It’s all the rage. Ha!
Actually it’s quite good. The script is very good, the direction is very good, and the acting is at least competent. Which, given everything else, is enough. Some of the visuals are stunning, in good and bad ways…in this film, the beautiful, peaceful, playful, and haunting exist intertwined with the grotesque, violent, vicious, and haunting.
I have no idea if it was intended, but I find symbolism in the fact that “Rage” inevitably destroys itself…the answer being no answer at all. As with anger, it can keep you alive only for so long, no matter how strong it is. Then you need something a bit more meaningful. That, or you burn out.
What elevates this above the vast majority of “horror” films is what almost always does – Humanity. The characters are portrayed as real, not absurd extremes of “Good” and “Evil”. They’re capable of horrible and wonderful things…sometimes they’re happy, sometimes they’re sad, sometimes they’re scared…you know, real.
Two of my favorite scenes are the ‘Dawn of the Dead’ shopping homage, which is decidedly pleasant and amusing, and a scene near the end involving the male lead, which is decidedly unpleasant, and shows that human beings don’t need an infection to be truly enraged.
Inspirational Music: Inevitable build near the end.
Grade: A-
6/24/12: Not as gruesome as ‘Land’, but better. Grade: A