MovieChat Forums > The Life Before Her Eyes (2008) Discussion > Dumb Movie

Dumb Movie

posted 15 years ago by msbhatia
11 replies | jump to latest

Considering that House of Sand and Fog is one of my all time favourite movies, This was one of the worst movies I've seen because it is just a completely illogical movie based on something that can never happen. No,.. I'm not talking about the shooting, but about the Restroom situation. Here's why?

a) The shooter is going rampant outside but the girls in the restroom don't make an attempt to hide anywhere.

b) Why does he enter the girl's bathroom and not the boys?

c) Why does he decide to indulge in a game in the restroom, when previous to entering it he shoots indiscriminately? He actually doesn't even kill the teacher before entering the restroom.

d) Once he comes into the restroom, he seems to have plenty of time on his hand to engage in a dialogue. What happened to the rampant crazed out shooter?

e) Faced with a life ending situation, if Diana was smart enough to spend those moments thinking elaborately about what "might have been her future", why couldn't she just pounce on the gunman with her friends help and wrest his gun away or shoot him?

That would have been a better decision and a more natural reaction, than both of them wasting time thinking who should be killed first, and having elaborate dreams about themselves 15 years later.

f) I hated the repetitions of the restroom scene and did not like the direction at all, moving from present to flashback to present to restroom, etc, etc..

g) The moralistic angle on abortion etc. was even more annoying.

Net Net, simply a boring, and annoying movie, a waste of time. A better movie on the subject of school shooting is the movie DARK MATTER

[–] paulmarkj 15 years ago

a) The shooter is going rampant outside but the girls in the restroom don't make an attempt to hide anywhere.

There is nowhere to hide in the restroom. Going outside would have been suicide.

b) Why does he enter the girl's bathroom and not the boys?

He may have been killing randomly (girls' just as random as boys'); he may have chosen to go in the girls'; he nay have been deranged and so not making good or decent decisions. He may have gone on the boys'.

c) Why does he decide to indulge in a game in the restroom, when previous to entering it he shoots indiscriminately? He actually doesn't even kill the teacher before entering the restroom.

We don't know his motives. Again, being deranged, his decisions can't be questioned for being illogical. He fatally shot the teacher, why do you expect him to shoot him some more.

In any case, 'playing games' is surely what he is doing - playing with people's lives.

d) Once he comes into the restroom, he seems to have plenty of time on his hand to engage in a dialogue. What happened to the rampant crazed out shooter?

Again, he is deranged, or as you put it, crazed. So why expect logical reasoning.

e) Faced with a life ending situation, if Diana was smart enough to spend those moments thinking elaborately about what "might have been her future", why couldn't she just pounce on the gunman with her friends help and wrest his gun away or shoot him?

Yeah, right.

f) I hated the repetitions of the restroom scene and did not like the direction at all, moving from present to flashback to present to restroom, etc, etc..

You may hate them, but they played a part in the plot, gradully revealing information.

g) The moralistic angle on abortion etc. was even more annoying.

You opinion.

[–] jlent 15 years ago

Comment on some of the comments.

a) The shooter is going rampant outside but the girls in the restroom don't make an attempt to hide anywhere.

There is nowhere to hide in the restroom. Going outside would have been suicide.

Don't quite understand. "Outside" meaning "out in the hall?" Then yes, suicide. "Outside" meaning "outside?" Not suicide. Could they open the windows? If so they could have escaped. If they couldn't have opened them could they have smashed them open?

d) Once he comes into the restroom, he seems to have plenty of time on his hand to engage in a dialogue. What happened to the rampant crazed out shooter?

Again, he is deranged, or as you put it, crazed. So why expect logical reasoning.

Especially when it doesn't suit the slimy manipulations of the director/screenwriter.

e) Faced with a life ending situation, if Diana was smart enough to spend those moments thinking elaborately about what "might have been her future", why couldn't she just pounce on the gunman with her friends help and wrest his gun away or shoot him?

Yeah, right.

There's nobody in the entire universe creative and skilled with symbols enough to dream up Diana's future life in the time period given and the adenalin that Diana would have been pumping. It's the writer's wet dream and is beyond absurd. Once you get past that though, then, yeah, they wouldn't have been able to shoot the guy.

g) The moralistic angle on abortion etc. was even more annoying.

It was more than annoying, it was disgusting. The ultimate argument of this utterly horrid little film is that if you get pregnant and decide to get an abortion you need to be brutally murdered to find absolution.

