jmzalapa

This little film showed up in my search for a rainy weekend movie doom scroll with no fanfare and little in the way of expectations. I was pleasantly surprised by the acting, especially the lead. The cinematography is pretty basic; nothing amazing and there weren't too many special effects to speak of.

Overall, the pacing was good, but my one big gripe with low budget sci-fi movies is there is little to no effort in researching whatever science they put together to make the plot happen. Cryptography is a fascinating and deep field, and while it is the key talent the protagonists have, it's neither explained or demonstrated through anything but hand waving. Any other actual science is just name dropped, like "quantum theory" or "holographic theory," and personally, I see that as lazy writing.

Also, the way the time ripples happen don't really follow any sort of sense or logic, and neither do the "visitors" when they show up. It's just kind of yadda yadda'd to make the movie more interesting, I guess.

Overall, kind of meh, but saved by a nice climactic scene evoking Plato's cave allegory and an underrated acting performance from the lead. Could have been better, definitely could have been worse. Watch if you're just kind of bored and have seen everything else.

So this set had it's moments. More than once, I got a solid chuckle. And a couple of times, I had a good sized laugh. Nothing really left me in stitches, but I think the 1 and 2 star reviews are more of a "review bomb" phenomina.

The bit is better than average, but nothing ground breaking. It does have some insightful humor and moments of introspection, but Rogan seems to shout his punchlines more now than in previous specials. That, to me more than anything, detracted from the story or the punchlines because of just how frequently it was used.

Maybe I'm getting older, or maybe Always Sunny ruined the gimic of shouting punchlines... no matter the reason, I'm less and less fond of "louder = funnier."

Again, not bad, but not great either. A tick above average.

No spoilers because there's nothing to spoil.

Bad soundtrack, cliché plot and twists, melodramatic acting, nonsensical character decisions and annoying editing all wrapped into this Netflix film. It's like a dumb, extended murder-of-the-week show.

There's no real substance here to warrant watching this almost two-hour dump. Anyone who has ever seen a movie before can figure this out past the 1st act. And the ham-fisted attempt to shoehorn in an assault survivor story lands as a lame play to emotion, but ultimately goes flat because there's no character development to make the viewer interested.

Seriously, Netflix keeps churning out these steam piles and I keep hoping one will be worth watching.

Short story long, save your time.