Necronomicon (1993)

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT

Holy fucking shit. Of course this trainwreck is a Brian Yuzna production.

So...  Necronomicon (1993*). I wanted to do this for a while.

This, ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and ghouls, vamplings, zombesquities etc., is what scientists watch whilst typing away fanatically at long-winded papers about the development of hypostases of ancient Sumerian deities which could be linked conceptually with Yog-Sothoth**. 

I don't know about you, but my own brand of horror education has made me aware of the fact that people dealing with things like this are usually prone to visits from terrifying abominations lurking beyond the frail borders of mortal perception, elder things that have lurked beyond the dim echo of the line dividing life and death, immanent in the horrifying splendour and awe-inspiring terrors of the universe, waiting and spawning at the gateways. So there you go, my eventual fate is probably to die screaming in an asylum after attempting to summon the monstrous horrors of the void and emptiness between the stars.***

Necronomicon (1993) consists of three shorts - 'The Drowned', 'Cold Air' and 'Whispers' - embedded into a frame-story (0, also known as 'The Library' and directed by our collective favourite, Brian Yuzna), which, amazingly, gives us Jeffrey Combs as the man himself, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Within said frame-story, he (...or should that be He?) is visiting a library to research the hidden secrets of blasphemous monstrosities from beyond, so naturally, things become interesting as he stumbles across that most evil of all books: The Necronomicon! Lovecraft starts to read - and the stories we are shown are right from the pages of that terrifying tome penned by the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred.

'The Drowned' (I) - The last of the lines of the Delapores (well, de la Poers actually if we're really going by canon here) returns to his ancestral manor... and we all know that ancestral manors are usually a beacon for evil forces that cast their demented shadow over such places, attracting all kinds of abominations from the lonely places beyond.
The first minutes are more or less setting up the story of the de la Poers - but just as the esteemed Lovecraft-fan is getting comfortable and begins to identify the story used as 'The Rats in the Walls' (one of HPL's masterpieces - if you feel like, enjoy), gleefully waiting for the ancestral cannibalistic terror to be involved, atavistically driving our protagonist to madness, the story kind of... switches around in the middle of establishing itself and adds weird story elements not really congruent with what we know the mentioned story at all.
The ancestral manor - sitting upon a cliff that is honeycombed with ancient caves, which any faithful reader of the master of weird fiction knows to house a terrible, terrible secret - is situated near the sea. This apparently made it a favourite with suicides of the de la Poer family... and whoosh, suddenly the story completely switches, and we're suddenly right in something that... is not a Lovecraft story I recognise. A ship runs aground in a terrible storm (one feels slightly reminded of The Call of Cthulhu, but that's wrong alarm... or maybe this potpourri is intentional? Who knows...), and a character's wife and child die in the process; said character, now lacking said wife and child, burns the Hol(e)y Bible out of a theatrical display of anger aimed at the Most High and kind of renounces god (that YHVH-guy). What follows is the most logical conclusion - he gets a nightly visit from a fish-/crab-/thingie-creature threateningly telling him that he is not alone, and as such, he suddenly finds the (you guessed it) Necronomicon (dun - DUN - DUNNNNNNNNN!!!!) underneath a pile of sea-ish stuff with which probably would have disgusted Lovecraft to no end****. As the book (or should that be 'tome'?) is friendly, it opens to a ritual called "Towards the Remedie of Untimely Loss". This includes chanting the famous lines we all know and love - that is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die as well as the line about 'in his house in R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming' (or something like that, I'm reciting from memory here).
As this is a Lovecraftian story nonetheless, no matter on what story or story elements it is based on or not based on, the ritual succeeds and the guy's two loved ones, wife and son, are indeed resurrected - AS TENTACLED MONSTROSITIES! *mad laughter*
...suicide ensues.

