Donnie Darko with a plot
I'm going to be brow beaten for saying that but it's true. Donnie Darko was a drug trip with no meaning. I enjoyed it but it was plotless and plotless for a reason. Heck it's accurate to describe Napoleon Dynamite as a remake of Donnie Darko using comedy instead of drama/drug trip. Just another excuse to play 80's music.
This movie was for the most part a good set up for the next Silent Hill game. The set up was not much for a real movie. In fact if you read the cover you can't help but laugh... "Suicide... Occult... Necromancers... Nazis... Goverment Cover ups... TIME TRAVEL! MIND CONTROL!!!" Also the acting and overall quality is distractingly low budget.
However this is one of the few low budget movies I've been able to look past and still enjoy. This is a very creepy classic tale the likes of tales from the crypt. I'm not going to say it's Twilight Zone worthy, but it is a very cool story and the whole time I was dreading the chair in the cellar. That thing coupled with the paintings set up a wonderful creepy "don't watch with the lights out" mood.
I also love how the movie came together. There's a full circle like in Donnie Darko that allows room for more. Although it pretty much implies that the circle will continue without altering itself, they also did a great leave off with so many possibilities. Does the necromencer really exist? Was the mom real and was it all mind control to make them hide the evidence? Can and will the past be altered?
The other part that I love is the time travel aspect. Bill and Ted use a telephone booth and charmed can some how go into the past to change the future and then go back into the past to stop themselves from changing the future to be sure memories never change and then return to that changed future (final episode). Heros was great the way that space and time both bend at the same time, meaning when Hiro moves distance he also moves time.
Anyway the time travel with this is the way I think is best written. The Back to the Future 3 method. Where when you change the past to affect the future it doesn't matter because you traveling in time was part of the past all along and nothing can change that. Life was already written in stone and you traveling to the past was part of history even before you traveled back into time. Time Line was similar however it had allowed for minor changes. I really think that that was what they were going for with unholy.
It also took the best elements from the Skeleton Key. Now the Skeleton Key sucked like a 8 pound vacuum cleaner but the way they used older technology to automate the black magic was interesting. They do that in unholy, it's something you have to look for but it's cool. (chanting recorded onto LP records and such)
Lastly the local fokelore to make up the plot. It was blair witch-ish. In the end the fokelore was all true but not the way you thought it would be. And you can even hang on every word because everything comes full circle including the shop owners comments, Hope's comments at the beginning, and even what you hear on Hope's recorded diary.
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Babies:
Fun to make
Even more fun to eat