neener3707

When I saw the trailer I thought "well that's an interesting enough concept" but its directed by who its directed by so I'll take it with a grain of salt. That was a good idea because while it starts off.... ok.... it quickly descends into mediocrity, and hubris, and just plain old fashioned bad movie making.

I never really cared for any of the characters. I think these filmmakers thought they were a lot more clever than they actually are. Which seems to be symptomatic in this mans movies. They go for a Dexter vibe of insane yet a good liar/family man but its just so off putting that even with suspension of disbelief, its still absurd. One look at this killer acting "normally" and he'd jump up high on the suspect list. But that isn't the problem, its effectively a Lifetime or Hallmark movie with sinister overtones of a profoundly deep "elevated" horror film. But its not, its not even a teen scream movie.

Just another failed attempt at trying to be clever. It wasn't clever, it was 30 minutes of intrigued and then a snooze fest of several "twists" that I (and likely everyone else) saw coming or didn't particularly care about. Just dont bother, the only way this man can continue making movies (obvious by this being an HBO Max movie) is if we keep watching them, so don't.

Wow where do I start? I'm sure the film asked that as well because nothing of interest happens for the first 29 minutes, and then takes another 20 to get started and pick up an semblance of pace. You've read it in all the other reviews so I'll gloss by it and say other things that need to be said. Walking. LOTS of walking. I get the point of the film. Ever wonder what Jason was doing while the "plot" was happening and the characters are running around panicked? Well the answer to that is obvious, and it is super boring and does not translate to the screen well enough to keep most people satisfied. Just a lot of arthouse "oh look a cool tree or abandoned car" shots of walking and unbelievably long sequences of Tarkovsky-esque walking through the woods shots. It was a fun idea but ultimately hindered what could have been a very cool film. There are plenty of other films that did the "slasher film from the perspective of the killer" idea much better.

Can we talk more about that acting? Holy mother of exposition and bad acting Batman what was that? People don't talk like that to each other, people don't act like that at all let alone right before they get murdered by a giant weapon wielding crazy person. I understand this is a slasher film so I know the rebuttal, we expect more often than not face fulls of cheese as far as acting is concerned but this is not that. In the 70's and 80's we look back at with an endearing lens, in the 90's and 2000's it was either just part of the schtick or an homage. But this is just a masterclass of what we call, "my friends from high school made a movie together" bad acting.

Can we also talk about the sound mixing? What was that? This distortion for distance that is so unbearably wrong. How loud some scenes are compared to others. How there are verifiable hard cuts in which a certain amount of time has passed yet the conversation happening has not changed in distance or at all, its just still happening in the background as if they're voices in my head. I just hated it, I dont know anything about sound mixing but as a viewer all I know is what I was seeing did not match what I was hearing and its jarring and takes away from what should be seamless editing.

The only saving grace of this movie in my opinion is its gore and its kills. Glorious... just amazing. The first one? Eh.... not so much but once that gal doing yoga gets it, I almost wanted to start clapping even though I was by myself. I can imagine that was the only time in the theaters the crowd was at all interested, some people were probably jarred awake or shaken awake by their one conscious friend to see the kill after they had fallen asleep in other sections. The ending? Well I don't want to spoil anything, but it was not good, just take my word and turn it off when someone puts a necklace on a gas can and runs off.

My final verdict? Fast forward to the kills and save yourself an hour of your life.

Yes, like everyone said, its a Die Hard clone like many action films of the 90's. While sifting through my VHS collection for something dumb to watch, I found one and dumb I got. But the funny sort of dumb that when watching with a group of friends, becomes a fun experience that creates a communal taunting of this... not horrendous... but silly film. My friends and I personally enjoyed it, out of morbid curiosity, but I have a feeling that watching it alone would make you want to put your head through a wall.

It was not an outright clone of Die Hard, same basic plot with some specific/almost exact copies that are admittedly out order. Group of "mercenaries" take over building, take hostages, ulterior motive for doing so, blah blah blah, you know the plot of Die Hard so just replace an office building with a chemical plant. What is funny though is they seem to cram in as many visually similar events to Die Hard in the first 20 minutes as they could. Shooting a rocket at police vehicle, attacking a police car to get the entire force on the scene, black officer who communicates with the inside, a quasi are shaft scene, references to John Wayne, the main villains' name even rhymes with Hans Gruber (from Die Hard).

The whole movie is just hilarious, if you look at it from the perspective. The acting is all over the place, which is truly a thing to behold. Upon discovering the dead bodies of their fellow "mercenaries", they react with an "oh jeez" with the literal inflection of an 8 year old who dropped their sandwich in the playground sand (everyone watching audibly laughed the first time). The main villains' acting is that over the top, absurd acting of John Malkovich performance as Cyrus the Virus in Con Air (you know if you know). Its all just so laughable combined with the stiff and emotionless car wreck that is Jeff Wincott.

Combine all of this with laugh out loud filmmaking misfires such as every set other than the factory looking like a student's film project, to blatantly obvious ragdoll dummies being thrown over ledges, to smaller things like Jeff killing the first merc and not taking the mercs gun and continuing the film unarmed because.... yeah we get it you can do martial arts. The dialog? Lets not go there, I'm no Hemmingway but I can spot writing so amateurish I could have done it better myself.

So in summation, if you are looking for an explosive action film to watch; don't. But if you're THAT bored and got some possibly not sober friends, its a funny watch.