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Murder Party
This is first of 3 Jeremy Saulnier's movie I will review leading upto release of Hold the dark on 28th September,2018 on Netflix . According to me he is one of the most exciting up and coming directors though he is 40 yrs old. In directors' age that's young. The premise of the movie is very simple. A deadbeat law enforcement officer receives an anonymous invitation to a Halloween Party called Murder Party. The whole movie takes place on the night of the Halloween.
There is no other way to say it but it is a student film. It feels like a student film right down to the casting, the camera used to shoot and production budget. It feels like a guy who made a movie about the topics that inspired him the most. That might involve other filmmakers or the festive occasions that are near and dear to him. Subverting expectations is the key things that stick out in this movie. There are many elements that rightfully feel heavily influenced by other directors. But the one thing he brought to the movie that is his own is the subverting expectations part. They might feel like twists but it is all there. All the clues are right in front of you. That one thing you know for a fact is dangerous will cause danger when you are distracted by something else and least expect. One thing that is very new in this movie is the scope of Halloween festive feel in the movie. Most of the movies that deal with Halloween set them in a country town. You see the sheriff's office , the small close knit communities etc. But this movie shows Halloween in a major city. You see the lead character live in a modest house on a huge street. You see him take a subway on Halloween night and when getting out of the subway you see him passing by a lot of people in Halloween costume. You see him take a turn that is deserted. The scene captures the dreaded empty isolated streets of Cities. Weird thing about major cities is how a densely populated street is next to an empty street. You see the lead character blindly go into dark alley after dark alley and go right upto the abandoned warehouse looking for the address of the party. This gives us some kind of insight into how dumb the lead character is.
The movie doesn't subvert expectations in terms of what you go into the movie for. Its not changing that. The movie is about a group of crazy people who wants to kill a random person and send a message to the society. All the people are hippy loser types. Their ring leader however has some secret plans and he brings his Russian friend. When **** hits the fan the difference between a bad movie and a good movie is that in case of good movie the crazy circumstances make sense. The crazy circumstances don't seem to have some out of the blue. There is rhyme and rhythm to them. This movie has a sequence where a characters' face is burnt because he has lot of inflammable substance on him a while ago and tries to light a cigar. But he has a wolf Halloween mast on his face when this happens. So the fire makes it stick to his face and so he looks like a were wolf. And it makes sense. Certain twists and sequences felt try hard. But this was a decent and an okay directorial debut.
Now lets get to the biggest and most obvious influence that is hanging over this movie for its entire run time. The Quentin Tarantino influence. The movie is extremely violent. It has twists. It has a character tied down to a chair like Reservoir dogs. It has drugs and people under substance influence. The thing about Tarantino is that no matter how much controversies he gets himself into he is quintessential an american director. Countless up and coming filmmakers and lot of filmmakers in Hollywood have grown up watching his movies. No amount of controversies or associations with vile individuals will take that away from him. Awards recognition and praise is something that relies on reputation. To a certain extents that's justified. You don't earn reputation for being great if you are inconsistent. So you gotta have some outstanding movies under your belt that make you earn the respect of a wide variety of filmmakers. They should look at your movies and say "I can't do what he does". If an capable filmmaker says that looking at your movie , you earn their respect. This all seems trivial but any and every recognition during awards season all goes back to this simple concept. That's precisely the reason why DiCaprio works with him. Because the whole director's guild will anticipate a Tarantino movie. The hold him at high regard. So if the movie turn our great. He will have no trouble rallying support and Oscar nominations. In case of other directors even if the movie turns out great they still have the trouble of having bad professional reputation like Ridley Scott who is known as a director for hire and not an auteur and the biggest trouble is many directors are not respected that much. Someone like Scott Cooper is not respected that much. Many people look at him as an okay director. Giving him director nomination is something they would never do until he explodes their expectation. So its very hard for movies without name directors to get to the top unless their movies blow everyone away. Until then they will be in the trenches and will not be welcomed into the circles. Meritocracy in Hollywood is quite cutthroat. Chris Nolan is at the top of his game right now and everyone is his friend. But if his next 2 films flop miserably, he will have no friends. Its very cutthroat. So when you have directors like Jeremy Saulnier that are influenced by him in their bones voting for him during awards season he will get Oscar nominations and wins.
