Take Back the Night

Captures the good times of drinking and pills from the days of misspent youth really well. Glad my time was before social media ruined everything. Interesting story built around the "is this really happening" genre while offering some commentary on social issues, it goes to some dark place and gets fairly intense. My only criticism, as seen here, would be the current trend of directors changing the shot angle every 5 seconds, too much imagery to process.

No pun intended - the movie is not about something .. well it is not about one thing I reckon is the right way to go about it and describe it. We have a woman, an influencer of sorts, who has a nightly encounter. Now many may say, well why is she alone, why this or why that ... that should not be the issue. Although I do have one issue of my own: the closing of the gate is completely unnecessary.

We do not have a .... culprit that you can "touch", that you can point to - with substance. It is an idea ... the movie gives us food for thought. It tells us about an evil that exists ... and it urges us to change the status quo. Since this is a small or low budget movie, it does have issues in that department, but it does try its best to still tell us the story as good as it can ... if you don't mind the downfalls, this is an interesting watch.

An interesting premise goes downhill after a promising start. Emma Fitzpatrick is very good as the star here. Jane is an artist with some severe mental problems.

She is at a party where she drinks heavily and takes some unknown drugs and after a quickie in a bathtub, she ventures out into an alley and is set upon by a Bigfoot type of creature who cuts her up. The injuries are thought to be self inflicted by the LAPD, including the requisite lesbian detective.

It becomes more and more unbelievable by the minute as Jane becomes an internet sensation by posting her story with updates on her attack.

The last few minutes are ridiculous and the talented Ms. Fitzpatrick is wasted here. The rating of three is only for her.

Right, well I had not heard about this 2021 horror movie titled "Take Back the Night" before now, late in 2022, as I stumbled upon it by sheer luck. Seeing it was a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to give the movie a chance.

Writers Gia Elliot and Emma Fitzpatrick might have had something interesting in means of concept, but the transition from script to screen didn't make for an impressive movie. Sure, there were elements of the storyline that were interesting, but the overall impression of "Take Back the Night" is that of a dumpster fire. The storyline is cluttered, erratic and all over the place. So director Gia Elliot wasn't exactly bringing the ship safely to harbor.

The acting performances in the movie were fair enough, just a shame that the actresses and actors virtually had nothing solid to work with in terms of script, character gallery and dialogue.

The storyline was not appealing to me, and it was a difficult movie to suffer through. And it didn't help much that the character gallery had a lot of very dislikable characters in it. Personally I am not keen on vloggers and people constantly filming themselves for putting online, but when the main character in "Take Back the Night" kept filming herself while she was being attacked, I was good and ready to turn off the movie.

For a horror movie, then "Take Back the Night" was a swing and a miss. Well, unless you consider such an ill-constructed storyline to be horror, then you're in luck.

My rating of "Take Back the Night" lands on a very generous two out of ten stars. This is not a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on. Some of us suffered through this so you don't have to.

The reviews downplaying this movie must be the same people who blame the victim.

The sound, camera, and lighting quality are amateur.

The acting is decent.

The dialogue and plot are actually superb.

Every day victims are belittled, ignored, and accused on lying about being assaulted or raped. This film demonstrates the emotional toll one takes and the hurdles they must overcome just to report an assault, let alone going through the court system.

This artsy cultural commentary deserves higher praise and should be used to spread awareness rather than being fodder for those in the privileged and ignorant position to deny.