... the viewers aptitude for maintaining patience while sitting through horrible, convoluted crap
586971
The entire experience with this film seemed in its own right to be a psychological experiment in the viewers aptitude for maintaining patience while sitting through horrible, convoluted crap. Maybe that was the point. Every time Wynona Ryder spoke one of her lines, my girlfriend howled as if she was the one being electrocuted. The actress looked lost at times, and possibly fighting a second day hangover at others. She always looked so clammy, like someone was consistently moistening her. Also, why would you hire a guy with the last name Sarsgaard to play an ethnic Jew from the Bronx? His faux Jewish accent, especially during his lamentations, felt unechoingly empty. There was nothing there. Horrible casting altogether. And the use of all the little extraneous bulls*** throughout the flick was nothing else but trying. An elephant in the room? What? That diarrhea-colored, werewolf-faced, feral child with the black eyes and a wig - wearing vagrant clothing? Who the hell was that!? What was he doing? Was some demented kid (who obviously dressed himself that morning) lost on set and the director said  "hey, why not?"  Also, John Leguizamo, were you doing someone a favor? How did he end up in this heap?
4922756
This oddly shot movie, teases an intellectual look at the secrets of the universe, but only delivers pseudo intellectual psycho babble.  It leaves you queezy along the way, while being highly annoyed with nearly every one of the movies characters.  The only redeeming factor is the effort you can tell some of actors put into it.  Do not watch this movie for fear of losing faith in Hollywood.
2397023
If you like watching incompetent, corrupt and badly behaved police officers at work then this is the show for you. The constant flow of foul language may be realistic but could have been toned down for public viewing.
3673928
Amazon's streaming function left a lot to be desired.  Every 30 seconds or so, throughout the better part of the showing, the picture froze, accompanied by a message that said "loading."  This made it impossible to enjoy and to assess the quality of the story.
2179799
For the most part, this is not at all a direct adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gillman's short story. For Logan Thomas' retelling of this story, I had a hard time getting past the horrible acting and even more so past the dramatic, choppy transitions between scenes. I think that the intent of the choppy scenes may have been to give viewers a feeling horror, being in a nightmare from which they can't wake. For instance, you're flying, suddenly you're falling, then suddenly you're being swallowed whole by an alligator with two heads. Now the two-headed alligator is your mother-in-law, she regurgitates you and after a few chews she spits you out, hurtling you through space and time. You finally find yourself naked, trying in vain to open your junior high locker to get clothing you know is in there, but you've forgotten the combination!  Oh the horror! Okay, and then there's the story line. What local residents our characters do come across impart that they're all in on a horrible secret that of course they're not willing to let our heros in on. The story flows from tedious boredom to tedious boredom to suprise intended horror back to tedious boredom. When we're finally brought to scenes that was to provide horror, there was no feeling of consistency to the nature of what horrible manifestation would ultimately ruin the young couple in the movie. It's psychosis? Or ghosts? Oh wait, now it's an evil shape shifting demon! Mangey demon dogs? Dead gladiator wandering the desert...wt??? Finally, when the real monster is revealed, it seems to me the viewer is "supposed" to conclude, oh yes, this makes complete sense even though there was no foundation set in the movie to ever suggest a...vampire! Worse yet, he's an extremely old coot of a vampire and he's been seated at the dinner table the whole time and no one noticed! Sorry for the spoiler. :/  Logan then inserts flashbacks to earlier scenes (sister-in-law tar-tar) that is supposed to validate the vampire-happily-ever-after ending and tie the inanity of Logan's story back to the strongest premise of movement behind the yellow wallpaper in Gillman's story. Logan's woman behind the yellow wallpaper is a vampire who opens a hidden door in an attic room each night to suck the blood out of the living and her husband is now a vampire slave, doomed to do her bidding for eternity. Genius symbolism or just plain stupid? Especially since everyone knows, attics get hot and vampires prefer the coolness of basements. Duh. Logan ends his adaptation set in the 1970's, with the ill-fated husband of our yellow wallpapered vampiress, greeting a new couple, who were apparently invited in as dinner, wearing the most ghastly polyester leisure suit ever. The feigned horror! Luckily there, the attempt at horror ends and the credits roll.
3399326
There are many aesthetic pleasures and there is some ink black wit in this picture, but I don't blame anyone for not liking the experience.  It gives me the now anticipated Coen pangs of guilt and remorse whenever a character does the kind of really s***ty things that people do but can't admit to themselves that they do.  I eagerly await the next one.

