J_Brian

Your horror movie is only as terrifying and convincing as your villain and if you don't have the money to pull off a really good one, don't even bother. And none of these actors are hardly believable as Marines, especially the soft ladies. Marines are supposed to be hardened bad asses, these "Marines" look more like "Mary-eens". And I couldn't stop laughing as they all tried in vain to convince me they're a battle-hardened group of soldiers.

The "LT" is laughable as the "strong female warrior" and the fact that they had to throw in the side note that she's lesbian with one of the soldiers in her squad made my eyes roll so hard. And there's a scene where she tells a soldier, who is using a motion tracker, to watch for more "unfriendliness" rather than "unfriendlies". And the way the soldiers kept calling her "LT" just induced more giggles. Another laugh-inducing element was the way some of the Mary-eens delivered the line "I'm a marine", it just came across like a bunch of kids playing soldier in the backyard and trying to convince their daddy how tough they are.

There's a scene where one of these very soft and pretty Mary-eens is asked by a prisoner how many people she's killed and the delivery of her answer had me rolling with laughter. I'd be more likely to believe that she's picked 100 daisies in a meadow surrounded by unicorns and cute little Disney cartoon animals before I ever accepted the story that she's killed 100 people.

The set looks like they dressed up a basement and built one hallway and shot every scene of them running down the same hall over and over again. Some of the weapons don't make any sense or are left unexplained as to how they work and why. The ship's A.I. is annoying as hell. The soundtrack is crap. The visual effects are visual crap.

This movie's version of the "Alien" is just a guy in a sweat suit wearing a psuedo-xeonmorph mask. Granted the filmmakers did figure out a clever way around having to build an actual alien suit by having the "alien" be a human prisoner who happened to get mutated into the creature, hence the jogging suit.

The ending is just friggin weak and stupid.

Did these filmmakers even watch their finished product? If so, did they think we would enjoy struggling to hear dialogue being drowned out by the insanely loud music? And what's with the ending of this movie? I missed the dialogue at the end and got tired of trying to go back to hear what Lin is saying to the Sarah character while writing her last letter. Very annoying.

So the big question in my mind is - If this world is bathed in perpetual daylight, which means that for 1000s, or maybe millions of years, neither this planet nor its inhabitants have ever experienced anything but "day time", how the heck do these people even know what "night" is, let alone even have a name for it? "Darkfall"? Sure I can see them maybe referring to it as that since it is possible for darkness to exist even in a world of light, and they would understand what darkness is. But "night"? How is there a word for it in their language if they've never even experienced it?

Also, for a planet of people who have lived in sunlight all their lives, these folks are pretty darned white. I mean pale white or extremely light skinned for being perpetual sun dwellers. Nobody seems to even have a tan. It would make better sense if they were dark skinned people.

And, by the way, why does there seem to only be about 50 people living on this entire planet? If this eclipse is supposed to happen every 2000, or so, years, causing previous generations to destroy their civilizations every time the eclipse happens, why have they not been able to repopulate their planet beyond a few dozen people?

And why are they living in the stone age? 2000 years ago, on Earth, our ancestors may have lived that way, but after 2 millennia, we've managed to accomplish flight, we've developed technology that allows us to communicate across great distances, we've traveled to the stars, we've figured out how to mine metals to create steel weapons (yet the characters in this story fight with weapons made of quartz or crystals of some kind) and we've even discovered methods of harnessing and creating electricity. The people of this planet are so friggin lazy they haven't even attempted to crawl out of the stone age in 2000 years.

Aside form that, this is really kind of a bland movie.

I got this movie as part of a 10-movie DVD collection at Walmart because we like love to watch them and make fun of the horrible ones. After sitting through several of those crapfests, I figured this would be the same. I was wrong. This was actually probably the best movie in the collection.

The PROS: It was directed well; Howell has an eye for intrigue and action. My favorite thing about this movie is the way Howell and the production team melded the aesthetic and feel of a 40's noir flick with its contemporary environment; it didn't feel out of place or forced. It's like Howell was wise enough to know he didn't have the budget to pull off a full blown, believable 1940's detective movie so he blurred the lines and gave us a very clean and exciting picture. Now THAT'S good film making!

The CONS: The only thing that kept pulling me out of the story was how much Howell resembled Jim Carey from 'Dumb and Dumber'. It was also kinda difficult for me to buy into the idea of baby-faced Howell being this tough-as-nails, rough and tumble private eye. But, he does get his a$$ kicked enough to offset that notion and make it a bit more believable.

There are so many armchair critics and wannabe cinema experts here dishing out their drivel on why they think the CGI looks horrible or that Mr. Scott is unable to direct a movie. I won't waste your time with such nonsensical garbage.

