Review - Director's Cut (2006)

Never before have I seen such a well-crafted, original independent movie before until now. Director’s Cut, though on the outside looks mild and temperate… the story itself is wonderful, brilliant and is like a spoof, of sorts, of self-aware movies like Scream. In a way, it even reminds me of Nightmare on Elm Street but I will get to that later. There were a number of things that made this movie work so well but before I get into that I want to briefly tell you about the movie and it may seem confusing but I don’t want to give anything away.

 

The story takes place in the house of an indie director and it’s about the director, the cast and the actor watching the finished product but when the movie starts becoming self-aware and starts showing scenes that were never filmed… things get weird. The tables turn when the actors in the movie start dying and the real life actors’ start dying as their counterparts do in the movie. Even the crew isn’t safe because the movie ceases to be a movie but real life. It’s sounds confusing as fuck but once you’ll see it, you’ll understand it.

What works is the plot of this movie. It’s a satire of the independent movie business and it plays on the fact that actors and directors will do anything to make it big and it’s almost a parody on independent filmmaking in general. The movie is self-aware in a fact because the main characters call their movie counterparts and try to help them, which is almost parodying the breaking of the third wall. The killer in the movie bares a strange resemblance of Freddy Krueger in the sense that he only exists in a dream world in a movie.  He kills the movie you while simultaneously killing the real you. It’s genius.

Acting wise, it can get really over the top and when shit starts hitting the fan it seems like the actors were doing a stage play rather than actual acting. Although, to be fair, it wasn’t bad… it was just awkward and there were times when the acting was just fine. It was only something that I noticed but it didn’t take me out of the film. The characters were very likable but the problem is, they did some stupid things which is a shame because it would have been much better had they known what they were doing a little more.

This movie was just a treat from start to finish and it was original and it was executed well. It’s easy to see the inspiration behind it and you can easily see the theme that it was playing off when it comes to Hollywood. It can get confusing but the movie doesn’t make it obvious to what’s going on and it keeps the audience thinking. The characters were well liked, despite some flaws and it’s just a shame that this movie didn’t get a release that it should have gotten. I feel like this is the kind of material horror movies are made off. This was an overall achievement and I highly recommend this.

Check out the movie here available at Cinedoo.