After thinking about it for a couple of months I saw it again yesterday.  It seemed to provide a relentless parade of faces collapsing or exploding with the detonation of hurtful words.  In that relentlessness of hurtful words I was put in mind of P. T. Anderson's "Magnolia," which on its opening week tested my capacity for loud fighting and cruelty such that I saw the second half for the first time when I tried again a year later.  I cherish the experience all the same.

It takes one to know one.  Were Jean and Llewyn drawn to each other by a shared fluency in withering profanity and an ancient need for a sparring partner?  Jim does not know what he's got.

Did Llewyn make anybody but me think of Lenny Bruce and HIS inability to shut his big mouth?  That closing shot, the au revoir, all I could think of was Lenny after a few court trials.  But I've had that picture in my head for forty years.

I don't imagine Bob Dylan would have made any better an uncle.
3518314
It's like a train wreck.  You know it will end badly, but you can't help watching it.  The author has some unusual quirks, like letting us in on one side of a phone conversation, which he does a number of times.  Like recapping a previous chapter as if it were last week's to-be-continued TV show.  The star of the book (I guess), Bob only makes one sound: "Murph".  I kept wondering if this was a children's book; it is so explicitly written that every minute detail of the simplest process is excruciatingly explained.

Why did I bother finishing it?  I'm not sure.  I guess I was holed up in a nondescript motel room, and my options were limited
3963685
Until now, I've never had a single complaint about my near-perfect three year old. From sleeping through the night at 6 weeks of, giving up bottles and his crib and moving to his own room - even taking baths and going to bed every night without a single complaint and potty training and reading on his own at 2.

UNTIL CAILLOU.  And I'm not joking. This isn't a joke review. This is a serious complaint.

That obnoxious little brat, Caillou, in just two episodes, has my son WHINING "I can't!!" to EVERYTHING he is asked to do. "Time to get out of the tub, sweetie," I tell him. "I caaaaaaannnn't." He whines in this horrible squeal. I had NO IDEA where this abhorrent behavior came from until I caught THREE SECONDS of this horrible show on tv.

My won was watching intently and I said "turn the tv off please." And to my horror, he dropped to the floor, and started whining over and over "I can't!  I can't".

I wanted to throw up.  No shock- this horrible excuse for a television show has been PERMANENTLY banned from our home. I will tell every parent I know of this god -awful excuse for an "educational program".

My son has caught glimpses of sponge bob (crude), power rangers (physical fighting) and even half an hour of gremlins (not in my presence, but I found out he saw the most gruesome parts) and had ZERO reaction to these things - he didn't karate chop our house cats, or imitate any of the crude humor on sponge bob....but in a mere TWO MINUTES of "CAILLOU" my son immediately picked up that petulant little Bart's HORRIBLE incessant whine and his "I can't" crap that he spews every time he is asked or told to do ANYTHING.

BY FAR the worst children's show I've ever seen.  PBS should be paying for a professional to help me fix this behavior (and a trip to the spa to relax my nerves after listening to the whining I'd never had to deal with before "CAILLOU". Flat out AWFUL.

