilla arrives, these lectures only increase.

The theme of oneness is very prevalent in this film, as well as many other LGBTQ+ movies and stories. The scene where Lara and Carmilla become blood sisters is incredibly important in this regard. There are also multiple shots that take advantage of reflections in the water and windows, showing the two girls literally becoming one. This, as well as many other LGBTQ+ narratives that use this trope, raises the question of how far the relationship goes. Do Lara and Carmilla consider themselves as lovers, blood sisters, or the same soul within two bodies? Or is it an amalgamation of all three?

The film is riddled with multiple close-up shots of insects. The audio for these shots is so loud that it fills the cinema completely. These are included because of a conversation that Lara and her governess have in the opening scene of the movie.

“Why are flowers colourful and why do they smell good?”

“To make them lovely and pretty.”

“No. To attract insects.”

This gives us the image of Lara and Carmilla as flowers and everyone else in the house as insects. Lara and Carmilla are two young girls flowering into adulthood. The adults in the house are the insects destroying them.

Carmilla is a wonderful coming of age film and I couldn’t be happier that I chose it as my first movie at the Edinburgh Film Festival this year. I admittedly have not read the original book, so I can’t comment on how it lived up to the source material, but from an unbiased perspective I can gladly say that this film was amazing and I think everyone should see it at least once.

10/10

Alita: Battle Angel – Movie Review

Well. That was a mess.

I was expecting a lot more from this movie. With decent reviews from critics and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 62%, I was expecting a solid B-movie. That is not what I got.

Alita: Battle Angel may have decent CGI and a good cast. but that’s quickly forgotten as soon as the movie starts. The first thing we see in the movie is a low-quality CGI floating city – already off to a bad start. We then see Dr. Ido searching through the scrapyard underneath said city, and finding Alita’s head on a pile of junk. He takes her back home and attaches her onto a robot body. Alita wakes up as a cyborg, with no memory of her past, and no knowledge of the world that she has been brought into. This all happens in about 10 minutes – and this is the movie’s first major mistake.

The pacing of this film is so fast that it verges on rushed most of the time. Most, if not all of the plot twists are ruined because there isn’t enough time for these sub-arcs to be suspenseful enough for the audience to care. A lot of the scenes are too rushed as well, and a quite a few of them just seem pointless as a result of this.

All of the relationships seem too rushed and have no chemistry – especially the romance between Alita and Hugo. It seems forced, and borders on ridiculous at points. This is partly a result of the pacing – time seems very warped in this story. The audience doesn’t know how long Alita and Hugo have been friends, so it seems a bit stupid for them to start a romantic relationship.

But this is also a result of sloppy writing. The dialogue is so clunky that it’s painfully obvious when the characters use a line taken directly from the original manga/anime. It just doesn’t match up with the way they talk for the rest of the movie. The characters themselves also aren’t developed enough for the audience to care about them. The only character I really felt anything for was Alita, and even then, her character arc was slightly problematic. At certain points, it felt like she was just doing things to rebel against Dr. Ido, or to impress Hugo, rather than doing things for herself.

There are a lot of sub-arcs that are suddenly dropped for no reason, leaving the audience confused and unfulfilled. And every time a “plot twist” happens, it doesn’t seem that dramatic or fatal, because chances are something happened a few scenes earlier that could easily fix what just happened.

A lot of the characters’ motives either weren’t explained clearly or just didn’t make sense. I honestly couldn’t even tell you what the villain of the story actually wanted to do, or why everyone was fighting against him. The characters in this story are too fickle, which is a result of bad writing. And this makes the audience care less and less about them as the movie goes on.

The way the other characters treated Alita was very strange as well. I’ll try not to go into spoiler territory too much here, but there’s a scene around halfway through the movie where the other characters start to make weird (and quite frankly, creepy) comments about her body, saying things like “oh, I guess she’s a bit older than you thought”, and constantly staring at her breasts. Alita’s treated like a possession or an object to most of the characters in this film (especially Dr. Ido and Hugo), and it really shows in those few scenes.

