Strong and Moving!

Good idea lost in the noise

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

MACABRE is one of those tasty blood-gushingly psychological tortures in three neat and tidy acts. Even the trailer is hard to watch without looking away. Act One has two newly weds, Adjie and Astrid, with three of their best friends. Chill out, relax in Bandung, Indonesia. Head for Jakarta, but give a lift home to a strange girl who says she's been robbed. In her mother's house, we enter the pristine, bourgeois world of Dara, who insists on repaying kindness with food and drink. And torture. Once drugged, our guests enter a blood-dripping, nightmarish world of no escape, their bodies neatly sliced one by one and professionally packaged. Astrid gives birth. Dara's calm, sophisticated composure never breaks its stride. She coolly empathises with Astrid's pain before pointing out that baby and hubby will experience even more. Viewing permitted. As the film is introduced at the end of a all-night film programme, we are told not to worry if we are already tired. The plot is simple and nothing to fret over. "Pink blobs are people, red buckets are blood, and whirring things are chainsaws." A classic story where the point isn't revealed till the end, and the suspense, sadistic pain, and surreal nastiness doesn't stop for a second. A satisfying if rather colourful conclusion to the long night at Edinburgh's Dead By Dawn horror film festival.

One of the highlights of my Cannes 2010 festival, Macabre dishes up the deaths in very assured and bloodily violent form. In a nutshell: 6 young people end up trapped in a house with a very nasty matriarch and her equally nasty offspring. Yes, there is a reason why the baddies do what they do, but you need to see the film for that!It's true, as has already been posted here, Macabre does not break any new ground and perhaps jaded palettes will find little here to their taste, but like a well engineered German car, the film delivers the goods in messy style. Breaking with, say, the US tradition, those whom you think would or deserve to survive, do not, nor does the order of their going follow typical genre rules. Unlike in British horror films there is also no humour to alleviate the situation, although local audiences will clearly get a laugh from the stupidly bumbling police - I found them overplayed and irritating - who fortunately also provide more fodder for the maniacs!

I had the opportunity to watch the screening last night and wasn't expecting much.The plot review I had read on Yahoo Movies wasn't really anything new, the lead actress looked like a drag queen in need of a chin on the poster (even folks who passed by the poster was overheard asking if it was a man in drag) and you know it's not good when you have a movie marketed as a horror film yet find audiences laughing when folks get mutilated, or terrorized.I found myself annoyed when the victims writhe in horror when confronted with the killer. In reality, would anyone scream and writhe in apparent agony when the killer has done nothing to you but just stand there? This movie has a lot of the cliché stuff abundance in horror movies of the 80's where someone sees her friend being killed in front of her eyes and she does nothing but whimper and slow mo her way to the nearest door.The victims are portrayed as dimwits who when given an opportunity to escape, simply returns back for more; or with so much abundance of weaponry in the house, only walks through it (blood and all) yelling out to their compadres, hoping that their friends will hear them, as well as the killers.The portrayal of Darah would be so much creepier if she had not had that wig and perfect make-up on. The directors were hoping that Darah's signature cocking of head to one side while speaking in a monotonous voice would stick with audience. It sure stuck but for the wrong reasons because after the movie I found many people mimicking her to great hilarity. Basically every villain in this movie is too coiffed and good looking, even the fat guy! If they were living in a wooded area away from civilization, would they actually look like models? The movie also does not seem to know what it wants to be. Coming into the cinema, I was expecting a supernatural horror - it went from supernatural to natural to comedy and then to downright Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The mix in genre may be welcomed but it has to be smooth, not pop an overweight cop in the middle of the show and have him juggle.That being said, the director's eye was impressive and some of the cinematography were unusual. It is just the script and make-up that needs to be thought through more thoroughly than just "let's have her do this so we can end up doing that". Think international but more precisely think how YOU would be scared before making a movie that is supposed to scare others.

Hello, everyone. I had the opportunity to see Macabre on Friday night at the PiFan festival in Bucheon, South Korea, and I was overall pleased. It's a story that has been told a hundred times, but it has a good, suspense building pace, some good acting (great in terms of "Maya", "Adjie", "Dara", and "Adam") despite mostly cardboard characters, and some great make up special effects. In fact, outside of the steady build into chaos, the gore may be the best part of this movie. That and that deep, wide-eyed stare of "Dara's" that truly is creepy. Some of the movie is pretty perfunctory and formulaic; some of it is cliché; most of it is predictable; and there are some parts that you can't help but burrow your eyebrows and frown, thinking, "Well, that was just stupid..." Still, the directing here is very well executed, and the cinematography is spot on. Plus, again, the make up is great. Who doesn't like seeing several people slipping around in ankle deep puddles of blood while being chased by a mad woman waving a roaring chainsaw at their face? Solid Slasher Cinema.