A Masterpiece of Human Horror Tragically Edited as a Horror Flick

Rating: 3/10 (5 January 2014)

Had the potential for eternal glory in cinema history, but the soundtrack, and the editing were off that badly. Luckily, if you're a person who can appreciate a stellar screenplay, directing, acting, and cinematography without paying attention to the afore-mentioned fumbled aspects, then you will love this movie.
Yes, it's horrific how the character's life changes and how if we put ourselves into the character's shoes, we realize this just may be the worst possible fear for anyone in his or her right mind. Unfortunately, just as I started to feel that, I got rattled by the strangely cutting in and out of the soundtrack and random objects flashing large against the screen. The lasting impact is that the mood was fumbled: Instead of taking horrific to mean the horror of realizing that we, as a species, hold that kind of sadistic torture in our souls, the direction shifts manically between the direction of a campy slasher movie, an experimental Bruce Connor kind of movie, and a pretty good cover of "The Passion of the Christ". Come to think of it, there may have been this kind of mix of editing styles in "Shame", but for some reason, it fit more smoothly there, possibly because the latter movie was more psychologically-rooted, whereas this movie is more situationally- and historically- rooted. So, the flashiness only takes us out of the feel. It's as if in the editing room, there was an argument about whether to try to capitalize on the hidden little art crowd or the larger shock- and-thrill audience, and they tried to capture both rather than trying to stay true to the movie's potentially independent spirit. Sad, but here's hoping for a new edit!!!!