However, I would like to ask the filmmakers how they are going to explain the drastic 18 year de-evolution of technology between all of the pretty holograms and colorful touch screens of the Covenant (and all human ships in Prometheus) and the archaic keyboards, green computer screens and DOS-like operating systems of the Nostromo. ???? Anyone?

I mean, according to the lore of the Alien universe on Xenopedia, the events in Prometheus take place in the year 2093. Eleven years later, in 2104, the Conventant is 7 years away from its destination (probably about 3 years into its mission) when disaster strikes. Which means that the ships in these two scenarios had to have been built before 2104. However, the Nostromo was constructed in the year 2101... obviously AFTER the Convenant, considering the immense size of the colonist cargo ship which must have taken several years to build then stock with supplies, colonists, etc. And yet the Nostromo is equipped with computer technology that seems to be 20 to 30 years older. Please explain...

And you are NOT ALLOWED to use the BS excuse that Lucas used to explain the difference between the pretty ships of the prequels and pieces of junk in the originals. Remember, there was only about a 19 year time lapse between episodes 3 and 4 and his excuse, though it may be sort of logical, was extremely thin.

SPOILER AHEAD.... And by the way, why didn't David just allow his alien to kill the remaining 2 crew members in the end and then take over the ship? Why the whole deception of letting them think he was Walter to the point of helping them kill it and then putting them back to sleep? That would have been a much more sinister and horrific ending than the out-dated "twist ending" that we all saw coming. Hire some real writers for a change instead of following the formula for garbage storytelling. I'm a screenwriter looking for work, let me take a crack at it.

My review will be short and sweet:

Little Nikita (1988), starring 80's heartthrob River Phoenix, did the whole "kid discovers his parents are spies" thing much better. And River didn't see the need to take his shirt off every 5 minutes to distract you from the fact that he can't act... because he actually could.

And for another "teenager gets caught up in spy stuff" movie, check out Gotcha! (1985) with Anthony Edwards from Revenge of the Nerds and ER.

The 80's did spy movies much better. I'm pretty sure that's because we had lots of inspiration due to the Cold War.

I love sharks and will watch a shark movie, even one as silly as Sharknado, a movie by a group of filmmakers who know it's a silly movie and that we won't take it seriously. But come on...

This movie had promise. When I heard about The Shallows, I thought maybe someone, after all these years since the granddaddy of all shark movies hit theaters in the 70's, would finally put out a shark flick just as good. Then, I watched it. Meh.

I'm an author, myself, so I can accept that a lot of times, in order to tell a story, the storyteller has to toss in a bit of fiction with fact to make the story as interesting as it can be believable. Such as the method in which Chief Brody kills the shark in the movie version Jaws. A sensational, though unbelievable, ending. (in the novel, the shark just rolls over and dies due to the massive amount of injuries it sustained during its fight with Brody and Quint)

However, in The Shallows, which is set up pretty well in the beginning, begins to take a bit of a nosedive near the end of the 2nd act. This shark has stranded our heroine on a rock and now, anyone who comes out try to rescue her is killed, as if it's trying to keep her isolated. I'm pretty sure sharks don't work like that, but again, it's fiction.

But what really got me laughing in the theater were the scenes when the heroine is trying to stay safe on a metal buoy.

First of all, she has to get through a large curtain of jellyfish, which she uses as cover from the shark, because even sharks don't like to get stung. But that's what happens when it tries to come after her. But she gets stung, as well.

Plus, the shark bit her pretty good earlier, slicing her leg open so by now you'd think her leg would be practically useless, especially for swimming in the ocean against swells and current. She hasn't had a bite to eat or drop to drink in over 24 hours, she's been abused by the sun, etc. yet she manages to swim like a champ for about 40 yards from a rock to this buoy right before the shark catches her.

And then, she shoots the shark with a flare gun she finds on the buoy and this seems to just make the shark hate her even more. Now, it seems it's out for revenge. Again, I'm pretty sure sharks don't work like that. But... fiction.

BUT THEN... this shark begins to EAT THE METAL TOWER on the buoy in order to get to her. It chomps away at the stuff like he's Pacman and the metal is just a bunch of power pellets. CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP. Okay, as far as I'm concerned, fiction or not, I had to call BS on this one. I mean, I've eaten corn chips and had a stray sliver stab the roof of my mouth, which made me slow it down on the nachos a bit, but wow, you'd think this buoy was made of gummy bears the way the shark tears through it. It's made of metal! He's like Roboshark!

He backed off immediately when a couple of jellyfish hit him, this shark's mouth doesn't seem to get stabbed with a sliver of steel anywhere.

And then the way she kills this monster is truly more unbelievable, and far less sensational, than Chief Brody's method. How on God's green earth (or blue ocean) do you successfully dodge a shark, that is right on your heels and behind you (you can't see it), under water the way she does with a nearly useless leg and no fins? A shark's reflexes are incredible, ESPECIALLY UNDER WATER where it lives 100% of the time!

