#glad you lovelies are here to witness my slow descent into madness

[feliciadraws]

I feel the need to release this bonkers Waka au out into the wild so hear me out;

AU where Waka is cursed with a werewolf style curse in which he turns into a large humanoid tengu like creature under a full moon; a weretengu if you will.

He killed one of a pair of ubume witch sisters and the surviving sister cursed him in revenge for him killing her sister and since then he turns into a weretengu every full moon.

And yes I have way too many thoughts about it

[aclockworkfilmsnob]

Thoughts on Suspira (1977)

I know I said I wouldn't review any more horror movies I watched unless I got a request to do so after I post my IMDb ratings but… I'm sorry, I just have to talk about this. I… did not like this movie. I thought it kind of sucked. And I am very disappointed to say that given all the amazing reviews. I must be missing something here. This movie is praised as a masterpiece. Did I… watch the wrong cut? Did I not go in with the right mindset? I went in with no real mindset or expectations, in fact my decision to watch this one was rather impulsive, I was just not impressed by what I saw. Now I do want to clarify that this is NOT a film with no redeeming qualities, far from it. I've found that the most praise this movie gets is for its use of color, and for good reason, this is (for the most part) a gorgeous movie. The use of lighting is truly breathtaking, I mean this is the very definition of eye candy. Accompanied by this, there are a lot of incredibly interesting shots, expertly composed and fascinatingly creepy that just a mere glance at a handful of these will make plenty of people feel compelled to see this for themselves. But that's where one (of many) issues comes in. The visual spectacle only becomes notably prominent in the second half. It's not absent from the first half, but it's not there as much as you'd like it to be. In regards to the first half of this movie, for every one shot that's visually cool to look at, there's one that's also flat and boring. Like, it goes from amazing to "ehhh we don't really care" very quickly. That's just one of many annoying inconsistencies in this thing. I don't think I need to say it, you all knew it was coming. This movie is style over substance (when the style is even present, of course). The film opens with a pretty decent scene, creating a lot of intrigue with a kind of cool soundtrack, though it does get a little repetitive. Later in the movie… it gets VERY FUCKING REPETITIVE. I swear there are like three main tracks in this entire score, and they loop them over and over and over again, it feels like royalty free music that first year film students use because they're too lazy to get creative with their soundtracks. I toyed with the idea that maybe this was done to reflect some sort of descent into madness our main character was going through, but she wasn't really enduring that at all. She was just kind of, in danger constantly. The threat wasn't repetitive or redundant really, just the soundtrack. It got on my nerves very quickly, and looking back at it I can think of no good reason it's done the way it is. Anyways, back to the opening scene (forgive this abysmally structured review, but maybe you're getting an idea of how awfully put together this movie is). Like I said before, the opening is kind of cool, it's a good hook but you're left wondering if the film will deliver more than it's presented you. Well it goes from cool and mysterious to HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? In the blink of an eye the movie becomes so violent and bloody and totally not what you were expecting from the previous build up. Two characters we just met are murdered before our eyes, in an incredibly gruesome and over the top way. I swear to you, with this abrupt shift I was convinced that I was watching an experimental film, and I actually got kind of excited because now the movie got me hyped for some serious David Lynch type shit. Unfortunately, immediately after this, the narrative becomes conventional again. I didn't realize it yet, but that previous murder scene eliminates the mystery element this movie attempts to have almost entirely. So basically the movie takes place at this German dance academy where this new American student (our main character) starts to notice strange shit happening around the school. First some of the students act strangely around her, ranging from strangely nice to strangely snarky, but overall just strange. By the second half of the movie, it's completely irrelevant, those characters don't matter anymore. Only the teachers and other faculty members in their strange nature have any sort of significant impact on the plot. And there's no real suspense here, you KNOW they're not on the level. The first murder in the film was of a former student. And it was rather supernatural, almost anybody watching this knows that there has to be a connection between the two. Our main character did not witness this event transpire, she only saw the girl running away saying some cryptic shit. So, we know for a fact that this school is bad business, but our protagonist doesn't. Automatically she cannot be used