Paintball

You will love or hate this one. The originality of this flick is also the way people disliked it. It's the first movie from director Daniel Benmayor. It's a good effort but of course he tried to combine other movies in his flick. It's a kind of survival flick with a mix of torture porn. So far so good but when it comes to the slaughtering he decided to do it from first person view. No probs but he showed it to us in the style predator/terminator but with colorless and negative viewing. So suddenly the blood turns white or grey and that doesn't work at all. It works for some shots but almost all killings are from the killer's point, a bit too much. It's not too gory, and there is some suspense but if he only had added the right color for the RED stuff well, it would have been much better. The storyline is very simple, some things aren't really explained but still, it's not that bad, one to see and probably forget.

I'm still waiting for the day that I'll break my duck and participate in a paintball game, especially if going back for in-camp training every year isn't enough that I'll want to wield a rifle with paint ammunition, and go around fragging peers or strangers in the opposite team. Best played with a big group of friends (or against people you dislike), this sport is picking up momentum, and specialized shops selling paintball gear have been sprouting up, giving indication of its popularity.

If only the cost of the game would go down, or if the terrain could be a little more challenging, like this one in the film Paintball, set in a fictional Redball Woods, touted as Europe's largest renegade paintball field, which would give infantry junkies a run for their money in terrain topology, with plenty of space for section movement and the application of section movement in order to organize and take out the enemy. But that's a dream playground, and as its advertisement touts, you have the power to choose whether to live or die.

The horror here, besides the fact that it's a film that failed to exploit its potential and chances, is of course for someone to have a weird sense of humour, and decided to substitute their paint ammunition, for real rounds meant to kill. Imagine the odds when all you have is a weapon firing paint, and the other party having a weapon meant to kill. Then there's this mysterious, savage player who doesn't seem to play for either side, from whom we adopt the POV from, and behind his thermal mask we see the bloody atrocities that he gets himself into when dispatching innocent players.

The story is pretty much standard, introducing us to the group of strangers who have signed up to participate in the game, and have to work together with great difficulty when they know that they're in for deep, deep trouble. It's like an amalgamation of Battle Royale and Hostel, where rich dudes sign up for something, only to find the tables turned and it's a fight for survival, with every man for himself. Their mission is to go from checkpoint to checkpoint and pick up stuff that they could use, such as bullet proof vests and a real machete, together with constant bickering as to who gets to use what.

You can't help but to apply horror film sensibilities in wondering which caricature gets to be killed how, and in what order. In fact, with their lack of unison, this is something of a given, and with characters who don't appeal, you'll just switch off automatically. The other drawback is of course the story by Mario Schoendorff being really lacklustre, with director Daniel Benmayor not being able to bring out any sense of tension or thrills, having everything played out in a rather flat manner, despite the slight revelation toward the end which was a little to late to make any impact, coming across more like a sick joke played by Redball Woods.

The only redeeming grace that stood out from the bad acting, caricatures and weak story, is the occasional flashes of brilliance in its initial long tracking shot of pandemonium. And that had given the film a lot of promise, only to be let down right after. I was impressed by how much was going on with people running, firing, taking cover, paint ammunition flying, with the entire mayhem played out for a constantly moving camera without breaking into a cut. I had expected more, but as the body count rose, the brilliance unfortunately diminished. The money shot was at the front, and was just about the best thing in the entire film.

And the final nail that sealed the coffin shut, was the inexplicable final scene. I have no idea what gives, and it could have ended one scene before, though conventional but at least it provides the film a proper closure rather than the hokey open ended finish that just made it look plain silly. I suppose with more experience under their belts, the filmmakers would know how to bring out the best of a story, and know when to pull the plug when things go awry, rather than to prolong the misery. Strictly for paintball fans, but even then you'd rather prefer to be playing the game, than to watch a horrible horror film about it.

