The Seamstress (2009)

Best movie of this year hands down!

To me, this movie is perfection.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This starts a little confused and strange. Things do become clearer by the end. Cursed by an innocent teacher who is burnt to death by seven local men for the grizzly murders of twelve kids the daughter of one returns to the area after her father goes back and disappears. Several of her friends rally around her for support. They really shouldn't have as they start dieing one by one once the whole group is stranded on the island where the teacher was killed. I liked this movie because there was not the usual blood, guts, and gore. There is gore but not really gratuitous, just in keeping with the story plot. Turns out that two of the victims, a married couple, are stilled tied to the island. They are the ones still killing. To pass on they must kill the real Seamstress which turns out to be one of the seven men who burnt the teacher. He is killed by them so they get to go. The curse is not lifted though until the daughter kills the last of the seven murderers. This ends the movie, at least for now.

Imagine you're watching one of those cooking contest shows, they give the contestant a beautiful Filet Mignon and then they proceed to make a cheeseburger with it. That's this mess of a movie.It seemed to have all the elements of making an excellent horror film yet fails so so badly. The concept while not original was still good, the setting was great- small island off the coast? spooky looking ghost. a curse of some sort, and Lance Henriksen. Instead what we get, the angry confused, unlikable daughter trying to find out what happened to her father. Oh yeah she has "vision" dreams but this isn't ever expanded upon. pretty flat characters with similar acting. a back story/ curse/ that's never truly explained. "They Changed the rules". yeah? well how? this isn't explained either. The run time is pretty short I think around 76 minutes yet it feels much longer than this. another minus, it never seems to know if it wants to be a drama/mystery, a supernatural horror, or just a slasher type movie. with more focus on the backstory and less time spent on the character which didn't really need any development and this could have been one hell of a good movie. I stress could have been....

This movie seems to be a movie where they shot the action scenes and forgot to shoot the rest. The real back story for this movie is barely explained. In case you want to watch it, there were children that were being kidnapped, tortured and killed with their eyes and mouths sewn shut. There was a school teacher that boated in every day to teach the students and she was accused as the killer. Some of the locals took it upon themselves to deal with the situation, killing the teacher and her husband. This is what you need to know going in to the movie for it to lay the foundation for the majority of the movie. A group of young adults goes to this island in search of one of the girl's father. It consists of 3 males and 3 females, probably in their early 20s. Upon arriving at the island and setting up camp, they are met by someone that lives on the island and he tells them to stay on the shore. Of course, they don't. They threw in, for some unknown reason, a person that is apparently a chronic masterbater. I guess this is a new twist on naked females. No, there is no nudity, but when someone asks if you're masturbating and someone else mentions it, you have to guess he has a problem with it. Of course, the group does not stick to the shore and mayhem ensues. Poor story, good actors.

Common is the horror genre today where logic & plot development take a backseat for special effects. The Seamstress is one such example of a film that chose to rush the development of a truly chilling story & replace it with a whole bunch of uninspiring supernatural backwash. I refer to this film being 'half baked' on a number of levels. First of all, this film is around 72 minutes long (don't believe IMDb's 85 minute version). It is barely feature length & most likely would of been more suitable not as a film but an episode of the TV show 'Supernatural'.Not only this, but Jesse Miller's inexperience behind the camera as director is quite evident. His experience previously in the editing department shows up in this film as he seems better at cutting the film to pieces rather than effectively developing it. The premise of the film in hindsight is very simple yet due to the fact that the film is abysmal in its length the plot is consistently rushing through key points that may help the viewer unravel the mystery. I found myself as a critic needing to watch the film twice because many key points hidden in cryptic maps & slurred/low volume dialogue (especially Kevin McNulty's character in the later stages of the film) eluded me. The contextual matter in this film is important to the viewer because most of the time the dialogue is referring to the past.From what I gather the film follows a young woman by the name of Allie Platt (Kailin See) looking to work out the mystery behind her father, Donny's (David Nykl) disappearance. The establishing scenes at the beginning of the film make no effort in trying to hide his horrible fate at the hands of a sadistic killer. We follow her as she goes on a cross country quest to discover his whereabouts all the while experiencing haunting visions of her dead father. In her childhood town, Sticks Creek she meets a creepy mechanic (Kevin McNulty) who gives her the address to a reclusive man by the name of Logan (Lance Henriksen). A man who seems vague in his responses when discussing just what happened to Donny.After a heated debate Allie; who blames Logan on her father's disappearance confides in her friends. They discover the location of a remote island that her father talked about in his notes & decide to visit it. On this island is where the story begins to meet its conflict. As the teens snug around the fire talking about the tale of an innocent woman (AKA The Seamstress) brutally killed by a vigilante mob, Allie begins to wonder if the story is more than just a myth. As the hapless teens are slowly picked off & turned into grisly pieces of artwork, the mystery of Donny becomes ever so clear. Did he somehow play a role in the events that occurred on that island 20 years ago? A question that comes begging for an answer as the final act draws to its climax.The 'campy' side to this film is somewhat the greatest redeeming factor to it. Not only does it cater for your horror/gore fanatics who take delight in watching teens get sliced open but it also has a solid ensemble of actors such as Kailin See & Lance Henriksen, who alone add to the tension as well as general atmospherics of the piece. In my opinion that whole 'campy' feel overrides my general dislike for this film which could of been in a whole new ball park if for 10 minutes the viewer had time to understand the fundamental concepts of everything. This in my opinion is a film not worthy of a cinematic release & will probably pass you a thousand times on your way down the horror isle when it is eventually released on DVD.1.5/5