haskellhello

*zero spoilers*

Solid pacing, all the acting ranges from good to incredible, the science is fleshed out a fair amount given the budget, with a good quality over quantity approach to the science itself.

My biggest issue was actually the audio. There is some truly wonderful screenplay that borders on world-class poetry, but to figure out the words, I had to turn on subtitles because the audio was muddled. I'm literally subtracting almost an entire point from the 10-star system just for this. I think it's that bad at times, and the rest of the movie is that good.

The climaxes just peak so high. Seriously, the movie just has that magic to it that makes you care, and the big moments deliver chills. I chalk it up mostly to the great screenplay and 4/5 of the main characters doing a phenomenally good job delivering them with personality, and the other doing acceptably well.

8.5/10



SPOILER on my opinion of how the final scene could be better, do not read until youve watched the movie: -- -- -- The main character shouldve been running faster, tripping over himself with his desperate movement. Hes like casually jogging down the halls. Bruh. Put some knee pads on and haul ass. Still gave me chills bc so much else was done right but they wouldve been tripled if it looked like he gave a s***.

*Extremely mild spoilers*

The sole reason I'd recommend this movie is the genre, and the genre alone. I didn't think the plot was well written. The first 2/5 or so were building up just fine, but after that it only got even slower and more confusing and pointless. The astral projection felt so random, like what the hell is the goal here? What purpose does this incredible power serve in this movie? I didnt get it. It's like it's done simply to be done. The power is never used to accomplish anything, until suddenly it does in some completely random and unexplained way that doesnt make sense unless you use your imagination. It didnt even seem realistic to me. A camera is used as part of the setup to produce the phenomenon. However, there is no camera recording the actual events that unfold. She does a whole episode on astral projection, just to seemingly accomplish nothing and prove it to no one. This is practically the climax of the movie, despite stating that she had these powers at the very beginning of the movie. The acting on screen is significantly worse than the narration, the latter of which was probably the strongest aspect of the movie. Most of the CGI is fine, but there was one scene with an inexcusably bad green screen! The character's clothes become semi-transparent, and the top of her silhouette is cropped out flat against the background!! That's just low quality; how did they miss that? Then there's the 911 call, which loses all visuals to make the audio really stand out. Yet it sounds painfully unrealistic, and obviously faked.

Idk where else to put this, but they did a solid job creating spook factor in the first 2/5. It fizzles out from there.

I would never recommend it to someone unless they were seriously into astral projection and aliens, and liked horror films.

No spoilers ! Plz read and vote!

The first expectation to bring with you is that the whole movie takes place in a rehab facility. The characters are recovering addicts. This is pretty relevant, and ultimately defines the target audience as 20-somethings. The movie's worst aspect is it's weak plot, although the movie doesn't fail to hold your interest anyways. And it does this without cheap gags. In fact, the movie is almost entirely driven by the story and the interactions between characters. The overarching plot might be excessively simple and poorly thought out, but the motifs and themes are still explored quite well, giving a powerful, clear narrative without spelling it out for you at the same time. The screenplay itself is fine, but the actors behind it are fantastic. They deliver truly dynamic emotion and get you thinking about who's side you would take. Probably the biggest strength of the movie is the cinematography, which is actually, surprisingly, extraordinarily good, but the acting would be on the same top tier level if the script was a little more developed.

The target audience is definitely 20-somethings, especially couples or small groups.

Thanks for reading. Remember to rate the film when you're done!!

