Don't Look Now

Saw Don't Look Now. It was a scary movie. Well, not exactly scary so much as ominous. There's all these baroque signs and omens which could be considered scary, but need not be.

The story follows a married man and woman working in Venice shortly after the death (by drowning) of their daughter. One example of an ambiguously menacing omen is as follows: the two are lost in the side-streets. They come upon a narrow set of stairs leading into the water. White rats scurry around their feet. The man mutters "I know this place" while his wife keeps shouting "let's get out of here." Eventually they leave. I can offer no explanation for that scene. Ominous and weird but nothing you could actually pinpoint as creepy, just kind of Lynchian and oppressive. I actually really liked this at first. I liked that the possibility of self-delusion was also part of the horror. Similarly, I argue The Exorcist is scarier before the possession is revealed. What's worse than watching your child dying, dying of an illness without explanation or reason? Demons come as a relief to that. In this film, however, the omens become increasingly less prosaic and more spiritually suggestive, so so much for mundane horror.

Anyway, all of these signs and portents must be building up to something of course. The movie is not so brave/stupid as to cheat us of a climax after all. Unfortunately when that climax occurs the movie kind of falls apart for me. The ultimate cashing-in of the residual creep in this film is cinematically awesome, with its weaving together of predestined through-lines, but just don't see it with other people or the laughter may never die down. Truly disappointing.

Far better in terms of buildup and payoff is the girl's initial death scene. The husband is looking at photographs of a church in Venice while his children (they also have a son) play outside. The son runs his bike over an inexplicable pane of glass just as the father drops a glass of whiskey, cutting his finger. A drop of blood drips onto the photo, right over a shot of his daughter's blood-red raincoat. He stares transfixed as suddenly the drop runs across the photo on its own. He runs outside but his daughter is already dead. The movie works in this kind of dream-logic. Water and red appears again and again from then on. This film is like a tamer version of The Tenant. There's the same eerie creep, but little payoff. The ideas feel slightly half-formed and too ambiguously wishy-washy for me. The horror is pitched at an almost subconscious level which is fascinating, but requires you to play along too much. I could see this film inspiring interesting, and more accessible, horror films. It has the right evocative ideas, just not the finale I could have hoped for.

PS - according to imdb, this was originally a double-feature with the original Wicker Man, which is awesome. Both are super-British and low-key horror.