SJinSeaTac

Privileged and vapid twenty somethings talk a lot and whine about their poor privileged lives in Hawaii. Some people die, with not enough character development to even care about anyone at any point. Paper-thin characters with a paper-thin plot. Not even a fun waste of time. This truly is the bottom of the barrel for "remakes."

Bryan Bertino started his career with a small film called the Strangers. With a modest budget, the film was a huge financial success for Universal. Since then he has pulled away from the director's chair, choosing to write and produce content instead of directing. In the wake of the Strangers release, many wondered why with such a huge success would Bertino stop directing. Well, I think this film shows pretty clearly why that is the case. Without a major studio to rein him in, Bertino has little to no command of his own material, relying on several "made you look" death scenes to convey the cruelty of his narrative structure. This is not new territory to horror, and Bertino wastes Marin Ireland in a lead role (which she elevates above and beyond the material on the page), meandering around, creating atmosphere over plot, resulting in a tired, boring, run of the mill art film with nothing surprising up its sleeve, and nothing to say about the family dynamics of the characters that it purports to know so well about. Do yourself a favor and re watch something else.

This movie was not scary, nor clever, and a waste of time. To me, many of these reviews are probably planted by the creators of this movie and possibly Shudder as well. If you want to be incredibly bored for about two hours, go ahead and watch. Otherwise, watch something else on Netflix. Maybe watch it again.

Colman and Bonham Carter are perfect in their respective roles of Margaret and the Queen. Definitely a must-see season!

The original had a moderately effective format that brought in some box office. This movie has the ghost Charlie from the original and that's it. Why couldn't the filmmakers have stuck to the original formula and upped their game? This is like Blair Witch 2. Avoid.

Save yourself the time of watching this boring film and skip right to the ending:

*MAJOR SPOILER*

Everyone on the plane has died.

The final reveal at the end is that nothing supernatural is really happening at all. Everyone on the plane has died after the plane's seal has leaked out all of the oxygen. The reason we only see five to eight of the characters acting on screen at any given time is because everyone else isn't asleep, they have died. The characters walking around have died as well, but they have yet to make peace with things in their past lives in order to move on. Or they have not yet accepted their deaths. Or WHO KNOWS really. It's not clear at all.

A lot could be forgiven if this movie was at least scary. It wasn't. Leslie Bibb and Jamie Chung are not strong enough actors to support this film on their own and Amy Smart and Ryan Kwanten still cannot act. Skip it.

I would give this zero stars if I could. Too bad that is not an option.

Plot (if you want to call it that): A young man (who clearly didn't graduate from the Stella Adler school of acting) goes to visit his mother at a mental hospital. She tells him that she knows who his father is, but won't tell him who it is. Later the young man inherits a house in the middle of nowhere. He goes looking for his father and takes his best friend and now very pregnant fiancé'/girlfriend/womanherandomlymetinabareightmonthsago to find said house. Bad things happen.

Throw in a subplot about being able to see other people's future deaths when you touch them, Tobin Bell from the Saw franchise looking all menacing, a house that somehow has managed to be relocate on its own, weird characters who run around with axes like the nurses from Silent Hill, along with other goofy characters that may or may not be the "bad guys," and you have Dark House.

AVOID THIS FILM. Go see other, better, recent straight to video haunted house movies, such as "Haunter" or "Haunt." But do not assume like I did that just because Victor Salva struck gold from directing Jeepers Creepers that he is any good at making movies anymore. He isn't. His career and this pathetic excuse for a movie both belong in the garbage bin.

I will admit that my hopes for this film were higher than normal. Being a fan of director Jaume Collet-Serra's work on "Unknown" and "Orphan," I was surprised to find out how terrible this film really is. Let me define terrible:

Frustrating. Ridiculous. IMPOSSIBLE.

The plot set up is really simple. Bill, a federal air marshal, boards a flight from New York to London. Three hours into the flight he starts to receive text messages from someone who purports to have hacked into the federal messaging database. This person claims to be on the plane and directs Bill to have $150 million deposited into a bank account or someone on the plane will die every 20 minutes. Off runs Liam trying to figure out who is messaging him, who he can trust, and is there a greater master plan afoot.

