I sat down to watch this movie only half an hour after I finished FF through The Bucket List, so, along with being pleasantly surprised by the sheer agility cascading from every pore of the producers, or whoever made the trailer, I was expecting what IT(yes, the trailer) had promised me - that is, gore competing with the likes of Saw and Hostel, those being the benchmarks, I presume, and a compelling storyline with a twist, since, after all, it's made by Europeans. Now, after watching the flick, when trying to compare this grotesque piece of film making, that, without the shadow of a doubt, I could probably replicate using my cell phone and shooting all the scenes in the bathroom and closet, to the mentioned above almost cult bits, and as a matter of fact, to any movie from here back to 1952, Frontier(s) is nothing but a tragic display of letting foreign people take hold of a camera every once in a while. Then I started thinking, how can the movie be so unpleasant to watch, so I broke the whole thing down and got the following gaps in the picture. Well, no so much gaps, as huge, unlit holes in the middle of a freeway, the kind of holes you would avoid as you show nothing but hate against towing your car some 40 kilometers back to get it fixed.
First of all, the director, Xavier Gens, better known for directing Hit-man, which, although a painful movie to watch, was at least well directed, disappoints like whole grain bread. Don't get me wrong, the directing bit is somewhat flawless, but, in lack of a better word, shallow. As shallow as French actors actually trying to perform in front of a camera. It's the same with Mountain Dew, the drink tastes good, but after a while you start thinking what's point is? The issue here is not so much the directing, but the writing, which Mr. Gens is also credit for. The movie is so mind numbingly stupid, it makes fatal head injuries seem like playing World of Warcraft. Some young, passionate, probably mentally incompetent thieves from Paris flee and end up in a hostel, where, get this, the movie shifts to a slaughterhouse, condo, trailer park or whatever, literally littered with Nazis, that, besides killing innocent people and cooking them into delicious, mouth-watering treats, try to find a bride for the man of the family, as no sane chick with hook up with a French neo Nazi that just happens to trick teenagers out of their vital organs. Now that's a perfectly ordinary English statement.
The gore is not visual, nor feels gore by the end of the movie. It's more of a feeling the movie projects, anguish and such, but there are no more than three, maybe four violent scenes, the rest being endless reels of garbage with bad French, which reminds me, not only is French bad in general, but here its spoken with such a rebellious, ignorant and utterly dumb accent that you pretty much have to drink toilet scrub to get it out of your system.
Then it's the retarded and clichéd bit where the heroine kills everybody, and it's done in such a bad taste, it makes you shiver with contempt when the movie comes to a halt. And the even more idiotic, and this time just annoying scene where the girl happens to have a very steady aim when killing her brother, or whatever he was, but will not budge for the wood of the true cross to help the main protagonist in defeating the final villain. This, along with the melee weapons that just happen to be left ALL throughout the building and the unrealistic fighting, all of this of course being painful to watch, leave the competitors sighing with relief. I'm sure a lot of people liked the movie, but then again, a lot of people think Chronicles of Narnia was good, and you don't see them being put to sleep now do you? There was a great scene however, the one where the blonde, obnoxious kid gets stuck in the tunnel, that was really well done, but, of course, they screwed that up in the end, as the kid was just lazy and self conscious, not stuck. A more vivid experience of horror would be looking at my thumb for one hour, or possibly eating cereal with a fork while I try to pick spilled human entrails from the floor.
Watch this only if you find trees interesting.
First of all, the director, Xavier Gens, better known for directing Hit-man, which, although a painful movie to watch, was at least well directed, disappoints like whole grain bread. Don't get me wrong, the directing bit is somewhat flawless, but, in lack of a better word, shallow. As shallow as French actors actually trying to perform in front of a camera. It's the same with Mountain Dew, the drink tastes good, but after a while you start thinking what's point is? The issue here is not so much the directing, but the writing, which Mr. Gens is also credit for. The movie is so mind numbingly stupid, it makes fatal head injuries seem like playing World of Warcraft. Some young, passionate, probably mentally incompetent thieves from Paris flee and end up in a hostel, where, get this, the movie shifts to a slaughterhouse, condo, trailer park or whatever, literally littered with Nazis, that, besides killing innocent people and cooking them into delicious, mouth-watering treats, try to find a bride for the man of the family, as no sane chick with hook up with a French neo Nazi that just happens to trick teenagers out of their vital organs. Now that's a perfectly ordinary English statement.
The gore is not visual, nor feels gore by the end of the movie. It's more of a feeling the movie projects, anguish and such, but there are no more than three, maybe four violent scenes, the rest being endless reels of garbage with bad French, which reminds me, not only is French bad in general, but here its spoken with such a rebellious, ignorant and utterly dumb accent that you pretty much have to drink toilet scrub to get it out of your system.
Then it's the retarded and clichéd bit where the heroine kills everybody, and it's done in such a bad taste, it makes you shiver with contempt when the movie comes to a halt. And the even more idiotic, and this time just annoying scene where the girl happens to have a very steady aim when killing her brother, or whatever he was, but will not budge for the wood of the true cross to help the main protagonist in defeating the final villain. This, along with the melee weapons that just happen to be left ALL throughout the building and the unrealistic fighting, all of this of course being painful to watch, leave the competitors sighing with relief. I'm sure a lot of people liked the movie, but then again, a lot of people think Chronicles of Narnia was good, and you don't see them being put to sleep now do you? There was a great scene however, the one where the blonde, obnoxious kid gets stuck in the tunnel, that was really well done, but, of course, they screwed that up in the end, as the kid was just lazy and self conscious, not stuck. A more vivid experience of horror would be looking at my thumb for one hour, or possibly eating cereal with a fork while I try to pick spilled human entrails from the floor.
Watch this only if you find trees interesting.