... ...AAAAAAAND we're out of that story segment (let's call it I.1) and back in the frame-short of Mr. Delapore/de la Poer in his ancestral manor. In the library, no less, frantically researching hidden knowledge that man was never meant to know. As he falls asleep in exhaustion, the story suddenly makes a violent turn and rapes your Lovecraft-mind: Bony things appear from underneath Delapore's bed amidst a green glow (of the black magick / black science-persuasion of colour), whispering something.
Naturally, the last scion of the line of those degenerated de la Poers finds the - you guessed it! - Necronomicon (I begin to see a pattern here) and immediately starts ritualising around, calling upon Elder Forces from beyond.
For some reason, hot undead chick ensues (yepp, another relationship-y resurrection), and we nearly get some action - this being a Lovecraft flick by Brian Yuzna, we know that not all is well, though. The moment the female begins to develop quite the tentacles-from-various-orifices-theme, we know that we're back in "we're doing Lovecraft not for the cosmic terror and creeping fear, we do it for the octopoid abominations and possibilities to use great slimy masses of stuff to make our point about otheworldly terrors"-land. Which is so charming that you can't not like it... (unfortunately, no screen shot. Craptop doth not want to take screenshots - 't'would be too much, running two applications at the same time!)

...And we're back in the movie's frame-story (0) about Jeffrey Combs as Howard Phillips, reading the Necronomicon...

...and the story that unfolds right before our eyes is 'The Cold' (II), obviously based on the original story 'Cool Air'. This one's been produced by Shûsuke Kaneko, whose other works I have not been privy to.

Interestingly enough, the first time I saw this outside of my <3 suhrkamp editions of actually rather good German translations of Lovecraft's stories or in lovingly made .txt-files on the net, it was in a zombie-anthology ('The Dead that Walk'). I had never seen it under that premise of an idea.
This version of the story involves a young woman being extraordinarily sensitive to heat, living in a suspiciously cool flat. A reporter visits her and asks her about the doctor used to live there - and his alleged connection to 11 dead people. After clumsily threatening the woman, she starts with her story...

The Past:
Young woman (with no particular sensitivity to heat - HINT HINT HINT) moves into the house, the other people living there being the woman who owns it and a mysterious tenant (which we could foresee to be the mysterious doctor) who is not to be disturbed. In her apartment, however, young woman notices ammonia accumulating on the ceiling, dropping onto her musical notes.
Cue in abusive stepfather, crude sexual innuendos and attempted rape - in the end being heroically forestalled by mysterious tenant with a scalpel. Yes, meet David Warner as Dr. Madden. He's awesome in that role. Seriously awesome - but maybe that's because I'm kind of a fan of the guy, so there is a distinct possibility of bias.
The good doctor explains the frigid temperature to young woman by his skin disease, which requires an unusually cold room temperature, and after noncomittally having accepted that matter-of-factly, they part ways. Blood dripping down from the ceiling at night is the logical next step in this story's development.
We also find out that the doctor is probably more than 100 years old, and that he bleeds transparent ick instead of blood.
The story proceeds predictably from there if one is aware of the story by HPL, with only minor variations. Okay, we get a pretty kitschy romantic scene (which is surprisingly awesome considering the participants) complete with a bit of romantic love-making (...yaayy(?)!)... complete with a love-plot of the respected "Oh noes! I cannot stay away from this elderly mad undead scientist!"-variety + a kind of love-triangle. Followed by graphic melting of the good undead elderly mad scientist. We love you, Brian Yuzna. We do. So very very much.

Back to young woman and reporter. Reporter is drunk and suspects young-woman-talking-to-him and young-woman-from-the-story-about-the-goodly-doctor to be the same person. Oh noes. We totally didn't see that coming. Blah blah spinal fluid blah blah.

After that:
Back to Jeffrey Combs... eh, I mean Howard Phillips in 'The Library' (0), reading the Necronomicon. Another story - the third in this collection, again arising mystically from the pages of that evil book! (*grins*) ---

--- cut away to short number III, 'Whispers'. This one's also directed by Brian Yuzna, so you can freely assume to be in for some fleshy ride. And you would be right! 

It's the most ridiculous thing EVAR.

I love it dearly.