Sounds simple enough? Wrong. Collet-Serra is determined to throw everything including the kitchen sink at this movie where credulity is stretched past the breaking point. After the first death comes at the hands of Bill himself (solid plot twist, IMO), everyone else starts dying of anaphylactic shock. How? Well, the plot holes are big enough to fit an elephant into.

What is more frustrating is how obvious the plot holes are. For example, since when is the security of the pass code protected cockpit door so easily bypassed by poking a hole in the wall that is behind the bathroom paper towel dispenser? Yes really, I am not even joking.

Finally, when it is revealed whodunnit, you might as well just take your ball and go home, because the explanation, if you even want to call it an explanation, makes no sense.

**Read no further unless you, unlike me, desire to save yourself two hours of your life**

The writers seem to have lifted what I like to call the "Scream" complex for the film's conclusion. That's right, TWO people have conspired to do this. One is motivated by money, the other by madness. What madness?

9/11.

Yes, seriously. 9/11 did it.

After all of this planning and conniving (and putting us the audience through the misery of watching Liam and the cast run around the plane for two hours like a bunch of idiots who have been directed to look suspicious at all times while frequently making racist comments about each other), the crazy guy simply shoots his accomplice!

Really? After all of this planning together, you just shoot him?

Seriously?

After sitting through this mess of a film, with subplots involving drug smuggling, the token black guy, cop, and Muslim suspects, the shifty flight attendant that will remind you of far superior films (Flightplan) and dreadful but amusing (bad) ones (Turbulence), all I wanted was a hot shower and a hug- or the plane to crash at the 90 minute mark so this entire mess would just end already.

Even after all of this, Collet-Serra makes the cardinal sin of casting great actors and failing to use any of their talent. Julianne Moore, Linus Roache, Corey Stoll- even Lupita Nyong'o who is currently nominated for an Academy Award for "12 Years a Slave"- figuratively, if not actually, are all wasted. Liam Neeson is playing another angry growling character that made him famous in "Taken," which apparently has taken the place of what used to be a great talent that was only comparable to that of Daniel-Day Lewis.

Overly long and frustrating, "Non-stop" will leave major action fans and other mouth breathers drooling for more. But if you are like me and you are looking for logic, you won't find it here.

My suggestion is that you take up drinking like Moore does through most of this film if you are in fact tempted to spend $9.00 on seeing it. She must have realized halfway through production the direction this film was headed toward and asked Collet-Serra if drinking scotch was something her character would be motivated to do. I certainly would have.

I watched "Love Crime" about two years ago and I agree with most critics that it is the film version of "Damages." I just finished watching "Passion" (French bluray version) and....wow. What DePalma has done is not reinvent the wheel, but taken what he knows and meshed it with a well received French film from 2010. After all, his formula, dating back to "Carrie" has always worked for him. And in "Passion", he is back in all of his bloody glory.

Isabel has an amicable relationship with her boss, Christine. Both work at a large corporate public relations firm in Germany. Christine has her eye on the cushy executive job in New York, but poor poor Isabel does all of the work that Christine passes off as her own. She reassures Isabel that taking credit for her work is all part of the business. But as the film plays out, we start to see that Christine is manipulative, conniving, and though she explains that her actions are all part of the job, there is always an angle for her. And Isabel buys into what Christine tells her- at least you are led to believe she does. Or is she even MORE manipulative than Christine? You will have to watch the movie to find out.

Isabel gets frustrated by being pushed down and finally goes over Christine's head by releasing a new smartphone advertisement she developed onto YouTube before Christine comes out with her own version. Needless to say, the claws come out shortly thereafter and Christine takes to humiliating Isabel, and engaging in destructive conduct to have her fired. But then a twist comes, and someone dies. Horribly. Who did it. Again, you will have to watch to find out. Because even if you have seen "Love Crime", you might have your doubts while watching it.

