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Disclaimer:
I must offer to you a confession: I like movies that give me a fright. If the subject is horror I got to see more or I won't be contented all night.
-from "The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati"
Fair warning: I'm biased in favor of movies involving horror, monsters, the supernatural, the paranormal, space aliens, zombies, science fiction, and those Twinkies of cinema, found footage. I would rather drink syrup of ipecac than watch "On Golden Pond", "Places in the Heart", or "Fried Green Tomatoes". I am not William Blake; what you will read here is the foamy-mouthed drivel of Clyde the Village Idiot.
While it's true that 97% of the movies within the above listed genres are utter rubbish, I put on garbage bags and it's my hobby to dig through the stinking pile and find the few that are, miraculously, somehow redeemable. So be confident in the knowledge that only the highest quality cultural dreck will receive a positive review.
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"THE WINDMILL" (a.k.a. The Windmill Massacre)
As it turns out, the gateway to hell is actually in Holland! And you'll never guess where. In a windmill! I know, right!? Who'd a thunk it? Considering that about 26% of Holland's area is below sea level and only about 50% of its area is more than a meter above sea level, global warming and the consequent rise in sea levels could result in all sorts of metaphysical conundrums. Ha! I managed to wedge in some whingeing about global warming in a review of a horror picture about a windmill. Bet you did not see that coming.
If we take the plot line of "the Windmill" and reduce it to its structural abstraction, it's basically the same as about a zillion other slasher movies with a supernatural topspin. A logically related group of people (a football team with cheerleaders, a neighborhood full of trick- or-treaters, a collection of people on a boat, a lost group of hikers taking refuge in a cabin, etc.), in this case a tour group on a tour bus in Holland, get artificially stranded beyond cell phone reach and get picked off by an antagonist with optional supernatural origins/connections. Not new. SO not new.
There is a meager surprise or two during the course of the film, ostensibly I suppose to break the mechanical progression as we dice up one tourist-victim after another. We learn, for example, that this is a truly "organized" tour, as most members of the tour group are sinners, and so not here by accident, and are therefore the devil's due. And we also learn that one of the people on the bus is in cahoots with the hellish tour management.
But rather carelessly in my opinion, having gone so far as to set up a reason and rationale for why we're here and why people are being picked off in a collection of gruesome ways, the movie then violates its own rules by killing off the members of the tour group who have been identified as "innocents" ANYWAY, just by operatives other than the designated bogeyman. So guilty you get whacked and innocent you get whacked. By being innocent you get the added insult of being whacked by the assistant. If it were me I would insist upon a tour ticket refund.
One such innocent completes his tenure in the picture staring dazedly back at the burning windmill having just been sprayed head to toe with the skull innards of the apparent heroin of the picture. We are never sure where or how this particular character ends up. A loose end, I say.
Somewhat reservedly, I'll stick my neck out and say, specifically to my kindred spirits out there, that this movie barely squeaks into the realm of the "worth watching". But just barely. But only when you have nothing else to watch or are too sleepy to change streams. It only makes this grade by virtue of its unique and peculiar setting and origin hypothesis. Do be prepared to feel bad for the heroin. She can't win for losing right down, apparently, to the legal fine print of the supernatural.
Disclaimer:
I must offer to you a confession: I like movies that give me a fright. If the subject is horror I got to see more or I won't be contented all night.
-from "The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati"
Fair warning: I'm biased in favor of movies involving horror, monsters, the supernatural, the paranormal, space aliens, zombies, science fiction, and those Twinkies of cinema, found footage. I would rather drink syrup of ipecac than watch "On Golden Pond", "Places in the Heart", or "Fried Green Tomatoes". I am not William Blake; what you will read here is the foamy-mouthed drivel of Clyde the Village Idiot.
While it's true that 97% of the movies within the above listed genres are utter rubbish, I put on garbage bags and it's my hobby to dig through the stinking pile and find the few that are, miraculously, somehow redeemable. So be confident in the knowledge that only the highest quality cultural dreck will receive a positive review.
*************************************************************
"THE WINDMILL" (a.k.a. The Windmill Massacre)
As it turns out, the gateway to hell is actually in Holland! And you'll never guess where. In a windmill! I know, right!? Who'd a thunk it? Considering that about 26% of Holland's area is below sea level and only about 50% of its area is more than a meter above sea level, global warming and the consequent rise in sea levels could result in all sorts of metaphysical conundrums. Ha! I managed to wedge in some whingeing about global warming in a review of a horror picture about a windmill. Bet you did not see that coming.
If we take the plot line of "the Windmill" and reduce it to its structural abstraction, it's basically the same as about a zillion other slasher movies with a supernatural topspin. A logically related group of people (a football team with cheerleaders, a neighborhood full of trick- or-treaters, a collection of people on a boat, a lost group of hikers taking refuge in a cabin, etc.), in this case a tour group on a tour bus in Holland, get artificially stranded beyond cell phone reach and get picked off by an antagonist with optional supernatural origins/connections. Not new. SO not new.
There is a meager surprise or two during the course of the film, ostensibly I suppose to break the mechanical progression as we dice up one tourist-victim after another. We learn, for example, that this is a truly "organized" tour, as most members of the tour group are sinners, and so not here by accident, and are therefore the devil's due. And we also learn that one of the people on the bus is in cahoots with the hellish tour management.
But rather carelessly in my opinion, having gone so far as to set up a reason and rationale for why we're here and why people are being picked off in a collection of gruesome ways, the movie then violates its own rules by killing off the members of the tour group who have been identified as "innocents" ANYWAY, just by operatives other than the designated bogeyman. So guilty you get whacked and innocent you get whacked. By being innocent you get the added insult of being whacked by the assistant. If it were me I would insist upon a tour ticket refund.
One such innocent completes his tenure in the picture staring dazedly back at the burning windmill having just been sprayed head to toe with the skull innards of the apparent heroin of the picture. We are never sure where or how this particular character ends up. A loose end, I say.
Somewhat reservedly, I'll stick my neck out and say, specifically to my kindred spirits out there, that this movie barely squeaks into the realm of the "worth watching". But just barely. But only when you have nothing else to watch or are too sleepy to change streams. It only makes this grade by virtue of its unique and peculiar setting and origin hypothesis. Do be prepared to feel bad for the heroin. She can't win for losing right down, apparently, to the legal fine print of the supernatural.