Runtime: 85 incredibly painful minutes
Directed by: Cristian Ponce
Starring: A bunch of random Argentinian actors
From: A number of different companies
OK, so I am genuinely baffled why this is held in so high regard by many people. Many long-time followers will know that modern horror habitually turns me off and is more irritating than enjoyable. It’s not just “elevated horror” which falls in this category. That’s why Late Night with the Devil was an utter delight—even better than expected as I not only loved the premise, it included some elements seemingly tailor-made for my esoteric tastes.
Even longer than I’ve known about Devil, History of the Occult has received plenty of buzz; the film from Argentina and Mexico does have a unique hook: during the last broadcast of a controversial investigative TV show in late 1986, a link is revealed between the (fictional) president of Argentina and the occult. It even sort of sounded like Devil. Turns out, it wasn’t but that wasn’t a deal-breaker for me.
Rather, the deal-breaker was the plot wholesale and how it was presented. It’s not just the broadcast of 60 Minutes to Midnight that the viewer watches; oh no, there’s also plenty of confusing obtuse cut-aways to the show’s producers who are sequestered in an apartment elsewhere, because reasons. Unfortunately, much of what happens is left unexplained and when I later searched on Reddit (I know, I know), the theories as to what in the blue hell was going on… it seems OK granted that you ignore some major logical fallacies or can just accept some far-fetched theories.
No way in heck would I ever go back now having somewhat of foreknowledge as to what may be going on when the first time around I grew increasingly frustrated with the stupid, irritating characters speaking in riddles for no good reason and reference events that the viewer has no context for, or how seemingly the movie was designed to make me physically nauseous. I don’t believe it was supposed to be one of those “the audience is supposed to hate it!” crap we do and have received from certain directors for decades now. It was just a film that was a repellent for my tastes, sorry to say.
Even if certain moments and references made more sense after looking at those Reddit comments, this does not mean that retroactively the miserable experience I had viewing this nonsense suddenly was all sunshine and lollipops. If I had known that this would be such a puzzle box—but I had no idea. Look, modern horror is frequently not of much interest to me, no matter how hard I try; the older stuff is far more interesting to me. It’s a shame to give such a low rating to a movie that doesn’t rehash old ideas and instead clearly had ambition. However, when it was a titanic struggle just to finish the film rather than giving up & waving the white flag…
No comments:
Post a Comment