Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) ***/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Saturday, May 18, 2013 at 10:41 PM


The 2009 reboot of classic Star Trek that was spear-headed by director JJ Abrams wasn’t a perfect film. Its story relied on a few too many coincidences to move itself along, it presented our heroes with a villain who was too easily defeated, and generally its writing was just too flimsy for it to be fully satisfying. The main conceit that it introduced, however, some alternate reality shenanigans that explained away how we could be once again seeing the early adventures of all the Original Series Star Trek characters, but played by new actors, was a particularly clever piece of work that allowed a fresh start that would please new fans and old alike. And the look of the film, all shiny and polished like the latest gadget to be released by Apple, made Star Trek appear to be more hip and modern than it had in ages. Plus, the principal cast, down to the actor, was a talented and charismatic bunch who managed to embody their characters without living in the shadows of the actors who originally played the roles. 

Abrams put all of the necessary pieces in place to restart a franchise that had been going strong for nearly half a century, and to build a foundation that might allow it to go on for at least another few decades. So, given that Star Trek Into Darkness is the second step in what Paramount surely hopes is going to be a lengthy next phase in their long-running property, how well does it build upon the foundation laid in order to move things forward? Not too well, unfortunately. But it does manage to be a fun action movie, regardless.

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Short Round: The Great Gatsby (2013) ***/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Monday, May 13, 2013 at 11:38 PM


Baz Luhrmann is the sort of director who makes big, loud, glittery movies full of singing, dancing, and lavish stage numbers, so seeing as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is something of a somber story about complex characters, doomed love, and poisoned ambition, you might think that he would be a terrible fit to adapt it for the big screen. One must remember that Gatsby is also a story full of big parties, empty artifice, and the excesses of the young and wealthy, however, so a Luhrmann take on the material ends up being not without its own merits.

Luhrmann is a filmmaker whose work has historically been stylized and visually enticing to the point of distraction and tackiness, and that has always led to him having both his regular detractors as well as his regular fans—but chances are you know which side of that debate you come down on already. If you’ve liked his films before, and especially if you enjoyed his adapting a piece of classic literature with Leonardo DiCaprio as his star when he made Romeo + Juliet, then likely you’ll enjoy this one. Gatsby is an engaging story, and the screenplay that Luhrmann and his collaborator Craig Pearce put together employs enough of Fitzgerald’s prose to take things to a more introspective place than most romantic dramas attempt to reach. The only reason one would have to avoid this one is if they’re the type of person who just can’t take Luhrmann’s exaggerated, hyper-real style. Which is understandable.

Still, there are a couple of problems unique to Gatsby that keep it from being quite as strong as Luhrmann’s most loved works, like R+J or Moulin Rouge!. For one thing, Luhrmann’s use of a modern soundtrack doesn’t work as well here as it did in something like R+J. It mixes a healthy dose of the jazzy sounds of the era along with modern rap music, and given that both the Roaring 20s and today’s culture share a glamorizing of excess, that experiment is understandable, but every time a rap song that we recognize from the radio starts up the effect here is just jarring. Sticking with the music of the period would have been fine. And though Leonardo Dicaprio, Carey Mulligan, and especially Joel Edgerton are all really good as the players who make up the story’s central love triangle, Tobey Maguire remains—as ever—a limp noodle as the everyman character whose eyes we experience the story through. There’s just rarely anything either engaging or authentic about him as a performer, and his work here doesn’t prove to be an exception to that rule. Plus, you know, Daisy Buchanan is still one of the most contemptible characters in all of literature. But that’s another one of those things you’re likely to be expecting going in.



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Short Round: Iron Man 3 (2013) ****/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On at 10:38 PM


By the time a third film in a series rolls around, you usually have a pretty good idea of what to expect from it. Iron Man 3 is a little bit different though, and that’s because it’s the first of these technology-driven superhero films that isn’t being directed by Jon Favreau. Instead, we’ve got action-genre veteran Shane Black at the helm, and he represents something of an x-factor for the franchise. Though he was once a fairly prominent screenwriter, Black is generally known for producing material that’s darker than most mainstream superhero fare, and the only film he’s ever directed is the considerably smaller scale Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Given his potential ill-fit for the material, what does a Shane Black-directed Iron Man movie end up looking like?