The final point I’d like to bring up is the issue of white-washing. As someone who hasn’t read the manga or seen the original anime, I can’t really comment too much on the ethnicity of the main characters – but I was at least expecting the cast to be a bit more diverse. Pretty much every character that gets a decent amount of screentime is white. The only POC are either villains or background characters. Rosa Salazar, the actress who plays Alita, is Latina – but you very quickly forget that, as she blends in pretty easily with the rest of the white cast.

 

Despite these factors, the cast is pretty decent, and the acting is ok, considering what the actors had to work with. There are also a few moments where the CGI and visuals are pretty good. I’d say the film really picks up when the fighting scenes start (but that only happens after around half an hour of exposition).

Alita: Battle Angel doesn’t live up to the hype and ratings that critics have given it. But if you go into the cinema expecting it to be kind of a dumb B-movie, you’ll probably enjoy it a bit more than I did.

 

5/10

 

 

 

 

100 Movies List: 6. 12 Angry Men

12 Angry Men is a commentary on the American justice system, and whether we have the right to dictate another person’s fate. At first, this film doesn’t look like much – it appears to be your stereotypical black-and-white movie about whatever social issues where important at the time. But then it explodes in all the best ways.

The film follows a jury of twelve men who have to decide whether a teenage boy is guilty of murdering his father or not. At the start of the movie, eleven men say that the boy is guilty. By the end, all twelve decide that he is innocent.

The entire film takes place in the same room (save for the opening and ending scenes), and still manages to be captivating for the entire runtime. One man manages to convince the rest of the jury that the boy is innocent by breaking down their arguments one point at a time. How could the old man next door make it to the crime scene on time if he was crippled? How could the woman across the street see the murder happen if she wasn’t wearing her glasses? How can we know that the knife used in the murder belonged to the boy if one of the jurors has one exactly like it?

Although we never really learn any of the jurors’ names, the film still manages to draw you into the story and the arguments between all of the men in the room. The movie succeeds in making the audience more and more invested in the case and how the boy could possibly be innocent.

This is a perfect example of the character study. By limiting the set, the actors have no choice but to play off each other. The cast is brilliant, and manage to build up emotions to the point that the film is tense, but not to the point where they’re chewing the scenery. The points brought up by each character are interesting as well – why should they have the right to condemn an 18 year old boy, who’s barely had a chance at life yet? Why do people assume that people from a certain area have certain attitudes and beliefs?

There’s also a man who completely rejects every valid point that is brought up by the rest of the jury. Throughout the majority of the movie this just makes him look ignorant. However, when a photo of him and the boy falls onto the table, he eventually breaks down and claims that he’s not guilty. This shows how personal relationships and biases can affect the outcome of a trial like this. This man tried to claim that the boy was guilty because – for reasons unknown – he has some sort of personal vendetta against him.

12 Angry Men shows how not everything is as it seems, and how personal beliefs and biases can affect the fate of another person’s life. If every single man in the jury had said that the boy was guilty without trying to figure out whether the trial was fair or not, an innocent person would have been sent to the chair. This movie questions the value of human life, and opens the viewers’ eyes to how inaccurate testimonies can be when given in the heat of the moment.

 

9/10

The Favourite – Movie Review (SPOILERS)

The Favourite is a brilliant film about how corrupt the 18th Century English court was. Abigail (Emma Stone) is the daughter of a nobleman who has fallen from grace, and is forced to seek employment from her cousin, Sarah, in Queen Anne’s palace. Sarah immediately banishes her to the kitchens, where Abigail must suffer the cattiness of the other women working there. She is whipped, shouted at, and has her hands burned by chemicals, all within the first 20 minutes of the movie.

 

When she is promoted to working as an attendant for the Queen with Sarah, the hardships and manipulation continue, but in a different way. Abigail starts off as an innocent, likeable character; when she sees that Queen Anne’s relationship with Sarah is much more intimate and sexual than the rest of the court believes, she keeps her mouth shut and respects their privacy. When Robert Harley, a politician, approaches and encourages her to eavesdrop on the Queen’s conversations and betray her by telling him everything, she refuses.

