Sisu (2023)

[Tom Holmberg]

I'm surprised this hasn't been come up yet.  It has a sursprising 94% postive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

[AimingforYoko]

This ain't for everybody, but if you enjoy Nazis getting annihilated in graphic manner, see this movie.

[StatisticalOutlier]

3 hours ago, AimingforYoko said:

This ain't for everybody, but if you enjoy Nazis getting annihilated in graphic manner, see this movie.

Do you have any clue how people are hearing about this movie?  I'm always on the lookout for foreign and independent movies and this one got on my radar--I'm all for seeing a movie set in Lapland.  But the reported gore turned me away.

It's been showing in theaters that generally show only mainstream fare AND there are tickets sold for pretty much every screening (albeit maybe only two screenings a day for Sisu), while other more mainstream movies will have zero tickets sold.  Look at the list of cities where it's showing in Texas--not all of them are suburbs of major cities.  I'm just shocked that a movie by a Finnish director set in Lapland is showing in Odessa or Wichita Falls.

https://www.tributemovies.com/movie/Texas/Sisu/169214/

This popularity was pushing me back into planning to see Sisu, but I just re-read the Metacritic page (it got a score of 70 there) with snippets from critic reviews, and I'm back to thinking it's too gory for my taste.  But I'm still can't figure out how it's generating enough notice and interest in these far-flung places to put people in the seats.

[Raja]

5 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

Do you have any clue how people are hearing about this movie?  I'm always on the lookout for foreign and independent movies and this one got on my radar--I'm all for seeing a movie set in Lapland.  But the reported gore turned me away.

Sisu was the last trailer before John Wick 4, it served to warm up the audience. The first kill in the trailer got as big a shock reaction as the John Wick scenes. From there the reviewers that I watch picked it up to review.

[Tom Holmberg]

20 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

Do you have any clue how people are hearing about this movie?  I'm always on the lookout for foreign and independent movies and this one got on my radar--I'm all for seeing a movie set in Lapland.  But the reported gore turned me away.

It's been showing in theaters that generally show only mainstream fare AND there are tickets sold for pretty much every screening (albeit maybe only two screenings a day for Sisu), while other more mainstream movies will have zero tickets sold.  Look at the list of cities where it's showing in Texas--not all of them are suburbs of major cities.  I'm just shocked that a movie by a Finnish director set in Lapland is showing in Odessa or Wichita Falls.

https://www.tributemovies.com/movie/Texas/Sisu/169214/

This popularity was pushing me back into planning to see Sisu, but I just re-read the Metacritic page (it got a score of 70 there) with snippets from critic reviews, and I'm back to thinking it's too gory for my taste.  But I'm still can't figure out how it's generating enough notice and interest in these far-flung places to put people in the seats.

Well, they are only killing Nazis, so that's okay. :)

[Anela]

I only heard about this last night.  It looked too gory for me, but I loved Ready or Not, and that was gory, too. I’m also all for nazis being eliminated. 

[StatisticalOutlier]

3 hours ago, Tom Holmberg said:

Well, they are only killing Nazis, so that's okay. :)

That's part of what's so confounding.  I can almost kind of understand a super violent movie appealing to people in East Texas (Lufkin), but when they find out it's Nazis being killed I would think they'd consider that a no-go.

In the theater in Chattanooga, Tennessee, today, the 2:40 screening of Sisu is in a 400+ seat theater!  It sold 8 tickets.  Doesn't sound like much unless you compare it to the other 2D movies starting at about that same time.

Guardians of the Galaxy:  5 sold

Super Mario Brothers:  0 sold

Book Club:  4 sold

Evil Dead Rise:  0 sold

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret:  0 sold

Hypnotic:  5 sold

John Wick:  4 sold

Knights of the Zodiac:  2 sold

Fool's Paradise:  2 sold

Rally Road Racers:  0 sold

BlackBerry:  5 sold (I saw this last week and greatly enjoyed it)

Big George Foreman:  0 sold

Guy Ritchie's The Covenant:  0 sold

Air:  0 sold

Sisu outsold every other movie in its time slot, in fact selling almost double the number of tickets for any other movie in that time slot.

[Tom Holmberg]

16 hours ago, Anela said:

I only heard about this last night.  It looked too gory for me, but I loved Ready or Not, and that was gory, too. I’m also all for nazis being eliminated. 

I'm waiting for the sequel, "Are You There God? It's Me, Sisu."

[Tom Holmberg]

16 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

That's part of what's so confounding.  I can almost kind of understand a super violent movie appealing to people in East Texas (Lufkin), but when they find out it's Nazis being killed I would think they'd consider that a no-go.

In the theater in Chattanooga, Tennessee, today, the 2:40 screening of Sisu is in a 400+ seat theater!  It sold 8 tickets.  Doesn't sound like much unless you compare it to the other 2D movies starting at about that same time.

Sisu outsold every other movie in its time slot, in fact selling almost double the number of tickets for any other movie in that time slot.

I did see one TV ad for the movie, which made me aware of it.  But that was all the promotion I've seen.  I think the theater business is in deep trouble.  When a first-run movie is streaming a few weeks after premiering, a large segment of the population will just wait.  In the old days, a movie would open in maybe one first-run theater in a town's downtown area. It would play there for weeks, if it was doing well, before moving on the the bigger neighborhood theaters, then it would go even wider.  

[StatisticalOutlier]

Well, this showed up on cable so I watched it, mainly out of curiosity. 

It is indeed way too gory for my taste, but I adored this guy's ability to go about the business of killing everyone and not dying in the process.  Some of what he did was faaaar beyond even remotely believable, but that's not necessarily a bad thing in my book.

I saw The Retirement Plan the other day, where Nicolas Cage is a very capable retired assassin.  And I saw Nobody back when it came out.  Sisu is kind of a very grubby much more graphic version of those.  Actually kind of fun, except for the gore.

The Nazis seemed more like generic bad guys to me, and not Nazi specific, so maybe the shall we say non-art-house audiences didn't take annihilating them personally.