Pajiba

Intriguing.

It looks no less ridiculous than Inception, Paprika, or Synecdoche, New York. That is to say, it is a ridiculous concept, but that doesn't mean that it can't be interesting with the right execution. The trailer looks like it might tip its hand a bit too much toward self-importance. I think we saw, what, all of one continuous sequence in the trailer? That final little bit of dialog at the table? Everything else looked like it was woven together from all throughout the film. It's hard to judge the approach when you're dealing in snapshots and tone.

I like the concept. I like that the actors look like real people. I think it could be very interesting, but the pacing has to be right, and the trailer didn't give me a sense of where the tension lies.

I can wait for it to hit the television circuit.

The trailer was lousy. If not for the post's synopsis description, I would have had no clue what their inane babbling was about. Even so, there is little motivation given as to what exactly this doorway represents and why people are looking for it in droves and what the reward is for finding it. So why do we want to watch them wandering around opening random literal doors looking for a figurative one for two hours?

The point of the trailer is to entice people to come watch the actual movie, not to give us a 2-minute narcoleptic episode. It might be a clever and entertaining movie, but if it is, the trailer failed to show it.

Good to see that there's someone in this country trying to do something creative. There's a gaping black hole dying to be filled by something unique like this. Will this be the film to give Australia its next great film which stands apart from the world of film, like Animal Kingdom, The Proposition, Last Ride and (despite the largely foreign cast) Dark City before it? I'm certainly not convinced of that, but I'm so excited to see someone trying to do it.

Beyond that element of it, the description sounded like a wanky monologue from Crash, until I realised they meant the whole "self contained prison city with one door that is the exit to the rest of the world" thing literally. That's certainly intriguing.

The trailer looks quite well shot, regardless of the inevitable shoestring budget that comes with shooting anything in Australia's broken film system (oh how I long for a day when Australia looks at the UK, the BBC and the sheer amount of quality from there and wonders "why aren't we doing that?!"). The delivery of the monologues leaves something to be desired, but I can still think that in context they would work. What really matters is what will surely be the bulk of the film - the actual search for the exit, etc etc.

All in all, it's tough to get a read on much about this film from just the teaser, but they've done what a teaser is meant to do - put me on the look out for future trailers/news/release/etc. Here's hoping that it lives up to its apparant potential. And that if it doesn't, that something else steps up to do so.