WARNING! This post contains extensive spoilers for this movie. Watch the movie before reading! Or don't. You have been warned.
Neverlake (2013)
Unrated
IMDB Says: “On a trip home to Italy to visit her father, Jenny is thrown into a world of mystery, horror and legend as she is compelled to discover the truth behind all his secrets and lies.”
IMDB Rating: 5.4/10
Metacritic Rating: N/A
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A critics, 42% audience
Solee: 3/5
Mikey: 3/5
We watched this on Amazon Prime.
Solee: Neverlake starts with a very dramatic underwater scene and a voiceover reading of a Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) poem. Artistic or pretentious? What’s the difference?
Mikey: I think pretentious is in the eye of the beholder. But the real trick to doing it right is for it to matter. Like if we open with a quote about the meaning of free will, the movie better be something that contemplates the nature of free will. I’m not actually sure what this poem was about, nor am I sure I was listening. All I was thinking was “I’d totally play the video game that begins with this intro.”
Solee: It felt pretentious to me, but I honestly think the real problem might exist in me and my distaste for deep poetry. I just looked it up and according to
this site the movie was inspired by the poem, which is called “The Sensitive Plant.” Shelley lived in Tuscany, which is the setting for this movie. I suspect there are lots of connections, just like you want, but we aren’t cultured enough to understand or recognize them. Let’s assume, for the purposes of all discussion to follow, that we know we’re talking out of our butts. With that in mind, what did you think of the movie as a horror flick?
Mikey: Well, I think it was talking above its means (if that’s a phrase). I checked that site and see that the Sensitive Plant is her dad. His wilting under pressure was just so minor… he was kind of just an evil villain. Especially I was noting that trying to explain your crazy plan to someone while stalking after them and cornering them is not really the best method. P.S. two in a row with evil villain dad trying to sacrifice his daughter to his cause!
Solee: I certainly wouldn’t have described the father as wilting under his secrets. He seemed perfectly comfortable with those secrets right up until Jenny stole the idols and broke his plan. The other woman, the love of his life and the mother of his sick daughter, was more of a sensitive plant than he was.
Mikey: I think he wilted under the pressure of being drowned by medusa. Which I doubt was in the poem.
Solee: One huge glaring question I have is why on earth did he expend all the time and energy to raise this daughter in a (relatively) normal life? He sent her to live with her gramma and then to a fancy boarding school. She had NO idea anything was off until she came home for this visit. Why wasn’t she locked up with the others?
Mikey: Right. Or perhaps they all got that treatment… although they clearly got yanked at younger ages than she did. It actually got me with the reveal that they were her siblings. I was expecting her mom to be chained up, but I couldn’t figure out what the point was until they did that. That is probably on me, because it’s obvious.
Solee: The whole thing also begs the question … why was she able to get to age 16 or whatever before he yanked a body part off of her? She was the oldest … she should have been the first! Or was she not actually the oldest? Was she the last born … just looked older because she was able to age so much more before she was needed?? There are just too many holes in this story.
Mikey: No, it made it clear she was oldest… Maya was 4 years older than her, and at some point it was revealed Maya was 20 (so our 20+ year old protagonist was playing 16), and so the other kids must have all come after her. Here’s an explanation: since she was first, he started out wishy-washy (sensitive and plant-like), and put her out in the world in a normal life, but later on he was hardcore about it and just churned out new body parts willy-nilly. Then finally at the end he felt the need to bring her back in because they were desperate.
Solee: Meh. I’m not buying it. The movie is easier to watch if you think of it as a fairy tale and don’t try to make it make sense. I realized this as the point where she was tasked with swimming to the bottom of the lake to retrieve the bronze body parts. VERY fairy tale like task.
Mikey: That’s probably the case for a lot of movies. I think the magic of the lake didn’t entirely make sense. Why did she need surgical replacement, along with the magic statue deposit? Etruscans certainly weren’t doing surgical limb replacements. Though maybe that’s because she had this rare and horrible disease. Plus the whole group of kids that were really ghosts… I mean, that’s a thing you see, but I don’t know. They didn’t seem ghostly enough. Especially the two boys who were bad actors.
