Movie Review: Granny (1999)
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| Play nice kids! |
Calling this a film is so far from the truth, you might as well call it bananphone! In reality, Granny is a 25 minute long short-film that has had every scene stretched to breaking point in order to hit that 60 minute mark as advertised on the DVD case. Maybe they printed the cases before finishing the film and just had to make the time up to hit that target. Whatever the reason, watching the eight supposedly college friends sitting around talking about random crap was rather excruciating! To make it all seem a bit less interesting, they don’t even appear to be drunk or for that matter anywhere close to being college students! Quite literally the first 16 minutes of this film are them sat around talking about nothing. The camera switching from wide shots to close up's and back again until I was frantically pulling my hair out screaming at the screen. Almost doing the unthinkable and fast forwarding the DVD!
As it turns out, the whole 60 minutes thing was a bit of a blessing, although it would have been better if they hadn't bothered really. I know it may sound a bit harsh and it goes against everything I believe but Granny doesn't give anything to the world of horror. It cuts a lonely figure, reminding us that Scream is still the best in the class when it comes to this sort of teen driven slasher film.
The cast give new meaning to the word wooden, as they fumble their way through the flimsy script, which doesn't really help their cause. Normally in these types of films, we are at least treated to a few one-liners. Sadly, all Granny serves us, is a steadfast reminder of how not to do it. It beggars belief that anyone in their right minds could watch this film and be taken away to that world of imagination and make believe! Even the terrible granny mask and flowing long hair aren't enough to bring a smile to the face and the mask is usually the go-to for bit of praise!
With everything I just said in mind, I was quite pleasantly surprised by the double-barrelled twist at the end. I won’t give anything away (Just in case you want to gouge your eyes out watching this) but after sitting through 59 minutes of this film, we are finally given something resembling my old friend, quality! Despite this not being enough to claw back any respect, it didn't seem as much of a waste of my time as it had originally looked.
Granny, serves up very little in the way of gore, sprecial effects, storyline, acting. Well anything really. It is quite easy to see how this remains Boris Pavlovsky's first and only effort in the world of movies.
Other than the last 30 seconds, if there was anything on a positive note I could say, it would be that the production value isn't terrible and the needles through the glasses did get a chuckle! That’s it. I apologise to Boris and the rest of the production crew of Granny as they obviously put in minutes of hard graft to get them to agree to put this onto a DVD and actually selling it to sane, good heated people in the real world!
Released: 1999
My Rating: 1.5
