JodyBruchon

The people behind this film are notorious for making movies meant to be "so bad it's good" a la Sharknado. You'll see the same faces involved in Jurassic Shark and Raiders of the Lost Shark. I was introduced to these movies through I Hate Everything's review of Jurassic Shark and went on to watch Raiders of the Lost Shark, then ultimately this movie. With the two shark movies as the basis, Avenging Force is surprisingly good. It's still not a great movie but it has a lot more charm and better production in general than later works by the same crew. It's at least worth a watch if you like amateur films that don't have a budget but made a good attempt.

I'm pretty annoyed fresh off of watching this. As so many other reviews have said, the visual and musical side of this is fantastic, to the point that I remarked to my significant other that "this would have worked with the idle parts cut out and no dialogue at all." Unfortunately, this movie has a plot thin enough that it almost belongs in a 90s porno. The story is woefully neglected. In the first 20 minutes, you find yourself excited to see how things develop because of how exquisite the presentation is. There is unfortunately zero payoff for your investment. The rules of the world are not explained. The quirks that make the premise of the story so interesting are left completely undeveloped. You don't care about what happens because you aren't told why you should care. This isn't the first Netflix-produced anime movie I've seen with this issue, either; it seems like Netflix anime is produced like a fan fiction with a huge budget. Everything looks amazing on the outside, yet the story could have been written on notebook paper by a hormonal eighth-grader. I wanted so badly for this to dig into the interesting world they started to build, but by the end there was nothing but a concrete foundation and some "uwu I wuv you" to work with.

The thing I resent the most is all the higher ratings just for the audiovisual work. The missing story merits a 5/10 at absolute best, but I rated it down because others rated it up foolishly and someone has to counter such garbage.

I am very lenient with movies. I give them a good chance to get past the rocky introductory parts and exposition. I wanted to give this one a chance because the start of it was clearly setting it up to be something I often enjoy, : a dark, suspenseful drama with complex characters and layers of secrets. Unfortunately, I made it around half an hour in and bailed out. It felt like it had gone on for an hour, and that 30 minutes should have been cut down to about 8 minutes of content. One of my most common criticisms of films is that they could have been cut down without losing anything important and this is clearly a major offender in that regard. The actors are clearly quite good, but their dialogue is far too short and widely spaced out. Shots are held for far too long. Directors usually think they're setting the desired mood smartly by dragging things out to force a stronger impression when they're really boring the audience and killing off the desired effect instead.

The best part was the part where a car was burning. The wide shot at twilight was beautiful and the narration over it was appropriately paced and delivered. It was by far the most competently done part that I witnessed. It would be nice if the director understood that longer doesn't mean better; I would probably have seen it through if they made every shot as competent as that one and tossed out all the dead air that adds nothing to the story whatsoever.