To start this review, I forgot half of the characters' names by the end of this film due to a lack of attachment to any of them, but I digress about that. I would say the main problem with this film is the lack of personality from any of the characters. Marcus is the typical geeky, nerd kid with some 13 year old tumblr girl platitudes (which let me just say, he's no "tech geek". He couldn't even decrypt an IPhone, but is considered as such. But now I'm just being petty, so I won't remain on that topic). He has this dialogue that makes him seem younger than he actually is. Holly has an abusive father, which definitely is a cop out because it is only briefly mentioned and instead of going to the police when she had the chance, she remains silent but vocally defiant against her father. This storyline is not delved into any deeper than face value providing as a tension starter in some scenes. Grant, who I could have sworn was named Garret, is completely irrelevant to this friend group. He goes to a fancy high school and has a crush on Holly. His only personality trait is as Holly calls him "selfish". Personally though, I think his only trait is being the rich friend who never quite knows what's happening. Together, the three friends' storyline is beyond boring, and I had to fight the urge to skip through their dialogue scenes, which are very shallow and do not work to provide insight to their characters. I don't have a problem with filler, fun dialogue, but when that is the only thing being written, it slowly becomes less amusing. Also, Grant is the only one to look and act like a high school freshman. Holly and Marcus act and speak how I would have in 6th grade. Then we have this corrupt cop, Steven who had this "mysterious" past, which, if you've seen any cop shows, you can probably guess what it is (hint: Elliot Stabler has probably done this on several occasions). I was sure he was going to be caught up in the drug cartel of this town, which would have made him a bit more interesting. It would have also explained why he didn't tell the Captain that he took that tip from Marcus. Moving on to Clay, the typical bully. Not much to say about him. He just pops in to stir up trouble. I would like to make a point in saying throughout the entire film, he does nothing but bully the friends and blackmail a cop, yet suddenly, at the end of the film, his character does this complete 180, which I did not find redeeming, but rather awkward and out of place. Finally, we are given a character who at least has a little personality, Katherine, but in this film, that doesn't mean much. Katherine reveals something about her past, which can only be described as the most interesting thing in this movie though again, it seems to be placed at a rather odd time in the film. Lastly, we have Cassie, who is the missing girl. The movie had focused so much on the three friends that they barely had anytime to create a personality for this girl. Now the problem becomes, I don't care about this girl at all possibly due to the fact that she is portrayed as being this perfect person. I would have liked to have seen a flaw or at least some kind of secret revealed about her at the end, just to humanize her. This leads to my nonchalantness when we do discover she was dead, which let me point out, was very rushed. She was missing for maybe 15 minutes out of the movie, she turns up dead, they interrogated one suspect, and no other players/suspects are introduced. A joke of a "thriller". I guessed who it was as soon as they were introduced. In fact, I figured out who it was 30 minutes into the movie and why, but I was really hoping there would be a twist. Nope. How can you write a "murder mystery" type of storyline, but not introduce any serious suspects or provoke the audience to think "Could it be them?" ? On top of all of this, the ending was so unbelievable + rushed, that I cannot accurately describe what happened. The final interaction between Katherine and Steven (almost called him Kurt) makes little sense as we have already discovered that the court documents are sealed, and the PD covered it up. If she really wanted him to transfer, she would have put in a request when the incident first happened. Finally, the final interaction between the friends as they look up into space proved just how much Cassie's death didn't matter, but rather the show down with the drug dealers was the main "moment" though again, this really wasn't character development. Nothing seemed to have changed by the end of the movie except the main character's relationship status. The ending sealed this movie as one of the worst I've seen. Between the shallow dialogue, shallow characterization, shallow "mysteries", unrelatable characters, lack of a solid storyline, a hundred mini storylines, and the straightforwardness, this movie disappointed and infuriated me beyond belief. I actually forgot someone had been murdered or what the "storyline" of this movie even was! Another problem I had with this movie was when Katherine said how "Bad things keep happening in this town," but nothing is really shown or talked about besides her past, the kid killed in the beginning, or Cassie's murder. And to further that point, how was this drug cartel not on the police's radar? I mean, the guys weren't exactly James Bond. They were still hanging around town with no protective measures. And if you are going to introduce a drug cartel storyline, I better see more of the drug dealers, so I know what the stakes are that Clay along with the three friends are put at. The drug dealers much like Cassie's death were laughable. I really wanted this to be good, so it would show that independent writers/directors can make just as good of movies as the big shots, but this was not it.
Sidenote: The acting was good though. No fault to anyone there. It would have been a powerful cast if the writing would have been more powerful and more thought out.
Sidenote: The acting was good though. No fault to anyone there. It would have been a powerful cast if the writing would have been more powerful and more thought out.