This movie had promise and potential, but I had to give it a 5. And you can thank Blake's nice little butt for that. It was nice to see how close they could get the camera to her butt to try to distract you from all the WTF moments to come.

*SPOILERS AHEAD... From the very beginning, this movie is riddles with clichés.

First (CLICHE #1) we have a girl who walks alone through a dark parking lot late at night even after her friend offers to give her a ride to her car. (CLICHE #2) This girl gets followed home by the killers and is killed. Then has her death pic taken by them.

Next (CLICHE #3), we have the cops who don't believe the lead girl, Colleen, who comes to them with the dead parking lot girl photo that was left posted on a bulletin board in the grocery store she works by someone who obviously got in after hours. Instead (CLICHE #4), the cops dismiss it as a hoax by a photographer.

So, (CLICHE # 5) Colleen tells her boyfriend "I can take of myself" and decides to go back to work in the dark grocery store - in the middle of the night ALONE because she works the "AM shift" - even though she knows that a possible murderer got in after hours and posted a photo of a mutilated girl on the bulletin board. She thought it was really enough to go to the cops. And why is she working the AM shift alone? DOESN'T ANYONE ELSE WORK AT THIS GROCERY STORE? Oh yeah, because the writer has to try to build suspense and tension by getting the girl alone in the dark somehow (CLICHE #6).

When a celebrity photographer and his group show up in town to capitalize on the real killer's photos, the first thing they do is actually take of picture of the killer's vehicle (which, of course, they don't it belongs to the killer) and leave a business card on the window to invite them to a party. Gee, what better way to get the killers to know where your party is. I don't think this is really a cliché, just a stupid coincidence... and coincidentally it is really stupid writing. Really. Stupid. Writing.

(CLICHE #7) When the killers leave another pic of a dead girl, this time on Colleen's car, once again, the cops don't really take it that seriously. And then, (CLICHE #8) she decides it's best to go home ALONE rather than accept a police escort!

Here's something else that's just totally stupid... During business hours, Colleen's a checkout girl at the grocery store and she actually types in the UPC number of every single grocery item because the scanner is busted. Which could take ALL DAY!!!! AREN'T THERE OTHER CHECK OUT LANES IN THIS GROCERY STORE THAT SHE COULD USE THAT DON'T HAVE BUSTED SCANNERS? For effeciency's sake, a grocery store manager would have never allowed her to use this lane unless it was the only one available, which it isn't.

We never really understand why the killers are obsessed with torturing Colleen with these photos or killing her friends.

The only reason I gave this thing a 5 is because I really enjoyed the scenes of the killings. Very brutal stuff.

Horrible. First... I like Sam Jackson a lot and his talent in wasted on crap like this. He couldn't even say "motherf*cker" (I can't even write it here)... they had to mask out the "f*cker" with machine gun fire.

In this movie, the POTUS repeats several times how he has the power to command the greatest army in the world, yet, he's a f*cking idiot who doesn't seem to know how to take care of himself and needs a 13 year old to survive. I had a hard time deciding which was more retarded: this movie or the POTUS.

It started out really good and had a very good premise - The POTUS is lost in the wilderness of a foreign country - hunted by terrorists - and his only saving grace is a boy from a local village. Very cool.

But the execution was just flat out lame and it seems the creators were trying to join Maze Runner and Hunger Games on the whole teen empowerment band wagon.

There were some scenes that had promise, but too many plot holes, inexplicable situations, simple coincidences and good luck really made this a sh*tty movie. The kid didn't really do much to save the day that the Prez couldn't have done himself.

Lots of things p!ssed me off- -Here's the one that ruined the whole movie for me from the start - Air Force One is traveling at, let's say, around 600 miles per hour, and the Presidential escape pod is ejected out of the rear of Air Force One almost a full two minutes before the jet liner is shot down. After the jet is shot down, it is still traveling at a high rate of speed and nearly crash lands on top of the kid while he is traveling through the forest, headed in the same direction. Suddenly, he comes upon the President's escape pod... just ahead of him. How the hell is this possible? If my math is correct, a plane flying at 600 miles per our is traveling at a rate of 10 miles a minute. If the escape pod was released two minutes before the plane was shot down, wouldn't it land around 20 miles BEHIND the kid and not 20 feet in front of him?

-The Prez wasn't smart enough or was too much of a pussy to jump out of the damned fridge while it was being pulled through the trees by a helicopter, yet the kid could still run and keep up with it. And climb back on it!

-The Prez couldn't just tell the kid to take him back to his village and find help?

-Plus the kid was too dumb to return to his village for help with a stranger he finds lost in a forest, especially after nearly having the entire damned Air Force One fall right on top of him. You'd think that would be a hint to find help.

-A helicopter dragging an object through such a heavily forested terrain and nothing snags on a tree to bring the chopper down? Bullshit.

