HEFILM's reviews

Yes it's offputting to start with all the "white" actors playing Aztecs but once you get used to this the story is on the side of the Aztecs, not the Spanish and their Christian campaign is shown as a type of genocide which isn't what you'd expect, perhaps especially from DeMille.

The film is centered on the female who constantly drives the story. The final battle is pretty impressive,the final moment sappy, which in the face of tougher view seems more out of place.

The early section does get pretty slow but once you get through that it steadily builds. The costumes and sets are pretty impressive and get more so as it moves along.

It's hard to find a good version of this, the ones that seem to be around are all intertitled in French! So you have to put up with ready tiny subtitles in English.

First off this film has more style than I expect from John Farrow as a director, well photographed with style and camera movement. However the noir flashback structure and the various obvious Maltese Falcon knock off elements are pretty uninteresting this time around, pretty much every cliche you can think of comes up and seems to just get in the way of the real story starting. Much of the start is and a long long boat ride to Mexico. All these tiresome things, take up too much run time. Once the film finally gets to Mexico and some nice, but rather sparse, on location sequences it finally becomes interersting, as is the music by a Mexican symphonic composer. The actors do what they can with tiresome roles. Too bad they didn't actually make this mostly about the ruins and threat of ancient curses, which are pushed in all the promotional material for the film. Too bad the story doesn't do much with these possibly exciting elements. You could almost fast forward to when they arrive in Mexico and not miss anything.

I saw this as Graveyard in a mediocre copy. The thing is producer Kevin Francis, I'm told, won't allow these movie he produced to be released now. Turner is good so it Bates, but the ending confrontation really goes on and on and drags out so much that when the very appropriate ending comes it lacks the impact it should have. Perhaps part of the problem is the lack of music and too talky a finale. The story is more disturbing than scary but the beginning is really the best part, then after an unexpected kill the movie becomes slower and less interesting. Deserves to be seen and seen in better form. Of the three horror films Francis produced I'd put this in the middle, The Ghoul is worse, the final Werewolf film is the least original but the most satisfying.

I guess my feeling is what you may hear about this film before you watch it, is actually more interesting than watching the film itself.

Not only are virtually all the scenes in this film dialogue scenes, there is very little going on visually other than photographing these scenes in a static way. To explain other problems I need to go vaguely into some details but they don't contain any real spoilers, no specifics will be gone into.

So you know going in, this is a sort of Frankenstein film, meaning a man creates a being in this case a female. So you'd expect a creation scene? Nope, not in this film. There is an escape scene later, you'd expect that'd be an exciting scene. Nope they tell you about the escape afterwards. The film is just not interesting in anything purely visual, the exception being a couple shots of the Mandrake root. Kind of like Vertigo, which is a film whose unspoken subject in Necrophilia, this film's unspoken subject is Incest. But also like Vertigo the film isn't really about this "unspoken" subject really, it's just there for as Hitch might say, "naughty" people to think about outside the real content of the film itself.

As a talky film and lacking the ability to talk the film moves at a very slow pace. This is the type silent film where they show people's lips and mouths moving for a long time, you cut to the intertitle to explai what they say, then you cut back to the scene and watch them still speaking. This is not a unique thing to this silent film, but the smarter filmmakers didn't do this.

The lead female Alraune is acted pretty well, but all the acting is pretty surface level and pretty "Big," again not something that can be common in silent films, but not in the best of them.

Also as I write this in 2025, no good version of the film exists so the translations I could find from German into English were pretty bad and the visual quality also poor. I hear a restoration exists in HD. That would certainly help the film. It will however remain a static and talky film.

Yes I guess the fact that a film with only 2 people wandering around in an occasionally supernatural woods can't sustain interest for a full feature, it should have been shorter, but the first 3rd of the film is very strong and moody, then it just turns into long long set piece scenes, 2 of which are mostly just blackness with noises, neither of which work. The ending isn't totally grim but doesn't make sense. It seems in the last half of the movie they are pretty much just making it up as they go along. There is a needless element of the husband recording stuff on his videocamera for a bit that isn't needed and I have to say, really, at this point we still have to do Blair Witch. Digital effects are mostly pretty poor and that hurts as the film builds up effect mood only for some of the pay offs to be mediocre CG. Music score doesn't help much, but some great locations do! There just isn't enough here ultimately to keep you going for this long. The wife's story goes especially wrong almost comically so.

This is a boring filmed stage play, to call it adapted to be a film means they turned some cameras on while the actors talked.

Time has perhaps not been kind, the basic sort of Twilight Zone premise would be more interesting back then than it is now, the ultimate message is interesting, but this is barely a movie. It's mostly dull medium shots of people talking and talking, enough talk for three films and it quickly becomes boring. There is just very little visual story telling here. Interesting set just like the subject matter is dully photographed with no creative staging for the camera. Understand I'm a fan of Basil Dearden, the director, I think he's under appreciated, so I expected to like this or find it interesting, but it failed. J. B. Priestley is also an interesting writer, but the allegory here is pretty obvious and heavy handed. There seems to be too many characters to keep track of or care much about, the one comic relief character comes off best. A general low budget feel to the whole thing also holds it back, characters tell you about the wonderful things you are seeing but you never see any of them. It's a chore to get through this film.

SyFy channel, at this point, no longer cranks out crappy films with crappy CGI and taking place all during the day. I see people reviewing this saying it's typical, well it's not good, but it has very few fx, what Fx there are, are actually for the most part well done.

The 1960's movie was loaded with monsters this has only one sort of, and a volcano--the volcano fx are the weakest, but really very little happens.

Yes it's cheap, too cheap to even have any horses in the civil war scenes. Civil War, scenes, they are just a few more actors walking around.

The problem is this is more a lot budget version of the LOST tv show than Mysterious Island, only without much better writing and much better acting. Though the writing is the main villain here. The character conflict are very obvious, Black Soldier and Confederate Soldier. Two sisters one spoiled the other not. All done in not-too-confrontational style.

Only the music score seems to try for the Bernard Herrmman sound from the 60's version, and it just drones on and on, but what does it have to really score anyway?

The first killing on the island is pretty well done, or is the "action" highlight of the film, the rest of the few actor scenes are poorly done.

Occasionally Mark Shepard as director moves the camera in an attempt to add some interest, but the whole thing is dragged down but the group walking and walking and talking and talking about nothing.

Really went into this believing it was an erotic thriller but most of it is just light submissive stuff with an overlay of female empowerment--or it would seem anti empowerment as it's the woman who secretly wants to be "told what to do." There is no thriller here, just a drama about someone cheating, and cheating and cheating, only because of fantasies that run counter to their mainstream life.

