Bringing an interesting riff on the murderer mythology, the film's antagonist is a killer who cannot die, a literal force of evil, a parasitic entity that can take over anybody, can be anyone. He/it's a full realisation of the social fear of the serial killer: The monster who looks just like us. There's an awful lot to work with there, but it's not worked especially well here.
Firstly it gets ahead of itself. It gives the game away pretty much right out of the gate, we're ahead of Denzel for a good hour or so, which is just frustrating. Yes, the films marketing probably covered it in order to get you to your local multiplex, but the discovery, the detection is clearly an important aspect in what should be a supernatural detective story. Once the beings nature is revealed to our beleaguered detective, in an admittedly memorable scene in which it sings to him, all elements of police procedure are forgot in favour of a reasonably generic horror plot. There's some nonsense about demons and the end of days and by which point I was passed caring.
There are a handful of scenes that stuck, the cast is surprisingly strong and while some fairly weighty actors phone a lot of the performance in, they do occasionally come alive. Usually when they had a bit of demon inside of them, but ultimately they took an idea that perfectly resonated with serial killer fiction and then proceeded to remove as much of the serial killer aspect as they could. So much more could have been done with the idea and the actors. For shame.
No comments:
Post a Comment