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'THE MAN IN THE ORANGE JACKET': LONDON REVIEW
Hollywood Reporter
Oct 29 2014
10:47 AM PDT 10/29/2014 by Stephen Dalton
Atmospheric Latvian slasher thriller puts a timely twist on
psycho-horror conventions for an age of economic austerity
Billed as the first ever horror movie from Latvia, The Man in
the Orange Jacket is a stylish, ambitious, politically charged
psycho-thriller made by the same Riga-based production house as
the small Baltic state's current Foreign Language Oscar candidate,
Rocks in My Pocket. The Armenian-born writer-director Aik Karapetian
never quite delivers on the chilly promise of his opening act, but
there are sequences here that have the creepy, controlled intensity
of Michael Haneke or Lars Von Trier.
After making a positive splash at Telluride, Austin's Fantastic Fest
and Canada's Fantasia, Karapetian's second feature screened at the
London Film Festival two weeks ago. Beyond festival circles it should
appeal to the minority of genre fans who favor highbrow psychological
mystery over high body counts, with potential for crossover to arthouse
audiences too.
Dressed in the high-visibility uniform of his profession, the nameless
man of the title (Maxim Lazarev) is a dock worker who has just been
laid off from his job along with 200 colleagues. Emotionless and
silently determined, he sets off on a trudging country walk to a
luxurious lakeside mansion belonging to the dock's wealthy owner
(Aris Rozentals). Following a silent home invasion, the intruder
slaughters the tycoon and his young wife (Anta Aizupe) with a hammer
and screwdriver, the tools of manual labor transformed into weapons
of class war.
Instead of fleeing the scene of his crime, the killer turns lord of
the manor and begins savoring the high life, gorging on expensive
artwork and fancy food. But he soon starts to feel spooked by odd
noises and sightings around the remote, empty mansion. A mysterious
figure starts stalking him, also wearing an orange jacket. A visit
from a pair of lookalike prostitutes descends into a sadistic, sexually
deranged bloodbath and a brutal cat-and-mouse chase through the snowy
woods outside. Or so it seems, as there are strong hints that these
reality-warping scenes are feverish hallucinations.
The Man in the Orange Jacket draws on some classy cinematic
antecedents, from Kubrick's The Shining to Von Trier's Antichrist
via Alexandre Aja's High Tension. It is also assembled with a
self-consciously arty eye, holding back its elegant opening credits
until a full 15 minutes of plot have elapsed, and keeping the
protagonist silent until almost midway through.
Sadly, Karapetian appears to lose his nerve in the second half, piling
on nightmarish twists in place of narrative logic, from reanimated
corpses to amateurishly staged knife attacks. The identity of the
second orange-jacketed man is also plain from the start, despite
clumsy attempts to conceal his face. With a compact running time of
71 minutes, the bloody finale inevitably feels a little rushed and
lacks the requisite nerve-shredding crescendo that defines the best
psycho-horror movies.
More spooky short story than full-blooded feature, The Man in
the Orange Jacket is a great idea only half realized, failing to
exploit the latent dramatic potential buried in its timely subtext
of underclass rage in an age of extreme inequality. That said, this
is still an intriguing trip into the Twilight Zone from an unsung
cinematic corner of Europe, marking out Karapetian as a sharp young
talent with a bright future in dark fairy tales.
Production company: Locomotive Productions Cast: Maxim Lazarev,
Anta Aizupe, Aris Rozentals Director: Aik Karapetian Screenwriter:
Aik Karapetian Producer: Roberts Vinovskis Cinematographers: Janis
Eglitis, Jurgis Kmins Editor: Andris Grants Make-up: Maija Gundare
Sales company: Wide Management, Paris No rating, 71 minutes
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/man-orange-jacket-london-review-744662
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Hollywood Reporter
Oct 29 2014
10:47 AM PDT 10/29/2014 by Stephen Dalton
Atmospheric Latvian slasher thriller puts a timely twist on
psycho-horror conventions for an age of economic austerity
Billed as the first ever horror movie from Latvia, The Man in
the Orange Jacket is a stylish, ambitious, politically charged
psycho-thriller made by the same Riga-based production house as
the small Baltic state's current Foreign Language Oscar candidate,
Rocks in My Pocket. The Armenian-born writer-director Aik Karapetian
never quite delivers on the chilly promise of his opening act, but
there are sequences here that have the creepy, controlled intensity
of Michael Haneke or Lars Von Trier.
After making a positive splash at Telluride, Austin's Fantastic Fest
and Canada's Fantasia, Karapetian's second feature screened at the
London Film Festival two weeks ago. Beyond festival circles it should
appeal to the minority of genre fans who favor highbrow psychological
mystery over high body counts, with potential for crossover to arthouse
audiences too.
Dressed in the high-visibility uniform of his profession, the nameless
man of the title (Maxim Lazarev) is a dock worker who has just been
laid off from his job along with 200 colleagues. Emotionless and
silently determined, he sets off on a trudging country walk to a
luxurious lakeside mansion belonging to the dock's wealthy owner
(Aris Rozentals). Following a silent home invasion, the intruder
slaughters the tycoon and his young wife (Anta Aizupe) with a hammer
and screwdriver, the tools of manual labor transformed into weapons
of class war.
Instead of fleeing the scene of his crime, the killer turns lord of
the manor and begins savoring the high life, gorging on expensive
artwork and fancy food. But he soon starts to feel spooked by odd
noises and sightings around the remote, empty mansion. A mysterious
figure starts stalking him, also wearing an orange jacket. A visit
from a pair of lookalike prostitutes descends into a sadistic, sexually
deranged bloodbath and a brutal cat-and-mouse chase through the snowy
woods outside. Or so it seems, as there are strong hints that these
reality-warping scenes are feverish hallucinations.
The Man in the Orange Jacket draws on some classy cinematic
antecedents, from Kubrick's The Shining to Von Trier's Antichrist
via Alexandre Aja's High Tension. It is also assembled with a
self-consciously arty eye, holding back its elegant opening credits
until a full 15 minutes of plot have elapsed, and keeping the
protagonist silent until almost midway through.
Sadly, Karapetian appears to lose his nerve in the second half, piling
on nightmarish twists in place of narrative logic, from reanimated
corpses to amateurishly staged knife attacks. The identity of the
second orange-jacketed man is also plain from the start, despite
clumsy attempts to conceal his face. With a compact running time of
71 minutes, the bloody finale inevitably feels a little rushed and
lacks the requisite nerve-shredding crescendo that defines the best
psycho-horror movies.
More spooky short story than full-blooded feature, The Man in
the Orange Jacket is a great idea only half realized, failing to
exploit the latent dramatic potential buried in its timely subtext
of underclass rage in an age of extreme inequality. That said, this
is still an intriguing trip into the Twilight Zone from an unsung
cinematic corner of Europe, marking out Karapetian as a sharp young
talent with a bright future in dark fairy tales.
Production company: Locomotive Productions Cast: Maxim Lazarev,
Anta Aizupe, Aris Rozentals Director: Aik Karapetian Screenwriter:
Aik Karapetian Producer: Roberts Vinovskis Cinematographers: Janis
Eglitis, Jurgis Kmins Editor: Andris Grants Make-up: Maija Gundare
Sales company: Wide Management, Paris No rating, 71 minutes
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/man-orange-jacket-london-review-744662
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress