After just 10 minutes, this film already felt like it was too long. After a half hour, I wanted Jigsaw or those Eastern European guys from Hostel to show up and start torturing people to death. After an hour, I was stupefied by the vacant nothingness pouring out of the screen. And when Lying at long, long, long last came to an end, the only emotion I could feel was aggravation at being 94 minutes closer to death with nothing at all to show for it.
This movie was apparently filmed without a script...or at least I certainly hope it was. If there had been a script, it couldn't have been more than 20 pages long because Lying is about 10% dialog, 20% movement and 70% silence. If any of the cast had been able to read a screenplay in advance that told them how much time their characters would be standing mute, they probably would have found something better to do, like scrubbing their toilet bowls or rearranging their sock drawers.
The story, if you can call it that, is about 5 women spending a weekend in the country. Four of them are in one big house and the fifth is in another big house across the way. The four lounge around like they've been drugged, play dress up and videotape the world's worst anti-hunger public service announcement. The fifth stands out in the yard waving semaphore flags around. One of the four tells some innocuous lies and when the other three find out, they drive back to the city. The end. Yeah. That's it. The end. I'm not being sarcastic. That really is it. Seriously. The end.
For quite a while, I kept thinking there had to be some point to Lying. Surely, I thought, nothing could be this vacuous without a purpose. At first, I expected it to turn into a horror movie where the lying woman kills the other three. Then I hoped that maybe they'd all get naked or something. Finally, I was reduced to waiting for the camera to pull back and reveal the whole thing took place inside the snow globe of an autistic child. No such luck.
Lying feels like it's made up of nothing but deleted scenes. If it were a 15 minute long film festival entry, it would be boring. At an hour and a half, it's practically anesthetizing. If you showed this movie to a small dog, it might go to sleep and never wake up. There's simply nothing going on here.
I suppose the actresses here do fine enough work, though they might as well be portraying cigar store Indians for all there is to their characters. Non-writer/director M. Blash's use of a hand held camera also demonstrates that he's seen the jillion other movies shot with hand held cameras since the late 90s, though that appears to be the extent of his experience as a filmmaker. The movie is well lit, though this is the first time a film has ever been so lacking in any redeeming features that I've been reduced to praising the lighting.
There's a lot of prejudice out there against so-called "art house" cinema. Nonsense like Lying is one of the main reasons it exists and is so prevalent. If you told someone this was good, not only would watching it probably sour them on "art house" films for the rest of their lives, that person likely wouldn't speak to you ever again. This thing fits the old joke that the only people who should ever see it are convicts on their way to the electric chair, because it will make their last moments seem like an eternity.
In case I've been too cryptic, this movie is terrible. Don't ever look at it, even it someone else is paying.
This movie was apparently filmed without a script...or at least I certainly hope it was. If there had been a script, it couldn't have been more than 20 pages long because Lying is about 10% dialog, 20% movement and 70% silence. If any of the cast had been able to read a screenplay in advance that told them how much time their characters would be standing mute, they probably would have found something better to do, like scrubbing their toilet bowls or rearranging their sock drawers.
The story, if you can call it that, is about 5 women spending a weekend in the country. Four of them are in one big house and the fifth is in another big house across the way. The four lounge around like they've been drugged, play dress up and videotape the world's worst anti-hunger public service announcement. The fifth stands out in the yard waving semaphore flags around. One of the four tells some innocuous lies and when the other three find out, they drive back to the city. The end. Yeah. That's it. The end. I'm not being sarcastic. That really is it. Seriously. The end.
For quite a while, I kept thinking there had to be some point to Lying. Surely, I thought, nothing could be this vacuous without a purpose. At first, I expected it to turn into a horror movie where the lying woman kills the other three. Then I hoped that maybe they'd all get naked or something. Finally, I was reduced to waiting for the camera to pull back and reveal the whole thing took place inside the snow globe of an autistic child. No such luck.
Lying feels like it's made up of nothing but deleted scenes. If it were a 15 minute long film festival entry, it would be boring. At an hour and a half, it's practically anesthetizing. If you showed this movie to a small dog, it might go to sleep and never wake up. There's simply nothing going on here.
I suppose the actresses here do fine enough work, though they might as well be portraying cigar store Indians for all there is to their characters. Non-writer/director M. Blash's use of a hand held camera also demonstrates that he's seen the jillion other movies shot with hand held cameras since the late 90s, though that appears to be the extent of his experience as a filmmaker. The movie is well lit, though this is the first time a film has ever been so lacking in any redeeming features that I've been reduced to praising the lighting.
There's a lot of prejudice out there against so-called "art house" cinema. Nonsense like Lying is one of the main reasons it exists and is so prevalent. If you told someone this was good, not only would watching it probably sour them on "art house" films for the rest of their lives, that person likely wouldn't speak to you ever again. This thing fits the old joke that the only people who should ever see it are convicts on their way to the electric chair, because it will make their last moments seem like an eternity.
In case I've been too cryptic, this movie is terrible. Don't ever look at it, even it someone else is paying.