*This is a zero spoiler why-you-should-watch-it style movie review. Why people waste time posting anything else on imdb unless its a full blown movie analysis.*

This is a great movie from a cinematic point of view. Its biggest strength lies in it's characters. The main protagonist is an absolute alpha: one of the strongest characters presented to me on screen in a long time. I mean that quite seriously. And the thing about the characters in this move is that they're just that- characters. I feel like too often do directors try to create these ideal heroes or people who just end up spewing ridiculously predictable lines. This movie successfully breaks that mould. The characters really have personality, properly dictated by exposition, and for that reason their word choices might surprise you a little, in an extremely well acted way. Same with the girl. She really doesn't look like much other than a pretty face, but goddamn, she ends up delivering every single line with a punch. I'd honestly give the lead acting in this movie a deserved 10/10, and sadly I cant say anymore without dropping a spoiler. Skip to the next paragraph right now if you dont want this extremely mild spoiler. Watching the two get closer is honestly beautiful, and while romance is not at all a focus here, it feels incredibly genuine; more so than just about any movie that isn't specifically labelled under the genre "romance".

The plot and its elements are also very good. There are twists and turns that feel realistic and original. I want to praise this movie for doing its homework, and providing a lot of details that are reminiscent of the "real" abduction stories a lot of viewers may have already heard. That then gets transitioned into pure sci-fi very smoothly. For the first 30 minutes, it might feel like a legitimate documentary, which I think is the sign of a good sci-fi.

They also do a great job of setting a spooky atmosphere in the first half. Seriously. I do feel like this was kind of lost for the rest of the film tho, and if it had been maintained, would've made this a legitimate horror sci-fi, which is my favorite genre. It should still be said that the movie is a little spooky.

The CGI is next-level. What a treat. Seriously, so good. I do have a quip tho that when it comes out, its almost like the directors are saying "Oooh, look at this. Isn't this pretty?" and cease to tell a story for a minute. That was a loss in my book. The CGI bits could've had a little more direction.

The biggest downfall is the timeline not being nailed perfectly, and I had an issue with the characters catching way too hard of a break one time. There was a time when I was like "Wait, what is going on here. Why are we doing this." but it got cleared up eventually. The movie could've been longer in total with very little cut out, and with one or two more major events thrown in before s*** hits the fan, it could've been a 10. It should be said that most movies of comparable ratings need 10x or more the boring crap cut from the final product, and that's a big reason why I stand by the fact that this movie is heavily underrated. My complaints about pacing would definitely be more aimed towards "it needed more/a better explanation" than "that part was boring and predictable." Ok, I am about to throw one final small and vague spoiler in so skip to the end of this paragraph if you want ZERO spoilers, but its something revealed maybe 20 minutes in and referenced throughout the rest of the movie. Kay. Well there's a major event that's being panned out to happen towards the end of the movie. It's like the movie is saying: "There will be a climax. It's coming in X amount of time." And then it keeps reminding you throughout the film. Thing is, we get some very interesting events leading up to it. That is awesome. It's like, yea, something wicked is on it's way, and oh look, is still going down in the mean time. Love it.

Bottom line: A very good story told in a compelling, yet slightly meandering way. Phenomenal lead actors are not dragged down by a bad script or bad secondary actors, leading to a very strong connection to the both realistic and original characters. Superb CGI, which the characters even interact with very well. If the story had had just one or two more interesting elements, and the pacing had been nailed down slightly better, it would have been a masterpiece, but you would still be an utter fool to call it empty or aimless as is.

This movie deserves absolutely no less than 8/10, and is a must watch for fans of sci-fi who enjoy quality cinema.

Zero spoilers! Read without fear. <3

This is a tale of pure adventure and little else. There is a goal, but a vague one. A naive but determined adventurer meets an aimless survivalist, and they decide to team up to seek a fabled objective. There is virtually no variety in scenery and very little happens, aside from dialogue being exchanged. The narrative is much more introspective than it is objective. It's a tale about the journey, adventuring for the sake of adventuring, and weighing survival vs happiness. The movie deals with artificial intelligence as well, in a healthy way. If you have a child, especially one with a special curiosity and a twinkle in their eye, I implore you to have them watch it. If you are a grown adult, you could watch this to awaken the child in you and rekindle your passion for adventure, but it will not be terribly exciting, to the point where it might not be enough to hold your attention. I see this as a (must-see) kid's movie, whether it's marketed that way or not. I rated 7 to describe my own enjoyment of the film as an adult, but it does hold immense value that others could put to better use. There is no denying that it is an entirely wholesome film.

