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According to an
urban legend, the ghosts of three
little girls who were brutally killed by their
mother pick people at random and then follow them
around for three days. If you do something bad
within these three days, they will kill you, but
if you don't, you'll survive. Now, the ghosts seem
to have picked out a group of friends and the friends
quickly realize that they have to be good in order
to stay alive through this process.
Ugh! I hate reviewing art house movies simply because
they don't appeal to me very often. To me, art house
movies are often long, drawn-out, depressing movies
that lead to nowhere with a deep message hidden
somewhere in the blur of boredom. And that's just
what Dead Daughters is, a blur of boredom. I'm not
sure whether it had a message or not, and if so,
I didn't pick it up. Either way, after having seen
several promising trailers and posters for this
movie (let's face it, it's been one of the most
anticipated foreign horror movies of the year) I was
definitely let down when the movie turned out to be
anything but what the previews had promised.
The concept of the movie is fairly good. Three ghost
girls killed by their insane mother can move objects
of any weight - and this is also how they kill their
victims, we never actually get to see these ghost
girls so it's far from a Ring-clone. Anyway, they
randomly pick persons to watch over for three days
and see if they do something bad, and if they do,
they get killed. The story revolves around a group
of teens who have been selected by the dead girls
and naturally they all end up doing something bad.
I'm sure that the remake of this movie can be quite
entertaining as the storyline is pretty decent, but
the execution here is just terrible.
Director and writer Pavel Ruminov complicates things
to the max and it doesn't exactly help that he keeps
shaking the camera around. I swear, there was not a
single scene in this movie where a tripod was used.
It was as if he had tried to do a Blair Witch-like
ghost movie with a higher production budget. In fact,
in many ways, Dead Daughters is very much like Blair
Witch Project. It follows a bunch of teens who are
completely paranoid and get worked up over nothing.
They all believe that their put under the curse way
too quickly and don't even seem to question what's
going on around them. Then a whole lot of nothing
happens for about one and a half hour until the
ridiculous ending comes and underwhelms the audience.
True, the ending is the best thing about the movie.
Well, parts of it anyway. There's a really cool
scene where a guy gets killed by hundreds of dart
arrows, but the scene is so annoyingly filmed that
it takes away from the experience. I can see why
this movie flopped at the Russian box-office as it's
nothing like its previews. This should have been an
entertaining, unoriginal thrill-ride, but instead
it turned out to be a dull, unoriginal art house movie
that leads to nowhere. Don't bother.
Not a lot, some gore towards the ending.
At this point I can't even take into consideration
that the soundtrack was quite competent.
If you're into art house movies that are artsy for no
apparent reason, Dead Daughters should be right down
your alley. It's basically a teen ghost story turned
into an art house movie - and it's no surprise that
it doesn't work on any level. Don't believe anything
you've seen or heard about this movie, because this
is so excruciatingly boring that I am positive that
it can cure insomnia. I'm sending this one right to
the hospital so that maybe someone will have use for
this atrocious drama.
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