OK, let me start off to give you a short summary of the storyline: bunch of teen to tween aged relatives and the people they make out with, meet in an area that has not aged well, for an evening of fun and narcotics. the main protagonist, who is the half sister, joins them after being away in the USA for longer amount of time. some kind of monster appears, hell breaks lose, people act stupid, surprise ending, curtains.
well, one could also list all the filler material sub plots that were needed to stretch it into the estimated runtime, but let's face it: what the writer had here was a good basic idea and a rather satisfying and almost clever ending, but he had no idea what exactly to do with it. the ending kinda works, everything before that fails eventually. funny enough, if you just watch the last 30 minutes as a standalone short movie, it works surprisingly well. unfortunately that lowers the first hour or so even more,as it renders them unnecessary.
anyway, on the positive side i can say that they have put a lot of effort into this and that i liked the last minutes very much. on the negative side though, all that effort went to waste.
the budget. not really as low budget as they want us to believe. funny enough i had a hard time to find confirmed informations regarding this ultra low budget. every homepage that covered this film seemed to have an extreme focus on the insanely low amount of cash that was spent, which seemed more like an attempt of fishing for advanced sympathy, without actually stating any hard facts. if have have any insight into the film business then you will recognize some stuff within the flick that swallowed up quite some cash. this is not clerks. this is not a risky indie project, based on a 36k USDA credit card loan. this is a small studio movie, so it has to be compared to other projects like aronofsky's pi and vincenzo natali's cube.
the characters. they were for the most part pretty unbelievable, as the dialog was mediocre at best. never heard young adults talk in such a strange manner. furthermore they all seemed to have been suffering from a different kind of mental problem, which left me rather confused, since i eventually got lost as of which of the characters i was supposed to like or be emotive about or dislike or whatever. they all seemed equally uninteresting and unsympathetic. the writers tried to give the characters more depth through their dialog and actions throughout the film, which backfired, as it only added to the confusion.
the story. well, as i already stated: they had a good and interesting ending and wrote a whole lotta boring story to put right in front of it. usually that saves the experience as a whole for me, but this time my interest was already hopelessly lost, so eventually the best part got wasted.
also, it is always a triple risk package right there, if you insist to include a monster of any kind into your movie. this goes especially if you claim to have budget restrictions. we have seen any type of monster that a human brain can come up with in like 10000s of versions. vampires, werewolves, aliens, ogres ..etc and all mixtures and hybrids of those. unless you come up with something that separates you positively from the rest then you are most likely to fail. and please let's not forget that this is not the 80s anymore, where you can talk about and run away and fight something and not show it for 70 minutes just to rely on the human interaction.
which leads me directly to my main criticism. it was an overall inconclusive experience. it starts off with the always wise for an indie flick confined space, the usual group of young mischiefs and a yet unknown evil. as soon as the monster arrives the whole thing completely falls apart. first person gets killed and the rest hides safely in the attic. now, keeping in mind that this is a restricted budget horror film and even keeping in mind all the clichés that such a movie usually almost guaranteed comes with, why didn't they take a nap and wait until daytime?
look, when you are writing a horror b-movie then of course reality is secondary, but at least you gotta use the tools that make such movies compelling. you don't even need clever answers. answers alone usually just do fine. in this case for example: why didn't they stay in the attic? because due to some freak incident a lamp fell over and everything started to burn. just an example.
bottom line: i can see the effort that went into this and i would for sure like a short film version of this, but as a full length release it is just too boring and too confusing for too long to let the ending alone make up for the rest.
well, one could also list all the filler material sub plots that were needed to stretch it into the estimated runtime, but let's face it: what the writer had here was a good basic idea and a rather satisfying and almost clever ending, but he had no idea what exactly to do with it. the ending kinda works, everything before that fails eventually. funny enough, if you just watch the last 30 minutes as a standalone short movie, it works surprisingly well. unfortunately that lowers the first hour or so even more,as it renders them unnecessary.
anyway, on the positive side i can say that they have put a lot of effort into this and that i liked the last minutes very much. on the negative side though, all that effort went to waste.
the budget. not really as low budget as they want us to believe. funny enough i had a hard time to find confirmed informations regarding this ultra low budget. every homepage that covered this film seemed to have an extreme focus on the insanely low amount of cash that was spent, which seemed more like an attempt of fishing for advanced sympathy, without actually stating any hard facts. if have have any insight into the film business then you will recognize some stuff within the flick that swallowed up quite some cash. this is not clerks. this is not a risky indie project, based on a 36k USDA credit card loan. this is a small studio movie, so it has to be compared to other projects like aronofsky's pi and vincenzo natali's cube.
the characters. they were for the most part pretty unbelievable, as the dialog was mediocre at best. never heard young adults talk in such a strange manner. furthermore they all seemed to have been suffering from a different kind of mental problem, which left me rather confused, since i eventually got lost as of which of the characters i was supposed to like or be emotive about or dislike or whatever. they all seemed equally uninteresting and unsympathetic. the writers tried to give the characters more depth through their dialog and actions throughout the film, which backfired, as it only added to the confusion.
the story. well, as i already stated: they had a good and interesting ending and wrote a whole lotta boring story to put right in front of it. usually that saves the experience as a whole for me, but this time my interest was already hopelessly lost, so eventually the best part got wasted.
also, it is always a triple risk package right there, if you insist to include a monster of any kind into your movie. this goes especially if you claim to have budget restrictions. we have seen any type of monster that a human brain can come up with in like 10000s of versions. vampires, werewolves, aliens, ogres ..etc and all mixtures and hybrids of those. unless you come up with something that separates you positively from the rest then you are most likely to fail. and please let's not forget that this is not the 80s anymore, where you can talk about and run away and fight something and not show it for 70 minutes just to rely on the human interaction.
which leads me directly to my main criticism. it was an overall inconclusive experience. it starts off with the always wise for an indie flick confined space, the usual group of young mischiefs and a yet unknown evil. as soon as the monster arrives the whole thing completely falls apart. first person gets killed and the rest hides safely in the attic. now, keeping in mind that this is a restricted budget horror film and even keeping in mind all the clichés that such a movie usually almost guaranteed comes with, why didn't they take a nap and wait until daytime?
look, when you are writing a horror b-movie then of course reality is secondary, but at least you gotta use the tools that make such movies compelling. you don't even need clever answers. answers alone usually just do fine. in this case for example: why didn't they stay in the attic? because due to some freak incident a lamp fell over and everything started to burn. just an example.
bottom line: i can see the effort that went into this and i would for sure like a short film version of this, but as a full length release it is just too boring and too confusing for too long to let the ending alone make up for the rest.