Lone – 2014 – Something different

I find it very hard to write something about this. That’s not unusual of course since movies that don’t follow the usual conventions are a bit harder to comprehend. If you go for a different way to tell a story you’re bound to narrow down you audience. On the other hand, I don’t think you totally have to “get it” every time. Imagery can be “felt” and taken aside from the rational mind that we usually rate movies with. Mark Pellington does a fine job with that here. I wouldn’t go as far as comparing this with Alejandro Jodorowskys surreal masterpieces but now you know just which direction to expect from it.

This is more or less a musical video, but it’s quite lengthy (about 57 minutes) and there’s not music all the time either. The artist in question is Chelsea Wolfe whom I had no previous knowledge about. I can say that I enjoy her singing more than I would any other professional singer but she’s ok. I didn’t watch this for the music anyway.

And I’m sure there’s a story in there somewhere. But I can’t account for it. That’s not the point of this movie anyway, not in my opinion. What you should do is to let your mind flow and don’t try so much. Either you like it or not. I can’t say for sure what I think as far as a grade goes. I do know though that I had to watch it multiple times before getting any sense to it. Who said reviewing movies, short or long, blockbuster or independent, should be easy?

Review: Video Geisteskrank - 2008

As soon as Ronny Carlsson has made a new film I know I just have to have it as soon as possible. I like the innovative ideas and the ambition this you Swedish filmmaker! So when he released Video Geisteskrank on VHS I knew that I needed it! The general interest of this release (on the ancient format) was very low but I’m very proud over my limited numbered copy “1”. The film itself is also available on the anthology-DVD Experimental Films Through the Lens of a Shitty Camcorder (which I believe has been sold out!).

But regardless of the availability of the film I’m very impressed by the director’s competence when it comes to creating spellbinding sound/image combinations. All the music and sounds in the movie are just perfect to the graphic imagery. The style of the film seems to be inspired from the silent movie era and it’s just superb. I get the feeling that Ronny’s had a lot of fun making this and I really think that rubs off on the viewer. Apart from the silent films there’s obviously also inspiration from the infamous August Underground movies and there are bits and pieces here and there that manifests this quite clearly I think.

But if I’ll be completely honest with you I think this is more interesting than it´s more known inspirational sources! There’s a lot of suspense and horror when the films main character put starts to violate an innocent woman. The story is very simple but yet kind of genius. The main character (portrayed but Ronny himself) has this list where he needs to checks out one thing at the time, sort of a bucket list. First thing out is something “innocent” like killing a hitchhiker, after that he aims to vomit on two girls, which finally leads up to where the movie takes place – violating the innocent woman…

The killers mask, because the killer is mask, is another stroke of genius! It´s a pig head which might not be the most common mask in the business. It looks very original and horrifying, even real and that’s something I for one don’t take for granted when it comes to movies like this!

8/10