"Pretty": Metecan Duren's Ambitious Horror Debut Shows Promise
New horror film "Pretty" is good to look at thanks to 19-year-old director Metecan Duren.

After 16 years, Sabine travels back to her home village. The occasion is a class reunion. She wants to return to Vienna that very evening. She has only come anyway because things are still not settled between her and her childhood sweetheart Leonhard. The joy of their reunion is overshadowed by the disappearance of his daughter. The events awaken a sense of déjà vu in her. In addition, she learns of the suicide of her former best friend. She directs her suspicions towards her former teacher, the village's great patron, Dr. Körbler. "Körbler loves children", she writes on a note, which she anonymously passes to Leonard. The girl had tutored with Körbler before she disappeared. Sabine obviously has good reason to suspect the seemingly harmless old man.
New horror film "Pretty" is good to look at thanks to 19-year-old director Metecan Duren.
This Comedy-Drama set in Nazi Germany, shows a young boy, Jojo who wants to be Hitler's personal guard and even conjures up Hitler to be his imaginary friend. His nationalism and prejudices of Jews change when he discovers a Jewish girl hiding in his attic.
The human experience is described through the eyes of a marginalized outsider, neither judgmental nor invested, just an observant donkey.
The Fog follows more of a 1950s creature feature plot than a late-70s slasher with three legendary scream queens.
Disclosure Day asks us to question humanity's role in the universe but falls victim to the same assumptions of centrality.
“And I think to myself….what a wonderful world”. Louis Armstrong sang about this notion via his classic 1967 song, an ode to witnessing elements of our life that should be but some reminders of exactly what that concluding line of each verse indicates. Now we see our contemporary realities and, just being honest, it makes a sentiment like this seem SO overtly far away….perhaps even impossible….to accept or believe could be. It sounds harsh, but again, so much of what is occurring speaks not to beauty, but bedlam.