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The traditional way of making beef jerky.
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At a glance:
"Holy cow!" is the obvious, blasphemous and yet appropriate
response to this very unrewardin movie. There are crowd-pleasin
blockbusters and there are niche-market, art house indies. Then there are
films like
Isolation, ones that befuddle the human mind to no end.
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Essie Davis gets to grace this poster.
Others I've seen feature Ruth Negga. |
Bad news on the doorstep:
So
befuddlin was it that it befuddled itself into the hearts of several
film festival judges and won some mediocre horror movie awards even! How do we
make heads and tails of this one? It's essentially a
one-sentence movie - a full-length feature about a mutant cow foetus
terrorisin an Irish farm. Oh wait – there's actually a few of them, but
one was particularly difficult to capture. In any case, it's about Dan
Reilly (John Lynch), an Irish farmer whom we are told is a little short on money.
It soon transpires through Orla (Essie Davis), the vet, that together
they have been workin for mad scientist John (Marcel Iures) in bizarre
biological experiments involving cow-breedin. Meanwhile, a young couple
(Sean Harris and Ruth Negga), runnin away from an unknown
enemy, enters the fray when Dan experiences trouble with a calf and asks
for help. Soon however, the fate of everyone on the farm becomes
inextricably linked with a missin cow foetus.
Reminds me of:
The now-defunct Cathay-Keris distribution arm in Malaysia. When I watched this in 2007 under their limited release, this
movie was showin at one solitary cinema nationwide, givin its film
title the most fittin tribute ever.
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| I have no clue what's goin on here. |
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| Or here. |
I can't remember if I cried:
Havin such an
unusual plot, this was bound to provide at least some shock
entertainment, you'd think. So many things were out of place however,
when shock turned to schlock within the first 30 minutes, the most
frustratin being the characters which are so painfully disengagin. I
couldn't be bothered if they died, lived, won the lottery or turned into
lactatin mutant cows. With no real protagonists, coupled in with a
claustrophobic settin, the appeal became very limited. The ecological
arguments of genetic tamperin in this movie were already lost – not on
merit, but attention – by the time the crawlin foeti stopped makin you
go 'euww'.
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
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| Ruth Negga |
There's one savin grace - the traditional FX. This would've been a straight-to-DVD
feature if the cows were anywhere near digital. What we get to see is
quite graphic – say, a vaginal checkup performed on a cow – and the
details of the goo, gum, teeth and blood are a nice touch. Bein so
stickily real, the movie however shot itself in the hoof (ha!) again
when the screenplay didn't allow for a fuller view of the mutant cow in
question. Well, it did teach me about how swingin a newborn calf around
your head from its hind legs is supposed to accelerate blood flow to
the heart. Moo-ving stuff, eh?
★1/2
Bonus material:
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Like this character, I was drowning in the movie.
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Havin such an
unusual plot, this was bound to provide at least some shock
entertainment, you'd think. So many things were out of place however,
when shock turned to schlock within the first 30 minutes, the most
frustratin being the characters which are so painfully disengagin. I
couldn't be bothered if they died, lived, won the lottery or turned into
lactatin mutant cows. With no real protagonists, coupled in with a
claustrophobic settin, the appeal became very limited. The ecological
arguments of genetic tamperin in this movie were already lost – not on
merit, but attention – by the time the crawlin foeti stopped makin you
go 'euww'.
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