Social Bookmarking
[The Daisy Chain]
Plot:Following the death of their baby daughter, a couple take in a disturbed and orphaned autistic girl called Daisy, only for a series of strange occurrences to start taking place linked to the girl.
Cast:Samantha Morton,
Steven Mackintosh.
My Thoughts:Has it's moments.
Review:"The Daisy Chain" follows a couple who after the death of their first child from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), move to the countryside, and from there, take in a strange little girl named Daisy. While the female half of the couple seems to really be attached to Daisy, the rest of the people in the rural village where they live aren't. They believe Daisy is a strange, supernatural even, entity.
That should be kept away from everyone. But now that Daisy has been taken in, is this couples nightmare just beginning? "The Daisy Chain" is certainly the strangest sinister kid horror film I've ever seen. The movie doesn't necessarily play by a set of pre-conceived rules, but it follows the usual pattern of films like this. Creepy little girl? CHECK! Gullable and naive adults who take her in? CHECK!
The decision eventually turning tragic? CHECK! A kid with bad intentions, tugging at the heartstrings so she can worm her way into the lives of two unsuspecting people? CHECK! All of the standard twists and turns that devious-child horror films usually, take, "The Daisy Chain" has all of them. The films main problem though is that the characters are extremely weak. Even Daisy to an extent. Granted, the character of Daisy is creepy, weird, odd, strange, and sinister-tinged in many ways, but you just don't get that bad feeling in the pit of your stomach whenever she shows up on screen.
Kind of like the feleing you got when Damien showed up on screen in "The Omen" (original), or even more recently, Esther in "Orphan". Daisy doesn't do much except repeat the line "play with me" a lot, and she manages to take out one or two annoying kids in a freak accident that of course gets blamed on her, and further builds upon her dark mystique throughout the village. But the reality is, the scene isn't very effective because Daisy doesn't seem to have a strong enoguh hand in the accident.
Killer kid movies work because they make it well-known that the evil child in question had a definite, hand in all of the demises of the main players. But in this film, peoples own fear of Daisy seems to end up getting them killed or hurt. And then you have to factor in what kind of people these are. Rural, countryside types. And considering how superstitious these sorts of folks usually are, this even further hurts their credbility and the films credibility, when it comes to making Daisy a genuinely scary character, and or young murderess.
If you're looking for bloody kills and or gory demises in this film also, do indeed look further. This movie doesn't have any...zero...zilch. There hardly are any deaths in this film actually. Most of the movie is spent building up Daisy, and slowly unraveling her mystery, like who, or what she really is. As for her origins, I won't spoil that here, but it seems the filmmakers couldn't decide on one or the other, so they made her two things.
And what they did sounds really dumb, everytime a character in the movie speaks the word, or it rolls off of someone's tongue. And it makes the film take a "Peter Pan"-ish turn, which the filmmakers manage to save only by adding enough of a sinister tone and tinge to it. However, what saves this movie from being a pretty bad, and slightly wasteful supernatural-evil-kid film, is the finale. The finale is pretty intense, disturbing, and somber and sad as well.
The ending is actually quite perfect. It ends on a dark note, a very powerful note also, and is the most well-played part of the film. Which makes me wonder, why wasn't the rest of this movie as well-played and perfectly structured as the ending was? Why all the lolli-gagging, and beating around the bush? Had the filmmakers shown as much moxy, gumption, and bravery with acts 1 and 2, as they showed with act 3, maybe this film could've been a scary little indie gem. Instead, it just wastes too much time, and too much story. And by the time the film ends, you're totally engrossed, and really wish it had gotten truly scary way earlier, instead of just as the 70 minute mark.
Positives:The final 20 minutes was terrific.
Negatives:Everything before the final 20 was quite boring, and just seemed afraid to take any real risks. It's as if someone is slipping from a cliff edge, and when they go completely over, you leap into action to save them. That's how this movie felt, it waited way too long to get good.
Overall:Two stars out of four.
(
Talk about it in the Forums!)
(
Back to the main page)
