Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Shabby-chic Supernatural Thriller 11-11-11 So Lo-Fi It’s Almost Endearing

REVIEW: Shabby-chic Supernatural Thriller 11-11-11 So Lo-Fi It’s Almost Endearing

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There’s something almost endearing about the creakily lo-fi quality of 11-11-11, the latest feature from Darren Lynn Bousman, director of Repo! The Genetic Opera and _Saw_s II-IV. The film has the feel of something conceived and whipped together in very little time, perhaps to make its own built-in deadline. It struggles with big ideas — about the apocalypse, the changing nature of faith and, of course, how a certain date allows for the passage of possibly demonic beings between the worlds — that it can’t possibly accommodate on its small scale. It’s a film with maybe a dozen speaking parts and supernatural beings that are clearly dudes in black robes wearing rubber masks that nevertheless tries to suggest seismic spiritual changes are afoot, thanks to the events it chronicles in a beach house in Spain (a country from which I can only assume the film received funding, as there’s no other reason for it to be set there and the travel opens up problematic time zone questions).

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