Movies
One of the films that kickstarted the French horror wave and rightfully so. Alexandre Aja shows what he's made off and launches a simple but extremely raunchy and effective horror flick. Blood flows, heads are severed and limbs fly with hardly an intro or outro to speak of. Horror as it should be.
Aja's latest isn't really a return to his roots, but it's definitely a film that limits his legroom. Rather than go full-out, Oxygen is set in a single, cramped location, with one principal actor and just a handful of flashbacks to escape the film's claustrophobic setting. One of those films where it's entirely up to the director to keep things interesting. I hoped Aja would've used this setup as an excuse for some audiovisual muscle flexing, and though he does his best I felt there was the potential to go a lot further still. Laurent does a good job and the plot was interesting enough, though not exactly very original. Oxygen is good, solid genre cinema with a little extra, but not quite masterpiece material.Read all
A surprisingly effective croc-chiller from Alexandre Aja. Not really a big fan of this particular niche, but Aja managed to make it tense and exciting. Crawl is little more than a neat little genre film, warts and all, but if you manage to look past the leaps of logic then there's a lot of fun to be had here. Not a must-see, but horror fans are sure to have a good time.
Aja's latest film has an interesting enough premise, but it quickly devolves into an "is it real or not" type of story. Those can be good when the execution is tense and gripping, sadly, that just isn't the case here. The "evil" is too bland and unimaginative, which hinders the narrative part of this film. It's a shame because the setting is lovely and Aja builds up a nice mood. The performances aren't too great though and the horror elements could've been more outspoken. It's not a terrible film, it's nice to see something new from Aja, but this is hardly up there with his best work. Just decent horror filler.Read all