DePalma proves to be the master of the erotic thriller once again. Not since "Femme Fatale" have we seen his return to the modern murder mystery/thriller. Basically, what you have in "Passion" is a shot for shot retelling of "Love Crime" with some minor changes and a classic DePalma ending accompanied by Pino Donagio's "Dressed to Kill" score blaring, with actions speaking for the characters instead of words. Minor changes have been made, and for the better. The ending is a twist where as in "Love Crime" the killer is immediately revealed. The subplot with Isabel's sister has been taken out and further developed into Isabel's assistant's character, who is now a woman, and love-struck, too. And there are two entirely new subplots that work to support the ending of the film, and let's just say that DePalma's "Sisters", where he started his career in this genre back in 1973, is in full effect towards the end.

DePalma does something here that I absolutely think works for him: he combines all of his major successes in film of the past 40 years into the climax. Remember what I said about not reinventing the wheel? Well not to spoil it for you, but think "Sisters" meets "Raising Cain" meets "Dressed to Kill" meets "Body Double" meets "Blow Out" by the end of this. Yes, all of the nastiest bits of violence, dreams within dreams, doppelgangers, asphyxiation, voyeurism, and maybe a little borrowing from the Wachowski's movie "Bound." But just a little ;)

This movie is DePalma's life work rolled into one. His fans will be happy to know that DePalma is back, and better than ever.

First of all, if you do not read the title before watching this movie, you may be a little...irritated? Or upset. The characters in this movie are dysfunctional but their dysfunctions remain very well guarded and hidden in their everyday lives...until their old friend from college (Missi Pyle) convinces them all to meet years later, in the middle of nowhere Montana to go on her own selfish journey. At first she seems to be the only person who is not a mental case, but towards the end, we realize she may be worse than any of the other characters.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone who isn't afraid of stepping out of their comfort zone, and has the ability to to laugh at the fact that what runs through a person's mind daily, or even just many times in their own life, can actually be played-out in reality when all pretenses and distractions are suddenly removed.

Be warned, the next time you see "Richard Kelly" involved in any production, run away. Fast.

Kelly proved to the world after his last movie, "Southland Tales", that he is one pretentious director. It was indulgent and convoluted. In "The Box", not much has changed.

I can picture what his pitch to Warner Bros must have been, and I bet the executives at the studio ate it right up: a full-feature film based on one of Richard "Twilight Zone" Matheson's old short stories.

Big mistake! Do not read any further unless you want this movie COMPLETELY spoiled for you:

Norma (Cameron Diaz) pushes the button.

Turns out that Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) has an Alien using his body as a vessel to conduct "experiments" in which the fate of mankind rests. His face is scarred because he was struck by Alien lightening, which killed him, but then brought him back to life to do all of this red button testing. Obviously since Norma pushes the button, knowing full well that someone may die, she must suffer the consequences for failing to consider someone else's life instead of her own. In the end she and her husband (James Marsden) choose to kill Norma instead of having their son grow up deaf and blind.

Kelly dances around his film's "message", trying to make the audience figure out what the moral of the story is. Obviously, any person with a brain is saying at the beginning, "What if I was the person who dies?". Richard Kelly doesn't even let his character's have this normal, HUMAN conversation. In fact, they avoid it all together. They appear to both be educated, working at a prestigious school and also for NASA, so why wouldn't they both have a better ability to LOOK OUTSIDE OF THE BOX???

If he had the main characters actually have this conversation, the entire movie could have ended right there! Instead, we have to watch weddings go on forever, NASA and the NSA be complacent to Arlington Stewart taking over these government programs, teleportation to show Marsden life beyond our world so it will be "easier" to kill his wife, and drone's controlled by Steward which can be anywhere and nowhere, at any time.

The most painful part of this movie is the pacing. Nothing really happens. Its a muddled mish-mash of ideas that are laughable.

It is insufferable how this film is being marketed. The commercials make it look like "Saw" and even use the music from those films to sell it. In reality what you get is a slow, dull, laughable (yes, half the theater was laughing at the acting and visual effects), and messy film which is neither imaginative, interesting, nor cohesive. At one point, Cameron Diaz and her son are abducted and then suddenly, she is back in the NSA's big black car with her husband on the way home. Where did she go? Why did they take her? Do we really care? Not anymore you won't.