You will, too, if you can appreciate Yuzna-stamped fleshy things man was never meant to see and a campy plot:
Two policemen (one guy, one gal) have a car accident. Waking up, the female finds herself alone, her partner taken. As she's a cop and he's her partner and this is a predictable movie, she goes off to find him. Doing this, she demonstrates a great ability to pick out the worst situations to be in as she follows the trail of his blood...
The male disappears, whereas she ends up in some sort of subterranean hall and is found by a harmless and polite-appearing elderly man. Still underneath the earth, his bizarre wife appears, and it turns out they know about The Butcher - the (ghastly, terrifying, terrible, horrifying, astoundingly evil, bad, monstrous etc. etc. pp. ad nauseam) criminal that the policefemale and her partner have been hunting together! What a coincidence!
So they (the elderly couple) take her to their home, having a bit of small-talk and such things (...one would expect tea and biscuits!), and inform her that The Butcher is an alien that has been here since before the time of the dinosaurs - or is he the servant of an alien? Who knows...
In order to achieve police-y stuff,  female cop is being taken downwards...  farther down into the depth of the earth - to a tunnel, decorated with odd wallcarvings and stuff like that (presumably, this is supposed to be a 'Lovecraftian' design), where the elderly male shows her a deep hole in the ground, fully hidden by a malevolent mist and surrounded by more eldritch (kind of Aztec-looking) carvings. How did he come by this knowledge, we all wonder? So finally it turns out at this point that the elderly couple is a team of obscene cultists of the Great Old Ones. Female cop is thrown into a surreal, slime-filled, squicky underworld, where she finds her partner undergoing a horrible transformation.

It is the most ridiculous thing I have ever fucking seen. I mean... OMG. Flappy flapping things. Seriously, this beats a lot of crappy animatronics, and ZOMG -- this is perfect. Hilarious.

In the end, the cultists turn out to be pro-life AND marrow-sucking aliens. This is indeed worth a satisfied nod - predictable, yes, but awesome. It's far too random and awesome and cool to give away the 'plot', for lack of a better worth, - well, give away more than I already did, but hey, I did slap a spoiler warning on top of this - but... man.
Flappy things.
They make me giggle every time I see them.

*happyful*

...rest assured that madness ensues.

Cut to frame-story (0) of Jeffrey Combs in the library with the Necronomicon. Something tentacled attacks him, and an awesome bald priest - who is seriously cool, I like the character a lot -, has, after warning Lovecraft cryptically of evil things, most of his face pulled off by our soft-spoken Providence scholar. Then a terrible evil from the other end of a colourful tunnel connecting the Necronomicon to worlds beyond eats his skull out of his skin.

Forces have been unleashed that should never have been stirred from their uneasy, merciful sleep...



A remarkably funny way of butchering Lovecraft. I am often lenient with the truly trashy terrible transmutations being marketed as 'based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft', especially if they have this ...special charm. Yes, I'm an addict. However, this flick is thoroughly enjoyable and will guarantee giggles galore. The FX alone are enjoyable - handiwork one recognises and appreciates. There should be more movies like that.


6.75 / 10 flappy flapping things wildly flapping around in a completely non-menacing way (yes, it's that good).

* There seems to be some kind of disagreement on the year; my copy says 1994, and I've originally seen this aired on TV ages ago as a 1994 movie. IMDB says 1993. I am obviously going with IMDB here.

** Spelling disputed.

*** Knowledge of obscure dead languages - check. Researches ancient religions - check. Trained in archaeology / anthopology - check. Reads old books - check. Pale and thin - check. Indulges in the occasional mad giggling - check. Watches horror movies - check. Reads HPL - check. 

...Holy fuck, I am a manifestation of a cliché!

**** Lovecraft didn't like seafood or general fishy stuff. Like... really didn't like it. Never wondered why most of his grand, icky stuff comes from the watery abyssal depths?

