A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

I don’t consider him wasted in Begins, but yeah, he was definitely underutilized in the two sequels. I do think he wasn’t developed that well in Inception, even though I did enjoy it.
As a side note, he is really sinister in Red Eye, from what I remember (rewatch is due) and really great in The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

3) To have Tom Waits in the movie.

10) You're not wrong.

Amen to this.

Well, it is the best part.

Well, I felt like his conclusion in Begins was a shrug-off (probably because Nolan is incapable of a truly rewarding third act, at least in the films of his I've seen) of the better of the two villains in the film. And then in the next two it's an almost insulting waste of talent. Of course, part of that is because Rises was such an overblown, unfocused mess.

And you're definitely right about Red Eye (with another guy with third act issues). Have meant to see tWTStB for a while but got distracted.

So the early 90s would've been the time when I really started doing a deep dive into the Universal sequels, to the exclusion of just about everything else for a while there. And one thing I'm remembering now is that Coppola's Drac and Branagh's Frankenstein were both too "noisy" for my taste. Literally noisy sometimes, but also just "busier" in general.



So these were completely at odds with the oldies I happened to be obsessed with at the time. That's not the movies' fault, I'm just explaining why I wasn't sold on them originally. Again, I'm looking forward to rewatching it with my post-Argento, post-Raimi sensibilities this time.

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Eh, I don’t feel Nolan had issues with the third act in his films, with the exception of Inception and Tenet, as far as I can recall.
I’d have to rewatch Red Eye to see how it holds up before making any clear comment on the third act on that one.

I've gone back and forth with Winona since the beginning. Loved her in some things and didn't in others. My recent viewing of Heathers has me back on Team Ryder so I'm afraid Dracula is going to ruin that.

Then keep Stranger Things for after Dracula and you'll be back on track.

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After the compellingly intimate dynamic of the first two acts (literally the characters sitting together in seats, that horrifying sequence in the airplane bathroom), the *ahem* broader action and plot elements of the final act are kind of jarring.

Like, there's literally .

And I happen to really love Red Eye. It's not that the ending is bad, just that it's a departure from a much more interesting and tense dynamic from the beginning.

Frankly, the acting in the film (accents included) weren't what bothered me. I'm not tempted to sling crap at Keanu or Winona. I think that the writing really lets them down. Like, what was Reeves supposed to do with that character? The script takes out all of the compelling action taken by the character and blunts the most effective aspect of his character arc (his slow horror at what is happening in the castle and his traumatized response when he returns to England) are reduced to 30 second glimpses.

Likewise, Mina is written in a way that is really fractured. In the novel, you see how this young woman is grappling with the loss of her best friend and the PTSD of her fiance. But in recentering the narrative on Dracula's personal life and emotions, Mina's story gets split---half of it is the novel stuff (losing Lucy, dealing with Jonathan's trauma), and half of it is the weird "romance" between her and Dracula. I honestly think that Winona did the best with what she was given, especially considering that her motivations and actions swing around wildly from scene to scene.

I don’t particularly value narrative more highly than other elements of filmmaking (and often value it significantly less). Craft is always at the forefront of my cinematic interests and Dracula is one of the most impressively made films I think I’ve ever seen (Citizen Kane and 2001 are a couple of others with comparable levels of virtuosity on display, albeit with stronger narratives).

I think, moreso than narrative value, the expression of an antiquated style and giving it newfound vitality and longevity becomes the point of the film. A single effect doesn’t need to serve a specific purpose because it serves the overarching, nigh allegorical meaning behind the techniques (aligning cinema with vampirism is a fun through line of the film).

It’s akin to Italian cinema. You can punch holes through the narratives even the best of Argento and Bava (whom Roman specifically cites as an influence on this film) but it misses the joy of technique and atmosphere that makes them special.

When someone asks “why did this happen?” in Suspiria, my honest answer is that I don’t really care because of everything else going on that’s pure cinema. Same goes for Dracula.

Well, the third act of TDK is oft-maligned, and Rises even more so. I personally felt that Memento, which I thought was a pretty great movie through two acts, also fumbled in the third. And I felt The Prestige didn't really deliver either. So, from my perspective, that's actually 6 of his films and I've only seen 8 of his films because 6 of them kinda disappointed me. So, in my world, 75% of Nolan's films end with a sigh.

As for Red Eye (and this is really what I mean about Nolan's films too), it's not about a BAD third act it's about one that's just less than what the film felt like before it.

She's spotty. She has some good films/performances and then sometimes she's bad enough I wonder how she got famous. She was just comically bad in Alien: Resurrection, for example. Like, for years after I saw that I thought we had all just been mistaken that she ever had talent.

Well, I think all that's fine when the craft is superior. But when it's not, it's not. And Coppola's Dracula is no Suspiria.

I don’t see TDK as oft maligned, personally, and *spoilers* it’ll find its way onto my 2000 ballot. But to each their own.

When I think of bad third acts, I think of Joker, and Natural Born Killers

Alright, you understand exactly what I mean about third acts and particularly Red Eye.

I think your strong feelings about the script versus the novel is effecting your ability to see how bad Reeves and Ryder's acting was.

No, I said it's third act is oft-maligned, which is to say that whenever TDK is criticized it is almost always about the third act.

And I'm really not talking about bad third acts here I'm talking about third acts that are letdowns from what the first two might have delivered.

So you haven't seen Argento's?

To wit, most Argento films are not Suspiria either.

Now here was a true ****show.

Yeah, I know what you said. My response was more of a “nothing is maligned at all to me it’s a great film” deal. But again, to each their own.