Nocturne
Black Swan meets Whiplash in this tale of fraternal twin sisters competing for their prestigious music academy’s biggest spotlight. This is a psychological horror film where the monster in the closet is crippling anxiety.
While far from perfect, this was a promising debut feature for writer/director Zu Quirke. At 90-minutes, it’s well-paced and the tone has the appropriate amount of creepiness from the outset. Sibling rivalry is a real thing and the relationship between the sisters seems pretty authentic, but the intensity is dialed way up to make the story work.
The color palette is a bit dull, but the movie is well-shot and Carmen Cabana’s cinematography helped accentuate key moments of color. The aesthetic never lets you forget what kind of movie you’re watching and the visual storytelling is solid and consistent. Elizabeth Bernoll’s original score fit the narrative well along with the compositions that were chosen to accent the piano performances.
All the performances that needed to be good were, but it was Sydney Sweeney who really shined in the lead performance as Juliet and her quiet intensity resonated loudly in this setting.
Stylistically, this was probably my favorite of the Blumhouse TV movies.
Recommendation: If you only watch one of the bunch, this
Evil Eye
I like that this movie wasn’t just telling the same run-of-the-mill story, and I appreciate that it was made by Indian filmmakers (Rajeev and Elan Dassani) using Indian actors, and telling a story written by an Indian author (Madhuri Shekar). It could have been a lot better though.
An overly-protective helicopter-mom is constantly pushing for her daughter to find a man. Once she does, her mother is strangely convinced that this new boyfriend is the reincarnation of a man that abused her in the past.
Now that I read that back, it’s more ridiculous than the trailer makes it seem. This idea could have worked out okay but the foundation needed for the audience to believe in it’s simply not there. There’s some vague allusion to astrology and a mention of a curse but nothing to establish why the audience should believe reincarnation is possible in this story. Unfortunately, the script glosses right over that and powers through knowing full well that they left that in the rearview.
There’s this push and pull with whether or not to believe the mom or whether she’s just going crazy, but her husband doesn’t seem to take it too seriously and she and her daughter already have a contentious relationship, so it’s hard to gauge where to land as the viewer. Sadly, all the back-and-forth doesn’t even result in any kind of satisfying explanation.
The four central performances from Sarita Choudry, Sunita Mani, Bernard White, and Omar Maskati were all pretty good, so it helped to keep things moving along even when things aren’t adding up.
Cultural authenticity is important and the story is built on that foundation, but I was hoping more. With a few small adjustments, this could have added up into something solid but is probably the weakest of the Blumhouse TV bunch.
Recommendation: If you’re a fan of horror movies, there are some positives to take away but otherwise you can skip it.