I get what they're going for here. I'm a horror nut and this premise was too juicy to pass up when scanning through my streaming apps. I'm on board with the shock-value horror aesthetic, I've seen Human Centipede a dozen times and I admired what Last House on the Left was trying to do. Landmine Goes Click is a great premise wrapped in extremely questionable filmmaking choices. It starts out like an okay Twilight Zone (or Saw, for that matter) story. Lots of people here are pointing out the problems with the brutalization of women (which I'll get to), but I understand where the filmmakers are coming from. They're not saying that the characters were right in brutalizing the only female characters. They were trying to show that our protagonist's troubles earlier in the film turned him into just as much of a monster as our original antagonist. In seeking revenge, the hero became a much worse villain than the villain ever was. If that was the point, then I get it and it's even a good idea (even if overused) for a revenge movie. The problem I have with the execution is that we never feel sorry for the women.
**SPOILERS** We feel terrible for Chris because he's unable to save Alicia. Sure, we feel bad for her too but we're focused on Chris and how he had to endure watching her get raped and carrying her body and listening to her die. We are supposed to see that the antagonist is suffering because he has to watch his daughter get abused. I'm really, really not the person who points to every movie and asks why the female characters are just used as props, but this movie broke me in that respect. There are 3 women in the film and every single one is used as a device and torture target to inflict emotional pain on a male character. I said that the filmmakers made questionable choices. One of these was using rape as a plot device to show the audience how tough Chris' trouble was. Of course we're supposed to feel Alicia's pain, too, but only insofar as it makes us reflect on what we would do if we were in Chris' shoes. In the same way, I found myself kind of rooting for Chris to brutalize the family at the end, and I choose to blame that on the filmmakers rather than my own sick desires for revenge. I'll also say that a 3-minute rape sequence filled with vivid sounds that does not cut away and zooms in to make sure we can see just how much Alicia is in pain and makes sure we can see she's crying real tears, is a little much for me. Most people don't recognize gunshots in a real-world shooting scenario because Hollywood has tricked us into thinking they sound louder and fuller than they actually do. This rape scene was like filming a gunfight with no quick-cuts, no embellished gunshot sounds, no overuse of blood. It's too real to feel any normal cinematic escapism. Instead, I feel like I'm watching a real person get raped. I did not enjoy that. I didn't necessarily enjoy watching what's her face get killed in Scream either, but it was done with purposeful cinematic staging so it was entertaining. I liked watching Scream much more than I would like watching a snuff film where real people get slashed to death. That was my problem with this rape scene. **/SPOILERS**
I can enjoy shocking horror, gore, and brutality. I can overlook and understand movies that don't have great cinematography or dialog. What I take exception with in this movie was that it tried way too hard to get the audience to understand the real-world emotional pain of the characters in a not- at-all escapist way. The Human Centipede (not a film to hold as a measure of all cinema, I know) was shocking but over the top in a way that disconnected us from the characters emotionally. Sure, we still felt for the characters. Same with Last House on the Left, we still came away with an ache in our stomachs, but the impact was dampened because of the use of devices that disconnect us from what was on the screen. Landmine Goes Click gets too real, too quickly, and in all the wrong ways. I don't need to watch movies that shock me in ways that evoke real feelings of disgust at actual horrors in the real world. Are there serial killers and chainsaw-wielding psychos in the world? Sure. But Friday 13th and Scream have a level of disbelief built into them that this movie lacks. Serial killers are like the boogie man, so making them the baddies of movies is like fantasy. Making an alcoholic rapist the bad guy is like making a movie about Ebola where we spend 2 hours watching an 8 year old girl slowly die of diarrhea. It's far too real to be entertainment. If I want to watch a vivid depiction of the types of brutality that dirty old men can inflict on young, pretty girls, I'll watch the news. Instead, I wanted to watch some escapism horror that let's me satisfy the sick parts of my brain with blood and terror and, sure, even brutal violence against women if the script calls for it, and all the other things that skilled writers and directors know how to put on screen without giving their audience anxiety over how easily men have preyed on women since the dawn of time. It's like they wanted to make a powerful movie about the horrors of forgotten buried explosives (it's a real problem- children get blown up all of the time), a snuff film about brutal manipulation and rape, and a horror/suspense revenge flick. Instead the filmmakers just sewed all three together so that they share one digestive tract. The end result was the same: crap from beginning to end.
