Review of Don't Look Now (1936) by Zacho D — 23 Aug 2013

This is the type of movie where you just can't look at the surface and expect to enjoy it. This movie is complex, subtle, full of imagery, symbolism, motifs and themes that repeat themselves, etc. Figuring out the mystery is a large part of the fun and it's the type of movie that DEMANDS multiple viewings to truly understand what is going on.

And the movie is pretty damn great to begin with. The acting is top-notch and, believably, captures how the grief parents must feel when they lose a child. But they also involve some more supernatural aspects and seeing how those affect Laura and John in vastly different ways.

Laura somehow becomes at ease with her death, whereas John is still haunted, while in Venice, by strange visions of what he believes to be his daughter. It's a movie that's really dense. So dense, I don't even think I can begin to cover it here.

The movie repeats many of the same themes and motifs throughout. For example the girl with the red coat is featured prominently in John's "visions", water and glass breaking are also featured prominently as they help to keep in mind that the Baxter's daughter died horribly.

The glass breaking is used to represent that something bad is about to happen, as glass breaks before certain events in the movie, and the water, of course, represents where the daughter drowned. So they never let you forget what has happened, and they bring it up constantly.

But it's done in very clever ways, and it doesn't feel intrusive. I did think the movie dragged a little once Laura went to England to check on their son. One of the things that I very much liked about the film was how, at the beginning, John sees a photo that has someone wearing a coat the same color as his daughter is wearing right at that moment, and ink spills over the person.

It's red ink so it, obviously looks like blood. This worries John, who hurries out to find that his daughter has fallen into the lake. Of course this brings up questions as to why would there be blood if she drowned? This is where Venice comes into play.

And this part will be SPOILERRIFIC, so you can just skip ahead to when I say the spoilers are over. The visions he's having of what he believes to be his daughter aren't that. He's actually having visions of his own death and he doesn't realize this until it's absolutely too late.

It's an incredibly smart twist that seems unassuming, except it's anything but. It adds a whole new layer to the film because what you thought were visions of John's daughter, weren't really visions.

It was just that the serial murderer that had been killing people left and right, in a little subplot of the film, uses the red coat to lure the victims into a trap. John Baxter, not having fully grieved his daughter's death yet, really does believe he's seeing his daughter and that she's trying to reach out to him.

That makes the ending particularly bittersweet in that regard. SPOILER END. This review is already long enough and I haven't even gotten into as much detail as I could on the film's complexities and its themes.

But this is the type of movie that can, and SHOULD, get better with repeated viewings, when you can peel back more and more layers of the mystery. The acting is top-notch, the score is cool and gives it a creepy feeling, and the editing blurs the line between what is real and what's not.

Top-notch thriller right here. It requires a little more brainpower than a lot of mainstream psychological thrillers, but it's a film that will reward you with each viewing. Highly recommended.