Moon (2009)

Let me preface this review by stating that I was never a big fan of science fiction. It's not that I don't like sci-fi; I read Perry Rhodan when I was a kid, but the amount of science fiction books I own is not a lot. And by that I mean really not a lot. The only sci-fi I actually enjoyed reading is/was the stuff by Michael Moorcock (because Michael Moorcock rules), which I chanced upon when I started collecting his stuff. So maybe it's my lack of exposion to science fiction that leads me to... not exactly appreciate this movie.




To put it bluntly: This movie (from the UK - shame on you, Great Britain!) is a complete waste of time. Do yourself a favour and watch something else. I found myself sitting in the dark, rocking back and forth with my chair (which I hadn't done since school before I saw this movie) and thinking wistfully of jewels like Death Machine or Lesbian Vampire Killers. Or, fuck it, Gothic Vampires From Hell.

But this wouldn't be a movie if I wouldn't tell you a bit more about it, would it? So, on we go.




The movie starts out with a really interesting advert, telling us that 70% of the earth's energy needs are met by harvesting He3 (Helium 3) from the moon. This is done by Lunar Enterprises - and after the spot, we say hello to our protagonist, Sam (played by Sam Rockwell). Sam is the only person on the Sarang Base 1 on the moon, accompanied only by the roboter Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). His contract runs for 3 years, and he's soon to return to earth to meet his wife and baby daughter again. The only information he gets from the outside world comes in via pre-recorded video messages, and he communicates in the same way, as for some reason the interception of a live feed is impossible.




Sam is an interesting character. When we first meet him, he's not in the best of moods, in a way that Gerty the robot is worried. The only human being on the base shows irrational behaviour, is more aggressive than usual, complains of headaches etc. The lack of human communication is getting to him, and he worries about getting home - in only two weeks, his stay on the moon would be over.





In the past years since he got there, he developed a relationship with the plants on the base (he talks to them), started woodcarving (an entire little town, complete with people - impressive), and generally started to talk to himself more often and regularly.



Then something weird happens: As he goes to get some hot water, he sees a beautiful young woman sitting on the chair in the living quarter. Staring at her, completely distracted, he doesn't even notice that he's burning his hand with the burning water. Gerty, who fixes him up, is worried that Sam starts hallucinating - he doesn't mention the word, but it's implicit enough.




The next day, Sam has an accident.

Long story short, he wakes up in the infirmary. Gerty talks to him, asking him if he remembers what happened, but he doesn't, suffering from slight amnesia. Gerty wants to keep him in the infirmary for a few days to run some tests, and Sam is indeed very tired as the robot suggests.




When getting up for the first time, Sam's legs don't work. As if... as if he'd not been using them for quite a long time. Gerty runs quite a few tests on him, some of them cognitive etc., because he might have suffered damage from the injury. The observant watcher notices that the burn on the back of the hand disappeared. And Sam is suffering from nightmares. And the robot won't let him out of the base.




Sam sabotages the base and manages to convince Gerty to let him out in order to fix the damage - he promises just to fix the damage. Nothing else. So, as expected, he runs off with one of the massive 6-wheelers of the base to the site of his accident. And finds himself, lying wounded and dying in the wreck.




This all happens within the first 30 minutes of the movie. There is practically everything to make a compelling movie: The shots are beautiful, as well as the special effects. The whole set of the Sarang base and the moon is very well done and practically awesome. I liked the bulky look of the equipment and its intentional simplicity (although having them had Sam run a sneak Linux machine would have been nifteh as well). The colours were crisp and clear, and the contrast between cold and warm colours is used with great care and to the expected effect. The music adds to the bleak atmosphere of the moon and the isolation and, indeed, despair our main character (Sam #1) goes through.




After minute 27, the movie remains somewhat interesting until minute 35. During this time, the problem of the character is established... and after that, you can more or less turn off the movie and do something more interesting, like watering your houseplants or lying on the bed and looking at the wall.

The movie takes the interesting premises it worked half an hour to establish and then forgets them in a corner of the bathroom after having taken a piss and some valium. Quite a few of the nice little blue pills, in fact.




