Reviews

I've loved each of the prior Arcadia installments and was eagerly awaiting this movie as the intended finale. Sadly I was let down on just about every level.

The film rushes through plot points, never giving any specific moment it's due. Important characters die without much ado or weight to their sacrifices. Worst of all, though, is that the films conclusion feels like it invalidates every moment that came before it by making it all irrelevant.

This film was ill conceived from the get go, and feels like a mandate from Dreamworks to wrap things up as quickly as possible. The franchise deserved better than this half hearted cap stone.

I'm sorry. I know I'm in some sort of minority about this movie, but frankly I think it was terrible.

The first part of the movie was pretty poorly written and the acting wasn't terribly much better. Far too much of this movie was told to us instead of shown, which is a surefire way to make you not care about characters that the finale requires you to care about. If a character has to tell you that they're broken, instead of you seeing it revealed through their own actions and the revelation of those weaknesses... even the revelation of their awareness of those weaknesses, then you haven't made me feel for the characters inherent sadness.

"I'll pretty much do anything as long as you tell me you love me," should be a heart breaking revelation... but it wasn't earned one bit. It just fell flat and made me say "okay, so she's broken.... what a stereotype".

Frankly I think making this a found footage film was a mistake. While I'm sure it was done to try to bump the realism factor, the genre itself is so limiting that it forces awkward scenes and also some very strange moments like Megan and Amy doing some sort of video chat on their phones when they're literally on their way to each other (apparently a very short distance). It also forces one to question who in the film was recording all of these Skype sessions and why were they recording them?

Moving beyond that, crucial points in the film are also gaping plot holes. When the Amy character finally goes to the police about Megan's possible kidnapper (after strangely not telling them about him earlier, you know, before the odds of her being alive shrink dramatically) they plaster her name and face all over the news. I'm sorry, but that sort of thing does not happen. Additionally, if all of Megan's Skype sessions were recorded, wouldn't the police know about Josh before hand? Also, if Josh is going around posting photos of Megan on message boards, then there's obviously a way to track him. Unless we're expected to believe that Josh is not only a kidnapper, rapist and murderer, but also a computer whiz.

None of it adds up, but it's all crucial to the plot.

Finally, let's talk about those last 22 minutes.

I'm sorry, but if you're deeply disturbed by those last 22 minutes, you have missed A LOT of films in the last 40 or so years. The last 22 minutes felt way too sanitized, likely because of the characters ages, when held up against things like the original Last House on the Left or even the remake of The Hills Have Eyes (watching the attack scenes in those films, I felt I needed a shower afterward just to feel clean. Last House particularly felt so much like a snuff film when I first saw it, it took a long time for me to watch it again). She's kept prisoner, raped and then stuffed in a barrel with, yeah you saw it coming a mile away, her dead friend. Then we sit through a man digging a whole for 10 minutes while Amy, clearly not seeing where this is going, tries to talk her way out of the barrel.

This all leads to a big problem with the climax- Amy never really seems to take her situation seriously. She never does anything but scream at Josh. She seems to think that "if you let me go I won't tell anyone" will be taken seriously. To top it off, even during the brief moments in these last 22 minutes when she's not chained up, Amy makes absolutely no attempts to escape. At one point there is clearly a jagged piece of metal a few inches from her head, and she never goes for it... she just keeps crying for help.

Seriously?

I'm sorry, but this film just doesn't work. It expects you to find it's subject matter shocking and disturbing because it's made its characters 14 years old (though the actress who played Megan looked far older then 14). This fails because unless you sell me on what I'm watching, just telling me that this person is a specific age will not make me engaged during their problems later in the film. It doesn't engage a willing suspension of disbelief. Make me care up front, or when I need to care... it'll be too late.

I get what the filmmakers were going for, and I applaud the effort. I think that if they hadn't tried to cash in on the "found footage" boom that's been going on, they may have made a much more engaging and effective film. A film that makes you care, instead of expecting you to care because adult actors are playing characters of a certain age.

So, I've been seeing the ads for this film for a while now, and it always looked like a really interesting concept. Even looking at IMDb's summary of the film sells it as a sort of science fiction film.

Nothing you see in the ads or read in the summaries has anything to do with the actual film.

While the footage from the ads featuring strange creatures that seem to embody brands and feed off the desires of the populous for the brand is indeed in the film, it takes more than half the film to get to that point. The first half of the film shows the protagonist as marketing executive who gets caught as a pawn in a scheme to make fast food brands more popular. Throughout this section of the film, there is no indication that you'll ever see any of the footage that has been presented in the ads.

After the halfway point, the story radically shifts gears and we finally start to see the images that sold us on the film. However, it must be made clear that this isn't the story, and in fact the climax seems very strange compared to the first half of the film. Each brand has it's own weird monster, which really might be nothing more than the protagonist hallucinating (it's never really made clear and no one else ever sees or acknowledges these monsters), and eventually the monsters fight. However, again, there's no indication that any of it's really going on save in the protagonists head.

Now, that said, the movie itself is pretty interesting. I think that if they had sold it as what it really is, it might attract the right audience for it. As it is, the movie is being marketed solely around it's climax which has a drastic tone and premise shift from the rest of the film. Yes, there is a narrator who seems to be the filmmakers short cut, but it doesn't really add much to the film and every now and again seems inappropriate. The film felt long, but that may be because a part of you is waiting for the movie you expected to see to start.

Over all, this may be more of a Netflix rental for most people. It's not the movie it wants you to think it is, and it's not the movie you expect it to be. However, if you can get past the downright dishonest marketing, the movie isn't half bad. It has a lot of flaws, and the end of the film feels like it needed some sort of biting twist that was hinted at, but never fully arrived.

I don't regret seeing it, but I wish I'd waited until I could pay less to see it.

This is the second movie I have seen in a row that had potential.

This is also the second movie I have seen in a row that despite decent work by the actors and director could not over come a script that had no focus and could have been cut down by at least 15 pages.

Like another other movie I have seen recently (Hollywood Hommocide), this movie started off promisingly. Though I'm not a big fan of Eric Bana's work in this film, the entire cast seemed reasonably comfortable and the story pushed forward as a reasonable rate, then Nic Nolte comes into the mix.

Don't get me wrong, I think Nolte put forth a comendable performance (though it was easily over shadowed by Sam Elliot), but his character was almost completely unnecessary. David Banner served no purpose in this film after the opening credits initial set up. Each time the movie brought him into the mix, the plot seemed to simply stall until his character had left and the other elements of the film were allowed to push onward.

This dilemma grows worse as the film goes on. There seems to be no comprehensible reason for Nolte to send his mutated dogs after Betty. And even less of a reason for Nolte to suddenly gain the power to absorb the properties of whatever he touches. Why, when you have gone through an hour and twenty minutes of a film without giving the Hulk a super villain, would it be necessary to throw one into the mix in the last act?

Having done this, the writers then feel the need to extend the movie well past its most climatic point just so that the Hulk can now do in his, now supervillain, father. Why?

Why, why why?

Do yourself a favor. If you haven't seen this movie... DON'T. I feel like I wasted 2 hours and 8 dollars on this piece of garbage. If you want to see a movie that has action or explosions, find a theater still showing Matrix Reloaded, or wait for T3. Either way, avoid this one.