Kayt
(Mom to one son, 3)
4924211
I am trying my best to get through this series, but I'm finding if extremely difficult. The sad thing is, there's no reason for it to be failing as much as it does.  It's a great premise, the costume and make-up team did a fantastic job, the characters are genuine, and it's pulled off rather well despite the budget.
So why is it difficult to watch you ask?
WORST MUSIC EVER!!
I am constantly amazed at how awful it is.  From the retched theme song all the way down the line, it's this agonizing nightmare of cheesy meandering synth vomit. It's somewhat reminiscent of the score from Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (which I don't actually mind), but the problem here is that it never fits with the scene.  It's like someone took an giant audio crap all over what would have been an otherwise delicious bit of television sweetness, rendering it nearly unwatchable.  This is the first time I've wished for separate audio tracks for dialog, sound fx and music so I could just mute it and get on with enjoying the story.
I don't want to think that all New Zealanders are musically retarded. I'm hoping it's only Simon Lockyer, and that someone will break his fingers, before he attempts to ruin another project.
4194844
The show is great but technically it is a mess: no lip sync; the film skips and lurches; it is a pain in the neck!
4219753
I watched this thing out of curiosity and saw exactly what I expected. I gave it 2 stars because one of the "possessed" girls was kind of hot. What a bunch of tripe. They take some pretty sophisticated equipment and just start running it. Geeez what most people don't understand is that equipment like that needs to be calibrated you can't just start taking data there is no baseline. The electronic speech phenomena is even worse. You would never make the same connections without the words printed while you are listening to it.  I have a suggestion for anyone who gives this kind of thing credibility.  If you invested the time to watch this thing take 14 minuets to watch this and use your actual brain.
[...]
587367
Truth be told, I would honestly give this maybe 3 stars, but who bothers reading those lukewarm rational opinions? I enjoyed the actors and the situations and even the envelope that was pushed to limits commonly found only in comic books.
For the sake of decency and in an effort to warn parents and honor the Founding Fathers I give one star because it might be read and people will not only say "Hell to the disgusting no! We don't want our precious little impressionable gifts from heaven, Bobby, Bobbie, and Whatev's, to be sucker-punched by the weird freakshow horror that is Bone Tomahawk." This is not a family show, unless maybe its that family from The House of a 1000 Corpses. Now that was a fine horror flick.
This adults-only diversion spectacular needs a particular code warning viewers of the few minutes towards the movie's conclusion of a repulsive and potentially traumatic depiction of a person being drawn and quartered and the body parts thrown on the barby to be eaten by the desert cave-dwellers as they stomp about grunting and threatening, remarkably identical to Hillary. It reminds of a Sunday meal at the kids' table with giddy efforts at comedy waving chicken legs in the air and sporting black olives on our finger tips. Yes, we were blessed. However, the scary heathens need two hands to carry around a human leg while chewing on it. At this point in the show, I might have looked like the ultra violent criminal Alex from Clockwork Orange in his close-up during his reprogramming treatment, but that I was doing it because I wanted to and I need to "see it through" someday and prove to myself that "I have what it takes" in the self-confidence category as an amateur movie critic and foot dragger. Even though the moment of frozen horror was relatively brief, the effect was similar to the one I experienced when I saw Jaws at the afternoon cheap matinee. I went whole hog and purchased a large bucket of popcorn which I put under my seat as the movie was already starting and there's no "How do you do?" with Jaws on the big screen. No light comments humorously delivered about something in current events that everybody can relate to so you can laugh at the same thing a hundred unseen strangers are laughing at. Just the air not being inhaled like normal because many are holding their breath, sceaming inside and out, and getting a natural buzz from not breathing. Finally, after the shark exploded and the lights came up, I went "whoosh" and kicked my big popcorn with my heel and realized it was a shameful squander I had committed, but the magical power of Jaws had removed me from common humdrum life and I wasn't really at fault. Maybe I should give this Indy show more than one star. Was Jaws so much more righteous than this fine twisted western? Jaws was a great movie.
The truth is that I enjoyed the show, watched it by myself in the air conditioned comfort of my basement theater, and didn't need to worry about the impact that the extreme depictions might have on the impressionable.
I've been around the block and I'm not too afraid of "the wild side", and could easily be labelled as "jaded" like many others.
Another positive is the absence of the too-common moralizing hidden in the narrative by naive pagan college students trying to teach me what they learned in school, how to "get along with weird perversions of every kind" and that "there is no such thing as weird perversions" and  the rest of that squirrelly rehashed "enlightened" jive talk.
I'll stick with my Romans 1: 16- 32, thank you very much. Good movies are hard to find.
Shave and a haircut...!
1565540
For some bizzare reason, I would punish myself week after week by watching this.  It must have had some 'good' aspect to it in order to watch it every week, but looking back, I can't think of many.  I think I enjoyed watching these girls look like idiots the majority of the time.  They are beyond ditzy and without a doubt, most situations here were definate set ups.  One family they stayed with, the girls went with the sons to a gym and whilst the guys were showering, Paris and Nicole stole their clothes and the guys walked home with towels.  Now come on.  Like that wasn't a set up.  Spilling ashes from an urn at a funeral parlor and vacuuming it up?  Again - a set up.  Obviously you don't have to concentrate on this a lot; I think I just watched (and rated it 4 stars) for the laugh factor.  Not because they are funny, but because it makes a 5 year old look mature and smart.
3089643
Terrible...watched about 15-20 minutes of pure crap before giving up.
4464856
Within the first five minutes, I wanted to turn this movie off--as soon as she said in the voice over, the eyeroll-worthy "wargasms", I had had enough.  I have very little patience for movies lately.
Even so, I forced myself to continue watching--it's Oliver Stone, right?
Oh, but it gets worse, because "O" then watches a video of decapitated heads and has no human reaction.  "Oh, like people being tortured and beheaded, like. um, sigh and stuff"  And whilst the "men" then discuss this dangerous new development--another drug cartel wishing to take them over with threats of death included, the dingbat girlfriend joins the conversation and all but twirls her hair and bats her eyes and says, "Let's, like, go party and stuff!"  I paraphrase, forgive me.

