According to director Schalz, his script for "Krisia" is also writing "Night Visit", so it is not surprising that the two works have an intertextual relationship. An "intruder" role appeared in both works, which brought a devastating blow to the original family relationship. The unseen mother in "Krisia" returned to the big family on Thanksgiving Day, but the family relationship that could be repaired became vulnerable; and in this doomsday "Night Visit", an outsider family People not only bring new hope of survival together, but also cause the bad luck of the protagonist’s family destruction. Intriguingly, the design of the outsider in this film has multiple metaphorical colors, which provides a larger space for the audience to understand the film. Combined with the exclusionary immigration policy of the Trump administration in the United States nowadays, it seems to have a surprisingly realistic meaning.
In the final analysis, this new film by Schalz is still about family relationships. In an extreme environment where humanity is almost extinct, how to treat relatives and outsiders, how to defend the integrity of the family, how to struggle between human morality and survival instinct. From this perspective, Schalz’s work is an anti-genre horror film. Although the director used a lot of effective audio-visual language to enhance the continuation of this horrible atmosphere, but from the beginning to the end, there were almost no positive and scary monsters. Instead, the dark side of human nature was revealed in the increasingly vivid author style. , This seems to be the source of the most creepy viewers.
I was impressed by the method Schalz used to create suspense, which is exactly the same as in "Krisia". Needless to say, the close-up face shot of the opening scene, this time the scary soundtrack finally came in handy, with the lens movement gradually approaching the character, or the 360-degree rotating lens, and a tribute to Kubrick's "The Shining" The strange corridors and the red wooden doors are enough to prove Schalz’s mastery of horror genre films. This time, the deformation of the frame is more subtle. When the boy enters the dream, the frame gradually narrows, and returns to its original state after returning to reality. This method of portraying psychological changes also confirms the director's bold conception of trying to incorporate the author's style into the genre.
However, the discussion on the dark side of human nature in the movie is a bit clichéd, and the tone is too literary, and there are many dispensable and ambiguous characterizations in the plot, which greatly compromises the appeal and logic of the story, and makes most of the genre films come. The audience was disappointed. Nevertheless, through this film, more audiences realize the director of Schalz, which can be regarded as bringing hope to the development prospects of the new generation of American directors.
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