thejoudblitz

The movie starts with a child narrating for what felt like forever. Hey, filmmaker. Have you ever heard about 'show don't tell'? Should be reasonable considering it's a picture, not a campfire tale. Okay so bad start already, ignoring the terrible movie poster which technically is the initial bad start but could be just subjectively appalling, right? The amazing Julia Garner is in it and wastes her talent on a nonsense plot with jump scares and incompetent law enforcement. The rest is drivel and fake imdb reviews. A film needs only three things that work plus a satisfying ending. The three things are pacing (boring long shots, an unnecessary voice over right at the start, over 2 hours runtime filled with pointless scenes), action (when there was, it was alright), and finally strong characters (Brolin has negative screen presence. He is a charisma hole and could not carry a phone game ad if his life depended on it). Satisfying end? There was no payoff because before there was no build up. "Weapons" sucked. Don't try again please, you noob.

This movie has a great cast, good looking people who can act. The campfire scene in the beginning sets up characters nicely, with understandable dialogue and the viewer quickly gets to know the protagonists sufficiently. Unfortunately that's everything the film has going for it. First of all it's simply too hard to watch with the constantly shaking and zooming camera. The editing is so erratic, immersion can never happen for the audience. I was looking forward to see how they solved the logistical and continuity problems that would arise from the preposterous premise, bomb vests which transfer remaining time to anyone who kills the wearer, since I am a big fan of the Saw franchise. But given the bad camera work I'd rather read the story than watch this.

Mumbled words (bad acting), shaky camera (bad directing), boring story (bad script), no screen presence characters (bad casting), annoying score (bad producer), still old cgi gore effects (bad visuals). Congratulations, this turd sandwich has it all. They should have stopped making this after the umteenth hostage situation in the first series. Fear started strong but went the same way, World does not even try in the pilot. Is it still make-up people doing this?