A Presença

This film is kind of a fascinating trainwreck of someone who was trying to be Spielberg but also wanted to be John Hughes. It mean, it's so...uneven. The photography is fine, the dialogue is above average, the acting solid. But I would never have thought this was written and directed by the same person; it feels like the writer and director were at odds with each other.

The basis of the story is a video of an alien that a guy says he shot, and the story is driven by whether it is real or not...but you never get to see the video. It's like a McGuffin...but you NEED to see it to validate the other characters' responses. It's cheating the viewer by not letting you see it for yourself.

And the music is TERRIBLE. Invasive, and tries to drive the emotion of the scene in all the wrong directions. I swear, if I produced this and heard that music in the final cut, I would have paid out of my own pocket to have it re-scored.

It's not awful. It's not unwatchable. But it always feels off tempo, off balance...and not in a good way.

Overall: Meh.