Absolutely phenomenal

Rating: 9/10 (11 March 2006)

Aja hits you out of nowhere in the beginning, then spends a while with the characters after seeing exactly what's in store for them as you're getting to know them makes this probably the most unnerving film I've ever seen in theatres. The pacing and the atmosphere were right on target. People's complaints about the characters "pointlessly bitching and moaning at each other" were just what I thought they'd be, a great way of making them feel like real people and not clichés. I don't have any siblings, but I have two step-sisters, and the way they act around each other mirrors the interaction shown in the film beautifully. We all engage in petty bickering with the ones we love, especially under certain circumstances, and although it may annoy the hell out of us there will come a time when we wish those people were there to annoy us. I loved how well Aja showed this. It added so much more impact to the horror. The fact that I was teary-eyed at the end is a testament to Aja's characterization. Michael Bailey Smith needs to play Jason. Pluto was so damned cool that I couldn't help but love him even after he'd made me hate him. He gave me a chance to see what it was like to see the Jason of the 80's on the big screen. Aja's direction is spot on. I love his contrasts. Inter-cutting glimpses of deformities during the main titles with warm-hearted music playing over it to show the shift that happens in the area after the nuclear testing; the beautiful shots of the desert landscapes to offset the ugliness that lies within them; the use of visceral music that you almost feel more than you hear that keeps that sick, uneasy feeling in tact throughout the film, countered by the heroic orchestral themes used when the victims start to fight back... The political themes were a bit heavier than I expected, but Aja integrated them into the story without having them consume it. The film does have one scene in particular that has a great message about creating your own problems that applies heavily to the world today. I love Aja's use of things that have been done before in these types of films, such as the area where the killers keep the vehicles of people that came to their land and never made it back, this time showing them in a huge pit with crows everywhere to add a further sense of eerieness to the atmosphere. The fight scenes were incredible, and brutal enough to keep it from turning into an action movie. They don't feel choreographed, they reflect the mental state of the killers, and the victims after what the point that the killers drive them to. Aja's ending works both ways. I felt the same joy the family did when the survivors were reuinted, but Aja still left that sense of dread that there's still more members of another family out there lingering. I was going in expecting as close to perfection as it gets, and that's pretty much what Aja gave me. Anything I found wrong with the film was just a minor nitpick, Aja went a little nutts with the jump scares, but they still worked on me, which they often don't; but he delivered a film that made me feel the same brutality, intensity, terror, sorrow, and joy of what the characters were going through like films ever have.