Tag Archives: oliver-stone

Recap:

So there is this guy and his family, and they are expecting guests. Then there is this home invasion, and we assume that these invaders are the escapees from the madhouse they have mentioned earlier.

Well, yes, what do you do if you’re a Vietnam veteran who does small jobs in the movie industry. For example you could co-write and direct a horror movie, why not? How hard can it be? Actually it was quite hard, there is an abundance of stories about what a stupid idea it was to have the whole cast and crew live in the house which was also the movie location, and how difficult it was to get a copy of the movie and bring it back to the USA. The biggest problem however was, in my eyes, Oliver Stone himself. Later on he became the award winning darling of many (not really including me), but back then he hardly knew what he wanted nor what he was doing. Yes, the movie is both quite suspenseful and surreal, I have seen so much worse, but on the other hand I constantly get the feeling that I am looking at an attempt to create arthouse horror with a talent which may be huge or not but which is so totally not honed. It sure is worth to give it try for reasons of curiosity, but I really say it’s rather so-so. There are movies which were made with lower standards that I enjoyed more because they actually met these lower standards.