Review of Don't Look Now (1936) by Jim H — 12 Oct 2012

I went into Don't Look Now with so-so expectations. Usually, I hate horror films but much indicated that Don't Look Now is more of a thriller-horror a subgenre I enjoy in most cases. It's smart and artsy indeed and the horror elements are only vague, yet there are not many thrills in it either.

Don't Look Now is mostly praised for its inventive editing techniques and I agree that there are a lot of scenes where the cross-cutting and montage-like editing creates some neat effects but after a while it gets confusing and exhausting to watch. It doesn't even help that the cinematography captures Venice so effectively and interrupts the rather boring quest of protagonist John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) for... yeah what for actually? He chases through the city, looking for his wife, dead daughter, a blind woman and her sister, and many more and although there's a sense of haunting in his behaviour there's never much suspense in watching him do his thing.

I give DLN more props for the technical execution than for the actual story. I guess this is another example of someone trying too hard to make a symbolic, smart and innovative horror thriller and got lost in his own filmmaking task.

PS: After reading some analysis pieces about it, it became clearer to me how everything unravels. Still, it's disjointed (although some of the uneven mood comes exactly from this disjointedness) and, after all, not very suspenseful.