Drowning Echo

"Drowning Echo" is original in that the overall storyline is creative and offers many high concept ideas visually. There are elements of mythology, mysticism, and psychological thriller woven into the premise. And at times the film almost achieves an indie feel elevated above low-budget affair. The downfall is that there are far too many tropes fighting for space in both exposition and the horror element. No single one ever fully manifests enough to solidify "Drowning Echo" cohesively.

The acting is relatively quality work. The cast give committed performances and most characters come off as believable. There are a few moments that dialog feels forced, but never enough to cut the fluidity of the storytelling. The fault is in the sheer amount of unnecessary length of scenes and overdrawn sequences that weigh down the value of the moment and intent of the director. Then there is the whole middle section with unneeded found footage that just confuses the whole movie. Well it felt confusing to me. It takes things a bit left, and the story looses momentum.

The horror elements are a blend of classic CGI "paranormal-esque" tricks, and really cool atmospheric neon thriller elements. They work well to give some real good moments of shadowy, eerieness. The whole look of the movie is a credit to quality cinematography. The angles and lighting choices give classic horror vibe. The whole asthetic somewhere between late night TV mystery, and cable network melodrama.

Overall "Drowning Echo" will disappoint most horror fans looking for something a bit more straightforward. The overuse of varied concepts mingled together without a cohesive vision drag the entertainment value down some. However there are some cool moments and the idea that the director was going for is original. The problem is that nothing ever fully coalesced to allow "Drowning Echo" to reach it's potential completely. Even with the creature feature aspect of a hidden horror that could make poolside fun treacherous, this is a film to go into with lowered expectations.

Now I'm not saying Nereus has a good concept, but it did have something there, it did have a competent SFX team, but they really messed it up.

It tells a very messy over convoluted story about an ancient entity with a connection to water and..........I'm really not going to describe it further because it's an absolute mess.

Part visual horror part psychological it's incredibly boring, the plot is a broken mess, the cast are interchangeable and really poor and the whole movie feels like the fraction of potential here was pissed away.

When something happens, it's actually quite good for a movie of it's ilk. But things don't happen very often and even when they do they' still don't deflect from the fact that the whole movie is a shattered all over the place mess.

The SFX guys and girls should distance themselves from filmmakers like these lest find their reputations tarnished.

Messy, unlikable tosh.

The Good:

Some interesting visuals

The Bad:

Stock scream

Absolute mess of a plot

How have these people ever been friends? There is so much infighting among them, that I'm wondering what the plot of the movie actually was. Every isolated horror movie about cabins/woods/abandoned asylums, houses, hospitals/lakes, have a certain amount of infighting, but this one was over the top. This movie could easily been made with a hours run time, if they had used the clips that actually pertained to the evil entity.

Garbage to the 1000th power, stealing it's premise from the Abysss....crapola!

It's tooo looooooooong babes, why is this 103 minutes, this length is insane? They could have easily, EASILY, shaved 30-35 minutes off and had a solid indie horror. I totally love and respect the basic level idea of "spooky pool" and their core concept is intriguing and honestly kinds exciting. You had me hooked! The acting is rigid like suuuuper stilted but it's basically every single crew members first movie, including directing and writing and with that perspective they did great. Like for someone's first movie they did a respectable job. The script for being about a scary pool is actually really good. It just has too many pointless filler scenes or ones that are way too drawn out and by the time we get to our finale it's like omggg just wrap it up cause they've drug us along so much. But overall, not bad, they added some complexities and concepts that really made it work. Cinematics wise it's fine, nothing particularly mind blowing but everything looks crisp and organized. Of course the cover art is nothing like the actual product but that's to be expected with any cover that looks like this. I definitely wouldn't mind seeing more from this crew. Anyone that can take the idea of a killer swimming pool and turn it into a totally acceptable project has my interest for future endeavors