Review of Ugly, The

Introduction

The Ugly, oh how I could apply that to many a beer induced pickup. Far from being a teenage conquest this time around The Ugly is the title of a movie said to be “on a par with Silence of the Lambs and Seven”. Comments such as this really do a movie no favours whatsoever. The expectations you have watching a film with this sort of comparison are very high indeed so it’s almost certain that the movie will fail to live up to the hype. Of course the movie studios only do this to maximise the impulse purchases but it can be very harmful to a person’s perception of a movie.

My expectations where somewhat knocked back into perspective a bit when I read on the back of the box “New Zealand Film Commission presents . . . “. This isn’t to mock the New Zealand Film Commission at all, it’s just I can’t remember the last time I watched a serious Australian/New Zealand made movie and enjoyed it. So could we be looking at a cross between Silence of the Lambs/Home and Away/Neighbours ? I seriously hoped not :).

Video

The back of the box reveals those two dreaded words . . . Full Screen! With the region 1 disc sporting an anamorphic widescreen transfer once again region 2 is treated as if it were the backwater of the DVD world. All the while companies fail to match the output in the States then that’s the way it will remain.

So a full screen image, not the end of the world if the quality is good. Sadly it’s extremely poor. I have seen many VHS transfers much better. Rather than go through the bad points of the picture quality I’ll save myself some time and simply say I can’t name a single good point. Now I don’t know if this is anything to do with budgetary constraints as if course it isn’t a big budget Hollywood flick however it’s pretty p*** poor.

The camera work is almost as bad, with there appearing to be some sort of focusing issue when switching from foreground objects to background and back again. The focus always seems a few seconds behind and many a time I had to wipe my eyes to make sure it wasn’t just me. This could have been a particular effect used in the filming but when you consider it doesn’t tie in with any key scenes you can’t really say that it’s anything other than poor camera work.

There are some scenes towards the end that use quite a cool effect but that’s about it.

Audio

A glorious Dolby Digital soundtrack, of the 2.0 kind :(, a very poor one at that. The subject matter would have really benefited from a really spooky Dolby Digital 5.1 track but has to put up with a very poor effort indeed. Oddly enough my amplifier picked up the soundtrack as Dolby Pro-Logic yet the rears were silent throughout.

Enough of the audio, endlessly forgettable unfortunately.

Features

When will move studios realise that Interactive menus and scene access does NOT constitute extras ? Also touted are cast filmographies and a trailer. Hang on, I’ll go get my champagne and celebrate the wealth of extras that floweth from this DVD!

To add further insult this disc contains no timing information whatsoever so you can`t even tell how long is left until you can go and watch something with some features. Even VHS manages this for crying out loud!

Conclusion

This movie tells the story of Simon Cartwright (Paolo Rotondo), an institutionalised killer who murdered his victims with a switchblade in cold blood. At his request a celebrity lawyer, Dr. Karen Shoemaker (Rebecca Hobbs), is brought in to the institute to try and ascertain if he has been cured or whether he is still a danger to society. This leads to a look at the killers past with the inevitable “don’t let him into your head” scenes.

Despite the awful quality of the DVD the story does is actually quite interesting in parts. Once you get used to the thick Aussie accents and start to look at the actual substance of the movie it does offer up some interesting material, particularly when looking at the childhood of the killer. Also the manifestation of the voices in his mind willing him to kill is pretty well done and does build up some tension towards the end of the movie. There are some very clever filming techniques used in jumping from the present to the past and back again.

The director (Scott Reynolds) has put some real thought into some of these scenes although this doesn’t hold out for all of it. It almost felt to me as if two different people handled the movie, the one that knows about movie making dealing with the killer’s background and a clueless one dealing with the scenes set in the institute. I would like to see what Scott Reynolds could do with a bigger budget as some of what he has done here is very good; it’s just a shame that his talents don’t appear to have been applied to the larger part of the movie.

The two main stars, the killer and the lawyer, are actually pretty convincing in their roles however what credibility is built up almost instantly disappears when other cast members are introduced. The staff at the institute are dreadful, as are allot of the people who pop up throughout the killer’s past.

So this movie is interesting in parts but never really shocked or surprised me and certainly came nowhere near the promise of being “on a par with Silence of the Lambs and Seven”. It shows the odd bit of flair here and there but coupled to a dreadful quality DVD I can’t really recommend it to anyone.