In the most general sort of way, it ends up looking a lot like the first two Iron Man movies. When we’re reintroduced to Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) he’s very much where we would expect him to be, living in his lavish mansion and dealing with the ramifications of his close encounter at the end of The Avengers. Favreau is still on board as his best friend/body guard, Gwyneth Paltrow is still on board as his love interest/business partner, and the content and tone of their daily lives is much unchanged, despite the fact that Stark is having trouble coping with having come face-to-face with the unpleasant truth that there are things in the universe that even he can’t handle. This time around the villains our heroes run afoul of are an insecurity-driven scientist who has developed a dangerous technology that allows organic material to repair itself played by Guy Pearce, and an infamy-seeking international terrorist played by Ben Kingsley. Both actors are strong in their roles, and both characters are largely in tune with the Iron Man villains we’ve gotten in the past.

Of course, given the fact that this is Black’s show, there are a few differences between this and the first two Iron Man movies. In general, there’s a slightly darker tone to both the humor and the pathos the film is injected with, which comes as a welcome spin on the familiar formula. One detriment to losing Favreau as a helmer is that the lyrical, sing-song nature of the banter shared by Downey’s Stark and Paltrow’s Pepper Potts is missing, and its absence is noticeable enough to change their dynamic. This slightly different feel combined with some clunky setup scenes at the beginning of the film at first makes it seem like Black might not be a good fit for the material, but happily Iron Man 3 is a film that gets better as it goes on. Which brings us to the one big advantage of having him in charge of this film instead of Favreau: finally we get a third act that doesn’t look weak compared to the rest of the film. The threats that Favreau introduced us to in his Iron Man movies were never as interesting as his protagonists, so his films generally fizzled out by the time you got to the big fight. Black gives us an action movie showdown big, loud, and dangerous enough to feel like a real climax, which ultimately allows you to leave the theater with a smile on your face.



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Mud (2013) ****/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 2:20 AM


With his first two films as a writer/director, 2007’s Shotgun Stories and 2011’s Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols quickly established himself as a filmmaker worth watching, and his lead actor, Michael Shannon, a talent worth keeping an eye on. After the depth, beauty, and artisan skill that those films displayed, pretty much all you would need to do is put Nichols' and Shannon’s names on a marquee and I would consume whatever’s being advertised. Unfortunately, Shannon only comes back in a bit part for this third film, Mud, but when you’ve got a slimy looking Matthew McConaughey complete with chipped up hillbilly teeth taking his place as the lead, it’s kind of hard to complain.

Okay, so that’s not entirely accurate. Actually, a young actor named Tye Sheridan is the lead here, and McConaughey is the otherworldly entity at the center of the film who kicks off the forward progression of the plot. The basic story is that Sheridan’s character, a 14-year-old named Ellis, is a coming of age boy who lives with his mother and father on a river in Arkansas. His parents are having serious marital problems, his own burgeoning interest in women is providing him with more trouble than he anticipated, and he’s started to wonder if this whole romance thing might not be more trouble than it’s worth. Enter Mud (McConaughey), a wanted man with a sob story about the wrongs that have been perpetrated on him by those in power, and the lost love who he’s trying to reconnect with. 

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Pain & Gain (2013) ***/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Sunday, April 28, 2013 at 4:57 PM


The latest movie from the king of schlocky blockbusters, Michael Bay, isn’t really a schlocky blockbuster at all. Actually, it’s the smallest movie he’s ever made—a crime film that mixes colorful characters and dark humor to come up with something that kind of resembles a mix between an Elmore Leonard novel and the Coen brothers’ Fargo—but, you know, not as smart as that. The story, as we’re reminded ad nauseam, is based on the true tale of a gang of down on their luck Miami bodybuilders who decide to kidnap one of the rich clients at their gym and force him to—under the influence of torture—sign over his life savings. You see, the man who owns the gym they work for is also a notary, and... ah, heck, it’s all pretty messy. Just know that these guys are complete idiots, so things don’t go well. Due to abject incompetence, a simple snatch and grab spirals downward into a twisted tale of murder and mayhem.

Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s screenplay, which was based on a series of magazine articles covering the real-life events by Pete Collins, is one of the big positives here. You may not expect it from a Michael Bay movie, but Pain & Gain is actually pretty clever, and will likely keep you chuckling all the way through. And seeing as the unbelievably crazy characters who are delivering all of this clever dialogue are brought to life by a cast that includes names like Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Ed Harris, Tony Shalhoub, Rob Corddry, and Rebel Wilson, it’s probably safe to say that the acting is the other big positive of the film. Pain & Gain has charm to spare.

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Oblivion (2013) ***/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On at 4:50 PM


Director Joseph Kosinski’s debut feature, 2010’s TRON: Legacy, was a dazzling marriage of sight and sound that made for a unique and immersive filmgoing experience—for about the first half hour of its runtime. Then you got used to the visual style and the Daft Punk soundtrack, and what you were left with was a hollow story with paper thin characters that failed to engage past the initial wow factor. His new film, Oblivion, is much the same. The film’s music, provided by M83, is booming and evocative, the design and effects work that bring the future version of Earth that Kosinski has conceptualized to life are interesting and impressive... and then you get to the story.

Oblivion is the kind of movie that’s hard to write about, because past the initial setup it mostly hangs its hat on plot twists and reveals, and one doesn’t want to give up any of its secrets. What is safe to say is that the film stars Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough as the crew of a maintenance station that’s one of the few things left behind on an Earth that has been decimated by a costly war with the alien “Scavs.” The plan is to move humanity off to one of the moons of Saturn or some such, and our protagonists’ job is to monitor and maintain the drones that are stripping the Earth of what’s left of the vital resources we need. They’ve been mind wiped, the only contact they have with anyone outside of each other is one off-planet supervisor (Melissa Leo) who they communicate with through a little monitor, and generally there’s the looming feeling that something shady is definitely going on. After a mysterious spaceship crashes in a nearby sector, a chain of events is set off that eventually brings some hard truths to light.

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To the Wonder (2013) ***/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Sunday, April 21, 2013 at 8:51 PM


Terrence Malick is a director whose style has become so distinct and defined that, in some circles, his filmmaking has become the butt of jokes. You know that his movies are going to be light on dialogue, that his characters are going to feel some sort of connection to nature, that most of the scenes are going to be shot during twilight, and that there will be lots of shots of wind blowing through tall grasses, no matter what. His latest film, To the Wonder, sticks to these conventions. There’s no surprise there. You know what you’re going to get, content-wise. What’s never exactly certain is how one is going to react to a Malick movie though. Despite the fact that they share themes and imagery, fans of his work can argue over which of his films are his lesser works and which are his masterpieces, and those who generally don’t respond to what he does still often have one or two that they like despite themselves. 

For me, a cinema fan who generally starts Malick’s movies dazzled by their visuals but eventually turned off completely by their lack of a traditional narrative and their ambiguity of meaning, I found To the Wonder to be one of the more palatable of his works—probably even my favorite since the days of Badlands and Days of Heaven—and that’s largely because of its simplicity. Malick’s wandering camera follows two narrative threads, that of a young couple (Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko) first falling in love in France and later moving to Oklahoma, where their relationship struggles, and that of a transplant priest (Javier Bardem) struggling with matters of faith in that same Oklahoma town. 

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The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) ****/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at 9:44 PM


If director Derek Cianfrance has any sort of specialty, his most recent film, Blue Valentine, hints that it’s probably putting characters in awkward situations, making the viewer squirm as they have to live in them as well, and then making the whole painful package go down smoothly by jazzing it up with pretty photography and music. It’s a formula that works, that makes a filmgoer feel like they’ve been through an experience and got their money’s worth, so his latest film, The Place Beyond the Pines, largely sticks to it. The focus here gets expanded beyond just a relationship gone bad though. This is a film that’s actually fairly epic in scope, in that it features quite a few characters and is told from several different perspectives.

