Not art but entertaining

Rating: 5/10 (5 September 1998)

Most of the reviews I've read have closely matched my own thoughts so I'm pleasantly surprised, still not being discouraged from my original angst and thus yearning to comment due to disagreement with others on the merits and bad points of the film are. This movie, as I said before, is not art. It doesn't want to be, I think. At least it doesn't go for pretension to fool people into thinking the movie has far reaching poetic ideas. But it is entertaining, to me. That is, mainly because the film exhibits a certain Gothic atmosphere I like. Not that it's terribly original in that (or anything else for that matter), but its gothic sense is pushed into overdrive later in the film, expresses some simple, not too challenging but interesting ideas, gives you an action climax which is loathable for it being an action climax, but entertaining in its setup and execution, interesting designs (I like how the ship is shaped like a cross) and some extreme imagery and style. Where the film excels, in my opinion, is its excessiveness. It pushes the gore and horror over the edge beyond what you would have first imagined, and gives you genuine terror with this concept and showing you in a somewhat restrained manner, how it is. This energy is good enough for me to enjoy the film without necessarily calling it a good film.