I watched it together with Riesenkater, who definitely knows more about science fiction than I do and has actually seen movies of that particular genre, and his reaction was eerily similar to mine. When I mentioned to him that this movie has been compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey, he just shook his head and said that that must be the opinion of semi-intellectuals who want to glorify something they don't understand because they don't understand it. The problem is not that the movie is "intellectual" or anything remotely connected to that: The problem is that there just is nothing interesting or new in the movie. It starts out impressive and fine, then takes a turn and violates your boredom-receptors. It RAPES them, actually.

It came as a surprise to me to learn that the movie was already out, and I was looking forward to it. Maybe it was exactly that which turned out to be the problem - my high expectations. Or maybe not.



Oh, and don't get fooled into thinking that this movie contains any horror elements. It's about as much "horror" as Twilight. Only that Twilight is more entertaining. Seriously.




3.5/10 for looking good and having tried in the first 30 minutes.

Darkness (2002)

Uhm. Yeah... Come on, cyn, think of SOMETHING to say...

Darkness is, as the name might cleverly suggest, a very ...dark movie. Dark and wet, to be precise. There's a lot of raining going on, lots of water... lots of... darkness...

To be honest, I don't know what to write about that movie. It's... I don't know. Nondescript maybe? No, that doesn't really cover it, but it conveys some of my feelings.

Uhm.

Let's try to make cyn talk a bit more about this movie. First of all, it features Anna Paquin of "True Blood" fame. I personally call her "annoying bitch", because seriously, in every single episode of "True Blood" aired as of now, she managed to annoy me. Royally. Luckily, she plays a less annoying character here - a teenage daughter who has some issues. I guess it says a lot about my opinion of her character in "True Blood" when I think an annoying teenager with issues is, well, less of a nuisance. Also, Regina is less of a stupid name than "Sookie Stackhouse". I mean... come on. "Sookie"? *shakes head*

So... she's in the movie and plays the teenage daughter of Mark (Iain Glen) and Maria (Lena Olin), who, together with said daughter and their young boy Paul (some kid), move into an old house in Spain. The family itself is American, with only Mark originally being from Spain. He suffered some weird traumatic event during his childhood, after which he and his mother went to the USA, whilst his father, Albert Rua - a famed doctor - stayed behind. Albert also helped to arrange that Mark and his family can move into the house (which had been uninhabited for fourty years)... but soon after they move in, weird things begin to happen - the lights go out daily, Paul develops a fear of the dark, Mark suffers from increasingly high levels of psychological stress (which seems to be tied to the darkness, somehow)... and ghostly children, who actually look kind of creepy, are watching the family... watching and waiting - for the eclipse...

Great, now I managed to give a plot synopsis. Kudos to me.

The problem with Darkness is... well. I don't know. It's aesthetically pleasing at times. At other times, it's just bland. There are a few scares... but, well. Uhm. I am grasping at straws here... there just is nothing special or memorable about this flick.

Also, the story is confusing. I was constantly trying to figure out why the plot is happening. Ghosts? The supernatural seeping into our world in a Lovecraftian way? A haunted house? WHY?! So... whilst I was guessing and trying to make sense of the plot, I sort of enjoyed the movie. Not immensely, but it wasn't bad either. Just something to fill a boring Saturday afternoon with procrastinating.

Problem? The very second we get an explanation for the things that happened (and continue to happen), it gets lame. Lame and boring. Plus, the explanation doesn't work. It just doesn't. Nope. *shakes head*
There should be a rule for scriptwriters: If a movie like Dracula AD 1972 has a coherent plot and manages to capture the audience and your movie can't... you're doing it wrong.

As I already mentioned in passim, the movie has atmosphere. What it doesn't have is a good story with a good plot based on a good script. Hell, we get a freaking "evil occultists sacrifice children in order to do stuff that is vaguely connected with darkness"-plot! Which, as I already said, just doesn't work. You see, evil occultists usually want to reach some sort of goal with their evil doings (I know this sounds farfetched, but trust me on this). "Darkness" is not a goal. I can't stress this enough. Yes, I'll admit it, plunging the world into primordial chaos, darkness and silence sounds nice to me, but just doing some stuff vaguely reminiscent of "evil doings" and blabbing about it is ...pointless. Pointless and a bit stupid.

