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n. hoop·la fac·tor (h  p lä f kt r)
degree of entertainment attained irrespective of critical worth |
Visitors
 | Year: 2003 |
| Country: Australia | |
| Writer: Everett De Roche | |
| Director: Richard Franklin | |
| Cast: Radha Mitchell, Susannah York, Ray Barrett |
stuart |
mark |
imdb |
official site |
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Stuart:Okay, so I had a feeling that they would botch this film.What's so annoying about this film is that it could have been fantastic. All the elements are there, and Radha Mitchell is a strong performer, but unfortunately the end result is a bit of a mess.  I've liked so much of Mitchell's work, from the fantastic Pitch Black, to High Art (one of the most sensual films I've ever seen) and even Love And Other Catastrophes, which I quite enjoyed even though no one else did. I think it's kinda fortunate for her that she hasn't quite hit the big time, as it means she has been able to jump around different projects, rather getting bogged down in lead roles (in ways that our major export Nicole does). I'm sure she'd like to earn more money, but all the same I think she has had a fantastic career thus far. Suffice to say that Mitchell is great in a less than perfect film, and sexy as always (although I wonder how cold it would have been out in the middle of the ocean, and if she really would have been wearing a bikini all that time).The supporting characters in Visitors, however, are all a bit silly. Most of the time they are over the top caricatures. This really brings the film down, as I think that the rest of the world should have been very realistic, in order to directly juxtapose Mitchell’s crumbling sanity. There are some great ideas in this film, and as I have already said it has all the elements to be a great psychological thriller. But there is simply too much. Illusion piles on top of illusion, and quite frankly it becomes a bit of a mess. It would have been much better had they had held back on some of 'freaky shit' so that it actually would have had some impact - in this case less would have been much, much more. I think it also would have been more effective to build that stuff up slowly, rather than subjecting us to extraordinary levels of craziness almost straight away.  I should point out that this film features the best feline character since Jones in Alien. And I think this particular quirk (once you see the film you'll know what I mean) is fantastic.Visitors also suffers from a bad case of 'it looks like a set'. I appreciate that there were probably very tight budget constraints, but even excusing some less than perfect digital effects, the sets themselves looked like they'd been built for Neighbours - all shiny and perfect. And I was never under the impression that we were actually on the ocean. All of this wouldn't have been a problem, however, if the execution had been better. Visitors has a great concept with fantastic acting by Mitchell, but it suffers from an overabundance of ideas. Stripped back and taken a little more seriously I think this film could have been great.
Mark:is yet to review this film |
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