Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

17 October 2008

W Delta Z (aka The Killing Gene)

Director: Tom Shankland
Writer: Clive Bradley
Released: 2007
Cast: Stellan SkarsgÄrd, Selma Blair, Melissa George


NIKKI says:
You know, WAZ started off okay. I thought the banter between Melissa George and Stellan Skarsgaard was geniune and effective. I also thought the Se7en-like energy the film had meant it might be a cut above your standard psychological slasher. Sadly, as the film went on, it lost much of its inital smart, low-key appeal. Which is to say, it went all torture-porn-y and showed way more than it needed to and just moved to extremes I really don't think it needed to go to. I don't think the story needed much alteration, just the depication of the sadist undertakings within it.


In a movie like this, I want to feel haunted by the things we do to each other, by the levels we'll go to when exacting revenge. Stepping away from a film like Se7ev, you certainly feel the grime on you, but that film didn't show us in ultra-graphic detail every cut and kill. Here, we see it all, and we're horribly desesnsitised to the Hostel way of vieweing horror effects in films that the atmosphere of terror is replaced by blatant gore which really isn't that shocking. It's like a movie pissing contest to see who can make the best looking snapping back fingernails. Boring.

Annoying really, because this had potential to be a really classy thriller. They just pushed it all too far and I didn't really care one way of the other in the end. I just wanted it all to stop.

2/5