However, Abigail slowly becomes unrecognizable as the film goes on. Sarah begins to fear that Queen Anne prefers Abigail over her, and not-so-subtly tells Abigail to back off, or she’ll be fired.

The film then turns into a massive cat-fight between Sarah and Abigail, as both women fight desperately against each other for the Queen’s favour. This is both entertaining and horrifying to watch: some witty one-liners come out of this, but the whole situation turns the cousins against each other, as they begin to spread lies about each other to the Queen, and in one case Abigail even deliberately injures herself and blames it on Sarah to avoid losing her job.

Not only is Abigail a threat to Sarah’s profession, she is also a threat to her romantic relationship with the Queen. Halfway through the movie, Sarah stumbles into Queen Anne’s bedroom to find both Abigail and the Queen sleeping naked in bed together. The feud between servants has turned into a love triangle, and it only elevates the tension between the three women.

 

When Abigail poisons Sarah’s tea, causing Sarah to disappear for over a week, she persuades the Queen to let her marry a colonel in the court, and she becomes a lady. Her climb up the social ladder is finally complete. When the disgraced Sarah is finally found, she is banished from the palace, and eventually banished from England. This is all Abigail’s fault. She deliberately schemes and manipulates both Sarah and Queen Anne in order to get what she wants. This is a clear contrast from the kind, sweet girl that we saw at the start of the film.

The Favourite can be seen as commentary on how political behaviours can change someone to the point that they become unrecognizable. Abigail did not become a lady by behaving in the same way as when she first came to the palace, desperate for a job and a roof over her head. She becomes cocky and selfish, daring to think that she is above everyone else in the court, even the Queen herself. The last shot of the film reminds us and Abigail that this is not the case. As Queen Anne forces her to rub her gout-ridden legs, images of the Queen’s profile, as well as he 17 rabbits (symbolic of her 17 dead children, we are reminded that Abigail is still inferior to the Queen. By placing the shot of the rabbits over Abigail and Anne’s faces, we are given the image of Abigail caged in the palace by Queen Anne, like a pet. In this way, Abigail hasn’t solved her problem from the start of the movie. She is still trapped and inferior (this article by Kevin Lincoln gives a very interesting reading on the final shot: https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/what-happens-at-the-end-of-the-favourite.html).

The Favourite has definitely been my favourite film of the year so far, and I would definitely recommend watching it. The balance of humour and tragedy is just enough to keep the audience engaged, and the performances from all of the actors are absolutely amazing.

 

9/10

Bird Box – Movie Review

Around a month ago, Netflix release their adaptation of Josh Malerman’s book Bird Box. Bird Box is about beings that suddenly appear in the sky, and cause people to commit suicide if they look at them. They spread throughout the whole world, and soon most of the human race is gone.

Sandra Bullock plays Malorie, a pregnant woman who manages to survive the outburst of mass hysteria as the creatures arrive in the United States. She survives a crash as her friend, Jessica (played by Sarah Paulson) looks up at the sky and drives into a line of parked cars in a trance.

The rest of the film follows Malorie’s struggle for survival. The narrative jumps between the past and the present, making the events of the story rather confusing at first, but things soon clear up as more of Malorie’s past is shown to us. From the first present day scene, we can see that Malorie has two children – but, in the past, she had an ultrasound showing that she was pregnant with only one child. As the film goes on, we learn where the second child comes from.

She is also rowing both of the children down a river in present day – as we see more of the flashbacks, we learn why this is as well. This choice of narrative adds to the confusion that the characters face. We never know exactly what is happening until the end of the film. This reflects how Malorie and her children never know if they will be safe, and how they’ll never know if they can escape the creatures in the sky or not.

Bird Box is a film of survival, placing the human race in the role of the hunted. This movie seemed very reminiscent of A Quiet Place and Hush, as the protagonists are stripped of one of their senses or functions in order to survive (for reference: A Quiet Place = no talking; Hush = no sound – deaf protagonist; Bird Box = no sight). The only way Malorie and the other characters can survive is by blindfolding themselves, as well as carrying birds with them, as they can sense when the creatures are nearby.

