Pluskylang Great Film overall

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Lloyd Bowman Based on the renown and tautly written allegorical horror short story by Shirley Jackson, this made-for-TV movie manages to take all the worst attributes of the made-for-TV movie genre and encapsulate them into one tedious and tiresome drawn-out telling of an otherwise great story while adding nothing in the process. The great kernel that is the basis for this film is Jackson's story, upon which it spins a larger and longer story; yet it adds absolutely nothing to the tale, in spite of all of the production resources and the cast it has available to do the job. With saccharine and stilted dialog, a very badly developed and written screenplay, bad acting, worse direction (because some of the actors in this film had proved track records or have proved themselves since), and one tired trope after another, this film would work better as camp or a satirical spoof of the genre rather than being an honest attempt to enlarge the original story. I haven't checked the credits of the screenplay's writer or writers, the producers or the director, but I have the sense this had either the same people involved — or at least similar people — as gave us such dreck as cheap Sunday evening TV fare as the 1970s "Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mystery" series, another example of using a set of successfully written stories as the kernel around which to build unwatchable TV. I gave this a 4/10. I've given better ratings to productions that looked and seemed far worse than this. However bad they were, those independently produced films usually run on a shoestring budget likely cobbled together by gifts from friends and family and obviously didn't have anything close to the budget or resources this film must have had available. At least the independently produced films usually manage to convey their story and their sense of truth, while this movie is simply an inanity.

Robert J. Maxwell A man enters a rural town for a humdrum purpose and everywhere he turns he finds mystery. People answer elliptically. No one is friendly. Puzzling things happen. Objects aren't where they're supposed to be. Records are missing. Why, it's almost as if the villagers were -- covering up some secret! When these things are done right, they can be genuinely effective. "Bad Day at Black Rock" is simple but gripping. "The Wicker Man" is unforgettable -- the original, not the loathsome remake. Even a low-budget TV movie like "Evidence of Blood" can do the job. And no one can finish reading Shirley Jackson's story for the first time without a gasp. She offers no real explanation. As someone said of another short story writer, ""Hemingway walks the reader to the bridge that he or she must cross alone without the narrator's help."The problem is that Jackson's is a short story, and short stories about mysterious and unexplained events can be stellar as long as they remain short. Look at Hemingway's "The Killers" -- nasty, concise, horrifying.But when you turn a short story into a feature-length movie, you have to pad it out, tell the back stories, parse the synecdoches, fill in all the blanks that made the original so enthralling.That's the problem the film makers ran into here. Those back stories and ellipses. "The Lottery" is littered with them. And they're not too interesting either. As the hero, Cortese, is making his escape with Keri Russel towards the end -- long AFTER what SHOULD have been the end -- they have a kind of philosophical exchange in which Russell defends the practices of her small town by counting the vices of the big city that Cortese has come from. It's a stupid brief. It makes as much sense as an argument in favor of the euthanasia of the mentally ill or the unemployed. ("At least we're pruning the herd.") A couple of good character actors appear in this film -- William Daniels, M. Emmet Walsh, Veronica Cartwright. It's beneath their dignity. Salome Gens gives an outstanding performance in her brief appearances.As the puzzled visitor, Dan Cortese is okay. He brings a certain professionalism to the role. He's darkly handsome in a conventional way, and a bit over-muscled. But make up has made a mistake that they didn't make with Keri Russell. Cortese has been given, not an ordinary haircut, but the kind of carefully styled grooming that was popular among West Coast celebrities at the time, a sort of pattern in which the man's hair is swept back into a wavy loaf over his occiput, suggesting the sagittal crest of an extinct reptile. Keri Russell's russet tresses are alternately straight and curled -- and very long. She has the features of a kewpie doll and is quite attractive. How much of an actress she is, is hard to tell from this hollow attempt to make a long film out of a gem of a short story.

Mean_Joe_Weeks There are some things in this world that are tied very exclusively to one time period, and though their essence is eternal, there is a need, sometimes, to bring subtle changes to the details in order to allow other generations to share in their merit. Unfortunately for the film version, 'The Lottery' is not one of these. The original short story by Shirley Jackson is the perfect encapsulation of every interesting facet the story had to offer. it beautifully and subtly creates tension and then shocking horror, and makes us question ourselves and the things we hold to be normal. It does all this in a few scant pages.The movie drags on and on for about an hour and a half, and the payoff is exactly the same. Along the way you have to sit through mercilessly lame acting and flat, dull characters. The idea that the town has a mysterious secret is introduced almost immediately, but the film's final climax is where everything is revealed. Simple enough, but it unfortunately means that through the vast bulk of the movie, the same theme is repeated over and over. Jason comes to a situation that seems mysterious. But the townies won't tell him what's going on! Even if it were well acted, even if the subplots were remotely engaging, there just isn't any way to get around the tedious repetition. And folks, the acting is not good. And the subplots are just corny as all hell. Keri Russel in particular seems unfathomably cast. She stands out as totally inappropriate for the role of a small-town girl with her modern vernacular and of course her suspiciously flawless tan. Most of the other character actors just play the predictable role of "belligerent small town sheriff" and the like. Nothing to see here. The film particularly produces groans with it's implausible romance -replete with an exploding car, natch - and absurdly vague expository dialog.As for the end, its executed with appropriate style. But the wait it takes to get there just isn't justified. All and all, the film can't get past the troublesome point that there just isn't enough there to fill an hour and a half. Read the short story instead, its impact is at least as potent. And considerably more eloquent as well.

pchic I saw the original movie (circa 1973). At the time, it was a mandatory English class assignment to watch and write a report on it. That version, to me was even worse than the one with Dan Cortese. But again, I was only 12 years old. What a movie for a child!!!! As an adult now, I only have an occassional disturbing dream about it. When I saw the Dan Cortese version, my curiosity got the best of me and I only wanted to compare my emotions/feelings to the original and the remake. Even though I will never watch this movie again, the writing and acting was as good as only the script would allow. For people who like disturbing, twisted and at times very spooky movies....this one is for you!!! But don't say that you weren't warned!!!!!!!