Background context: directed and written by Maximilian Von Vier who also directed The Host (2011) and Sanctuary (2011).
One of the worst movies I ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes on was Suicide Club (2017) directed by Maximillian Von Vier. Not to be confused with indie Japanese satirical horror film, Suicide Club (2001) directed by Sion Sono.
The film follows a young woman (Liz) who has terrible social anxiety and stays cooped in her apartment room. She's very suicidal and hears about a website called "Suicide Club" from her friends. She joins the website and finds herself having to provide a name to kill or she dies. She then starts to suspect that another resident of her apartment complex is a serial killer behind all of this.
I'm going to break this criticism into 4 different sections: Pacing, character development, plot, and cinematography.
Something that immediately bothered me about this film was the weird unnecessary time skips. I don't know how else to articulate what I'm talking about other than they show something insignificant and then skip like 17+ hours. Maybe it was to show how long she was cooped up in her apartment, but they already established that. Her room is a mess, she orders everything online, and refuses to show her face to the delivery man. It's obvious she doesn't go outside they don't need to shove it down our throats with these pointless time skips. The pacing otherwise was okay, nothing really notable
The character of Liz becomes flat towards the climax of the movie. At first I found her character to be pretty realistic but as it went on it just became another cookie cutter 2 dimensional "we must save humanity" heroine. Plus her confusion of the club's motivation drives me insane. The website literally states in big bold red letters "KILL OR BE KILLED" and yet she becomes oh so surprised when she finds out she has to kill people in order to survive. Her love interest is dull and I didn't care for him, so honestly I have nothing to add to his character.
The plot has so many holes call it swiss cheese. Firstly, she discovered the website on the dark web (which she accessed just by looking up "how 2 get 2 dark web") and then acted disgusted when she saw videos of people "killing themselves". ITS THE DARK WEB?? You see worse shit on Liveleak which, by the way, isn't the dark web. Secondly, I don't understand the club's intention. So you select someone to be the next victim and then these men in sh*tty masks break into their house with guns and tell the victims to take poison, slit their wrists, or whatever and they film it like it's a suicide. 2 questions, if you have the gun then why don't you just murder them yourself? Why make it look like they're committing suicide? They're already wearing masks and they most likely won't get caught have you seen what people can get away with on the dark web? And my second question is why do the victims take the poison or whatever? If they have guns, I'd rather get shot in the head than killing myself slowly. Also it would be more evidence for the police of foul play. It's so goddamn stupid I can't even begin. Plus the whole "its not the website its one guy" thing was a major let down. Also the name doesn't make sense, it's not suicide nor a club.
Lastly is the cinematography. Visually dull, barely any blood, the violence looks fake as hell, and the camera shots are plain. Normally, I'd give indie movies a lot of grace for not having good special effects. good special effects doesn't equate to being a good film. But when it's a bad film AND bad effects, it's a visual and auditory eye sore. Plus the movie focused too much on the self exploration than horror aspect that considering this a horror movie should be punishable by death.
Overall, I rank this movie a 2/10. I understand where they were going for with the anti-suicide message but it really just fell flat and i don't think it was executed (pun unintended) well. I do not recommend this movie if you're actually seeking out a good film, but if you want something to laugh at then by all means go for it
but hey that's just my opinion, what are ur thoughts?
[EDIT]
Ended up finishing the film and it was very pointless. It was dull, lifeless, and not even a horror film. It was just a drama. And thats fine, great even. But it's not horror
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