Waiting for the Giants

In the near future (2007) the US is turning against the mutants in its midst. Ramond Pierce a mutant, or 'Giant' of the title, with some telepathic powers takes to the road when his wife is murdered by the police who have come to arrest him. On his way he meets Nate, a blind victim of some weird (unexplained) pain experiments (which seem to consist of attaching electrodes to his head and bleaching his hair) and Annabelle, a mute girl escaping her abusive grandfather. Along the way Anabelle demonstrates that she too is a 'Giant' by doing some weird and totally unexplained soul/life-force/glowing-light thing to save the life of a car crash victim who, by an amazing coincidence, turns out to be the daughter of the senator who is leading the campaign for the mutants persecution. (At least I think that's what happened). Nate and Anabelle fall in love. They all have some weird deeply mystical shared experience in the middle of a field and Raymond dies when the grandfather catches up with them. The end.

I really didn't know what to make of this film. (apart from realising it was awful). It is well intentioned though wordy and pretentious; no sooner have the two male leads met than they are having a deep and meaningful discussion about homophobia over a burger thus, I guess, letting you know that the movie's message about mutants is a allegory for Aids, just as the Martin Luther King Jr. quote in the titles lays it's anti-racist cards out for all to see. The acting isn't bad, the three central actors are OK; Lorne Hughes in particular does a good job. The minor parts are wooden and amateurish but this is a road movie of a sort and you expect that sort of thing of a road movie.

What makes this movie so bad - nearly unwatchable - is the absolutely appalling sound editing. It really is atrocious, it sounds like a first rough cut. I find it hard to fathom how anyone with any kind of hearing could have let this out of the editing room. Half the time some (or all) of the cast are almost inaudible. Christopher Stone as Nate is particularly unlucky. At one point you can hear an actor hit the mike as he moves out of frame. There has been no attempt to do any ADR and the background noise varies wildly (and loudly) from shot to shot in the same scene. I don't think they could have done any Wild Tracks (ie recorded the ambient sound of the set or location without any dialogue) because at one point there is scene cutting between a pair of over the shoulder shots in which one character doesn't speak and the character that does speak has his back to the camera when he does so - which in itself is pretty weird - the sound cuts pointlessly coincide with the picture cuts. It's amateur movie making at its worst.

The chronology of this flick doesn't make any sense either. The movie is set in 2007. We have flashbacks to about 15 years before that. (I would guess Annabelle is in about her mid 20s in 2007 and 10 in the flashbacks - making the flashbacks happen in 1990-ish) in the flashbacks there are references to events and movements that haven't happened in the real world (a growing "Anti-giant" feeling and bombings) so why set the movie in the future? There is nothing in the movie that needs it to be set in the future or indeed any element of the dialogue plot or design that looks like it IS set in the future, looks like normal everyday America to me.

Some other questions: Why was Nate left in a zipped up body bag at the side of the road by his mysterious tormentors when a voice over says he requires further experimentation?... Where the hell is Ramond going? He just leaves the house and drives... What is this unexplained soul/life-force/glowing-light thing that Annabelle does and why, when given the choice, does she save the life of an abusive elderly Redneck rapist instead of the man who has just shown her some sort of path to salvation - or something - there's a lot of "something" in this movie.

If you ever watch this movie after this review and work out what it was all about please don't mail me and let me know - just sit back and marvel at the worst sound editing you will ever hear.