Now THIS is how it's done folks. Let me explain; for starters, newb filmmaker Jonathan W. Stokes hasn't riddled this film's account with endless bs shill high reviews. For that, mad respect, sir. 🙌 Nothing is more annoying than a filmmaker - newb or seasoned, resorting to desperate tactics trying to fool his audience. If you click on my account, you will see how I really feel about shill reviews, and how I deal with them. You can also see more of my 1000+ reviews, to see that this is a non-biased honest critics review.
This film is Stokes' third full length feature film, with about the same number of short films. I am not a fan of slow paced long dragged out films. This one pretty much fit that theme, however, his outstanding camera work and perfect shots, direction of his cast's performances, as well as the outstanding cinematography, kept me glued to the screen, and time did fly by.
The pacing for the decent 93 min runtime was slow, but that didn't really affect the tension and suspense, because Stokes kept his scenes nice, short and to the point. There were no long dragged out scenes. Yes, there was much filler for the most part, and his story could've used more substance - and action, but for a newb filmmaker, I think he nailed it. For that matter, he came up with something much better than some seasoned filmmakers have put out in the last year or so. Even for a low budget B-grade film, the score was on point and fitting, unlike your typical loud, overbearing and unfitting scores in most B films. My only issue was the sound mixing. I found many scenes were hard to hear and understand the dialogue, especially the whispering parts. The sound editor needed to amp up the voices in those scenes, so not Stokes' fault.
What I really appreciated, was his use of a low budget; be basically shot this entire film in just two rooms, with a handful of actors. To be able to pull that off... now that's talent. It reminded me of the movie Phone Booth with Colin Farrell. It was a story filmed mostly in a confined phonebooth with excellent directing, but it was also Farrell's excellent performance that made that one a hit. And for this film, the beautiful Georgina Campbell delivered an equal caliber, if not better performance. Even Mido Hamada was excellent as Abu Khalid.
Nevertheless, having only some of the dialogue sound issues, and the need for more substance in Stokes' writing, everything else in this film was pretty much perfect, and quite deserving of my 8/10, especially taking into account he's a newb filmmaker, with a limited budget and cast, and production value for a B film, that was put together outstandingly. I will certainly be keeping an eye open to see what else Stokes gives us, as he is certainly a filmmaker to watch out for.
