Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

When Netflix Movie Streaming works, it is wonderful.  Sure, there’s a lot of really bad stuff in the movie section, but occasionally you come across a movie you might not have rented at the video store or caught on TV that is actually pretty good.  Death of a Ghost Hunter fits somewhere in the middle of the independent movie spectrum, but the next two movies, Dark Rising and Breathing Room, sit solidly on either side of that middle.

Dark Rising is a fantasy flick that, while it has a promising beginning, soon can’t decide what type of movie it wants to be.  It begins with Vincent Vale translating an ancient text late at night.  He is interrupted by his daughter Summer, who can’t sleep.  He takes her back to her room and tells her the stereotypical bedtime story about a beautiful princess who grows up to find her prince, to which Summer precociously replies “Why does a princess need a prince?”  After Summer is asleep, Vincent returns to his text, but he inadvertantly casts a spell when he reads the words aloud.  Woken by the noise Summer runs downstairs into the study, which is flooded with green light, and screams, her father yelling her name.

I thought this beginning part was interesting; I liked the interaction between Vincent and Summer, as well as the hint about Summer’s mother being dead (the ancient text was a gift from her).  The next couple scenes also piqued my interest.  First we see three girls, one of whom is asleep, pull up to a bookstore.  The sleeping girl (Renee) is having a nightmare about another woman being experiment on in an extremely vague way.  The other two girls (Jasmine and Marlene) wake her up.

The third (and final) interesting scene concerns Jason, who is talking about his ex-girlfriend while holding a ring that she had returned to him.  I liked this scene primarily because for a while we don’t see who he’s talking to: he could be talking to himself or a friend.  The reveal of who he’s talking to, and the playout of the rest of the scene, was quite enjoyable, and gave me hopes that this movie could pull off a combination of comedy and fantasy.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the high point of the movie.  I won’t go into the rest of the plot, which just gets convoluted with plot points that are never fully explained (perhaps in hopes of a sequel) and campy scenes (the relationship between Jasmine and Marlene is particularly exploited).  While I do commend this movie for establishing its characters and sticking to them (something recent Syfy Saturday movie Infestation couldn’t do), what it does with those characters is uninteresting.  The camp tends to crowd out the fantastical elements, and none of it is ever very funny past the scene with Jason talking about his ex (Jasmine).  Any plot holes are likely to remain unfilled given the chances of this movie getting a sequel.

On the other hand, I was quite impressed with Breathing Room.  The movie’s basic concept (strangers thrown into a room and forced to play a sadistic game) has become cliche by now (eg. Saw and The Cube), but this movie has a lot going for it.  First, I enjoyed most of the acting; unlike Death of the Ghost Hunter, I didn’t feel like I was watching community theatre actors.  Second, I love what they did with a limited budget (reportedly only $25,000).  They kept the cast small, the movie has exactly one location, and all of the effects were practical.  People not into torture porn like Saw will be pleased to know that, while many of the deaths (and of course there are deaths) are gruesome, they’re not dragged out in excruciating detail; they’re always quick affairs, with the action often taking place in the dark and only the end result revealed.  Like all of these movies, there is a twist, and while it may not be a subtle one, I still kept wondering (even if the end result was in my top list) what was going on.

Finally, there is a style to Breathing Room that I liked a lot, which is the very clean environment and bland, business-like plaques and notes giving the “players” various rules and hints.  The first plaque that main character Tonya (#14) reads, with it’s crisp sans-serif font and friendly manner reminded me of Valve’s videogame Portal.

So, there you have it.  If you’ve been keeping score, I’ve come out slightly ahead in viewing enjoyment in this Netflix Movie Marathon.