Actually, that’s an important aspect of this film that needs to be made clear up front. The advertisements made it look like a caper flick where a motorcycle riding stuntman played by Ryan Gosling robs banks and a fresh faced cop played by Bradley Cooper tries to stop him, but that’s not quite what it ends up being, and some of the people in the theater I saw it with were audibly frustrated at the bait and switch. What we get is actually a film that’s split up into three very distinct acts that are loosely connected through a handful of shared characters. The first third of the film, that’s the one where Gosling is robbing banks to convince Eva Mendes’ character that he can support the baby they’ve had together. The second act is Cooper’s show, and mostly involves him dealing with a mistake he makes in the line of duty. The third act takes place 15 years in the future, and is probably the place where most people are going to find themselves thrown.

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Short Round: Evil Dead (2013) ***/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Saturday, April 6, 2013 at 2:40 AM


First time feature director Fede Alvarez’s remake of Sam Raimi’s highly regarded 1981 horror film The Evil Dead isn’t nearly the shameful atrocity that most modern remakes of 70s and 80s-era horror movies are. Not only does Alvarez stick close enough to the things that made the first Evil Dead beloved by fans of the genre, but he’s also a filmmaker with a capable enough eye for visual style that his take on the tale doesn’t end up looking like the glossy, homogenized version made to please a mainstream audience.

So, what’s different here and what’s the same? This is still a story about three girls and two guys going out to a cabin in the woods, discovering a flesh-bound book, and using it to release demonic forces that end up possessing and disemboweling them, but this time around the kids aren’t just going out there to have a good time, they’re going out there so that one of them (Jane Levy) can kick her heroine addiction. It’s an interesting twist that not only spares us the tedious and now-obligatory partying teens segment of a horror film, but that also allows Alvarez to layer in some interesting thematics that connect drug addiction with demonic possession. The film also makes the smart move of not establishing a clear hero the way Bruce Campbell’s Ash was in the original. Not only does this save some young actor from having his career sabotaged by trying and failing to fill Campbell’s gigantic shoes, but it also allows the plot to swerve in a couple of different directions and not feel like a complete retread.

Most importantly though, Evil Dead stays true to the original by keeping the focus on the gore and amping the blood and guts up to absurd levels. This is the bloodiest, most disgusting, most hard-R horror film that I can remember seeing in a theater in quite some time. By the end of the movie it looks like you’re inside of a blood tornado. And, best of all, this is the sort of gore that mixes in enough practical effects work that the tactile nature of the flesh ripping and the blood spurting effectively grosses you out. Too many modern films rely too much on CGI and end up creating video game gore that numbs rather than upsets. Alvarez’s Evil Dead may not have the spark of personality that Raimi’s The Evil Dead did, and it may be lacking Raimi’s innovations in crafting, but it polishes up the acting and the effects work enough that it makes up for its shortcomings and plays on par with the original. 

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Short Round: The Evil Dead (1981) ***/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On at 2:37 AM


It’s true that director Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead looks a little rote and dated to modern eyes, but that’s not necessarily the fault of the film. Mostly it’s due to the decades of imitators that have come after. If you’re trying to watch this low budget, blood and guts slasher for the first time today, it’s important to keep in mind how fresh and progressive Raimi’s kinetic camera work and near-montage style editing felt at the time, and that the group of kids going out to a cabin in the woods story had yet to become so much of an overdone trope. These days we complain about filmmakers moving their cameras too much or editing too quickly, or that every horror movie we watch seems to have the same premise, but a huge reason that’s the case is that a whole generation of filmmakers who grew up in the 80s entered into the industry wanting to be Sam Raimi.

The story here is really simple. A group of kids, three girls and two guys, are going out to a remote cabin, because in horror movies that’s the sort of thing young people do for fun, but once they explore the place they discover a flesh-bound book that they use to unleash demonic forces, and soon their night turns into one full of possessions and blood-lettings. Honestly, there isn’t more story than that. The rest of the film is just an excuse to show off gore and to experiment with what visuals could be accomplished on a shoestring budget. Back in the early 80s, thanks to films like Halloween and Friday the 13th, slasher movies were in full effect, but Evil Dead had to be the first (or was at least among the first) to really push the blood and guts to a place where it was being presented purposefully over the top, for reasons of self-aware ridiculousness. The results are largely that fun is had.

