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I caught this in Lurdiak's stream last night. It's a much bleaker film than I expected, and the dead dog especially means I won't be showing this to family. Echoing STAC Goat's thoughts, there's something quite dreamlike about the film. The setting is this weird rich person hell castle, complete with weird traps, contraptions, and secret passages. The editing makes things feel very disconnected. There will be a scene where the kid escapes from Santa using some device, and then hard cut to them being at opposite ends of the house. It gives the film a very loose sense of continuity. The bad Santa himself seems to be the worst fears of the child and his mother. For the child, that his mother would invite in a paternal figure who'd threaten his inheritance and his grandfather's health (see also: Mom's assistant). For the mother, that her business as not just a working mother but a capitalist would not only keep her from protecting her family but outright endanger them. Santa vacillates between being terrifying, ineffectual, murderous and harmless. Is he just a destitute, mentally ill old man, or a calculating killer with a grudge? It seems like he's both, and it makes him less like a real person so much as a phantom. He's the ultimate enemy of the castle doctrine fantasy, and appropriate to that fantasy he's only finally dispelled when the man of the house fires a gun. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Dec 24, 2020 |
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Dec 24, 2020 22:07
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:26 |
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