Blackout

First of all this is not a horror movie! I've sat trough this entire movie waiting for the 'horror' but it never came. This movie is really, really bad. I don't mean that in a cool Michael Jackson-1987- music video type of way. This movie is more a thriller, with a lot of drama in it. The movie is one hour and ten minutes. To me it felt like it was over two hours. A terrible script made it impossible for me to like this movie.

The movie is about three people who are stuck in an elevator. As time goes by things get crazier and crazier. The plot itself is a big plothole. Without giving it away, in this day and age, it's simply not possible to get stuck in an elevator like that. The viewer will notice this along the way, and this certainly doesn't do the credibility of this movie any good.

For a movie that is straight to DVD I was pleasantly surprised with the visuals. Not once, did I get the feeling that this is a struggling movie. It's beautifully shot. The tone is dark. You could see the director put time and effort in the making of this movie.

The first minutes looked promising but then something changed. It began showing flashbacks. I was cool with this because it gave a little backstory on the characters. But the flashbacks kept going on and on in this movie. The problem with this is that it killed the pacing of this movie. It almost felt like I was watching drama. It wasn't what I expected of this movie and there was almost no real suspense till near the end.

The dialogue is cloggy a lot of the times and interesting some of the times. Acting was bad on some parts in the beginning and got better after I think 20 minutes. As a matter of fact, one character annoyed me endlessly .The movie tries to develop the characters but doesn't do a good job. Because it's so slow paced, I lost interest in the characters. The backstories just aren't interesting.

I didn't like the 'big revelation' near the end. You know the part of the movie where all the pieces of the puzzles fit together. I expected something bigger and intriguing. I was searching for some redemption, some reward for sitting trough this mess, but it was so predictable and rushed.

Bottom line: It's garbage. A big, smelly one. With a bunch of flies on it.

2/10

Such a low rating on IMDb! I don't write many reviews but feel compelled to write a short one (if IMDb allowed me to) to redress the balance. Blackout was one of the best movies I've seen in the past 6 months. The best thing about the movie is that you don't know what's going to happen next - unlike the rubbish, yawn inducing "thriller" Lakeview Terrace. It is violent & disturbing in parts - especially against women so wouldn't recommend it as a date movie. All the actors were good with the protagonist being particularly menacing! It's not laden with special effects - it doesn't need to be. It's a thriller, not a horror but unlike some movies is thrilling.

BLACKOUT is another low budget B-movie thriller with bags of potential but little thought process gone into the execution. Thus this is a film that looks cheap throughout, and which becomes boring not long after you start watching. This is because the whole movie is padded out with flashbacks to explore the characters of the three people trapped in the lift, flashbacks which add little except to increase the running time.

Cast-wise, the film is in firm hands with the presence of Aidan Gillen (GAME OF THRONES), but sadly the actors can't do a lot with what are relatively one dimensional characters. There's violence here but very little suspense, and the dark cinematography fails to make much of the setting or indeed to bring out the claustrophobia inherent in the situation. For a better trapped-in-a-lift movie, check out ELEVATOR.

I had heard nothing about this film before it came up in the TV listings. I hadn't even seen it on the shelves of my local DVD store. I read the write-up on the TV and it looked interesting and so I decided to watch it. Not the best film of its type, but still quite a good watch, but more of that later, here's a brief synopsis.

Three people board an elevator in an old apartment building. It is a holiday weekend and most of the residents have gone away. The elevator rises past the ninth floor and then a power outage leaves it stuck between nine and ten. As time passes we learn about the three occupants. Karl is a surgeon; he has a young daughter and is grieving for his wife who had died tragically. Claudia is asthmatic, a student who is worried about her grandmother who has a terminal illness. Tommy, who has bruised knuckles has come from his girlfriend, Francesca's house and is in a hurry. They do all the usual things, press the alarm button, open the doors and shout, but to no avail. We are told in flashback the events that led these three to be on this elevator and it makes for some interesting revelations, especially when we discover one particularly gruesome secret that makes one of them very dangerous. But, of course, I'm not going to give that away, so I'll leave it here.

This is quite a tense claustrophobic drama that unfolds into an exciting thriller in the end. I like the way the back-stories of the three main characters slowly unfold, which adds to the tension. Decent performances from the entire main cast, so honourable mentions go to Amber Tamblyn as Claudia, Aidan Gillen as Karl, Armie Hammer as Tommy and Katie Stuart as Francesca.

This version has a running time of only 82 minutes which, I felt, was just right. Any longer and I think I may have got bored. As I said at the beginning, it's not the best film of its type, but having said that, I did find it quite entertaining and pretty gruesome in places. So, it's not one for the feint hearted, but quite an interesting film none the less. Recommended.

My score: 6.3/10

'Blackout' is one of those obscure little multinational affairs that can either be jaw-droppingly bad or a rare unearthed gem - happily, it's the latter. Three characters are trapped overnight in a stalled elevator, bickering and bitching as they try and find a way out while thinking back to the sequence of events that led them there. These 'Lost'-style flashbacks eventually reveal that one of their number is a vicious sociopath.

It's clear that Mexican director Castaneda is influenced more by the character driven horror of the sixties and seventies than by vapid eighties slashers, but his interest in people shouldn't be mistaken for squeamishness when it comes to ugly sexual violence - it's been a long time since I wanted to see a bad guy get what he deserves as much as I did watching 'Blackout'. Castaneda uses more than a few moves from the David Fincher play-book, with the camera squeezing through keyholes and cracks and plummeting down elevator shafts, and the whole thing is beautifully photographed, belying what was in truth a meager budget of only $4 million. A great psychological thriller from a director who deserves success.