Diana S
I was excited for this movie because I love experimental stuff, but I was super disappointed. The "music," which I think was meant to give the film a big zing, made me want to die ... in a bad way. Just being able to make cool sounds on your fancy computer equipment doesn't music make. I'm so sorry to say it. And just in terms of the story itself, it was unfocused, rambling, trying to be minimalist but just being entirely opaque, and I found it annoying. I think part of the problem for me was this thing of if you inherit a free house at like 22 and you don't have to have a real job and you get to fart around with your expensive noise-making equipment all day trying to be a professional musician and all you can think to do is be depressed and whiny, I have no use for you or your story.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
08/23/24
Full Review
Hugo S
After breaking up her band, a musician takes refugee in a remote cabin to work on new material. The woman soon faces the presence of a malevolent force. Similarly to its wintry landscape, "The Strings" is emotionally raw and cold. A movie that finds its horror element in the loneliness of the main character. The final musical performance is chilling and haunting!
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
03/13/24
Full Review
Sam G
I like this movie. When it's scary it's pretty damn scary/tense. There are def some scenes i think are drawn out/boring but not enough to trash the movie. The opening shot is really cool as are a lot of other shots. Lead actress is pretty unpolished but she gets better as the movie progresses. I enjoyed the music she has a pretty voice and played piano well. Wish there some more scares but i enjoyed it.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/13/24
Full Review
Joseph S
There are good horror films being made right now. I have to remind myself of this every time I see a film like The Strings, which like so many others made by hopeful film-school graduates, is a hodgepodge of isolated art-house images and horror-movie cliches that the filmmaker obviously wants the viewer to interpret as more than the sum of its parts.
The recipe: a bleak but picturesque setting where a tragedy occurred in the distant past; a protagonist fleeing a personal or professional loss; the potential for redemption embodied in a new career path or love interest; continual references to scientific theories that might provide a convenient explanation for strange goings-on; and the inevitable intrusion of the tragic past into the protagonist's current situation.
Enter Catherine, a sad-sack self-absorbed singer songwriter who's just left her boyfriend? band-mate? and her band to pursue a new creative direction. Catherine flees to a cabin on remote Prince Edward Island, in the middle of winter, to begin working on her new material. Once there, we see her setting up her equipment, diddling around with loopers and keyboards, lounging on the couch, staring at her smart phone, washing her clothes—it's the Chantal Ackerman Jeanne Dielman portion of the film, but with a few hints of ominous potentialities, like the closed door in the basement—the basement she didn't remember the place having the last time she was there.
Still, mostly nothing much happens. Catherine may be a decent singer and her material isn't bad, but it's almost exclusively on the "drenched with sorrow" side of the musical spectrum—perfect for the 20-something audience the film is going for, who ideally is as self-absorbed, full of angst, and just as boring and mumbly as the film's star, Teagan Johnston, a.k.a., "Little Coyote." Catherine also obsessively watches a series of lectures about quantum theory throughout the film (see recipe above), and later, during a phone interview for an online zine, she says, "I'm getting into quantum theory right now, looking there for inspiration instead of love or some fucking bullshit." (My paraphrase, but it's close enough). Eventually, the internet science lecturer introduces the concept of "string theory," (ah! the title reveals itself at last!), and talks about folding time and space—clearly this is an implied rationale for the haunting that begins to manifest, and it also connects to the odd diamond-shaped tattoo Catherine got just before leaving for the island.
The merest whisp of a ghost story plot begins to take shape when Catherine hooks up with Grace, an acquaintance and photographer, for a photo shoot. Grace takes her to an abandoned farmhouse that was the scene of at least two tragedies in the past (one of which we've already seen incoherent bits and pieces of in the opening minutes of the film). Grace takes LOTS of photos of Catherine, both outside the house and inside among the ruined furniture and peeling walls, while regaling her about the house's tragic past (see recipe above), and after that, Cath begins to see things—namely one thing—the silhouette of a man—first in a couple of the photos, then back in her own cabin. Open doors slam shut and then open again, dull thumping sounds wake Cath in the middle of the night, and once, she (and we) see a kitchen chair slide across the floor on its own. The viewer knows this is likely a man involved in one of the farmhouse tragedies, which Grace tells us was an accident—so lord knows why his ghost decides to latch onto Catherine, or why he'd become a malevolent ghost after his death.
Grace likes Catherine, and they suck face at one point in the film, so it's not surprising that when Cath asks Grace to sleep over so she doesn't wake up at night to more spooky shit all alone, Grace agrees.
Bad bad Catherine, for putting Grace in danger!
(Spoiler ahead: stop now if you're planning to watch the film).
Grace disappears in the middle of the night, and Catherine is so distraught she decides to take a shower outside and then walk into the snowy night completely naked while giving sorrowful looks at the camera, after which she decides she might need to go look for Grace. Fortunately she realizes this will require clothes. But she needn't have followed the clues left for her that lead her to the frozen shore and back to the cabin—Grace is there, in the unremembered basement room, standing on a stool with an electrical cord around her neck, while the shadow-man-ghost stands ominously in the corner. Grace tips the stool, Catherine catches her, but then the cord snaps and they fall, causing Grace to bash her head against the stool and die.
But this proves to be just the inspiration Cath needed to get her musical career up and running again! The final scene, which the credits artfully frame, is of Catherine singing her new song, "the Strings," not solo, but with a keyboard player backing her up!
I saw the edge;
I saw the end;
I saw the Strings,
they took my friend…
If you're into Teagan's music, you might absolutely love this otherwise incoherent mess of a ghost story, in which no rationale for what occurs is ever provided. Why does the ghost want to kill Grace? Why is Catherine so apparently devoid of normal human emotion throughout the film, other than the emotion she shows when being asked uncomfortable questions about her career, which—even though she snogs Grace a bit—seems to be all she cares about? Catherine's vocal performance at the end shows us how utterly devoid of sympathy for anything but herself she is—prompting me to say:
I saw The Strings, and it took 94 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
09/18/23
Full Review
Melissa L
This movie starts out with the image of a fat arm being tattooed. It only gets worse from there. Teagan is quite impressed with herself, but I'm not sure why.
You will spend half of this movie watching a big girl pose for a photo shoot as if she is Gisele Bündchen. And don't be fooled by the plot summary, which says that she is a very talented musician. She hits a button on a few keyboards and think she is Mozart, It is pretty gross, watching her smoking her head off and playing with her nose ring.
This movie is ridiculously self indulgent and just plain boring. The scenery is nice, though. I refuse to believe that all of the critics on rotten tomatoes thought this was a great film. My guess is that they were afraid to say anything negative about it because the star is an overweight woman who is also LGBTQ. It's a shame that is where we are. I miss being able to read movie reviews to decide whether I actually wanted to see a movie. Political correctness has taken that off the table.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
07/31/23
Full Review
Gareth M
A few tense moments that tease a potentially good movie ... But nothing really happens and the music is dreadful.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
06/26/23
Full Review
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