Tag: The Music Box

[EXPRESSO] The Nest (2019) | Scrambled, Scrambled Eggs

The Nest Il Nido 2019 poster.jpg

Oddly enough as it may sound, there’s not many italian horror movies screening in cinemas here in Italy.

So when i saw the trailer for The Nest, i was intrigued, even more because it didn’t look like one of those (relatively) cheap production when it clearly redubbed despite being filmed in Italy and with a lot of italians in the cast, like The Music Box/Il Carillon.

The story involves a wheelchair bound boy, Samuel, who is raised in this humongous estate, treated with a princely respect by his family and servants, all bound to the estate by a rigid set of rules set to ensur “the program” is respected at all costs. But Samuel feels more and more like a caged songbird, moved around by the wishes of his stern mother, even more restless due to the recent weird happenings and the arrival of a young girl called Denise..

The Nest is a movie with some good performances, a good atmosphere, an intriguing plot revolving the cultish family and the drama that inevitably festers in an enviroment like that, but it’s also a movie that reminded me of Hereditary. And i don’t mean that as a compliment, but here it truly feels like the horror parts were forced in by a producer, as they stick out like a sore thumb, underveloped, clichè and almost vestigial.

Then… the ending, which i’m just gonna spoil because it’s so fuckin stupid it deserves shame. Zombies. Out of nowhere, i’m sure the scriptwriter thought he established it before, but it didn’t, at all. I hate this ending because it doesn’t gel with anything, and reminded me of the shit Fragasso and Mattei pulled in the 80’s, i truly hate to say this about a movie with some self-respect and ambition.

Decent, but frustratingly uneven.

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P.S.: It’s worth noting that there’s another movie simply called “The Nest” , it’s a 2016 fairly obscure italo-swiss production (so it explains why they named this one “The Nest – Il Nido”), directed by Klaudia Reynicke, maybe more talked about after Love Me Tender, her new movie which had its debut in Swiss cinemas this 9th of august.

[EXPRESSO] The Music Box/The Carillon (2018) | Seeming Is Believing

The Carillon- The Music Box 2018 italian poster

It would be really easy to just dismiss this movie at first glance, just going by the cliched title and poster showing the stock “creepy lil’ ghost girl” and selling it (at least here in Italy) as “the horror movie that has frightened milions of spectators”.

And in this specific case, your assumptions would be 100 % correct.

The same trite story of a haunted object, a child coming in contact with the evil spirit contained within, and her foster mother fighting to save her from the entity. It really IS as predictable and clichè as it sound, and the execution is majestically bland, boring, not helped at all by acting that’s mediocre, at the very best, which isn’t often.

Even when the script basically gives up in the third act and events stop making any sense, it’s still so predictable you don’t even get mad or react at the stupid ass “scares”, the filler scenes where characters are told the same stuff they already know just so this can reach 90 minutes, or the forced (and undeserved) happy ending. It’s just that kind of pathetic, pitiful bad horror movie.

All of this is “crowned” by an odd italian dub (it’s an italian production, filmed in english language, not as rare as it sounds, though) that feels like a mix of a 90’s italian dub of brazilian telenovelas (not a compliment) and a sit-com, which is even odder for the italian actors in the cast, and makes the whole thing harder to take serious. Even more with the quality of production and cinematography, not notably worst than usual, but low enough that doesn’t feel exactly like a movie, or add to the atmosphere.

And no, still, none of this makes the movie unintentionally funny, just sadder and more pathetic, for everyone (me included). 😦

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