The acting is phenomenal, the scripting is great, the cinematography is good, and the coloring is beautiful.

Contains zero spoilers.

It's very interesting how the theses people write on this movie are so much better than how the story is actually presented. There are *so* many loose ends and confusing plot elements that never get cleared up, but there were some great themes at its core that other people pretty much fabricated theories about that sound great on paper. I found the story telling here awful.

However, it is important that the sport itself takes up about 50% of the screentime, and its just awesome to watch. Seriously, what a spectacle. The plays themselves are well thought out, but it's the execution that is world-class. You really wonder if we'll ever see something so dangerous and appearingly violent as this ever choreographed again. I think this film has so much potential to be remade into something amazing in today's day and age, but I question if such a stunt team could ever be put together again. It's actually insane, and I would definitely recommend this film for that reason alone.

I'm not a professional but I think this review is fair. *Zero spoilers*

The film reminds me of Dante's Inferno. The main character gets dragged confusingly into Hell, and he basically stares each demonic figure in the face and says "I dont know why Im here, but you dont scare me." The main character definitely hogs the limelight, but he is the perfect person for the role. The pacing is good. What I really liked this movie for though is it's sense of setting. This movie stands out as one of the best uses of budget CGI I've ever seen. I think this movie had almost no budget whatsoever- I saw that their Indiegogo (kickstarter) raised some $2,000 with a $45,000 goal. They got pennies. I couldnt see more info than that because I dont have imdb pro (yeehaw), but they really went all out with the CGI regardless, never shying away from animating some ludicrous demon on screen. That's always a peeve of mine- when they hide the epic monsters in the shadowy bushes etc and try to use the excuse of "oh its all mysterious bc you cant see it yet," when theyre obviously just cheaping out.There were literally only 2 times that I would call the CGI bad: one being some blood against metal (again, only one time this happened), and the other being sadly right at the end, where the greenscreen was painfully obvious. I was really disappointed by that, how they left one of their worst greenscreen shots in right at the end. There was also one small issue with props selection, but Im not going to spoil what it was. Youll probably know when you see it. Other than that though, the CGI is extremely effective dollar for dollar, and it's easy to feel like they really shipped this man and a camera-strapped drone to Hell to shoot these scenes. I also thought the ending itself was kind of bad for being too sudden and how they got there to be the most confusing part of the entire movie, aside from the final scene itself and brief soliloquy which was pretty good. I'd give this movie 7.5, and if you enjoy things demonic then you'll definitely find this a good watch. I didn't think it was too confusing, and it isnt aimless. If nothing else, it was a well visualized journey to the depths of Hell, featuring one bad ass old man, a pretty girl, some interesting villains, and a handful of demons.

No spoilers.

My favorite part of a good movie is quality small talk and characters showing personality. I also love intricate action scenes. This movie absolutely NAILS these two things. Id go so far as to say that it does so perfectly, which is *incredibly* rare.

I'm gonna risk losing your faith for a minute here because I tried watching Alien and thought it was painfully slow. Idk, I probably just didn't give it enough time to get going, but it seemed like nothing was happening. The difference with this movie is that the entire time it's setting itself up, you're captivated by the characters. I truly believe this movie deserves the credit that Alien got. I was lucky enough to run into this gem on Amazon video.

The exposition and character development is literally a 10/10 for me. It literally doesn't get better than this in a horror film. The characters feel more real than actual people do, and to me that's what quality cinema should be about. In today's day and age, it's too often that you only see that in drama films, but it should be applied to all genres.

What's crazy is that the action they go through is of the same calibur. The final scene is literally 16 minutes of straight non-stop action. The sets look like a million bucks apiece, which adds so much more realism than cgi ever could. The creatures even look surprisingly good, and I really mean that.