Malorie herself could be criticized as being too cold and stand-offish as a character, and also as a mother. She greets every newcomer with a gun to the face, and she calls her children ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’. But this is the end of the world – everyone she knew and loved is dead. It’s up to her to make it to safety, if that even exists anymore. So, in context, Malorie acts in the same way as anyone else would in that situation.

Bird Box is a thrilling and gripping Netflix original that I didn’t know I needed. Watching this movie has made me interested in reading the original book, as well as exploring more media in this genre.

 

8/10

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch – Movie Review

After a few days of trying to find a device I could actually watch this movie on (because apparently my laptop is too much of a tank to play it), I finally managed to watch Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. I have been a huge fan of Black Mirror ever since I saw the first season, and this movie did not disappoint.

Bandersnatch is an interactive movie – the choices you make throughout the game determine the ending that you get. Whenever you get “the wrong ending”, you get sent back to a shot of two 80’s TV screens, and you have to choose a point in the story to go back to, so you can change your decisions. This seems very reminiscent of choice-based RPGs, like Undertale, Life is Strange, and Detroit: Become Human. The choice mechanism makes you very aware of how the smallest actions can affect the bigger picture, and leaves you second-guessing everything.

The actual story follows a young man named Stefan, trying to make a game adaptation of a book called Bandersnatch. As the film goes on, we learn that the author went insane while trying to write it, due to the infinite choices and multiple endings that the book portrayed.

While trying to develop the game, Stefan can be seen going through the same process. The choices range from choosing what music he listens to, to deciding whether he should jump off a balcony or not. Stefan begins to feel extremely paranoid, and suspects that there is more to this story than a controversial game. He begins to realize that he is not in control, and starts to ask the audience who they are, and why they’re controlling him.

It seems that no matter what you do, no matter what you choose, the ending to Stefan’s story is always bad. The best that you can hope for is a good rating for the game, whilst Stefan is sent to prison for murdering his father. Every ending is horribly grim in their own separate ways. An element of the supernatural also starts to play into the story towards the end of the movie, making both Stefan and the audience question the reality of each situation.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a very self-aware film. Much like other Black Mirror stories, Charlie Brooker pins the blame on humanity rather than one difficult situation. It isn’t the game that drives Stefan insane – it’s you. You decide his fate, and you make him do terrible things to ensure that his game gets released. This is acknowledged multiple times throughout the film by Stefan, and does nothing to ease your anxiety about what is going to happen at the end (whichever ending you get, that is).

The way that the film bounces you back to certain options, and makes you go round and round in a loop when you make “the wrong choice” takes away from the element of control a bit. It’s clear that the creative team wanted to elicit certain responses from the audience, and that they wanted to lead us to a certain ending. From what I’ve seen, you can only escape to the safety of the Netflix homepage after one of the endings, and you only get credits in two. In this way, you end up in the same situation as Stefan – not to the same degree, sure, but you do still end up staring at your screen for hours trying to figure out how the hell you’re supposed to end the film. This film goes on for quite a while because of the endless possibilities, and it can be quite draining when you have to make Stefan kill his father because “he had no choice” again (if you choose “back off” it sends you right back to the same scenario).

 

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch provides an interesting commentary on choice and control. Just as the audience controls Stefan’s decisions, the film itself seems to encourage you into choosing certain paths. While some may argue that this takes the audience out of the immersion, I think this only adds to the horrors that the audience puts Stefan through. The film makes it impossible to choose a good ending – that’s not how it was written. If the audience did have complete control, they could come up with an ending where everyone is happy. In this way, Brooker is attempting to control the decision-making process of the audience, just as we are trying to control Stefan. By doing this, we realise how horrible and inhumane this type of power really is.

 

9/10

Suspiria (1977) Movie Review

I feel like this is one of those films where the phrase “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that” applies.

I went into this movie completely blind – I knew it was about a ballet academy, but that was pretty much it. So, what I was expecting was something like a 70’s version of Black Swan, with a plot focused on rivalries and power struggles between the ballerinas in the academy. What I got was something completely different.

