Just uses a more commonplace event than being chased by a murderer.
But the whole point is to scare us.
Other than that, it does little for us.
I felt sorry for him, and the other victims, but I wish there was a deeper point to this film. Unfortunately, that is all we get.
So you are saying this was nothing but a cheap trick to scare audiences and have no more value than that?
Sorry men but i strongly disagree with you this may be the best movie of the year even when i doubt win the Oscar defenitly is better than any other nominee really put you in the shoes of someone with a progresive dementia in a way i have never seen before this movie is not you tipical pasive cinematic experienced instead take you with the main character, you are with him even if in the begining you dont notice until you star to be as confused as him, you watch the world with his eyes and his memories, it is terrifying but is because the nature of the diseace itself is terrifying that is not a poitn against the movie but is a point in his favor, the clever direction and editing of the story submerge us in the mind of Hopkins character is really brilliant a great movie
Why cheap? Not all horrors are cheap, only the bad ones.
What you just described in your wall of text is exactly a horror.
It puts you in the shoes of this sick man and scares you with his horrific reality.
We are trapped in his nightmare. It's a well crafted and acted recreation, we are immersed in his reality quite convincingly.
But other than the horror of this reality, there's not much.
Agreed.
In fact 'Jacob's Ladder' (Adrian Lyne, 1990) used a similar disorienting concept half-way through the film, of very squarely and unassumingly changing the actress playing the protagonist's wife, with children popping out of nowhere, in a different house, then reverting to his former environment and girlfriend, both reality seeming like the "real one" each time...
Except in Jacob's Ladder it only takes 10 minutes of the film, and then it uses the rest of it's running time to develop other ideas and themes, whereas 'The Father' very rapidly feels like that (very on the nose) scene of the broken CD Anthony is listening to...
Also David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006) does a similar thing throughout the whole 3 hours running time of the film, except none of the characters are senile, which makes for a much more interesting observation about identity, the nature of consciousness and perception of reality (what if there's a slightly psychotic component to EVERYBODY's experience of the outside world?).
Great connections, man. Exactly what I meant in the OP.
And like you mentioned, The Father is stuck in this gimmick, never taking it further. Which could very well be its point, that dementia gets you stuck and there is no escape. But other than that, there is not much.
I always felt that The Sixth Sense does a similar gimmick magnification: we see the same exact " I am dead but I don't know it yet" switch in Beetlejuice and in Ghost. Only both of these use it for a couple of minutes and then move on (or their characters would look very stupid for not understanding that they are dead). Shyamalan spread its thinly over 2 hours instead.
I wonder who first invented that particular ghost switch.
The thing about horror is that its supposed to give put you into a horrifying situation that would not normally occur in your life (its been proven it actually helps your brain train for stress situations!). Dementia is unfortunatelly a situation all too many people have occuring in their lives as it is. Its like filming a car crash, its horrying, but i wouldnt call it a horror movie.
shareWell, the best horrors are the ones that latch onto commonplace situations that can happen to you, like Psycho, in particular taking a shower.
This one exploits hat precise angle for its horror, something that could happen to anyone.
Except its not a commonplace situation. People very rarely get murdered in a shower and even more rarely by a crosdressing hotel owner who talks to his dead mother. It is a horrifying situation that does not normally occur to people in their lives. Dementia is something that happens to a lot of people past the certain age unfortunatelly.
shareThe commonplace, very commonplace situation is: the shower.
Duh!
In Jaws, the commonplace situation is: swimming in deep water.
You don't need to wait for the shark or the knife to feel uneasy.
This one uses the same trick: something that anybody can experience. No need to wait for the doctors to feel the horror of it.
Being in the shower is not the horrific part of Psycho. Getting murdered is.
In Jaws the horrific part is shacks coming after you, not swimming.
Do you get uneasy every time you enter a shower?
What are you talking about? Talk about woosh.
You completely miss the whole concept of horror.
Of course being in the shower and in deep water is the horrific part.
I don't get uneasy every time. It's forgotten horror by now, I'm not that impressionable.
The concept is: watch Psycho for the first time. Go take a shower right after, possibly at night and in a foreign house/hotel. See how easy that is.
Or watch Jaws for the first time and jump in the ocean right after.
The horror is the impression left on your memory by those fictional circumstances, which are commonplace and otherwise not scary, turning them now into something dangerous and scary.