Ciemno, prawie noc

I watched this movie on the worldwide opening night in Warsaw. It started as an interesting, but quirky dark fantasy film with hints of horror. Not my cup of tea, but it could still be an entertaining evening.

However, soon enough the movie turned into a mess. The plot is a trivialization of child abuse that despite using fairy tales tropes is as explicit as it can get, like the screenwriter never learned about metaphors. The dialog, mostly delivered as drawn out monologues, never made much sense and failed to keep anyone's attention. The numerous characters whose lives were interwoven in complicated relationships as you would expect of a soap opera on its 20th consecutive running year. The sound was OK, though the adult screams were ridiculous at times. The only redeeming factor was the photography, which did a great job capturing the forest where the film was filmed and many of the aged interiors.

The movie could have easily been 30 to 45 minutes shorter. Each of the two or three epilogues after the mystery had been solved made people in the audience ask whether the movie was finally ending that time.

Ironically, when the producer introduced the movie, he criticized the same film institutes that financed 100% of this movie for not funding movies that aren't romantic comedies or war movies. And that's why we can't have nice things.