Reviews

There were plenty of visuals and lighting that made this film pretty to look at, but so much else about it was wrong, discordant, and not appealing.

First off, it's not really a story meant to entertain, but a metaphor/allegory/arthouse (take your pick) for the journey within. So skip this if your looking an adventure to an alternate world.

On the other hand, if you want something artsy that addresses mental health, this might be up your alley.

At no time did I find the soundtrack pleasant. It was always a little discordant, a little annoying, and I'm sure that was on purpose. But it made me very edgy and unhappy, and wishing it would hurry up and get to a new track.

Many scenes dragged on with characters doing weird things just to be weird. It reminded me of someone wanting to be surreal but never quite getting there or understanding it. Rather clunky, but perhaps with some practice they'll improve.

I did not care for the attempts to mislead by pretending there WAS something metaphysical/supernatural happening. Other than being a red herring, I think it's slightly disrespectful to those who believe in the consciousness and higher realms.

All Margaret's encounters with the demons were super hamfisted attempts to be subtle, but they just dragged on harder and longer and got worse as the movie progressed. The attempt to hide the message of the encounter was there, but it was as amateur as the surrealism.

Also, was I supposed to like any of the characters? And if Mom and Dad are at such odds with each other, why are they still together after 20 years? Seems like the child's death would have finished driving them apart.

Lastly, how much guilt would a 4-year-old even imprint upon themselves that they're still a wreck 20 years later? I had some traumas and tragedies around that age frame, and it didn't imprint to that level. Now, if all her angst were spawned from feeling like her parents blamed her and they had treated her like crap, I would have felt a lot better about her catharsis. As is, it felt unearned and unwarranted.

Waste of time for anyone other than arthouse lovers who want to feel superior.

There are some things to be said about loss and obsession and how we bury ourselves to avoid pain/discomfort...but there are only a few moments of that, and lots of long drawn-out nothingness. There are plenty of beautiful, dialogue-free scenes, but by the end of the movie, I suspected they were just to pad the run time and give a facade of greater meaning.

By the end, I felt completely let down by a rather shallow film.

It's not one of those weird arthouse movies that's trying to be edgy or anything, but I felt like it was attempting to use artistry in place of a story, and that someone confused slice-of-life with depressing and nihilistic.

Definitely not for someone looking for an actual story or a thriller, and definitely not any kind of action or suspense. I am actually weary after getting through 90 minutes and not having a payoff.

Mostly I'm left with this aching question of why a rare foods vendor had a truffle pig stolen. That makes the 'conclusion' even more perplexing and dissatisfying. The inciting event for the entire movie is the pig theft, but there was no reason for the pig to be stolen in the first place. And if that had no point, what was the point of anything else?

I liked the cast. There was something very relatable about the dialogue, but that's probably the nerd in me. Enjoyable and quirky.

However, it did kinda drag, and some jokes lingered too long to really be funny. I also felt like there was a line or two missing about how the girls were vampires but not already immortal.

I do consider it watchable, and though I'll probably never watch it again, I AM looking forward to the sequel. So I hope they make it.

This movie (a generous description) is bad on so many levels, and I can't even give it the caveat of "at least they were trying to tell their own story". Because they weren't. It slowly becomes more obvious that they wanted to make a bigger, meaner Dog Soldiers, and I'm fairly certain the ' twist reveal' is just a slightly reworded version of the reveal in that movie.

The acting is slightly below average. About what I expect from low budget films. The characters are quite unbelievable, and they're so poorly written. I mean, who is told they have to bring two trusted soldiers with them into the wilderness to hunt a creature and chooses to bring the 'soldier' who needs crutches to walk around? It's not like it was some hacking mission and she was the only computer expert you could get.

The script isn't doing the actors any favors with lines like "It won't be like last time" and "I don't blame you for what happened that last time", yet we never know what happened on that last mission that would cause these three women to have such PTSD and trust issues. Also, I don't think it's common for military types to call each other by first names like they're at a family gathering.

The plot itself is thin, and nothing supports it at all. Just lots of egregious errors that reveal how amateur everyone was. And, again, there isn't even the caveat of them having a story but no budget. Problems like:

-These three soldiers are supposed to go capture a reported creature, yet they bring no hunting or trapping supplies with them. Were they just going to ask the creature to politely buckle up in the back of their SUV? Do any of them have experience tracking an animal in the wild? Shouldn't they have sat phones and surveillance equipment and other things for a hunting expedition?

-There's a dragon 'nest', which was just a prop egg in the middle of a clump of grass near a rock. No one on the production even bothered to make a little ring of rocks or sticks to indicate it was a nest. And from the point of view of someone who knows stuff about animals, it was one of the worst places to build a nest to begin with.

-The scientist in charge says he can't tell if this is an insect, reptile, or bird egg - but whomever was in charge of props couldn't pretend to make it look like anything other than a giant chicken egg.

-Said egg eventually hatches and the baby gets out, but then nothing ever comes of there being a baby dragon. It's not like the adult stops attacking because they had their baby back, nor does the baby get a surprise kill because no one expected it to be hiding in the house with them.

-After one brief dragon attack, the head scientist suddenly knows all about what kind of hunters these dragons are, and what they are and aren't capable. Watching one woman get pounced on does not convey superior intelligence or tactics.

-For some reason there are B-plots about radiation (though two of the characters carry the K1 pills in a little baggie like they're tabs of molly) and the dragons being psychic. Neither seem to really influence anything, and neither get resolved. Especially the psychic noise from the dragons. What could have been an interesting tool for the team to use is pointless and just gives an excuse for one of the characters to scream and moan while everyone else thinks she's crazy.

I'm not taking any stars away for the bad computer graphics (they looked like something from late Playstation 1 graphics, maybe early PS2) because I understand that low-budget means you work with what you have. However, I AM taking away stars because there's only one creature that ever actually looks like a dragon. The character design was outrageously bad, and no one would look at the bipedal vulture-scorpion-thing and think to themselves "That's a dragon!" It looked more like a gargoyle in size and shape, and it didn't look like it could grow up to become the dragon that is finally shown at the end.

Pass on this. Hard. It doesn't have a long runtime, but it drags on forever. The only thing memorable is how much I hated myself for enduring it.