By the end you really won't care what happens to any of the characters. You will be rooting for all of them to die so the film will just end. Go see anything else that's playing. Don't waste your time, or money.

...the real title of this film.

TWO WARNINGS:

1) I checked two "user" reviews for this movie here on IMDb which were good/favorable towards this movie and they have NO OTHER COMMENT HISTORY! Or any history, of any kind, with IMDb.com. To me, that means these reviews are planted BY THE STUDIO, cast, or crew!

2) This comment contains no spoilers at all, for there is nothing about this film to spoil or give away, honest!

NO. That's the first thing you should say to anyone who asks you to see this. Better yet, make another movie suggestion. Not even a hot date is worth taking to this because there will never be a second date and nothing is gonna happen after the date either!

Plot in a nutshell- Serial Killer looking for the "perfect family", formerly troubled son returns home after 6 months away at a military school, is suspicious of his new stepfather, and shakes things up.

There are numerous things the writer and director could have done with this movie. My expectations were exceedingly low (the same dud-making-duo behind the 2008 "Prom Night" re-imagining) and were fulfilled.

Followers of the original cult classic will not find a remake or re-imagining but a different film with the title "The Stepfather" attached.

Almost every possible scenario which could have benefited this movie was either rushed, failed at during the execution, or left out entirely. Believe it or not, there isn't even one decent scene where Mom and son have the "he's a monster serial killer why are you marrying him?!?" fight. What the film is reduced to is us watching Amber Heard wear a new two-piece swimsuit every other scene while floating in the pool with the troubled son (no, I'm not even kidding), trying not to laugh at Sela Ward's nose-job, ignoring the blatant homophobic references ("Meet him in the basement? for what?") including the 12 year-old giggle factor of two women saying "I love you" to each other, and rushed kill scenes devoid of any true violence.

I did give this film 2 stars however. The first is for not being as bad as their "Prom Night" remake. The second is for making a film which will end both of their careers, more or less.

Let's not pay Hollywood any more money to produce sanitized waste like this movie. Suggestion? Go see the "Last House on the Left" remake instead.

Okay, so I feel obligated to warn people about this movie ONLY because there are so many "positive" reviews about this film.

Plot: Child kills mom, gets locked up in asylum for many years, later escapes when they are going to transfer him to another institution, tries to kill everyone and his sister....Halloween, right? Wrong!

MAJOR Spoilers AHEAD:

If your idea of a good time is figuring out the beginning, middle, and end of a movie, see this. From the opening scene, when the kid is sitting on the bed....when you never actually SEE him beating his mother to death, you will know who did it because NO OTHER OPTION for who could have killed her besides the FATHER are introduced. Its all too convenient of a plot device.

When you see "someone's" foot sticking out of the bushes near the asylum at the start of the movie, and THEN an hour later you are being told who's dead body it is, and THEN you have to watch another 20 minutes of BAD ACTING as the movie continues, as if the audience is absolutely clueless......all I can say is whatever.

The director's obviously thought their double-twist at the ending was good enough to make-up for BAAAAD and laughable acting throughout this film, and a complete lack of suspense since you can see the first "twist" coming a MILE AWAY. Right from when "Gary" the security guard is in the car at the beginning and the driver says, "But, there wasn't anyone out there, I saw. I saw there wasn't anyone there". Maybe because...THERE WASN'T ANYONE OUT THERE!!

And for everyone else who is thinking this looks good, the second twist reveals that it is all in the escaped son's head, that he has been lying at the edge of the road THE ENTIRE TIME, that he never killed anyone, he just "imagined" killing everyone before his pedophile cop-father kills him to silence him, later to just to head home to his real family and molest his other son....SICK.

The ending is a PRANK, a GIMMICK, to make you squirm, and also tells you that everything you just watched NEVER HAPPENED. Congratulations audience, you just wasted you time watching nothing. Now child molestation is horrific, yes, and I am sure that the directors and all of their script writers (all FIVE of them) used the "life is scarier than a slasher killer" angle when selling this movie and its "ending" to the studio who financed and distributed it, but come ON! You have to sit through all of this to find out its 1) not real 2) the pedophile father gets away with it and 3) BAAAD acting.

