naff-sound

This movie doesn't live up to its rating. It's a take on the found footage genre using mostly the perspectives of laptop and cellphone camera.The viewer is supposed to feel like watching most of the scenes in realtime. Interesting concept, which doesn't play out. This movie kept me barely interested. The storyline doesn't create tension and is void of twists and major surprises. It just unfolded like I expected it to. According to some other reviewers this could be understood as a viable statement on the dangers of the internet. I find that laughable. People should be concerned about other aspects of the net than that. The tale of the anonymous killer has been told before - the movie doesn't offer anything beyond of that. 3 Stars because the idea of connecting the viewer to a live-feed as a willing witness is good, but just a concept. Also the last scene contains something like a statement of critical value.. certainly not enough to justify the drag. The "banality of evil" is a good quote with which to end the movie, but two good ideas don't make a movie float.. This production is made up of little besides the basic idea. No memorable performance on any level - fast forgotten flick.

"The Road" tells the story of violent occurrences on a stretch of an abandoned road over a timespan of 20 years. It is divided in 3 Chapters, each then years apart. The chapters are interconnected, the whole story unfolding with the third episode. The storyline moves back in time - it therefore starts with the most recent occurrence in 2008 and depicts then the incident of 1998. Finally it connects the lose strands left by the two previous episodes by showing us what happened in 1988.

Good things first: the sonic ambiance, the score if you like, is great. It pushes expectations right from the start. Bad thing : it is utterly wasted on this film. I don't want to go deep into the tremendous holes in the storyline, illogical behavior all around and very cheap and sententious depiction of the development of a psychological illness. It's enough that you know that these are annoyingly obvious even for a genre that thrives on them. The real pain of the movie is the acting. The first two chapters have a cast from the Children's Hospital of the Terminally Talentless! The script lets 16 year olds act like toddlers. The dialogs are horrible. They are like an audio summary for the blind: never telling more than the absolute obvious.

While I do think it refreshing if a horror movie for once doesn't exploit violence and gore, this movie is not giving a valuable solution - I have seen more violent fisticuffs in Stan&Laurel movies. The uneasy avoidance of graphic violence while actually implying its existence, leads to ridiculous scenes - like a girl bleeding from a head wound apparently because she fell on a mattress.

There is no special twist. It is a well used recipe in filmmaking to divide a movie in several chapters that intertwine and all get connected in the end. This was professionally executed, but without major surprises. The movie in itself is neither scary nor startling or revealing. It develops some more depth with the third chapter, which is so much better than the others that it seems to be from a different director entirely. But too little, too late.

3 Stars because sound and cinematography deserve recognition.

This movie may have been planned as a horror movie but it didn't came out as one. The supernatural theme was obviously meant as the ingredient holding the flick together, but it felt like someone got embarrassed of this and started experimenting by patching different plots and actions together - none of them is carried through to the end. I felt like listening to someone embroidering a vaguely interesting story with unnecessary detail: the movie is frequently wandering off by showing actions and telling story lines with no importance or meaning for the main plot. It is using the stylistic inconsistency as a device, but in my opinion this is not well enough executed. It left me slightly annoyed.. especially when I felt forced to witness some interactions between the main character and a young divorcée dragging along, which then break off whimsily like they couldn't find the space to end properly what they started. I found the frequent depiction of the main actress in revealing clothing ridiculous and therefore looked for a hint of self-irony but couldn't find one. I think it was really meant as: "we also could show some bum".. The movie delivers shock moments too scarcely to play the horror card even though the set-up would have left more than ample room for them! Why? It's a trial, I think. It's not bad, it's uncommon and mostly entertaining. But sadly it's not good either.. it feels unbalanced. So there is the ghost-story, some relationship drama.. at some point you may even think it's a serial killer story - but with every strand of action there is the phenomenon of negligence after introduction! the problem is that even after having finished watching the movie, I wasn't clear about its intention - it lacks a theme! The production value is good though and the result is surprisingly coherent - at least enough to keep me vaguely entertained.. Honoring the eagerness to do things differently and the technical workmanship, I give it 5 stars.