 The Evil Dead isn’t exactly the untouchable classic that fans who had their socks knocked off by it in the 80s would lead you to believe though. While the gore is lots of fun, and it is amazing to see how much they were able to pull off with limited resources, there are several sequences that look so dated they just don’t hold up. Translation: the Karo syrup blood and silicone flesh still look great, the stop-motion disintegrations of bodies not so much. Plus, the acting is amateur enough to venture into the territory of cheese. Sure, there’s a manic charisma to the film’s star, Bruce Campbell, a charisma that Raimi showcased to great success in Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, but here the people surrounding him are so bad and the focus put on his over the top reaction shots is so slight that the acting can’t be seen as anything but a detriment. Still, The Evil Dead remains an entertaining watch and an important part of horror movie history.

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GI Joe: Retaliation (2013) ***/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Monday, April 1, 2013 at 6:48 PM


When you’re about to watch a movie, it’s best to push all of your preconceived notions about it out of your head and view it open-mindedly as a singular viewing experience. Don’t judge it based on expectations that its source material or earlier films that it might be a sequel to have put in your head. Instead approach it on its own terms and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses in a vacuum. Or, at least, that’s the theory. But when you’re watching a movie like GI Joe: Retaliation, which is a sequel to a much-reviled adaptation of a beloved action figure/video game/cartoon property from the 80s, following those rules starts to seem a little silly. Making a live action GI Joe movie is kind of a crazy idea in the first place, but we all loved the Joe stuff from when we were kids enough that we were willing to turn our brains off in order to have fun with one for nostalgia’s sake anyway—so it was very off-putting that 2009’s GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra went and got everything wrong to the point where we couldn’t even enjoy it on a base level. Because of this, the most important thing to know about Retaliation is that it makes an effort to fix all of the mistakes of the first film.

Every GI Joe story is exactly the same—Cobra tries to take over the world and the Joes stop them—so we don’t really need to do any plot synopsis here. Instead, let’s focus our energies on what all it was that director Stephen Sommers’ The Rise of Cobra got wrong, and how Jon M. Chu’s new film fixes most of the issues. You might not think that bringing in the director of the Step Up sequels and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never would be the logical way to fix an action movie franchise, but damned if the strategy didn’t work out pretty well here anyway. There are a lot of criticisms that can and will be hailed at Chu’s GI Joe: Retaliation, but everyone should at least be willing to agree that he approached the material as a fan, or at least as a professional willing to do some research and honor what came before him.

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Short Round: Admission (2013) ***/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Sunday, March 31, 2013 at 10:13 PM


Tina Fey and Paul Rudd are such talented, likable people that having them bounce off of each other in a romantic comedy should be a no-brainer way to make a movie that people will like. But when you’re going into a movie that’s directed by Paul Weitz, like Admission is, you can’t be so sure about what you’re going to get. This is the guy who has recently brought us filth like Little Fockers and Being Flynn, after all. And, more than that, Admission’s advertisements made it look impossibly cutesy and formulaic. Isn’t this the sort of stuff that’s supposed to be beneath performers like Fey and Rudd? Shouldn’t people this smart be too self-conscious to grin and bear their way through contrived meet-cutes and childish flirting?

Yes, they should be, and the good news is Admission isn’t the terrible movie about adult people behaving like awkward teenagers it was advertised as, so we don’t have to worry ourselves with such concerns. The characters Fey and Rudd play are actually believably adult, and they’re dealing with much more important matters than whether or not the two of them will get together and do some smooching. Plus, the intellectual elitism of the Princeton setting allows the writers (Karen Croner adapting a Jean Hanff Korelitz novel) to go for more high-minded quips and references than you’d usually get from a comedy like this, so they play like a breath of fresh air. 

That’s not to say that the script doesn’t have its problems though. There’s a running gag where Fey’s ex-boyfriend and his new love interest always show up at the exact moment that she’s doing something embarrassing that feels too broad and is completely out of place in a movie that’s otherwise dealing with fairly dramatic issues, like the relationships between parents and children and assuming responsibility for your past mistakes. And though Fey and Rudd’s characters are well-defined and brought to life by engaging talents, the struggles they’re experiencing are just kind of dull. They’re good people acting as mentors to good kids, so there’s very little dramatic tension that’s built. There’s no big thing that all of the action is leading up to, and there certainly aren’t any big belly laughs coming from the comedy—just a handful of chuckles—so what you’re left with is something nice, and fairly capable, but ultimately forgettable. Which, of course, is an improvement for recent Weitz, so maybe next time around he’ll get his hands on a script that’s actually funny and finally break that slump he’s been in.