The director, be she gay or not, is, among other things, a therapist, which is probably why the acting is first rate but there is also a lot of talk and role playing. The only nudity is from Kidman that seems rather strange and the whole thing has a sell out twist that makes it all very safe. By that I mean that Kidman's character runs a corporation yet is sexually unfufilled despite what seems a happy marriage and kids--one of whom is either gay or trans--possibly. So the story concept seems to be teasing the idea of does this powerful woman secretly want to be helpless in order to be sexually happy? An edgy topic for sure.

The bulk of the movie, too much, are the sex scenes though mostly it's about her being told to do things, like drink milk from a cat bowl. The movie wallows in this stuff, perhaps fan of submission will enjoy it on that level, why not? But the story, especially the ending, doesn't come off in any kind of supportive or sympathetic way. As can be the case this movie settles for a women good, men bad ending, leaving behind some interesting and challenging elements along the way. And it's a long way, there is little plot and the ending when it finally comes is rather rushed.

Kidman is well cast and all the actors make the material more interesting, if ultimately not compelling, for longer than would be possible. Banderas as her husbands role should realy be larger.

Another thing is a fair amount of wealth porn, both Kidman and Bandaras are super rich. This fights against some connection the audience could have for them, but instead you'll find yourself saying, "Wow, nice Pool. Wow, nice office. Wow, he's a broadway play director. Wow nice wardrobe!

Interesting use of music and songs which is very loud and starts and stops abruptly. A lot of shallow focus, the opening shot is effective and unusual, but this lack of focus is distracting as it goes on, having things pull in and out of focus, there are moments where one eye is in focus and not the other, it's just not very well shot and feels a bit like video. Kidman sometimes looks great and sometimes aging, which if controlled could fit into the story very neatly, but it seems more an accident of how it was lit and shot, not intent.

So again, this is NOT A THRILLER. It's slightly highminded arthouse sexploitation film, if that's what you're looking for you'll find this most satisfying.

I saw this on a recent, as of 2024, blu ray release and was shocked when I went to IMDB to discover that I guess I'd seen it. Now how could I forget the film, well after watching it I can see how. It's not memorable. I had given it a 6 but I've revised that more to a 4.

The problems are the script and directing, both by the same man who seems to have little talent at either. The performances are just ok, no one seems very committed to a role, other than Neri. There are a few really beautiful shots of her, how could there not be?, but she's had better parts and looked better in much better films.

There is very little style and the shots at times barely cut together. The music score is pretty good but it stops and starts at odd moments sometimes in mid scene, it all feels like no one with much experience was at the helm of the movie.

For something that's supposed to be shocking, the violence and nudity are few and far between, not a problem if the drama is compelling, but it's not.

There is one laughable scene with a red hooded guy popping, like in Bewitched, in and out in various places. The editing is sluggish so you can tell one actor is freezing in place while the other moves and they start shooting again. It's really half heartedly done.

There is a sword fight and well, uh, that's about it, I guess there sort of is another sword fight eventually.

It's all rather flatly done and pretty dull, for a film called The Devil's Lover the whole devil angle is also dull and almost silly the way it's done. A film that doesn't know how to be erotic horrific or compelling, decent production values raise it above worse films, but it looks like what it is, a producer directing and not knowing how.

In the Severin 2024 release there is an interview with actor Robert Woods who claims he was brought in to try to save the movie, to edit the film, be in it in a small role added later and to direct some of it. Even with all that he says it's not better than just ok and I'd agree.

The 2024 release looks and sounds very good, features a dull commentary track with lot of silence between not too interesting things to say.

So a kind of regime change happened at Full Moon as far as those in charge of making their films in Cleveland and it shows in a positive way. First off C Courtney Joyner is back writing and that makes probably the most difference, his credits go back as far as Prison, but Full Moon fans would know him for his run of credits at Full Moon when it was making films for Paramount. The story feels like the right bits from Dr, Jekyll and Sister Hyde have been put into a Artificial world therapy session gone wrong scenerio.

Another name from the past is Tom Callaway shooting the film, which also makes a difference there is a progession from a normal intentionally flat look to one with hard shadows and overall the camera moves more than usual from company president Charles Band.

The sort of mad doctor and his assistant characters are both pretty badly acted and probably miscast, but the rest of the supporting cast and lead crazy are really quite good.

There is blood and gore and black and white sequences all something unsual from recent Full Moon releases and it has a few but good exterior locations, the one by the graveyard is the best one,

The helmet that takes people to Quadrant isn't a great prop, but the overall production values are up from recent Cleveland films as well.

The ending is pretty poorly filmed which is too bad, but the rest holds together and feels like a movie. Music score isn't bad though it repeats itself a bit too much and then turns into a John Carpenter knock off rather abruptly towards the end.

Some weird AI/CGI demons look fairly scary, the Black and White London based stuff is kind of a missed opportunity, the weird green forest when another characters nightmares/ Quadrant work better, and as I mentioned the final section, well, is probably the weakest but can't ruin it entirely.

So a promising one off production or a sign of better things ahead, only time will tell, but this time Full Moon has something worth watching, for once. With special credtit to the lead actress!

A movie about one person who wanders about in the same building for an entire feature could be potentially boring. In a way this wastes no time being boring, but I don't mean to totally dismiss it.

The film's central character rarely talks, mostly in stilted voice over that wants to be as good as that in Let's Scare Jessica to Death, and rarely changes expression.

The film is deliberately slow moving, with very little editing, I swear there are several shots in this movie that must last 5 minutes and feel like much more. There is some virtue in this as far as creating tension and suspense as you wait, even hope, for something to happen. The sound design for the film is good, working hard to inject menace and life into the smallest little details.

I have to think they were going for a David Lynch arthouse dread here, but it's just too slow and no offense, not too wel cast or acted, not horribly so, but when you basically have only one person in the whole movie you need a miraculous performance.

The material is some Lovecraftian "stuff" a central book that eventually, everything in this movie seems like eventually something will happen, is just a rip off of Evil Deads' book of the dead. Which is a let down, the film isn't doing the same old schlockly thing you expect and going instead for a Lynch foreign film regional one-offness that it at times almost achieves. But by the time you reach the halfway point and the pace just gets slower and slower, it's a fail.

I think if you held your breath during the long static shots in the movie you'd probably die from lack of oxygen, it's that slow.

It all leads to exactly where you might think, there is a scene where I think the lead girl is being pleasured by her dead grandmother monster. I think. I don't think that's been in a movie before.

No nudiy or violence, just once-in-a-while effective weirdness if only it at least built slowly rather than just repeating the same ideas in the slowest way possible.

