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Meet the Drinkwaters - the quirky father and son from Penticton, BC. The story centres on son Mike's last year in high school, his struggles to find himself, find love and find a future, in spite of a father who is unsupportive, a girl who doesn't notice him, a bully and a school that doesn't appreciate his clever challenges to Bernoulli's principle of flight. But, along the way he meets new neighbour Wallace, an American girl he introduces to Canada and who in turn helps him see past the roadblocks of the past.

Acting was great with particular comedy kudos to Daniel Doheny (Mike) and Eric McCormack (Mike's father Hank), and a winning smile from Louriza Tronco (Wallace).

The amount of work that went into this is really astounding - the details of the costume and design, the many nods to Canada in the writing and setting (filmed entirely in Penticton), the soundtrack which is replete with Canadian bands, and of course the Canadian cast. Although contemporary, it feels like the 80s, from Mike's groaning Gremlin to Wallace's banana seat bike with handlebar streamers. It's total nostalgia.

And it's a feel-good movie. Yes, a bit predictable at times, but sometimes you know what you want.

This movie is well done for such a low budget. I disagree with others regarding the camera work. It was shot well. The opening credit sequence was quite interesting and conveyed a sense of gloom and fear.

Yes, 99% of the movie takes place in the woods, but whether the story was written around that setting for budget reasons (or not) is moot: the setting is still used effectively, especially during the night scenes, in which the silhouette of a figure in the moonlight is striking or the beam of a flashlight searches for the source of a disturbing sound. My only criticism is the appalling use of CGI for a campfire.

Acting was tolerable, especially the elder sister. Where the movie fails is that towards the middle it departs from the "aliens attack" / "altered beings attack" plot to get bogged down in the tiresome survivor trope of "can we trust each other?", which gets somewhat boring. This is unfortunate, because the parts that deal with altered beings can be invigorating, such as the intense nighttime sequence on their return from getting water.

The altered beings themselves are quite intriguing - over time it seems as though they are not the mindless "zombies" we imagined, and that their behaviour follows certain rules and may include a hierarchy. Finally, their design seems to evolve, becoming more alien - colour, hands and the inexplicable white powder. I'm so curious as to what that represents, but more likely than not it was a design feature added as an afterthought to generate interest, since it is not explained in movie. Much promise wasted.

The first three seasons improve with time but season 4 was a let-down. It lacked a coherent plot. It's still unclear who was a terrorist and what their political goals were. Villains are all painted with the same one-dimensional brush, whereas in previous seasons they are more developed and motivations revealed.

It's predictable, like when a character has an epiphany that the villain is so-and-so and they're going to blow up the such-and-such, but you the viewer guessed this last episode. Yeah.

Finally, the ending. All the build-up for a cheap finale. The Triad's sinister plot is the complex equivalent of a child's grade 9 short story. "He saved them, the end." Great.

Pre-season 4 is a good time-waster however.