Idea is better than the final result
Jan. 19th, 2006 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorhathorWatched another Japanese horror movie to review. This one's called "The Locker," which comes on a DVD with "The Locker 2." Schweet. Just wish the idea had been executed better.
"The Locker" is based on a Japanese urban legend, basically. You know those coin-operated storage lockers you can find in bus stations and stuff? It is an urban legend in Japan that you should put a present and/or letter for the person you have a crush on in a lucky coin-operated locker. Then you should give them the key. The lucky locker will make this turn out alright, where the two of you will find love. Such a legend is mostly popular with teens, as you can imagine, but it's a sweet legend nonetheless.
In "The Locker," there is a lucky locker, but there is also a cursed locker. No one is really sure which lockers are lucky and which one is cursed, which is always the case with urban legends, right? SPOILERS AHEAD! A woman who was raped got pregnant and dumped her baby in a coin-operated locker, then committed suicide. The baby died. This cursed the locker that the baby died in. Anyone who uses the locker dies. IMO, it sounds like an excellent idea for a horror movie. But it fell MAJORLY short.
The problems with it were that the curse didn't seem to have any structure to it. People who used the locker for simple storage died right alongside people who used it for these "give a present to your crush" ventures. Even people who just peered inside the locker and didn't even store anything in it died randomly. Bad writing. A curse should always have a structure that relates to how the curser died, IMO. Another problem was with the killer ghost - she was, at times, a baby. Other times, she appeared five. Often, she wore the burlap sack that her mother wrapped her in as a dress. All of these images are laughable. No amount of creepy long black hair coming after people is going to make a killer baby scary. Especially when that baby is walking around dressed in a burlap sack. She was just a really lame ghost. Why not include the other ghosts involved in this legend? A third problem was the movie was way too talky. People do not want to watch characters yack on and on about boring things in a horror movie. We want to see creepy, scary shit. The scenes between the tutor and the student yapping endlessly about "no baby who is born is unwanted blah blah blah BS BS" were SOOOO dull. Finally, there was just a lot of dumb things and stupid behavior in the movie. Many things just didn't make sense. Like, why were people scared so badly by the damn ghost baby? She just wasn't scary enough to justify people wandering the streets screaming. And why, when one of the girls disappeared, did her friends just seem not to care at all? They were going shopping like nothing happened. Is this supposed to make the viewer feel something besides confusion?
The sequel was actually better than the first movie, but not by much. MORE SPOILERS!! I thought the crush the boy had on the main character was played soooo sweetly. When he put a birthday present for her in the locker, thinking it was the lucky locker, my heart just went, "Awwwwwww... how sweet... and AHHHHHH NOOOOO you put it in the cursed locker, now you're gonna DIIIIIIIE!!" It was a shame that such a nice idea was wasted by the movie sucking so bad otherwise. Now I want to rewrite it. I just don't know what they were thinking.
"The Locker" is based on a Japanese urban legend, basically. You know those coin-operated storage lockers you can find in bus stations and stuff? It is an urban legend in Japan that you should put a present and/or letter for the person you have a crush on in a lucky coin-operated locker. Then you should give them the key. The lucky locker will make this turn out alright, where the two of you will find love. Such a legend is mostly popular with teens, as you can imagine, but it's a sweet legend nonetheless.
In "The Locker," there is a lucky locker, but there is also a cursed locker. No one is really sure which lockers are lucky and which one is cursed, which is always the case with urban legends, right? SPOILERS AHEAD! A woman who was raped got pregnant and dumped her baby in a coin-operated locker, then committed suicide. The baby died. This cursed the locker that the baby died in. Anyone who uses the locker dies. IMO, it sounds like an excellent idea for a horror movie. But it fell MAJORLY short.
The problems with it were that the curse didn't seem to have any structure to it. People who used the locker for simple storage died right alongside people who used it for these "give a present to your crush" ventures. Even people who just peered inside the locker and didn't even store anything in it died randomly. Bad writing. A curse should always have a structure that relates to how the curser died, IMO. Another problem was with the killer ghost - she was, at times, a baby. Other times, she appeared five. Often, she wore the burlap sack that her mother wrapped her in as a dress. All of these images are laughable. No amount of creepy long black hair coming after people is going to make a killer baby scary. Especially when that baby is walking around dressed in a burlap sack. She was just a really lame ghost. Why not include the other ghosts involved in this legend? A third problem was the movie was way too talky. People do not want to watch characters yack on and on about boring things in a horror movie. We want to see creepy, scary shit. The scenes between the tutor and the student yapping endlessly about "no baby who is born is unwanted blah blah blah BS BS" were SOOOO dull. Finally, there was just a lot of dumb things and stupid behavior in the movie. Many things just didn't make sense. Like, why were people scared so badly by the damn ghost baby? She just wasn't scary enough to justify people wandering the streets screaming. And why, when one of the girls disappeared, did her friends just seem not to care at all? They were going shopping like nothing happened. Is this supposed to make the viewer feel something besides confusion?
The sequel was actually better than the first movie, but not by much. MORE SPOILERS!! I thought the crush the boy had on the main character was played soooo sweetly. When he put a birthday present for her in the locker, thinking it was the lucky locker, my heart just went, "Awwwwwww... how sweet... and AHHHHHH NOOOOO you put it in the cursed locker, now you're gonna DIIIIIIIE!!" It was a shame that such a nice idea was wasted by the movie sucking so bad otherwise. Now I want to rewrite it. I just don't know what they were thinking.