The movie starts off with Suzy, the protagonist, desperately trying to find a cab and communicate in German after she has left the airport. As the cab drives up to the ballet academy, Suzy sees a woman running out of the front door, speaking frantically about a secret and an iris.

The film then makes a rather jarring cut to a scene with two completely different girls in what appears to be an apartment. One of the girls seems to be very paranoid about something – but it’s never specified what she’s paranoid about. She sees a pair of eyes through the window – and, as she’s staring into the night, a hand crashes through the glass and grabs her.

The girl is brutally attacked and murdered, soon followed by her friend.

Alright. So. First murder of the movie. This seems to be setting up for a murder mystery, right?

Wrong.

Well. Partially wrong. There are a lot of murders in this film. And I guess it could technically be classified as a murder mystery, as the killer remains anonymous until the end of the movie. But this film isn’t what would come to mind when you think of a stereotypical murder mystery.

The film goes back to Suzy, and continues to focus on her and her friends for the remainder of the story. This makes that scene with the two unknown girls that much more jarring and strange – who were they? Why were they so scared? Why were they murdered? These thoughts linger in the back of your mind for the rest of the film, adding to the paranoia that the movie and its characters portray.

The rest of the movie is surprisingly violence-free from this point until the last half hour. However, the tone of the movie doesn’t lose its tension and suspense. Strange things keep happening in the academy: Suzy collapses during her first rehearsal; maggots start to fall from the ceiling; an unnatural snoring sound can be heard when the girls are forced to sleep in the rehearsal room. The behaviour of the ballet instructors at the school is incredibly strange as well – they seem to be too accepting of all of these strange occurrences. The way they seem to be constantly at ease is rather unsettling, and makes the viewer question whether they have something to do with the strange things happening throughout the movie.

Everything falls into place when Sarah, Suzy’s friend from the academy, tries to find out where all of the instructors go at night. She tries to follow them, and is murdered.

Suzy tries to find out what happened to Sarah by talking to her psychiatrist (who definitely breaks multiple confidentiality rules), and – here’s the bombshell – it turns out that Sarah was paranoid because the founder of the academy was a witch.

Weird, right? Yeah, it gets weirder. Suzy decides to do some exploring of her own, and finds the iris that the girl at the start of the movie was talking about. Turns out the iris is actually a doorknob – Suzy turns the blue iris, and a secret door opens. She walks through, and soon finds a room, where all of the members of staff are gathered together. She watches in the shadows of the corridors as they mutter about killing her off. The headmistress then takes what appears to be a chalice and drinks from it, asking for power. Plot twist – the staff of the ballet academy are actually a coven of witches.

Suzy runs, and finds Sarah’s dead body, as well as the person who had that unnatural snore from earlier on in the movie. The person hears Suzy enter the room, and reveals herself to be Helena – the witch that founded the academy in the 19th century.

There is a struggle as Helena brings Sarah’s body back to life and tries to make Susie fight her – but she manages to kill Helena instead, somehow setting the entire academy on fire. Suzy walks away from the burning wreck, rain soaking through her hair and clothes as she finally escapes the horrors of the academy.

Suspiria doesn’t completely fit into one distinct genre. The paranoia and murders throughout the film would suggest that it should be a horror; while the use of the coven and witches would suggest that it should be a fantasy. Suspiria manages to merge horror and fantasy in a surreal, dream-like manner that keeps the audience guessing right up until the final plot twist. The strange behaviour of the people at the ballet academy, as well as the general confusion of the protagonists makes the film feel like a strange lucid dream. The use of colour adds to this – a luminous red is very prevalent in this film, constantly pulling the viewer out of any realism that the story offers. Even the structure of the academy itself is too perfect and maze-like, and seems too much like something out of an illustration or a Disney princess movie.

Suspiria is a film that feels like it shouldn’t work – but with the balance of the script, the use of tone, and the fact that this 70’s film has a nostalgic feel to it, it surprisingly works very well. Tensions run high throughout the entire movie, and although the ending seems strange, the strangeness only adds to the paranoia that is shown throughout the rest of the story.

 

7/10