Nymph (A.K.A Killer Mermaid)

Score: 2 Out Of 10

         I went in to this movie knowing it would not be good. I know you should not judge a book by it's cover but there are sometimes when you can just tell that a movie is going to suck. This was one of those times. "Nymph (2014)" was directed by Milan Todorovic and stars Kristina Klebe, Franco Nero and Natalie Burn. The movie is about a couple of girls who meet a man and decide to sail away to an island that is home to an old abandoned fort. Once they are there, they become stranded and something begins hunting them. To give you an idea of how bad this movie was, our main character is supposed to be a journalist yet she seemingly has no intuition of any kind whatsoever. This aspect of the film seems to be a metaphor for the entire rest of the film. It is a really nice idea, but it just does not seem to pan out at all. The acting is bad and the writing is all over the place. On the other hand, I have to admit the the cinematography was pretty good. This was a pretty gorgeous film.

       What is really sad is that this film does have a lot of good things going for it. They do not show you the "monster" until late in the film and there is a nice plot twist in there. The problem really is the overall presentation. The film as a whole just feels like a cookie cutter horror movie. I got the impression that the writer sat down, watched a bunch of horror movies and then came up with a formula for how to write his own horror movie. The end result is something that just feels generic and lame. The most eye rolling moment of the film was when the creepy old man warned our protagonists not to sail out to the island. See what I mean?

Love,
   The B-Movie Guy.

Twitter: @BMovieguy

The Virgin Spring (55 Years Later)

Score: 9 Out Of 10

         February eighth is the fifty fifth anniversary of "The Virgin Spring (1960)" being released in it's home country of Sweden, and believe it or not, I have just sat down and watched it for the first time. "The Virgin Spring" was directed by Ingmar Bergman and stars Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg and Gunnel Lindblom. The film is about a young women who is traveling with a farm hand to her church, but along the way she is raped and murdered. Her attackers, by way of coincidence (or possibly fate), come to be house guests of the their victims' family. No joke, this is the best movie I have seen in a long time. This film is so well acted and directed that one of the most powerful scenes plays out with only two lines of dialogue, yet is one of the most tense scenes I have ever watched. I also found it interesting that the sound cuts out twice during the rape scene. I am not sure if this was intentional but it did make the scene much more unsettling. 

         I was also fascinated by the amount of symbolism in this film, which was not in any way subtle and deeply religious. The film at it's core is questioning the existence of a higher power and by the end reaches some very surprising conclusions. Fifty five years after the initial release of this film it still holds up. If you have doubts about how good this movie is, just remember it is part of the Criterion Collection and it won the nineteen sixty one academy award for best foreign language film. The absolute best compliment I can give this film is that as soon as it ended I immediately wanted to watch it again and with another person so we could discuss how good it was.

Love,

   The B-Movie Guy

Twitter: @BMovieguy