Much ado about nothing

Rating: 6/10 (10 July 2007)

I just watched this on DVD and spent a lot of the time watching the DVD players time counter count out the 1hr 52mins this movie ran. The only thing that kept me watching was the excellent cinematography and dark atmosphere created by this film. This would have been better seen on the big screen, but for squeamish types the small screen is better.
Unfortunately that's all the 'ticks' I can give it.
This movie seemed to go nowhere. I was completely bored with the plot which advanced at a snails pace between a lot of completely unnecessary violence. My 20 year old daughter gave up on it due to the violence and left the room. There was absolutely no need for the graphic nature of this especially as it seemed to serve no purpose but to show the cruelty of the stepfather. This point was brought home to the viewers early in the film and did not need to be repeated over and over again.
Eventually the stepfather became a 'comic book' super villain, never smiling and, towards the end of the film becoming completely oblivious to what must have been incapacitating, extraordinarily painful injuries. This gave me the only laugh in what was a totally depressing film as these scenes of the stepfather at the end of the film were completely unbelievable and ridiculous.
The 'pale man' could have been an interesting character. The idea was great, make-up excellent but why wasn't he used more? Just as the scenes with him were becoming interesting he was gone, out of the film, not to be seen again. This was far too shallow.
The character of the housekeeper was stupid too. She gave herself away on many occasions but the stepfather never seemed to notice. I mean, anybody else who stepped out of line, just slightly, copped it big time as we so often saw throughout the film.
The young girl showed almost no emotion during the film. Where was her fear when confronted by the giant toad or the faun, or even the 'pale man'? (Aside - laughed out loud at the carefully daubed on mud during the toad scenes.)
To summarise, this was beautifully filmed but with an almost non-existent plot, stupid, unrealistic characters and wooden acting.