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komissar-93513
Reviews
A Quiet Place (2018)
I made this account to review an equally awful movie a few years back.
I am once again compelled to sign into this account to absolutely tear into a movie that thinks it's hot stuff.
Starting off, the premise is okay. Could have used a bit more of back story, but honestly it's not terribly important. I can accept a lack thereof.
So let's start with the beginning scene, to introduce the monsters, we're shown a kid getting himself napped on a bridge over a river, by playing with a noisy toy. Alright so the things hunt by sound. We've established man vs... nature? Why not, we'll go with "nature". All good so far.
So let's fast forward, because this is where things go straight to hell in a hand basket and "things that make sense" right out the window. We're shown several newspapers that say we're on our own, military isn't helping, they hunt by sound! ect... ect... Wait a minute. Okay you're telling me that traditional print media is is still going to be publishing articles and distributing them to the public while these super-being sound hunter things are destroying the world? Ah hell, it's gonna be another delusional Hollywood director movie isn't it?
Okay in the grand scheme of things the above is admittedly minor, but it's really just a precursor to the nonsense that's about to hit your screen. So let's address the second biggest issue. WHO in their right minds decides "hey let's have another baby!" When the one we had last was too noisey and got eaten, and also the world? Oh I'll tell you who, the same morons who apparently couldn't figure out how to fortify a damn building, and left nearly every door wide open for their alien guests. You will never convince me that fortifying a building would have been too noisy, and they didn't have enough time. Those monsters had to start somewhere, and spread, and they had to spread while fighting with the military. There was time to fortify, especially if there was time for print media to run their giant printing presses and distribute "we're all doomed" articles to everyone. Ever been around a printing press? They're about as quiet as a nuke, powered by... Smaller nukes. But no one thought to nail a few windows shut. Nope, would have been too noisy. Oooh boy, here we go!
Alright sure, maybe I'm just being too critical, and expecting too much realism in my movies, so let's talk about the river scene. The river scene, where they yell next to the waterfall. Yeah, that one. Apparently, in Hollywood, understanding continuity and physics is illegal, because first off, last time I checked, yelling is louder than a toy, which is what got the first kid killed in the first place. But! Let's say for argument sake, the river and waterfall are louder, I'm fine with this for now. It seems like there was a lot of artistic license taken out on physics, as a lot of things seemed to be louder/quieter simply based on the need to force a scene to make sense. Lamp breaking, quieter than a raccoon running? There's several more examples of this, the fireworks scene, the basement scene with the nail, but whatever. I'll gloss over these too.
Let's talk about the hearing aid. This is the part I'm really interested in. Hey Hollywood! You ever heard of the AARP, or LRADs? No? Because it shows. For anyone thinking "what is this crazy guy in about" I'll explain: While the nuclear powered printing presses were making more noise printing those articles telling people "OMG ITS SOUND" and distributing them in what can only be described as the world's most quiet distribution network, they forgot two glaring issues I simply cannot look past.
1) The AARP exists, and they have hearing aids. They have OODLES of hearing aids. Are you telling me no one noticed their bingo sessions remained unmolested? C'mon Hollywood, try harder.
2) LRADs. These are weapons that are quite literally made of sound. They are sound weapons. They stand for "Long Range Acoustic Device". Are you gonna sit there and tell me that these super-monsters took down an entire combined global military, and not a single one of them thought "hey you know those things that are killing us? Yeah the ones hearing aids basically render defenseless? Let's point sound at them. No no, just a LOAD OF SOUND!" No? No one thought of this? Only the newspapers figured this out while running their nuclear powered printing presses, while the military just sat helplessly with their thumbs up their backs while the newspapers saved the day? Or is this movie just another case of Hollywood having it's head up it's collective you know what's, and either being too dumb, or thinking its audience is too dumb to catch these mistakes?
I'll go with the latter. In conclusion: just another craptastic crap sandwich of artistic license, and make believe physics that don't even follow their own made up continuity. Pass.
Aliens: Zone of Silence (2017)
I made an account just to review this travesty.
Once again, a bunch of amateur film students decide to make a film about a lost film, for an audience of film students that should never have been filmed in the first place.
First and foremost, these self-filmed style movies can be amazing. This one was far from it. The continuity made absolutely zero sense. Scenes went from practically hyperventilating on camera to completely calm and collected conversations with absolutely zero buildup, or cooldown period at all. There was no rhyme or reason to the hysteria or lack thereof. I can't imagine anyone in a similar situation behaving like this at all. The characters would also freak the absolute hell out over something that wouldn't warrant a second thought in the real world. The directors of this movie must moonlight filming violent porn, because they are REALLY good at forcing scenes. All of this however was honestly a minor flaw in comparison to the rest. While on the topic of styles though, the film interference effects were too much. There's much better, and more subtle ways to simulate video streaming interference that would be far more effective and less irritating to watch. We get it, it's the zone of silence. Cool it with the effects.
The intended audience was a far bigger issue because as far as I can tell, this was a movie which intended to be for sci-fi fans, but the director was so disconnected from his audience he ended up making a movie for film students. Let's start with the most obvious problem: The entire damn plot. No, there will be no prisoners taken in this review. So old girl's brother, and friend go missing in the Mexican desert in a location that is known for really weird crap happening, alright, so far so good. The Mexican government doesn't care. Alright, sounds realistic so far. So what is the plan?
A) Form a private search party with several friends and relatives, and search the last known location of your brother in hopes of finding clues that may provide answers to his disappearance?
B) As a single female, take 800 cameras it out into the middle of the desert, alone, where weird crap is known to happen and people go missing, AND where two able bodied men you know personally have gone missing? I'm sure it'll be okay, it's being streamed on the internet. Internet man will save the day if something happens!
If you answered B, then you may just be a delusional film student or director who needs to go camping or do something that doesn't involve making videos every now and then, because no one in their right mind would choose option B. Option B however is exactly what this movie was, and it was a very poor choice indeed. Not only is the entire underlying plot unrealistic, but it seems like absolutely nothing within said terrible plot added up, made sense, or even resembled something that might actually happen... Anywhere... Ever. Exhibit A) The plan once the main character gets to her destination. She sets up extremely advanced camera equipment, laser motion detection, and very triumphantly states "If anything moves, I'll know!" Yeah that's great... Then what? You're in a tent, in the middle of Mexico, and your only contact with the outside world is some voyer we can't QUITE tell if you hired or is a friend. All the camera equipment in the world won't save you from that crap sandwich. This of course ties back into the theory of the film being for film students, because only a film student would think that's somehow an advantageous situation.
Without describing the entire movie in detail, some other points do need to be addressed. This section will gloss over them. That's not how metal detection works directors. Try learning the basics about the things you're going to put in your movies. In that same vein, that's not how camping works, you hear weird stuff all the time, and funny enough, about 90% of it is animal mating calls. Not every sound heard deserves a hyperventilation scene. That's also not how missing persons cases work, even in Mexico. For the love of god and all that is holy, no one, and I mean no one would go into a place known for weird stuff and missing people in Mexico alone and unnamed. It just wouldn't happen. The Blaire Witch project is dead, just leave it alone and let it rest in peace, please.
This movie, right here, is literally the reason people pirate media. When steaming piles of film student crap are passed off as movies, and you believe you deserve money for it, you're creating a market for piracy. Nobody should have yo spend their hard earned money on a botch job like this. If this were a chicken dinner at a restaurant, I would send it back for being cold and raw. If this were a car repair, I would redeem the warranty on it. If this were a defective electronic, I would return it.