Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997)

This film stars Sigourney Weaver and Sam Neill. That brings with it certain expectations - that this will be a good film, but not great, because that's how I think of these two actors. They are both good actors, in some roles very good, but neither one of them are charismatic in the least. That is why they can never be great actors. I will grant that maybe they can be in great films, but that is because the other members fo the cast or the story itself provides that essential ingrediant.
This could have been such a good film. Like if instead of what they did, they actually went with terror. Or if the supernatural bits had happened earlier, or at least were hinted at earlier. Or if they had done anything to make us care about Weaver or Neill's characters. They could have taken this in a Lovecraftian direction or a Poeian, um maybe that should be Poeish, either one of those would have been fresh. Instead this was a film that was "good" - technically sound, costumes looked correct, etc. But nothing made it stand out. Hell, they could even have taken this in Raimian turn a la Evil Dead. They could have stayed more main stream and just used Weaver's character to actually show her descent into madness, or at least explain why she was doing what she did. But, it was all fucked up.
This film tried to be a period piece, it tried to be a horror story, it tried to be a love story. It kind did all of them, but half-assed. Maybe I should classify this as a "fair" movie - I made it all the way to the end, but I'm not going to encourage anyone else to attempt that feat without first hearing my caveats.
This film is a perfect example of a movie where the cast and crew do their jobs - no one was phoning any acting in and the technical stuff never lapsed - but the director lets you down. There are so many little things the director could have done to make us care about the characters. The main one could have been a little more character development. The film is only an hour and a half, we could have handled another 20 minutes if it was well spent with giving us characters that we care about instead of using contrivances to get the point across.
Blurgh.
There is one other little thing about this film that really chaps my hide, and I think maybe the studio gets tagged for this one, and that's the name. Don't a) call a movie a "Tale of Terror" and then give us half-assed creepiness and b) and this is the big one, don't call the damn thing Snow White and then stray enough from the story that it's only recognizable in a couple of spots. You would have been better suited to call this something completely different, like "The Mirror's Shards". Then as we come across things that remind us of Snow White, we could have had "a-ha!" moments. In interviews after the movie was released you wouldn't deny it was an interpretation of the Snow White tale, but you wouldn't be all like, "hey, were spinnin' Ess Dub in a whole new direction!" either.
I was told that this movie wasn't bad, and I was sure that implied the film was good but not great, but I'm going to hold my critique to the exact words, "it wasn't bad".

Snow White: A Tale of Terror at IMDb