Homestead

Remember that movie a few months ago from Kevin Costner called HORIZON? It started like the makings of a great movie, but then about 1/3 the way into the running time, they decided to just slow everything down and not move the plot along anymore, because it was a miniseries pilot rather than an actual movie. Well that exact same thing happens here, and it really bummed me out because I loved the opening of the film.

Going back to THREADS in the early 80's and even the pilot episodes for such shows as "Walking Dead", "Survivors", and "Jericho", I've always felt hungry for a well-directed (and especially a well-written) realistic portrayal of society falling apart at the very opening of the apocalypse. The closer these shows and films get to full on realism, the more interesting they get, but it never seems to quite hit the threshold of believability. The closest of course would be THREADS, but that film is hampered a bit by its low budget and unrelenting bleakness, plus it's a "broad-brush" film that doesn't really focus on the personal journey of the characters with much depth. Most of these films follow characters who are essentially unprepared victims who run around like headless chickens, looting and killing each other. There's very little attention paid to the rebuilding of society unless you stick with the series.

What's fascinating about this film is that it seems to follow the world's best prepper; a billionaire who owns a large property, stockpiles many months worth of food, and hires a large staff to run the place. It's a much more fascinating concept to me than following some loner wandering around because we get the makings of a small society trying its best to function and dealing with the various crises and things they didn't plan out. I have a feeling it'll be a pretty satisfactory miniseries (assuming that there are more episodes coming), but unlike a lot of my fellow Gen-Xers, I have little patience to sit down and binge-watch or maintain some loyalty to an ongoing series. I'd much rather watch films in the form of closed-narratives, which is something that this film does not offer (nor did HORIZON) in the slightest bit. There's nothing satisfying at all in the end but a lot of unanswered questions.

The key scenes such as the incident with the hunters feels very poorly handled, and the attempt to make the killer character conflicted and then suddenly get over it rang completely false and hollow as well. The film has a lot of tough guys posing with guns but ultimately has practically no action, which is frustrating when you can spot many, many opportunities for it along the way. Ultimately, the film lacks in entertainment value unless you really are drawn toward prepper culture and want to see what sort of blind spots you may have in your own prepping strategy. There are those who are practical and those who are idealistic, and the film seems to favor the idealists without really showing the consequences of ignoring pragmatism in a doomsday situation in which it's absolutely critical. I guess that may be the downside of watching a post-apocalypse movie with an ever-so-slight religious bend to it, though this is worlds better from something more overt such as LEFT BEHIND.

I really wanted to watch a good movie tonight and since I like the post-apocalyptic genre I thought this one might do it. It started promising but that's about it. The more you get into the story the worse it gets. It's one of those movies you need a vomit bucket close by, and in this case I even needed the emergency bucket as I filled the first one quickly. At one point I told my wife that this movie looks like a pilot of a series you wouldn't continue watching. And what do I find out at the end? That there is actually a series about it, which I will for obvious reasons not watch. I really don't want to waste anymore time on bad scripts and mediocre acting.

The movie was pretty good for what it was, but I believe the type of scenario that played out at the beginning, with the US coming under nuclear attack and the power grid going down, would have been much better if more people could relate to the aftermath of such events. Less than 10 minutes into the movie, 98% of people who have made some sort of preparations for such events were left out of the rest of the movie, and the 2%, or less, who might know someone with such accommodations and security were the only ones left to imagine themselves in that type of situation, unless, of course, you were one of those people who were totally unprepared, standing outside the gate begging to get in. Like I said at the beginning of this review, the movie was pretty good for what it was, but unfortunately, it was unrealistic to "prepper" viewers. Maybe Angel should think about making another movie that relates more to average people in rural areas who are prepared, to one degree or another. Maybe the storyline could be about a family, or families, living through such a scenario of events from their own homes and properties; their struggles to hang on to what they have; to keep their families safe and fed, and the tuff decisions that have to be made concerning those who were un or under prepared, including friends and neighbors.

But, that's just me thinking.

This was not a "movie" it was clearly a Series Pilot.

As a pilot there can be a lot forgiven, as a movie it was not great.

Zero character development and the "plotting" style of story development is transparent and poorly executed with characters constantly making unnatural choices to move the plot toward predetermined events.

Totally missing is any level of discovery where the characters organically develop, making natural feeling choices that grow the story.

While the highlight opening scene on the ocean was fantastic, it jumped in making it difficult to understand where they were, how they got there, and why they were on their mission. In its own this was ok, being dropped in to the story so abruptly could allow the viewer to build their own narrative about the situation.

However it got worse from here. Who is the owner of the homestead, why has he set it up, what is his background, and how was it funded, perhaps as a series this will be explored over time, but as a movie it made it difficult to understand the core foundation.

Just one of the countless examples, a city official that stops by demanding an accounting of who and what is on the homestead so they could collect taxes, just a few days after the world entered a crisis. Very awkward and unnatural, however this was clearly just a poorly executed plot setup for a later encounter.

I waited for this movie for months. I had allowed my anticipation to build to that of a child awaiting Christmas morning. Wanting that one gift that blows the rest away only to open all your gift and find you didn't get the one that matters...Angel Studios didn't gift me my one gift. Instead they gave me a huge build up into a mediocre movie that is basically a long advertisement for a new series. Very little action. Very little scenes showing what's actually happening through America after the bombs. I felt robbed and tricked at the end. I'm not happy about the way they built this up. This could have been the movie of the year. If anyone walks away from this saying they are fulfilled and happy with the production then they are not in being honest and are only attempting to be kind. I can not deny the disappointment my family and I felt as we walked out of the theater.