as a catalyst for the audience to slowly but surely uncover new hints and clues that may explain the dark unrests of terrible things happening at the school. But she's at least interesting, right? We at least like her enough for us to want to see her get out of the film okay, right? Um… not really, no. Now she's not the most one dimensional character in existence or anything, but the amount of depth she has is lacking for this kind of film to work. Every now and again you kind of get what she's about, but not enough to feel as though you know her. She's like an acquaintance you when to high school with, like yeah you guys talked every now and again, and you kind of picked up on some of her quirks and interests, but you guys were definitely not close. That's who this girl is. You don't want to see bad things happen to her, but you won't be heartbroken if you do. She also has a friend who adds nothing but exposition to the movie. These two don't even build a friendship really, generic friend character just kind of whispers some things to the protagonist about how the teachers have always been creepy and mysterious, and suddenly they decide to stick together so they can survive, I guess. No real chemistry between the two, so these scenes aren't very interesting to watch, they're just kind of… necessary? By the way, that whispering scene I mentioned before has awful sound mixing. I could barely hear a word they were saying behind the creepy background noise, which is especially questionable when half of this film is ADR'd. At first I was willing to forgive the lackluster dubbing with the excuse of "oh maybe it's purposefully off putting, perhaps it will add to the tone of the film." Spoiler alert, it does not, it's just distracting. Suspira has a really awful balancing of tones. Sometimes it's incredibly over the top and bloody. Other times it's slow and atmospheric, trying to build suspense. Hell, sometimes it's just people talking with flat and uninspired dialogue. Absolutely none of it meshes, there's no glue holding any of this together, the filmmakers just pick and choose what kind of movie this is going to be at random spots, and they just can't make up their mind. I'm all for mixing genres and tones, but it should be handled like a chef carefully crafting a myriad of different foods into a gourmet dish, not some lazy slob putting his favorite meals in a blender and expecting it to be 5 star cuisine. 3/4ths of the way into this movie, there's a 10 minute long exposition scene that doesn't even attempt to be interesting or act as if it fits into the plot for a second. It's just one giant moment of "Here's what you need to know." I feel like this scene was filmed later in production, when the editor realized "oh shit, we didn't make enough sense out of what happens at the end." Speaking of the end, it doesn't really feel earned. The protagonist hasn't grown or overcome any obstacles, even though they sort of kind of I think try to imply she has. It's just her using a collection of information previously given to fight the odds at the end, kind of. Every now and again there's a problem she doesn't quite know how to face, but the solution ends up being so easy and takes her no time at all to solve that you're just let wondering "what was the point?" Now don't get me wrong, there were a few really good scenes. Scenes that, on their own, had me kind of invested, interested in what was going on and actually worked in being creepy/suspenseful. But they would have been better off in a better movie. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who will tell me that this movie isn't about the characters or the plot, it's about the style and the experience. That would be totally fine, if it stayed consistent with being a colorful over the top joyride of unpredictability. But it's not that, there are too many moments spent with our main character slowly wondering to herself "what is up with this place?" Well, we know what's up with this place, and we don't care enough about you to have any sort of investment in you finding out. The over the top moments don't work when you were trying to get into the suspense, and vice versa. Moments that are solely dialogue and exposition… simply don't work in any sense. A lot of shots are impressive and the lighting is gorgeous, but more times than not it's making up for it's lack of substance instead of harmonizing with it. I hardly felt any real emotion throughout most of Suspira. Was it supposed to be scary? Because I was hardly scared. Was it supposed to be suspenseful? Because it was almost never biting. Was it supposed to be funny? Because I never laughed un-ironically. Is it possible that this movie was supposed to be disjointed? Maybe it's some sort of parody of horror? Honestly, yeah that is possible, but even at that it doesn't work. I know this movie has a lot of fans and I'm glad people enjoy it. I envy that, I really do. I wanted to love this movie but I just didn't. I understand why people love it and I hope that one day I can change my mind on it and enjoy it too. Maybe there's something I'm just not getting, I don't know, but I got to go with my gut on this one. I just didn't like it, it was very disappointing. 4.5/10