Great Film: They
Imaginary creatures who live in the dark come to get their victims.
This film has it's good and bad sides. There's a lot of potential and
beautiful scenes in this movie. I don't know how they managed to find that
country scene with mists, the moon, a country road and everything just
perfect!
It also succeeds in scaring the viewer quite a few times with startling
attacks and creepy camera work. I would even have liked to see more of this,
but true, it might become repetitive, and we know how how we hate repetitive
stuff in the world of the short attention span! Also sound is used to scare,
like the telephone ringing in the 'Exorcist', at a tense
moment.
It also slightly over uses the "monster coming to get the camera" scene,
where a scary monster comes at the camera (/viewer). These are good methods
of scaring people.
There are some terrible logic errors and they do spoil the film for
'thinking' people. If it was a real scenario her boyfriend, for example,
wouldn't let her out of his sight! Much of the plot relies on the people
isolating themselves from others for anything to take place. The strange
thing is, even though they know they are in danger, they still go off on
their own, where no one is there to help them. Whenever there are people
present, nothing happens.
This flaw ruined the film a bit for me. I kept thinking "why is she doing
THAT", when nothing would happen if she did THIS. Very frustrating... but I
guess they were out to make a movie about people being attacked when they
were alone, and this is what they ended up with. (The British "Lenny Henry
Show" did a great parody of this kind of movie, with the actors always
saying: "We've got to split up, it's more likely we get chopped up that
way!" and "oh-oh, the music's changed, that must mean - here comes the bad
guy!")
Also, without spoiling anything, there are some places where people just
seem to willingly ignore the facts. Like when a window is broken -inwards-,
into a closed chamber. No one even noticed that, and one is left asking -
and then what? Just another missing person from a locked room? How many of
these can there be? Where are the paranormal investigators when you need
them? Where are the university geeks want to become the "ghost busters"?
They investigated stuff like this in "The Entity" and that was supposed to
be based on a true story.
Coming back to the positive side, I can imagine the actress playing the main
part was chosen because she bears a striking resemblance to a young Mia
Farrow in "Rosemary's Baby". Those types are always believable when scared
to death. One seems to identify with a skinny (almost anorexic (was that
possibly the comment they were making with her vomiting in the railways
station?) sweet young thing. Her boyfriend is far too conservative for his
own good. Letting her sleep alone in a double bed! What kind of gentleman is
that, in this day and age!
Just think: If her impotent shrink had been played by Bruce Willis he'd have
followed up on her story and we'd have seen some aliens splattered all over
the subway! - Now that'd been juicy! Sorry wrong film. That's
"Mimic".
"They" is one of these movies that end up being rather annoying the more you
see it. From all sides... and I agree there was a LOT of potential in there.
Just not quite enough attention to detail.
Still: *** /5
Cast
- Young Billy played by Alexander Gould
- Billy played by Jon Abrahams
- Dr. Booth played by Jay Brazeau
- Terry played by Dagmara Dominczyk
- Julia played by Laura Regan
- Paul played by Marc Blucas
- Sam played by Ethan Embry
