Azrael, I tried, but it never managed to pace itself properly to land a satisfying movie. Instead, we are dragged through sloppy, blunt storytelling, lack of horror and scares, and just a poorly paced movie in general.
I was looking forward to this actually, Weaving is great usually. And the premise looked intriguing. Whilst the movie had a decent start, it very quickly shows it's first few weaknesses. The cinematopgray is not one them though, for a movie shot in the woods, it's very easy to feel and look cheap, lack of budget. But there's a solid eye for the camera here and that's to be appreciated. Besides that action bits are alright, towards the end some unearned slow motion but it's okay. But, whilst the movie might look good. It fails at being a good horror or really building up good scares. Most of them fall somewhat flat. In due part to the monsters being somewhat meh, and the rules of the game being quite random.
The story/writing is my main gripe and it starts off with a strange interaction with the lead and the somehow, instantly romantic partner, through a single weird moment. Complete strangers. Somehow we're supposed to believe they have this deep connection? Where is this coming from? Just poorly done and with enough care to really add the needed depth. It felt like it was in the wrong order, the hardship that came after should've been the foundation of them coming together. Not the other way around. Just odd. Beyond that, for a movie without words, you really need to pull off something special. And they just can't keep it up. The locations are not interesting enough nor is the journey, you can only film a forest so many ways. And the lack of creativity with the monsters and how they interact with the world is also lacking.
Acting, a waste of Weaving, the rest of the cast was just fine. But convinced wouldn't be a word I could use to describe the acting.
Sadly, the boredom took hold and for what it's worth the last bit of the movie has some good action. But at that point, I was done. The slow burn wasn't worth the trip.
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