Panga is, I guess a hooked African Knife and that's what the film was sold as, until it failed and instead became part of the shaggy series of dog movies under that title.

But now it should just be seen and called Panga, it reflects the 80s everything is about knives cutting people era of horror. Now to be clear this film has little gore, it does feature bits of sexual exploitation in two scenes, Harrison self-consciously holding up her breasts to make them look larger. She isn't actor enough to carry the movie which has plenty of other problems.

Though we have Christopher Lee top billed, he barely has anything to do or is even in most of the film. Eventuallly a monster does appear, though even the monster must still lumber around, briefly with the Panga.

So do we don't get lots of killings, which might help a film where nothing really happes for half it's running time. The few times the Panga kills someone we have a shot of the blade rising and falling through frame--as if it's a TV movie, and even these shots don't birng any fear or, if you're after it, any blood or terror.

It's directed by an editor of the Least of the first three Star Wars films and one that drew criticism in part for doing a lot of intercutting between scenes making all the scenes seem less important individually than creataing any tension that that happens in this film too, which may make it sound more like it has some style than it does.

The film just can't pull off any kind of action at all, even if it's two people walking up stairs the camera seems awkwardly placed and the action artificial. The director, has no feel for the genre, there are only one or two kinda of moody shots and one long tedious walking around a dark empty house scene. He never directed another movie.

The obnoxious cheap sounding electric music score took two people to push some kind of cheesy thin synth momentum into the non eventful proceedings. It wasn't good then and it's worse now as far as hurting not helping the movie.

Harrison is a big problem, she's all surface, bugging out her eyes and letting her mouth hang open, getting messy and then suddenly having perfect hair and make up again. There is one of the unintentionally funniest reaction shots in genre history. She finds a body and screams while messing up her hair with both hands like she's in a hair commercial showing off how much body her hair has, then she slow walks out of the room and has perfect hair again. It's a high or low light that has to be seen to be believed.

Lee finally has a good moment telling his characters backstory which sounds much better than anything we've had to sit through in this movie. If he and the possibly interesting African supernatural elements had been allowed to take up more time the film could have been better. Or if it was going to be a slasher film then where is all the slashing and elaborate set-piece suspense scenes? Not in this movie that's where!!!

Then the film climaxes with not one but two totally unlikely and increbibly huge instant fires. The climax takes place in the rain yet one lantern instantly ignites a large very gree cane field!

So interesting perhaps as an example of a movie failing to pull off older horror elements while including trendy ones of the day. Ligthing is often done very flatly and though dolby stereo it doesn't do anything creative or effective with its sound either, and the cheesy synth music sounds like it's playing on a poolside AM radio of the day.

All said a loser, but not the worse of THE CURSE movies if that says anything. As others point out and like most of THE CURSE movies it's wasn't made to be one in the first place.

Why all this is called A SNAKE OF JUNE is beyond me, but this is a powerful and effective film, that builds of the strengths of director Tsukamoto's film TETSUO IRON MAN, while showing that he's made a much deeper film that at the same time is less graphic but more moving.

He seemed to be progressing in the same way that David Cronenberg did up to a point where his least graphic film, DEAD RINGERS is his most powerful and disturbing because he's internalized all the gross out gags he used on the way to making that great film. Since then Cronenberg has largely lost his way, had no where else to go, or perhaps just failed to find the right material to continue his growth with. Likewise Tsukamoto may well reach a dead end eventually too, but not yet.

Any film about sex has lots of baggage to carry and overcome, or be overwhelmed by. The problem with films that feature sexual themes and situations is that they usually parade as art but are really exploitation and/or masturbatory fantasies's both for their makers and their audience. If you're making a sex movie then make a sex movie don't try to tell anyone, especially yourself, that you're making art. The problem with turning a camera on and aiming it at a naked person is that the audience will always go, "wow, they are naked!" All character and the artifice of the story has built, the crucial suspension of disbelief will instantly vanish. The movie instantly becomes a sea of cheap sexual thrills. Whole magazines have sprung up just to show off the latest naked freeze frames of actresses mostly, not exclusively, who bare it all. The argument that pornographers make that screen sexuality is forbidden while screen violence is accepted don't understand, or pretend not to know, that nakedness is real where screen violence is false. The audience knows it. The characters in the movie aren't really dead at the end. But, wow, did you see her she was totally naked!!! Oh and women out there, don't pretend you don't talk about butt shots male actors indulge in, I've heard you while you thought I wasn't listening.

Now stay with me just a moment longer. Some filmmakers like Paul Verhoven for example are so thrilled to show off the nudity and outrageousness in general that their enthusiasm can be infectious and you go along with them. Or of course you can just ignore what the press releases and what critics say and just enjoy this type of film as a good peep show. For example, Roger Ebert is openly hot for certain actresses and will almost invariably love movies they are in when they are naked, but his endorsements of the films don't admit this fact, it skews his judgement. I'm saying if you want to go to enjoy the cheap naked thrills for what they are that's great. But that's all it is. Love it for what it is, not for what it's not.

A SNAKE OF JUNE is loaded with elements that could make it a perfectly fine art house (remember that this term in the 60's was a euphemism for a place to see racy foreign films which featured nudity before it was allowed stateside) sex film. But Tsukamoto successfully makes a genuine film about sex/voyeurism/obsession/ and redemption all at the same time. He also manages to make the sex sexy when he wants to and disturbing when he wants to as well.

The lead, Asuka Kurosawa, is a large part of this. She is believably mousy at the start and the remarkably beautiful and more importantly sensual later on. Tsukamoto saves he on screen nudity for close to the end of the film, this helps as well. And when it does come, it comes at a moment when all the three main characters share the moment at the same time. So it's a climax on many levels for all characters at the same time.

The stalker/photographer character is driving her to a sexual awakening and his dealing with his own obsession with his own illness. The actual awakening is portrayed as being humiliating and more painful than pleasurable, but he'll show the pleasure by the end as well. There's a wonderful moment that shows this power of sexual love as healing that I can't reveal here without ruining it.

The story is broken into sections the first of which is the wife's view of the story, and then the husband's. There is, unlike in THE GRUDGE, no overlapping repeated time elements, but the story is seen from the husband's point of view for he back half. This works surprisingly well. The husband seems like such a freak in the beginning that it is surprising how we get to know him and route for him to become what his wife really needs.

The whole story is about what the characters really need and finding that to be a successful human being.

