Don't Say Its Name

This film packs in a lot of complex themes into its story without being one sided or overly preachy.

Unfortunately, much of what it explores is hampered by a less than perfect delivery.

Watching this you can't help wishing someone with a stronger vision and more deft touch had been behind the wheel.

Where the movie could have used subtlety to communicate, it relied on dialog and over the top characters.

That had the unfortunate effects of slowing the pace down and giving too much away, too soon.

The mystery and suspense aspects of this film are therefore less successful than the social commentary and supernatural elements.

Still, there is enough in Don't Say Its Name to be worth your time.

You simply need to approach the film when you are feeling patient enough to overlook its flaws, in favor of focusing on its strengths.

When I watch any film, but particularly my favoured genre I ask a few questions. Did they love what they did, did they treat the audience with respect, and how did the do with what they have.

I was extremely impressed with Don't Say Its Name.

You can tell they had a passion for the story they told, which is both Indigenous, and Universal. The freshness and realness of the people who were real people and not just caricatures comes through for the whole thing. For those of us who are descended from colonizers, this story may very well provoke a reaction. That's another piece of an extremely well crafted puzzle.

They respected me and my time as the audience. The scares, while not intense, were earned and not cheap. I am really used to being treated like an idiot by a large section of the horror genre, and it was really nice to be able to watch something that wanted me to pay attention to the people and the ideas in the story.

They did a tremendous amount with what they had. They alternated between CGI and practical effects with a deft hand for, despite Telefilm and SuperChannel funding was not a huge budget film. They made the story work for them, and there were large parts of the movie where I actually lost track of the time, and that's really rare in horror films these days, especially when you're watching on TV Streaming services with all your devices around asking for attention.

While it's true that at it's heart it's not a blazingly original idea there are few of those left, and they took a classic story and made it their own.

I was really impressed - this is well worth your time.

In this film we follow an indigenous peoples on tribal land as they try to figure out who or what has been killing family and friends in a mysterious way. This movie is definitely trying to tell a message as well . Which is welcomed but not done in very subtle ways. Acting is decent except for one white dude who plays the obvious racist -- that could have been done better too. Glad to see a "Native" American a.k.a Indigenous peoples film. Enjoyable but could have changed some things around. 5.5 out of 10 stars.

Poor acting from virtually all the cast denigrates what would otherwise have been an average supernatural "myth" movie.

Quite boring with lots of extended conversations about the meaning of life ie padded script fillers which just seemed like the writer did not have much to say.

The special effects / gore looks like tomato sauce (and not even of HP quality, more your Lidl cheapo watery variety) and the horror is the usual invisible predator to save cash. It is obviously low budget and to be fair I do judge based on many things including the movie budget but this was just badly made - from the absolutely out of place music which really annoyed me at points in the movie where it jarred badly as it was so out of place.

Then we have the rather poor acting from the main female lead - it was as if she was reading off a cue card at times. She was so out of place as a Ripley / Vasquez hard-ass female ex-army vet, it elicited a chuckle on more than one occasion - what was the casting director thinking?

Nope as a horror movie this one is a bit of a plonker!

Really solid acting and filming. Great editing and production quality. Good script and storyline. The CGI and special effects make-up were also excellent. It was more of a supernatural thriller than a horror I think, but regardless, I enjoyed it.

I read the other reviews and I didn't experience any flaws, other than from the reviewers themselves.

I hope to see more content like this.