**SPOILERS** We feel terrible for Chris because he's unable to save Alicia. Sure, we feel bad for her too but we're focused on Chris and how he had to endure watching her get raped and carrying her body and listening to her die. We are supposed to see that the antagonist is suffering because he has to watch his daughter get abused. I'm really, really not the person who points to every movie and asks why the female characters are just used as props, but this movie broke me in that respect. There are 3 women in the film and every single one is used as a device and torture target to inflict emotional pain on a male character. I said that the filmmakers made questionable choices. One of these was using rape as a plot device to show the audience how tough Chris' trouble was. Of course we're supposed to feel Alicia's pain, too, but only insofar as it makes us reflect on what we would do if we were in Chris' shoes. In the same way, I found myself kind of rooting for Chris to brutalize the family at the end, and I choose to blame that on the filmmakers rather than my own sick desires for revenge. I'll also say that a 3-minute rape sequence filled with vivid sounds that does not cut away and zooms in to make sure we can see just how much Alicia is in pain and makes sure we can see she's crying real tears, is a little much for me. Most people don't recognize gunshots in a real-world shooting scenario because Hollywood has tricked us into thinking they sound louder and fuller than they actually do. This rape scene was like filming a gunfight with no quick-cuts, no embellished gunshot sounds, no overuse of blood. It's too real to feel any normal cinematic escapism. Instead, I feel like I'm watching a real person get raped. I did not enjoy that. I didn't necessarily enjoy watching what's her face get killed in Scream either, but it was done with purposeful cinematic staging so it was entertaining. I liked watching Scream much more than I would like watching a snuff film where real people get slashed to death. That was my problem with this rape scene. **/SPOILERS**
I can enjoy shocking horror, gore, and brutality. I can overlook and understand movies that don't have great cinematography or dialog. What I take exception with in this movie was that it tried way too hard to get the audience to understand the real-world emotional pain of the characters in a not- at-all escapist way. The Human Centipede (not a film to hold as a measure of all cinema, I know) was shocking but over the top in a way that disconnected us from the characters emotionally. Sure, we still felt for the characters. Same with Last House on the Left, we still came away with an ache in our stomachs, but the impact was dampened because of the use of devices that disconnect us from what was on the screen. Landmine Goes Click gets too real, too quickly, and in all the wrong ways. I don't need to watch movies that shock me in ways that evoke real feelings of disgust at actual horrors in the real world. Are there serial killers and chainsaw-wielding psychos in the world? Sure. But Friday 13th and Scream have a level of disbelief built into them that this movie lacks. Serial killers are like the boogie man, so making them the baddies of movies is like fantasy. Making an alcoholic rapist the bad guy is like making a movie about Ebola where we spend 2 hours watching an 8 year old girl slowly die of diarrhea. It's far too real to be entertainment. If I want to watch a vivid depiction of the types of brutality that dirty old men can inflict on young, pretty girls, I'll watch the news. Instead, I wanted to watch some escapism horror that let's me satisfy the sick parts of my brain with blood and terror and, sure, even brutal violence against women if the script calls for it, and all the other things that skilled writers and directors know how to put on screen without giving their audience anxiety over how easily men have preyed on women since the dawn of time. It's like they wanted to make a powerful movie about the horrors of forgotten buried explosives (it's a real problem- children get blown up all of the time), a snuff film about brutal manipulation and rape, and a horror/suspense revenge flick. Instead the filmmakers just sewed all three together so that they share one digestive tract. The end result was the same: crap from beginning to end.