DON'T LOOK UP (2009)

If you were to say you were “watchin’ a horror movie” in your dumbest Gomer Pyle voice,  no one could fault you for your lack of articulation - that failure falls squarely on the shoulders of the filmmakers.

I’m actually at somewhat of a loss as to what to say about Don’t Look Up.  Fruit Chan’s latest effort is so painfully derivative that it’s difficult to identify individual flaws.  The writing is hackneyed, the actors all seem bored, and no matter what happens onscreen, there’s no escaping the feeling that we’ve seen it all before.

Though entirely too complicated for its own good, the gist is this: a film crew travels to a haunted location to make a movie on some haunted celluloid and calamity ensues.  There’s some lore about an old gypsy curse, and life imitates art in such a way that most of the crew doesn’t believe anything funny is going on.  Only the director, with his special paranormal sensitivity, is consciously aware that something otherworldly is at work.  Of course, then the guts and eyeballs start to fly and it becomes clear that the people *making* a horror movie are also *experiencing* a horror movie.  Wah wah.

Don’t Look Up employs just about every convention known to Japanese horror without ever bothering with story or character development.  The end result is a film with no identity.  If you were to say you were “watchin’ a horror movie” in your dumbest Gomer Pyle voice,  no one could fault you for your lack of articulation - that failure falls squarely on the shoulders of the filmmakers.

DVD NOTES

Extras include a making-of featurette with behind the scenes footage and the original theatrical trailer.