Reviews

Here's a movie that just gets worse and worse, I'll just list things that will give you a rough idea.

1) It felt fake, the sets, the costumes, the camera angles, the direction, (some of the casting, some of the acting) it felt like a movie, and it was for these reasons that I just couldn't get into it. Go and watch a movie like 'The Proposition' and look at how hard they went into making the costumes by hand, and dirtying up the sets to the point of realism, with a fantastic soundtrack / camera operation / editing / cinematography / directing. Compare it to this and you'll realise just how stale this movie really is. The sets felt like they were made of clean plywood that were built last week, nothing felt aged, it was very disappointing.

2) Eric Cantona... As much as I loved the guy during his football career, he completely breaks the fourth wall, it's like this constant reminder that what you are watching is completely fake, and it doesn't allow you to really get into the movie once you lay eyes on him. It felt like someone behind the scenes was doing him some sort of favour and they had to sell out their standards to repay it.

3) Eva Green... She seemed like she was playing the role of a gothic witch of some sort, she felt completely out of place in the movie, and with the budget constraints that the movie constantly stunk of, it had me wondering the entire time, "why not just cast a woman who doesn't cost half a million - 1 million (or more) especially if she doesn't even have to speak a line throughout the entire film" my guess is you'd have a thousand pretty women that fit the profile, and would literally work for nothing for the opportunity to be in a film, and I reckon they all could have done a better job than Eva Green, who has facial expressions and characteristics that only feel at home in a kids film.

4) Nightime scenes shot in daylight and then edited to look dark. Urgh.

5) Soundtrack was a forgetful mess, all the music sounded like a song you've heard before and then changes into something else, it's asif they needed a jumping off point for every song in the movie, by using the beginning of better more successful songs from the past.

SPOILERS BELOW, SPOILERS BELOW.



6) What happened to the kid in the end, there was no clarification, it's asif the director/editor completely forgot to tie his character off. Not only that but the last interaction we see between him and 'Mads' is when he's telling him he can't come yet in the next scene, they're double teaming the enemy quarters, it's so stupid, watch that scene again and tell me I'm wrong.

Look, this films a cheap mess, the only reason it's got a 5/10 is because I'm very lenient, and also the stage coach scene, the offering up of town citizens scene and the prison break scene were all very enjoyable, also I'm a big fan of Mads Mikkelsen, it's a shame that all else surrounding the movie, bars Mads and them select scenes was a disaster.

This is a below par British horror film, that could have been a surprise hit.

I'm just gonna list the things I felt were wrong with the film...

Some of the actors were weak as hell, some over acting, some under acting. Made me feel asif there was a good chance that I myself could go out tomorrow and get an acting job, they were sometimes that bad.

The characters never really felt asif they clicked, I didn't understand the relationships between them so they didn't mix well, plus none of the characters were really drawn out well on their own so you just have to take the stereotype list out in order to understand them...

1) Weak white boy pyromaniac

2) Mouthy over the top mixed race guy

3) Pregnant girl

4) Sketty girl

5) Big stupid, soft at heart guy

6) Just left prison guy, getting himself in order

Literally nobody in this movie grows, or surpasses the stereotype that their characters are written as. This is something I'd be willing to forgive if the horror was there but they mess that up too.

Nothing in this movie is actually scary, except the reality check at the ending which did surprise me, they could have went down other roads, but they didn't. So I'm glad to see abit of originality where the ending was concerned.

Geoff Bell... Having Geoff Bell in the movie as the bad guy and keeping him hooded up for 90 percent of the movie barely speaking a line of dialogue is a sin on its own, if you've seen Geoff Bell in 'The Business' than I'm sure you know what he's capable of, unfortunately in this film it's asif he doesn't even exist.

Man what more is there to say, Imagine a scene where the elevator door opens, and theres the bad guy standing at the end of the hall way, drapped in darkness, running towards the lift at full speed as the kids are desperately hammering at the buttons, trying to get the doors to close, that's horror, there was nothing of the sort in this movie.

Also where was the comedy too? I like Adam Deacon but his mad ramblings were doing nothing for me here. I pictured a scene where he screams, and everyone runs to him like "what's wrong" and he's just screaming cause he's got a bit of dirt on his new trainers, stuff like that was not crafted for this movie.

Plus all of them supposedly used to live in the tower, and there wasn't even a scene crafted where one of them is in a flat that they grew up in, maybe it would have been a good scene to include a flashback, of them as children, to break up the movie a bit, maybe it would have involved the main guy and Adam Deacons character making friends again and teaming together, seeing as they were mortal enemies with no sign of ever being friends throughout the whole movie.

Where was the drug effects throughout the film, they disappeared as soon as the drugs went, also, nobody's phone worked when the radio signal was up (stupid anyway) but nobody's phone worked after it was broke either, it's the only tower in London that can't carry a damn phone signal, why couldn't they at least all have left their phones on the table and when they returned to the room, they was all gone, to explain for the fact that they can't call out for help, maybe a scene where they had to retrieve a phone from the dead 554 guy could have been added.

Urgh I could go on and on and on, I'm gonna have to stop, could have been a classic 8/10 movie, ended up in the trash pile.

3/10 (I'm being generous)

I'm not gonna play around, I'll just cut straight to the points.

Things I didn't like:

Pennywise (the clown) sounded very similar to Scooby Doo, imagine Scooby Doo, with a slightly menacing voice and you pretty much got Pennywise voice down. Seriously I didn't know whether to laugh or what whenever he spoke, don't get me wrong he was scary sometimes but most of the time I was laughing at how much he sounded like Scooby Doo or struggling to hear exactly what he was saying (on one part he even sounded like Daniel Day Lewis in 'There Will Be Blood')

Some terrible acting from the kid that took the pills in particular, mixed with every character not being likable, except the fat kid, neither none of the kids being relatable, neither much bonding or growth between characters either, I don't think the black kid in the film even got a chance to speak did he? For real characters were weak as hell.

