They Talk

I caught right at the start the opening credits mentioning Calabria, and realized this was basically an Italian movie. I was concerned because the listing said English, which worried me that I would be watching a badly dubbed version, but in retrospect that probably would've been preferable.

This is a film set in America, and almost none of the main characters has an accent that could discernably be called American. This is not a problem since America is a land of many people except that the main character is described as having been born and raised in America, in Missouri, and has a Scandinavian accent thick enough to have a speaking role in "The Last Kingdom" or "Vikings".

It's all mildly amusing but it's not the reason this movie is so bad. That falls almost entirely on the writing and the overall acting.

Firstly, the depiction of EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomenon is absolutely cartoonish. The incredible crystal clear audio clarity with which these ghostly voices are picked up makes it as though people would be unable to record anything anywhere because they'd be constantly picking up ghosts talking over everything else.

A whole lot of things depicted here are very cartoonish in how they come across, which speaks a lot to either a gross misunderstanding of the subject matter, a severe lack of research, or a very bad writer.

There's constant little things that break what little immersion this film has. The way a whole lot of the dialogue and behavior comes across feels like it was written by someone who has never gone outside and experienced the real world. It comes across as if written by a child imagining this is what grownups sound and act like.

One of the better comparisons to this sort of dissonance I can make is the example of trying to translate a story using a computer translator rather than a native speaker.

On top of this, the story itself is just a boring mess that seems to be trying to set up something, but never actually gets around to it. Then it goes for a completely incoherent twist ending that feels as though a whole lot of the original idea ended up being cut out and they forgot to update the ending accordingly.

Too may loose ends that were never tied up....

Not enough explanation. The flashback to the past didinot explain why anything was happening.

Just incoherent.......

You may not even know what is going on.

A thriller with its plot-heavy scenes creating a weighty, incomprehensible story. Meanwhile the impressive acting surfaces here and there amidst all the unanswered questions. The documentary film subplot, itself, is abandoned, so too many of the movie's characters disappear, leaving the effective protagonist alone with too many computer scenes, and too many drone shots. There's a gorgeous synthesizer score and the special effects are top-notch--and practical. Only a few obnoxious stutter-cuts interrupt what the director maintains in traditional style and pace. Rocio Morales is superb as the movie's most tragic character. There's a large quantity of atmosphere, and the movie's art direction and locations support this. If only the writers and editors had collaborated more on communicating suspenseful information over just creating beautifully photographed suspense, and some quality gore.

The person who shot this knew what they were doing but no one else connected with this did. It kind of had a story, if you can say this is about a guy who hears voices, but that's about all there is to it. It's as if totally random scenes are just strung together, even love scenes that just seem to be inserted for no reason. The movie was all over the place, as if they couldn't decide what this was suppose to be. The lead actor tried, but every supporting actor was awful. Worst of all, were the accents. Although they show a car with a Missouri license plate, it would seen most of the cast was foreign and English was not their first language. While the movie is in English, some actors really struggled with their lines, making listening to the bad dialogue even worse. No chemistry between actors, no scares, no suspense, just a mess and a waste of time.

Okay what can you say about a low budget foreign movie, the tries surprisingly hard to pretend that it was filmed in America. Everyone speaks with a European accent, but we have American flags flying everywhere and a Missouri license plate on one of the vehicles. Most of the actors/characters really need to wash their hair and take a bath, it has a dirty, grungy, smoky feel to the entire movie, which really does nothing to enhance the movie, and actually took me out of it a number of times because all I could think of is my God they need to take a shower. The pacing is incredibly slow, nothing unusual for a low budget foreign horror movie. The plot overall is predictable and plodding. Acting is so so, playing bunch of people that you can't understand why they have anything to do with each other, but that's pretty much the norm for modern horror films. It feels low budget, it looks low budget, it is low budget. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it just gets old after a while. Since it's basically a free movie on a free service, there's not a lot to complain about. Would I watch it again? No. Do I regret watching it? Not really. It gave me something to listen to while I was folding clothes.