Saturday, November 5, 2011

11-11-11 (2011)

Stars - Timothy Gibbs
           Michael Landes
           Brendan Price
Directed by:  Darren Lynn Bousman
Summary: After the death of his wife and child, an author travels to Barcelona to see his estranged brother and dying father, where he learns that his life is plagued by events that occur on 11/11/11. (via imdb). 
This is a movie about repetition, and I'm not just referring to the constant repeating of the movie's title throughout the movie. I swear the screenwriter used the copy/paste function on his word processor liberally. The same exact phrases are repeated numerous times, and not in some freaky deja vu sense, which would almost be cool. The main character chastises his priest brother for believing in what he terms a make believe figurehead but not believing in the things happening around him no less than 5 times before the film ends. He maddeningly repeats that they are going to pack up and leave the house 3 or 4 times, but nobody does anything. It's frustrating and annoying and really sloppy.
They try really hard to create a sense of mystery and dark foreboding, but your lack of empathy for anyone in this cast makes it feel like, eh... so what. All the atmosphere in the world can't salvage it or make it scary. It just doesn't work for me. It's okay at best. Even the score seems overly repetitive and annoying.
And without spoiling anything, the supposed twist ending is both ridiculous and highly illogical. In other words, a complete crock of horseshit, for lack of a better term. It tries to be The Omen meets M. Night Shymalan, abd fails, which, I guess makes it very Shymalan like, so, congrats on that part. Stylistically, it may warrant a 6, but the sum of all it's evils makes it a 4 out of 10

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