*Quick thoughts typed here. Composition is mess with my quick review of Red Eye*
I saw some chatter about this movie on Instagram, so I said "why the hell not" and checked it out. I'm all for low budget indie horror. There's no other way to say it, but this is just a poor horror film. No sense of tension, and when some actually would build, it's killed by unintersting and overlong conversations with very cringeworthy dialogue. Another thing that became distracting were the filmmakers need to constantly remind you that this movie was made by horror fans that have watched a lot of horror films. It's sprinkled all over the movie in its dialogue, but it would explain the unoriginality on display during its running time. It just kept taking me out it. The use of music wasn't handled well either, mostly where it was placed throughout the film. Red Eye himself wasn't very much realized and had a lame origin, but I will say I did like his look. But for the most part he was wasted here.
There's some extreme pacing issues. After a slow and clock watching first two acts the movie eventually starts to pick it up towards its third act, but by that time I just lost interest. Every character is completely unlikable and poorly acted for the most part. And I don't know the obsession with this movie with sexual violence, and there's plenty mind you, but it's just used for straight up shock value and it comes off immature honestly. There are way more interesting ways to make your audience uneasy and this just came off lazy. The movie's climax tries to be unexpected, but it's quite the opposite. They would have been better off telling a straight up slasher story rather than make an attempt to outsmart their audience, because the story just didn't develop to make its twist feel earned.
Not all is awful in this movie. The cinematography for the most part is well done, and there is some decent gore in the movie. Now I know this was written and directed by individuals with minimal experience making movies, and they are fairly young. You can see that through and through in this. I do applaud them for going for it and getting a movie made. It's actually impressive with how they got it done. But I have to judge without bias what I watched, and their first effort falls flat on its face hard. I hope they keep making movies because I'm all for young filmmakers getting their work out there, but they have a lot of work to do to improve their craft.