-A guided missile that doesn't totally destroy a plane the size of Air Force One - it just knocks it out of the sky? They must have bought on Blue Light Special from K-Mart.

-If the plane wasn't completely destroyed - just did a belly landing into a lake - how could there be no survivors on board? It wasn't even completely submerged.

-Satellites can actually be used to find the POTUS, lost in the wilderness, by simply zeroing in on a stray helicopter?

-A terrorist, who orchestrated this entire kidnapping, starts a countdown on a bomb to kill the Prez and ends up left behind with it and rather than disarm it, he fights with the Prez instead and, then, during the fight, we discover that he doesn't even know how to chamber a round in a machine gun?

-AND FINALLY -The kid shoots an arrow, while parachuting, at a bad guy sitting in the door of a hovering helicopter, from a distance of probably 30-40 feet, and hits the guy right square in the chest? He barely even had the strength, earlier, to send the arrow 15 feet and now he has enough strength to not only shoot an arrow 40 feet, but his target in a straight flight against the vortex of down draft from the rotor blades of a hovering chopper. Wow. I don't think even Rambo could do that.

I know that, sometimes, you have to suspend disbelief when watching a movie, but this one expects you to be full blown retarded.

Avoid this movie unless you have kids who just want to see another tween play soldier against a bunch of professional bad guys.

*May contain spoilers* This movie wasn't as great as I'd hoped it would be. While the plot is pretty interesting, the movie actually sucked. And the reason behind the villain's purpose of subjecting victims to fight to the death for food is totally idiotic, and then he tells the 2 main characters about it as if it's some kind of bedtime story. Weak.

It takes place in an abandoned high school that the "mayor" has turned into an arena for his own pleasure.

The makeup effects are limited to that of a high school drama club.

The writing is terrible. It's almost as if the screenwriter found this old school house and thought "Hmmm, I wonder if I can write a movie we can make there". I'm pretty convinced this was made from the first draft of a very thin script to begin with.

Plus, there are several characters who are also caged victims that come along that really have no point nor drive the story along. Such as the black girl who is free from her cage and seems to use the lockers as a way to move undetected throughout the building. At one point, she even approaches one of the lead characters at her cage and says her dad is close to escaping and he'll get help, or something. But then she gets captured and has to fight some nutty cannibal. We never know anything about her dad from then on. Who the hell was he? And if she could escape so easily from her cage, why the hell did she never try to escape the building?

Another character that comes along for no reason is this dumb woman who comes around after the 2 leads have been missing for a month and asks if anyone has seen them. She mentions possibly getting the police involved, blah blah blah if she doesn't get any cooperation. So, the "mayor" takes her to the school where he captures her and forces her to fight some dude to the death so HE can finally eat. And he kills her in the most retarded way ever... by shoving a curling iron down her throat! ACTUALLY, ABOUT 2 INCHES INTO HER MOUTH! And it wasn't even plugged in. My fiancé cracked up at this scene and said "Wow, death by lack of gag reflex". It turns out that this dumb woman was actually a cop, because when she's captured the "mayor" finds a revolver in her ankle holster and later he runs down one of the characters with her unmarked police car with the lights flashing. So, why didn't this police woman calling her location or call for backup when the "mayor" took her to the school? How could she be bested so easily by this guy who was obviously starved and should have been too weak to overpower such a healthy person? And didn't she learn any self defense in police school? Stupid writing.

It also took the filmmakers long enough to tell us how long the lead characters had been missing. Just when I thought it was only a couple of days (since the lead guy's facial hair never grew any longer and his girlfriend looked fairly fresh) we learn from the useless, dumb cop lady that they've been gone for over a month. Where the hell have these people been shitting is what I want to know? There are no piles of poop anywhere.

Then, the lead character who gets run down by the "mayor' in the police car, actually is able to get up and walk around as if nothing happened? WTF!!!??? It was a brutal hit, too. She should have at least come away with a broken leg or something.

Several times, we get the idea that there are multiple people caged up in this school - because we can see them all around - but in the end, when the lead characters have killed the bad guy and escape, they leave everyone behind. ASSHOLES!

And then, in the end, the two lead characters drive away into the sunset with big smiles while police and emergency vehicles rush to the school. WHAT!?? You are both in very obvious need of medical attention and you just drive away?

Oh, and there's some kind of pointless tag midway through the end credits that, I guess, is supposed to allude to a sequel. Whatever. I accidentally stumbled upon it because I got up to use the bathroom after the movie and left it playing. I came back just in time to catch this wannabe Marvel-movie setup.

Who writes this sh*t?!

And what f*cking investors in their right minds finance it? I'd seriously like to know because I'm a filmmaker and I'd like to dig into your pockets to make a couple of movies that actually have some very good scripts with Hollywood notable actors attached... nothing like this garbage.

I gave this a 2 for the comedic value