The violence towards children & amongst the children was absurd & I'm not even a religious person. I've played violent games like Manhunt, GTA and watched movies like Natural Born Killers, all my life, so you could say I'm very desensitised to this stuff. Although even I thought the situations the kids found themselves to be in were just borderline satanic and added nothing to any kind of horror, art or creative elements, just pure shock value. It just seems asif many scenes were made to set the bar even higher of what things can be shown in films these days. You know typically in a movie, if it's like a home invasion scene for example they'll show a man shot, even a woman shot. But when it comes to the child, you just hear the sound of the gunshot and maybe see a small body bag later on. This film does not do that. Within minutes we see a child with his arm cut off, and later, we see the same kid shot point blank in the head with a cattle gun. By kid you might be thinking like some 14 year old who looks like he can pass for 17... Nooo no, i'm talking about a 5 year old here, 6 at the most. Is this the kind of entertainment you wanna see? Really? I thought people were overly desensitised when films like Hostel and Saw came out, I shudder to imagine the kind of things people will class as normal in 10 years from now. (Shocked the rating was a 15 to be honest) The fact other people haven't mentioned this and shot it down for this has annoyed me too, it's disgusting.

Another message the film seemed to convey throughout was sex and profanity amongst those viewed as innocent. It was asif Hollywood's top paedophiles, Charlie Sheen, Roman Polanski, Victor Salva and the rest of the gang all got together and decided to make their dream film, a film where kids run around in their pants, shout obscenities every 5 seconds, & make sexual references every 10 seconds. And we're supposed to believe this is set in the 80's? Go watch an 80's film, people didn't speak this bad back then, it's like they wrote a script for 2017 kids, but their environment just looks 80'sish. I think they really failed to capture the spirit of the 80's with the script. I know 18 year old, 20 year old, older, younger with more restraint than these kids, it felt odd throughout the entire film with just how much bad language was said.

Why was it that eveeeeery parent was a big bad wolf, I'm not talking 1 or 2 I'm talking eveeeeery single one in the film. Actually no, it was every adult now that I think back, from a sexual abusing dad, to the emotional abusing dad, to the black kids overly harsh guardian, to the main kids dad who we see in one scene talking smmmmack to his kid (and his mom who doesn't exist) to the kid who takes pills who's mom had this evil way about her, even the pharmacist was a full blown paedophile, who the young girl just knew would fall for her young charm, like am I the only one seeing this!!!! I saw it with my aunt, and we both saw it the same way. There was a very menacing undertone throughout this film that either... (A. People are too desensitised to see it. Or (B. People are seeing it but nobody is talking about it.

I felt almost asif the film is a part of an agenda to desensitise people to paedophilia, something which, would not surprise me with all the things I've heard from Hollywood.

All in all I gotta say, horror wise it was better that most the crap that comes out these days, it's got plenty of scares that come at a really balanced rate, it's not just clowns either, you got zombies, abstract things, ghosts, all sorts, so as far as that goes it gets a good mark. The overuse of CGI (which was expected for the director of the unbelievably terrible Mama) really let it down though in my opinion, I can't seem to find things that I can see too be computer generated as scary. To be honest I could go on and on about this film, the ending was terrible, some parts didn't even make sense. I'm baffled as to how it's almost made IMDb's top 250 films of all time to be fair. I gave it a 6/10 and with its disturbing undertones and it's debauchery, it's lucky to have even got that, maybe if the films wasn't so obviously a product of the ages we live in and it could have produced scares withing sinking to sick levels, I could have rated it higher. But nope, it's a low 6 for me.

I've seen this movie about 3 times now, and I'll start off by saying I'm a huge Sci-fi fan, as is my aunt, it's probably our favourite genre. Anyway she had never seen this film before so we both sat down and watched it together; afterwards she said exactly what I expected her to say "how is that, one of the best films of all time?"

I truly can't believe how disappointing it actually is, maybe if it wasn't praised so much, therefore living up to an expectation, we could have enjoyed it more? I don't know.

Harrison Ford was the most boring, uninteresting character I have ever laid my eyes on, there was nothing about him that grabbed me ever. He was just so stiff and generic, one of the dullest performances I've ever seen, and not only that, he basically rapes the replicant Rachael, that was actually very uncomfortable to watch, and made me hate him when I saw how he treated her, basically telling her what to feel, absolutely sick.

Also was Deckard a replicant? I saw the final cut version each time I viewed the movie and it's never really felt to be explained, it's dropped in there slightly but not really touched on? Or was my attention drifting from boredom, I don't know.

I've gotta say, I loved the movie Brazil, The Thing, Matrix, Dark City, 1984, and I felt like this was a bit of a mixture of movies like that, but one with a really lack of story, a lack of a moral message, no social commentary, I just couldn't find anything in it, I'm baffled as to how it's so praised.

I will say the soundtrack was sometimes beautiful, the sets were done very well and are really immersive (especially when you take age into account) and it was certainly different from any other movie of it's sort. Also Ruther Hauer provided a legendary performance, it's a real shame how little of him is actually in the film, same goes for Daryl Hannah and the guy that made the little dummy things. It's for the reasons above I gave it a 6/10 (61/100).

All in all, All the actors and actresses that played replicants, we're superb, especially Rutger. Great sets, creative with some good music, I just found Harrison Ford to be a bore, the story was boring, the script was mostly boring, and I found very little deepness inside the film, just a letdown really...