This movie had everything it needed to be a great horror movie. Isolation, loneliness, paranoia, psychosis, an unknown terror, a bleak and unforgiving environment; and yet, it falls short, particularly in the second half of the film.
The director does a wonderful job setting the tone and mood at the outset of the film. We get to meet each of the characters and catch at least a small glimpse into each of their lives. The camera work is very well done in the first half of the movie and helps to establish the isolation of the scene. I particularly liked the dinner table conversations, the "around the compound" outsiders view of the private room of each character, and the camera work that involved each character individually.
The story starts to build after and during our foray's into the individual lives of each character. Something is happening at this forlorn outpost, and it effects everyone involved. It starts with the one character out of all that did not want to be there in the first place. To me, the pinnacle of the film occurred after this same character returns to the outpost after wandering aimlessly throughout the outer waste, neglecting both food and water upon his return. The scene of the protagonist speaking to this "paranoid" character in his room afterwords is very well done with eerie first-person views of the characters. However, after this scene, things go rapidly down hill. (The crows in the later half of the movie are a nice touch though.)
Many of the characters go off the deep-end too quickly. In other words, there is no sign of paranoia or psychosis until the time that they totally lose it. As was mentioned in another review, the CGI "moose" almost single-handedly ruined this movie for me. Throughout the second half of the film, I couldn't help feeling I had seen much of this before, for example: Bloody noses like in "The Ring", the use of a Night-Vision camera and subsequent close up shot of the subject as in "The Blair Witch Project" and finally the ending that might as well have been a direct clipping from the first "Resident Evil" film.
All in all, I really wanted to like this film, and their were some definite good parts. But overall, I couldn't help feeling disappointed by it. This may have been that the potential for a great movie was so strong at the outset, and totally fell by the wayside during the last half.
The director does a wonderful job setting the tone and mood at the outset of the film. We get to meet each of the characters and catch at least a small glimpse into each of their lives. The camera work is very well done in the first half of the movie and helps to establish the isolation of the scene. I particularly liked the dinner table conversations, the "around the compound" outsiders view of the private room of each character, and the camera work that involved each character individually.
The story starts to build after and during our foray's into the individual lives of each character. Something is happening at this forlorn outpost, and it effects everyone involved. It starts with the one character out of all that did not want to be there in the first place. To me, the pinnacle of the film occurred after this same character returns to the outpost after wandering aimlessly throughout the outer waste, neglecting both food and water upon his return. The scene of the protagonist speaking to this "paranoid" character in his room afterwords is very well done with eerie first-person views of the characters. However, after this scene, things go rapidly down hill. (The crows in the later half of the movie are a nice touch though.)
Many of the characters go off the deep-end too quickly. In other words, there is no sign of paranoia or psychosis until the time that they totally lose it. As was mentioned in another review, the CGI "moose" almost single-handedly ruined this movie for me. Throughout the second half of the film, I couldn't help feeling I had seen much of this before, for example: Bloody noses like in "The Ring", the use of a Night-Vision camera and subsequent close up shot of the subject as in "The Blair Witch Project" and finally the ending that might as well have been a direct clipping from the first "Resident Evil" film.
All in all, I really wanted to like this film, and their were some definite good parts. But overall, I couldn't help feeling disappointed by it. This may have been that the potential for a great movie was so strong at the outset, and totally fell by the wayside during the last half.