I don't exactly know anymore why I thought that "Paintball" could easily have been a cool and exciting survival/slasher movie when I rented it… Maybe because I went paintballing with a group of friends recently and you immediately link this game to adrenalin-rushing action and sportive kicks? Or perhaps because I have a tremendous weakness for equally obscure and similarly themed flicks from the 1980's, like "TAG: The Assassination Game", "Master Blaster" and "The Zero Boys"? All these flicks share the same plot, namely that a dim-witted but fun shootout game turns deadly when one or more participants start using real ammunition. None of them are to be considered genre classics, or even remotely great films for that matter, but they nonetheless provided pure and unpretentious entertainment. Entertainment is also exactly what I wanted to get out of "Paintball", but apparently that was too much to ask for … It's truly a dire effort, with an utterly dumb and implausible plot, and sadly also severely lacking gore, brutality and fast-paced suspense/excitement. "Paintball" is a European production – more specifically a Spanish one – and the creators obviously wanted to further exploit the worldwide impression that ALL Europeans are psychopathic butchers with a fetish for torturing Americans. Hence we're getting some kind of ridiculous mixture between the aforementioned 80's titles and Eli Roth's "Hostel". A bunch of people are in the back of a shaky truck, heading out to the remote Redwoods area and preparing themselves for a large-scaled and allegedly super-deluxe paintballing contest. Upon their first confrontation with another team already, it becomes clear that they are all defenseless puppets in much more sadistic and profitable game, run from an illegal control room somewhere in the city. It's kind of a dumb twist, if you ask me, but even more imbecilic than the plot are the totally bland and unremarkable characters. Each and every single member in the group of protagonists irritated me enormously, what with their whining and selfishness, and I literally wished for none of them to survive the ordeal. Director Daniel Benmayor also thought it would be a good idea to film all the killings from POV angle and through a sort of unclear brown camera filter. Result: the killings are hectically shot and extremely dull. There's nearly not enough bloodshed or cruelty for die-hard horror fanatics, let alone the admirers of the nowadays popular torture porn genre. The film doesn't take enough advantage of the sublime forestry filming locations and we don't learn enough about the actual villains that are running the show. "Paintball" a complete failure across all departments.

I guess pun intended with the summary line. The idea is really good, but the movie itself isn't. It's a shame, that they couldn't make something out of it. The title gives away a little bit and of course you can imagine, that this won't be a regular Paintball game, that you will watch in this movie.

There are quite a few neat scenes, but especially one gimmick (where the camera uses a filter and therefor the picture you're seeing is "different") that it uses, wears off pretty quickly. Add to that, whiny characters (not all, but too many) and not that many different ones, so you could root for a particular character. It moves along too slow and any tension that gets build up, is destroyed pretty quickly. Some nice (gory) scenes won't help that either (not to mention, that some of them are shot through the aforementioned filter, which is really bad).

I'm reviewing this as a curiosity, possibly the worst I've ever seen. It's not one of those so bad it's good, more so bad that, yawn, who could ever care? So what are the problems? No story – but that's not unusual in a film like this. No characters – can also happen in this kind of softish horror, but there's usually someone, even if badly acted and paper-thin, to latch onto. Not here. Makes no sense – frequently a problem in horror of all kinds and here it's made worse by the fact that there's absolutely nothing to hook you in and pull you along. Unexplained stuff happens all the time - example: why not take the car with keys in it and how did we get from there to railroad tracks? Maybe if I'd cared even a little bit, I'd have paid more attention and just maybe made a bit more sense of it.

So what does happen? People run around a lot, rarely for any sensible reason. They shout a lot, usually all at the same time so you can't tell what any of them are shouting. The women (and only them) scream, gasp and sob a lot – not that unreasonable when nasty stuff starts up, but I suspect plenty of men would do the same in the unlikely event that real life could ever be remotely like this.

This movie is a perfect 1. There's nothing here worth seeing, the kind of thing I never get to see because I walk out/ switch channels/ throw the DVD in the garbage if even the opening 5-10 minutes are this bad. This time I made myself watch, waiting for something interesting to happen. It never did and I wasted 90 minutes of my life. Don't make the same mistake.