The Devil's Muse (2007)

The Age of Commercialism

How sad is this?

A Masterpiece!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is actually one of the strangest and most bizarre movies i've ever seen. A horrorstory woven into a dream, made of short arty scenes and a fantastic soundtrack made by David J (Bauhaus) and Ego Plum.I don't know a movie to compare this with, thought it reminded me of some movies. The movies that came to my mind were 'the naked breakfast'(because of the surrealism) and pink Floyd - the Wall (because of the music-picture combination). If you like arty films, this movie will blow your mind. But if you're just looking for a nasty horrorslasher, look further, you won't find it in this movie.Don't expect a predictable story, expect a dream from which you can't wake up till the end of the movie.

Not to be confused with Ulli Lommel's unwatchable mess or the incomprehensible De Palma film, this is a decently shot and produced meditation on the price of fame and fortune in Lotus Land. The film uses the Black Dahlia as a springboard for a series of vignettes and haunted images of Hollywood's past. The cinematography is excellent and the cast is up for the challenge. You do not learn about the Black Dahlia crime from this film. The viewer is thrust into the shoes of a number of actresses searching for success with the Black Dahlia character as a backdrop. This stream of ideas is not for all tastes, but if you are in the mood, you will find this film rewarding.

Great art is open ended, and such are the works of Ramzi Abed.Abed's films offer the viewer the opportunity to detach from them self and to escape this world for a little over an hour.Expect nothing when watching an Abed film and you will have everything.What can I say about The Black Dahlia Movie? I have no idea what that was going on during the film AND YET IT WAS AEWSOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How does that happen? How does a filmmaker take on us a journey with no clear destination and still entertain us? Perhaps it's best not to think too much about it, or life in general.Abed is a genius. Watch his films!

Dreams are not movies or reality. They are the mind's attempt to sort out difficult information. The difficult reality portrayed in this dream-like movie is that Elizabeth Short is only one of many.The atmosphere can be quite oppressive at times, as the audience is put right in among the Dahlias in a Hollywood that is exactly as glamorous as a burlesque house in the low rent section of any town. It should play more cheerily at home with the lights on, as it would in a drive-in on the same bill with, say The Indestructible Man or Gun Crazy. If you are reading this 10 or 20 years down the line you can watch Black Dahlia Movie for a glimpse of the world that was. This dream-like vision will tell you something about how people felt about this subject when it was made. The director can be seen working on the movie. It's his troubled point-of-view that puts actual talented unknowns in very contemporary settings. Little walkways between buildings, seedy-looking houses where parties are staged by fake big-shots, and the plain old streets of Hollywood.The editing could use some tightening because it isn't a dream, only dream-like, and I wish Ramzi Abed had had a bigger budget. People who dislike the early and later work of Stanley Kubrick and the jazzy poetical riffing of Jack Kerouac will not like this one bit. Repeat viewing can bring out it's more traditional narrative qualities. Toward the end, as many dreams do at the approach of wakefulness, the story seems to be trying to reconcile itself to the harsh reality it has been contemplating by imagining fantastic resolutions, each with it's own narrative logic, then goes back where it began with the young dead woman in the weedy lot. There's no way to fix what was done to her.This is just the sort of cultural document an impressionable young person needs to see. Never mind that the occasionally not-so-great acting and tellingly low budget will make them laugh, or the gruesome murders portrayed give them nightmares. A timely warning might keep some kid from making a mistake.The contribution of David J and other musicians helps. There are lots of cute actresses in this movie. Kristen Kerr, who plays the chief Dahlia, is poetry in motion.