JeruZalem
Directors: Doran
Paz, Yoav Paz
Writers: Doran Paz,
Yoav Paz
Starring: Yael
Groblas, Yon Tumarkin, Danielle Jadelyn
Rating: One and a
half stars out of five
Available on demand
now
Movies are made with purposeful misdirection. They are manipulations of
the viewers' perception in order to generate a desired response, to
create a form of thematic truth if not a factual one. Not every film
achieves their intended effect on an audience, but they try via a
cinematic language that has developed over a period of longer than a
century. Now there is something encroaching slightly on that
cinematic language, perhaps with the ability, in the long term, to
cater movies to a user's immediate view. It is a quasi-virtual
reality simulation, and it is done by the newly released paranormal
thriller JeruZalem, which is as much a formal experiment as it
is a monster movie with a religious slant.
Put aside for
a moment the fact that JeruZalem, about a pair of American tourists
(Danielle Jadelyn and Yael Groblas) experiencing the night when
Jewish, Islamic, and Christian demons rise from a supernatural portal
beneath the Israeli capital, is bad. It is stupefyingly
bad, in fact. But it is a possible next step in the evolution of
first-person storytelling that has thrived in video games for at
least 20 years. It never stops feeling like an advertisement for
Google Glass – “Glass, [insert command here]” is used
innumerable times throughout the 95 minutes of the movie – but the
shift from an omniscient camera to an experiential one for an entire film is,
theoretically speaking, a worthwhile decision. At least the instinct
to experiment with such new storytelling avenues is probably correct,
and it is one that can be used in exponential new ways in the future.
But to work, the
films made in this newish form need to tailor themselves to what that
form can do. The message must be bent to suit the medium. That
does not happen in JeruZalem. This may have more to do with
the film's content than its formal filmmaking decisions, but the
point-of-view of a set of Google Glass serves to dull the sharp edges
a more traditionally shot horror film would be able to generate with its
scares.
And that's because
of the first line of this piece. The movie involves long, unbroken
takes from Jadelyn's viewpoint. As such, the viewer gets something
approximating “the whole story.” The tension that is possible in
this situation – being startled by people or things sneaking up
behind you, disorientation in new surroundings, etc. – isn't
explored with much fervor by brother filmmakers Doran and Yoav Paz.
There are a few token fake-out moments early in the movie, but the
sound design is too clear to allow an early moment of Groblas's
character, Rachel, sneaking up on Jadelyn's Sarah to throw anyone off
– you can hear the footsteps coming seconds beforehand. Without
traditional editing to give a haunting and exacting rhythm,
everything feels off, either dragging or rushing in a ramshackle way
that feels like an out-of-practice garage band playing a drunken,
impromptu concert.
When the plot of
the movie gets going in earnest, about half an hour into it,
JeruZalem cannot break free from its fourth-rate haunted house
trappings. Scares are telegraphed too far in advance, either through
the already noted sound or through showing demons in the far
background long before they pose an immediate threat. The Paz
brothers try to work around this issue by making the demons lightning
fast, able to leap forward like a coiled snake snapping at its prey.
This is wrong for the visual mode the story is told in, because it
removes the possibility of a methodical march toward doom and also,
because of how visible and audible these monsters are before reaching
the protagonists, they don't have surprise on their side.
Some of these
issues could be masked over with characters and acting that more
closely resembled JeruZalem's obvious touchpoint, Matt
Reeves's 2008 handheld Godzilla riff, Cloverfield. Even that
movie is just okay, but it gets by with the J.J. Abrams-Bad Robot
crew's attention to character and wit. In JeruZalem, the
performers are trapped in this in-between area where they aren't sure
how to react to anything. With the camera operating as Sarah's
disembodied head, it is next to impossible for the best friend
relationship between her and Rachel to imprint itself on the audience
because only one side is shown. Combine that with some dodgy CGI
creatures as the only other acting stimuli, these performers are at
an extreme disadvantage when it comes to creating a believable
scenario.
But more than the
issues with new technology creating a difficult acting environment,
it is the writing that lets the wind out of everything. The Paz
brothers have an understanding of story function – the movie sets
things up and knocks them down in structurally satisfying ways –
but they lack feel. Everything is pursued in such a utilitarian way,
as if they are telling everyone on set, “We need to move onto the
next thing at this instant because that's the way it's supposed to
be.” This leaves callbacks to clunky emotional beats to fester
in an eye-rolling manner rather than landing with any significance.
In one scene, during a drunken hookup between Sarah and Kevin (Yon
Tumarkin, whose American accent is more like the Swedish Chef from
The Muppets than anything), the directors understand that it
would be an ironic juxtaposition of action and perception to have
Sarah's father (Howard Rypp) send her text messages – which pop up
on the Google Glass screen, placed on the nightstand – as she goes
about some of that sinful business in the holy city. But they can't
let the guilt trip lie with just one flourish. They have the father
send multiple texts, saying how Sarah is such a “good” and
“sweet” girl, not allowing herself to get into trouble. The first
message, an suggestion that he may have caught his daughter while she
was sleeping, would have been enough.
So on and so forth
JeruZalem ambles toward its rickety conclusion, with other
too-cute-by-half Glass-related misadventures popping up along the way
– adorable cat YouTube videos during a malfunction, “stressful”
rock music coming on during a demon attack, etc. There is value in
learning from this movie's mistakes, because there is a nugget of
something interesting in first-person visual narratives. But that
doesn't change how malignant this particular experiment turned out.
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