The Girl in the Photographs
Small-town store clerk Colleen is eager to escape her tedious existence and annoying boyfriend. Then gruesome photos of murdered women start appearing.
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- Cast:
- Kal Penn , Claudia Lee , Kenny Wormald , Toby Hemingway , Luke Baines , Miranda Rae Mayo , Katharine Isabelle
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Reviews
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
best movie i've ever seen.
It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Big names like Wes Craven and Kal Penn can get away with anything. If those two names were not attached to this project, it would be largely unknown.Either that or the smaller names that took their places would have realized they had to actually work at making a film worth watching.There are precisely two main characters who I can bring myself to care about. Most of the acting is probably not bad, but the terrible acting (I'm looking at you, Kal Penn) makes it hard to notice anyone else's passable acting.I guess I'd summarize by saying that there's really no point watching this movie unless you just want to say you saw it.
The trailer looked good. The premise was interesting. The actual film itself...well...I just kept hoping for it to end or at least provide SOME sort of creepy factors. This movie may work for some but true Horror and Thriller fans will be disappointed. If you can get past the obnoxious and facetious character of one of the main actors well you're definitely more patient and forgiving than me. He was absolutely AWFUL. Condescending...and much more. Horribly written character. In addition I was very discouraged by the police and how they handled certain situations. Finally this movie may as well be re-named "Masked Stabbers" trying in some way to perhaps be like Scream (but failing miserably). I am not sure how this film garnered 5/10...definitely beyond me. Pass.
"The Girl in the Photographs" centers on Colleen, a grocery store clerk in small town South Dakota who is the unwitting target of a mysterious local who has been leaving photographs of mutilated women for her to find. The series of bizarre photos go viral, garnering interest from an egotistical Los Angeles photographer (Kal Penn) who is also from the town. The arrival of him and his entourage and their meeting with Colleen sets the killer's plans into motion.This middling contemporary slasher has received most of its buzz from the fact that it was the last project that the late Wes Craven was attached to (he served as executive producer), and had the maestro's name not been on the bill, it's unlikely the film would have seen as much as attention as it has from genre fans. I was excited about the film irrespective of this, as "executive producer' does not equal "writer" or "director," and also because films done in this tradition are rare these days. Opening on VOD and to a small circuit of indie theaters (I caught the film at Cinema Village in New York), the reviews overall have been lukewarm to terrible, so I went into the film with barred expectations–and was actually somewhat surprised by how much I enjoyed it.While it is in so many ways a conventional slasher thriller, it's also well-shot and decently-acted by any standards. Is it revolutionary? The advent of contemporary horror? Absolutely not. But as a playful riff on serial killer thrillers, it never ceases to be supremely amusing. The production values are high here, and the film benefits greatly from Dean Cundey's cinematography (a frequent collaborator with Spielberg, and the man who shot John Carpenter's "Halloween"). It's flashy and glossy from beginning to end, and conjures the prototypical small-town-in-terror vibe very nicely.As far as scariness or suspense goes, that is where the film does lack some bite; jump scares surprisingly are not the route taken here, but "masked men lurking in the shadows" is the film's modus operandi. It's ineffective, but what can you do? The muted suspense is possibly the result of the script not seeming to know where it's quite going, but the ambiguous conclusion reifies the apparent confusion in narrative direction, and is quite disturbing in its own right. The performances overall are solid; Kal Penn is appropriately ridiculous as the egomaniacal photographer (whose persona seems to be culled from the likes of Terry Richardson), and Claudia Lee is serviceable as the leading lady despite having an underwritten character. The rest of the supporting cast manages to pull in some comedic elements that offset the sadomasochistic center of the movie, and the dialogue is efficient and believable.Overall, I thought this was a decent effort, and it is one of the best modern slasher movies I've seen in quite awhile. Fans expecting something revolutionary or on par with the likes of Craven will be disappointed, and I feel that Craven's name on the project may have something to do with the disheartened fans who expected something more than what this film has to offer. In spite of that, "The Girl in the Photographs" is a fun and indulgent throwback to the eighties slasher. It's conventional, but stylish and entertaining enough that I found it worth my time–and maybe that's enough. 6/10.
This film drowns in monotony as it ultimately leaves the viewer in a literal state of "can they please just kill these people so this film can end" for an extended amount of time, mostly the last twenty minutes of the film. Losing patience to such a degree means that all feeling for the cast has been lost or in this case never felt to begin with, this is obviously a big problem for a horror film when even the fate of the innocent young lead(Claudia Lee) loses importance. Nick Simon fails to create any atmosphere throughout as well as suspense and tension. There may have been a few small jolts of electricity, but they dissolve almost instantaneously.Despite being well produced, shot and acted with lots of pretty faces and even some nice T&A, this film just doesn't succeed in being what could have been a more engaging horror flick had some serious editing and script adjustment been applied.But in the end I'm still a horror junkie and I have to judge the overall package against it's fellow B horror competitors and there is enough here to possibly warrant some degree of entertainment for those with the same genre affliction, there were some OK kills and to be completely honest the picture the killers leave for the girl in the final seconds was brilliantly done, though a photo cannot undo the overall average plot and mundane feel to this film.