Review #240: Don't Look Now (1973)

This review was originally written in October 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #94: Don't Look Now (1973)

Don't Look Now follows a married couple, Laura and John Baxter, who have lost a daughter to an accidental drowning and are living in Venice while John works as an art restorer and their son is at a boarding school in London. The couple meets a pair of elderly sisters, one of whom is blind and claims to have psychic visions (and has communicated with the Baxters' deceased daughter). The blind psychic has a couple visions that seemingly come true, Laura leaves Venice to visit their son who has been injured, and John thinks he sees Laura still in town with the two sisters, so he searches for her and eventually gets the police involved. Laura (who did in fact leave town) comes back but she and John get separated. John thinks he sees their dead daughter run into an abandoned building or something, so he chases after her, but it turns out it's actually some kind of goblin I guess and it kills him. (It might not be intended to be a goblin, I can't figure out if the actress was wearing any sort of makeup or facial prosthesis so that might just be what she looks like. In which case I feel bad, but I swear there's no information about this person anywhere online and whether it's a goblin or just a random murderous little person it makes as much sense within the plot.)

I did not care for this film. It's yet another nearly-two-hour entry with about twenty minutes' worth of meaningful content in it, and I just don't really understand what anything had to do with anything. I guess the movie tries to imply that John is also psychic, but really, how does it do this? He seemingly realizes his daughter is drowning at the start of the film, but he realizes this by seeing a red figure in a photo he was studying (and this is such an easily-missed detail I spent the entire film wondering what in the world he was reacting to until they showed it again at the end of the movie). He later thinks he sees his daughter running around Venice, but like, what indication are we given to not just assume this is just some kid (or goblin) that happens to have a red jacket? Because, spoiler, it turns out that's exactly the case! Then he's certain that he saw Laura on a boat after she left for London, but is it not possible that he was mistaken in that single moment? The movie plays these "visions" or "premonitions" so quickly and without incident that it's quite easy to mistake them for simply being nothing. But the movie so desperately wants you to think that these ARE some kind of visions, because otherwise, John's actions don't really make any sense.

And like, if they are visions, then who or what kills him at the end? Not a vision, apparently! I guess we're supposed to think that some of what he saw were visions, and others were a very real murderous goblin that somehow knew that John was going to follow her into an abandoned building. The scene where he thinks he's found his daughter makes no sense if it's a real person, because why was the murderous goblin just standing in a corner facing away from him for like thirty seconds? I get that they tried establishing earlier in the film that there's been a rash of murders in Venice lately, but again, what kind of a murderer's MO is to dress like someone's dead daughter and then run into an abandoned building in the hopes that they'll follow and stand and stare while they get killed? It doesn't make any sense.

Looking at this review I feel like I've made Don't Look Now sound much more interesting than it is. It isn't interesting at all. It's long, it's boring, most of the scenes don't feel like they add up to anything, and yet this is another one of those movies where people all over the world praise it up and down. I just don't get it.

Overall Rating: 2/10 Red Raincoats

Cinematic Urban Legend: Apparently, many people over the years have spread a rumor that the two lead actors, Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, actually had sex during their (incredibly long) romance scene in this film. However, it has been repeatedly debunked by the actors themselves, as well as the several other people who were on set at the time.