Pretty Good

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Make no mistake: This film has low ratings because its script, acting and direction is flawed to the point of ridiculousness. It has very few redeeming factors...if any. It promotes itself as cultural and diverse when all it really does is attempt to get on the non-Hollywood horror bandwagon after a slew of foreign 'subtle' horrors that both precede and exceed it! I am a fan of 'subtle' horrors...foreign or no. I do not believe you need extreme bloodshed and shock to make a good movie...although I do not deny the pull of such tactics. I like shock horrors AND creepy horrors. This film, however, tries much too hard to slot itself into a pigeon-hole that it does not belong in...and to be honest...does not deserve the right to try. Many 'subtle' horrors before this terrible crime on entertainment have left the likes of "The Tattooist" in the back seat, and many since...and for good reason. "The Tattooist" is boring, pointless and quite frankly; crap! It's good for background noise during a film night where the film doesn't matter since all you want to do is talk about your week. But if you're looking for a movie that will both keep you entertained AND take you out of the room? You can do better than this; believe me. Now go get yourself a real movie...not this weak sauce!

The Tattooist starts in Singapore where American tattooist Jake Sawyer (Jason Behr) is attending a tattoo festival, while there he sees an attractive woman named Sina (Mia Blake) & he follows to a traditional Samaon tattooing session. Jake is intrigued & steals a Samoan tattooing tool on which he cuts his hand later that night, Jake decides to fly to Aukland in New Zealand to find Sina & return the tool he stole but starts to experience strange dreams & visions. One of Jake's old friends gives him a job as a tattooist in his place, Jake manages to find Sina & they start having a relationship together. However the dreams & visions won't go away & Jake discovers that those he has tattooed are dying is mysteriously circumstances & strangely their tattoos have grown, Jake finally comes to the conclusion that an evil Samoan spirit is using him to kill those Jake has tattooed & since Jake tattooed the love of his life Sina she will be next unless the evil spirit can be stopped...This New Zealand Singapore co-production was directed by Peter Burger & I thought The Tattooist was a terrible attempt at a supernatural horror thriller, I thought The Tattooist was just plain bad from start to finish on so many levels. For a start it's very slow going, almost half the film has gone before anything even remotely horror orientated happens & the story just doesn't work for me at all. There's a Asian ghost story kind of feel about it as some vengeful ghost kills a few people & wants the world to know about the wrongs done to them while they were alive & the whole tattooing angle is just awful. The scenes between that fat Samoan tattoo master & Jake the cocky American are just embarrassing as it comes across as two duelling tattooist's trying to out-stare each other, it seems some like this film but I just found the seriousness of it all had the opposite effect on me & I thought it was quite funny at times. Then there's that little fat kid who can contact ghost's while driving along listening to a bad rap song, there are some bad moments here. There's also the moments when Jake tattoos people, they just sit down in his chair & the goes to work, they never say what they want or where they want it & then these people just get up & walk out without paying, I'm not being funny but if I was having a tattoo (which would be for life) then I'd at least want to pick the design & where it was going. Also during the opening sequence Jake's father cuts a tattoo from his arm, at that point surely Jake wasn't eighteen & he wouldn't have been legally allowed to get a tattoo so how did he have one? The romance between Jake & Sina feels as phony as a three pound note, the whole Samoan tradition's & belief's angle is dull & the twist ending is pretty bad as a collection of coincidences come together to solve a murder mystery of the lamest order.Now what I am about to write is only a personal opinion but I find excessive tattoos on a body absolutely repulsive, I don't care who i offend saying that but I do & I cannot understand why anyone would want horrible ugly pictures or patterns permanently etched onto their skin. I have nothing against anyone with lots of tattoos but I just think it looks repulsive & the way The Tattooist tries to place tattoos as a sexual thing (Jake tattoos Sina just before they have sex) & tries to sexualise them is something I could not relate to at all in any way. There's no real blood or gore here, a strip of flesh is cut from someones arm & there's a bit of blood splatter but nothing else. The Tattooist doesn't feel like a horror film either, the lighting is bright & there's no mood or atmosphere to any of this as it plods along.The IMDb says The Tattooist had a budget of about $3,000,000 which I find hard to believe as next to nothing happens, where did all that money go? What was it spent on? Mostly filmed in Auckland in New Zealand. The acting is average at best & no-one stands out as being particularly good.The Tattooist is a terrible horror thriller with a hint of Asian ghost story thrown in that revolves around the world of tattooing, it's a bad combination all round really as this is just terrible apart from a few unintentional laughs.

I thought that the Tattooist was quite a good horror movie. It was about an American tattoo artist called Jake Sawyer, who travels the world, exploring different ethnic themes in his tattoo designs. At a tattoo expert in Singapore, he gets his first glimpse at the exotic world of traditional Samoan tattoo (tatau), and, in a thoughtless act, unwittingly unleashes a powerful angry spirit. In his journey into Pacific mysticism, Jake must find a way to save his new love, Sina and recover his own soul. This ended up being a good horror film and i would strongly recommended it to viewers. And it also gave a good look into how Samoan tattoos are made.

What can I say about this one: you got a melancholic guy as the main character, who charts a course from South East Asia to return a stolen tattoo object to a traveling group New Zealand natives and also using this adventure as an opportunity to see more of this mysterious woman that he had first met while traveling with the tribes men only after he's pricked by the art instrument from a surprise encounter from a very disgruntled client. The prick from the instrument releases a murderous ghost who you could call "Oil boy" who's on a hellbent quest to restore his honor; Ghosts (shrugs shoulders). Well there's more and there's a twist that could be presumed as obvious that wasn't so obvious and that's why I had given it a 7 out of 10. My complaint about this movie is 1: in the beginning, the main character is a boy who has his inner left fore arm skinned from his Puritan-Priest like father because he spots a rather cool looking Pentagram tattoo nested on some tribal vines or something or other. The problem with this is that considering the main character is at an age where he got me by three or four years and assuming he was let's say 15 at the time of this tragic incident with his father would mean that the kid had to of had this tattoo professionally done somewhere which of course would be illegal and the tribal design itself with crowning pentacle wouldn't be in style until 1995 and it seems like this incident happened in 87'-but this is pure speculation. But stuff like this is important because when I watch a movie, I like to be lost in a movie and forget that I'm watching a movie. Anyway, point two with problem one is, despite the off time frame of this situation, is the fact that even if it's illegal for a pre-addy getting inked like that, it wouldn't of been uncalled for somebody to call Child Protection on the dad. I mean a kid with a skinned inner arm would catch attention since it would most likely be infected. Problem two with this movie and I don't know why this is the current trend is that they used Rap music for the main theme of the movie-Rap as in bubbly pop, cool for club casual play music. You know the happy up beat music crooned over by ignorant lyrics of non-sense. This had no place in the movie. IF you can overlook those points, then you have an alright ghost flick.