Ganja & Hess is an art house movie disguised as blaxploitation. But it's a bad art house movie, more like a bad student film.
There is some beautiful photography throughout, but that's the only compliment that immediately comes to mind. The acting is uniformly wooden, the story is slow and goes nowhere, and the soundtrack is unbearably obnoxious. Those are three elements that I'm usually looking forward to in a movie like this. Other takes on the genre have awesome music, entertaining preformances, and an a interesting hook to the plot (however cheesy it might have been). The hook here was supposed to be another take on 'Blackula', but instead we get a vague allegory layered over a bizzare vampire story involving a cursed knife.
Looking at the movie objectively, away from it's supposed genre, it's still a mess. It's worst sin is how boring it becomes, and how quickly. The filmmakers seemed to be going for a surrealist vibe within the constraints of the characters and production, but it all falls flat. A surrealist blaxsploitation film could be very interesting, but they never go far enough in either direction. Like forgetting the key ingredients while making a great recipe.
The occasional moments of impressive cinematography kept me watching, in spite of it being crushingly boring. I literally nodded off on multiple occasions while watching (it was late, give the movie a break).
Even being low budget, and (arguably) ahead of it's time conceptually, and even though there were parts of the production that were very impressive and watchable, this ended up as one of the least enjoyable movie experiences in recent memory.
Points for originality and some beautiful proto Wes Anderson style shots. The cinematography was truly excellent, it bears repeating
There is some beautiful photography throughout, but that's the only compliment that immediately comes to mind. The acting is uniformly wooden, the story is slow and goes nowhere, and the soundtrack is unbearably obnoxious. Those are three elements that I'm usually looking forward to in a movie like this. Other takes on the genre have awesome music, entertaining preformances, and an a interesting hook to the plot (however cheesy it might have been). The hook here was supposed to be another take on 'Blackula', but instead we get a vague allegory layered over a bizzare vampire story involving a cursed knife.
Looking at the movie objectively, away from it's supposed genre, it's still a mess. It's worst sin is how boring it becomes, and how quickly. The filmmakers seemed to be going for a surrealist vibe within the constraints of the characters and production, but it all falls flat. A surrealist blaxsploitation film could be very interesting, but they never go far enough in either direction. Like forgetting the key ingredients while making a great recipe.
The occasional moments of impressive cinematography kept me watching, in spite of it being crushingly boring. I literally nodded off on multiple occasions while watching (it was late, give the movie a break).
Even being low budget, and (arguably) ahead of it's time conceptually, and even though there were parts of the production that were very impressive and watchable, this ended up as one of the least enjoyable movie experiences in recent memory.
Points for originality and some beautiful proto Wes Anderson style shots. The cinematography was truly excellent, it bears repeating