Arctic Hollow

Arctic Hollow has a good deal of potential to be a really great fill, however it doesn't fulfill the narrative and ends on a rather bland and dissatisfying level.

It starts out intriguingly, with the lone, isolated cabin dweller, sitting in front of the fireplace, silently contemplating, reminiscing, where he hears on his radio of a couple who have fallen victim to the snow swept wilderness.

The interactions between Bruce and Ally give off warm vibes and this element works well in the movie, largely due to decent acting and script. Their quest to find the underworld where Ally believes is where her father has gone, is tantalizing, as ancient cultures world wide believe in such a place and give the possibility of it's existence credence.

As I say, some really good ideas here, but it takes too long to arrive at its point. I wondered why they didn't make this go for at least another 30 minutes, as it ends very abruptly and doesn't explore the hollow earth aspect enough, for it's title would lead us to believe otherwise.

Trying to get past a traumatic incident, a fighter pilot gets wind of his assistance in a necessary extraction mission to rescue friends of his in a trek to the Alaskan circle to find a passageway to a Middle Earth, but when he gets stranded with them finds the area guarded by savage, unbelievable creatures.

There wasn't a whole lot to be had with this one. Among its few positives stem from the general setup at play here which manages to generate a solid setup at its main core. With the early setup showing the pilot to be dealing with his issues involving the tragic accident and his memories of the strange encounter that drags him into the search to rescue them, this provides the kind of intriguing setup that would work quite well as a means of getting him into the mix to battle the creatures. That has quite a lot to like about it with the final half featuring the atmospheric encounters within the darkened caves underground as the creatures emerge to battle the survivors that provides some rather chilling conceptual sequences at the center of this one for the main likable points here. This one does have a few major drawbacks to be had here. The main drawback to be had with this one is a seriously dull and plodding pace that's almost impossible to explain why due to the film being this short. There's little reason why a film that barely cracks the running time this one does to spend as much time as it does with so much extraneous material where it focuses on his backstory with the couple at the bar which brings him together into their sphere, his history including the traumatic accident that sends him into the heavy drinking stupor, and the utterly bland setup with the group being stranded on the mountain and needing to be rescued. None of these aspects are all that interesting or enjoyable to see play out and just lead to a wholly plodding and uneventful focus here. On top of that, there's also the excessively problematic special effects. The fact that the generally underutilized creatures look so terrible when they're shown on-screen in the absolute darkness of the caves at the end is a massively disappointing factor where it's just so lackluster to have them shown in such an environment that it's so laughably cheesy and inexcusable to be shown so briefly for what barely amounts to be worth it in terms of how bad it all looks. As well, the fact that the other effects featured here are just as bad, with a horrendously bad sound design that brings everything into a generally unlistenable muffle and a lighting design that makes everything so dark as to be hard to make out, these factors all bring about a rather large series of factors that holds it back.

Rated Unrated/R: Language and Violence.

And other such AMAZING one liners for this horror of an excuse got a movie. Like it has been said bwfore---it's DARK. Literally only ten minutes of this movie are clearly visible-8 minutes into he beginning and two minutes at the end. Everything else is just reddish light cave scenes of a hand or a foot, LITERALLY just absolutely pitch black scenes,and sometimes a headlamp shining on the opposite character's face. It was awful,and only made worse by the TERRIBLE acting and cheesy dialogue. Don't even get me started on the lady's father's theory of middle earth,but then it only being 40 or so miles into the 4000 miles to the center of the earth that life appears,and her belief that her father,who disappeared FIVE YEARS AGO is somehow still alive in nowhere earth. Just an all around dumpster fire stinker of a movie. It's too late for me I can't unsee this but you have a chance. Save yourself.

I stumbled across this movie when I was searching for the 2018 movie Arctic. Being that I'm a sucker for movies that take place in the snowy elements I decided to give it a try knowing full well it is a lower budget indy film.

I didn't have a ton of expectations but was thoughorly entertained to be honest, haha. It's a monster movie but it's not gory or violent. It's more of a Jules Verne adventure film that has some heart to it. Don't get me wrong it has some tense moments and some jump scrares, but to me it's the overall advernture that kept me intrigued.

It's only 70 minutes, so it's not a long commitment. Again, I love films that take place in snowy isolation so that influences my rating.

Just think of the things you could do with 5k. Here we have a movie that is basically filmed 90% in a dark basement so there is no spending on set design, or much of anything else.

The script and dialogue sequences are bad, plane rental is $1500, actors are friends of the writer/director and paid min wage. Not much else to spend the budget on. Oh, the shock ending, $1000 on cgi.

Movies like this should be reserved for a separate part of IMDB. Self funded, vanity projects or Indie categories so that expectations are super low before hand.

Not much else to write here, ended up watching at 2x speed and then switched to 4x. Not much time wasted.