Less than a few seconds into the opening cinematic for "Bitter Lake", you can tell exactly how the rest of the movie is going to play out: It's going to be cheap, it's going to be confusing, and it's going to pretend to be a serious movie.
The movie starts with solid black silhouettes being moved around on a parchment background. This is where the movie begins to show it's budget. While there are much better ways to do what they were trying to do (Something like
this, for instance, for which there are
tutorials), they instead chose a really cheesy method that reminds me of poorly produced local commercials or a skit from Tim and Eric.
During all this, a narrator explains the backstory to the movie: It's 1602, the king of the kingdom (Valinor) is assassinated, and the leaders of the provenances of the kingdom refuse to crown his son king, and instead fight amongst themselves (insert joke about furries running things here), which leads to war. After 12 years, all the citizens are tired of the war and beg the leaders to end it, so they arrange a secret meeting to figure out how to end the war.
Now we get to perhaps the best part of the movie, the opening titles. Here is where the film's soundtrack (by Fox Amoore, and surprisingly well done) really shines. A pretty well done title animation is played over the music, listing the cast and some crew members, and displaying parts of a map of the kingdom. Don't get too attached to the map or the names of the towns, this is the first and last time we hear about them.
What happens next sets in motion a long and confusing plot that you can't really understand until the movie is over and you sit down and think about it for a long time. A wolf character is seen
pretending to write on a letter someone printed out 5 minutes before the scene was shot writing a letter to an unnamed character talking about a plan. We're not given any other details other than "the plan" needs to be carried out.
Next, we see two characters (a wolf and a fox) running through the forest, during the day, breathing heavily. The music that plays is dramatic and sounds as if there are murders chasing after the characters we are following. The scene suddenly and without explanation shifts to night, and it turns out one of them (the fox)
is a murder, who stabs the other character in the back with acting that rivals the local high school's drama production.
Cut to a daytime scene at what appears to be a farm. Another wolf character is attempting to get into the barn, but it's locked. Trying all the entrances, he finally draws his sword and opens an unlocked door. This scene really makes no sense, as no one in their right mind would
rattle on doors if you're convinced whatever's inside could harm you BEFORE drawing a weapon. Turns out that inside is a new character, a female dragon-y thing. It turns out they both know each other. They go into another house where we see the fox from earlier and a black wolf-thing character.
We find out the wolf is the rightful heir to the throne. And the black wolf doesn't want to give him control of the armies. This is where everything starts to fall apart. The dialog is boring and hard to follow and most of the acting is too forced. There seem to be some attempts at humor, but they fall flat. The black wolf thing frequently uses the term "Hells Bitches" which is always delivered in a way that makes me feel they were attempting to force a meme on the audience.
The next scene is delivered at night with extremely odd lighting with no logical source other than "There's a light behind that tree". Sure enough, you can see the
leg of a lighting stand behind a tree.
We then cut to the next morning, and see the black wolf thing entering the barn. But then he's entering the home, talking with the wolf. We're treated to more hand gestures and forced lines. Soon it's mentioned the female dragon thing is missing, and upon investigation the prince finds her dead, holding a note saying "There is an assassin in our midst". Here's where things take another tern for the worse. He grabs a bloody knife sitting nearby, just as the black wolf thing finds them both. The prince explains the scene while he continues to hold the knife and flail it around. This goes on for a few minutes.
And suddenly, the knife he's been holding for minutes has hidden poisoned barbs. And a minute later, the prince is dead. The fox arrives and begins arguing with the black wolf thing, and we figure out (if you're paying extremely close attention) that the person the fox killed earlier was the true representative of the Provence he is pretending to represent. He's actually a member of a group called the Dark Brotherhood. He runs into a
Conveniently Placed Room Full of Hanging Sheets as the black wolf chases after him. This eventually leads to a swordfight that looks
really convincing (as in "so bad it's funny"), ultimately ending with the fox slowly sliding his sword (that has a rounded tip) into the wolf thing's back. It's bad. Really bad.
Then we find out what the plot is. The fox is working for the Prince's brother, who is the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, and the guy who was writing the letter at the beginning. The guy killed at the very beginning? He killed the king. And the leader of the Dark Brotherhood? He's come up with a great scheme to take the throne, and he's doing it simply because he's butthurt that he was called a retard. No,
I'm serious. That's seriously what he says. They called him a name and he's mad and out for revenge.
The final part of the plot is to frame the fox as the true leader of the Dark Brotherhood. He stabs the fox (again, very unconvincingly) and leaves him to die in the forest.
And the credits roll. We find out
after the credits that the new king gets assassinated by an unknown character. But that's basically the movie.
Everyone dies. The end.
This movie has so many problems I don't know where to begin. The plot had potential but the execution made it boring and hard to follow. There are glaring technical issues (There's a lack of
Foley work which make many scenes feel unnatural) and poor attempts to hide modern-day conveniences that were present in the
rental house they were using (A sheet is placed over a radiator/HVAC unit, seen
here in the movie and seen
here on the house's website, with no attempts at putting something in front of it to obscure the now fabric-covered rectangle on the wall).
The voiceover dubbing adds another level of uneasiness to the movie as well. There's very little work done to make the voices blend in to the environment. Additionally, the whole "actors in fursuit" thing makes the entire movie feel like it was a foregin film dubbed into English.
Not everything about the movie is bad. The camera work is pretty good (I was surprised to see the jib/crane shot early in the movie) and the sceness are lit well, with the exception of the night scenes which use really bizarre, unnatural lighting. The picture quality is better than I expected, as it was shot on a DSLR and pretty much everything I've seen that was shot on a DSLR looks horrible.
There was potential for a good movie, but the execution was just poor.
TL;DR Bitter Lake is a movie that is confusing and makes "The Room" look like a cinema masterpiece.
