After the passing of my grandpa, I inherited most of his movie collection, nearly all mainstream movies, but poking through some of the ones he had, I came across this one. Not knowing what it was, I took the name as some kind of fantasy movie. What I got was certainly some kind of fantasy for someone.
To put it bluntly, this is just a bad movie. There are different types of bad movies. You have your movies that bomb at the box office because they were "bad" because of poor decision making or acting, things that just turn people off. Then there's "bad", but enjoyable. Those movies you go into them knowing they're bad, but you can still have fun (Plan 9 From Outer Space and Super Mario Bros. come to mind).
However, this is "bad" in a way that there is really no redeeming quality about it. The acting (what there was), the voices, the camera work, even the special effects (I'll get to that).
From the very beginning, you're treated to a rather annoying and barely audible female whispering all her lines. This coupled with the fact that her whisper is one of those that cracks because her vocal chords can't speak that softly makes it one of the most annoying narration of any movie.
The two main characters rarely speak and speak even less to each other, making the dialogue something else altogether. Most of the speaking is done by the narrator (who, by the way, sounds way too old to be a 12-18 year old girl). The kidnapper (yes, that's his character name) does speak, but it's usually when he sings, reads the Bible or the repeated "Are you a which? All women are witches!" that happens throughout the entire movie.
The plot is very basic, but is also very confusing. Schatzy's father commits suicide for no reason other than to start the plot, leaving her with her mother who is old enough to be her grandmother, her uncle who her mother is embarrassed by for no reason given and some other guy that seems to just hate Schatzy, again for no apparent reason. Nothing is explained, it's always random garble from the narrator asking questions about herself and why things have happened, but never actually explains WHAT has happened.
Some random creep comes by the house day after day, with no one but Schatzi apparently able to see him and she lets herself out to be "kidnapped". From that point on, it's literally just random scenes back and forth between these two in mostly awkward silence and scenes of the kidnapper making food, ironing, staring, staring, staring, and staring. Yes, lots of staring, like he's forgotten his line he was supposed to say.
Schatzy herself is supposed to be 12 years old when she is kidnapped, but for the supposed 6 years this story takes place, she never seems to change from age 18 (I'm assuming the girl playing her is 18 simply for the scene of her wearing only a towel and later one of her in just a bikini top and shorts).
The plot likes to force flashbacks on you of Schatzy's life when she was even younger which literally have no bearing on the plot of the movie. You can literally cut them out and never know they were there. It also likes to show these repeated clips of colonial women being dragged and beaten, I'm assuming witch hunts or something similar (when you consider the overlayed "are you a witch?")
Eventually the story ends with her suddenly wanting to escape, even though the narration would have you believe that she wants nothing else than to stay. There is a moment that she contemplates it, but let's face it, the story doesn't actually know what it wants to do or what direction to go.
The camera work is just downright atrocious. I can get better camera work with my $400 camera and a cheap tripod AND a homemade gimbal mount. Even cheap directors can come up with really awesome equipment al'a McGuyver, but these guys forget to use even a simple tripod and it shows.
The special effects, if you can call them that, consist of random TV channels that have been layered over top of a blank TV... and very badly, I might add. One of the first is the news report of Schatzy's kidnapping and the camera literally starts moving to the right while the TV screen follows along, leaving the TV itself behind. It's not exactly floating in midair, but it's enough to notice. The same with further TV "broadcasts", they must have thought this movie was so bad that they didn't want to stay around either.
The girl that plays Schatzy is primarily eye candy. She's easy on the eyes and the director likes to tease with sensual scenes or random goings-on. Like the aforementioned towel scene, though not much can be seen, it's enough to "tantalize" viewers, along with the later "bikini" scene which shows her outside with the kidnapper playing a lousy game of badminton with no net. She also spends the entire movie nearly stationary with nothing but a tight top and shorts, lots of makeup and always wearing jewelry. The problem with all of this is that it makes the character wholly unbelievable as someone held in captivity, even if the kidnapper was less than threatening. I'm assuming it was the daughter of a friend of the director or something like that.
Speaking of eye candy, if you were looking for a movie that shows old man butt, then you've found your movie. The kidnapper is shown in the nude (from the back) so often that I was starting to wonder what the director had on his mind. Granted, I wouldn't want to exploit a young girl just for a few nude scenes, but this was equally uncalled for and once again served no purpose to the plot because no explanation is given for it (maybe it's just because he's a nut job).
Oh, did I forget to mention the music? Yeah, it's the sort that you just know the director said "hey, we'll pay for lunch if you just bang on random things for us" or "we'll throw in some beer if you give us something with some kind of beat".
This movie is supposed to be some kind of horror/thriller, but it comes off as more of something you show to people to explain why some people should not be allowed to make movie. I could go on for pages more about the problems with this one, but I'm sure you've gotten the point by now.
This movie WILL leave you with more questions than answers and even more questions than what the narrator asks. Avoid this one if you want, but if you want something memorable that will make other bad movies pale in comparison, this is it.
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