Now there are problems in this second half of the film. Ironically the more obviously weird elements or now post cyber punk elements aren't really needed and are confusing. How and why does the husband find himself with a bunch of other men suddenly watching women being drowned in a tank? Why does he make no mention of this ever happening to him or call the police afterwards? Why does the photographer suddenly have a doctor Octopus type of metal penis thing that he grabs the husband with at one point? (Maybe this is the Snake of the title, June is the rainiest month in Japan) The director himself confesses in one of the featurettes he doesn't even know what the penis thing is doing in the movie.

Perhaps these things are only in the husband's imagination but that's not clear and frankly it's a stretch on my part to forgive these out of place elements. These things aren't needed in the film, it's strange and compelling enough without them. These are just left over images that worked much better in an overtly gonzo film like TETSUO than here.

The film is deliberately paced and not so much shot in black and white as in blue and white. It feels like what it is 16mm blownup and printed on color stock, but it's frequently and always effective. The jerky hand held moments are intercut with more deliberate and forceful compositions, but watching closely the hand held elements are used only when the characters are uncertain, not just put in to make it look like a reality TV show. The sound mix available in 5.1 or in DTS doesn't really demand or use either very much. Post dubbing of the actors voices is distracting at times. Chu Ishiwawa's mostly synthesized music score is effective except in some of the more overtly horror scenes where is sounds like bad horror movie music.

The menu pages are all hyped up, especially the opening menu page that essentially shows you the first shots of the movie. When you press play you seem to be seeing the menu page twice in a row when actually it's the start of the film. A poor choice on the DVD producer's side.

The two featurettes are both interesting and worth the time to hear the actors and crew talk seriously about something worth talking seriously about. Director Tsukamoto, who plays the stalker/photographer himself talks about how he found the character less and less threatening the more he thought about it, this attitude makes the film much richer than it would have been had he made the film earlier in his career as he would have liked to.

Though Tartan on the original dvd US release, puts a banner on the box that says ASIA EXTREME this is not a film likely to be endorsed by the large Asian, especially Japanese, anime/ pornography crowd. It will be too slow and way too non graphic for them.

There is far too much going on in this film to talk about much of it here especially without ruining it if you haven't seen it. The script has some admittedly willfully obscure elements both of story and of character, but the film probably rewards repeated viewings that will make just what the hell is going on make more and more sense on many levels if you care to really delve into this interesting and powerful little movie.

Let's face it (no pun intended) the best and most influential horror films from the start of 21st century came from Asia, mostly Japan and more recently Korea. Of course the influences aren't just on our own domestic horror films but on other Asian films as well. Films like Korea's FACE for example, which is really a second tier film but still one worth seeing, especially given the large selection of crap that hovers dangerously nearby on the DVD shelves as a genre fan goes out to rent or more riskily buy a horror film to watch. Given those options, I'd say this is more of a rental.

I stay away from plot synopsis in reviews as much as possible, but the one on this box is perhaps typically of this distributor, Tartan, not really what the film is about. The focus here is on a forensic facial reconstruction worker whose daughter he, and we, quickly believe has been given a transplanted heart from a donor who is really a victim of a serial killer. This premise is an excuse to see the ghost crawling on a ceiling and peeking out through the now overly familiar long straight black hair with its overly familiar blood red eyes. One scene has the little girl open her closet and act afraid, it really looks like she has a THE GRUDGE poster in her closet, it's that much alike. For all the very professionally done and controlled style of the movie and the well timed scares, the scares themselves are now mostly been-there-done-that in other Asian films. And every scene in the first third of the movie is about some kind of scare or another.

Then the movie becomes more about the mystery of who is the killer and the scares mostly go away. The wrap up of the killer's identity is a typical and slightly confused rush job. There are too many early scenes that end in a jump and too few later on for the film's own good. The well acted and ultimately important romantic subplot is fine other than the fact that the set up for it is ridiculous, really a cliche, in this case from American films, of the good natured but not too bright female assistant/side kick who eventually charms our hero into caring for her despite the fact she has no reason to be there in the first place.

First time feature director Hyun has done numerous short films and says in his interview that he doesn't see this as being any different than those. Well, yes and no, he doesn't know how to pace a feature yet, though this one isn't overlong at 88 minutes.

For a film about the rarely used and slightly controversial procedure of basically sculpting a clay face over a skull in an attempt to identify the victim, it doesn't do enough with the procedure. Where is the scene with the clay face talking or bleeding or melting? Instead we cutaway to the always exciting (not) nearby computer monitors where the CG image of the head can spin around (you see it looks more 3D if it spins around) as it has skin magically morph onto it, etc. There were opportunities here to do more original and specific scares related to the premise, than the end result shows.

Director Hyun also reveals in a rather poorly shot interview (which ends abruptly) that his intentions with this film weren't to make a brutal ghost film but a more human one. He does succeed at this, he does not however, despite his claims in the same interview, succeed at fresh horror and ghost imagery. It almost seems like perhaps someone else "got to" the film after he did, as he speaks about imagery that is not in the finished film. A bit more of this imagery is seen in two trailers (one hidden as an Easter Egg) that might have helped overcome the GRUDGE/RING elements that pull this otherwise worthy film down a notch.

The image on the cover art is striking, more so than the actual appearance of the face in FACE. Tartan's DVD presentation is all pro (though for an Asian Extreme movie there isn't much in it gore wise or exploitation wise to call extreme) with moving menu pages and the always welcome DTS as a sound option. The three separate interviews with cast, crew, director may not be action packed but they are also mostly hype free and that alone is kind of refreshing and a nice inclusion.

The surround sound is used effectively if not perhaps as much as it could have been. The music score is effective if unmemorable the same can be said of the actors' performances. FACE is a real film, not a pandering festival of ineptitude like the last 5 horror rentals I've seen. There is one interesting ghost appearance involving a type of split screen effect that you can see works even better in the trailer. Again, I wonder who's responsible for some of the final edit choices in the film, I get the feeling it could have worked better than it does.

Then again, this is still much better than most of what's out there to choose from and better than many American remakes and films "inspired" by Asia's leadership in the field.

The problem with this movie is that it should have been photographed more poorly. I actually can't remember ever thinking that until watching SEARCHING FOR HAIZMANN. It's a problem because this is yet another BLAIR WITCH PROJECT knock off, coming long after the cycle seemed to be mercifully over.

As soon as BLAIR WITCH started making money it divided people sharply into the "one of the greats" and "not even a film" camps of opinion. Regardless of if you thought it was a fake display of bad acting and shaky camera work I think you would still agree that virtually all of the rip offs and attempted parodies of BLAIR WITCH prove that the original does contain enough unrepeatable lighting in a bottle moments that it should be left alone. Well a good case has been made by the makers of the, starts-off-well-but-ends -badly, THE LAST BROADCAST to prove that it inspired THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT which in a way makes BLAIR the best of the knock offs of the basic relatively new mockumentary genre.