[–] arjenf 15 years ago

I couldn't agree more. This movie lost me early in - it would've been enough to just consider the implications and survival of such a traumatic experience but yet the screenwriter decided to take us 20 000 miles away from reality. The only thoughts that I’m left is high school shootings are terrible and that it affects a community for a long time, but that wasn’t even portrayed seeing that everything is just a made-up dream! Useless movie and serves no purpose, other than my irritation of it.

[–] ats02171 15 years ago

Well actully the everything but the restroom scene is in diana's head. It is that when the brain is dieing it can create a whole world with using the things around it like, The movie Fracture or that classic short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. So everything we see happends after she getts shot not before. At the end the dicetor shows the audiance what they missed. i kinda figured it out before that. One eveything looked like it was dated 2007 and clothes that the girl were wearing and items that they talked about where 2007. Emma looks just like Diana in a picture with her mother. there is no way that in 15 years here mom would still look 40ish. the part with the husband and the "mistress" they both had the same braslet and after she got hit by the car the husband didn't have his icecream but had his bag.

[–] herbaciak 15 years ago

I agree 100%! I was shocked when I discovered that it's a movie from the director of House of Sand and Fog (imo one of the best dramas ever, fantastic acting, incredible emotions... perfect film!). And this one? Wow, that was hella dumb movie. Idiotic. Hey, there is a killer. Let us wait for him, and then do nothing. Ok. And it was also predictable film. Somewhere near its half I already knew that Evan Rachel/Uma is the one who died (especially when the movie title is one big spoiler). Total crap. Waste of time.

[–] laurenw666 15 years ago

I agree with you. The whole time I was watching it, I saw opportunities for the girls to try and attack the gunman. While he was reloading or not paying full attention, the girls could have at least tried something. Also, they could have attempted to hide in the bathroom by standing up on one of the toilets and closing the door. It might not of worked but they could have made an attempt.

[–] jackthegreat2004 15 years ago

To say this movie is dumb because they didnt attack him is really idiotic. How many movies have moments where you wanna tell them what to do? I WONDER! Besides its not compltely unrealistic for the girls not to attack him, not everyone would do.

[–] willie_stark 15 years ago

Come on guys -- "the girls should have jumped him". I take it none of you have ever been face to face with a person with a loaded assault rifle.

And no, Diana is not "dreaming this up" while waiting for the killer to shoot her. The whole plot of the movie is what passes through her mind as she is on the floor dying, after having already been shot.

And no, the movie doesn't take a moralistic view on abortion. It touches on Diana's feelings of guilt, which happen to any woman having this procedure. If anything, it portrays the anti-abortion movement as irrelevant, cynical and having a lack of understanding. Not a definitively pronounced pro-choice message, but doesn't need to be. Certainly doesn't have a pro-life agenda.

[–] jlent 15 years ago

I'm not sure it really matters when she's having her vision, but it's just as absurd to have it while dying as any other time. What subtle lighting, what convincing symbols, how complex is my thinking and how pretty is my picture making as I lie here, the blood draining from my body as I drift off into shock and die. And so much story in the few seconds of life I have left.
I'm sorry, horsesh*t.
I wish it didn't take a moralistic view of abortion, I might not have been as offended by it. But the whole plot of the movie revolves around the kid she doesn't have that she recreates in her dying fantasy. Then there's all the crosses. Her last activity in her fantasy is her kid disappearing into the woods.
The film doesn't just "touch" on Diana's guilt, it's the whole point. She's shot as she realizes her errant ways.
Dying is her absolution.
Religious garbage.

[–] arjenf 15 years ago

"I take it none of you have ever been face to face with a person with a loaded assault rifle."

Yeah like that happens every other day to most people - wtf. No in honesty I haven't stood face to face with a person with a loaded assualt rifle. Have you?

[–] o341627 15 years ago

a)
First: where to hide.
Second: you hear screams, shouts and a machinegun, and you realize it's a crazy guy killing everyone. In that situation, you aren't really calm, can't really think. It's called shock.

b)
Because he was going through the hallway and went into every room that came in his way?

c)
Because he was crazy and wanted to be cruel. And seeing they are great friends, he wanted to hurt them even more than simply killing them. Let them choose which one of them to kill. That is much more ruthless than simply killing both of them.

d)
It was simply his last kill. You could say "why didn't he continue after killing one of the girls"?
It was over just over, he killed himself.

e)
Yea, "That would have been a better decision and a more natural reaction" in front of a monitor at home.
I'll repeat: They were in shock.
It's like in horror movies. People say "oh my god why didn't he did this and why didn't she did that" well because THAT would be unrealistic. Not all of us can (could) act as a Rambo and think like Einstein in horrible and absolutely unexpected situations like that. It's easy to say but maybe even you or me would just stare at the gun instead of attacking or thinking through our every move.

f)
Opinion.

g)
Opinion.