The Quiet Earth

What Jesse said:

The Quiet Earth was one of the first movies that Jesse recommended to me and it’s been so many years since that I don’t remember what sort of ridiculous arguments he used. They must have sounded good enough at time.

Mike’s verdict:

Fantastic. 10/10

The Quiet Earth is one of those movies that manages to put you on a wave riding from subtle to in-your-face and back again without making you sea-sick. At it’s base, the film is heavy science fiction that requires a major suspension of disbelief – and that will likely turn off a lot of viewers. But the story isn’t about the science – it’s about the people and how they come to terms with their predicament. Jesse got this one right.

ps. This movie is based on a book of the same title by New Zealand author Craig Harrison.  Being a big fan of the movie, I looked everywhere for a copy of the book. At the time, there had only been two editions of the novel released – the original hardcover and a subsequent paperback. They had been out of print for so long that hardcover versions were being listed at more than $1000US, but I managed to find a great deal on a very well-read paperback copy for $150 from a New Zealand used book dealer. Do not spend $150 on this book. It’s terrible.  However, as of this writing it appears that Amazon has a listing for a new edition of The Quiet Earth set to be released in May 2014. At the new edition price, it’s worth reading if you like the movie – but definitely start with the movie first.

Oldboy (“Oldeuboi”)

What Jesse said:

Yo – you have to watch Oldboy – it’s a Korean revenge flick and it’s awesome. It’s so awesome that I can’t even tell you about it. Just watch it. Oh, and it’s going to be remade this year so you’ll want to watch the original first. It has subtitles though – sorry.

Mike’s verdict:

This one was fairly good. A lot of Korean films lose pretty much everything in translation (at least I assume that’s the problem, since people are always raving about them and I never get it). But Oldboy came through pretty well. I thought it moved a little slow in the middle, but that seems to be what we call ‘building suspense’ now anyway. My main concern with Oldboy is the big twist. It’s super obvious. I mean, super, super, obvious. It’s the very first thing you think. That being said, it’s so super obvious that I immediately discounted it as too obvious. So when I finally reached the big reveal at the end, I had spent so much time exploring all the other possibilities that the truth really was a big shock. Kudos Chan-wook Park, kudos.

Bottle line: It’s not a movie I plan to watch again, but I’ll give it an 8/10 for the mind-games. And I’ll definitely check out the Spike Lee version when I get the chance, if only to see what he does differently.

UPDATE: I’ve now reviewed the Spike Lee remake too.

The Conjuring

What Jesse said:

Dude – watch The Conjuring. It’s scary. Like, totally scary.  I was really scared – but in a good way. It’s not lame like most movies that are supposed to be scary. You’ll be scared too. Seriously.

Mike’s verdict:

(This review is a lightly edited version of an email I sent to Jesse immediately after watching The Conjuring. That email was itself the main impetus for the creation of the mike reviews movies suggested by friends blog.)

All that Blue’s Clues and Thomas the Tank Engine has made Jesse soft. The Conjuring was pretty decent as far as ghost movies go, but it wasn’t noticeably scarier than some others I’ve seen. Sort of reminded me of The Exorcism of Emily Rose (which I liked) but with annoying and unlikely secondary characters.

Part of the problem might be that I dislike movies where the ‘authorities’ have some kind of emotionally scarred history that they need to contend with – ie the chick ghostbuster seeing something scary at a previous exorcism. Really, she’s a bloody ghostbuster and she’s only seen something scary once? They could have at least made it that she had actually been possessed or something. The emotional block from the past is a cliched and far too easy way of pretending that characters have depth. It’s like the writers finish the movie and then realize that they haven’t explained what some character’s issue is; ‘well if we can’t work it into the movie proper then lets just throw it into the back story’. Lame.

Don’t even get me started on the cop that doesn’t believe in ghosts but is still more than happy to spend days and nights in the house anyway. And since when does the church refuse to help people just because they weren’t baptized? Oh wait, on second thought that actually makes sense…

I really didn’t like the museum of supernatural objects either. First, it’s clearly stolen from Warehouse 13. And second, it’s stupid – if you are a proper ghostbuster with a healthy respect for the supernatural objects that you are busting, you don’t store them down the hall from your daughter’s bedroom. At least in Warehouse 13 they have the sense to keep the objects buried in the mountains of South Dakota.

The movie definitely had some good creepiness though. Aside from the first bit about the doll where it looked like it was going to be a comedy, there were lots of scenes with creepy atmosphere. And they didn’t rely on the jump scare too much either. The very last scene looking at the mirror could have been an easy scare but they didn’t go for the cheap jump.

I give it a 7/10 since most of the issues are industry tropes that ‘real’ reviewers expect to see. It could have had an 8 but they chose to use an unattractive woman as the mother. That’s just lazy.