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Ratings4.2K
Armin_Nikkhah_Shirazi's rating
Reviews320
Armin_Nikkhah_Shirazi's rating
AMBER ALERT gives a vicarious experience for something that could realistically happen to any of us:
you sight a car matching an Amber Alert; what would you do?
Would you just call the police and leave it at that, or would you try to do more?
Most people would probably just alert the authorities and then go their own way, but if the protagonists did that, there would obviously be no movie.
There are several things I liked about this film: the originality and realism of the setup; how initially small decision like tailing the suspect from the distance lead to bigger decisions down the road, so that before long, the protagonists end up doing something they would have never agreed to doing at the outset; the prolonged sense of mystery, keeping alternate possibilities requiring drastically different decisions alive as long as possible; finally, a lesson about the consequences of one's actions.
Unfortunately, there are some flaws, too: a significant portion of the dialogue is yelled, which suggests to me that the dialogue was improvised, there could have been a dose of humor, and the protagonists were not as likable as they should have been, straddling the border of being annoying. Without these flaws, this would have been a great found footage movie.
I enjoy Found footage movies most when they manage to help me immerse myself in the movie's world and vicariously explore a hypothetical "what if" scenario. This film did that.
AMBER ALERT is not for people who let difficult characters ruin their viewing experience, or for those who hate found footage movies, but others will find this probably to be interesting and enjoyable.
you sight a car matching an Amber Alert; what would you do?
Would you just call the police and leave it at that, or would you try to do more?
Most people would probably just alert the authorities and then go their own way, but if the protagonists did that, there would obviously be no movie.
There are several things I liked about this film: the originality and realism of the setup; how initially small decision like tailing the suspect from the distance lead to bigger decisions down the road, so that before long, the protagonists end up doing something they would have never agreed to doing at the outset; the prolonged sense of mystery, keeping alternate possibilities requiring drastically different decisions alive as long as possible; finally, a lesson about the consequences of one's actions.
Unfortunately, there are some flaws, too: a significant portion of the dialogue is yelled, which suggests to me that the dialogue was improvised, there could have been a dose of humor, and the protagonists were not as likable as they should have been, straddling the border of being annoying. Without these flaws, this would have been a great found footage movie.
I enjoy Found footage movies most when they manage to help me immerse myself in the movie's world and vicariously explore a hypothetical "what if" scenario. This film did that.
AMBER ALERT is not for people who let difficult characters ruin their viewing experience, or for those who hate found footage movies, but others will find this probably to be interesting and enjoyable.
I just finished watching ENCOUNTER (2021) and found it to be a pretty good drama-thriller. Since I had not heard of its director, Michael Pearce, I checked on some of his other works on IMDb. I noticed that he has several short movies which are rated under 2, an unusually low rating on this site. This made me curious enough to watch one of them.
In STRANGER, a young man and woman are frolicking outside by a meadow, passed by a stranger. Soon it becomes apparent that the woman is actually blind, and an unexpected tragedy befalls them...
There is not a single word spoken in this short, and the ending is somewhat open. Perhaps people thought that this was too pretentious, but I did not. The moment of the life-altering event is actually delivered quite effectively using the audio, and contributes to a growing sense of unease.
I do not understand how anyone could give this such low ratings. It has an original idea, it achieves what it sets out to do, and while it may not be among the very best that short film has to offer, it is not bad. The IMDb rating of 1.7 at this time is entirely unreasonable.
In STRANGER, a young man and woman are frolicking outside by a meadow, passed by a stranger. Soon it becomes apparent that the woman is actually blind, and an unexpected tragedy befalls them...
There is not a single word spoken in this short, and the ending is somewhat open. Perhaps people thought that this was too pretentious, but I did not. The moment of the life-altering event is actually delivered quite effectively using the audio, and contributes to a growing sense of unease.
I do not understand how anyone could give this such low ratings. It has an original idea, it achieves what it sets out to do, and while it may not be among the very best that short film has to offer, it is not bad. The IMDb rating of 1.7 at this time is entirely unreasonable.