Hillwalkers

I have no issue with small budget films and in some ways the director did a good job. I certainly felt that the landscape and decent cinematography were going to make for an atmospheric and tense thriller. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case here due to poor writing which failed to create sympathetic characters or deliver any tension whatsoever.

As a previous reviewer pointed out, the real problem I had was during the hikers' initial encounter with the farmers. I am unsure why there was an attempt to create unrealistic and unwarranted tension here because it would just never play out like that. And, why does the supposedly strong and assertive woman let the feeble chap lead the negotiations when she has said she will do exactly the opposite just minutes before? A woeful scene that made no sense.

Sadly, none of the characters are even remotely believable and are, largely, so dislikable, that you don't route for any of them. Of course, suspension of disbelief is often required for this type of film, but there are just so many gaping plot holes and nonsensical elements that it was too much for me to engage with on any level.

I gave this film a go as it had a little of the Blair Witch Project atmosphere about it and the intro at the start with the woman in red was quite well done. The rest is embarassing. Not talking about the acting which wasn't too bad although the characters of this film were not developed and devoid of personality. How can you criticise a film that cost 30,000 to make? I don't know but it seems 'off'. Apart from the intro the rest does not seem to have been developed at all. Cringeworthy stuff and hard to believe. In Ireland if you travel more than 2 steps forward unless you are in a national park you are going to hear or see a car. This can't have been a national park because of all the private property signs. So its just impossible to believe they are isolated in such a way. All without mobile phone coverage and no thought given as to what to do in the event of an accident even though they are dressed up in stylish hiking clothes they did not think about what to do in an emergency. Quite a dumb bunch of hikers. So why did they send off one person on their own from a group of 6 to get help and not two? I guess so that she can be terrifed later on. When you make characters dumb in order to force through a plot it ends up with characters that you want to see killed straight away to punish them for their stupidity. Reminds me of the League of Gentlemen on steroids and seems insulting to anyone who is not from Dublin. The whole thing looks like a a poor Rockshore beer commercial and lacks credibility and certainly lacks movement or pace. Actually painful waiting for each scene to end and move on to the next one.

Some might say if you give 100,000,000 monkeys (I don't know the exact amount) a load of typewriters they would eventually write Shakespeare.

Well, this film, yeah, I think they put one monkey in a wheelie bin, shook it around a lot and pushed it down a big hill, then gave him/her/they a typewriter....and.....well...then it wrote and filmed this movie!!!

I knew from the onset this was not going to fair well. I thought at first it was the filming but then quickly realised it was also the script and acting that were to doom this film. Clearly there was no budget for effects nor post production.

Not sure how it can be classed as a horror either? I've experienced more horror and suspense when I opened my GCSE results letter.

Sorry, but awful. Points for the location and a few stupidly funny lines.

This is now, officially, my personal pet peeve about most movies: they have a lot going for them in a very narrow, familiar genre fashion, but then waste it by not making any effort to be original, or intelligent when the plot or action finally kicks in. As if it doesn't matter what they do after a certain point, as if anyone watching the film won't care if it's stops making sense or becomes so downright stereotypical and bland and DUMB that it's kind of an insult. This film starts fairly good (for such a well worn genre convention: city folks go into country and find danger), nothing exceptional by any stretch but the actors do alright with rather dull characters, the cinematography is amazing and the countryside is awesome. Pretty by the book (one character is "strong" and overcoming cancer so you might guess who's gonna survive) but I was interested. They even make a point of what amazing negotiators these folks are so I was expecting that might come into play when they run afoul of the local loonies. But no. It actually just gets forgotten and how they behave from their first meeting on is basically guaranteed to allow the stupid, predictable plot to unfold after that. Very quickly the best thing about the film becomes the interplay between the locals which is amusing in a believable fashion and, thank god, not played broadly for laughs! Their performances are also the best, and if only the script didn't let them down when it came to what happens this film might have been a real winner. They had everything they needed to make a successful genre entry except the ability (or willingness) to fix a mediocre script that falls apart in the last half. It's one thing to suggest the city folks are ill equipped to deal with survival at this level (see Deliverance) but this movie just has the characters become idiots. If you don't consider a directors job to include caring about the script, or character actions, you could say it's still handled well enough but all the good points the film earned in the beginning are wasted.

This was not a horror movie to me. It wasn't really good. The actors/acting wasn't great. The movie had no suspense or thrills to it. You could really figure out what was about to happen in every scene.

There were actually done funny parts in the movie. And I never found out who the girl was at the start of the movie. Could be because I lost interest in the movie and started doing other things.

I wouldn't watch it again. It wasn't a total waste to me at least I was able to read and reply to some emails while this movie was on.

I read that some have compared this to Wrong Turn. It's not the same.