Watch "High Tension" instead, or again if you have already seen it. At least it moves along faster and doesn't completely cheat you in the end.

I really enjoy watching fast-paced thrillers and murder-mysteries. Unfortunately most films which are released these days do not put the time nor effort into flushing-out a story. Often times I resort to seedy little horror films to watch a good whodunit film. Therefore Surrogates was definitely a great surprise to me. I went in expecting some idiotic action film which should have gone straight to video and was very surprised at how engaging this film was!

The only reason I didn't give this film a 10/10 rating is because Brancato and Ferris most obviously got the idea for their script from the Wachowski Brother's of "The matrix" fame. The only difference is that instead of entering another reality people enter the body of a robot for which they use to interact with people in the world right from their homes, never having to leave the house. These Surrogates act and talk just like their counterparts back home, linked-up in their cyber-kinetic chairs, although as you will find in the first act, don't always look like them. The entire benefit of using a surrogate is to never be hurt or killed, and also to look the way you want people to see you.

Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell play two FBI agents investigating the destruction of two surrogates and their operators who were connected to them at the time, which up until then has never been possible. Now, I won't ruin anything, but lets just say that if you can use a surrogate to be "anyone you want to be" you might not really always know who you are talking too...or what their ulterior-motives are!!

The storytelling, twists & turns, and fast-paced action really move this film along. Also, the special effects are so well put together that when you are watching people on the screen you really believe out of this world things are happening to them...but to me the best part or character of the film is Radha Mitchell. She is required to take on so many different things here and also be believable, and she pulled it off very well indeed!

I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie and at a midnight screening as well. "Surrogates" is definitely worth seeing on the big screen, so don't miss it!

Having had no expectations going into this movie I was pleasantly surprised at how entertaining it really was. I skimmed some of the other reviews on here and a lot of the other comments are very hung-up on the nudity in this movie. However, having only graduated from College 5 years ago director Stewart Hendler would have failed miserably in making this film if he wasn't working to make it as realistic as possible. The opening sequence alone helps a lot in establishing the characters and the roles they will play as well. The drinking, drugs, sex, and nudity are part of the fraternal culture, at least in America. Unfortunately so is the way the men (I mean, boys) in this film treat women.

Every night is another party, there are no real consequences or adults, just older kids with family's who have plenty of money to do whatever without supervision....until something bad really happens to them.

It is true it starts out very much like "I know what you did last summer" (or any other horror movie where a teens do something stupid and immature, and then try to cover it up), but the quick-witted scrip and GOOD ACTING (yes, good acting, in a slasher film) save this movie from the junk pile. The actresses in this film were in full-form, showing genuinely their ability to capture what its like to be 21 again, thinking that "we are adults now" but then quickly realizing that they don't even have a clue of how to behave like adults or make good decisions when confronted with the death of their sorority sister after a prank goes wrong.

It is the oldest morality-play in the book: people making bad decisions and then being forced to suffer the consequences, that being their own gruesome deaths from a mystery killer.

It also didn't hurt that the camera work was excellent as well as the score. The director Hendler was able to ratchet up the suspense plenty, keep the story moving, and create an ending that was very unpredictable and unnerving. Although somewhat last minute in nature, the ending did make sense, in that horror-movie kind of way.

This is a definite must for those who enjoy murder-mysteries and good acting/suspense. While there is some gore, this isn't for gore-hounds. Sometimes the less you see the more frightening it may be.

I had the displeasure of seeing this movie yesterday and believe me when I say that my expectations were really low...but I did't think it would be that bad! David Ellis has done some decent films, Cellular was very well executed in my opinion, but what happened here I will never know.

Everyone knows that the Final Destination franchise which started as a exercise in suspense and terror descended into parody starting with the sequels. There is no suspense and I hate to say it, every time someone died and gore appeared on the screen, I started laughing. None of it was realistic, not even when blood was coming out of someone's mouth did it look real.

The way people die in films like this are made to be creative, because the kind of audience going to see these films wants to see people die in inventive and gory ways...too bad its just silly. Lets hope this really is the "Final Destination" for this worn out franchise.

