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Scarlett (2018)
Poor (in pace, scripting and dialogues)
The plot doesn't find a way to emerge, as your mind is distracted by the erratic and continuos change in rhythm (of the narrative mechanism and of the camera movements) and, moreover, by the dialogues (language, words, intonation, pronunciation, at least in the original Italian version) and by the interaction between characters in the dialogues: an extrem example of the "plastic language" used by fiction, that here reaches almost disturbing levels.
Having "The Passenger" by Iggy Pop in a "poor midi-version", aside with a "pseudo Goblin's Profondi Rosso" tune, doesn't help at all, as well as the mismatch between the inside and the outside shots in the driving sequences and the changes in lights and predominant colors (no, not always you get a Breaking Bad o a Memento poetic result just by changing saturation).
The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
When a good work finishes in a bad story telling
There will be spoilers. Spoilers.
Did I say that there will be spoilers already?
Ok, so, if you want, go ahead.
Nice acting, nice setting, technically well done. But... fictional tv series, at the very core, are about telling a story, aren't they? And here we come: the story of The haunting of Bly Manor is not a well told story.
First of all: a good story have balance. I know that twists and surprises are useful to make a story a great story, but they need to be used wisely, 'cum grano salis', otherwise viewers simply start to not understand, and to lose the willing to understand at all. We are in the era after Lost (honour, but also shame on you JJ!), and after The sixth sense and The others, and they reached huge success. But in the last years, writers, directors, and producers, just adding and adding shocking ingredients, tend to lose the grip on what really matters.
The haunting of Bly Manor is really too much 'surprising' to be really surprising:
(SPOILERs!)
- oh my! She sees a ghost!
- oh my! This house has ghosts??
- oh my! They see ghosts!?
- oh my! She is now a ghost!?
- oh my!! He is the ghost of himself!!!?
- oh my!! They are ghost that jump inside others!!??
Secondly: a good story can be followed without effort. It goes smoothly, even if it runs on a rollercoaster. This is a more technical issue in story telling: if you read a novel, or see a movie or a fictional tv show, you have a point of view on the plot. You start knowing nothing, and while reading or seeing you collect information about what's going on from that point of view. At any moment, you could find out that what you know is not 'true', or that what you think is 'past' 'present' and 'future' are not as you thought, and you could also completely change point of view (from a character to another, for instance). But, as for surprises, it is really difficult to use these kind of changes keeping a story fluid, enjoyable. And here, we are plenty of point of view changes. We read Fight Club, we saw Memento, and so on, and we liked them because they suddenly change our point of viewing the plot. But The haunting of Bly Manor (again) is too much:(SPOILERs) it has a narrator (that is also a character), that starts telling you the story; but at the same time you see something that that narrator/character cannot know, and you see something else that none of the main characters could know. When something like that happens, a logic mind feels wrong. When you have several of these leaps, a logic mind starts to feel pain.
Lastly: a good story is 'as less fictional as needed'. I mean (SPOILERs): I can buy that an American girl, with a lot of pain, goes to England looking for a fresh start. But... a girl that is followed by a ghost (the only one in the world, as far as she knows), that accepts to be the nanny of two children that live with ghosts (a very different kind from the girl's ghost, I must notice), and just after the appearance of a brand new ghost, that (what a coincidence!) is the very first one in a couple of centuries that have a plan to come back to the living party. And all the ghosts (the girl's one, the very first one, and all the others...) do not interact, except a couple of them... More: they do not share feelings, willing, desires, limits; they are different kinds of creatures.
Summing up: nothing keeps the storytelling solid.
I understand how a lot of people could like The haunting of Bly Manor and enjoy it. It has a comfortable-enough ending; it has some really good moments; actors are good; it reminds great movies and shows; it is a ghost story, if you want it, or a love story if you prefer... But for a lot of people it would be just an unsound story. And anything else, to me, just fades away...
Into the Dark: Treehouse (2019)
My bad?
Maybe it was just bad chemistry in the crew, or the story itself that is excessively out of sync to be enjoyable. Anyway, I saw some episodes of this anthology and all of them gave me the same feeling: come on guys, you can do much better than that. Unless it's just that I don't catch a possible reference to b-movie universe.
Villmark 2 (2015)
Too bad to be view
Technically (images, acting), average quality. In narration, really really really bad.
Plot holes, inconsistency in characters behaviour, discontinuity in space arrangement of the asylum itself: everything it's too off of pace for a viewer to bond with characters... I'm sorry, but I think that nobody can enjoy something with such a script.
Pretty Tough (2011)
a movie about teenagers and sport...
... but a poor one. Every single narrative solution is already seen and the plot gives no surprise. Not at all. Unfourtanely this gives a constant sensation of 'premonition'. Sport scenes appear fake (more than usual sport movies already are), and most of the second part takes place in a 'sunset effect' light, that has the result to make even more difficult to 'feel' the story. If you like soccer and love stories about girls trying to make their dreams true, maybe you could find something nicer, or at least more original. Average rate is (at the moment) really high, so maybe there is something in the movie I cannot see and makes it special. Not in my opinion.