Reviews

We recently screened it at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland Oregon and I must say that I loved this film.

This is a thinking man's movie done in period with an excellent cast. I can't really go into depth about the film with out revealing the cause and effect mechanism. It reminds me a little of Memento since it is non-linear and does not have traditional time line. If you love weird tales, film noir, and time paradoxes, then run don't walk to your nearest film festival.

I am not sure were the market is for this one but I hope it fines a home. It is what Indy films are all about.

This poetic black and white short film from the Netherlands was inspired by a fragment from an incomplete H. P. Lovecraft story. It's about a worker drone who lives in a crowded low-rent high-rise apartment. His only window looks out onto a small courtyard boxed in on all sides by neighboring buildings. At night, he lies on a board shoved outside his window (like a gang plank) and looks up at the few stars he can see in the open space above the buildings. But the stars begin to affect him in strange ways and he starts to obsess on things between the known spaces. At work he stares into the neck of a co-worker, at a bookstore he stares closer and closer into the printed page until all he sees is black and imperfections in the printing that looks like stars. Only 5 minutes long this film manages to capture some of the atmosphere of Lovecraft's cosmic sensibilities. Shown at the 2004 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

This is an interesting film and shows off the talent of director Michael Bartlett (Little Girl who fell from a Tree). A weird tale about a grounds keeper who finds a female mannequin in a park and proceeds to take it home. On the way, he drops into a clothing store to buy "her" a dress... a store run by a one armed man. The right arm of the mannequin of course falls out the bag and the store owner finds it and brings it home. Strangeness ensues at both the homes of the grounds keeper (were he assembles and wines and dines his new catch) and the store owner who discovers that the arm has a life of its own and proceeds to be attached to his stump.

What I find very interesting is how Bartlett actually filmed the union of a female arm to a male actor, it is really quite seamless (no pun intended). The only fault I find with the film is that it is overly long by 15 minutes or so (which could be easily fixed in the editing room if it were to come out on DVD). For musician turned filmmaker, this is an impressive and ambitious first film.

This is an excellent thriller. Both my wife and I were very pleasantly surprised at how engaging the film actually was and how it kept us guessing almost to the end of the film. The success of the film lies squarely in the hands of Screenwriter/Director Michael Bartlett who does a brilliant job with creating an atmosphere of creeping uneasiness. It is also clear that the film was built on top of a solid script. My only gripe, albeit a small one, is that I felt that the film could have been condensed in places or edited differently as there seemed to be many repetitive shots that didn't add anything to the story. I too am really surprised that this film is not out on DVD yet or that a U.S. remake of the film has not been attempted. This is a keeper.