This is a shock akin to the opening of Psycho (1960) that abruptly kills off Janet Leigh 47 minutes into the film. Ciaran returns home, knows what she has done and the jolt is that he pursues her through the house and kills her. Left alone in the house, she promptly does just that – finding a body in a slab drawer (the significance of which will not become apparent to us later). Here Ciaran Hinds gives newlywed wife Abbey Lee the freedom of his house but warns her not to go into the one room. Scientist Ciaran Hinds and his clone wife Elizabeth (Abbey Lee) The fairytale has been previously filmed as Bluebeard (1944) and Bluebeard (1972). You become aware that the film is conducting a modernised retelling of the Bluebeard fairytale – first written down in France sometime in the 17th Century concerning a man who forbids each of his wives to enter a room and kills them after they break this rule. We are taken by the opulence of the home where Gutierrez delights in putting the furnishings, decor, lighting schemes, landscaping and wardrobes of clothing on display for us. There is the captivating opening where Ciaran Hinds brings his younger wife Abbey Lee home for the first time. Gutierrez has also written a number of screenplays for other films including Gothika (2003), Snakes on a Plane (2006) and The Eye (2008).īack in the director’s chair after an absence of six years, Sebastian Gutierrez creates an undeniably interesting film. Gutierrez had previously directed the thriller Judas Kiss (1998) and ventured into genre material with the mermaid horror She Creature (2001) and the vampire hunter film Rise (2007), followed by non-fantastical efforts such as Electra Luxx (2010), Girl Walks Into a Bar (2011) and Hotel Noir (2012). Sebastian Gutierrez was a name that was on the rise a few years ago and has made some reasonable genre productions. Variously aided and kept prisoner in the house by Oliver, Elizabeth begins to come to an understanding of who she truly is. However, as events repeat themselves, she kills him this time. Several weeks later, Henry marries another version of Elizabeth and brings her home, making the same stipulations. When Henry returns, he pursues Elizabeth through the house and kills her. However, when he is away, she ventures in to the room to find a laboratory with bodies in containers. Henry gives Elizabeth the freedom of the house but asks that she does not go into one room. It reminded me of a great line from the Simpsons: “It’s so simple… wait, no it’s not, it’s needlessly complicated.Elizabeth has married scientist Henry Kellenberg, an older man to her, and moves to his home where he lives along with his assistants Claire and the blind Oliver. Motivations that really fall apart upon closer examination. Instead, you are force fed a bunch of strangely elaborate motivations and plots by all of the characters that led to the current situation. Sure, you might not have gotten all of the details, but you could have gotten the broad strokes. It’s really just telling you a bunch of stuff that you probably could have guessed from the start. You keep waiting for there to be some kind of surprise twist, but… nope. Moreover, almost everything that is revealed to the audience is so very, very obvious, mostly from the good performances and visual storytelling at the beginning. You know how I’m a big fan of “show, don’t tell?” Yeah, this is a ton of tell that has very little show. The rest of the movie, which clocks in at about an hour and forty minutes, is mostly just a convoluted explanation of why Elizabeth is being cloned. See the plot summary I just wrote? That covers about the first half of the film. Looks great, sounds great… but is only mediocre.
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