To paraphrase a very boring movie, The Butterfly Room is The Expendables of horror! Check out this fine cast: Barbara Steele, Adrienne King, Heather Langenkamp, James Karen, P.J.Soles, Ray Wise and Camille Keaton! Director Jonathan Zarantonello really hit the jackpot here with the cast, the question is if the movie can live up to the talent involved? Now, what’s even more cool is the strong, good female cast - most of them over the tender age of 40, which is so rare I guess this movie is two of a kind together with Rob Zombie’s excellent The Lords of Salem! I love my mature ladies, always. Don’t take it the wrong way, I’m still gay as David Warbeck on weed.
Barbara Steele is Ann, a recluse. But also a very twisted lady who loves her butterfly collection more than everything else. She also obsesses about little girls and especially Alice, the neighbor's daughter and… oh shit, I can’t write another synopsis again! IT’S SOOOOO BORING. Really. Check the official page at IMDB instead. Or Wikipedia. Or call the director for I care. But I’m not gonna write a damn word about the story. No way, José!
But don’t worry, don’t judge my disinterest in writing yet another pointless story synopsis so it seems like this is a bad movie, it’s not. It’s actually a damn interesting indie flick, shot like a movie with a lot bigger budget and with a killer cast. So it’s worth watching. Let me get back to interesting female characters in film. Here we have a horror movie where more or less every main character AND supporting character is a she. Barbara Steele of course steals the show as the charismatic actress she is. She’s always had more charisma than actual talent in my humble opinion. She’s cool as hell but not very versatile when it comes to deliver performances out of her world of characters. Here she’s highly effective, especially the longer the movie goes. She get’s more twisted and freaky the further the script takes the character, which is awesome.
While not a typical murder mystery, it still has a feeling of giallo over it - from the childhood trauma, dolls and a few twists here and there. The ending is ambiguous and not totally clear, but I think it rocks - it’s just a bit too subtle of the traditional ordinary Joe crowd out there who just wanna see something together with their microfood dinner.
The biggest flaw now is that it feels like a cavalcade of cameos. Nothing wrong with that really, but the episodic nature of the script becomes more evident when there’s a new legendary horror star who makes a guest spot. No, I shouldn’t complain. The Butterfly Room is a very ambitious and good-looking horror movie, one of those that actually has ambitions to be something else than a quickie DTV movie. One of those with a seriousness, the stuff the genre desperately needs.
No, this is not The Expendables of horror. This is more than that. This is a bunch of strong, interesting female actors playing interesting and complex female characters in all ages, instead of The Expendables boring bunch of more or less untalented Republican men with penis-envy.
"But don’t worry, don’t judge my disinterest in writing yet another pointless story synopsis so it seems like this is a bad movie, it’s not. It’s actually a damn interesting indie flick, shot like a movie with a lot bigger budget and with a killer cast."
I remember seeing this trailer a while ago....it looked very nice.
"Barbara Steele of course steals the show as the charismatic actress she is. She’s always had more charisma than actual talent in my humble opinion. She’s cool as hell but not very versatile when it comes to deliver performances out of her world of characters."
I remember her mostly from Black Sunday/La maschera del demonio (1960).....beautiful girl, nice to see she´s still working.
"The biggest flaw now is that it feels like a cavalcade of cameos. Nothing wrong with that really, but the episodic nature of the script becomes more evident when there’s a new legendary horror star who makes a guest spot. No, I shouldn’t complain."
I guess the director wanted to pay homage to some of his inspirations.....
Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
"No, this is not The Expendables of horror. This is more than that. This is a bunch of strong, interesting female actors playing interesting and complex female characters in all ages, instead of The Expendables boring bunch of more or less untalented Republican men with penis-envy."
Aw, come on, nothing wrong with The Expendables 1-2......but of course they should probably stop after part 3.
Good review and thanks, never seen this one yet.
Posted by: Megatron | March 10, 2014 at 00:02