6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Only In Celebration Do We Go Beyond The Circle Of Life And Death" ~ Teenage Musings On Death And The Afterlife, February 11, 2007
This review is from: Purgatory House (DVD)
The first thing you'll notice about this movie is that it views like a very low budget high school student film project. However this is not a film that should be judged by its production values or level of acting ability. When you discover that the script was written in its entirety by fourteen year old Celeste Davis (who bears a striking resemblance to ex-olympic figure skater Tonya Harding) who also stars in the lead role of recently departed suicide victim Silver Strand, you'll begin to realize what a remarkable achievement this movie truly is.
Synopsis: Silver departs this world to find herself in Purgatory House, kind of a halfway home for teenage suicides. Each occupant has their own room that is exactly like the one they left on earth, equipped with all the same belongings and wardrobe they left behind. Not only that, but they are also supplied with a limitless amount of the drugs of their choice. Who could ask for anything more?
However there are also hard lessons to be learned in Purgatory, one of the most difficult is mandatory viewing of earthTV via a large big screen television mounted on the wall of each bedroom. Here they are forced to observe the ongoing life on earth of family and friends in order to see and understand how their choice to end their own life has impacted others.
'Purgatory House' is a pleasant surprise containing some very inventive thoughts, considerations and situations. It also deals with a number of crucial problems facing todays teenagers; suicide, addiction, school violence and unwanted pregnancy. Imagine, all this from the mind of a fourteen year old.
P.S.: Don't forget to watch the two featurettes; 'The Making of Purgatory House' and 'Putting It All Together.' They go a long way in putting the project in perspective and definitely raise the film to a higher level. This movie should be required viewing in every high school in America.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
something special, October 8, 2009
This review is from: Purgatory House (DVD)
when i first watched this film i was very surprised to hear that the star, Celeste Davis, had never acted before in anything. she really puts her heart and soul into this character, perhaps because she wrote it with herself in mind. she steals every scene and captivates with the way she moves her eyes, the way she smiles, and the way she brings this person to life on the screen. after a while it makes you forget you are watching a very low budget, very indie film.
Purgatory House is about adolescent suicide, a subject all too common in the modern world. its a film that projects the hope that the lost can be redeemed here and in the hereafter, that their suffering is essential and not in vain, that God is often complex and unknowable, but also lovable.
It is must see for those who are dealing with or have dealt with teen depression or suicide. written by a depressed, suicidal fourteen year-old, the emotion is as close to reality as it gets.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This is the movie Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen" should have been., June 1, 2009
This review is from: Purgatory House (DVD)
Purgatory House (Cindy Baer, 2004)
A few years back, there was a sensation about a gritty, hard-hitting script written by a thirteen-year-old girl. It was immediately snapped up by Hollywood, filmed with the cream of the B-list, and released with the highest of expectations. The movie was called Thirteen, and the end result was mediocre in every way. Well, every way that it wasn't godawful. There was one silver lining to that particular cloud, however; since then, a number of movies scripted by teenage girls have gotten funding, however little it may have been, and those movies have been released. To a film, every one of them I've seen has been miles better than Thirteen. Of course, since the formula failed once in Hollywood, the industry has ignored them since, forcing the filmmakers to go through independent channels for production and distribution. One of the earliest of these films was Purgatory House, which traded the gritty-realism factor for a kind of fuzzy fantasy, and because of that, paradoxically ended up being far more realistic, not to mention much better.
Purgatory House is the story of Silver Strand (screenwriter Celeste Davis in her first film role), who, as the movie opens, has just died. How, we do not know, and she does not remember. (Part of the underlying mystery of the movie is how she died, which is revealed to us in stages as Silver recovers her memories.) She finds herself in Purgatory House, which Catholics will immediately recognize; Purgatory, in Catholic doctrine, is the area between heaven and hell where souls go who are still being judged. Purgatory House is presided over by Saint James (Jim Hanks, from XTRO 3: Watch the Skies), a combination of saint, therapist, and administrator who tries to help the house's inhabitants understand why they died and what their deaths mean to those back in the real world, which the kids watch through TV-like monitors. (This, in fact, takes the place of much of the schoolwork they'd be doing were they still alive; there are assignments, tests, etc.) As the place is a house full of teenagers, the interpersonal relationships are fleeting, strong, and fraught with drama, and the kids are constantly testing James' rules. Silver's internal struggles are symbolized through a number of dreams she has, each enacted with Davis' script's cynical humor and fantastic (in the "fantasy" sense of the term) imagery; the "God's quiz show" dream will stay with viewers for a long, long time. Eventually, we get the whole story (and Silver is as surprised as we are), and Silver has a choice--continue on in Purgatory House, or find the power within herself to change.
If you've seen Thirteen, it's pretty much impossible to avoid comparing the two. (Equally so with Emily Hagens' more recent horror flick Pathogen.) Unlike Thirteen, pretty much everyone involved in Purgatory House was an amateur; first-time director Baer has spent her Hollywood career in front of the camera, most of the young cast members were first-time actors, etc. This obviously lends the movie an indie feel, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending, and often whether it's good or bad depends on the script. While Davis, being thirteen at the time she wrote this, tends to hit us over the head with some things a more accomplished screenwriter would have swept a little farther under the rug, for the most part this is a solid script that's a great deal more subtle than expected; Davis does understand the power of allegory, even if she doesn't quite trust the viewer enough to really allow us to draw our own conclusions. Given some age and more screenwriting experience, I expect very good things from this talented young writer, and she's not a bad actress, either.
A pleasant surprise, definitely worth a rental. *** ½
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