Open Windows

So far, the bullshit of the year and I don’t think anyone can beat it in the three months we have left. The promising Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo has perpetrated a thriller that’s ridiculously unlikely in every possible sense. The “formal” sense, the camera jumping between the windows in the protagonist’s laptop is not as conceptually focused as in this year’s much better The Den, it often feels absurd (modelling the frame from the boot of car), and by the end I wasn’t even sure whether I was still looking at the windows of the titular notebook, or if things had jumped to another device, or somewhere else entirely, or what. And that is only the tip of the iceberg. As a layman, I can’t judge the technical aspect – but even then I think most of the IT stuff was nonsense, though maybe, technically it’s actually possible, if the characters are leading experts or hackers... But then I would expect them to be more savvy in other things as well, but they aren’t. At all. The script is just awful, some of the twists and the clumsy reveals of the characters’ motivations made me almost laugh/cry hysterically. And most of the time it feels even more stupid than it actually is after the final reveal, and so much that I think many people will switch it off after half an hour, because they simply won’t want to watch such a bunch of idiots. And it’s actually that twist that brings the rating up to a merciful two stars, it turns an “absurdly idiotic film” into an “absurdly jumbled film” (where the main plot structure turns out to be relatively rational, though tragically unauthentic and unconvincing), which makes the diagnosis a little less serious. (02/10/2014)

Despite its flaws, the movie still entertained me, and despite its overall long running time, it managed to hold my attention. True, mainly because I was curious about how convoluted it would be. It's needlessly convoluted, but I really liked the style and it didn't bother me at all. Elijah Wood is becoming an interesting horror icon and I'm curious to see in what other movie he will appear, because it could be interesting in some way again. (16/02/2015)