No Such Thing

No Such Thing

A 2001 film by Hal Hartley

No Such Thing, Let my start off by saying this; No Such thing is the most contradicting horror film of the 21st, that I have personally seen. Everything about human morals as time passes on through this film is LITERALLY turned on it's back. By the end of the film I, as a viewer was personally left feeling mad, confused, and somewhat betrayed by the false advertisement that this film opens up in.

The film starts out with a the monster in a somewhat silhouette setting. He is recording a message to the world saying the he is fed up with not only humans but himself as well and if humans don't do something soon to kill him, then he is going to go on a killing rampage and basically DESTROY EVERYONE.

This leads us to our main protagonist/ heroine/ damsel in distress, Beatrice. Beatrice works as one of those low ranking help for a new station. Whom is basically sent off to investigate this so called monster, but while flying on the way there she was involved in a plane accident over the Atlantic ocean.

And that it, this is what takes up half if not more of the whole freakin' movie. It's just her recovering from the accident. There are no screens that just cut to the monster, to even reestablish his existents. Hell, at this point of the movie I would not be surprise if the viewers even forgets that this monster is major part in this film. Anyway, during Beatrice's recovery she is approached by for snotty boss, who is a obvious clique of very big time reporter ever made. She is that one person that would do anything to get ratings and report the next big thing. She proposes to Beatrice to tell her story to the world about being the only lone survivor of the plane crash over the Atlantic. Of course she promises that she would be payed in full enough to cover all her hospital bill and more. Beatrice being the supposedly good noble girl that she is declines saying that she would not subject herself to be used as just an object to the world. This is just to add to her "positive" and "gentle" personality. Well later on in the movie these facts or limits to her personality changes and takes a complete 180 by the end of the film.

After taking up 2-3rd's of the film we finally see Beatrice on her way to track down the monster. They finally confront each other after Beatrice was welcoming tricked into getting drunk by the village people. They exchange a great screen in which they make a deal. If Beatrice is able to help kill the monster then she can live in peace. If she is unable to kill the monster then she will meet her end by the the hands of him. She of course agrees but on one condition, not only must the monster come with her, but he must also not harm anyone on their journey. This whole screen makes the viewer think that they are going to go on this amazing adventure together and experience major character development on the way.

With that in mind the Beatrice and the monster set out on their journey, of course getting strange looks form the villages on the way out. You imagine that based on Beatrice's character and the whole set up that they were going to go on this interesting adventure, but instead they do something that is completely counter-acts everything that leads up to this story. Instead of going on a classic on foot adventure, they have Beatrice call up her old new reporter station and basically sell out the monster to them in order to find the Doctor, who is going to help kill the monster. And to seal the deal with selling out the monster, the last thing she says in that scene is, "I think we are going to be famous"

And thats it a girl, whom a first seems like a human being so perfect and so nice and has no desire to be famous, suddenly does a complete 360 and becomes this greedy self adsorbed little girl, that doesn't really give two-f*cks until it is too late.

This factor right makes the whole story seem somewhat pointless. They focus too much on the girl and her recovery. Her character development is just off the wall, that by the end the viewer is questioning themselves like, "What the heck just happen?"The remanding characters are painfully, and I mean painfully clique in their own personalities. The only decent character in this whole movie is the monster. His development was approached much more differently and was way more original then the other characters. By the end his character teaches us that man is more so of a monster then he ever was. Which was exampled through the other characters throughout the film and even the main protagonist, Beatrice, seems more of a monster by the end of the film.