Magic Marmalade 17th Jul 2023
| | Rated 9/10Beauty in the darkness.
While this is perhaps, not the most gross, or horrific movie to look at, compared to others, it has a uniquely disturbing nightmare quality, which most closely approximates the experience of a sweat inducing, nocturnal hallucination that we all know... more than any other film I can think of.
It does it by virtue of a mood, a tone, the grimy, dingy looking cinematography, and some disturbing, horrific concepts shown through the images, rather than what the images themselves show... And what really underscores that nightmare, is the concept that, while most of us get to wake up, and shake it off, poor Jacob lives it in his waking world... all the time.
For Jacob, an ex Vietnam vet, mourning the loss of his son, finds things around him in his world, by degrees, turning very peculiar, and terrifying.
But it's not a simple horror movie, there is a purpose to the horror, as this is one man's journey through a kind of purgatory instead of hell.
For this reason, once the film is done, is feels like it has a redemptive quality; Even, a grace to it, which prompts you to reconsider, in this context, all that you have just seen in the foregoing events.
Although not a movie I'd put on for giggles, or fun, by any stretch of the imagination, I always found it strangely compelling, and needful, back in the day, to re-watch my old VHS copy, as a kind of catharsis / therapy for myself.
In fact, I wonder what an actual therapist / psychiatrist / psychologist might make of this, not least, in how closely it might resemble a genuine psychosis, or schizophrenic state...
...Not entirely sure if it would, in such a scenario, be considered advisable or not for anyone suffering from such a condition to watch it... could be, according to the new-speak: triggering.
But still, as a movie, masterfully done, and a perfectly executed, finely balanced redemptive nightmare movie.
1 person found this review helpful. ✔︎ Helpful Review? |