This I have to admit is a very B-movie. If it were not for the actors in it I wouldn't even call it a C-movie. However the storyline is very engaging. I wouldn't dare compare it to any other movie however and most of the critics have already slammed it because "Hitchcock's version was better" (although this movie has been made by several others as well).

The director has done a fairly good job with the budget he has and has made some very good decisions at least in casting the actors in their roles. The movie is mostly a "copycat" film, but the concepts are still the same. Obviously it is not possible to follow the storyline of "jack the ripper has left England and is now in the United States" as in the original Lodger story because it is now 2009, which in the end doesn't really help or hurt the film at all. It was also nice to see Rebecca Pidgeon in a film again although her character is mostly just thrown in to "tie" the ending together in a "Psycho-esque" kind of way. Donal Logue seems like the typical husband who doesn't SEEM to understand his wife, played by Hope Davis, who may or may not be imagining things. And finally Alfred Molina is basically cast as himself, stubborn, difficult, and determined.

Everyone is a suspect and Ondaatje does a very good job keeping the pace while switching seamlessly between the detectives investigating and the Bunting residence where "The Lodger" is. However, whether or not you feel "cheated" by the end of the film is up to you. I however was not very surprised by the modern day twists that are thrown at the audience in the end. Definitely worth seeing in the theater if you can.

While this is not the best horror film ever to have been made, it stands out as one that actually has taken the time to develop the characters and still manage to hold your attention. Aside from a back-story that is thrown in at the last minute which never really explains why this is happening to the characters, the film stars and director have helped create some very effective scar sequences which don't always need to be played upon with exhausting music and gore.

The story begins with a girl (Emily Blunt, "The Devil Wears Prada") who needs a ride home for the holidays from college because she has just broken up with her boyfriend. Upon checking the student "ride board" she sees that there is someone offering a ride home in her direction and decides to take it. The boy (Ashton Holmes, "A History of Violence") is our driver, who may have ulterior motives of his own.

Needless to say things begin to fall apart when the boy decides to get off the main highway at the behest of the girl, swerves the car to avoid another one that is oncoming, and crashes in the middle of nowhere. In the snow. In the freezing cold. Obviously with no cell phones in service. Soon the two realize that they have much more to worry about than just freezing to death in the night.

Up until this point things have been fairly clichéd and predictable as with most horror films, but this is exactly what catches you off guard for the second half of the film, the dynamics of which I will not spoil for you. The director Jacobs ("Criminal") is fully aware that the best of horror films are those that have given you time to get to know and feel for the characters before something bad happens to them, even if it is only in the last half. Hitchcock knew this quite well and although "Wind Chill" may be a far cry from "Psycho" or "Frenzy", its effectiveness in making you believe in these characters and feel for them is a truly terrifying experience.

This film doesn't even deserve 1 star for a rating. I really enjoyed "Relative Fear" by this director, but this film is a disgrace. Everything is muddled, nothing is surprising, and by the time it was over, my first reaction was "that's it"? Yes, the box cover is really pretty and elusive, but this movie which credits itself as a "mystery" lacks any mystery at all. If there was some big "reveal" towards the end then I must have missed it (or dozed off).

Don't be fooled....It's just BAD movie-making, period!

Go and see any other modern film out there, or a classic film and you will be much happier, I assure you.

***NO CRUCIAL Spoilers HERE, BUT THERE ARE SOME*** Why do these major motion picture companies continue to let Brett Ratner direct their films? First Hannibal Lecter and now X-men. Who cares if he has wanted to direct a comic book/X-men film for years? I just hope they won't let him do it again! Why you ask? because all of his films are incomplete thoughts and ideas, or scenes that are so literal you can predict exactly what is going to happen next or throughout the rest of the film. The best example of this is how characters appear in his films just to be there but serve no real purpose. For example, why is Rogue in this film? What is the point? To tell us that everyone's life is their own and they should be able to make their own choices? Excuse me, but even though the plot is paper thin, it gives the audience enough knowledge of this conflict without her even needing to appear in the film. Also, the conflict is never fully established between her or Bobby, or even Kitty for that matter. Is that because she is angry about her powers and inability to get close to others? Maybe, but even if it is, who cares? We get it! The other problem with his films are that the characters appearing will usually only serve one specific purpose to the story, such as in Red Dragon, where we get to see Mary Louise Parker a whole 3 times before the climax of the film, and one of these times she is learning to fire a gun...can you guess what purpose her character served in the end? Same thing in this film: we get new mutants to link the story together because the director and writers couldn't figure how else to do it. Example: Isn't it just a LITTLE too convenient to introduce a character that can sense another mutant's powers and strengths? I mean, really, how many times do we have to hear a location call-out to Magneto because the writers needed to link this mess together (i.e.- "she's on the far side of the building", "she's at her house", "she's in a heavily guarded trailer going god knows where!").

