The Worst Film Ever

Lack of good storyline.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Before I go into any level of detail about this movie (which honestly won't be much), I should say upfront that I expected more from this since it's supposed to be part of this New French Extremity. What I ended up getting was rather tame and, worst of all, just plain boring at times.The plot, if one can call it that, revolves around several people who work for a few different companies. One is TokyoAnime, who specialize in animation and manga; the second is the titular Demonlover, a website where people can watch hentai; and the third is Mangatronics, Demonlover's primary competitor. There's also a torture site called Hellfire Club which may or may not be run on the sly by Demonlover. I suppose that last site could have made for a more graphic and explicit film if they'd chose to focus on that, but no, all you get is a dull slog about corporate spying among companies who just happen to deal with some rather sleazy stuff. However, there's only really one scene where you get to see exactly what this content is and a lot of it is blurred out.Moving on, the acting in this movie was passable although it's not what I would consider great by any means. Connie Nielsen and Gina Gershon, in her limited screen time, come off the best but mostly because their characters were the least annoying. Another major fault of this movie is writing. Aside from a lack of coherence in the general storyline, the characters are all varying degrees of unsympathetic and, at times, grating to the ears. Chloe Sevigny is probably the worst offender, as there are scenes where she'll lurch from calm and sedate to bitchy and screechy without much motivation or reason. On the whole, there is not a likable character to be found and the confusing plot didn't do them any favors at all.On a technical level I can sort of give this a pass because it was low-budget, so it wasn't too unexpected that most of the film was shot up-close and hand-held. Most of the time, they gave you enough of a look at what was happening so that it wasn't visually disorienting. Still, there are a couple of scenes in which this filming style is detrimental. One was a catfight between Connie Nielsen and Gina Gershon's character in which it's often hard to tell who's hitting who and where they exactly are at any given moment. The other was a chase scene towards the end.Overall, given the subject matter, or at least what I thought the subject matter was going to be, I have to say this film was a disappointment. It was overly confusing, poorly written with unlikeable characters and, worst of all, rather boring. With such sleazy content involving animated porn and torture sites, they chose possibly one of the worst angles to approach it from and certainly one of the least compelling. It kind of improves in the last 30 minutes or so, but that doesn't excuse the nearly 90 minutes that came before it. If discussions about contracts, clauses and market share are your cup of tea, by all means check this out. For me, however, it was just a dud and waste of my time and money.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this film to be honest. Connie Nielsen, Gershon, and Sevigny gave good performances. However, that's not enough is it? The plot was very convoluted and hard to grasp. It was corporate espionage within the porn industry. Which could have been very interesting if the direction was executed properly. But that wasn't the issue as much as the script was. Towards the end there were one too many 'back stabbings" to keep track of, and I wasn't sure who was responsible for what. Gershon's character seemed to have disappeared and another main character did as well with no explanation, at least that's my take on it. I did like the downer ending though, that was a nice touch.The cinematography was beautiful at many points in the film and the score from Sonic Youth fit in very well with the vibe of the film. Back to the cinematography for a second, I couldn't enjoy it as much I should have since the DVD I viewed it on (region 1 - USA) had a very poor transfer. The image was very pix-elated. Did the production company or distribution company not care enough to do the DVD encoding properly? Anyway, I tried my best to enjoy this film but I could not. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Apologies to everyone that worked very hard on this project.

Demonlover: 4 out of 10: Wow what an overlong train wreck of a movie. Before I begin to scratch the surface of the ineptitude of this film let me explain the few things Demonlover does right.Demonlover does some things very well. It has individual scenes that work on their own either as erotic vignettes; (Chloe Sevigny playing videogames in the nude , an Asian girl seducing a French man at a club after his lover leaves.) or plot actions (dosing a bottled water with Halcion) before the film ventures down the rabbit hole twenty odd minutes in.The general plot of Demonlover is a French conglomerate is looking to buy an adult anime company. Because of this, a rival Adult anime distributor has sent a corporate spy to put a kibosh on the proceedings. That is the story, there is some silliness about a for-pay torture and bondage site but ther story in a nutshell is an Anime buyout scheme.So how can a thriller dealing with bondage and Hentai and starring Chloë Sevigny, Gina Gershon, and the hot redhead from Devil’s Advocate, Connie Nielsen, possibly go wrong? Well for one thing, there are cloistered nuns that know more about marketing animated porn online than writer/director Olivier Assayas does. I often complain about movies where the writers and director have clearly never worked in an office (13 Going on 30 for example) but this is over the top. The French, as an example, are worried about a secret website that makes lots of money. If the website makes lots of money… wait for it… it probably is not a secret. Moreover, I am sure that cornering the online Hentai traffic is an unattainable goal. After all, how hard is it to draw new tentacle porn? In addition, I doubt many corporate spies scale the sides of buildings or poison colleagues. Moreover, with the silliest script this side of The Core you cannot depend on the ever confusing and contrived plot.I know I praised the sex scenes above but with this cast, I was expecting more, a lot more. Also I often did not know where the movie was taking place. (are they in Tokyo or France is a popular game you can play.) Then there is the car chase, at the end, that looks like an outtake from Vanishing Point. (As Tom Servo would have said “Meanwhile in another decade”)The film is overlong, very confusing, somewhat boring and the characters IQ’s seem to drop every scene. After the fifteenth fade to black transition, I actually screamed “end already” at the screen.In reality, this seems to be a badly done remake of Videodrome. Olivier Assayas is clearly no David Cronenberg. He cannot even tell a simple story in a believable and entertaining manner. Or take advantage of three of the hottest actresses in the business.

Superior thriller about a corporate spy (Connie Neilsen) caught up in the big money, cutthroat world of internet porn. The film is filled with wonderfully shady characters, hidden agendas, and weird plot twists as Neilsen's attempts at sabotaging a deal with an adult anime company lead to unexpected revelations about the nature of the internet entertainment trade. While it moves like a suspense drama, it makes so many points and takes so many swipes at how otherwise normal seeming people are not above using the internet to peep at the lowest forms of degradation that it almost plays like satire. An interesting and very different kind of movie, with a frightening ending that hits very close to home.