I Sell the Dead plays up its humour much too much. The sole, recurring, dragged out joke is how we, the audience, are meant to be impressed or put off by the grim work of grave robbing. But it's tedious. It's like listening to someone talk about how hard their job is: constantly. A lot of the actors are good but their characters are one-dimensional grave robbing toughies.
The music exacerbates the humour. Goofy is too strong a word for it, but there is a hokey kind of (clarinet?) music that plays throughout the entire show that tries to communicate its humour. Yeah, okay; "Sell" is a black comedy; I get it, you make dark jokes and stuff. Your fascination with death is not profound.
The movie is also overpacked, giving it a listless feel. "I Sell the Dead" doesn't have a traditional three-act structure, but works more as an anthology. But there is too much content. All of the little anecdotes throughout the film take away from the focus of the overall plot. Anecdotes like these work much better in print. And to reiterate, the humour is not appreciated. There's one "humorous" anecdote of a boy who keeps having his pets killed by his father, until the boy beats his father to the punch and kills his pets before the father can. That reads pretty twisted, but the movie spoils it with cheese: when the boy finally kills the pet, he has red paint on his face (he kills it by biting it, teehee) and breaks immersion by looking at us and smiling. It's over the top but not in a fun way. I don't know. If I was much, much younger (ten years old?) maybe I would've thought it was cool.
Speaking of immersion-breaking, the movie's obviously low budget makes everything look cheap. There's a brown wash to every scene and a lot of sets feel empty or underdeveloped. I don't want to knock the film for not having the lavish budget of a mega-Hollywood movie, but the cheapness plus the poor humour and lack of focus makes "I Sell" a tedious bore.
That said, I know this is the debut work of the director, and I have to admit this is an ambitious project. I'd like to see more of his work in the future.
The music exacerbates the humour. Goofy is too strong a word for it, but there is a hokey kind of (clarinet?) music that plays throughout the entire show that tries to communicate its humour. Yeah, okay; "Sell" is a black comedy; I get it, you make dark jokes and stuff. Your fascination with death is not profound.
The movie is also overpacked, giving it a listless feel. "I Sell the Dead" doesn't have a traditional three-act structure, but works more as an anthology. But there is too much content. All of the little anecdotes throughout the film take away from the focus of the overall plot. Anecdotes like these work much better in print. And to reiterate, the humour is not appreciated. There's one "humorous" anecdote of a boy who keeps having his pets killed by his father, until the boy beats his father to the punch and kills his pets before the father can. That reads pretty twisted, but the movie spoils it with cheese: when the boy finally kills the pet, he has red paint on his face (he kills it by biting it, teehee) and breaks immersion by looking at us and smiling. It's over the top but not in a fun way. I don't know. If I was much, much younger (ten years old?) maybe I would've thought it was cool.
Speaking of immersion-breaking, the movie's obviously low budget makes everything look cheap. There's a brown wash to every scene and a lot of sets feel empty or underdeveloped. I don't want to knock the film for not having the lavish budget of a mega-Hollywood movie, but the cheapness plus the poor humour and lack of focus makes "I Sell" a tedious bore.
That said, I know this is the debut work of the director, and I have to admit this is an ambitious project. I'd like to see more of his work in the future.