Coming to DVD Tuesday, April 7th
Cast:
Emmanuelle Béart as Janet Belhmer
Rufus Sewell as Paul Belhmer
Julie Dreyfus as Kim
Directed by Fabrice Du Welz
Review:
Obviously, most horror fans are aware of the little blue kids from The Grudge/Ju-on movies. Probably most have had an ass-load of them from either those films or the numerous parodies by the Scary Movie franchise. It is probably safe to say that the little blue kids as the main antagonist in horror films has run its course â sorry Grudge 3.
But are you ready for little grey kids?
Because Vinyan is full of them. Well, that is if you can get past the horrifically long set-up of the film and the completely unscary anything contained within.
Vinyan is at its heart a story about Janet and Paul Belhmer (played by a considerably aged Emmanuelle Béart and The Eleventh Hour‘s Rufus Sewell), who tragically lost their only child when he was lost in the devastating Southeast Asian tsunami from a few years ago, and their search for their son after Janet sees what she believes to be the boy on a film about natives in the dangerous jungle of Burma.
Apparently, John Rambo isn’t around this time in Burma and the couple – after a lengthy and time consuming portion of the film where they wander the Thailand local streets, party in a Thai tranny/hooker bar, attend an art show and have strange nightmares about their boy – decide to hire a local scumbag to smuggle them into Burma and to the location of their son. Of course, the obligatory fleecing begins but despite this, the fact they are going into one of the most dangerous countries in the world and their fleecing scumbag guide getting bludgeoned to death right in front of them by another group of thugs (that also fleece them), the couple remains surprisingly optimistic and cheery – even getting their groove on in a bamboo hut just inside of Burma, because hey, why not>
This is followed by some random part where a slew of faceless, naked Asian women in what appears to be a sauna twirl in circles while an Asian Andy Warhol and the couple’s friend Kim (Julie Dreyfus) look on both as if they were in the process of dropping a deuce.
By this point in the film, a hour has passed without a single ounce of horror but only a series of random events, multiple fleecings, a host of gratuitously nude, faceless Asian chicks and one of the most excruciatingly long set-ups in the history of horror.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t get any better. As the couple get sent to a strange village inside Burma whose residents include a group of little grey kids running around making the lives of everyone that passes by a living hell. But this isn’t even scary as the kids are just covered in mud and just creep around. And boy they hate it when they have visitors – robbing them of their possessions, stringing them up, putting them in a pit and stoning them to death or stabbing and disemboweling them.
Not my idea of a nice vacation. The trouble mostly with the film is that any interesting bits take place in the last 20 minutes and by that time, had I not had to review it, I would have turned it off out of sheer boredom.
I did, however, learn one thing while watching Vinyan. That is: I never want to visit Burma or Thailand because you either get a tranny hooker, fleeced for all your cash or you end up on a wild goose chase that ends up with you either sold into human slavery or toast.
Extras:
Only one real special feature here: A featurette on the making of the film, a lot of which is subtitled for those who hate to read be warned. This is the best part of the DVD. Because it is a true making of that includes ample footage of how they went about creating the production including lots of great interaction with the director and actors in explaining just what he wants from them. Clocking in at more than 50 minutes, it is more of a documentary on the film rather than just a featurette with a series of great interviews with the cast and crew, a look at where they filmed each scene and at least the hope of what they tried to make with the movie and the passion they had for it. It is a shame that what translated on film wasn’t as good.
