Oct 6, 2009
This is my first review, but I feel like it needs to be written because no other review has highlighted how much of a let down this movie is.
Story (3/10): The premise is not terribly deep and can be summed up quite quickly; basically the Nazi's want to summon this ghost to kill all of the Soviets, so the Soviets send this clairvoyant teenage girl fight the ghost. The premise isn't amazing, but the movie could have still been good despite that. Where the story really goes bad are during these documentary-esque live action scenes with 'war veterans' and 'historians' (who are not actually war
...
veterans or historians). The scenes do very little to help advance the plot and don't help add to the back story. The movie without the live action scenes would have been just as good, if not better, as they really interrupt the flow at some points. Also the climax was disappointingly short and the movie ended with a 'cliff hanger' that didn't leave me wanting more.
Art (8/10): The art was probably the only thing preventing me from giving this movie a 1/10. The animation, for the most part, was excellent. It wasn't mind blowing, but it was consistent and enjoyable. The only downside to the art was the live action scenes, which were mostly just people talking in front of a dark background, and one person was really quite ugly. I don't just mean not attractive, I mean I almost couldn't stand to watch that scene. Still the live action scenes were short so overall the animation was very good.
Sound (6/10): The voices are in Russian (with a few possible cases of German, not sure though), but I don't really hold that for or against the movie. As for the music, I didn't really notice any amazing music, but I didn't really notice any bad music either. Overall the sound didn't really affect my opinion of the movie at all.
Character (2/10): The characters were awful. The movie is only an hour long, so I can understand somewhat limited development, but there are just too many characters who are literally not introduced at all (random guy with a wooden staff, Nazi chicks with guns, General Below, etc). The only excuse for the poor characters that I could see is that everyone other than the main character doesn't exist because the main character is just a schizo (similar to "A Beautiful Mind"), but there's no big twist, and any speculation that the main character is crazy is left as speculation. There was one decent flashback, which added some actual character depth, but it wasn't enough to help the overall dreadful characters.
Enjoyment (1/10): By about 1/2 way through the movie I was just waiting for it to be over. Some people may find it more enjoyable, but I was really put off by the live action scenes, lacking story, and shallow characters. The animation was good, but it just couldn't compensate for everything it had going against it. From the synopsis I was expecting some epic 12th century sword-fighting during WW2, but there was only a minute or two of sword fighting throughout the whole movie. The movie could have really benefited from any kind of twist, but it didn't have one and it just ended up like a bad joke without a punchline.
Overall (2/10): Obviously I'm not going to stop anyone from watching this movie, but I'd have to seriously recommend against it. There's a two minute trailer on Youtube which has every bit of action and story in the movie. Just watch that and save yourself the other hour and 11 minutes of poor story and underdeveloped characters.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all