Recovery

I read the reviews on here and honestly the movie isn't as bad as they want to make you believe. It's for sure not the greatest thriller horror ever but also not the worst. It's mostly the last fifteen minutes that aren't that great. And also the dialogues aren't that great either. I think it could have used a bit more gore. But nonetheless there are a couple moments of suspense. The beginning isn't bad either. The cast is what you expect to be with this kind of movies, not the greatest but at least they gave it a shot. I would just have made the last part of the movie differently. But unlike other movies, with this one I don't really regret watching it. I won't watch it a second time though.

But well done as far as production. I guess you just gotta run with it. Pretty good acting. Pretty unbelievable storyline. It's worth watching for a laugh.

Im just writing this as a warning to other viewers out there do not waste your time on this incredible piece of space waste. From the start the story line fails to be convincing and it just gets thinner as the movie stumbles forward. Sigh, the lousy generic inexpressive electronic dance music complete works as a great soundtrack to this preposterously boring movie. I'm glad i did not watch it sober anyway...when my girlfriend who had fallen asleep during this torture asked me how it ended when i woke up, my kind of good mood flew out the window, because i actually had forgotten about the whole 82 minutes and it just came back to me, the incredibly dumb and unrealistic ways the actors reacts to stuff happening in the movie, the lousy music, the boring setting, the missing logic everywhere. The actors should as soon as possible (if they have not already) quit their jobs and go beg to flip burgers or whatever. This was a catastrophe. face palm. Sigh. Please dear production company, don't make more movies, get a new start in your lives, start a cleaning company or something useful. Cause you actually don't know how to entertain, Have you ever watched movies at all? do you guys know what plots, storytelling, acting and logic means? Im so furious that people like you actually has enough time and money to fart out this nonsense, that is so damn hard to cope with...and the facts that you don't have an all awful review just breaks my heart and i have lost my faith in humanity decades ago but this is the dot over the i.

This starts with some men brutalizing a female captive. After catching a cheating boyfriend, Jessie (Kirby Bliss Blanton) and Kim (Rachel DiPillo) are new friends going out together into the night. Along the way, they are joined by Jessie's geek brother Miles (Alex Shaffer) and bad boy Logan (Samuel Larsen). Jessie loses her phone and Kim disappears. The remaining three uses an app to recover the phone.

The story is a little muddled about these characters. It turns out that there is a reason for that. While I like where this goes, it does come with issues. Most of this movie feels like a drunken night with a bunch of new friends who don't know each other. I've had those nights. I'm sure that all of you have too. Mostly, those nights end up with the group splintering. At times, that's this movie. It threatens to splinter into pieces. As for the ending, there are still issues and some of it doesn't make sense. They also keep doing the horror thing where nobody picks up a weapon or finish off the bad guys. Eventually, one does grab the hammer, but it is a frustrating trope.

NOTE: I was given a screener copy of this film for the Dark Discussions Podcast.

Reverse home invasion films seem to be a thing this year. Films like Intruders and Don't Breathe tell tales of people breaking into the homes only to find something horrible waiting for them. I am sure there is something significant in that.

Unlike those other films, in which our protagonists are criminals trapped by bigger threats, Jess (Kirby Bliss Blanton), Logan (James Landry Hebert) and Miles (Alex Shaffer) are relative innocents drawn into a spider's web spun by the suburban equivalent of TCM's sawyer family.

How effective you find the film will likely depend on how much empathy you have for the teenage characters (Jess is about to graduate High School), who mostly act like teenage characters; in search of a good time, they lie to their parents, experiment with drugs, cheat on each other, and spend too much time on their phones. It is telling that the characters spend much of the film looking for Jess's phone, with little concern over the fate of their new friend Kim, who vanished along with it. Still, in a genre that is still grappling with how to deal with new technology in old tropes, using the phone as bait to draw in victims is inspired.

The film is a slow burn - though only 82 minutes long, more than half of that is spent leading up to the confrontation between Jess's friends and their would-be abductors. Once they arrive at the death trap that is the antagonist's home, there is still much Scooby Doo style investigation that takes place before Daddy gets home. Much of the action in the house is confusing, and I never got a handle on it's layout, but I suspect that was the director's intent.

Once the action does take place, I found the violence to be more authentic than stylish, with a few moments of good practical gore, and I rather liked the Phantom of the Opera tension between Jess and Edward.