You see, I can get passionate about this movie. The portrayal of occultism is abysmal, and the stuff the writers "know" about occultism and symbolism is abysmal as well. I'll grant them that the connection to the Egyptian conceptualisation of darkness as a sort of primordial, chaotic thing (think of Apep, the snake that the sun-god has to defeat every night) closely linked to water was very beautiful. I like spotting references to ancient cultures in my movies. What I don't like is being stabbed in the eyes with incompetent portrayals of "occultism".

But I'm sure that there are people who approve of the movie's plot. Ehm... make that "plot".

4.5/10 watery buildings which were built in order to enhance stuff. For darkness. Or something like that. Really, barely coherent, the thing.

The Plague (2006)

First of all: No, Clive Barker didn't really have anything to do with this movie. It's not Hellraiser, or Midnight Meat Train, or Nightbreed. So if you're like me and are expecting cool stuff when you read the words "Clive Barker" - don't bother to watch this movie. It's not bad, but it's not good either. It's... just there.

Second: If you're a gorehound and expect something nifty - don't.

A short synopsis: One day, at exactly the same moment, all children all over the world under the age of 9 become catatonic. Well, most of the time. Twice per day, they suffer from violent tetraspasms (I don't know if this word is just a German word or not, because apparently, my dictionary doesn't know of its existence, nor does Wikipedia, but damn it, I have been diagnosed with it and want to use the term now in order to show off how infinitely cool I am), aka twitching and flailing of the limbs. Also, you only see the white of their eyes... hell yeah.
The children remain in this state for 10 years; all the children born in those 10 years are born comatose. I personally envision a beautiful, silent world with that premise, but maybe that's just me and my natural distaste for children. Children are creepy, loud, annoying little buggers, and I could do without them.

Maybe its this intrinsic distaste I personally have that did not exactly make this movie a success on the creepy-scale in my eyes. The thought of all children becoming catatonic is more interesting than creepy to me. The thought of babies being born in a coma is something I think of as awesome and cool. Maybe people who like children, or are parents, would see this film in a different light, so anyone out there who reads this and actually has some sort of positive relationship with kids: Watch it and tell me if it's just me and my personal perception of the cute little futures of humanity (*shivers in terror*) or the movie. I vote for the latter, but then again, that's just me.

People in the movie say that the children are "shut off from the world". Well, being catatonic doesn't necessarily mean that you don't notice what is going on around you, so I'd be rather careful with statements like that - especially in the light of what happens 10 years after the children suddenly went away...

Long story short: They wake up and start killing adults. Being an adult myself, I find the thought of being hunted by a group of children unnerving. Not in the "damn, what a creepy thought"-way, but in the "holy crap, that would be the most annoying thing ever"-way. I don't know if it was intended to come across as such, though. But just imagine it: Four 6 year old kids and one 15 year old sister are following you with the intent to kill you. Terrifying, isn't it? You can kick the smaller ones, and there sure as hell is something handy around to deliver a good blow to the taller one's head.
Then again, maybe it's that whole "I don't like children, so the thought of having to fight my way through hordes of kids is actually entertaining and something I'd volunteer to as long as I get a weapon in order to inflict proper damage"-thing I have going on. Somewhere, there is someone to whom the thought of kicking a child, or shooting it in its head, is a disgusting, terrifying one that would induce slight nausea (I mean come on, the little buggers are sooooooo cute...). I apologise to those people that I actually find it hilariously funny to see kids getting hit with stuff. Unfortunately, there is not enough damage done to the little "we just got up and want to kill you all"-flowers. Damn it, little Timmy woke up slightly angry (or whatever generic children's name you want to choose to mock the movie's terrifying premise).