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Spring Breakers (2013) ****/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Sunday, March 24, 2013 at 8:40 PM


The generation of young people currently coming of age is the most frustrating and terrifying there’s ever been when it comes to lack of self-discipline and an inability to prioritize the things that are worthwhile over fleeting matters of pleasure-seeking. Or maybe they’re not. Maybe young people are just as confused and destructive as they’ve always been, and every new generation of old fogies thinks that what they’re seeing is worse than what everyone who came before them had to deal with. These are the sort of questions you’ll find yourself mulling over after coming out of Harmony Korine’s (Gummo, Trash Humpers) latest experiment in testing our cinematic endurance by presenting us with the worst in humanity and forcing us to stare directly in its eye, Spring Breakers.

Spring Breakers is unique in that it’s a challenging-to-watch film that belongs in urban art houses, but because of the teen idols (Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson, joined by Korine’s wife Rachel) who he has cast as his leads, Korine has brought it to the suburban multiplexes, where it’s bound to corrupt just as many young minds as it turns off. The story follows four young girls who attend a boring university in a boring town as they attempt to get away from their daily drudgery and go on spring break. They believe that their lives are ugly, soulless, and full of repetition, and that the answer to all of their problems lies in that faraway paradise of meth labs, 2 for $10 tourist t-shirts, and white people with corn rows—Florida. In Florida, anything is possible. Along with the infinite eventually comes trouble though, and once the girls find themselves incarcerated for their careless behavior, salvation comes calling in the form of an aspiring rapper and drug dealer named Alien (James Franco) who has a pocket full of bail money. The girls were looking to cut loose, they even robbed a restaurant to fund their vacation, but now that they find themselves wrapped up in the life of a guy like Alien, are they really prepared to go down the rabbit hole of sleaze that he’s beckoning them toward? Is the goal of staying on spring break forever one that will lead to their freedom and salvation, or is it a Godless pursuit that will lead them to ruin?

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Short Round: The Call (2013) **/*****

Posted by Nathan Adams | Categories: , | Posted On Monday, March 18, 2013 at 11:53 PM


The advertisements for The Call made it look like a really ham-fisted and terrible thriller. But, upon closer inspection, one realizes that this is a new film from director Brad Anderson, who’s made fairly impressive stuff like Session 9 and The Machinist in the past. Given his track record, maybe it’s not as bad as it seems? Well, yes and no. From the ads you know that the basic story here is that Halle Berry is playing a 911 operator who’s traumatized because a mistake she made on a call led to a prowler getting his hands on a young victim and killing her, and eventually her mistake comes back to haunt her when she gets another call from another teen girl (Abigail Breslin) who’s being abducted by the same man. The good news is that the story takes more strange turns and goes to more entertainingly twisted places than the boring-looking ad campaign let on. The bad news is, despite Anderson’s direction, the film is not without its fair share of problems. 

While Berry is a capable enough actress to anchor The Call as its lead, the supporting performances are plagued with overacting. Michael Eklund doesn’t have enough of a presence to be menacing as the killer, so he relies on going really big with his unhinged performance in order to look like a threat, and it gets a little silly. Breslin is just too hysterical as the main victim. She starts her abduction shrieking and panicking about everything, so when things get way crazier later on, and she’s still shrieking and hysterical, it’s all already become too much meaningless noise to resonate. Her character could have really engaged our sympathies if she would have showed some restraint early on and then let loose during the big moments... but alas. Acting isn’t the only place where the film falters either; the writing is really bad too. The dialogue is horrible and is awkwardly used to hammer home themes and push the plot forward with little regard to whether or not the characters are talking like real people, there are plot holes you could drive a truck through, and the film suffers from the protagonists-acting-stupid horror movie cliché worse than any other film I’ve seen in a long time.

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