The Worst Film Ever

A Major Disappointment

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

"Gothic" is a fictional account of a June evening in 1816 which purportedly inspired Mary Shelley to write "Frankenstein." It was at the Villa Diodati, with her soon-to-be-husband Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, and Dr. William Polidori—all important historical figures. During a storm, the group decide to have an impromptu seance, after which they are tormented by apparitions, visions, and bumps in the night.Criticized by some for being one of Russell's more outlandish works, "Gothic" is certainly bonkers —like a fever dream crossed with the literary works of its subjects. Total cohesion is impossible given Russell's aims here, which are far more impressionistic than anything else. The film works itself into a frenzy that mirrors the state of mind of its characters, under the influence of the monsters of their own minds, or of God's, or the devil's, or perhaps (according to some historical accounts), opium use. The film never clues the audience in to any of these; we are simply handed the madness all its own.There are some nightmarish visuals throughout and several notably disturbing sequences. Others are utterly bizarre and borderline comical, a line that seems to be toed quite finely throughout. Intimations of the characters' own inner struggles and demons are transmitted subtly and overtly: Miscarriages, lost romances, homosexual desires, and religious paranoia. The performances match the content in terms of their histrionics; Julian Sands is especially over-the-top as Percy Shelley, and the same can be said for Miriam Cyr and Timothy Spall, while Natasha Richardson and Gabriel Byrne are a bit more understated in comparison.In the end, "Gothic" is really one of those love-it-or-hate-it types of films. It is thin on plot and thick on impressions and visuals. At times the film feels like a haunted funhouse where things go bump in the night, and at others is far more grave and dark than its more tongue-in-cheek moments. For what Russell seemed to be aiming to do, the film accomplishes it with the help of each creature, apparition, and hysteric. As a deluge of human repressions, fears, and existential dilemmas come to life, "Gothic" is an appropriately bloody, dripping pulp. 9/10.

Gothic, directed by Ken Russell, is a rather interesting film that deals with, among other things, the dark side of creativity and imagination. More specifically, it's about the night when Mary Shelley came up with the idea that she would later turn into the novel "Frankenstein." By and large, the performances are quite good, although I didn't really care for Julian Sands. However, the story was almost non-existent and ephemeral, existing merely to have a bunch of people go around saying stuffy lines and get scared out of their wits by creatures borne of their imaginations. Granted, some of these sequences and images were haunting and surreal, but it all added up to a lot of style with very little substance. As far as the score is concerned, I thought that the work Thomas Dolby did was impeccable as far as its musical quality, but some of the cues didn't really fit (to me) with this kind of period piece. The story takes place in the early 19th century, but a lot of the music sounded very 1980's with synthesizers and programmed drums. It's a score that I'd buy, but I'm not too sure that it completely fit the film. From a technical standpoint, I thought it was very well-made, i.e., it was well-lit and the shot composition was varied. There were also some Dutch angles that accentuated the disorienting feel the filmmakers seemed to be going for. Overall, if you're looking for a well-told story that has characters you care about and identify with, this might not be the best choice for you. However, if you like heavily stylized and surreal horror, this will probably suit your fancy.

Ken Russell's "Gothic" has a title both redolent of itself and the literary genre whose birth it charts. The renowned English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Julia Sands), his soon-to-be wife Mary Godwin (Natasha Richardson), and Mary's highly-strung stepsister Claire Clairmont (Miriam Cyr) travel to the Villa Diodati in Switzerland to be house-guests of the infamous exile Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) and his fawning physician Dr John Polidori (Timothy Spall). After an evening of excess imbibing laudanum and reading ghost stories to combat the boredom due to being kept inside by a lightning storm, all five denizens of this house of horrors (the Universal-esque title "House of Byron" would have been just as apt) must contend with nightmarish hallucinations and come face to face with their innermost terrors.As a literary biopic, viewers may find Russell's trademark auteur-ial flourishes offputting, but they are well suited to the subject matter and the larger than life grotesqueries of the characters themselves. Gabriel Byrne portrays the club-footed and lascivious Byron with great relish, and is reminiscent of the gentlemen who essayed the role in the opening prologue to "The Bride of Frankenstein". Spall is twitchy and nervy as Polidori, barely suppressing his homosexual lust for his devilish master, and conflicted with the Catholic upbringing that teaches him such feelings are evil. Polidori would come to chart his leanings, and his tortured feelings for Byron, in "The Vampyre": in which the Western world's first literary bloodsucker Lord Ruthven is a thinly-veiled portrait of the poet.Julian Sands (the "Warlock" himself!) and Miriam Cyr give a good acquittal of themselves as a soppy and foppish Shelley and the hysterical Claire respectively, but the showpiece of the film is in my opinion the performance of the late Natasha Richardson as the nascent Mary Shelley, whose nightmares of her stillborn child and yearning to bring it back to life give birth (pun intended) to the legend of "Frankenstein". The sequence in which Mary sees a grotesque version of herself - looking spookily like Erica Blanc's succubus from "The Devil's Nightmare" - nursing a baby's skeleton in a crib stayed with me for a long, long time (perhaps i shouldn't have been watching this at eight years old..?).

Percy and Mary Shelley visit Lord Byron's Swiss retreat to stimulate their calloused nerve ends in a wild orgy of free sex, laudanum, and the sort of Freudian psycho-sexual hallucinations only true poets can conjure. All for nothing, since in his attempt to duplicate the unbridled amorality of the evening director Ken Russell throws in everything except a reason for making the film in the first place. Supposedly Mary Shelley was inspired afterward to write her novel 'Frankenstein', a fact simply mentioned in passing after everything is revealed to have been nothing but a collective bad dream. Like its characters the film is self-absorbed to the point of unintended parody, with lots of florid emoting, profound dialogue, and nauseating, drug-induced imagery meant to either shock or titillate the viewer. A generation (or two) ago it might have been considered a 'heavy trip', but in these jaded days the strongest reactions will likely be fatigue and embarrassment. A bad dream is, after all, nothing but a bad dream.