This is a hard one to rate. On the plus side, the no-dialogue conceit works quite well, the slow pace is a virtue, and the lead actress manages to be charismatic even without any spoken dialogue. That said there are serious flaws.
-the movie looks like it was filmed on videotape, giving it a cheap, unwelcome brightness and sharpness to its visual look. I found this a distraction.
-too much of the extreme violence looks clumsy and badly simulated.
-while the story is properly simple, it still doesn't always make sense. At the halfway point the lead character is murdered, after the villains previously murdered everyone close to her. OK, except they needed her signature on a property contract--how does killing her solve this??
I'd say the film's second half is stronger, when the murdered woman emerges from the sea reborn, as some elemental pre-verbal creature to take revenge. The interlude with the young girl she befriends just after her resurrection is maybe the film's high point. But the flaws are glaring and keep the film from ever really taking flight. Also, yes I know we're in the extreme horror sub-genre, but why such fixation on genital mutilation? Is that needed to advance the story? Shock for shock's sake doesn't impress me. But in the end, I go back to the cheap videotaped look; making this on actual film would have been by itself a big improvement. So, not trash, but only partway successful.
-the movie looks like it was filmed on videotape, giving it a cheap, unwelcome brightness and sharpness to its visual look. I found this a distraction.
-too much of the extreme violence looks clumsy and badly simulated.
-while the story is properly simple, it still doesn't always make sense. At the halfway point the lead character is murdered, after the villains previously murdered everyone close to her. OK, except they needed her signature on a property contract--how does killing her solve this??
I'd say the film's second half is stronger, when the murdered woman emerges from the sea reborn, as some elemental pre-verbal creature to take revenge. The interlude with the young girl she befriends just after her resurrection is maybe the film's high point. But the flaws are glaring and keep the film from ever really taking flight. Also, yes I know we're in the extreme horror sub-genre, but why such fixation on genital mutilation? Is that needed to advance the story? Shock for shock's sake doesn't impress me. But in the end, I go back to the cheap videotaped look; making this on actual film would have been by itself a big improvement. So, not trash, but only partway successful.