The movie has its moments, though. At one point, we see the comatose children/teenagers. They are clothed in poor, ill-fitting clothes, each of them lying on a flat, simple "bed" - rows and rows of them, filling a highschool gymnasium. They are stacked, denied even the most basic things such as proper care and a blanket to cover them. It's at this point that you realise that things aren't exactly perfect, and that the whole world is probably dealing with this problem in the same way. Society doesn't know how to deal with the comatose kids, so they just ...put them away - a well-known, centuries old tradition. Have a problem with people you don't know how to deal with? Put them away. It doesn't solve the problem, true, but at least you don't have to face what you don't understand.
Considering this, I'd be in the mood for some killing as well after waking up. The problem is: The movie is incoherent when it comes to its premise of "you reap what you sow" (I fucking had to read a synopsis of "The Grapes of Wrath", a book that is often eluded to in the movie and has strong ties with it. I don't like North American "literature", so I want to state here officially that I go through hardships and pain like none of you can understand for a review that no one is going to read of a movie like "The Plague"... *sighs*). If the kids are angry at the world and how they got treated - why does Eric (one of those lovely little buggers) kill his father who spent ten freaking years doing nothing but caring lovingly for him? I don't get it. Seriously.

Looking at my notes, I see that I made some about the characters in this movie, but trust me when I say that they are really not important. This movie could have been done with any other combination of characters - it's not about them and how they cope with the situation of being hunted by mobs of angry, weird children, it's about the idea and premise behind the movie. Problem is, it fails to convincingly deliver said idea/premise. I still can't really figure out what the thing was about. And no, I am not going to torture myself by watching it again - it would just be boring, and I wouldn't pay any attention to it anymore.

Another thing I have a slight problem with is the following:

What the hell is this plague? What caused it? Why? What happened to the children? Why did they develop a hive mind? Why do they kill people? Why do they apparently commit random acts of violence with some adults they kill, and only snap the neck of another one? What is it with "every time they kill someone, they put their hands onto their eyes and take their soul"?! Why do they mutilate that one woman in the bathroom? Is that in any way helping with the soul-thing, or was the killer-kid just a particularly psychotic one? Why do they run around like zombies? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!

*takes a deep breath*

There you go, that's what I have a slight problem with.

I would love to say that the phrase "Teenage Zombies" never made so much sense, but... they're not zombies. They're not dead. Or undead, for that matter, although directly after they wake up, the movie changes into a zombie survival horror flick for a short while. I liked that part, although it was severely lacking in the gore department (I am willing to forgive that, though, as this movie was apparently destined to be broadcast on TV, so I understand that they don't want to show the doubtlessly educated and civilised people making up the audience terrible things like intestines, blood or brains). Still nice little episode, though. Trapped with something akin to teenage zombies in a highschool at night! I have to admit it, I found that part nifty.

At this point I want to add one thing: Producers and directors of movies - please, please, PLEASE. If you show a close-up of someone shooting up someone with morphine, do some research. I was confused. Why did the supposed nurse hold the syringe in a nearly 70° angle? Why did she ram the needle all the way into the arm? I know, it is one of those cool props you filmmakers have, but seriously. If you want to be realistic, please inform yourself how to properly instruct the actress to, well, play someone who knows how to actually do something like using a syringe. The way you showed it, she cleanly shot the morphine directly into the muscle after ramming it through the vein, for whatever reason there might be. Special American Nurse trick? It's especially weird if you know how fucking painful it is when a needle goes through the lower wall of the vein. Trust me on that - years of experience with hospitals and incompetent nurses and doctors have made sure that I know. So, please: Use your props in a more realistic way.

Anyways, it's a confused movie. Intellectual and philosophical "horror" (with very little horror being actually present), a plot that I am not quite sure if it deserves the name... confused. I'm sure that the idea it wants to convey is something worth pondering, but the movie just failed to actually convey the idea. I mean, I'm still a bit "WTF?!" now... which is not a sign of me having totally understood the plot. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I severely doubt that (Sartre couldn't beat me, so a movie like The Plague will hardly succeed where French Existentialism failed...).

But it's not a "bad" movie. As I said at the beginning of this review... it's just there. Nothing more, nothing less.

A neutral 5/10 for... nothing in particular.