colin sproule :-);-)

Just landed back at the home­stead after Must Love Death. This will be my first mini review from this years Cal­gary Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val (CIFF).

The best thing that ever hap­pened to Norman’s depress­ing life was being hit by a car. He starts a rela­tion­ship with the dri­ver, a beau­ti­ful young woman named Jen­nifer whose life is equally trou­bled. The love affair ends when a mis­un­der­stand­ing with Jennifer’s boor­ish on-again-off-again boyfriend finally pushes Nor­man to con­sider sui­cide. He answers an ad look­ing for four like-minded peo­ple to plot end­ing their lives in a mass sui­cide, but when he arrives at the meet­ing, the alleged sui­cides turn out to be a cou­ple of tor­tur­ous, though incom­pe­tent, mur­der­ers look­ing for a will­ing vic­tim. Nor­man is forced to fend for his life, and a com­i­cal and macabre fight against death begins.

 

MUST LOVE DEATH is an anti-romantic com­edy that art­fully blends two oppo­site gen­res, roman­tic com­edy and extreme hor­ror. Ger­man writer/director Andreas Schaap’s first fea­ture film is truly orig­i­nal, deliv­er­ing a twisted, genre-bending thrill-ride of a date movie.
calgaryfilm.com

I have to dis­agree with the above descrip­tion. Must Love Death does a poor job of blend­ing two gen­res. In fact it sim­ply jumps between tor­ture scenes and roman­tic scenes. Never the two shall meet in this movie; either some­one is hav­ing their arm nailed to a chair or you’re watch­ing the guy work up the courage to kiss the girl at her door step.

The roman­tic com­edy bits were a drag, it felt like I was trapped in a bad chick flick for a good chunk of the movie. Part of this was due to the fact that all the com­edy was actu­ally hap­pen­ing in the tor­ture scenes. Out in the woods where our vil­lains are tor­tur­ing young folk their were some solid laugh out loud moments.

Over­all the movie was just too dis­jointed with­out much car­ry­ing you from scene to scene. If they’d ditched the romance and just gone for a torture-comedy-horror it would have had my full attention.

Rat­ing: 5/10

As a side note the film was screened at the Plaza and there were some prob­lems with the short film that played prior so it was cut off half way thor­ough. It also appears that they pro­jected the Must Love Death screener DVD. A few times through­out the movie there was copy­right text over­lay­ing the bot­tom of the frame. It wasn’t overly dis­tract­ing and but CIFF was hand­ing out free tick­ets on the way out as a ges­ture of good will. I’m impressed with the CIFF orga­ni­za­tion and vol­un­teers as usual.