This time the real, or claimed to be real, subject matter involves a lost soul-eternal-man-antichrist named Haizmann who three kids who are internet pals decide to go after while at the same time hoping for some romance along the way. A documentary crew decides to go along for the ride. Are you convinced by any of this set up yet?

Now searching for the Antichrist hasn't previously proved to be a fertile ground for movie characters to use to find true love, or at least a roll in the hay, and it's a pretty bogus reason on the surface, but then again much of the downtime in Robert Wise's near masterpiece THE HAUNTING is filled by the characters trying to drink and joke their way into proving life after death so perhaps SEARCHING FOR HAIZMANN still might have a chance. Actually it's kind of a reversal of the crappy horror movie set up where kids go out to have a roll in the hay and decide to "have a seance" or "raise the devil" or "go into the haunted house/ funhouse/woods/etc..." as part of their evenings fun. The lesson here I guess is that going out to party and have sex really should be enough fun for everyone, and isn't that a message we can all get behind?

SEARCHING FOR HAIZMANN starts off with some dreadful fake actors pretending to not be actors talking to the camera that immediately let you know you're in trouble. After that things occasionally get better before they ultimately get worse. Along the way it tries to recreate, sometimes more than once, it's own version of BLAIR WITCHES instantly trademark moments, like the panicked run through the woods and the tilted angle final shot. The acting here can't be just said to be bad as much as it's confused since you have actors trying to act like they aren't acting. To try to alleviate this endemic problem one character is actually supposed to be an actor in "reel" life.

So I'm back to my "it should have been shot more poorly overall problem." It all looks the same. Doesn't matter if it's supposed to be "real" footage of things happening, or videotaped "interviews" it all looks artificially lit and theatrical albeit in a low low budget fashion. The rather good music and spooky 5.1 sound job further reminds you always that you are watching a movie not a documentary. One of the unsung virtues of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was it's excellent use of sound but it never made you think you were watching a movie as the sound effects do here. Of course nothing wrong with fiction films that are just fiction, but HAIZMANN'S story structure has to have some of it be "real" to hold your interest and it never is.

The film's opening credit sequence features a colorful if video looking series of overlapping images and computery- looking graphics that are supposed to be old texts from ancient books. Later in the film some of these same title graphics are layered over top of events occurring in the film which only further reminds you you are watching a movie during what should be shocking moments. Actually it reminds you of the opening credits which make you wonder just when all this tediousity might end.

Another problem is that the scope of this story is too large for the filmmakers to pull off. BLAIR WITCH was set is largely in a too bland looking forest, here the story spans both time and the globe, yet all we see are the interiors of various crew member's apartments.

Despite a case of budget impoverishment they did manage to get performances from a number of name (or former name) actors. Their presence is distracting but Clint Howard and especially Tippi Hedren come off well. Stephen (ANIMAL HOUSE, THE UNSEEN) Furst seems to loose weight as he gets older and is doing a rather good Woody Allen impersonation here in his small part that of course totally takes you out of any mood of being scared. The three "kids" who are the leads are pretty bad, though Jenny Mollen as Grace Robin does manage to have a few good hysterical moments.

Production values though suffer, especially in the prop department, there are some pretty fake looking headless chickens in one scene and some really bad paintings supposedly done by the demonic Haizmann over the course of many years that look like they were done by a fifth grader five minutes before they were plopped down in front of the camera. Now maybe those were real chickens and maybe the actual paintings did look like that. So what? They both look bad and fake here. I've never heard of Haizmann and though the filmmakers claim in a short extra that he's real that of course proves nothing in the context of a mockumentary like this.

The DVD presentation, I watched, is decent by the low standards of Brentwood Entertainment that is. Some artifacting comes and goes but the 5.1 sound is nice and there is a short extra, curiously called a commentary, that is actually an interview with the directors.

Too busy trying to be real in parts to take off as real suspense or horror, too artificial to be convincing as a documentary SEARCHING FOR HAIZMANN ends up as being not much of either.

Review of the Dvd released by Tartan Video

This is a well packaged film with all the right kind of reviews and accolades on the box to make a foreign or art film lover (and those are among my loves) at least rent it. Unfortunately the actual film suffers from many things that make people hate foreign and art films.

I was going to watch this of course to review it, but had my brother and a good friend of mine who like this kind of film insist on watching it with me. About 50 minutes in they were begging me to turn it off. Why?

Well for starters you can see by the running time above. This is a long movie but it feels much longer. It's a small story, really about two people and they are either in small grimy interiors or large barren exteriors. A review on the box compares it to a Tarkovsky movie. Japon actually starts with a long but interesting drive from the city out into the wasteland and the sequence is much like the long driving sequences at the beginning fo Tarkovsky's version of SOLARIS. But this film is paced for people who think that Tarkovsky or Werner Herzog's movies move too fast for them. It feels here, unlike with those two sometimes great filmmakers, that the pace is a result of a first time director not knowing what to really take time with and so then he just takes too much time with everything.

The story is about a semi hobbled older man who goes out to the middle of nowhere to kill himself. He finds only a bleak lonely wilderness wasteland environment. He stays at an old woman's shack for a while and that's all that happens until about 50 minutes in. He has a inexplicable dream of a bikini clad beauty kissing the old woman a moment put on the back of the DVD box I suppose to try to ensnare some of the gay art house audience.

The old woman tells him a story about a relative of her's who was in prison and used to masturbate to a picture of the virgin Mary. That night the man is about to shoot himself and instead decides to graphically masturbate. I guess the story has awakened in him what the DVD box promises the film offers "raw sexuality."

This is a way distributors sell foreign films to American audiences. You'll see real sexy stuff done by those uninhibited foreigners we all wish we were, or at least enjoy seeing being decadent. Well you do get to watch two horses have pretty graphic real sex from start to finish. Then you also have one of the longest most awkward joyless-feel-bad-for-the-actors sex scenes in film history. Neither of the leads are the type of people you want to see naked. They don't have any chemistry together, though the stilted slo-motion paced dialogue never allows them to either. In fact Magdalena Flores' whole performance feels like what it is, a confused non actor dealing with a script that is probably unplayable and then being pushed around in this really distasteful sex scene. In fact her filmography shows that her previous experience in films before this was as a continuity person! The male lead Alejandro Ferretis also feels like a non actor though he does have presence and a strong profile. He has since been murdered so this is his sole film credit.

