I enjoyed this more than Longlegs, for sure, as Osgood Perkins has moved on from his “look at me, I’m a serious horror guy” phase and gained a sense of fun. It’s genuinely funny, particularly the daft death scenes, though I seemed to be the only person in the cinema who realised that. Am I a sick bastard? No, it’s everyone else who is wrong.
But I don’t know what everyone else was getting out of it then, because without…
Wonderfully creepy stop-motion character designs make this an engaging watch. It’s a testament to how weird Carroll’s story is that this is actually a pretty accurate adaptation, except for the aesthetic change that Wonderland is now a worn-down Czech building in the 1980s populated by living skulls and socks.
The film never quite gives Alice any sense of character or motivation, meaning that the extended sequence of her attacking the rabbit and his friends feels unnecessarily cruel. And the cutaways to her mouth every time she gives part of the narration are really annoying, slowing scenes down.
They dance the Continental.
They dance until they ache, and they keep on dancing. They dance until their muscles give in, and they keep on dancing. They dance until they sleep, and they keep on dancing.
Is it the magic of cinema keeping them going? The magic that kept Harold Lloyd hanging to the clock, that turned the gears of Metropolis, that came out of Al Jolson's mouth?
Or is it a darker magic?
The paper cutout of two lovers…
So damn manly.
Men going around smashing other men. Big muscly scary men. Pulling each other's eyes out, throwing them through windows, kicking them in the manhood. The manliest place to kick a man.
Sure, the women get to jump around and have fun murdering too – "strong female characters"? – no, they're without exception motivated, defined even, by the big muscly scary men they're in love with.
Nothing original, nothing emotional, nothing clever. Lots of face-smashing.
It looks nice, though.
