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Reviews
The Dead Room (2018)
How NOT to tell a ghost story.
A Ghost Story For Christmas, the classic franchise, and this is the best the BBC can come up with? It would be laborious to define in full detail how disappointing this installment is, and while no episode has ever reached the creepy heights of Jonathan Miller's series progenitor Whistle And I'll Come To You, surely the minimum requirement for any tale should be a chilling/eerie atmosphere.
The Dead Room, sadly, is more like wading through a swamp so banal that its closing cliche somehow becomes the least of its offences. It pretty much amounts to half an hour of talking-heads exposition, and the arch tone of the first third's dialogue, as the lead explains the requirements of an optimum ghost story, is really the film's prime insult given what follows. Aside from this particular kick in the nuts, there are a multitude of sins on display, only some of which are -
Dialogue so on-the-nose and wholly without subtlety or subtext that the characters may as well say 'let me spell this out for you, stupid'. Leaden performances by otherwise fine actors (see: bad dialogue). The most pedestrian editing imaginable. Ill-considered choices of camera composition. A closing moment that you will recall from 692 other films before your eyeballs roll back an entire 180 degrees.
The last point would be insulting enough in itself but by the time you get to the end, if you've made it that far, it really doesn't matter anymore. To care about it would be something like cursing the bruise on your little toe after your leg has been hacked off. For a film that has the gall to explain what makes a good ghost story it does a hell of a job of showing us what doesn't.
Beautiful (2002)
A mini-masterpiece about masculinity
Having thought it was gone forever, I just found this in my short film archive on VHS, and what a delight! It was always one of my favourite shorts, a tightly executed idea bursting with between-the-lines hilarity and tension that is something of a masterclass in timing. After a relatively long introduction to the vast, enchanting New Zealand landscape, as two 'proper blokes' take their small fishing dinghy out into the lake at sunset, claustrophobia soon sets in when one of them rocks the boat (boom boom) by raising the topic of bisexuality. Endlessly quotable and not a minute wasted. This film deserved much more recognition and surely would have enjoyed the praise it deserves had it travelled the international festival circuit as much as it should have. Not only may favourite short film from New Zealand but one of my favourite shorts of all time. Now I just have to try and get it on DVD!