Even the plot and storyline has quality complexity to it, evolving and non-static which adds excitement. The characters discuss events intelligently and make sense of things in a feasibly possible way.

The single con I can come up with is the camera work during action scenes. It's not a 10 like the choreography, acting, and fx are. It's not BAD, just pay attention and it doesn't matter. Minus half a point but it rounds up from 9.5 to 10.

This is a monster movie masterpiece, and I can't believe it took me stumbling through Amazon video to hear of it.

I don't write a lot of reviews but I think this one is thorough and fair. It has no spoilers.

To say that Snyder used the confusing plot as an excuse to hit us with some of the best eye candy on the market would be a lie. There is definitely a story being told. Theres even reasons behind some of the confusing elements. Yet at the end of the day, it's just a little too hard to follow. For me the characters come across as underdeveloped, even though they DO show a LOT of emotion on screen. I think the film would've benefitted from a bit more quality small talk to make us fall in love with each character, which the film had almost none of. It makes sense though that every line had to be plot oriented when the biggest issue with a film like this is connecting the fantasy to the "real" storyline. I will say that the main female cast is nothing short of excellent both in the action and in the acting departments, and you will easily connect to them even without the exposition I wanted. You could totally argue that it's more realistic with how the characters interact with real emotion and they just don't explain why they are how they are because by the time we see the film they already know each other. That argument would be perfectly fair. The film probably just needed to be a little longer, and there's a good chance that the 18 minutes of extended footage in the Blu-ray cut make a big impact on the completeness of the experience. The fantasy sequences REALLY deliver, while the real world scenes feel like they don't get enough storytelling done. Seriously tho, the action is so damn good. Some of the camera work you just won't be able to find anywhere else, the slow-mo is used both generously and effectively, and the girls are incredibly acrobatic and absolutely ooze dramatic flair. It's bad ass. The real world plot feels like it takes too long to confusingly explain a simple plan. It was strange to me how the dialogue was often on the flat side, yet the narration at the end was so deep. The music is consistently bad ass and effectively adds to the atmosphere.

There were a couple moments where they failed to maintain ultra realism, like when a bad guy walks in on the gang plotting. Right after he leaves, 4-5 seconds later, they resume their full volume conversation. This vibe lingered throughout the movie too much and dropped it from 8 to 7 for me.

Bottom line: if you have a taste for things dark and bad ass AND you think you're pretty good at reading between the lines, this is 100% a must-see movie. The story really is there, it just takes a lot of effort to fully grasp with what's shown on screen. If you're a Shakespearean-style critic who only cares for intricate dialogue and thurough plot development, skip it. If you're an action junkie and love seeing hot girls twirling through the air shooting guns and swinging swords at often truly formidable foes in well-shot slow-mo, it should be on your bucket list. If you enjoy quality action portrayed with emotional actors, this is worth picking up.

This movie was created with one thing in mind, and that is the second half of the movie. Yes, it is f*cked/twisted, and yes it all makes sense in the end. I did not have a problem with the portrayal of the wicked and awful things that happen- I thought that they served their purpose. They build up towards a climax and that was done properly. My problem with the movie lies in the first half, and it is probably because the creators were SO tunnel-visioned on the intense ending that they majorly overlooked the realistic aspects of the first half. Many viewers would not mind this because they too only watch for the sick ending, but if you are like me and appreciate the WHOLE film, then you too will see the flaws in this cinematography. The connection between the main characters, Anna and Lucie, seems so incredibly wrong to me. There are times when these characters will simply walk off mid conversation and I find myself thinking "What kind of life-long friends are these??" They give no instinctive reaction when the other is about to do something they shouldn't, and it really bothered me because this ruins the aspect that feels genuine. For being friends from childhood, stemming from similar abuse, they don't communicate well at all and I had a problem with this.

