Nokturno (2024)

Turn on the light ⇢ How production can ruin a movie.

It took me a month to finish Nokturno. I watched a few minutes here, a few minutes there, but it never grabbed my attention enough for me to dedicate more than 20 minutes in one sitting. Why?

How was the movie? I don't really know. I was mostly watching my reflection on screen because the film was so freaking dark. How can I feel invested in the story, when I literally do not see what is happening? Scared? Of what, when the scares I hidden in the black hole of the lighting department. It was simply frustrating. I was putting my laptop right in front of my face trying to catch a glimpse of that's going on. I honestly considered getting into the wardrobe with hope a pitch black could help.

I get it, horrors are usually not supposed to be all bright and well lit (though, some of the best titles do use light setting for their advantage), but we still need to see something. Anything.

That said, it's not like the poor lighting was the only issue. The plot itself was just mediocre at best. The idea behind the creatures? Interesting - that's the movie I want to watch. Or at least get a better, more elaborate explanation of the background. The way they did not flesh out the supernatural elements, the human one was underdeveloped too - the relationships between the characters, their motivations, reasoning for their choices. Everything was always summed up in one liner.

Nokturno feels like a cheap version of The Ring with The Nun aesthetics. It just felt extremely sloppy. Decent performances meant truly nothing when everything else was distractivelly bad.

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