3.4 Stars.
The movie suffers from frenetic ambitions. It's trying to be too many things at the same time and lacking the aptitude to be very good at any of them.
As more than one reviewer has said, it's impossible to categorize it with it's many facets. It's a drama, a (campy) comedy, action, thriller, romance, and horror.
It's a Frankenstein.
Committing to one genre, or even aiming to be a hybrid would have been a much better strategy. This movie should have been a Drama-Thriller, period. Instead, we have a confused monster with a case of multiple personality disorder.
The acting was largely sub-par, but it's far from the worst I've seen. The Razzie here goes to the actress who plays the lead characters sister. Drama is clearly not her forte, that's all her character had to work with unfortunately. Maybe she'd be better at comedy because she did get laughs, even though they were unintentional. Unbelievable performances are almost always attributed to the actors lack of skill or likability but many times it's really due to one of more factors like a crap script., lack of prep time/rehearsals, or an inflexible or unskilled director. Whatever the cause(s) may have been the end result was just not that great.
For the viewers, at some point I think it would have made sense to make some scenes more distinguished from the others. A starker, visible shift between the types of scenes would have been very nice.
I'm absolutely not going to to say anything more specific, but to those who've seen the film and to those to created it, you know what I'm saying.
There were elements that I really liked and thought were well done. I had to check imdb to see where in Mexico the film was filmed but to my surprise (and still suspended disbelief) it said Michigan. I am expecting to hear that some scenes were in fact filmed in Mexico, but even so, the seamless way that these locales are brought together is nothing short of commendable. The camera-work was quite good, but the scenes still can only be as good as what the director can envisions/permits.
The final minutes manage to be genuinely bitter-sweet. I like the story!
