Title:  De L’Autre Cote (The Other Side)

Director:  Sean Marckos

Date saw the show:  August 14 2007
Place saw the show:  Calgary Fringe Festival (www.calgaryfringe.ca), Alberta, Canada

De l’Autre Cote (The Other Side) – 14A (Canada-90:00 Thriller, Sean Marckos – Director) It’s on the other side that the secret is revealed.

2 stars

Reviewed By: Emily Axelson

De L’Autre Coté was meant to be this creepy and terrifying film which causes the audience to contemplate the world of ghosts and the supernatural (The Other Side). This film did none of that for me. I found it to be cheesy, not frightening in the least, and talked about ghosts in a very false way. The only creepiness lay in the music. But usually, even if there is bad direction or acting, the music covers it up. De L’Autre Cote was so enormously cheesy that even the music could not save it.

A student with a tragic history has recently moved to Montreal to attend a university. With little money, he accepts a job working as a janitor at night at his university. He begins noticing strange things, and soon he begins to have visions which he believes to be former happenings at the school. After seeing terrifying events through his visions, he tells his boss, and then plans to call the police. All his co-workers urge him against this, not truly believing him. He then must decide on his own what to do as a result of these visions.

Although I am not a fan of this film, I must admit that the effects, no matter how unadvanced, were impressive as was the lighting. Other than that, I felt this film to be an immense disappointment. De L’Autre Cote did not seem realistic enough, making the world of the supernatural a valid realm for a film to be worth watching and getting excited over.

It was also very slow for me. I don‘t usually mind slowness, but this was just too much. Many pointless scenes dragged on, building no tension as they went along. There were several ten minute or so long scenes with no relevancy to the story whatsoever, simply of the main character mopping or cleaning windows.

Another aspect that really bothered me about this film was the main character. He got himself into so many problems, simply based on his poor judgment. For example: if you see a white, transparent wall with ghosts on the other side, you don’t walk through it. The main character was seriously lacking common sense.

This film could have been more promising without the endless monotonous scenes, and with some intelligence decision making skills within the main character. When I found out that this film was only 90 minutes, I was shocked. Because of the intensive slowness, it made this film seem much longer than it actually was.