Synopsis
Beware of the Unseen
In remote Chile, a vacationing young woman begins to mentally unravel; meanwhile, her friends ignore her claim until it's too late.
2013 Directed by Sebastián Silva
In remote Chile, a vacationing young woman begins to mentally unravel; meanwhile, her friends ignore her claim until it's too late.
荒島魔咒, Магия, магия, 魔力,魔力, Kabus Büyüsü, Uvnitř mé hlavy, Magia, Viagem sem Volta, 魔岛逃生, Magic, Magic, הקסם, Rémálom-sziget, Viagem Sem Volta, 매직, 매직, สองสาวร้อนในคืนหลอน, Магія, магія
does for the color yellow what DON'T LOOK NOW did for red.
every film should have Juno Temple doing a hypnotized dance to The Knife. every one. no excuses, Mizoguchi, you plain fucked up.
feels at once both overstuffed and undercooked, but if only every film at sundance was so interested in... ya know... being a film. still mulling over how it depicts private insecurity manifesting as public groupthink, and how the trust we place in others can expose just how small the spectrum of appropriate behavior is relative to that of which we're capable.
christopher doyle & the knife, y'all.
This is a tough one to rate! My main reason for watching it was Emily Browning because I adore her. But there were things I loved and mostly just one thing I hated.
I loved the location and the cinematography. I appreciated the whole “people blindly ignoring mental illness leads to tragedy” story because it’s true and it happens all the time. I’ve read that the ending was too ambiguous to many, but it wasn’t at all to me so if anyone wants to hear my take feel free to slide on in my DM’s. The performances all around were great, but Juno Temple really went all out and Michael Cera did an admirable job of being someone you truly…
*Insert four and a half star review because I honestly love this film and don't understand all of the low ratings*
Apart from an excellent Juno Temple and some beautiful cinematography, this film holds absolutely nothing that would earn it the label 'tense, psychological horror' that I read somewhere. It is boring, safe, predictable and tries to be smart by giving us a completely superfluous and unfitting ambiguous ending.
If you're going for a thriller and try to capture the psychological breakdown of someone you need to do something more than have her wailing around most of the time. Make us care for her, or the company she keeps. As convincing as Temple was, her character is extremely annoying surrounded by excruciatingly unpleasant people. Walk away from this liking any of the characters and I'd be impressed. Or sad. Whatever.
The…
An unexpected, unnerving, impressive horror film about social and psychic dislocation. Alicia (Juno Temple) travels with her cousin and cousin's friends to a remote location in southern Chile, and her discomfort--an exhaustion from travel and an introvert's unease--is exacerbated by social codes and behaviors that repel connection. Brink (a superb Michael Cera) is an outsized caricature of a sex-crazed adolescent; Barbara (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is brusque, brittle, patronizing; Sara (Emily Browning) and Agustin (Agustin Silva) are grappling with their own problems.
The movie embraces a grotesque naturalism that keeps the viewer equally decentered, nervous, frustrated. The performances are inflated yet grounded; the cinematography (by the reliably brilliant Christopher Doyle and Glenn Kaplan) is simultaneously lush and wild and formalist --…
Blunders through issues male writers/directors should maybe leave alone...hey but Michael autocorrect won't let me type his last name on my phone so fuck it anyway he gets kicked in the face so at least there's that. Tbh really sick of these 'women go mad! It's a metaphor for...idk, something!' Movies.
While it doesn't at all surprise me that Magic Magic is receiving its fair share of hate from audiences, I simply cannot dismiss how effectively it creeped me out with its dread-laden atmosphere in a similar way to the equally confounding Kill List, if I am to compare. Striking a similar chord as (the superior) Rosemary's Baby with its central character riding a fierce maelstrom of paranoia as her environmental displacement, language barrier and distrust of the people around her pulls her down like a sinking stone, in a mood piece where narrative thrust is not the key, and any information we are privy to may or may not be helpful in helping us find our bearings. Juno Temple nails…
A cinematic anxiety attack. Cera has spent the more recent half of his career portraying a diverse variety of irritating weirdos, but this may just be his pièce de résistance: a character so uniquely aggravating, creepy and painfully unfunny (all on purpose ofc) that I wanted to rip my head clean off. Dude should have won awards.
Oh, and this is one of the best psychological horrors of the century, btw. God bless Seb Silva.
During fits of anxiety, I’ve heard it helps to clench your shoulders then relax. Magic Magic is like that but never releasing. It’s anxious and ambiguous while having tension twisted in the darkly comedic. Sebastian Silva’s psychological thriller takes the trite plot of a woman’s “hysteria” on vacation to Chile and adds more questions surrounding spiritualism, race, and cultural isolation. Oh yeah, and a humping dog.
For such a familiar antidote, Magic Magic has a tonal atmosphere all its own. I like that. I like movies that are slightly off and this one has the bonus of a spot-on cast. Juno Temple plays spiraling with sympathetic confusion, annoying innocence, and the right amount of theatrical to fit the movie’s unique…
I am not quite sure what I just watched, but the ending was like they all got tired of filming and gave up.
Though it has its own angle, this reminded me a lot of Queen of Earth, but personally succeeded where that film fell short in striking the balance of making some characters dislikeable, but believable. There is an awkwardness to being surrounded by people you don't know, in an unfamiliar place, where actions can be read in different ways, and personalities can clash. Of course there is no denying that some of these actions are shitty, but the justification for the characters remaining together was a bit more sound as well. This is a frustrating and exasperating experience, in the best of ways. An ever escalating sense of dread and heartache, read well in the breakdown of everyone involved as it…