Vladimir Rakhmanin
Staff Writer
Snow White and the Huntsman
Snow White and the Huntsman was a complete surprise to me. I came in expecting absolutely nothing, and what I received was a very decent blockbuster with a wonderful visual style. In a way, it is the complete counterpoint to Prometheus – Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror had extraordinary ambition, but fell flat on its face during execution, whereas Snow White… plays it unbelievably safe, being a gritty reboot of a well-known fairy tale, but does its job so well that you can’t help but feel impressed.
Of course, the first thing to mention about this film is the amazing art direction. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, coming from the producers of the gorgeous but shallow Alice in Wonderland, but certain moments of the film truly amaze with their beauty. The Sanctuary is a highlight, which is a forest dreamscape full of extraordinary creatures, plants and fairies. And yes, a certain moment in this film is copy-and-pasted straight from Studio Ghibli’s anime masterpiece Princess Mononoke, but this doesn’t lessen the impact of the scene.
The acting is just a tad off. Charlize Theron’s constant yelling is ridiculous, and Kirsten Stewart’s speech at the end of the film, which is meant to be inspiring, is delivered in a spectacularly poor way. The saving grace of the cast is Chris Hemsworth, who plays his rather two-dimensional character fairly well. The Scottish/Celtic accents that everyone seems to have in this world lend the story authenticity, and fit well with the gritty tone.
I loved the way that elements of the original fairy tale were translated into this new version. The scary forest, that I’m sure we were all traumatised by in the Disney cartoon, is host to hallucinogenic plants in the film, giving a rational explanation to the trippy faces and alligators of the original. The Mirror also looks great, with a flowing golden cape covering his entire body. It’s amazing how key plot points that we’ve all heard hundreds of times before still manage to surprise because of the way they are presented – the poison apple is a key example of this. I won’t spoil anything, but the way the scene subverts your expectations is fairly clever.
The thing that won me over, though, was the small details that helped to flesh out the world. The dwarves and their sad history, the Queen’s true motivations, the women who scarred their faces in order to wreck their beauty and not be executed by the Queen… What could have been an absolute disaster is actually a very watchable blockbuster, set in a very interesting, and beautiful, world. If this is the director’s debut, I can’t wait to see what else he can come up with.
The Pact
I had not heard anything about The Pact in the media, for some reason, apart from a couple of bus ads, which promised me that it will be ‘the scariest film of the year’. Now, a quote like that should automatically set off alarm bells in any reasonable person’s head – when a film promises to be the ‘(insert adjective here) film of the year’, and this promise is made mid-year, you know the PR people are grasping for straws. Nonetheless, when I heard that the film is a ghost story that is not ‘based on true events’, and not ‘mysteriously discovered found footage’, I decided to give it a go. As a horror fan, I thought it would be interesting to finally watch something that isn’t either a Paranormal Activity rip-off or Hostel-style torture porn.
Unfortunately, The Pact is an extremely uninspired and generic horror film. The plot revolves around a woman who discovers that her old childhood home is – you guessed it – haunted, and attempts to discover what horrible secret it contains. What follows is a series of events involving characters you won’t care about, and some revelations that are so predictable they might as well have come from a “Horror Cliches 101” book. Yup, this film has it all – Ouija boards, mysterious peepholes, hidden doors, malevolent spirits, creepy wallpaper, and of course, a blind psychic.
Now, I’m a firm believer that a film can be uninspired and great at the same time, if it is executed well enough. And even though the film tries to build atmosphere with slow moving camera shots through claustrophobic corridors (a technique which I adore), it’s simply not enough. Too many of the film’s frights rely on jump scares, which is a shame, because the unnerving atmosphere (that features mostly in the middle of the film) is genuinely disturbing, and some of the set-pieces had me seriously creeped out.
Despite the general blandness of the film, moments of brilliance poke through. I liked how several scares use modern technology in a creative way. Also, the set-pieces that I just mentioned are really very good – one involving the psychic, and one involving the Ouija board. Despite this, The Pact is an extremely generic horror film, with a terrible ending (and a final shot that makes absolutely no sense). I would still prefer it over the masses of found footage films that are flooding the box office, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it warrants a recommendation. Watch The Cabin in the Woods again instead.