This is first of 3 Jeremy Saulnier's movie I will review leading upto release of Hold the dark on 28th September,2018 on Netflix . According to me he is one of the most exciting up and coming directors though he is 40 yrs old. In directors' age that's young. The premise of the movie is very simple. A deadbeat law enforcement officer receives an anonymous invitation to a Halloween Party called Murder Party. The whole movie takes place on the night of the Halloween.
There is no other way to say it but it is a student film. It feels like a student film right down to the casting, the camera used to shoot and production budget. It feels like a guy who made a movie about the topics that inspired him the most. That might involve other filmmakers or the festive occasions that are near and dear to him. Subverting expectations is the key things that stick out in this movie. There are many elements that rightfully feel heavily influenced by other directors. But the one thing he brought to the movie that is his own is the subverting expectations part. They might feel like twists but it is all there. All the clues are right in front of you. That one thing you know for a fact is dangerous will cause danger when you are distracted by something else and least expect. One thing that is very new in this movie is the scope of Halloween festive feel in the movie. Most of the movies that deal with Halloween set them in a country town. You see the sheriff's office , the small close knit communities etc. But this movie shows Halloween in a major city. You see the lead character live in a modest house on a huge street. You see him take a subway on Halloween night and when getting out of the subway you see him passing by a lot of people in Halloween costume. You see him take a turn that is deserted. The scene captures the dreaded empty isolated streets of Cities. Weird thing about major cities is how a densely populated street is next to an empty street. You see the lead character blindly go into dark alley after dark alley and go right upto the abandoned warehouse looking for the address of the party. This gives us some kind of insight into how dumb the lead character is.
The movie doesn't subvert expectations in terms of what you go into the movie for. Its not changing that. The movie is about a group of crazy people who wants to kill a random person and send a message to the society. All the people are hippy loser types. Their ring leader however has some secret plans and he brings his Russian friend. When **** hits the fan the difference between a bad movie and a good movie is that in case of good movie the crazy circumstances make sense. The crazy circumstances don't seem to have some out of the blue. There is rhyme and rhythm to them. This movie has a sequence where a characters' face is burnt because he has lot of inflammable substance on him a while ago and tries to light a cigar. But he has a wolf Halloween mast on his face when this happens. So the fire makes it stick to his face and so he looks like a were wolf. And it makes sense. Certain twists and sequences felt try hard. But this was a decent and an okay directorial debut.
Now lets get to the biggest and most obvious influence that is hanging over this movie for its entire run time. The Quentin Tarantino influence. The movie is extremely violent. It has twists. It has a character tied down to a chair like Reservoir dogs. It has drugs and people under substance influence. The thing about Tarantino is that no matter how much controversies he gets himself into he is quintessential an american director. Countless up and coming filmmakers and lot of filmmakers in Hollywood have grown up watching his movies. No amount of controversies or associations with vile individuals will take that away from him. Awards recognition and praise is something that relies on reputation. To a certain extents that's justified. You don't earn reputation for being great if you are inconsistent. So you gotta have some outstanding movies under your belt that make you earn the respect of a wide variety of filmmakers. They should look at your movies and say "I can't do what he does". If an capable filmmaker says that looking at your movie , you earn their respect. This all seems trivial but any and every recognition during awards season all goes back to this simple concept. That's precisely the reason why DiCaprio works with him. Because the whole director's guild will anticipate a Tarantino movie. The hold him at high regard. So if the movie turn our great. He will have no trouble rallying support and Oscar nominations. In case of other directors even if the movie turns out great they still have the trouble of having bad professional reputation like Ridley Scott who is known as a director for hire and not an auteur and the biggest trouble is many directors are not respected that much. Someone like Scott Cooper is not respected that much. Many people look at him as an okay director. Giving him director nomination is something they would never do until he explodes their expectation. So its very hard for movies without name directors to get to the top unless their movies blow everyone away. Until then they will be in the trenches and will not be welcomed into the circles. Meritocracy in Hollywood is quite cutthroat. Chris Nolan is at the top of his game right now and everyone is his friend. But if his next 2 films flop miserably, he will have no friends. Its very cutthroat. So when you have directors like Jeremy Saulnier that are influenced by him in their bones voting for him during awards season he will get Oscar nominations and wins.