They Have Escaped

2014 [FINNISH]

Drama / Mystery

Plot summary



December 29, 2022 at 11:04 PM

Director

J.-P. Valkeapää

Top cast

720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
932.78 MB
1280*692
Finnish 2.0
NR
24 fps
1 hr 41 min
P/S ...
1.87 GB
1920*1038
Finnish 5.1
NR
24 fps
1 hr 41 min
P/S ...

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by rlaine 4 / 10

Hoped for a better movie

I don't know what the intended target group for this movie was, but for what I gather it didn't really reach anyone. Demographically I'm probably not in the target group, but I'm a movie fan and appreciate a good movie no matter what the targeted audience is. This was not a good movie.

I was hoping to see a real original art house movie actually, but that's not really what it is. The poster and trailer showed some rather surrealistic images with interesting choice of music and nice cinematography, but for some reason the movie itself does not really look that good. The camera work and direction is not very interesting after all. There is one scene in the middle where things get interesting and quite original, but the rest of the movie is just lackluster youth drama. OK, the ending is quite extreme, but not in a good way in my opinion and definitely not enough to redeem the otherwise very mediocre movie.

The acting is not really very good. It's quite difficult to pinpoint what's wrong with it, but it's the average theatrical Finnish over-acting for the most part. The girl has the looks for a proper movie femme, but the guy is quite boring. Neither is someone you'd actually really care for, as a movie character.

The other reviewer mentioned the symbolism. For some reason I didn't even think there was any symbolism, maybe because I was hung up on the mediocre artistic delivery so that I wasn't even paying attention to the message of the movie.

Not recommended, for anyone really.

Reviewed by oskari-ratinen 3 / 10

Some promise and a load of utter bull

This movie is pretty promising at the start. For a Finnish movie, it uses a rather original cinematography and storytelling. Two teenagers get to know each other and decide to run away from the system that wants to oppress them both. OK, nothing very original, but a fair start. You even get hints of subtle symbolism.

...and then it hits you. The symbolism is anything but subtle. It's the only purpose of the movie. Who cares about telling a story, who cares about character development, who cares about anything at all but symbols after symbols after symbols, non stop for the entire length of the movie?

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with full blown symbolism if you know how to do it, if you know how to actually tickle the viewer's brain with something he or she can at some level understand, but then again, not quite. David Lynch is the master of this school, his movies make you think what actually happened, and even if you come to a conclusion, it's never THE conclusion.

Well, not here. There is nothing to interpret in the symbolism. It's so painfully obvious what the director wants to say that you feel like yelling at the screen for him to just tell a straight story without all this shallow symbolism. Want an example? Masked gunmen lock the protagonists in cages, urinate on them and perform all sorts of other oppressive and violent acts on their helpless victims. Gee, I wonder what that means. Maybe something with faceless society using violence to entrap the free spirits and force them to its will or something?

And therein lies the problem. This movie is a marathon of symbols you don't need to even try to interpret, because they're basically self explanatory, making them in effect not symbols, but Artsy Bullshit. And that does not make a good movie. 3/10 for decent effort though.

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