Pretty is about our eponymous lead (Melisa Kihtir), who is lonely and looking for companionship. She and her sister Emma (Saran Duren) live in a nice house in an affluent neighborhood, but beyond that Pretty doesn't have anyone else in her life. That changes when she hears the voice of a ghost at a neighboring house, whom she goes to talk to; and a mysterious person starts messaging her on Instagram. At the same time though, there have been intruders in her house. What could this mean? Are they there to do her harm? Is she imagining it? As she starts to learn more about this mysterious ghost, and this mysterious person messaging her on Instagram, these mysterious attacks become more frequent too. One night, while her two cousins are visiting after their parents were killed, the mysterious Instagram friend asks to meet her. Her decision to go out to meet him may be the thing that puts the rest of her family in danger.
Let's start with the fact that it is amazing that this film was not only directed by a 19-year-old, but he was the writer and DP as well, and this looks pretty decent and was competently made. We've seen people who are a lot older make things that look a lot worse than this. Also Melisa Kihtir was great in her first role, and a lot of what makes this work hinges on her performance. It's not perfect by any means though. The lighting in the night scenes look a lot like those early seasons of Better Call Saul where Jimmy would go to his brother's place, and his brother thought he was allergic to electricity, so everything was lit by lamps. You'd think a big, fancy house like the one the sisters lived in would have some nice overhead lighting. There are elements of the story that don't exactly work, especially at the end, where our heroine doesn't discover the truth on her own, it's given to her in an info dump, so we get this "put on your eye protection as the loose ends start flying together." With a two-hour plus runtime, we shouldn't need an info dump at the end, the lead has plenty of time to figure it out. There are also moments where the dialog doesn't fit, like when Pretty learns from Emma what happened to their parents, and she's upset, but her sister says "don't make this about you." Make what about her? Did we miss a page of script. Doesn't she have a right to be upset? All that said though, while this isn't perfect, there were a lot of tense moments, and the performance of Kihtir and the way Durecan shot her gives this a lot to hang its hat on. It's currently free on YouTube, so if the runtime doesn't scare you, this is a great way to support an up-and-coming indie director.
I think a big part of the reason why Duren's age makes this so amazing is, while it may not be perfect, if this is what it looks like at 19, what could we be seeing at 29? Or 39? If he stays in the horror genre, he could be one of the best ever. If he moves out of horror and tries other things, there's still a real promising career there. What's interesting at 19 though is there isn't as much world experience, and that's where you see a lot of the story holes. It's something I found with my own writing, especially with what was my first novel, Twenty-Nine, which I'm hoping to finally get out this year, but I wrote it when I was in my early 20s, and there were a lot of things in it that now in my late 40s don't sound right; plus, having published six novels in the interim, there's a lot more I know about writing too. On the other hand, the bulk of that book has stayed the same, and I think despite the holes in this, most of it was written well and still holds up too. Again, as Duren gets older, the stories he's able to tell will only get better, and he'll also get more experience behind the camera, so the sky is the limit.
Melisa Kihtir was Duren's muse for this film, as a lot of the scenes focused on her. Her reactions, walking in slow motion, sleeping, getting ready to go out, etc. Duren's cinematography combined with her ability to live in the moment made this the best stuff in the movie for me. Like when she's sitting in front of the door of the house that the ghost is at, while we can hear ghost, the rest of that is on Kihtir to make any of it work, and then Duren making sure he gets the right shots and cuts them together well. Another moment where this all came together was when the killer was stalking Pretty, and she was hiding behind an SUV. There were a lot of wide shots so we could see the killer lurking around, which required Kihtir to sell us on how scared she was with more than just her facial expressions, and she made it all work. For me, this movie could've been a half-hour shorter with no twist ending, and just focused mostly on Kihtir, and it would've worked even better than the end product.
I was looking at it, and this might be the first Turkish film I've ever seen. They haven't had one nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar yet, and that's probably how I would've found one if I'd seen any. We have reviewed a film that was shot in Turkey though, American Samurai, so at least we've been there on the site before. The interesting thing was I got the sense that this was supposed to take place in the US, or maybe the UK, even though it definitely wasn't either of those, so hopefully I read that wrong and it did actually take place in Turkey. The other thing was the decision to have the film entirely in English, as opposed to Turkish with English subtitles. While I would've appreciated it in Turkish, in the States I'd be in the minority, so the fact that Durecan could write well enough in English, and the rest of the cast could speak it, often with very little accent, is an asset they could use to break this film into the US and UK markets, which greatly enhances its earning power. I'm more interested in Turkish cinema now though, so I'll have to add some of their films to my already overloaded watch list!
Finally, I don't mean for this to be a regular feature on the site now, but this is our second CriticBridge movie, and the second time we have cellphone content. In this scene Pretty was messaging with her mysterious stranger on Instagram, and you can see the predictive text is showing the actor's name, Melisa Kihtir, instead, meaning she was using her own phone for any of the scenes that required a phone--except hopefully not when she had to throw it against the wall! I think you have to love it as part of the independent spirit when it comes to these low-budget indie productions, but also I don't use predictive text like that, so I had no idea it will suggest your name when you type "my name is". You'll also notice a tell that the characters are speaking English as a second language, when the stranger says "my phone ran out of battery." The phone doesn't run out of battery, the battery runs out of life, or as we say, "it's dead." Any kind of grammar detector won't catch it though, because while your phone can't run out of battery, people can run out of batteries. As someone who taught English as a foreign language, I know that phrasal verbs and idioms are the hardest thing for people learning the language to get, because they often have no rhyme or reason. "My phone ran out of battery" sounds like it should be right, but it isn't, and there isn't exactly a rule for why that is, other than you just have to remember it; but at the same time native speakers know it without thinking about it.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on YouTube, just keep in mind that the link on the IMDb page takes you to the middle of the movie, so make sure you start it over. I think this is well worth supporting, and I'm excited to see what both Metecan Duren and Melisa Kihtir do next.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt43378732
No comments:
Post a Comment