The scenes in his films follow no story line and might as well be pasted together in any given order. Example: one of Magneto's cohorts is turned human just to have Magneto turn his back on them because they are no longer a mutant. Is the point of this scene to establish that he is a really bad guy? Or is it a set-up for this character to betray Magneto later, just to have the betrayal result in nothing? Does this betrayal have anything to do with propelling the plot of this film forward? No. Its pointless! The rest of the film is Ratner trying to see how many new mutant powers he can show off without any real purpose except for us to watch the special effects in action. Shock waves, ramming through walls, moving at the speed of light, doppelgangers to confuse us (like we didn't see that one coming)...the list goes on. The effects are really cool and seamless, but who cares? After all this the film goes to the government trying to track down the rebel mutants in a remote forest, resulting in nothing being gained by this betrayal of Magneto's former accomplice, followed by the story moving straight into the climax...why? I assume the only reasoning for this is to once again see the "new mutants" in this franchise using their powers.

For all of the special effects and the gruesome happenings in this film, it is pretty neat to watch, but after having left the theater, it becomes less impressive almost immediately. Tons of the main characters die, people switch sides, then die, battles ensue 'just because', characters are introduced and then killed for no purpose, and the whole time the camera does nothing to capture any real emotion in which the first two films had expressed so wonderfully.

ALSO, all of the fight sequences you will have seen before, so don't expect anything new. You will see fight sequences with no real purpose, and you will see characters go "places" and get into fights with no reason, and not even to propel the plot in any way. For example: one of the characters gets into a really bad fight after having gone out to look for another and then comes back and says "She's with Magneto". Of course she is with Magneto....he took her 20 minutes ago when you were with her!!!! More violence and special effects do not compensate for a bad story and a bad director who cannot keep anything together enough for anyone who reads books to tear out the pages and put back in any given order.

Wait for DVD if you already have not seen it.

The problem with this movie is this:

Even if she served her time for a crime she never committed, upon her release, by killing him in the end, with a gun, in the office (an office, correct?) ... it ISN'T the same crime and she could be tried again for it (hence, it would NOT be double jeopardy).

Yes, what Bruce Greenwood's character did was horrible, but the legal system looks at the criminal act and the intent, NOT who the victim is.

So the system screwed up and sent an innocent person away for a crime they did not commit? That is irrelavant, just as is the victim's identity. The system would say "yes, we made a mistake, but even so, you took it upon yourself to ACTUALLY commit a crime". She would go to prison because this ISN'T THE SAME CRIME and she CAN be tried for it.

She would be tried for the ACTUAL crime and circumstances of shooting him, just as she was tried for the crime and circumstances of murdering him on the boat with a knife.

All in all this is a fairly engaging movie, but in the end it would have made more sense if she just killed him and got away with no one finding out.

Tommy Lee Jones allowing her to kill him in the end because the law says it is "double jeopardy" is dumb, because it ISN'T the same crime, and she CAN be, and that makes him look stupid.

This movie has to have one of the best surprise endings I have ever seen! I just watched this last night, and I have to say, none of these modern movies today have anything on this classic twist of an ending.

The atmosphere of this movie is extremely tense, and at the end when you finally realize what has just happened... I was in shock. Sorry to the other reviewers on here, but how can you see the ending a mile away?I mean, we KNOW it is not the gardener, because it is to obvious, then at that point it is hard to know if it her husband or the girlfriend because no other characters were presented to suspect.

