Ocean City Monster Building

I gathered from the end credits that the writer-director was influenced by the Dogme 95 group from Denmark (hand-held camera, no incidental music, no make-up on the actors etc etc....all in the service of naked, unadorned 'realism'). I didn't really feel it fully. I wanted to connect with the story but just couldn't.

I don't know if it's a police drama, a murder mystery, a critique of the U. S. and its treatment of immigrants, or a philosophical statement on life as we know it. The film needs to have a more focused intent for the script. I felt distracted from murder mystery/detective story by the U. S. policy/political critique and the philosophizing dialogue. The script needs tightened up quite a bit. The handheld digital lends well to the period feeling and realistic look added to the tone of the film but it seemed that some of the "art" shots were forced and didn't fit into the flow of the film." The performances were very good which carried me through this indulgent film.

The way they made it reminded me a bit like that German movie Christiane F. I didn't like that movie too much either.

While I'm in support of amateur filmmakers doing everything they can to tell their stories and make their movies. This movie Ocean City completely fails to deliver a coherent and engaging film while making you suffer through it's utterly amateur filmmaking. The direction feels aimless and lacks any clear vision, resulting in a messy final product. The shaky handheld camera work is unremarkable and fails to capture any sense of atmosphere, leaving the viewer feeling disconnected from the story. The lighting is also poor and feels inconsistent throughout the film.

The main characters the detective and the girl are both underdeveloped and lacks any depth, making it difficult for anyone to care about their struggles. The acting is void of any meaningful emotions and hindered by the poorly constructed script which is so unnatural and robotic that I'm seriously wondering if ChatGPT wrote it. And the pacing of the film is all over the place, at times sluggish and slow, other times confusing and overwhelming, making it difficult to maintain attention. The lack of suspense throughout this mystery thriller is also disappointing, failing to deliver on any satisfying conclusion. I can't believe I paid $2.99 to watch this hot garbage.

This film has a style and personality to which it remains faithful throughout; an achievement in itself already. It experiments both in its style and in its storytelling, resulting in a quite interesting movie, although sometimes questionable. The plot of the film is a murder investigation, although, really, it is more about the detective Aida. I like this transgression from the typical genre narrative and taking the liberty to be more free in the narrative development. However, I feel that this doesn't work to perfection in this case. At the beginning, for instance, I wanted the mystery narrative to develop, but I felt that time was unnecessarily spent in other conflicts, like with Megan's mother. Later into the film I realised that the film wouldn't focus too much on the mystery. However, although I appreciate this concept, I think the mystery could have been explored and developed more while still having the character developments. One thing I felt decreased the quality of the film immensely was the performances. For example, Megan's mother's scandalous screams at the police; this attitude is completely unnatural and the acting feels very fake. I felt that some reactions were just unrealistic: like when Sally learns her father died with a minor in the car and she starts sobbing. I think the film would have been highly improved if it was more subtle in its delivery. Moreover, on top of the sometimes unsubtle performances, I think that the dialogue at times was completely out of tune. I mean when the characters have mini philosophical speeches and say things like "we are all orphans" or "there is no magic in the adult trenches of existence." No one speaks like that! And I think this is the other weak point of the film: a lack of creativity in delivering these philosophical arguments, because the characters just say them, and I think that takes off their potential value. When Megan's mother speaks of cicadas, for instance, that parallelism could be done in a more creative and effective way, maybe by using the diegetic sound of a documentary about cicadas on TV and connecting it children through cuts to family pictures / baby pictures of Megan; I don't know, something like that. Using the mise-en-scene to create connections between ideas and express these philosophical thoughts in more subtle ways. I liked the part in the end, when we listen to the utopian TV show in the midst of the fight between Sally and her mother: I wanted more stuff like that. Overall, I liked the film, I think it has some valuable characteristics. I really liked the exploration of Aida and I think the wig was a powerful prop. The film's exploration of the two female immigrant characters in the USA was interesting; I think it could have focused more on that aspect while still exploring more the crime, giving more actual answers to it (but still remaining an unresolved mystery) and being more creative in delivering its philosophical parallelisms.

Watched it at a festival, the film is rather unique in its style and in its narrative, which experiments with the detective/mystery genre. Considering the mobility of the camera, the blocking and staging was not bad. Interesting script, yet many times the dialogues are too unnatural. The cinematography is very good I liked the aspect ratio, although some shots distract and feel unnecessarily unconventional. The performances, in times of high dramatic, are unrealistic due to the script; during more chill moments, they're pretty good. Although it has many locations but, it could have used the setting more creatively and experimented more with it. The pacing is hard to rate because it deliberately does not follow the conventional rhythm of a film of this genre. But I feel like the film might not be completely sure of where it stands between following the mystery and exploring the characters. The sound design is really good. The use of the radio and TV are really good.

Interesting low budget thriller-drama that takes place in a small town in Upstate NY. A mayor is found dead in a car with a 15 yrs old female. A detective from Albany leads the investigation and encounters the suspicious, sometimes racist, attitude of the local sheriff. She is originally migrated from Haiti and became a cop and she doesn't buy into the attitude of the local authorities that just want to close the case exonerating the mayor post-humanous. She forms a bond with the mayor adopted daughter from Vietnam, and they find common language because of their backgrounds. The plot thickens with several twists and turns and the case is being closed under pressure, without figuring out all the details. When they are revealed in the end, a sad truth of abuse and malignant intentions are exposed. The story takes place in 1984, before the Mondale-Reagan elections, and the filmmaker definitely wants to say something about the American dream in the eyes of immigrants, but it's not clear exactly. The film is very low budget, shot in monochromatic colors, better than black and white, but stands firm enough as a whole.

There is something that I really like about this. It doesn't 100% add up, and I'm not sure what the title has to do with it or at least the first half, but the story really gels as it goes along. Also, the lead performances by the daughter Sally and detective are really good especially when you piece it all together. I was thrown off initially by the hand held camera and the mellow color, but when I read that the Filmmaker was following the Dogme 95 style it kind of made more sense, and I had to give the filmmaker credit for attempting to follow this fairly consistently despite breaking a couple of the rules as many do.