a review of 黑森林
As far as crappy little low-budget horror-thrillers go, this was almost okay. It starts off decently enough. Sure, the characters are a bit annoying and there are near-constant cutaways to blurry flashbacks and flash-forwards in time, but the opening moments do a decent job of building anticipation for a trashy cat-and-mouse style bloodbath. Unfortunately, once the killer shows up all goodwill goes out the window. Oddly enough, that's when the movie becomes unbearably boring. Instead of delivering on the potential of its I Know What You Did Last Summer-esque premise, the film falls prey to some of its director's worst tendencies. Namely padding out the the running-time with dull conversations, repetitive scenes, and extended stretches of characters screaming obscenities at each other. By the time the killing finally starts, not only has over an hour gone by, but I had lost interest to the point where I wasn't paying enough attention to be able to tell you whether or not the action delivers in any way. The reason for this lack of excitement is that the whole thing tries to go for a psychological angle complete with some pretentious moralizing. Not that this is inherently a bad thing, but like all Boll movies it's not as deep as it thinks it is. I can at least say it isn't offensive. In fact, for an Uwe Boll work this isn't that bad at all. However, when best aspect of your feature presentation is an amusing Clint Howard in a role so small that it barely ranks above a cameo you know you have a problem.