POMO

A rather moronic, yet formalistically playful slasher flick for fans of the subgenre. It attempts to shock with extreme brutality of almost savage proportions, but that is all that it’s capable of, as if it is unaware that the path to unforgettable viewer terror leads elsewhere, through psychology. The RPG featuring a new Jason Voorhees is pleasing and raises expectations of surprises in the screenplay, but those do not materialize. And the dialogue, which is intended to give the “story” some kind of background, is muddled. Actually, there are only two such scenes (if we don’t count those when someone goes into the woods to take a shit): The first á la The Fog, when the camera circles around a group of teenagers around a fire as the legend is being told, lacks atmosphere. And the other, in a car, is needlessly long and tries in vain to give the violence an existential explanation. The only positive aspect in the minimalistic narrative is the slight gradation of what is shown and explained, i.e. the timing of certain moments, such as the first time the killer’s disfigured face is revealed.

The opening attack on New York could have at least approximated the impressiveness of the exposition in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. I would consider striving for that to be an obvious goal of the filmmakers. And that is reflected in a few shots of people disappearing into clouds of dust on the devastated streets of Manhattan. Together with the dismal interiors of abandoned buildings, those shots create a creditably bleak disaster-movie atmosphere. The film is thrilling in places, but without any of the plot ideas or cinematographic magic that made the franchise’s first two films interesting. Lupita Nyong’o performs as if her life depends on it, but her cat is the most interesting character in the film. The feline’s cautious glances and safely silent walking fit well into the concept of the story and the viewer’s experience of it.

The protagonists kill Nazis with excessive ease, without a hint of suspense as to whether something might happen to them. Not even the supposedly strictest Gestapo agent, played by Til Schweiger, gets up to anything sinister and demonic. However, the film contains a lot of blood and stab wounds, so this cannot be considered family entertainment. There are also a lot of explosions and shooting, which are attractively piratical in the ship and ocean settings. However, Jerry Bruckheimer and Guy Ritchie are merely imitating Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, albeit stylishly and with an excellent soundtrack, but the screenplay lacks clever dialogue, and though the characters look cool, their inner structure is at the level of an average Marvel movie.