I am confident that the producers of this movie wanted us to walk away feeling "disturbed." This didn't work on me because I was too busy being p*ssed at the directors for allowing such a bad ending to the movie to take place. The final awful acts take place by seemingly coincidence, yet the antagonist plays it off like another part of his scheme, and he throws away the side of himself that seems good by not acting like a hero after being the villain. I strongly despised the ending, I felt like it was not cohesive and threw the characters' developments under the bus in the name of creating something.... "f*cked up." One of the things about this film that I liked, up until the ending, was that the lines between "good" and "bad" were blurry. It seemed like the bad things were being done in the name of their victims for a while. They make it seem like the idea to put other people through Hell is justified. Until all of that gets thrown away for one truly bad scene, where our twisted villain decides to start doing things seemingly "just because." I'll admit I spent a lot of time thinking about this film as it played. The pace is fair- I thought there was a lot going on and most of the scenes did cut it for me, even if Stephen came off as an unoriginal guy in general. The ending made me not take the film as seriously because it did not fit with the movie as a whole. If you go in with this expectation, I think you will enjoy the movie more as you can enjoy the good parts and brace yourself for the rotten ending.

This movie made me think in certain ways. The villains show that they have morals: while they are twisted, they have a code of conduct and whether they stick to this or not is something to pay attention to.

Perhaps it is the straightforwardness of the movie that people hate, but the thing is, this movie is ***not*** predictable. People are mixing up these two concepts. The "plot" is easy to understand, but people judge this film almost like..... they want it to be confusing?? The film throws many scenes at us where we cannot be certain of the outcome. There are even a few twists, and I cannot say more about this without giving away my favorite part of the movie. Believe in the characters, and YOU will *not* be the one getting surprised.

The movie starts out portraying the characters as very run-of-the- mill, very typical people, but that quickly fades away when they fail to live up to the average horror film stock characters. These are heroes, not the shabby type to scream their lungs out and freeze in fear until they are brutally stabbed, etc. These people FIGHT for their lives and I admire that. I think this is a GREAT, and I mean GREAT movie to watch as a couple, because their teamwork is incredible and really peaks towards the end. They also do very well on their own, and this is backed up in the story. These are VICTIMS, but they are not HELPLESS.

The characters are developed. It bothers me that people complain about the smaller roles, but the truth is, we don't need to know much about them for them to serve their purpose. They come and go as they should, and they all add an element to the story: whether it be hope, or dread. Just because plans don't always work does ***not*** mean that someone is useless!! God, people want the story to be so predictable, and this movie just isn't. That's why I loved this one. Anyways, the story is obviously told from the point of view of our main characters, so stop focusing on the importance of minor characters. There are a lot of them and that's the point. The villain has been doing these wicked things for a long time. That's the message and it gets through to us. The only other thing I can say without spoiling too much is that by the end of the movie, these characters are fully addressed. (Watch until after the credits.)

The villains have depth. People say their background is cheesy but it's absolutely not. There are hugely acclaimed horror movies like Silence of the Lambs, which put *no* effort into explaining WHY the bad guys do what they do (iirc, but I know movies like this exist.) but this one makes sense. I'd be p1ssed too if I was in the guy's shoes, and I'd probably want to take it out on the world. Doesn't that sound like the perspective a bad guy should be coming from? The telling of his story fits in with the plot perfectly, looping back to the very first couple of scenes.

I will say that there were a very small number of parts that did not quite hit the mark, which is why I can only give this movie an 8/10 rating. Here is a spoiler, and while reading this won't ruin the movie for you, it will reveal bits and pieces. There is an undercover cop-like lady who tries to rescue the victims. Her acting is ***very*** bad. She dragged down this movie from 9 to 8, and I feel very strongly about that. Be ready to laugh at her scene and just take it with a grain of salt.

I loved this movie. If you're the type that feels like they've seen it all, and you want something both **original** and **good**, with characters that can stand on their own two legs, watch this one.