Warning!!! Pedophile Released

I'm guessing some people would see this banned from it's title alone but it's worth a look passed the "P" word before those people find themselves too outraged. This film was rated at 7.7 when I first found the page today - I'm guessing as sometimes happens the cast, crew and their moms all sign in and hit the 9* rating at first then the voting settles to a more realistic level.

For a first film attempt on what seems to be minimal budget this wasn't too bad. I can't decide if employing a title like they did was part of a promotional gimmick to get the film some attention - which of of course works a treat in our current, media frenzy era over this subject - or if they truly wanted to touch on a topic many larger film outfits would run a mile from. Apparently the two lead characters penned most of the script and it does a fair job of covering some of the basic issues that would be encountered in a situation where a male had been accused of underage sex with his girlfriend and the fallout post-jail.

Read basic as meaning just that - the film's script doesn't reveal the complexities and depth of the issue to any real degree - it seems instead they left it to the acting and long, mostly silent scenes following 'Echo' around to do that job for them. How well it achieves that result I'm unsure. Some of the scenes and effects worked well but there was constant over use and over emphasis of the shaky hand-camera viewpoint - shakes and scene blur movement when you just didn't need and and really didn't want it - I felt like turning away for a break on occasions. On top of that there were some bizarre choices of music... everything from rave beats to a long scene with a minimalist discordant piano.

I gave this 5 out of 10. I'd loved to have given it higher for a couple of young, new actors daring to tackle the topic on zero budget. However for me it didn't work - there's way too much made of the aimless (supposedly aimed at atmosphere and character empathy I guess) wondering around scenes when that time could have far better been spent highlighting the complexities of what can go wrong within the framework of a possible wrong conviction for underage sexual assault. If you want an informed take on the social/media treatment of this issue - check out Chris Morris's infamous Brass Eye TV series on it. -

Isn't as memorable as Ryan's first effort (Amateur Porn Star Killer) or later (My Name is 'A' by anonymous) and seems a bit more ambitious, which also seems to be where it has some failings, but it's still quite interesting and effective and, of course, daring and confrontational towards a controversial subject matter. Ultimately refreshing when compared to Hollywood films, though not as solid as his other films.

This film had so many situations that resonated with me. I am a psychiatric nurse and many of my clients have had similar life experiences and have walked the same path. Shane Ryan does a great job of probing into the life of a girl who has been kicked out of everywhere and disrespected by everyone. A few things could have been done better (shaky cam is for vomiteers) and some of the acting was amateurish from the support staff (the leads were good; Miss Kai is a gem). Someone said his lines and then looked at the person whose turn it was to speak next. Argh! It's not as bad as flicking a look at the camera but things like that make me nuts.

Given the synopsis of the movie, then I must admit that I was expecting somewhat of a grand drama. Boy was I sorely disappointed.

This turned out to be an unbelievably boring movie. The storyline was just abysmal and director Shane Ryan seemed to have little idea of what to grasp and what to do here.

The movie was full of questionable and shoddy camera work that was all over the place in a constant blurry motion, and quite often not even in focus. And that made the movie seem like such a low budget movie, such as one I could make myself with my digital video camera.

It had a very pointless and boring story, where absolutely nothing happened.

It was just a low budget amateurish project about a girl walking aimlessly around and doing nothing.

"Warning!!! Pedophile Released" had some really poor editing, which didn't help to improve the enjoyment of the movie in any way. It also had a laughably bad soundtrack.

It had some adequate acting, but no script or contents for the performers to work with.

I was ready to give up on the movie after 11 minutes, but I decided to stick with it. Which was poor judgment on my account, I should have given up after those first abysmal 11 minutes, because the movie did not improve, which was why I stuck with it.

Weirdly enough, this is a movie everybody seems to have an opinion about immediately - without even having seen it. But since the title carries the word "pedophile", everybody seems to know what this is about ... and it is not. This movie is about a guy who served time for pedophilia he did not commit, and about his alleged victim, who has waited for him all these years, even if it threw her life into an abyss. And the film doesn't consider this as a statement, but tells its plot as an actual story - and in terms of storytelling, WARNING!!! PEDOPHILE RELEASED shows its ingenuity: So OK, this film has been produced on a shoestring and filmed on hand-held digital camera with only skeletal cast and crew, but it tells its compelling story in a series of greatly set-in-scene, atmospheric images and a rich cinematic language that manages to keep things moving without the use of much dialog - all of which make it hard to find anything similar in modern cinema, as this film is more reminiscent of the neorealist movement from decades ago than anything else, without ever becoming a rip-off or an unimaginative homage though. Apart from its self-assured direction, the film is also beautifully carried by Kai Lanette's (intentionally) unglamorous yet spot-on performance, which makes her, a woman in her 20's, believable even as a twelve-year-old. In a nutshell, this film is a triumph of independent, no budget cinema.