BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Konterr Brilliant and touching

nycritic Todd Haynes is one of those directors whom I've come across with due to his more recent works (FAR FROM HEAVEN) but with whose earlier work I was totally unfamiliar with. If anyone would have told me that POISON was part of his filmography, I wouldn't have known -- that's how obscure this movie is. At a brief 85 minutes, it tells the three separate vignettes, all of them loosely based on the writings of Jean Genet: "Hero" presents a mockumentary of a boy who shoots his father and then flies away. Of course, we later learn out why. "Horror" ventures into science-fiction territory and has a 1950s feel (down to the cheap-looking make-up, wooden acting, and bad dialogue), in which a scientist extracts a hormone that not only unleashes his sexual desires, but turns him into a monster and thus sets free a mutating virus not unlike AIDS. The third installment is the one which most closely resembles the writing of Genet: "Homo" is a gay love story complete with male rituals and lots of repression set in prison and is the only one of the three to feature actual homoerotic content -- but has one very nauseating sequence in which one character's demons come to light in a flashback sequence in a juvenile detention that involves spitting into one of the character's mouth (and John Leguizamo, as excellent as he is as an actor, portrays sheer nastiness as one of the inmates who is enjoying himself a little too much). It is the most disturbing of the three and the one I least connected with, mainly because for obvious reasons it was fetishistic and implausible as well as humiliating. It's the only one of the three to make me feel like an outsider when venturing into gay-themed stories: for some reason I find that this sort of tale, where games of extreme humiliation seem to be rampant in gay erotica. Even so, POISON might be of some interest to those interested in gay-themed cinema, but it should be approached with a caveat for anyone a little sensitive to the degrading behavior that "Homo" offers.

you_ruin_me Despite this film receiving a lot of negative feed back from a lot of its viewers, I think the film is a truly provocative experience. Granted this film is definitely not everyones cup of tea to say the least, but it operates beyond entertainment. It is not there to be liked or disliked, it is there to be analysed and that is where the enjoyment comes into play.The film is constructed of 3 stories; the homo, the horror and the hero. Spread out over three different time periods. If any one is thinking The Hours or 21grams think again, its not. This is a much slower paced film and for want of a better word, 'duller' than the two previously mentioned films.Upon first viewing of the film, it appears that the three characters share no apparent link. However, each story acts as a metaphor for a wider issue, which does connect them all. I wont say what it is, thats your job! Overall poison is a very clever work of art, which belongs to the sub genres of expose and art-house. So if you enjoy those types of films and are interested in queer cinema go watch it! Finally I think Todd Haynes is a genius, a true auteur.

slake09 Poison was a total snooze fest. I had trouble even keeping awake it was so dull. The director is so obviously trying to make an art film that it jumped over the line into pretentious boredom. Not just over the line, either, but miles over it, whole degrees of longitude over it, light-years over the line into the land of pretentious boredom.The three stories don't hang together in any way, and the frequent cutting back and forth between them wasn't made to be interesting or unusual - it was just cuts back and forth between scenes. The stories themselves may have been interesting in some other film, but here they are made incredibly dull. Inescapably dull. So dull that you begin to think of grocery shopping, trash hauling, ice melting, exciting stuff like that.The actors are excellent in their roles, it's only too bad that their roles were so shallow and pointless. The directing is at fault here, and not just a little. Nothing spells "I'm trying to make this an art film" like frequent black and white. You might as well have put it in the opening credits. The heavy use of shadow and dark rooms to obscure the camera view - didn't they teach that in Film Making 101? Yeah, it was the chapter called "how to make your movie pretentious beyond belief".In any case, you can like art-house films without having to watch puerile junk like this.

Mike I rented this movie because I heard it was extremely provocative and surreal, but it actually turned out to be pretty boring. The homosexuality in the prison story was totally irresponsibly portrayed. The only good segment in the movie was the kid who murdered his father.