Oh you do get to see several real dead, or really killed on or almost on camera and or rotting animals. Pretty sexy stuff watching that decapitated birds head blink and gasp for air for an eternity. This is momentarily fascinating but in a real pornography of violence way. The film just all starts to seem grimy and pointless a short ways in and then you just think it will never end at all.

Look many or most American films especially right now have almost no connection to real life. But this film doesn't either. This isn't the way people act or speak in real life and this story doesn't have enough going on any level to justify the running time or the graphically ugly moments. It seems like a first time director out to shock the audience for fear of rejection of his ideas. The film only ends up being tedious and unpleasant, not stirringly, shocking or deep.

Widescreen 2:35 photography is sort of washed out looking and the hand held walking around shots at the beginning are pretty hard to watch without getting motion sickness even on the smaller home screen. There isn't much music but it is really effective when it does play as is the occasional expressive use of sound. I was only watching a screener so I did not have the interview with the director that is on the actual release version. Honestly I sort of wonder what he was thinking at times, perhaps that would give some answers, but would not make it a better film.

There may be promise of better things to come in moments of Japon for first time director Carlos Reygadas but the rewards he's gotten for this film aren't deserved yet. I freely admit I ended up fast forwarding to reach the end of it. I think most people will probably just hit stop.

KONOICHI LADY NINJA came out in the U. S. in 2002 105 minutes on DVD from Media Blasters/ Tokyo Shock line of releases.

Like cigarettes certain DVD boxes should probably warn viewers of certain risks. This one would say WARNING: THIS IS PART SEVEN IN A SERIES OF FILMS AND WILL MAKE NO SENSE AT ALL TO ANYONE WHO HASN'T SEEN ANY OF THE PREVIOUS FILMS, THOUGH WE DON'T WANT TO TELL YOU THAT OR YOU WON'T RENT OR BUY IT.

That said I get the feeling it would still be mostly senseless but that's not to say it's not fun in a Hi Octane wacky Asian way. There is almost never a shortage of ideas in Japanese fantasy films and this one is no exception, but at over 90 minutes and with no sense of story or purpose it's a bit of a trial to get through.

It seems like it will be simple enough when it starts. A group of bad guys, one of whom wears anachronistic glass goggles, attack a convent. One of the bad guys pulls out both his eyes and throws them on the ground so that they can turn into monsters to help in the battle. They kill some people fly around in the air spray blood, not spurt, spray blood in all directions and then leave without finishing the job. Sort of a Pearl Harbor kind of attack, they just make their enemy really mad. It would seem that the rest of the film we be a revenge movie as the female survivors track down the outlandish baddies and kill them real good with more gushering blood and goofy super powers. The group of sisters, Ninja's I guess, are called Konoichi, but like much of what is in this movie that's only a guess. These sisters in their quest for revenge do occasionally bear their very very small breasts, at one point this is done to invoke what they call NINJA MAGIC: NIPPLE SHOCK WAVE!

Sort of like a Power Rangers type thing in the middle of a fight a character will yell out things like, NINJA MAGIC: RED PHOENIX, FLYING BULLET POWER, or ROTTING EGG CURSE, or ENERGY BALL and unconvincing but bizarre powers will suddenly become part of the fight scene. The women to combat the ENERGY BALL thing sit on the ground spread their legs suck the energy balls into their, well you know, and then blow the bad guy into a thousand pieces. After this scene you can pretty much stop watching, it never tops this moment.

Yes, this isn't RASHOMAN that's for sure.

Moments like this will keep you going through the baffling thousand characters with a thousand motivations and special skills and agendas plot. I'm sure if I'd seen at least a few of the other films this would be more involving and less frustrating and by the end tedious. If you think you've seen campy Japanese samurai type screaming in movies before, well, this is the Mount Everest of over the top screaming. The scream however does lack the conviction of the authentic over the top screaming Asian movies. By this point the filmmaker's are camping it up and know they are that robs it of a bit of the fun.

The DVD box should also say something else WARNING: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION OF THIS FILM IS PERHAPS THE WORST DUBBING JOB IN HISTORY. It sounds like a SCTV parody of a English dub. It sounds like it was recorded by two guys, and maybe a girl or one of them just using a high voice, who do everthing. One of the characters sounds like John Candy and the other sounds like Joe Flaherty doing a dead on Yoda impersonation. It never matches anyone's lips but it sounds like what it is, two guys sitting in a room rushing half heartedly through the dialogue. It never actually sounds like it's part of the rest of the audio track or on a locations where the film takes place at. It cheapens the film enormously, just check out any scene in the much better Japanese surround mix and compare. The English one is childishly bad. Just for fun it references American action films. The lines MAKE MY DAY, and I'LL BE BACK pop up when you least expect them. Not that this takes away from anything given the nature of the film. Then again trying to make sense of this fast paced goofy story is even harder when trying to watch subtitles and keep up. It's nice they did an English track, I think done specially for this release, pity it's so poor.

The film's soundtrack isn't helped by the tinny, sounds-like-FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA'S DRACULA -done-on-1980's-keyboards music score by Torsten Rasch.

Extras on the disk reveal that certainly the filmmakers' intended much of the film to be funny. The director/ actor Ozawa is a pretty clever and amusing in person, he just needs to be a better film story teller. The extras also feature the sort of random nature that occasionally plagues Media Blaster releases. You never know when some extra will just suddenly start or stop in mid sentence. But you have to wonder, given the still unreleased titles of really classic Japanese horror and fantasy films, that this one would pop up while other more deserving ones remain lost to modern audiences both here and in Japan itself. I don't know perhaps this film is something of a relief from all the deadly serious and equally senseless RING and THE GRUDGE knock offs flooding our DVD shelves.

Best element of the film in terms of a classical look is the cinematography by Shouji Ebara. There are many classy visuals in between the grade school wackiness of the rest of it. Just imagine CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON directed by Lyold Kaufman and you'll have some idea, though Kaufman would have made sure it made a bit more sense and had larger breasts and more of them, and maybe you'd get to see the LESBIAN CANNIBAL HO DOWN video for the 100th time. For me that never grows old.

This is probably best watched as a party tape with some slash metal music playing over the soundtrack and the subtitles turned off. In that context it rates 4 stars.

American star who's career is in trouble goes to Europe to appear in a multinational production of little distinction. Those were the days, the late 1960's through mid 1970's and unless your name was Clint Eastwood probably nothing much came of the experience as far as the finished film was concerned. Ah, I feel sort of nostalgic for those euro trash co productions that you just knew were really about tax shelters as well as being one last chance for the star to headline a movie and have a vacation at the viewing public's expense.

Well, ANGEL OF DEATH is just such a movie and it is only from 2002! The original, more germane, title is SEMANA SANTA which means Easter or Easter week, referring to the parades and celebrations that feature hooded monks, one of whom is suspected of being the killer.