The ending is even more sinister because we never really know if her husband has been having an affair with sarah or not.

My only complaint is that during the ending sequence when the husband is fighting the killer, I could't see anything.

However, the violence at the end is unexpectedly brutal, even compared to some of the most violent horror films of today, so cover your eyes if you are of the faint of heart.

If you love psychological thrillers such as I do, including that of director's such as De palma, I highly recommend this film as a necessity to your collection.

don't even bother with this snot even worthy of a video release movie. Bruce Greenwood, you re such a good actor, and I suppose you had to start somewhere, but why THIS piece of trash. It is so BAD, that the over-the-top dialog and performances are not even funny.

Avoid this film like the plague, and DO NOT be fooled by Trimark's cool DVD box cover at your local Hollywood or Blockbuster!

As for the description on the back of the box, it is not what it seems. This grace woman just suddenly "bumps into" the boy and his mother in a parking garage...is that god's destiny?

This movie is such a joke. don't even bother trying to understand what the screenwriter's were thinking when they wrote this piece of trash.

I have been seeing the movie trailer for this movie for the past two months and finally saw it when it came out this past Friday. The trailer more or less gives you a complete description of what happens in the film, but that means absolutely nothing. When the film started, I was thinking to myself, "This is so programmed", and "I know what is going to happen next here", but that did not last very long at all. Yes, at first the film seems to take this very artificially programmed horror genre and do what it has done before, but then it does what you would have never expected it to do, take a completely different path than you could have ever imagined. The imagery, editing, score, and lighting techniques, not to mention the fact that we never really see what the killer looks like is utterly terrifying. At the end of any of the 3 scream films (if you were scared at all), when the audience finds out who the killer is, it is not as scary anymore. In our society we always want to know the "how" and "why" of everything. I guess you could take that and apply it to various individuals who are afraid of dying and turn to god. Regardless, not knowing has always been nerve racking. My best example; Jaws. If we could see the shark for the fake mechanical malfunctioning "Bruce", which it was, who cares?

When you watch a scene and say "I know what is going to happen next, he is going to come barreling out of the cornfield just like did earlier in the film a few times", and then something completely different happens is scary because you are not prepared for it. It is unpredictable. Isn't that what makes scary movies scary? Not knowing who it is or where they may be certainly is to me. After all, if we saw everything from rusty nail's point of view, who would be scared? At one point, the two brothers try to figure how far their CB radio's signal range may reach to another CB, indicating it may be just 5 miles or so. Is it? who knows. This is indication of a feeling that the psychopathic deviate may be a lot closer than you think, even if you are on a great big stretch of highway.

I live in a small college town and there is nothing to do here except either drink or watch movies. I watch movies. I have seen classics, horror, drama, foreign, and everything else in between. In conclusion, the plausibility and realistic point of view when you watch ANY film is always in question to a certain degree. If it wasn't, who would watch it? Would have U-571, Erin Brockovich or Patch Adams have made any money if they were even close to reality? Probably not. U-571 was not as action packed as in real life, that water has never been proven to cause cancer and Brockovich has numerous lawsuits pending against her as well as practicing law without a license, and many people have died under Patch Adam's care trying to use his methods. Maybe most people in a panic would go seek the police in a situation such as these kids, but how would any of us know until it happens?

The reality of a movie such as this or many others does not matter. If anyone looks too deep into a plot of any movie, sure, they are going to hate a film. Just as people try to compare a book to a movie. They are two different mediums so don't even try.

This movie is supposed to be entertainment, not an analysis of what we would do if it were us. It is easy to say, "Oh, I wouldn't ever be that dumb as to not do this or that", but seeing as most people don't recognize their own actions no one has any room to say what character of a film should or should not do. Everyone in this world is different and we all handle our lives and problems differently. Being critical towards an artistic and truly entertaining piece of work and ruining it for others just because you don't agree with the character's personality, motives, and coping strategies in a movie is not the way to go. Some people like some films that others do not. It all depends on the person.

This movie is not reality. No movie is, so no one should look so deep into any film pass judgement.

It is called entertainment, and that is what it is: entertaining.