 Is she concerned with this seething, vicious threat to herself, her way of living, or to these two men that she supposedly loves SO much?  No!  Gee, I would be.  But, you know, that's just me.

They plan to leave the country, escape the cartel, and what does she do next?  She goes to the mall!!!!!  And the morons LET her!!  Because, you know, when attempting to double cross a clever drug cartel, I always plan on calmly, dreamily promenading through department stores, making innumerable purchases, and changing into new clothes--WHILE I'M SHOPPING.
IN THE REAL WORLD,  I'd be freaking out, terrified that something bad would happen, I'd leave immediately--Stone could have milked that part of the film, he could have really saturated it with such incredible suspense and genuine fear, it could have been so gripping.  But he destroyed it all. What a lost opportunity.

I guess I'm expecting more from people in their twenties, whether potheads or no, a serious situation is a serious situation, right?  These people act like thirteen year olds, like my nephew, just very unaware of consequences. It was infuriating to watch.

As for the rest of the movie, the twists and turns, the brutality, eh.  It was okay.  I think Salma Hayek was good in her role, but I don't like the relationship that was developed between her character and O, it, too, was off and contrived.  All of them seemed like cartoon characters, or caricatures, they should have been drawn with far more gravity, then the film would have been fascinating.
670903
My roommate and I unfortunately wasted an hour and twenty minutes of our lives on this movie, perhaps the most frustrating complilation of bad acting and no plot that I have ever seen.  We stayed awake until the wee hours of the night watching this movie, hoping for the shocking turn of events that would make the whole attempt worthwhile. That time never came.  This movie was like the fight that you have with your boyfriend that takes hours and hours and nothing ever gets accomplished. For this reason, why would you ever watch, rent voluntarily or much to my horror even considering buying this god awful film? I feel it safe to say that I almost went bald viewing this film because I was constantly pulling at my hair, hoping for the torture to end. I only write this review to save others from the gut wreching pain. Mind you, I only gave this film one star because Amazon did not allow me to give it negative 10.
597012
Not suitable for 90% of viewers, unless they are extremely bored. Obnoxious movie buffs and liberal arts majors might enjoy this.