No less than six countries are listed in the credits and though set in Spain part of it was shot in Hamburg Germany. I guess I'm talking about all this because all of that is more interesting than the movie itself.

Other than the pleasing distractions of the setting, the story is really really tired. Though based on a novel it really feels like the work of a tired American television cop show writer. Doing some research I found that I was half right, Roy Mitchell is a English television cop show writer. One symbolic killing sparks an investigation. It is hinted that there is some religious connection to the killing. Ultimately this isn't explored in any depth. Woman Cop forced on a male counterpart who doesn't respect her. She is shown to kick ass early in the film to excuse her becoming pretty much just a typical weak woman for the killer to throw around by the end. The dialogue is really flat. A character gets locked in a room by the killer and immediately pounds on the door and yells, "Open this door!" Pretty much all the dialogue is on this level of freshness and creativity. It sounds even worse because we have a bunch of thick accented Europeans speaking lamely written television dialogue while we (the audience) are to pretend they are all really Spaniards. Though when we see anything written down it is in Spanish. It's all just not very convincing.

In the midst of this is Mira Sorvino sporting a pretty good accent but looking very out of place with her blonde hair amid all the dark haired natives. Though it is explained she is half American she should have just died her hair. She pretty much plays the whole film with the same slightly worried or interested expression. There is no chemistry between her and co star Oliver Martinez and though her part isn't written to really carry the film she doesn't rise to the challenge to elevate the material. I guess in this case Mira Sorvino and Olivier Martinez were an item at the time and thought it would be fun to go to Europe and pretend to hate each other on film. She I guess comes off better since she seems like an actress giving a poor performance where he comes off as being a non actor trying to act mean and tough.

Speaking earlier of Clint Eastwood, Mira certainly is in need of Clint saving her post Oscar career the way he did for Hillary Swank.

Ciro Cappellari's location photography makes you want to go there but generates no suspense or style other than a surface gloss to the film. All the production levels are about on par with a really well produced cable movie but not really up to feature standards. The first crime scene is rather gruesome and the second killing is too but after that it's a dullish hunt for the killer structure. The revelation is something of a cheat but does nothing to revive your interest in the story by that point. Two supporting characters are sort of interesting, but so what? One of these is Alida Valli, who makes the most of what little they allow her to do here. She's at least an authentic 70's Euro character actress, having been in SUSPIRIA, LISA AND THE DEVIL, THE ANTICHRIST to name a few of her impressive credits. Mira Sorvino seems almost in awe of her during their scenes together and for good reason, Valli is actually acting! But Valli's presence, and she does have that, just reminds you how blandly directed the film is.

To increase the growing sense of inertia there are extended flashback sequences in the middle of the film set during the Spanish revolution revealing Valli's character's origins.

Asleep at the helm director, Pepe Danquart, got to love that name, directs a movie that cuts together properly but doesn't tell an exciting story. Nor is he able to get a good performance from his leading lady. Nothing is done poorly enough to become silly, other than one scene where Sorvino gets stuck to a staircase rail with a bull fighting pike through the hand and has to pretend she can't get free while fighting and stabbing occurs around her between the macho men.

Music score adds little except in some probably authentic Catholic parade scenes and source music. 5.1 mix does almost nothing with the surround channels.

ANGEL OF DEATH does little with anything. The DVD does offer trailers for a number of better movies available from MGM. Despite the Spanish setting the only alternate language is French which makes no sense given the large domestic U. S. video audience of Spanish speakers who might be interested in the film because of the setting. Oh well, perhaps this is a small mercy for them.

Not a bad effort from star writer director Levy, but first timer mistakes keep it from really taking off. It's also all rather mild in all regards, be it as romance or drama or semi tragedy or comedy it dabbles in all these to not very exciting funny or moving ends. All the characters tend to speak alike and the performances are also of the soft-just above a whisper variety that make you want to shake them and ask them to speak up at times.

The title is kind of funny, with it's Charlie Brown allusions. It's no spoiler to say the film is about Levy's character dying at the start and how this effects his husband and his husbands friends.

It's really about this group of friends, two gay men, former lovers, and their gal pal a sort of actress. They are all seemingly very well off finacially which makes this a sort of mild neurotic problems of the upper class story, how bad can you feel as they all wear expensive clothing and hang out in the beautiful locations beautifully decorated. The story sets up possible financial issues for Levy's character but these are dropped. You really kind of feel not much is at stake, Levy's character is kind of sad, never seems on the verge of collapse though, nor does he display much bitter wit--aside from one very funny line.

It feels like a pretty good first draft of a script, there is one good twist early on that doesn't really go anywhere after that, you wish some real bitter comedy or real soul shattering grief might errupt but never does. Levy is a talented performer getting to make his his movie here, but as a filmmaker and feature length writer he shows his lack of experience and a lack of being able to look at the material from an audience point of view. The valid points the film does make about grief and friendship tend to just get repeated over and over again in the dialogue. It's pretty much all talk actually, the two kind of dramatic scenes happen off screen. One nice "date scene" at an art gallery is an exception.

Visually it's all smooth and pretty looking, the only thing that stands out is Levy's glasses, often they glow in an otherwise dark scene, this happens over and over again, is this to highlight his eyes, it tends to take away from the expression in them actually, it seems like either just a choice or a try at something that doesn't totally work.

Location work in Paris and London are beautiful, music score doesn't add much life toany of it. The fact that the film could probably be exactly the same with a male and female married couple rather and a gay couple sort of points to the generic polite middle of the quiet road the film remains on all the way through.

Also as a first time director and writer Levy's influences show, most of them being from Woody Allen, perhaps mostly Annie Hall which is far superior.

It seems that no one involved really read any Poe, and possibly not the original novelist either. Of course if you dont' know Poe's work whill that bother you? I can't say, but I think the disjointed nature and mismatching of elements will still leave you feeling like it's a jumble.

It also goes on a bit long, with some additional killing thrown in more to keep the story going that develop the story itself and a whole Hammer Horror movie element suddenly emerging only to then, hopefully, be forgotten if we are to accept the ending.

So as a detective movie it kind of works for awhile, as a horror film it doesn't work, as a sort of Historical figure, Poe, brought to life it does succeed at times and that give the movie some heart--no pun intented given the nature of the story.

The acting is pretty good, though it does dip into the mumbling and face making that seems on the one hand to try to make it seem more natural and on the other hand to make sure we know it's a period piece. The sound mix is the type which has people turning on the subtitles to read what they can't hear--a trend that shows real disconnect in current habits of production and "consuming" of filmed shows and movies. No doubt this film was seen as having little or no commercial value as far as being released theatrically and so was sold to Netflix.

