Wow! Such a good movie.

As Good As It Gets

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

A horror film from the Nether-lands...sounds scary in itself. Len (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) and Rob (Bart Klever) have been downsized from their banking jobs. They plan to discuss a new consulting business on vacation where they drag their unwilling families into the woods. Len decides they need to trespass to get to a good spot, one near a mosquito breeding ground, or pool. While at the pool, secrets are revealed, things rot and decay at accelerated speeds and emotions run high as the siren/witch/spirit of the pool doesn't allow anyone to leave unless...There are a number of films where people are trapped and they always circle around to where they started having to finish a task to leave. This is another one except it has English subtitles. We get a glimpse of the event that happened to cause a curse, although no real explanation was given, it was up to the viewer to figure out. The film has a descent into madness scenes to make things interesting.Fairy decent horror.Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity...perhaps that was supposed to be blurred rear nudity in one scene.

This Dutch horror film opens with one of the most sharply observed views of a family holiday I have seen. Leannart Lennaert (Gijs Scholten van Aschat, who also co-wrote the screenplay) takes his wife Sylke (Carine Crutzen), and two sons Jan (Alex Hendrickx) and Marco (Chris Peters) camping, along with friend Rob (Bart Klever) and his daughter Emilie (Jamie Grant). The teenage sons argue, flirt with Emilie, while the elder members become more and more exasperated, whilst revealing that Sylke is having an affair with Rob. The level of sarcasm between the characters is delightfully realistic, and Len is determined they all enjoy themselves, whether they like it or not! As is often the way in these films, no matter how many rotting animals are found, no matter how food supplies inexplicably become festooned with maggots or injuries are sustained, they refuse to leave immediately.After suffering food poisoning, Rob dies in the night. However, we see a brief clip of Leannart strangling him and vomiting over his face, making it appear he choked to death in his sleep. The clip is so sparse, it isn't immediately clear whether it actually happened, or was just another of the increasing amount of hallucinations prevalent. The hallucinations are caused by a shell found by Jan, but seems to possess Leannart, and causes them both to see images of a young woman. In another brief flashback, it appears the woman maybe the reincarnation of a witch, drowned in the pool many years ago.At the end, on Jan and friend Emilie are the only ones left alive. When they try to leave, they only find themselves back at their campsite. Emilie falls to her knees in despair.'The Pool' is a slow moving film which features some exceptional performances. It is difficult to know what is hallucinatory and what isn't as events wear on, and the ending does nothing to make things clearer: Jan finds a motorway, seemingly freedom. When he turns to look at the girl behind him, it is the woman from the hallucinations.

'De Poel' got some good press and as such I was reasonably excited to see this film. An actually suspenseful Dutch horror film; almost too good to be true. As it turns out, it was too good to be true. From the very first scene the acting is unbearably unnatural, the dialogue is clunky and the timing as far from subtle as possible. There is no motivation for what's happening to the group of campers and the "other" perspective (somewhat reminiscent of security camera footage) does nothing to create suspense. Because I don't want to sound bitter for the sake of it I will say that some of the acting between the sons was believable, as was some of the (funny) bickering between husband and wife. When the screening I attended was over, the audience collectively made a sound of disbelief and laughter.

The Pool is a deliciously tense movie. Contrary to what people have come to expect from Dutch horror productions, this is a little jewel both in its storyline as well as the high level of acting. Gijs Scholten van Aschat and his companions show not a solitary moment of weakness in their craft, and thus make a relatively predictable camping-in-the-wild story into a edge-of-your-seat experience. You know beforehand that people'll drop like flies. But that you'll care about these two divided families, and will bite nails till the end, that's a pleasant surprise. Not just that, but the quality of the sound, which in Holland is usually more horrific than its movies, is absolutely sublime: you won't miss a word. The little eye-rolls, irritations of a marriage that's past its prime, and creeping madness have been brought into frame with a deftness which can't usually be expected in a horror flick, much less a Dutch one. Subtlety and maggots, humor with a mourning band.