This is How Movies Should Be Made

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

I saw this movie several years ago with subtitles. It's a very dark and uncomfortable movie. I don't know that I loved it, but it was definitely interesting. However, I just watched it again and instead of subtitles, they dubbed the voices. OMG, it just ruins the whole movie. Shouldn't they be better at this by now?! It was like watching the old Japanese horror movies, like Mothra or Godzilla or Godzilla vs. Mothra (which BTW are campy fun). The dubbing was sooo bad that it was laughable. If you really hated this and were watching the dubbed version, you might want to try again with sub titles.

I read Ramsey Campbell's The Nameless a few years ago and I bought the movie on video when it came out. The film, a Spanish film is a dark film that does do the book justice. The film goes into very dark territory indeed, with child murders, mutilated bodies, a psychotic ex-boyfriend and a character (Santini) that just radiates evil. The story itself is filled with suspense when the mother of a young girl supposedly murdered begins to receive phones call from her. From there on, the mother, still grieving is caught in a game of cat and mouse along with the recently retired detective and a journalist who try to discover just who or what The Nameless are. I felt a little let down at the end though because I felt it all ended a little too abruptly, but other than that, I found the movie to be extremely creepy indeed. It still is one of the better horror film to come out of Spain though and I recommend it highly.

I thoroughly enjoyed much of this movie, but it is the careless of the directing that left me feeling short-changed. The characters are good and atmosphere excellent, however the director was very poor when he did his story boards and the reporter should have been introduced earlier in the film instead of appearing out of nowhere as a major player. Even if it had been a couple of very short scenes he participated in, it would have added to the flow and texture of the film.The director fails to paint his picture fully at times and substitutes convolution for story telling. And the denouement while effective is slightly illogical and ill-conceived. The final five minutes are inconsistent and lack cohesion, making the final scene lose any power. The director has created distrust with the viewer, and I for one went away feeling slightly robbed. A great build up let down by a lazy and ill-conceived climax.I give it good marks for the first three quarters of the film and for the great camera-work and moodiness. The film should have been slightly longer and much more better handled. If there is different version or director's cut of this film then I would like to see what it could have been!!!!

Somehow, because of the success of movies like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and SEVEN, some directors have jumped into the bandwagon and have come up with bad imitations of what psychological horror should be. Then again, maybe we should also blame H. P. Lovecraft for this as well, because a man who had a knack for creating pessimistic tales where unspeakable evils were unleashed in the name of Some Freaky God would eventually garner followers. And why not? People gravitate to what they relate to best. Lovecraft himself imitated Poe on several of his own stories, and Stephen King has reworked many horror classics without batting an eye.The thing is, not everyone can be as successful, and if you're going to create something our of a Lovecraftian universe (to mention a clichéd expression), it had better be truly horrific or it will be lost in translation. THE NAMELESS tells a story that visually starts out well but soon looses steam and ends up a complete mess. A girl is kidnapped and her body is found in a deep well, horribly burned beyond recognition. Only a physical deformity remains the identifying link -- one leg was four inches shorter. The mother grieves, her marriage soon disintegrates... and then, some time later, she receives a call. It's her daughter. She's alive.An interesting premise, but from here on the story becomes less and less horrific and more and more a by-the-numbers investigation which somehow never seems to involve the police (because of course, we need to place the heroine and the morally wounded cop back in the land of Fear). The fact that these two characters wind up where they do, and that the story unveils its bland denouement after so much build-up (with talks of "synthesizing" evil into some fantastic entity and a cataclysmic event, which winds up being a lot of mumbo-jumbo) is what makes THE NAMELESS fail: everyone moves according to plot requirement. If you're going to do a story that is supposedly that twisted, it had better drip conscious malice and make people squeamish. ROSEMARY'S BABY did just that in 1968 and nary a drop of blood to be seen. Hell (no pun intended), even THE OMEN, a rather mediocre movie about another Satanic plot, fares better. None of the "nameless" look particularly that dangerous, either -- little more than druggies who get their kicks smelling glue and cutting themselves to ease the pain. Would it that any of them could strike the menace that Mrs Baylock or those dotty Castevets did. Maybe Ramsey Campbell will like it. Assuming he understands Spanish.