It's really Poe and Poe's character, very well acted, who is portrayed as a nerdy unattractive figure that give the film any weight, but then again with the Detective Bale plays being the main character, the film loses momentum when he is off screen especially in the kind of long middle section of the film which seems to want to explain Poe's fiction by creating a fictional real life encounter/romance/mystery element--for awhile.

I don't think screenwriter/director Cooper really has a feel for horror and perhaps not really for period this time around.

Gillian Anderson is mostly wasted and a bit, though appropriately, wasted looking in the film. Howard Shore's score doesn't add much in the way of propelling the story or binding the elements together, it seems to play briefly once in awhile to let us know we are transitioning from one scene to another one.

The look of the film is one of those bluish not much color affairs, though feels big budget and pretty authentic to locations and the time period. Like the film itself it's slick without having much personality though it doesn't try to be too hip either visually.

Any detective story will shift gears and the fun is either liking that or feeling ultimately cheated once you know the whole story. This one it feels a bit like a cheat but the issue is it's long and one of those shift in gears doesn't really work and makes no sense at all.

Yes it's true there is no creeping flesh in this movie and not that much flesh really either.

I watched the restored and uncut version released by Severin and it's mostly a lot of talk, terrible acting and terrible dubbing and music. There is a lot of eye rolling, the lead villain is especially terrible.

Howard Vernon looks younger than I'm used to seeing him, but the voice they use to dub him sounds like it's from some giant of a man it's pitched so low.

There is little style to the direction, save one flashback scene to a rape scene, but there isn't much sleaze to be enjoyed here unless you like lots of shots of real heart surgery--interestingly enough the director had a bad heart, perhaps that's why he found this footage so interesting as it goes on and on.

The movie to goes on and on, lots of sitting around a big table eating and talking then walking around the castle and talking, it's really quite dull and protracted. Every scene just goes on and on to try to make the film longer.

Nudity is brief, there are two rape scenes that aren't very convinging, the plot doesn't make much sense which wouldn't matter if there were suspenseful set pieces. The real castle they shot at gives a bit of production value but they don't do much with it.

I'd say skip this one, don't be fooled by the title as that's not what the movie is about. I should mention there is a beat attack, a pretty shoddy bear attack and bear suit but at least something threatening happens.

Poorly made and dull dull dull.

Earl Holliman is really good in this movie. Often in films he came off as being rather stiff but if you fast forward to his moments in the film you are seeing the only virtues it's got.

Sold as a thriller it has very little thrills or courtroom drama either, it spends most of it's time with the young judge splitting his time in the sack with a white Blonde of a Mexican black haired girl, guess which one his mother prefers. There is a bit of frank talk but not much heat to these romanic elements and one long travelogue day in Mexico seuqence that tries to convince us we aren't just on the Universal Backlot the whole time.

Lamont Johnson had a long career doing good television work, but all his features feel like bad tv movies and this is no exception, even though it's shot by Robert Burks who shot many Hitchcock films this feels overlit and small scale, though it's supposed to be a period film all the costumes look like costumes freshly cleaned in between every shot.

Even Gene Hackman doesn't make any impression here. Really for the most part this tries to be a kind of light weight romance with the young judge bantering with his Mexican mom. Then once in awhile we cut abruptly to something related to the supposed race against the clock to save a man's life.

The film could have sordid elements but probably the censors at the time forbid this so there is nothing much to shake you out of waiting for the next commercial, which doesn't happen as it's not really the television movie it feels like.

Bafflingly happy to lucky Leonard Roseman score, as if told, hey let's push the romance.

The thriller plot is pretty goofy really but perhaps the few twists there might work if the movie was at all interested in being about the murder of the law. It might have had something to say. Who knows maybe they tried to keep too much in from the novel so everything feels undeveloped except the judge's romance and that hardly is about a Covenant with Death--something a rushed speech near the end mentions very briefly because, why should a movie with that title have anything to do with that subject matter.

A dud.

Anthony Ferrante is now left to direct small scale shark movies in the aftermath of his Sharknado films becoming both the summit and pit of such things. That was all awhile ago now. Those films had larger and larger budgets and probably helped crasht the Science Fiction channelas they finally stopping making their lousy CGI ANIMAL attack movies. The fact that is over is something to be thankful for, but sadly Ferrante was unable to escape from the cheap but still clutching at him movie produced by The Asylum, a company that pays so little the State of California Labor board was actually after them for awhile.

In this one a too skinny girl and her too handsome boyfriend encounter a too much like BIlly Zane in Dead calm guy, rather well acted by Francisco Angelini. It'd be nice to see him have a real career, his take on the "Indianapolis" speech--if you dont' know what that is then you've never watched a shark movie before--is well done, though somewhat ruined by a sudden need, by the director, to shake the camera around, perhaps thinking this is the Blair Witch confessional/goodbye cruel work, mom I loved you, moment from that film. Hard to keep the iconic rip off moments straight I guess.

A couple of the cgi shark shots look okay, none of the shark attacks are convincing or scary or exciting. Some nice drone shots, which could be stock footage but probably aren't. A choppy ineffective music score credited to three people--probably just reused music from other Asylum produced movies.

It takes them 53 minutes to figure out they can use a cell phone to call for help and that's the least of the logic problems in the movie.

The movie is bits of other shark movies and basically runs out of ideas about an hour in so the lead gal then becomes more of less blind and we get back to a kind of Dead Calm plot for a bit. There are a numbe of soft focus shots supposed to be the point of view of our hapless lead gal, but none of them match what would be her natural perspective, the point of view shots aren't her actual point of view, though they often try to be. Someone kicks her and is aiming way off camera, this type of thing happens over and over.

It's just after so many years and so many shark movies you'd think Ferrante would have it down to an art or at least a craft, then again these are now made for so little money is so little time maybe there just isn't any art or craft that can escape. Ferrante is left to try to do what he can in the remains of Asyulm the production company. Too bad for him, but as viewers we can look elsewhere in this case.

This film is better than SWIM which Ferrante just wrote, to be even more terribly directed by Jared Cohnhead. Swim I believe was the first movie to bear the shame of the TUBI ORIGINAL brand, one we can only hope leaves behind what was done to death and badly a few years ago to do some films that can be more like Tubi's wide ranging titles. To be clear I like Tubi as a streaming network and I hope for better from this ORIGINAL BRAND, but I've not gotten it yet.

I suppose this film could be a drinking game with every time a character yells, "Faster." or "Swim," of or course "Shark."