Son's Will

This movie is the first of its kind of these kinds of movies in Serbia. It has a great pace; the background lore is given in moderation; the characters are believable and you easily love the and cheer for the heroes, and hate and boo the villains, without anyone coming off as comical; character motivations are there, and every reaction makes sense from an internal logic standpoint.

The movie tells a classic hero's journey tale: a farm guy leaves his home behind to embark on a quest to save the ones he love, gets the girl, fights the bad guy minions to have an epic showdown with the main bad guy at the end, and returning to the starting places, having changed in the process.

The movie blends Serbian culture, style, and folklore elements with modern and more "Western" style, resulting in a very unique blend. It might be wrongully called "Serbian Mad Max" or "Serbian Fallout", but the comparison is only superficial: a post-apocalyptic setting. This is where the similarities end. It's a thing of its own, with its own identity, and a possibility of a wider story with future installments.

If this is the first of these kinds of modern epics to come, then it is a bright future for sure!

Honestly, this is the most original premise which I have seen in quite a few years. It combines cultural ethnic legacy through the musical instrument "gusle " (single string fiddle) and "guslar "- gusle's player, with the utopian environment of mad max 2, but rather than having Mad max atmosphere, rhis movie (series, actually) more leaning towards Badlands direction.

Why I said "series actually"? Because movie is unfortunately made as a promo for the series and movie itself looks messy when it comes to the story narrative a lot of things are not explained by the end of the movie.

While series, in the other hand, is nailing it!!!! Narrative is strong, acting is good, story is unfolding the way it should.

The only thing I didn't like is clearly low budget. As I already said, this story has potential to be recognized as one of the best in utopian sci fi genre ever, and execution is quite good, but the small budget made it not to shine to its full potential

Therefore, in giving 10/10 for the series, because budget shouldn't be taken into consideration when talking about masterpieces, especially when talking about the first movie ever if this genre, probably in 500 miles perimeter.

Movie...6/10.

This movie is significantly better than the director's last movie, and you can clearly see it.

The pacing is good, the movie never feels like its dragging along, the cinematography, music, and honestly most of the sets are really well done considering the monetary and location limitations, most important part is that cgi never really took me away from what was happening.

The world is interesting, and there is a lot to explore in it, but that's currently my biggest issue with the movie;

At some points of the movie we get lore dumps, to the point that you don't know whats happening and who's who, especially in the seed people backstory, the narrator doesn't help either - please don't ever use the narrator in a movie.

Despite what a lot of people say, the runtime is not too long, it just needed to be used better, the audience doesn't need to know everything, condense the story, only tell the most important details, or only show the stories important to the movie but do it properly.

Some actors were pretty bad, but they were not in the story for a long time so that makes it slightly better.

I have a lot more gripes with the movie and how it was made but you get the point.

All in all, the movie is a good stepping stone to an actually really good next movie from this team, and I'm actually excited for it.

A post-apocalyptic epic coming to the world from Serbia no less! A lot of motifs from the old Serbian heroic poetry, re-imagined in a new world that came out of nuclear war.

The main problem with the movie is that it isn't a movie at all. In Serbian cinematography they have this practice of creating a mini-series and also cutting it down into a movie for release in the cinemas. The Son's Will series is 8 episodes, 40 minutes long each. They had to cut it into 150 minutes movie that now simultaneously feels both too long and too short, as too much is crammed in with not enough exposure to explain all.

The scenes are very competently made and acted. A big issue is that the movie is very Americanized, not in the spirit of Serbian cinematography, so some dialogs and actions feel very cringey for domestic viewers, while I don't know how much it will appeal to international audience that has no idea what "gusle" is.

The movie may end up being more important than good.

While it is a bit unfair to hold the Serbian production to those same standards we expect from more advanced environments, its still the same scale we have to use for both.

The movie is not good in the most strict sense. Had it beed pumped out of Hollywood it would probably earn anywhere between 4,5 and 5,5. There are too many plotholes, characters are being introduced randomly with no depth or logic within the context, and acting is often subpar.

However, depending on the reception of the audience, it could mark the beginning of the fantasy genre proper in Serbian production. The whole endeavor took some serious cojones to even begin filming, with limited language reach and national audience not properly prepared or built for the genre. In those terms, everyone must respect what has been done here.

Had it been a bit shorter, I would have thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it in the theater.

Lets hope it kickstarts the new wave of fantasy pieces in this part of the world.