The Forbidden Room

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Audience Member Complete waste of time. The critics rating this so high on the tomatometer are probably of the same caliber that see paint flung on a canvas by monkeys and extol the virtues and beauty in the randomness of the splatters. Really surprised at the critics on this one. Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Audience Member I wanted to love this and on one level, I really do. Guy Maddin's latest is a triumph of style over substance, perhaps his most eye-popping feature yet. The screen bubbles and melts and exudes raw colour in a variety of cinematic fashions (silent, old technicolor, sixties schlock, etc.). Things are typically outlandish, silly, and sometimes gruesome or sexy. The high concept here is that Maddin decided to recreate some lost films based on surviving descriptions or scripts alone, films that Maddin himself really wanted to see (but obviously could not). After all, he is also a film historian of sorts (with interesting pieces in Film Comment that I am half-remembering now). So, 4, 5, or 6 films have been sliced and diced and welded together to make a deranged feature film (apparently to secure funding that the shorts could not). The result is largely incoherent as a sum of parts but there are so many wild vibrant moments across the 2 hours - and thinking of this as an experimental film really helps matters. Probably though it is not for the uninitiated and there are other easier entry points to Maddin's oeuvre (My Winnipeg, 2007, is my favourite thus far, of those I have seen). But really, just wow. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member It's often the case that experimental cinema is frustrating and boring. But Guy Maddin manages to be frenetic and self referential without losing the audience. Forbidden Room taps into the high melodrama of silent film in a way that is extremely entertaining, well paced, cogent, and often funny. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/21/23 Full Review Audience Member With very few redeeming qualities, experimental film hero Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room is an impenetrable and self-indulgent work that will really only appeal to those individuals who want to appear to be intelligent. Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Audience Member An avant-garde stream-of-consciousness, Freudian horror anthology that falls into the realm of "weird for weird's sake". This movie ends up being somewhere between bad Creepypastas (like "Squidward's Suicide") and a parody of avant-garde film itself. I would recommend any 5 minute excerpt to observe the style, but any longer is unbearable and borderline unintelligible Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/23/23 Full Review Audience Member My artsy fartsy predilections make me a big fan of directors using unusual techniques to create bizarre and original films. In many a pub based debate I have defended and eulogised celluloid curios like Jarmans 'Blue', Lynchs 'Mulholland Drive', Godards 'Weekend'... But all these films balanced style with substances. The Forbiden Room, though it has some commendable flashes of wit and invention hasn't the substances to keep the viewer engaged, it's choppy and frenetic style seems more suited for a short film but at nearly two hours long it fails on a fundamental level. Unfortunately it's unwatchable even for me. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/12/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Forbidden Room

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