The Editor (2014)

Absolutely Fantastic

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

I hate to give this such a low mark, because there were at least half a dozen times in the first half hour when I thought The Editor was about to blossom into a note-perfect giallo homage. A few brief scenes mimicked exactly the kind of bad dubbing/dialogue/acting/lighting/fashion etc of the original 70s Italian giallo horrors it's clearly inspired by. Frustratingly however these were just teases, and the film seemed more interested in being some kind of hip underground indie-flick slasher that didn't remind me much of anything giallo based, and it started to *seriously* drag. The lead character's virtually comatose performance didn't help much, and the plot soon got impossible to follow. After 45 mins I didn't really know or care what I was watching any more.Overall The Editor is nowhere near as bad as the absurdly boring Berberian Sound Studio (the closest modern-day comparison I can think of), but I wish they'd concentrated more on paying tribute to the classic giallo clichés instead of becoming a directionless and rather average slasher.

When the lead actor in a horror film that he is working on is murdered, a film editor has to contend with an egotistical replacement actor, a wife who takes too much interest in his work and a detective who thinks that he is guilty in this weird mix of horror, comedy and mystery elements. Co-director Adam Brooks is great as the jaded, ageing editor in question who claims that he has trouble distinguishing between movies and reality, and its best, the film blurs this line. There are several points where something grisly occurs and it takes one a while to work out whether it is 'actually' happening or just a part of the film being edited. There is also a neat homage to 'Videodrome' late in the piece - Cronenberg's iconic film about a network programmer unable to separate hallucinations from reality. For the most part though, 'The Editor' is just odd. The story does not make much sense with some uncanny supernatural elements and some unexplained bizarreness in which Brooks actually seems to enter the reels of the very film he is editing at one point. The final twist at the end is baffling too. Brooks is, however, the only actor who plays his part in a down-to-earth manner and with everyone else overacting, turning it up to 11, it seems evident that the film was intended to be a comedy first and foremost. If one does not focus on deciphering the plot too much, the film does in fact have several funny bits and pieces. The dialogue of the film within the film is hilariously bad, and then there is a replacement editor who insists that 'The Battleship Potemkin' was edited by Albert Einstein!

The movie starts fine, a giallo spoof/homages with all the trades of those 70's movies that many of us love, if you have seen enough movies of the genre you will recognize: Absurd dialog, insane amount of nudity, ultra-violent death scenes, unnecessary cuts, a killer with black gloves, crazy colors, cool production values and a great score. For example, the first death scene gathers all those ingredients. But after the first 45 minutes I felt that the jokes became repetitive. i expected the film to be more focused in mystery and horror and a little bit in comedy but it turned the other way around I would preferred that the movie take itself a little bit more serious as in a tribute, but instead it became a full parody.

"The Editor" is an homage to Italian Gaillo films (think Argento and Fulci). It is a tale about a former film editor that, due to a horrible accident, has lost four fingers on one of his hands, thus putting him in dire straits so to speak. Gruesome murders start happening to all involved in his latest movie, and he becomes the prime suspect.I would like to acknowledge everyone involved with this movie. They did not stray one iota from the crazy, simply-unable-to-follow (sometimes) script. The movie was poorly dubbed, as was usually the case back in the day, the plot all over the place, the "look" of the characters was on the money, the acting as "bad" as the majority of those 70s Italian films could produce, full nudity of BOTH sexes, and tons and tons of gore. I laughed out loud on more than one occasion because the actors took this so over the top, they all seemed to just be enjoying themselves. I was also quite astonished to find this film was made in Canada!"The Editor" was unrated but contains graphic violence, full nudity of both sexes, adult situations, and language. If you want to have some fun, check this one out. Recommended.