Friday, February 8, 2008

Double Review Bonnanza: White Noise 2 VS They




Well this may make up for the delay on my review for "The Village"...or it may not. I don't care. This is a new thing I'm going to try for a while, I'm going to take new(ish) films and compare them to classics. My first comparison review will be on "White Noise 2" and "They". One is good and one is, well...new. So lets get to it.

So I'll start with "White Noise 2" because it new and not that good. Keep in mind I liked the first one. I thought it was cool because it was a new idea; the whole evp thing was an original concept that led to some interesting scenes. Apparently when making the sequel the writers watched the original then said "fuck all this sciencey crap, lets do us up a good old fashioned religious thriller. cause that's original and jebus is awsome", retarded ideas aside they took an original idea and turned it into a genaric thriller with a faith aspect. Most of it makes little sense and what little evp elements there are seem tacked on. If you know anything about the bible you'll see the plot twists coming a mile away an if you don't see them coming you won't be impressed any way. There is one point where it seems like it may become original again but they fail to see it through and the ending is really cliche and will have you saying what the fuck just happened, it's almost good then it gets ruined by the whole white light sub theme. Arg, it gets a D+ watchable but inferiour to it's prediccesor.

And now for the movie "They" which involves night terrors and things that hide in your closet( insert overly used Michael Jackson joke here...I'm above this...). It works on the idea that children are afraid of the dark because there are actually things that thrive within it. The things of nightmares that remain shrouded in the shadows unable to enter the light. For the most part this works well because up until the end you never get a good look at the creatures, which leaves you wanting more and the use of darkness is top notch. The only faults to the movie is a poorly conceived ending and the acting is a little off at times. Over all a solid B and well worth a look for horror buffs.

So now comes the comparison part of the review is a segment called...

Nightmares top 3 comparisons...(fuck original titles)

#3 Usage of light. "They" nails darkness perfectly allowing you to see but not to be able to make out what you're looking at. That way it can scare you but you can't get used to it. As for "White Noise 2"... there are actually scenes where the lighting is so bright it actually hurt my eyes. I watch horror movie in the dark and at times they really had the high beams on and it got really annoying and you could also see every ghost way too clearly.

#2 Usage of "otherworldly" imagery. "They" has a few scenes where you get a glimpse of the other dark world but you never get a good look at it...it's dark (lol). But you get the impression that it's writhing which is cool. In "White Noise 2" (from now on refered to as WN2) there is one of thoughs near death experiences where the main character flies (litteraly) out of his body and into a tunnel of light (go into the light kind of garbage). I remember half way through this scene my friend turned to me and said "OK man the movie is ruined now", it's at the start of the movie.

#1 Usage of horror! Here we go the most important part. "They" works well because of the aforementioned darkness. You don't know what you saw and they only focus on it for a second then it's gone the scare only lasts long enough to make you jump. In "WN2" they have a bad habit of double-taking shots. They do a scare (some aren't bad either) then they focus on the main characters reaction, then they make the horrible move of looking back at the ghost again. There are 2 things bad about this: 1 it allows us to see the ghost better and we can no longer be scared of it because we know what it is, 2 we get to look at it again and notice it looks like shit because of the movies low budget and lack of originality.

So in conclusion don't bother with "WN2" and if you haven't yet watch "They" you may really enjoy it.

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