THE DEATHS OF IAN STONE

Ian Stone is a young Londoner, he plays hockey, has talent, and is in love with his girlfriend Jenny. One night, returning from a hockey game that didn't end too well, young Ian encounters a strange corpse near the railway and, in attempting to rescue him, discovers, to his dismay, that the corpse is nothing more than a monstrous demonic creature that does not delay in killing him. But with death, for Ian, a new life is born. After being barbarically killed by the demonic creature, in fact, Ian Stone wakes up in an office, seated at a desk and in the guise of a state employee. Was it just a bad and bizarre dream? No, Ian Stone is actually pursued by a horde of malevolent demons who do nothing but track him down and kill him in every life. What lies behind the strange "existence" of poor Ian? One could fill a chapter of a book, or better yet, develop an interesting essay to describe and accurately understand the bizarre idea that prevails at the base of this bizarre film; an essay capable of dissecting this work into many small parts to be able to assimilate each single detail and each single hypothetical metaphor contained in this film. Yes, the idea of the essay would not be bad, but probably "The Deaths of Ian Stone" is a film that lends itself to being inserted and analyzed better within a book of jokes. It has been many years now that complaints about the Hollywood cinematic circuit are becoming increasingly frequent; they complain about an increasingly accentuated lack of original ideas testified by the relentless realization of sequels, prequels, or worse still, remakes. We live in an era where, cinematographically speaking, everything has been said in all ways and therefore the only possible path is to repeat oneself. But despite everything, in this total creative crisis, it is sometimes possible to see small films being born that seem to have finally found something new to tell us, small works that could turn out to be pleasant breaths of fresh air within an arid and poor cinematic market of ideas. Well, "The Deaths of Ian Stone", thanks to a complex and apparently innovative plot, could turn out without too many difficulties to be one of these breaths of fresh air. Well, but if all the breaths of fresh air are carriers of bad smells like "The Deaths of Ian Stone", then welcome tons of remakes! It would be interesting, stimulating, and constructive to exchange a few words with the "brains" ideators of this subject, a pleasant conversation that would lead to understanding with what spirit the film should be viewed and what led them to conceive a product so idiotic. What should the spectator think who watches in disbelief at the vision? Should he think perhaps that these "ideators", whom someone would dare to call subject writers, really believed in the serious potential of this film? Or, more likely, should he think that these "subject writers" had recently "tripped" with the "Matrix" trilogy so as to want to generate a trash horror intended to pay homage to the work of the Wachowski brothers? There is little to say, this film is a real mess continuously balancing between the ugly (never was there a more appropriate definition) and the unintentional comedy; a film capable, in a wholly singular manner, of degenerating minute by minute leaving the spectator totally stunned who even paid to view this stuff (and who, in the best of cases, takes it all with irony letting themselves be carried away by the enormous trash charge of this product). The first twenty minutes, in fact, although repetitive to the unbelievable, do not foreshadow anything of the unpresentable ending and turn out, conversely, quite involving and intriguing. Too bad that with the passing of the minutes the meatball becomes more and more indigestible until reaching an ending that really leaves no escape thanks to banal explanations and formulated at the least worst, to ridiculous interludes where improbable demons clash and to childish moralism that reduces to the banality and stereotyped struggle between good and evil. The situation, already very serious, is worsened by the ridiculous aspect of the demonic creatures that, in a first moment, seem to have come straight out of "Matrix" (hair drowned in gel, tight and plastic clothes, black sunglasses), while at the end we have "the honor" to see malevolent entities parade that are nothing more than the demonic version of Lorenzo "Renegade" Lamas (with long and wavy hair constantly moved by a wind that does not exist). The serious thing is that "The Deaths of Ian Stone" could also configure as a sort of shame for our nation given that the director of this obscenity is the Italian Dario Piana (director mainly of TV spots and here in his second experience with a feature film, after "Sotto il vestito niente 2") who, perhaps in the grip of resignation given the awareness of the disproportionate ugliness of the film, executes the assignment given to him in an anonymous, superficial, and uninspired manner: it is known, some good camera positions could certainly not have been enough to save from the manure such an indecency. Not even the cast manages to save the product: unknown faces, or almost, move on the scene playing unlikable and uninteresting characters; the same Ian Stone, played by Mike Vogel ("Cloverfield", "Non aprite quella porta" by M. Nispel), never manages to capture the audience's empathy given that, in the screenplay phase, he receives a superficial treatment and often ends up in the pathetic. The only positive note could be spent in favor of the sufficiently cared-for photography, but even this small detail (purely aesthetic) appears futile in the hope of the film's success, because it is known: "clothes do not make the monk". Nothing can be done, therefore, to save from the gallows this squalid film at the limit of the watchable. "The Deaths of Ian Stone" is a real disaster!