One thing that I was instantly annoyed by, or rather surprised, is the fact the two characters speak perfect English. Even when the female character asks for directions while mispronouncing words, she speaks perfect English the entire film.
The stero typical racial differences are also very distracting from the political message they want to send (more on that later). It seems that they desperately wanted our sympathy, but didn't want to put in the work to build up their character.
The political message they try to convey is simply unclear and very poorly visualized. They move from one time and place to another and it's unclear how it alles fits together.
The sound effects are heavily overused; there is often more sound than image and it often used in overkill to keep the viewer interested. That being said, the overuse of jump scares is also a very desperate attempt to get the viewer in their grip. This should not be the kind of movie that should have to rely on these easy ways to scare the viewer.
The visual effects were OK, but also overused and you could definitely witness the early days of a young visual effects creator, using everything he has in his tool belt to how off his recent skills. The director should have known the time and place for this better.
My most important observation was the idea that this film borrowed a LOT of elements from other horror films, but copied them without any real original tone of voice. They just wanted a quick way to bootstrap their movie and sell a decent trailer, which is simply disappointing.
The ending, which I will not reveal, because there is not much to spoil, is just blurry, plain and not quite as thought provoking as the film leads up to. You turn off the tv with an awful font for the end credits and think to yourself "well, that's one and a half movie that I won't get back...".
The acting of most characters was OK. I hope this film may lead to more roles, but I think their talents were underused; they could have easily carried his film more, instead of relying on cheap computer effects.
In summary, this movie seems like a long short, one that was stretched to an hour and a half in order to be used by Netflix and add to their large stack of average-quality films.
The stero typical racial differences are also very distracting from the political message they want to send (more on that later). It seems that they desperately wanted our sympathy, but didn't want to put in the work to build up their character.
The political message they try to convey is simply unclear and very poorly visualized. They move from one time and place to another and it's unclear how it alles fits together.
The sound effects are heavily overused; there is often more sound than image and it often used in overkill to keep the viewer interested. That being said, the overuse of jump scares is also a very desperate attempt to get the viewer in their grip. This should not be the kind of movie that should have to rely on these easy ways to scare the viewer.
The visual effects were OK, but also overused and you could definitely witness the early days of a young visual effects creator, using everything he has in his tool belt to how off his recent skills. The director should have known the time and place for this better.
My most important observation was the idea that this film borrowed a LOT of elements from other horror films, but copied them without any real original tone of voice. They just wanted a quick way to bootstrap their movie and sell a decent trailer, which is simply disappointing.
The ending, which I will not reveal, because there is not much to spoil, is just blurry, plain and not quite as thought provoking as the film leads up to. You turn off the tv with an awful font for the end credits and think to yourself "well, that's one and a half movie that I won't get back...".
The acting of most characters was OK. I hope this film may lead to more roles, but I think their talents were underused; they could have easily carried his film more, instead of relying on cheap computer effects.
In summary, this movie seems like a long short, one that was stretched to an hour and a half in order to be used by Netflix and add to their large stack of average-quality films.