Solee: It was very clear after the bronze parts were removed from the lake that the medicine behind her surgeries wasn’t sound. She completely fell apart. I think the surgeries were only possible through the magic of the lake.
Mikey: Yeah… I whatever that. Speaking of fairy tales, “Isn’t she pretty? She’ll be perfect!” She was quite the kid-shoved-into-a-witch’s-oven in this movie.
Solee: Haha! I was just going to say that as a writer I was sorely disappointed in the clumsy foreshadowing in this movie. “She’s very beautiful. Perfect, I’d say.” is the exact line. They could have had the same reveal later without giving the whole game away if it had gone like this: “Isn’t she beautiful?” “Oh, yes, she’s just perfect!” Still a little awkward and weird, but not so much that it shines a spotlight on the upcoming trouble.
Mikey: I felt weird about all the interactions. I guess it’s the fact that these people (Olga & Dad) don’t know how to interact with kids normally, but so much was just them being unable to act normal. I don’t know. I appreciated the level of mystery we saw - I spent the whole movie working on figuring out what each weird thing must mean. But I think in the end, some of it was just people being weird (though there was a lot of mystery, and it did come together in reasonable fashion, rather than leaving a lot hanging).
Solee: There was a tiny bit of the you’re-not-my-mom, step-parent aspect that I think could have been utilized more effectively.
Mikey: She certainly didn’t do a lot of advocating for herself. But I identified. She felt very awkward in this very weird household. I’m not sure she ever actually ate food. I got uncomfortable with the sheer number of times they sidestepped a meal! In fact… I think they did it with literally every meal? They’d mention one, and then skip it for one reason or another.
Solee: Now that you mention it, that was super weird. They were so busy being shady about things that they never thought to just introduce her to Olga’s daughter and explain that she needed a kidney transplant and ask if she’d be interested in donating. I mean, seriously! This is the one organ they could have gotten through legit means. I am completely baffled as to why they made it so complicated for themselves.
Mikey: That’s certainly true. Although she could’ve said no, and that would’ve made her surgery all the more suspicious. But I think the best explanation is that they were wrapped up in the nefariousness of their existing plot, they didn’t consider more reasonable paths.
Solee: I guess so. Speaking of her surgery, my absolute favorite moment of the movie was when she was dreaming and lifted her nightgown to see the right side of her stomach missing. That was very well done. Creepy and somehow beautiful at the same time.
Mikey: You are scary. That was well done. When it happened, I thought she was having her kidney stolen, so I win. So, she did have a bunch of prophetic dreams. I feel like the magic here was kind of all over the place. Everything is magic!
Solee: You definitely win, because I had NO IDEA at that point. Yes. It was a grab-bag of magic/fairy tale/occult stuff. And odd medical stuff. Which reminds me while she was in the hospital after her “adrenal gland surgery” I made a note asking if this was going to end up being a Munchausen by Proxy story. It isn’t … but that would have been fun, too. Anyway, I’m all out of things to say about this movie. Are you ready to rate?
Mikey: Oh, sorry for no Munchausen. Okay, I can go for it. I did like the mystery that kept adding more confusing elements and then did actually explain them all by the end. I didn’t like the lake silliness, and I didn’t like her creepy father (as a character. Obviously I didn’t like him as a person!). Olga was a better character. Good twist. Don’t know what Medusa was doing in the movie at all. So all in all, I want to give this a solid 3 of 5. It held my interest with the mystery.
Solee: For all my complaints about plot, I did enjoy this movie … sorta. It was pretty to look at and quite dramatic, if you like that sort of thing, but it was actually very slooooow. I guess I give it a 3, as well. I’m trying to decide if I regret losing the time it took to watch it, and I’m just very ambivalent about the whole thing. That’s generally not a good sign for a movie.
Mikey: Yeah, definitely middle-of-the-road fare. Like roadkill burgers! Which reminds me, tomorrow we will be watching your pick!
Solee: I shall choose something delicious:
Ghosts of Darkness.
