Reviews

This film was ruined, as far as I can see, by the twist at the end, and by the directing in most parts. Until the twist was revealed, I'd assumed that Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond were simply giving the worst performances of their careers. As it happens, they were doing a reasonable job, but to no avail.

The dialogue was utterly abysmal. I think Lynch is trying to create an atmosphere of complete discomfort for the audience by employing this 'trick', but instead it only serves to hamper any character development. Rather than create a creepy-but-socially-adaptable character in Sam Hallaway, Pullman and Lynch have turned him into someone who appears to be suffering from the after-effects of a lobotomy. He also spends the entire film looking like he has a cricked neck, which looked utterly stupid.

Essentially it's a good premise for a film, and it was occasionally tense and gripping. However, there's something missing, and I felt that whatever it was turned what could have been a great thriller into something slightly farcical.

Given that a lot of horror films are based on the premise that one or more of the central characters does something stupid at some stage during the proceedings, the girls in this film would be collecting Gold, Silver and Bronze at a Darwin Awards Olympic ceremony. A mentally disabled baboon would have made better choices than they did, and would have screamed a lot less while doing so.

If you like films with a grainy picture, deliberately amateur camera-work (my 92 year-old grandmother wields a camcorder with better results), extremely poor sound and no discernible plot/narrative, then this is your ideal film. Also note that you should enjoy the following: women screaming for no reason, women whining for no reason. In fact reason and logic don't appear much in this film. For example: "we have to find Stephanie" "yeah I can't believe I was speaking to her, like, last night" "she called you last night?" "yeah, she wanted to talk about some date she got asked one" "WHAT? How come she didn't tell me"? As in, our friend is being chased by a serial killer with a shotgun and an array of grisly weapons but I have a problem with the fact that she didn't tell me she was going on a date.

Okay, so the budget is low. That doesn't mean you have to make it look like it cost half the budget. The 'score' is interesting since all - with the exception of one - tracks have been written and performed by the writers/directors of the film itself. In fact it would appear that the entire budget has been blown on sampling a track by The Duskfall, a death metal band from Sweden.

The most worrying thing of all in the entire film is the ending which leaves us with the possibility for a sequel.