It's been too long on MeFi without the AlanRickman tag.
August 25, 2014 10:51 PM   Subscribe

 
No. Well, at least, I didn't think so. There's some suspense.
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 11:47 PM on August 25, 2014


Suspenseful but I did not find it scary. I did skip to the end to see if it ended in a gory bloddy mess, at one point because it was just a bit intense for me, but I have a very, very low tolerance.

I enjoyed all 6 minutes.
posted by HMSSM at 12:06 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


is this scary?

It's deliberately misleading with its intentions and creates suspense based on lack of full disclosure, but it is decidedly not scary in the classic sense.

He's a bastard for not leaving her any money, though.
posted by hippybear at 12:18 AM on August 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


Heads for scary, takes sharp left into cute and weird. It would be a little too long, if it wasn't for spending those extra minutes looking at Alan Rickman.

(where can I get me one of those teeny spice grinders!!)
posted by Erasmouse at 1:42 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mild Spoiler: That's a tobacco grinder, Erasmouse.
posted by Smart Dalek at 3:50 AM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


This the best Neil Gaiman adaptation that actually isn't a Neil Gaiman adaptation.
posted by KingEdRa at 3:51 AM on August 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


My now 14 year old has been saying that the (redacted to avoided spoilers) looked just like that since she lost her first (redacted). This kinda gave me a weird feeling that she has some kind of magical, soothsayers power. Not going to show her.....don't need any more, "See Mom, I'm TOTALLY right!!!" (hair flip)
posted by pearlybob at 5:05 AM on August 26, 2014


This was so wrong, on so many levels.

(Is "in a good way" a level?)
posted by andreaazure at 6:06 AM on August 26, 2014


Just for the briefest instant, in the moments just after he gets what he was looking for, I was sure I saw the exact same facial expression he made when he played Hans falling off the Nakatomi building. It was actually kind of freaky, but after going back and trying to find it, I can't seem to find the exact frame now, which makes it even more weird. I'll chalk it up to the brain's over-enthusiasm at times concerning pattern and facial recognition and memory, but it was an unexpected bonus to an already unexpected series of events.
posted by chambers at 8:10 AM on August 26, 2014




(I'm going to assume those in the comments have watched and if not skip my comment)

Is he supposed her dad? Like except a weird fantasy creature of her dad? Any one want to speculate on what this means? BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN??!

I love Alan Rickmen, and I tolerated watching this in horror really really hoping this was not going to turn into CSA or sexual assault or a gory mess as mentioned above, but I was thinking it Rickmen bothered to do this there would be a point to it, and glad I watched.

To me, I imagine it reflected the struggles of people tormented with their own inner demons of wanting to harm, but that also feel a great love and don't want to cause harm (of whom I've known many who have had varying degrees of success at avoiding causing others harm).

But I wasn't sure if it was supposed to go that dark or if there were signs that it was supposed to be her dad, wrestling with addiction and missing his daughter?
posted by xarnop at 8:40 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


(Oh, someone told me... LOL I totally missed it!!)
posted by xarnop at 8:44 AM on August 26, 2014


This makes (slightly) more sense than Terry Pratchett's version.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:27 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


I resent being scared like that as a gimmick. It would have been better shorter and without the scary music.
posted by Obscure Reference at 12:39 PM on August 26, 2014


You're not being scared like that as a gimmick. You're being manipulated. It's what movies do, long and short, especially these days.

Personally, I think I prefer the 70s form of filmmaking, where scenes were long, dialogue wasn't as direct, and music wasn't present during EVERY FUCKING MOMENT of the film to tell you how you were supposed to feel about the events. You were required to listen, to watch, to process, to decode what you were being presented with, just like in real life.

Cinema took a different turn at some point in the past 30-40 years, I think Spielberg may be partly at fault here, to where all your feelings are pre-selected through music, all the plot is explicitly spelled out for you in black and white, and (here I blame MTV) scenes are no longer extended shots of actors playing off each other but instead are Hitchcockian snippets of film strung together to force viewers to notice and focus on exactly what they are meant to see.

I'm not saying that modern films are worse than those of earlier eras... Some of them are actually very very good at what they do in a way which was unimaginable decades ago. But, on some level, seeing a movie today isn't the intellectual, literary process that it might have been in those now-lost years. Now it's all about The Feels. Sometimes that is a perfectly fine way to tell a story, other times, it is not.

With a short film like this one, the subversion of that manipulation, IMO, is a sign of quality. It plays on your predisposed fears in this era of CSI assumptions.

Watch it again. The scary music is narrating Rickman's requirements to fulfill his raison d'ĂȘtre, not his intentions against the girl. The drone, which is present during the early parts of the story, evolves and reaches resolution as he achieves his goal, his fix. It is only your assumptions about what is happening which lead you into scary places.

I'd be curious to see the film without the music, because most of life doesn't have a dedicated soundtrack. But I don't think this is a gimmick. As I said above, it's withholding of information which creates the tension. Most of cinema is based on this.

(Rosebud)
posted by hippybear at 12:40 AM on August 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


« Older Scared Scientists   |   Sphere Gears Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments